He turned, and she saw a strange lump between his shoulder blades. She was sure that had not been there moments before, when she had held him. As she watched, it bulged, grew, bifurcated.
As she watched, feathered wings sprouted from his back.
With a shake, he settled his flight feathers and held his wings out stiffly behind him. He turned and stepped off the cliff and, moments later, was soaring, swooping, cutting back heavenward in an up-draft like a giant gull, like an angel. Her angel.
TlSH RETURNED TO the Falling Droplet late, unwashed.
Milton smiled at her, because that was how he was, and she wondered if he could tell, if she was that changed by what had happened.
She certainly felt different. She felt like something had been added, something taken away. She was not the woman she had been this morning.
She kissed Milton, willing him to taste the salt on her lips, to smell the cinnamon scent on her hair, her clothes.
She had arranged to meet her angel again the following day, and she knew she would keep the appointment.
"Customers," murmured her husband, drifting away.
She turned, looked out across the bay to where birds and pterosaurs flew, wondering if he might be out there too.
IT COULDN"T LAST, of course. It could never last.
Ever more brazen, Tish had brought her lover to the Vanguard to eat the renowned dipped crabs. They had met in the street, like pa.s.sing friends, with a smile and a few words, with not a single touch exchanged. Even now, sitting across a table from each other, their hands did not touch, their feet did not brush against each other. Only their eyes met, filled with promise, antic.i.p.ation.
Billi came across before their food had come out, unable to resist finding out more. Tish was tempting fate, and she knew it. If Billi put two and two together, word would be all over Penh.e.l.lion before nightfall.
"Going to introduce me to your friend?"
Tish looked up, and casually stroked a hand across her lover"s wrist, their touch like electricity. "h.e.l.lo, Billi," she said. "This is-" barely a pause "-Angelo. Angelo, meet Billi."
She saw Billi"s eyes narrow, a slight nod. "You like my bar, Angelo, eh?" he said. "What"re you eating? Crab"s good. Crab"s always good here. Don"t touch the lobster, though. Trust me on that."
"Crab," said Angelo-the name fitted, the name stuck. "I took Tish Goldenhawk"s advice."
Billi"s eyes narrowed again, and Tish wondered what connection he was making now. Then his eyes widened, turned more fully on Angelo.
She had seen that look before, that mechanical movement.
Billi raised a hand, held it palm-out toward Angelo with the fingers stiffly pointing.
His palm glowed.
Angelo ducked, dived forward, knocking the table aside, hard against Tish"s knee so that she screamed, then gasped as his weight struck her, sending her back off her chair.
She looked up from the floor, as voices rose around them.
The chair where Angelo had been seated was a blackened lump, smoking furiously.
Billi was turning slowly from the burnt chair to where Angelo and Tish lay on the floor. He had a puzzled expression on his face, a smooth, mechanical glide to his movements.
He was not Billi. Not for now, at least. Billi had been pushed aside and someone-the Accord, presumably-had taken over.
Why try to kill one of your own angels?
Billi raised a hand and Angelo stood, hauling Tish to her feet, kicking a chair and table back at the old man to stop him pursuing.
They were standing by one of the Vanguard"s big picture windows.
Tish looked out, suddenly dizzy at the height.
Angelo took a chair and raised it.
"You"re making a habit of this," she said, as he swung it down against the window, crazing the gla.s.s.
This time, he gave the chair a twist, and the gla.s.s gave way.
Salty air leapt in through the opening.
Angelo opened his arms and wrapped them around Tish as she stepped into his embrace, and then he jumped clear, taking her with him.
They fell, air rushing, whistling in Tish"s ears.
They were going to die on the rocks this time, she felt sure. This was a lovers" end, and they would move on into the Accord for eternity.
Fabric ripped, wings broke free, and their fall became a graceful swoop taking them out across the water, toward the place where the rainbows filled the air and the gulls and the pterosaurs flew.
"You NEED TO escape," she told him. "You need to get away from here. Why ever did you stay here in the first place after they found you?"
He shrugged. "I don"t think they expected me to still be here," he explained.
They were on an island, one of the many islands where the Grand River became the Grand Falls and tumbled over the cliffs to the sea far below.
"If you want to get away why can"t you just... I don"t know... snap your fingers? If you"re of the Accord then you should be able to just slip away and reappear somewhere else."
"Like a G.o.d?" he laughed. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. Nothing happened.
Tish stood and looked down at the seated Angelo. Time to confront things.
"If you"re no G.o.d, then who are you? What are you? Who are these people chasing after you? If they"re agents of the Accord, then why is this happening? What have you done?"
He let her finish. He smiled. He shrugged. "I don"t know," he told her. "I don"t know who or what I am. I don"t know why these people are chasing me or who they are. I don"t know what I have done, if I"ve done anything at all. I don"t remember much before a few tens of days ago. I don"t understand at all, but I can tell you one thing."
He waited. She asked, "What"s that?"
"I love every moment of this existence. Every last detail. I"m soaking it up. I"m a sponge. I want more. I want ever and ever more."
Tish heard the buzz of a motor-a flyer, perhaps. "You have to get away from here," she said. "They"ll destroy you."
