A Rumor of Angels Page 4

  “Not me.”

  “Taught me everything I know.” Clennan nodded.

  “That so.” Is that supposed to make me feel better or worse?

  “Yup. He’s the best and baddest.”

  Worse.

  Across the cavern, a band of mirrored mannequins sawed at their instruments as if playing the tinny Muzak. Jude sipped at her wine gingerly, toyed with her food. “I’m not exactly used to all this plenty,” she mumbled.

  “Get used to it. Your man here’s highly skilled at stretching an expense account.” He touched her wrist, a casual gesture of camaraderie. “That salad’s fresh, you know. I mean, grown here in the colony, out in the open, in the dirt. No hydroponics here.”

  Avoiding his hand, she studied the tomato quarter impaled on her fork. “Thought it tasted funny.”

  “Yeah, the Natives are natural farmers, it seems.” He sat back with a proprietary wave. “That’s one of the few things we’ve been able to get them doing right. Someday, Arkoi’ll be Terra’s greengrocer.” He sounded as if he were repeating somebody else’s words. “Goodbye soy mash, so long syn-protein. Feel like a new man on what I’ve been eating since I came here, though there’s still no meat ’cept what we ship in. Natives don’t understand about raising animals for food. They’re vegetarians, I think. But we’ll get that going, too, when we clear enough room.”

  Jude finished chewing the tomato and swallowed it. The taste was earthy and sensuous. She found it distracting. “With twelve billion on the verge of starvation all the time, the sooner the better.”

  Clennan’s smile quirked. “Ah, yes, I forgot. You’re one of those. Well, power to the people,” he mocked. Then experimented with sincerity: “Hey, we’re on the same side, babe, where food’s concerned. Lots of tourists come here just to eat, meat or no meat.”

  One thing he’d said had caught her interest. “The Natives don’t keep any animals at all?”

  “Well, there’s the occasional donkey to carry things around. And they did take to the dairy stock we brought in, but it hasn’t meant much yet. They don’t understand large-scale operations, where you can feed enough people to make the effort worthwhile.” Clennan mopped his plate deftly with a huge hunk of bread, soaking up the last dregs of dressing before the waiter stole his salad out from under him and brought the main course, a crisp broiled fish. “Fish is great here, since we stocked the lake.”

  “What happened to the fish already in residence?”

  “Didn’t you know?” His grin was eager. “There weren’t any.”

  “Oh.”

  He looked disappointed. “Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

  “Well, there aren’t all that many left at home, either.”

  Clennan twirled his fork in the air. “Think, woman! This is a clean world. Underpopulated. There’s no normal excuse for the lack of wildlife.” He leaned forward, as if about to reveal a state secret. “You seen any insects since you’ve been here? Where’s our old pal the cockroach?”

  “Well, I’ve only been here…”

  “Or a bird, maybe?” Jude nodded, but he held up a forefinger. “No, you haven’t. You think you have—we all do, because we assume they’ll be here. But they’re not, take my word for it. No birds. No bugs. Not even rats. Only a handful of humanoid vegetarians, our friendly Natives. A genuine biological puzzle.”

  Jude sat silent for a moment, picking bones out of her fish. Had she imagined the gull-beasts? Down to the last bizarre detail? Cat paws and downy fur? The shiny razored beak? The boundary between reality and fantasy weakened by the hour. She swallowed. Better not mention the gulls to this guy Clennan. Not right now.

  “I’m surprised I hadn’t heard this before, about the fish and all,” she ventured casually.

  Clennan slumped gracefully in his chair, diddling with his wineglass. He held the misted glass up to the light and squinted. “There are certain things about this world that are guaranteed to give the tourists the creeps—I mean the real stay-away primal creeps, not the adolescent kind they come here for—and this is one of them. It doesn’t get aired in public too often, and if you don’t talk about it, these city dwellers don’t notice it.”

  Jude pushed away her plate with a cold smile. “Yeah, well, the tourists can always leave the primal creeps behind and go home. What about me, Intelligence man? Isn’t it about time you let me in on what you have in mind?”

