A Rumor of Angels Read online

  Ramos grabbed the group shot from her hand and turned it over, reading aloud, with the voice of one more accustomed to speechifying than interpretive reading. “ ‘We camped by their lovely village that night, and spoke with them long into the summer darkness, with hands and pictures in the dirt, with whatever means we could find to communicate. They have a miraculous gift for language. The golden ones seemed most beautiful to me, perhaps because, if I were to picture God’s angels, they would look just like this.’ ” He grimaced and tossed the photo down on the desk. “Langdon again.”

  God’s angels? The phrase stopped her. She fingered the photo of the towheaded child. Obviously the religious type, this Langdon. Rare these days. Obviously crazy. Though she did not share Ramos’ distaste, she understood it. You could hardly trust the word of a fanatic. Yet beneath the florid literary style, there was something compelling in the very excesses of Langdon’s enthusiasm, rather like reading a fairy tale. It wasn’t reality, but it kept you turning the pages. Jude tried to understand Langdon, to be him for a moment, to assume that out there in Arkoi’s mountains, he had seen something that had moved him profoundly, something that his camera had been unable to capture. Something real or unreal, in the landscape, in the Natives, those drab little aliens, something his own language had better expressed, that was being lost in translation to film. What? She felt the first warning signals. I’m getting too interested in all this. Very little was safe in the Wards, but caring was surely fatal. Ramos must not know that her carefully cultivated passivity was vulnerable. She leaned back stiffly in her chair and distanced the entire subject.

  “Why don’t you just bring back a Native for questioning?”

  He snorted, disgusted. “You don’t think that’s been tried? We got a lot of wild tales and hocus-pocus. Good for nothing.”

  She rubbed the greasy arm of the chair noncommittally. “The journals don’t seem to describe them as good for nothing.”

  The feral smile came out again. “Well, good, Rowe. I’m glad to see the tranks haven’t dulled your brain completely.” He dug out his handkerchief once more, then perched his bulk on the edge of his chair, looming over the desk as his thick elbows crushed mounds of paper. “Now,” he began in a lowered voice, although they were alone in the room, “think about this. There’s a guy in an office somewhere who’s been studying this material real carefully for me. He’s trying to match what the journals say with the present-day facts about the Natives living in the Terran colony. Now, those Natives claim to be the entire population of Arkoi, but this guy is convinced that the journals can’t be talking about the same Natives. He thinks there must be others.”

  “Others?” She felt a slight prickle. She was suspicious of the greed in his eyes. This is getting very weird…

  “Others.” His jowled face was eager, almost conspiratorial. He tapped the Langdon file with a ringed pinky. “These angel ones. I think they’re out there, where we haven’t been able to get to yet. There’s gossip like that, you know, in the colony, only the tourists make them supernatural, call them ‘the Dark Powers,’ the usual nonsense. But if there are others, and if we could find them…” He paused, then sat back, as if regretting his own enthusiasm. The change in him was like a cold front blowing in. He retrieved Jude’s dossier from under the scattered mess on the desk and mused over it silently for a while.

  “You know,” he commented finally, “Breaking into a WorldFed accounting office… a stupid thing to wreck a promising career on. It was promising, am I right? What the hell good did you think that was going to do?”

  If you think it was so stupid, why the hell do you want to know? She knew she could not remember anyway. Oh, intellectually it still made sense. She had been photographing so-called classified information, government information that should be public information, especially in regard to government spending, when that spending seems to be promoting suspiciously personal benefits in certain quarters. But the anger, the outrage, that pure flame of righteous indignation that had compelled her late one night into a locked office: that had died in the Wards in order that something of her could survive.

  “With an eighty percent tax rate, people have a right to know how their money’s being spent,” she attempted weakly, out of respect for her anger’s memory.

  “Eighty-seven, now,” Ramos replied with tolerant malice. “You’ve been out of action, remember? Hell, that’s what the Petition Courts are for, Rowe. You want information, file for it.”

