Desolation Road (13 page)

ajandra Das had once lived in a hole under Meridian Main station. He still lived in a hole: in the Great Desert. Rajandra Das had once been prince of gutterboys, tramps, beggars, freebooters, goondahs and bums. He still was prince of gutterboys, tramps, beggars, freebooters, goondahs and bums. There was no one to compete with him for the honour. Too lazy to farm, he lived by his wits and the charity of his neighbours, charming their broken cultivators and faulty sun-tracker units to renewed vigour, aiding Ed Gallacelli in the construction of mechanical devices of little practical value save the utilization of too much time. Once he had fixed a Bethlehem Ares Railroads Locomotive: a Class 19, he remembered; it had limped into Desolation Road with a badly tuned tokamak. It had felt like the old days again. In a fit of nostalgia he had almost asked the engineers for a ride: to Wisdom, shining dream of his heart.

Then he thought of the guard who had thrown him off the train and the hardships, hard kicks, and work, hard work he would encounter on such a journey. Desolation Road was quiet, Desolation Road was isolated, but Desolation Road was comfortable and the fruit could be picked fresh from the tree. He would stay awhile yet.

Upon the winter solstice, when the sun stood low upon the horizon and the red dust glistened with frost, Adam Black returned to Desolation Road. His coming was as welcome as spring to the winter-weary farming folk.

"Roll up, roll up," he bawled. "Adam Black's Travelling Chautauqua and Educational 'Stravaganza
once again
" (and here he banged his goldtopped cane on a small block for emphasis) "presents to you the wonders of the four quarters of the world in an
all new
" (bang bang) "show! Featuring for your delectation and delight
ladies
" (bang) "gentlemen" (bang) "
boys
" (bang) "and
girls
, a never-before-seen novelty, an Angel from the Realms of Glory! Cap tured from the Heavenly Circus, a real, bona fide, hundred percent cardcarrying gilt-edged
angel
!" (bang bang) "Yes, roll up, roll up, good citizens, only fifty centavos for five minutes with this wonder of the Age; fifty centavos, good people, can you really afford not to witness this
unique phenomenon?
" (bang bang) "If you would be so kind as to form an orderly line, thank you ... no pushing please, there's time enough for everyone."

Rajandra Das had come late to the show. He had been comfortably asleep by his fire when the Chautauqua train drew up and as a consequence had to stand in the cold for over an hour before his turn came.

"Just the one?" asked Adam Black.

"Don't see anyone else."

"Fifty centavos then."

"Ain't got fifty centavos. You take two honeycombs?"

"Two honeycombs are fine. Five minutes."

It was warm in the coach. Black drapes covered the windows and whispered as the hot air from the ventilators stirred them. In the centre of the car stood a large and heavy steel cage, most solid, without doors or locks. Sitting on a trapeze suspended from the roof of the cage was a melancholy creature Rajandra Das was meant to believe was an angel, though it was no angel he had ever been taught about as a child on the pious knee of his dear and departed mother.

Its face and torso were those of an extraordinarily beautiful young man. Its arms and legs were made out of riveted metal. At shoulder and hip, flesh blended into metal. There were no distinct boundaries between skin and steel. Rajandra Das could see that this was no mere fusion of human with prosthetic. This was something distinctly other.

A glowing blue aura outlined the angel and provided the only illumination in the black, warm carriage.

Rajandra Das did not know how long he stood and stared before the angel extended its mechanical legs into long stilts and stepped down from its trapeze. It telescoped to human height and pressed its face close to the bars, eye-to-eye with the staring Rajandra Das.

"If you've got only five minutes, I suggest you ask me something." the angel said in a thrilling contralto voice.

The staring spell was broken.

"Hoee!" said Rajandra Das. "Just what sort of thing are you?"

"That's usually the first question," said the tin-pot angel with the weariness of long-established routine. "I'm an angel, a seraph of the Fifth Order of the Heavenly Host, hand-servant of the Blessed Lady of Tharsis. Now, would you like me to petition Our Lady on behalf of yourself or others, or take a message to a departed beloved beyond the veil of death? That's usually the second question."

"Well, it ain't mine," said Rajandra Das. "Any fool can see you're not taking any message anywhere, not while you're in that cage performing for Mr. Adam Black. No, what I want to know is what the hell kind of angel you are, sir, 'cause I was always taught angels were like ladies with long hair and pretty wings and glowing shifts and all that."

The angel pouted in petty offence.

"No damn dignity these days. Anyway, that's the third question most mortals ask. I expected better of you after you missed out question two."

"Well, how's about answering question three, then?"

The angel sighed.

"Behold mortal."

Out of its back unfolded two sets of collapsible helicopter vanes. The cage was too small to permit the rotors to open fully and the drooping blades made the angel seem even more pathetic and futile.

"Wings. And as for the gender question." The angel's halo flickered. Peculiar swellings rose and moved under its fleshly parts. Its features melted and ran like rainwater off a roof. The subcutaneous moundings converged, solidified, and formed a new terrain of features. Rajandra Das let out a low whistle of appreciation.