  But Clennan, without moving, was suddenly alert, looking over her shoulder. The restaurant had grown quiet. A woman at the next table nudged her husband and stared. Jude turned around. A stoop-shouldered man stood near the entrance, alone. With great concentration, he was squaring his feet off on a red floor tile.

  “Guilty,” he said out loud to his feet. “Guilty,” he said to those seated near him. Nervous titters leaked from the surrounding diners. The man shook his head sadly, then focused his gaze on Jude as surely as if she had called out to him.

  “Guilty,” he repeated, and took a step toward her. Silence followed him across the room, leaving a wake of whispers and jittery laughter. Jude turned back to Clennan and found him watching her impassively. The silence enveloped their table, and Jude forced herself to look up at the man, who stood a few feet away. He stared at her intently, without menace. He was tall and bony, like a wire armature draped in dusty rags. His face was a devastated landscape, slack-muscled, ragged with worry and remorse. His skin was fishbelly pale, like her own, as if untouched by Arkoi’s burning sun. It was an archetypal madman’s face, framed with ashen hair worn long and tied behind the neck with a piece of twine. Looking closer, Jude saw the clothes were not really rags, just old, but clean and meticulously patched. His faded high-collared jacket had once been part of a uniform.

  Not knowing what else to do, Jude met his stare. He holds him with his glittering eye, she thought self-consciously. But this madman’s eyes did not glitter. They absorbed. They were a light, luminous gray, with fine arching brows, unsettling in their calm yet passionate sensibility. She blinked. The Wedding-Guest stood still, and listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath his will. Her fingers gripped her chair. Perception was sliding, warping. The bland Muzak grew raucous. Lights and colors brightened, shadows sharpened. The room was full of madmen, whispering, gaping with red open mouths, pointing cruel fingers at the calm stranger who waited like an island of sanity, offering sanctuary.

  Sanctuary. Me!

  Jude shook her head violently. The vision receded.

  The madman drew out a chair and sat down facing her, folding his hands deliberately in front of him. Without moving his chair, Clennan seemed to shrink away from the table. The madman ignored him. Sadly, gently, he smiled.

  Jude’s throat was dry. “What do you want?”

  “Just to see,” he replied, as if it were obvious.

  “To see what?”

  When he spoke again, she had to lean forward to catch his words. She had forgotten Clennan’s existence.

  The madman’s smile was whimsical. He opened his gray eyes very wide. “Oh, it’s not you. It’s what you will be.”

  Jude considered this blankly. How does one converse in riddles? “Do you read the future, then?”

  “Not before. Sometimes, now.” It was shy, diffident, but he made it seem perfectly reasonable. Or at least reasoned.

  “Well, ah… what do you see?” It was impossible not to ask.

  He seemed about to answer when a hand fell gently on his shoulder. “James,” said a quiet voice, unmistakably apprehensive. “Come along. Leave the lady alone.”

  The passionate gray eyes still held her. Obscurely, she knew something was being demanded of her. Impulsively, she reached out a hand. Across the table, Clennan stifled an urge to grab her hand away before it could touch the madman’s arm.

  “Wait,” she begged. “I want to know… I mean…” She withdrew her hand. “We were just talking.” Her impulsive behavior confused, embarrassed her. She couldn’t look at the man whose large hand rest
ed with such familiarity on the madman’s bony shoulder. The madman continued to smile at her with his sane eyes, then sighed with the finality of a purpose accomplished.

  The other man shuffled nervously. “You must understand, miss… he was with the Kramer expedition. The only survivor.”

  Clennan was nodding to himself. He had seen the loonies before. Jude’s sympathy for the madman gained new dimensions. An expeditionary! He’s been Out There! What was it like, she wanted to ask, but looking at him, could not. What is Out There that could make you like this? What will it do to me?

  “I understand,” she said quietly, though she did not, for to say that this creature was insane and let it go at that was not enough of an explanation. She glanced up at the newcomer dubiously. She guessed he was in his mid-fifties. Not a big man. Only his broad hand had made her think that. He was oddly dressed, in an old-fashioned buttoned shirt and brown pants that bagged with age on a taut, nervous body, trim but frail. He stood his ground, but his flitting blue eyes were uneasy, the measure in his voice an obvious lie. Jude could feel his discomfort as keenly as her own. Only the madman James, lapsed into contemplative sadness, seemed relaxed. She saw now that he was not much older than herself.