  “The Petition Courts, sure. If you don’t mind waiting ten years.”

  Ramos shrugged. A man who has prospered in the military is unperturbed by bureaucracy. “Fifteen billion people out there at last count. What do you expect, instant service?” He pushed the dossier aside. “At any rate, about these so-called angels. We’re sending out another expedition, a different kind of expedition. We need more and better pictures taken by someone who knows what to expect. We want to know who’s lying and why.”

  Expedition? Jude pursed her lips grimly. The ax she was waiting for had just fallen. Hopelessness emboldened her to sarcasm. “Well, that’s one way to empty the jails.”

  Ramos found this hugely amusing. “Don’t take it so hard, Rowe. You could be the very one to make it back alive.”

  “Yeah. A real honor.” She felt cold, even in the stifling heat. She had overlooked that the hunter would have many quarries and one of them would be her. She watched the hunter watch her, and savor the fear that she could not hide from him.

  “You’ve got a real treat in store, Rowe. The Arkoi colony has become quite the tourist resort since you’ve been inside. Hotels, water sports, gambling, and lots weirder things besides that I can’t mention in mixed company. You’ll be in training there a month or so before you go out. Believe me, it’s the nicest place you’ve seen in a long while.”

  “See Naples and die,” she quipped bitterly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Or, you can stay in the Wards for the rest of your life.”

  “Would have done anyway.”

  “Think positive, Rowe. Fresh air, sunshine. A fantastic opportunity.”

  Finally, she looked him straight in the eye. “Why the sales pitch?”

  He shrugged again. “It would be easier if we had your cooperation.”

  “I see.” She laid her fingers in a frame around the photo still waiting in her lap. The Native child, if it was a child. She thought it looked out at her sadly. She pictured her dingy cell, remembered the long years of hard gray days, the harassment, the deadening despair, the sleep suffocated by drugs. Whatever Arkoi held in store, could it be any worse than a lifetime in the Wards?

  Ramos was impatient enough to lecture. “If there were a window in this place, Rowe, I’d shove your nose out it so you’d recall what it’s like to watch a world choking itself to death. Now, just next door is a brand-new world, clean air, open land, raw materials enough to revitalize our industry. We’re going to win that world, with or without your help, so do you want to come along for the ride or not? There are a few other photographers in the Wards.”

  Don’t know… can’t think. She hadn’t expected to be faced with a choice. “What time is it?”

  “What?”

  “Time. You know.”

  Ramos’ fingers drummed. “It’s four o’clock in the goddam morning, Rowe, long past my bedtime.” He pulled a neat plastic envelope from an inside pocket. “Here’s a shower pass, new-clothes requisition, walking papers, ID. Your very own robot waits outside to run you through the steps. The airbus leaves for the Transport Corridor at six-thirty. If you’re with us, Rowe, you’d better hustle.”

  In the short run, it was easier just to do what he said. The long run she had lost all sense of in the Wards. “I’m just supposed to go out there and take pictures?”

  “That’s it.”

  There had to be a catch, besides the big one. “What if I do come back in one piece?”

  His eyes nar
rowed, as if assessing a risk. “You bring us back what we want, you’re a free woman.”

  Free. Free? Still she resisted. “Do I get my choice of equipment?”

  He had left the most tempting bait for last.

  “You name it.”

  Silence. Just the purring of the computer terminal. Then: “I guess I’d better get going.”

  Ramos nodded, supremely satisfied with his own cleverness. “I guess you’d better.”

  Chapter 2

  Twelve prisoners in gray coveralls sat glumly in the first-class waiting lounge of the Transport Terminal, surrounded by luxury and security robots. Tall bony men and big-framed women with puzzled anger in their eyes, waiting like cattle in a market, all strangers to Jude, who drew apart from them, trying to adjust to the sudden unfamiliarity of her surroundings.