"Nice teats. So you're either."

"Or neither," said the angel, and repeated the facial thaw trick, melting into an extraordinarily beautiful young person of indeterminate gender. Now worthy of the pronoun, it tucked its rotor blades into its back and smiled a disconsolate smile. Rajandra Das felt a needle of sympathy prick his heart. He knew how it felt to be in a place he had not chosen to be. He knew how it felt to be pissed on by life.

"Anything else, mortal?" asked the angel wearily.

"Hey hey hey man, not so touchy. I'm on your side, honest. Tell me, how come you can't bust out of this cage with one flick of your pinky finger? I was taught angels were pretty powerful things."

The angel leaned confidentially against the bars of its cage.

"I'm only an angel, Fifth Rank of the Heavenly Host, not one of the big shots like PHARIOSTER or TELEMEGON; they're the most recent models; First Orders, Archangelsks; they can do just about damn anything, but we angels, we were the first, we were the Blessed Lady's prototypes and she improved the design with each succeeding model: Avatas, Lorarchs, Cher-aphs, Archangelsks."

"Hold on, hold on, you saying you were made?"

"We all get made, mortal, one way or another. My point is, we angels are designed to run on solar power, that's why Adam Black keeps this cage in darkness, otherwise I might be able to charge up enough sunpower to sunder these bars. Though," the angel added dolefully, "we angels are primarily designed for flight, not fight; most of my strength is channelled through my rotors."

"So what if I opened all the curtains?"

"Adam Black comes and closes them again. Thanks for the thought, mortal, but it would take about three weeks of constant sunshine for me to regain my full angelic might."

Adam Black put his head round the door and said, "Time's up. Come on out." He looked sternly at the angel. "You been keeping them talking again? I've told you to keep it short."

"Hey hey hey, what's the rush?" protested Rajandra Das. "There's no one after me and we were just getting to an interesting stage in the conversation. One minute more, all right?"

"Oh, okay." Adam Black withdrew to count his takings: six dollars fifty centavos, a chicken, three bottles of peapod wine, and two honeycombs.

"All right, tell me more, man," said Rajandra Das. "Like how you came to be in this here cage in the first place."

"Simple carelessness. There I was in the Great Company of the Blessed Lady, parading over some ten centavo High Plains town called Frenchmanwe do that from time to time, make like a big circus parade, keeps mortals mindful of higher things, like who made the world, and anyway, the Blessed Lady's got this new policy of direct intervention with organic beings. Well, it was a pretty big show and what with the Great Powers and Dominions and the Spiritual Menagerie and the Big Blue Plymouth and the Rider on the Many-Headed Beast and all that, it took the best part of a day for it to pass over. I was in the final wave and what with all that waiting around I was getting pretty bored, and bored angels get careless. Next thing I knew, I'd flown smack into the high-voltage section of the Frenchman microwave link. Stunned me. Clear blew my fuses. Kayoed. Mortals cut me down and stuck me in this cage in a cellar and fed me cornpone and beer. Any idea what it's like to be an alcoholic angel? I kept telling them I was solar powered, but they couldn't take it in. Mortals were wondering what they could do with an angel from the Heavenly Host, when along came Adam Black and bought me and my cage for fifteen golden dollars."

"Well, what about trying to escape?" suggested Rajandra Das, thinking evil thoughts.

"No lock. We are good with machinery, I'll say that for us, any lock on that cage I could pick, but that Adam Black knows his hagiography, for when I had regained my strength and grown new circuits, he had this door all welded up."

"That's bad," said Rajandra Das, remembering holes under Meridian Main Station. "No one should ever be in a cage because of a mistake."

The angel shrugged eloquently. Adam Black put his head around the door again.

"Okay. Time's up, and I mean time's up. Out. I'm closing up for the night."

"Help me," the angel whispered desperately, gripping the finger-thick steel bars. "You can get me out, I know it; I can read it in your heart."

"That's probably just question five," said Rajandra Das, and he turned to leave the darkened, carriage. But out of his pocket he slipped his Defence Forces multiblade knife, stolen from Krishnamurthi's Speciality Hardware, and palmed it to the angel.

"Hide that," he whispered without moving his lips. "And when you get out, promise me you'll do two things. First is don't come back. Ever. Second is remember me to the Blessed Lady when you see her, because she made me kind to machines and machines kind to me." The palm turned into a wave of farewell. Adam Black was waiting to lock the doors.

"Some sideshow you got there," Rajandra Das commented. "Tell you this, going to be a hard act to follow. What you got lined up for us next? St. Catherine in a cage, eh?" He winked at the showman. Already he thought he could hear the rasping of metal on metal.

he morning ROTECH came it entered the world as a dull drone in the dreams of the people and crept out of them as a heavy throbbing. It woke everyone from their sleep and it was then that they realized that they were not sharing the same communal nightmare, that the noise was a real objective phenomenon, so real and objective that it made every loose item in the house rattle and sent plates from their shelves to smash on the floor.