  The room had become noisy with relief. Jude held out her hand. “Goodbye, James. I hope I’ll see you again.”

  “Oh, you will,” he replied. The hand on his shoulder tightened.

  “Now how do you know that?” she whispered. Their heads drew close, secret sharers, but James only smiled.

  “He’s fond of riddles, miss,” the older man put in, beginning to urge the madman out of his seat. “He’ll keep you going for hours, but I must get him out of here. The crowds are hard on his nerves.” He got James to his feet, then nodded awkwardly. “Sorry for the disturbance,” Jude received a last sidelong smile from James as his companion ushered him out.

  “Question there is, which one’s the real loony,” remarked Clennan, returned from his silence.

  “The older guy? You know him?” Jude murmured as if waking from a dream.

  “Of him. That’s Mitchell Verde, one of the local vocal eccentrics. Ex-conservationist from back home, still beating the same old drum here in Arkoi. Says we’re upsetting the ecology, already, mind you, one stinking little city, says we ought to all pack up and go home or learn to live like the Natives.”

  “How do they live?” Jude felt she knew but didn’t know, as if someone had just given her a hint.

  “Who knows? Like any primitive folks, I guess. No machines, no comforts. Verde’s nuts. This place is a long way from terminal pollution.” Clennan brushed crumbs into his hand and dropped them into an unused ashtray. “He does take care of the crazies, though. Another personal crusade of his. Now… you wanted to talk business.”

  “Yeah. Business.” Jude regarded him critically for a moment. “You know, there’s no real point wasting all this charm on me, Clennan. I’m not forgetting that I’m here under duress.”

  He looked taken aback. Then he pushed his hair out of his eyes boyishly and chuckled. “No, I don’t suppose you are. But I was doing all right there for a while, eh?” His grin was unashamed.

  Jude said nothing.

  “Well. Ramos told you that you’d be going out with a penal expedition, right?”

  She nodded glumly.

  “That expedition is a cover for your operation, which is being kept secret. You won’t be going out with them.”

  “Secret? Why?”

  The glass band tinkled out its Muzak behind them. Clennan had put his charm aside and chose his words carefully now. “Because it’s a very special operation. We’ve found you a very special guide. A Native. We’ve never had a Native guide before.” Casually, he refilled her wineglass. “And you’ll be going out with him alone.”

  “Now, wait a minute.” Jude felt the butterflies begin, deep in her stomach. The soft flap-flap of fear. “Just me and one alien?” she demanded incredulously.

  “That’s the story.”

  “An expedition of two? Against the Guardians?” If she had allowed herself an inkling of hope, Clennan’s announcement stopped it dead. She snorted cynically and shot him a look of murderous dejection. “Not giving me much of a chance, are you?”

  Chapter 6

  In a quieter part of town, a mismatched pair straggled down an ill-lit street. The smaller urged the other along with patient insistence, while the tall one regaled him with a stream of soft patter, illustrated with many sudden gestures. His pale hair, loosed from its tie, floated about his thin shoulders like mist. Water ran in the gutters and between the cobblestones. The streetlights were weak pools in the darkness.

  They approached a massive steel gate in a wall that cut one part of the city off from the rest. A blue-uniformed guard stepped out of a brightly lit booth that bore the label “Native Quarter. Authorized personnel only after 9:00 p.m.”

  “ID, mister!” the guard barked, loosing the safety on his stunner. “Oh, it’s you, Verde. Taking that one home for the night?” He waved aside the plastic card the little man had reflexively pulled from his pocket.

  “Strayed a bit far tonight,” Verde explained.

  “Poor devil. What’d they do without you, eh?”

  Verde shrugged. “Been quiet tonight, Mike?”

  “Mostly, though there’s a big convention in town, and a bunch of guys came hollering around a while ago wanting to see the ‘alien weirdos.’ Same old stuff. We’re putting on extra men tomorrow, just in case. Sometimes I think this wall protects the Natives from us, rather than the other way around.”