  The airbus that had delivered them to the terminal had, in typical Ward style, no windows. A fancy chrome clock high on the lounge wall told her it was 6:20 a.m. on the Terran side of the corridor, and 7:20 p.m. on the Arkoi side. She knew the corridor was somewhere along the equator, but could not see outside. The first-class lounge was buried deep inside the gaudy package of steel and glass that housed the one precious point of connection between the parallel worlds. Jude still longed for a glimpse of the true light of day.

  She stood by a transparent wall that overlooked the vast main floor of the terminal. First class was cool and hushed, raised behind its protective glass. Beyond, among the arching girders, a sour haze of grease and smoke drifted through garlands of plastic vines hung with grapes and limp paper flowers. A huge picture sign announced in lurid color: escape to arkoi! go terratransit!

  When Jude had entered prison, construction of the big terminal had just begun. She and her colleagues in the underground had protested at the groundbreaking, calling the new building a boondoggle for the state building contractors. Who, they asked, but a handful of adventurers and mad scientists will want to vacation in an alien world?

  Boy, were we out of touch…

  The floor below was jammed with people. Without regard for order or efficiency, the tourist-class crowd milled and pushed, arms waving, mouths open wide. The glass wall vibrated gently beneath Jude’s hand, and she knew the noise down there must be deafening.

  Watching, she recalled her only childhood crime. (She had come late to being a lawbreaker.) Her creche had acquired an ant terrarium when she was five years old. For reasons she understood only later, she had found it intolerable to stare in at the thousands of mindless busy creatures running about trapped in their claustrophobic corridors. Late one night, she lugged it with enormous effort into the nursery recreation hall, and emptied it into the sandpile. Just like those spilled ants, she thought now, looking down at the mob of tourists. Rushing in circles, swarming over each other in foggy desperation, dreaming of escape.

  Escape. Now that the word had the ring of a commercial to it, she found the irony unbearable. For her, escape would be temporary at best. She was not putting much stock in Ramos’ promises, even if she did come back alive. And sane. She moved away from the window wall and sat. The unaccustomed plush softness of the couch was an invitation to relax, but she could not. Her new coverall scratched, the stolid security robots lurked about the walls, the camera case she carried, chosen by herself, seemed much heavier than it had six years ago, and she had finally realized that she was being packed off to an alien world where people went mad in the mountains. An alien world. Jude shook her head in wonder.

  Her hand strayed to the hard plastic of the camera case. It was good-quality. She found comfort in its hardness and in the thought of the fine machinery nestled inside. The supply officer had nearly refused her the outdated models she had selected.

  Ramos had ordered the best, Ramos would have his head, Ramos this, Ramos that. But these are the cameras I’m used to, she had replied. When he pouted, she had tried to make him understand. My hands know them.

  Suddenly there were buzzers sounding, soft but insistent. The robots sprang to work, hustling the prisoners roughly up the loading ramp. Waiting in line along the glass wall, Jude noticed a freshly erected partition at one end of the tourist floor. From her elevated vantage, she could see over it to where workers bustled around with huge crates of vegetables on forklifts. She recalled Ward gossip about food riots at the Transport Terminal and felt a murmur of indignation. There would be no more riots now that this innocent-looking barrier concealed from the tourists’ eyes the luxuriant masses of fresh vegetables that streamed from the fields of Arkoi straight into the kitchens of the rich.

  A security robot barked her into motion. At the top of the ramp was a small white room set about with couches. The carpet was thick and soft. The robots lined up in phalanx formation on the ramp until the door slid shut, sealing the prisoners inside.

  In the cramped white room, the other prisoners regarded each other dully, without hope or fear, anticipating only a more oblique form of execution than the Wards provided. Jude had learned that fear as a consistent state ceases to be frightening, and one either commits brave outrageous acts or lies passive in fear’s hand. She had also learned that the Wards were not the place for brave, outrageous acts.

  An electronic purr broke the silence.

  “Citizens, please take your seats. Transport will begin in ten seconds.”

  A warning bell sounded, and the coughing hum of giant engines. The prisoners jostled for seats.

