Greg Bear: Queen of Angels

Examiner: “But these other two…are they contemporary? ”

Clerk: “Human, sire, twenty-first century.”

Examiner: “Humans were made to learn quickly, not to take ages, like angels and demons. Haven’t they learned their lessons yet?” (No reply.)

Examiner: “I’m afraid we’ve run out of tortures appropriate for crimes of these sort. Not to mention space. Send them back.”

Clerk: “Sire?”

Examiner: “Send them back to their own kind. Let the living find the best ways to punish their miscreants. Open the gates of Hell, and push the damned through them, one by one!”

Madame de Roche was tired by noon and the faithful removed themselves from the house, all but Fettle whom she requested to stay behind. By twelve thirty the old stonecool house was quiet. Madame de Roche ordered her arbeiter to bring glasses of iced tea for them both. The sleek black machine walked on four spider legs through the dining hall into the kitchen.

“Have you published yet, Richard?” she asked him as they sat on the veranda looking across a dusty green and gray canyon at the rear of the house.

“No, Madame. I do not write for publication.”

“Of course not.”

+ Teasing me. She’s in a smooth.

“Your story made quite an impression. We were all fond of Emanuel Goldsmith. I knew him quite well when we were younger, when he was writing plays. Did you know him then?”

“No, Madame. I was a lobe sod. I met him thirteen years ago.”

Madame de Roche nodded then shook her head, frowning. “Please. We both remember a time when language was civilized.”

“Your pardon.”

“Was the pd certain Goldsmith was the murderer?”

“They seemed to be,” Richard said.

She put on a contemplative air, arms limp on the wicker rests of her peacock chair. “That would be a most interesting thing, Emanuel a killer. He always had it in him, I thought, but it was a crazy thought. I never voiced it…until now. You were an acolyte, were you not? You admired some of his women?”

“I was a sycophant, Madame. I admired his work.”

“Then you’re sad about this.”

“Surprised.”

“But not sad?” she asked, curious.

“If he did it, then I’m furious with him. It’s a betrayal of all the untherapied. He was one of our greats. We’ll be hounded till our deaths, our styles will be degraded, our works shunned.”

“That bad.”

Richard nodded almost hopefully as if anticipating the ordeal.

“This transform pd you met…She was not negroid, you say, but she was black.”

“Oriental in some features, Madame.”

“Black nemesis. I’d like to meet this woman sometime…Elegant, composed, I presume?”

“Very.”

“One of the therapied?”

“I would think so. She had the air of the combs.”

“There was once a time when police, public defenders, were underpaid, lower class.”

“I remember, Madame.”

“They probably enjoy coming into the shade.”

“Emanuel lived on the third foot of East Comb One, Madame.”

She nodded, remembering. “I wouldn’t worry if he is caught and convicted,” she said, voice light as down. “He was never really one of us. Untherapied, yes, but a natural needs no such thing. We are none of us naturals, my dear. We are merely untherapied. Our badge of mock protest. Oh, no. Emanuel will dishonor a much higher category than ours.”

Madame de Roche dismissed him and his spirits fell immediately he was outside the door. + More and more I am nothing without someone. To be alone is to be in bad company.

Richard paced one yard this way one yard that on the root heaved concrete. Five minutes after a signal from his beeper another little rounded white autobus hummed into the eucalyptus screen and opened its wide doors.

“Destination,” the bus asked him, voice pleasantly androgynous.

+ People. A place that brings an end to a rough.

Richard gave an address in Glendale on Pacific, an avenue leading to and in shade of East Comb Three. A literary lounge where home brew could be had and most important of all where he would not be alone. Perhaps there he could tell the tale again maximum effect maximum purgation. + Black nemesis. Work on that.

“One hour,” the bus told him.

“So long?”

“Many calls. Please come aboard.”

Richard boarded and took a strap.

Moses came down from Horeb, hair on fire with God, God’s soot around his lips where he had eaten the greasy leaves of the burning bush, his humanity blasted from him, leaving him like carbon steel touch him he might ring, and contemplated his future. A leader of men. And women. He sat near his dear wife Zipporah in the dark and cursed his misfortune.

Men didn’t know what they wanted, or how to go about getting it. They did whatever came into their minds first. They hated at the drop of a hat and spurned love because they feared being taken advantage of. They leaped into violence before an angel could blink, and then called their murder and destruction valorous, and boasted of it and wept while drunk. And women! Did not carbon steel deserve something more?

“Give me a glorious task, Lord, away from this rabble.”

And that was when God descended and was sore vexed with him, making the land outside their tent quiver. Zipporah daughter of Jethro said, “Moses, Moses, what have you done now?”

“I have thought unworthy thoughts,” Moses said, hoping that was enough to mollify God, but the landscape turned bloodred and the sky filled with bloody clouds. Moses, even carbon steel, was afraid.

Zipporah came upon the clever expedient of lopping off their poor son’s foreskin, touching Moses with the blood, and then the door frame.

“Stay away from my husband!” she cried. “He’s a good man. Take my son, but not my husband!”

Moses hid behind the daughter of Jethro and understood clearly the weakness of his people.

Mary Choy came back to the frozen apartment at thirteen, having been off six hours, barely time for catnap vinegar bath and paperwork. She had requested full time for this case and was certain she would get it.

Some of the victims still entombed had been identified and they were gold and platinum names, students, sons and daughters of the well known and influential. She put on a thermal suit in the cubicle erected outside the hall door, ordered the seal breached and stepped into the blue cold.

A radio assayer hung from the track mounted in the apartment ceiling, having replaced the sniffer. Dustmice pushed through the cold stiff tendrils of once live carpet searching for skin flakes and other debris trapped in the carpet’s custom digestion. They had already found traces of all victims and Emanuel Goldsmith; there were traces barely thirty six hours old of four other visitors.

Mary surveyed the solid spattered sadness of young bodies one by one saying her professional farewells.

The names, in order of death:

Augustin Rettig

Neona White

Betty-Ann Albigoni

Ernly Jeeger

Thomas Finch

and three unidentified. Rettig’s mother was general manager of North Comb One. White’s father owned Workers Inc the Pacific Rim’s biggest temp employment agency representing some twenty three million therapied and natural lobe sods—the cream of the crop. Workers Inc had approached Mary in her pretransform youth. She had turned them down. West Rim pds worked through Human Expedition Ltd and even in her raw youth she had known where she was going.

Betty-Ann Albigoni was the daughter of a publisher—books the file said, more lit than vids; Goldsmith’s major English language publisher. Thomas Finch’s uncle was counsel to High Reach, general chandlers for suborbitals. Ernly Jeeger was Emanuel Goldsmith’s godson a promising poet on his own also known for an eloi sympathizer and borderlaw activity in whole-life vids.