  “Of course it does,” the madman giggled.

  “Sure, kid, sure. And you loonies are just lucky the Natives don’t mind your being locked up with them at night.” The guard laughed, then tapped out the release code on his console. The big gate slid open noisily. “Hey, Verde, you spend much more time in there and the tourists will start taking you for crazy.”

  “Most of them already do.”

  The guard laughed again and waved them through.

  Inside the wall, no streetlights shone. The houses were small, their windows black and silent. Here the madman led the way, quietly, surely, through the night.

  Chapter 7

  There were no more leisurely dinners for a while. At 7:00 the next morning, Jude’s training began. Clennan drove her mercilessly, a cruelly cheerful taskmaster who insisted on pointing out how far she was from the shape she needed to be in to even think of surviving in the wilderness. Early to bed, even earlier to rise. Painful, sweating hours in a stifling gym, not the spotless air-conditioned gyms of the Intelligence Complex, which Clennan rejected as not “secure” enough, but a falling-down sweatbox near the Native Quarter. There she endured endless briefing sessions on survival technique, self-defense, first aid, local botany, repair and handling of all her equipment, geology, meteorology, swimming, and finally a wide variety of mountain-climbing techniques. Soon she wondered why she didn’t just break out screaming and run off into the mountains of her own accord. Perhaps Clennan had just that in mind, that by the time he had finished with her, she’d look forward to going Out There, just to be rid of him and his insistent schooling.

  All the while, he kept her away from her cameras. Her fingers itched for them, but Clennan pointed out that photography was the one skill she already possessed, and there’d be plenty of time Out There to take pictures. Just one more reason, she thought, to look forward to departure.

  “I still don’t understand why this Native is only willing to take one person into the mountains,” she complained one night as they sat in a pool of lamplight, working through another fat stack of scientific data. “I’d think the chances for success would be better the more people there were.”

  “The Native says different. He wants to keep the operation small and quiet: one person, no radio, doesn’t want the other Natives to know about it. He’s some sort of renegade, brought up by a Terran or something. Seems his own guys have been a bit ro
ugh on him.”

  The shadows were assuming threatening shapes in the darker corners of the old gym. “And how come no weapons? Karate can only get me so far.”

  “Especially yours.” At her look, Clennan rolled his eyes. “It’s a joke, kid. Next we’ll work on your sense of humor… Look, the weapons thing was another of his conditions. We had to play it his way, or he wouldn’t take the job.”

  “How do you know you can trust him?”

  Clennan grinned evilly. “How do I know I can trust you? Besides, I don’t have to trust him. You do.”

  “Thanks.” The table rocked as she shoved back her stool. She crossed the room to stare out at the neon-jangled city. It was raining. Steam rose from the pavement through red, then green, then amber until it dissipated into darkness. Jude did not like knowing she was afraid. “It’s all a big game for you, isn’t it, Clennan?”

  “You might say that. What’s to take seriously? You live, you die. Might as well have fun doing it.”

  “You’re not at risk here.”

  “I have been. I tell you, be a little more of a gamesman, babe. It’ll do you good.”

  She had a sudden temptation to smash the window. You are a bloody robot bastard, Clennan! But she caught his reflection in the dust-streaked glass, watching her with a semblance of compassion. Or was it merely pity?

  “So he’s agreed to take me over the mountains?”

  “Into. We made no mention of over, or that we suspect he’s hiding an entire population out there. He thinks you’re putting together one of those fancy picture books. Just play it by ear and get as far as you can.”

  Jude wiped her damp palms on her coverall. She left smudges of darker grime against the gray. “Have you, uh, met this person?” She moved back to the work table in weary resignation.

  “Nope. Alien Division deals with him. I keep clear of the Natives mostly.”

  “So I noticed.” She tossed her head, taking aim at where she hoped his ego lay. “I don’t understand how you guys run things. You stay in Arkoi, Ramos stays on Terra, you don’t communicate with him, you don’t talk to anyone here. Seems so inefficient. I mean, who’s really in charge? How does the right hand know…”