Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

“Hold on, hold on, you saying you were made?”

“We all get made, mortal, one way or another. My point is, we angels are designed to run on solar power, that’s why Adam Black keeps this cage in darkness, otherwise I might be able to charge up enough sunpower to sunder these bars. Though,” the angel added dolefully, “we angels are primarily designed for flight, not fight; most of my strength is channelled through my rotors.”

“So what if I opened all the curtains?”

“Adam Black comes and closes them again. Thanks for the thought, mortal, but it would take about three weeks of constant sunshine for me to regain my full angelic might.”

Adam Black put his head round the door and said, “Time’s up. Come on out.” He looked sternly at the angel. “You been keeping them talking again? I’ve told you to keep it short.”

“Hey hey hey, what’s the rush?” protested Rajandra Das. “There’s no one after me and we were just getting to an interesting stage in the conversation. One minute more, all right?”

“Oh, okay.” Adam Black withdrew to count his takings: six dollars fifty centavos, a chicken, three bottles of peapod wine, and two honeycombs.

“All right, tell me more, man,” said Rajandra Das. “Like how you came to be in this here cage in the first place.”

“Simple carelessness. There I was in the Great Company of the Blessed Lady, parading over some ten centavo High Plains town called Frenchmanwe do that from time to time, make like a big circus parade, keeps mortals mindful of higher things, like who made the world, and anyway, the Blessed Lady’s got this new policy of direct intervention with organic beings. Well, it was a pretty big show and what with the Great Powers and Dominions and the Spiritual Menagerie and the Big Blue Plymouth and the Rider on the Many-Headed Beast and all that, it took the best part of a day for it to pass over. I was in the final wave and what with all that waiting around I was getting pretty bored, and bored angels get careless. Next thing I knew, I’d flown smack into the high-voltage section of the Frenchman microwave link. Stunned me. Clear blew my fuses. Kayoed. Mortals cut me down and stuck me in this cage in a cellar and fed me cornpone and beer. Any idea what it’s like to be an alcoholic angel? I kept telling them I was solar powered, but they couldn’t take it in. Mortals were wondering what they could do with an angel from the Heavenly Host, when along came Adam Black and bought me and my cage for fifteen golden dollars.”

“Well, what about trying to escape?” suggested Rajandra Das, thinking evil thoughts.

“No lock. We are good with machinery, I’ll say that for us, any lock on that cage I could pick, but that Adam Black knows his hagiography, for when I had regained my strength and grown new circuits, he had this door all welded up.”

“That’s bad,” said Rajandra Das, remembering holes under Meridian Main Station. “No one should ever be in a cage because of a mistake.”

The angel shrugged eloquently. Adam Black put his head around the door again.

“Okay. Time’s up, and I mean time’s up. Out. I’m closing up for the night.”

“Help me,” the angel whispered desperately, gripping the finger-thick steel bars. “You can get me out, I know it; I can read it in your heart.”

“That’s probably just question five,” said Rajandra Das, and he turned to leave the darkened, carriage. But out of his pocket he slipped his Defence Forces multiblade knife, stolen from Krishnamurthi’s Speciality Hardware, and palmed it to the angel.

“Hide that,” he whispered without moving his lips. “And when you get out, promise me you’ll do two things. First is don’t come back. Ever. Second is remember me to the Blessed Lady when you see her, because she made me kind to machines and machines kind to me.” The palm turned into a wave of farewell. Adam Black was waiting to lock the doors.

“Some sideshow you got there,” Rajandra Das commented. “Tell you this, going to be a hard act to follow. What you got lined up for us next? St. Catherine in a cage, eh?” He winked at the showman. Already he thought he could hear the rasping of metal on metal.

The morning ROTECH came it entered the world as a dull drone in the dreams of the people and crept out of them as a heavy throbbing. It woke everyone from their sleep and it was then that they realized that they were not sharing the same communal nightmare, that the noise was a real objective phenomenon, so real and objective that it made every loose item in the house rattle and sent plates from their shelves to smash on the floor.

“What is it, what is it?” the people asked each other, throwing on their day clothes, throwing off nightmare superstitions of Apocalypse, Armageddon, nuclear destruction, interplanetary war or the sky falling upon their heads. The throbbing grew until it even filled the spaces inside their skulls. It shook the rocks beneath their feet, it shook the bones beneath the skin, it shook heaven and earth, it shook the people up the stairs and out of their front doors to see what was happening.

Above Desolation Road hung a thousand silver saucers, so shiny-bright in the dawn sun that they blinded the eye: a thousand silver sky-craft shaking earth and heaven with the pounding of their engines. Each was a full fifty metres across, each bore the holy name of ROTECH in conjunction with a serial number and the subscript, in bold black: <>. Searchlights snapped out and quartered the town, seeking the citizens who stood astounded on their porches and verandas. Illuminated from on high, the Babooshka fell to her knees and prayed that the Angel of the Five Vials of Destructions (plague of darkness, plague of hunger and thirst, plague of childlessness, plague of sarcasm, plague of all-devouring mutant goats) might pass from her presence. The children of Desolation Road waved to the crews in their forward control cabins. The pilots waved in return and flashed their search-lights. As people became used to the idea of ROTECH aircraft in the air above their town, they realized that there were not a thousand of them, nor a hundred, nor even fifty, but twenty-three. Twenty-three ’lighters filling heaven and earth with their pounding pounding engines was still an impressive sight first thing in the morning.

With a roar of stone-shattering power, twenty-two ’lighters lifted high into the air and banked away into the west, searchlights tracing long raking stains against the sky. The one remaining dirigible settled lower and came in for a landing on the far side of the railroad tracks, in the exact spot where Persis Tatterdemalion had crashed into Desolation Road. ROTECH’s landing was fully controlled and performed with arrogant ease. The ’lighter’s fans swiveled upward for landing and threw stifling clouds of dust into the air. When the coughing had stopped, the ’lighter was resting upon its landing pads and unfolding a flight of steps from its brightly lit interior. With the steps came the smell of breakfast cooking.

The citizens of Desolation Road were all gathered on the town side of the tracks, all save Persis Tatterdemalion, who had fled at the first touch of the searchlights on her skin, for the ’lighters were free to fly and she was not. The people watched the events aound the airship with trepidation mixed with excitement. These could be the best visitors yet.

“Go on,” said Mr. Jericho to Dr. Alimantando. “You’re the boss.” Dr. Alimantando brushed some dust from his perpetually dusty clothes and walked the hundred metres over the line to the ’lighter. There was not one encouraging cry to urge him on.