"Will you come with me? Will you share it with me?"
She nodded. She remembered that moment, walking back into the Falling Droplet and realizing that she was irrevocably changed. She felt that again, only more so. She hoped it would carry on happening, because she wasn"t finished yet.
Er-jian-die I HAVE NO past. I have no future. Only now.
I have many pasts and many futures, but as me, as this, there is only now. I am a composite. I have been cast for this occasion, for this task.
I am of the Accord.
I AM a.s.sEMBLED from the many, from the mult.i.tude. I will go back to the mult.i.tude.
I am of the Accord.
I am male, in this body. My skin is dark, my hair short, straight. I am slim and strong and fast, of course. Why would I be anything else?
I am enhanced. In many ways.
I am not alone. I will not be alone when I step out of this cabin. There are two others. Two like me, Ee and Sen. We are a team.
I step out through the cabin door, having opened it first. My others are here already. Their heads turn, we nod simultaneously. I join them at the rail.
We are high up, on the deck of a faux sailing ship that is really powered by twinned gravity-wave microgenerators below decks. Above us, sails bulge in a manner designed to appeal to the grand touristas.
We are only a few hours from port. I know this for a fact, like I know much for a fact.
I close my eyes. We close our eyes. Together.
Data flashes.
We open our eyes.
He is here, on the Lady Cecilia. The anomaly.
In a realm where everything is known to the Accord-where everything, by its nature, must be known to the Accord-he is different. He is unknown. He, by his very nature, does not conform with the rules that govern our existence, your existence, everyone"s existence.
He must be found.
He must be stopped.
He must be reabsorbed before he becomes self-propagating.
I turn. We turn. Together.
We smell him.
He has been here, on this deck, recently. He must be nearby.
We will seek him out, find him, reabsorb him, before the Lady Cecilia docks. We know this for a fact.
THE LADY CECILIA docks at Penh.e.l.lion, sliding smoothly into her s.p.a.ce in the harbor.
We have not found him, the anomaly.
We have found places where he has been, places where he has spent long hours alone, no doubt doing battle with his perverse nature. They do that. They don"t understand, but they try. They are you and me, us; it is their nature.
It is their nature to hide, and to run. This one has been here, in this world called Laverne, for longer than initial data indicated. Re-run a.n.a.lyses give him perhaps twenty more days" existence in which to acc.u.mulate knowledge, experience, before he was first detected.
His development is not linear. Those twenty days are days in which every aspect of his self has become exponentially more complex and data-rich.
This one is no babe in arms, then. He is a whirlwind, a destroyer of worlds.
He does not know it, of course.
Our task is to stop him from finding out.
PENh.e.l.lION IS A city built into a cliff. They could have built it on top of the cliff. They could have built it a few kilometers along the coast where the cliffs are not anything up to 1,200 meters high. Human nature is not such, and they built it in the cliff. We built it in the cliff. We are of the Accord.
Data flashes.
There are agents in this city. Many agents. They will look out for him and their reports will be relayed to us whenever they hold anything of relevance.
They do not know they are agents. They do not know they have been selected. Sanji Roseway does not know that she is watching, as she happily stocks her fabric stall on Fandango Way. Neither do the street musician, Mo Yous, or the bar-owner, Milton Goldenhawk, or the dreamcaster, Serendip Jones. They will not know when they are reporting, or when they have reported. That is not their place.
We did not see him leaving the Lady Cecilia, but he has done so. Those extra days, that logarithmic escalation of his survival instinct and wiles, have made a difference.
We must not underrate him.
But first, we must find him.
HE HAS BEEN quiet, which has not helped us in our task. He should be like a whirlpool, drawing in the human debris of this society, feeding on it. Such activity sends out signals, leaves traces, a pebble dropped in our collective pool.
But with experience comes guile and with guile, restraint. Perhaps he has stabilized. That would be unusual, but not a first.
We remain in Penh.e.l.lion, studying and using our agents to study. He will break cover. He will reveal himself by his actions. They always do.
WE PROXY INTO a bar-a bar through the eyes of another.
There has been a ripple-only the slightest of ripples, but detectable nonetheless. He has emerged.
We look across the bar. We are behind the bar, its surface finely polished flutewood. The barroom is crowded, which is good. Picture windows show sunlight splitting into separate colors through water droplets. I like rainbows. I am not an artist, but once I think a part of me was a part of an artist. Alizarin crimson. Venetian red. Monastral blue. Yellow ocher. I could paint that view a million times and in every instance it would be different.
My team, my others, are also proxying this bartender, and our gaze is drawn away from the picture windows, and we look along the bar.
Another bartender is serving, or rather, not serving, but leaning on the flutewood bar-top, chatting. She is of indeterminate age, as are most adult humans. She has long auburn hair with natural wave, wide eyes with burnt umber irises.
She is talking to him. The anomaly. He has the shape of a man, but we find it hard to focus our eyes-this proxy"s eyes-on that shape and determine any detail. He swirls and flows. He is drawing her in.
"Tish?" we say, addressing the bartender. She looks, we nod toward the crowded room. This proxy is not communicative, but his meaning gets across even so.
Tish moves off to serve other customers.