  “Transport in five seconds.” A muffled buzzer rang. Jude instinctively shut her eyes, though transport was supposed to be painless and instantaneous.

  Four… three… where are we going?… two… one…

  In the white room, the lights dimmed. Jude looked up and in the pit of her stomach felt a sickening kick. Then silence, absolute. An instant of hanging, out of time, out of space… the smell of… flowers? Dizziness. Wrenching vertigo. A deep humming in the ears, and then, in front of them, the wall disappeared.

  Light flooded the room, blinding them with warmth and color. Jude stumbled out of her chair to squint out at a sky of perfect story-book blue, ablaze with cotton-candy clouds and a sun brighter than she had ever seen. A path in a green lawn stretched invitingly away down a gentle hill to vanish behind a leafy hedge. Faint music floated in the air, tuneless and sweet, weaving sensual melodies with scents of unseen blossoms and wet grass.

  Jude stood dazed at the opening as the other prisoners exclaimed, jostled, pushed by her, and spilled out onto the lawn. She felt unbalanced, simultaneously elated and troubled. She looked, tried to see more clearly. Her back prickled and she thought of a dog’s hackles rising.

  But I see nothing to be afraid of… ahh!

  She caught her breath as a jarring flash of déjà vu enveloped her and vanished, will-o’-the-wisp, as she grasped to understand it.

  What is it, this undeniable sense of coming… home?

  Then there were human voices bawling orders and the spell was broken. Jude steadied herself with a hand against the rough stone that framed the opening. The music and the sweetness were gone. She sniffed, already nostalgic, and smelled only hot, dry air and the arid tang of pine. A quite ordinary gravel path ran away through trim hedges. The heat was like lead weights on her shoulders. Nothing stirred but the red-faced guards striding toward her. No birds. Not even an insect humming in the bushes.

  At the very least there should be birds. Jude stumbled dazedly as someone grabbed her arm. A vacation paradise should make certain to have a few around for local color. This seemed only reasonable. She searched the sky. Surely, in the midst of her confusion by the door, she had sensed a coolness, had heard a bird, faintly, like the music, a high wild bird cry in the distance?

  The guards lined them up in pairs and marched them down the path through a stone gateway covered with vines. A tendril brushed Jude’s cheek, and she started, flinched against her partner, then recovered with an embarrassed apology. They filed through the gate into a dusty monorail station packed with arrivin
g tourists. The bolder ones ceased their milling and shouting to stare as the guards shouldered their charges through the crowd.’ Jude heard the words “penal expedition” whispered up and down the platform. She pulled her concentration inside herself until her back hunched, and waited, sweating in the hot sun, to board the monorail. Motion drew her attention to a line of taxicars collecting passengers. Excitement flickered in her briefly. Will there be Native drivers? But only bored Terran faces met her gaze as she struggled onto the train.

  Chapter 3

  The monorail whooshed through a leafy tunnel in the treetops. The roof was a transparent bubble, and the interior was green with the premature twilight of the forest, broken by strobic flashes of sun. The guards retired to the head of the car to play five-handed poker, and slowly, the prisoners overcame their astonishment at the miles of forest whipping by outside, loosened up enough to talk fitfully among themselves, feeling each other out. Jude curled herself into a window seat, her eyes riveted by the trees, her ears tuned to the fear welling through the conversational tones.

  “When we come back crazy, you know what they’ll do?”

  “If we come back.”

  “They’ll leave us to run around in the streets, they will.”

  “If we come back,” repeated a scar-faced woman. “Most of those guys they never found at all.”

  “Bodies.”

  “They don’t call them the Mad Mountains for nothing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whaddaya mean, run around in the streets?”

  “The loonies. Come on, you’ve heard that. The ones that crawl back out of the mountains with brains like mush, they let them roam the streets here to scare the tourists.”

  “What the hell for? Aren’t the tourists’ own lives enough to be scared of, in the cities?”

  “It’s good for business,” said a dry voice. “Fear is a highly salable commodity if carefully controlled.”