K Jeter - Farewell Horizontal

In the half-light filtering through the fabric curving above his head, Axxter watched the slight rise and fall of the angel’s shallow breathing. He could have slapped some vital-signs monitoring equipment on her – he had the stuff somewhere at the bottom of his med kit – but figured there was no use. I wouldn’t know what it meant, anyway, human or otherwise. No injuries visible, except for a few bruises, the largest along the ribcage showing the imprint of the transit cable’s twisted steel strands. He lifted each limb, checking methodically for broken bones, before turning her over.

Out of the wind now, he could lift up the flight membrane and see the extent of the damage. The translucent tissue had more resilience than he expected, a thin film stretching between his hands, the network of capillaries expanding like a net. Only where the membrane was charred black had the wind and the angel’s weight been able to tear it. He lowered the membrane, a gauzy cape to the base of the angel’s spine, and knelt down to rummage through his med kit.

With a half-dozen bungee cords snagged onto the overhead curtain struts, the other ends hooked into the handle loops of a brace of hemostats clamped to the angel’s flight membrane, Axxter spread the tissue into a sagging tent. Now he could see the actual dimensions of the burn wound. Whatever tongue of fire had hit her – the acrid smell from the ruin zone, behind the smell of charred flesh, rose in his memory – who, or whatever, had aimed it, had vaporized an oval section of the membrane. Over a third of the total tissue area, Axxter estimated, peering at the draped skin. Leaving a black 0 slanting from the angel’s left hip up to the nape of her neck. The band of burned tissue was widest toward the bottom curve, narrowing to a few centimeters at the top. Studying the wound, Axxter could visualize the shot that had zeroed the membrane section out to ash, a blowtorch to a paper balloon.

She must’ve been there. He poked at the burned edge; a black flake adhered to his fingertip. Floating around out in the air, with that silly sweet smile on her face, when the Dead Centers blew open that whole section of the wall. All that screaming and various other loud noises as those horizontal suckers got crisped; plus big bright explosions – must’ve looked just fascinating to her. Axxter shook his head, grimacing at more than the burned smell rendered on his tongue. And then those fuckers – he meant the Dead Centers, even without the name forming inside his head – they looked out past the blown-open wall, out into the sky, and there’s some beautiful naked female apparition bobbing around out there, with her little smiling face looking in all curious to see what was going on, and a great big butterfly sphere filled with light behind her… So they just naturally lift their flame-spitting weapons at her – or just look at her with their dead eyes, all flint and steel. And just zap her out of the sky. Bad fuckers. An angel doesn’t stand a chance in this bad world.

“That’s what you get for being curious, sweetheart.” Axxter looked down at the angel’s sleeping face, turned to one side against the table, but there was no sign that she’d heard. It’s what I’ll probably get someday, too; remembering his little stroll around the ruin zone, the burn stench in his nostrils and the empty gazes of the horizontal dead on his back.

She was still breathing; inside the curtained-off space he could even hear the slight motion of air. Just getting her off the wall and into a secure space had postponed her death. Axxter scratched the side of his face, wondering what to do next. Probably won’t even die from the torn-open membrane, he supposed. But just kinda… starve to death, go into a moping decline or something, from not being able to float around in the air and do whatever it is angels do. Like a wing-clipped bird, a big one; what he imagined an eagle would be like. Have to hand-feed them for the rest of their lives, which wouldn’t be long, but would be sad. Shit; kinder to just kill her – he could dig enough anaesthetic dermal patches out of the med kit to do the job. Just slather them on the naked body and watch the heartbeat flutter and go still, under the massed chemical weight.

Or – the mercenary consideration; always that – I could just call up ol’ Ask & Receive. Tell them what I have here on the table; they’d have a pickup squad zooming down the wall in seconds, right to this spot. Take her right back to their toplevel research labs, and -

He shook his head. You get to go to hell – someplace down below the clouds, he imagined – for something like that. Being responsible for angel dissection. If there isn’t a hell, then there should be one, just for cases like that.

For a couple of minutes he stood by the table, gazing at the angel. Then he pushed through the curtains and clambered up the wall to where he’d left the Norton. He returned with his graffex gear. Setting it on the floor, he began pulling out the things he’d need.

† † †

He had strapped himself into the Norton’s sidecar, and even managed to fall asleep in that awkward position, legs angled out over the side. Not wanting to be there in the curtained-off work space when the angel awoke; there’d been enough bad shit happen to her, he’d figured, without her finding some gross, scary human being beside her.

An alarm beeped inside his ear, pulling him up from sleep. It took him a moment, blinking and running his tongue over sour-tasting teeth, before he realized what it was. “She’s up?” He had left a mike pinned to the curtains, set to detect any small sound.

I SUPPOSE. The letters moved across his gaze. EITHER THAT OR SOMETHING ELSE IN THERE.

Axxter climbed down to the platform. When he parted the curtains, he saw the angel sitting on the edge of the table, feet dangling. Her dark hair fell across her shoulders, one ribbon of it curling over her breast.

She looked straight at him. “Hello.” No fear in her face or voice.

He stood on the platform’s edge, curtain in each hand. “Uh -” His own voice had gotten lost for a moment. “Hello.”

A smile, radiant and heartbreaking. “Lahft’s my name. Angel’s my game.”

That threw him. Physically: he held tighter to the curtains to keep from swaying back from the platform’s edge. Who knew they could speak at all? Let alone anything you could understand. “Loft,” he repeated, unable to think of anything else.

She shook her head, the dark hair lifting from her shoulders. “Lahft. Lah-ah-ah- ahft .” Again the smile, waiting.

A fierce, dizzy joy swept across him, which he had to marvel at even as it passed. This was why he’d left the horizontal, gone vertical, stared down the wall and felt his guts rise in his throat, just to wake up and see that… all of that. To be standing, gazing at this female thing. But not that; that wasn’t it at all. An angel smiling at him. For her to be there, to be here… in a little space, nothing but the curtains and the echoing platform between him and the great empty air. If it only happened once, that was enough. Then it would always be happening, somewhere. Out here.

“Laaahhft. How’s that – okay?”

She nodded, then laughed when he told her his name. “Ny.” She looked upward, considering the sound. “Nigh, near, nearest. No such word as nearer . In a way.”

Her voice so bright, madly cheerful – considering what had happened to her, the condition he’d found her in – he wondered how much she actually understood of what she said, and how much was just parrot tape loops cycling around. Where’d she get it from, then? Eavesdropping – on whom? He let it slide, one of life’s mysteries. He stepped farther onto the platform, letting the curtains fall behind him; something small and metallic clattered away from the edge of his shoe. Looking down, he saw one of the scalpels he’d used to cut away the burnt edges of the angel’s flight membrane. All of the med kit’s implements were on the platform, arranged in lines and starbursts; the empty kit lay tucked under the table. She’d done all that, carefully and silently, before some small inadvertent noise had triggered the alarm mike.