The Transmigration of Souls (47 page)

o0o

Rahman stood still in a darkness lit only by angelic light, skin crawling from a cold breeze that had sprung up out of nowhere. Laing, still holding her hand, was shivering as well. Fear? Impossible to know. When the plane fell, she held tight to me. Held tight, put her hands...

Incredulity, even as I waited for us to die. Woman-construct like a man, like some man’s absurd dream, women-construct with her hands in my crotch, groping, groping, even as we fell through blue light down into the nothingness of Hell. That’s where we are now. Where we must be. I know it. But the certainty wasn’t there. Not really. Conviction only a matter of culture. Of expectation.

Astrid Kincaid beside her, suddenly standing, raising her weapon, click-clink of bolt interspersed with a hard
bamm
,
bamm
,
bamm
, bullets whistling away to nowhere.

Pointless
, said the Angel.

Pointless indeed.

I imagine my mother, bitter amusement in her mouth, watching this always-defiant American soldier try to shoot down God.
Not
, she would say with evident satisfaction, the Right Sort of Woman.

Not right at all.

Edgar’s shout: “God
damn
you!” Obvious, helpless rage.

God is damning no one these days
.

Rahman felt herself take a step forward, letting go of Laing’s trembling hand. “If you’re not God, who are you?”

Mediator
.

“Who?”

Sari-el
.

Ah. My mother’s voice: Sari-el, deciding the fate of those angels who transgress the Laws of God...

And the Archangel Sari-el said,
Finished
.

Double helix winding in on itself, receding, fitting itself in among the heavenly host, one more android soldier, soldier of light among the men, men marching in step, whistling softly as they marched. Soldiers diminishing to sparks, sparks of light become as one with the stars...

Hard strands of light, all pointing away, universe receding...

All of them then, all who were left, standing in darkness. Then Professor Ling’s voice, muffled by his oxygen mask, punctuated by the
snap-click
of its valve: “For just a moment there, I was on the deck of the
Millennium Falcon
.”

Kincaid: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Hideous Americans, equally hideous Green Chinamen, spoiling eternity for me, blotting out my mother’s voice. Then Laing’s trembling fingers again, seeking her out, hand on her breast. My God. Made to be as her Creator made her. Creator not God, nor even god. Merely some hideous man, living out his hideous dreams, in the fiction of
Crimson Desert
. Passiphaë Laing, equally ready to swing a heroic sword, save the man who needs saving by a mother’s grace, equally ready to lift her skirt, expose her soft underbelly, take him into the grace of a whore’s inner warmth...

Icon. Fragile now, her script erased.

Edgar said, “Well...”

Jump cut.

White light, blinding, dizzying. Rahman felt herself stagger, almost fall, felt Laing’s strong hand steady her, hold her upright. The eight of them then, standing together, almost touching, standing together in the middle of a featureless white plain, standing beneath a featureless white sky.

Rahman, shading her eyes: “Nothing. No horizon line.”

Kincaid stamped the floor, if that’s what it was. “Nice and level though.” She fired the gun, report muffled, flat, anechoic. A long-seeming  wait, then a distant
spock
of impact.

Professor Ling said, “One gee gravity. Just about the time the bullet would take to fall.”

Kincaid took a bullet out of her belt and dropped it from shoulder height.
Spock
. Louder, with a clink of brass.

“Well.”

Voice behind them, the lot of them, somehow facing in one direction, whirling as one. It was a slim man, very young, hardly out of his teens. Bright blue eyes, blonde hair cropped so short you could see his scalp. An old hair style English-speakers called a crew-cut, boy-man wearing white sneakers, high-tops with a red decal at the ankle, dressed in white chinos, a white tee-shirt, long white linen lab-coat open down the front. Smiling. He said, “Well, Edgar, you’ve gotten yourself in a
pile
of trouble this time, haven’t you?”

Edgar taken aback, edging back. Trying to stand behind us... He said, “What the Hell are you talking about? Who the Hell are you?”

The smiling man said, “Don’t you remember your old pal Khazmal?”

Khazmal? This open-faced, smiling-eyed boy the Fire-Speaking Angel? Edgar was silent, jaw clenched, eyes a mirror of fear.

Khazmal said, “Well, you really screwed up this time. Right through the Toolbox and into the Regulators’ lap.”

She could hear Kincaid whisper
toolbox
to herself, echoing the angel.

Edgar, voice somehow wooden, said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A sigh, a soft frown on the boy’s face. “What a mess.”

Kincaid said, “So. I guess this means the Jug’s caught up with us.”

So long ago, so far in the past, those quasi-revelations about the Scavengers and their possibly-imaginary Space-Time Juggernaut. Possibly the last moment when we could have gone back, back through the gate to the Moon and surrender and, just maybe, go back home, to live and die in ignorance. It was
my
decision to flee through the gate. Flee, spin the dial behind us, try to get away... A hard pang, the eyes of her mother looking through the murk. Accusing me.

Khazmal said, “Well, Edgar. Time to live.” Hand reaching out, touching Edgar on the forehead, bald man flinching, eyes widening, reflecting sudden awareness, sudden knowledge, turning sullen.

“Come now, don’t be like that. You knew what the job would entail when you took it.”

A slow, reluctant nod. “I won’t stop trying, though. Not ‘til I’m whole again.”

“What do you think you’d gain by reassembly? Do you still think you can become God?”

A stolid, resentful stare: “The position looks vacant to me.”

“Only because you see so little.”

“Only because I’ve been lied to.”

A final sigh, resigned. A sigh that said, No more point to this. “All right, Edgar. Maybe someday you’ll see. Until then...”

Anger in his eyes, like the embers of a dying fire. “Right. Back to fucking work.”

Khazmal reached out to touch him again...

Flicker of pale blue light, light always coming from behind no matter which way you looked. A sound, like crisp sheets of paper being riffled into a fan... Edgar suddenly erupted into a cone of images, images of himself flying into the sky, cone widening, spreading out across the white sky, sky growing ever more dense with Edgars, thousand, millions, billions of Edgars, all with their arms outstretched, heads tipped back, Edgars flying away into the heavens, diminishing even as they grew in number. Suddenly, the spot where he’d stood was empty, wisp of gray smoke curling upward, dissipating, and...

One last Edgar standing there, bald Edgar in dusty black leather, looking down at big, blunt, empty hands. Squire Edgar, whispering, “I was inside him after all...”

Khazmal said, “They were all inside him, consumed one by one.”

Edgar turned and looked at Amanda Grey for a moment, looked into her eyes, then his own seemed to narrow, as if in pain. He looked back at the angel. “Somewhere,” he said, “One of them, him,
me
, I guess, will remember. Start the cycle all over again.”

“Not you though.”

“No. Not me.”

“The seed of discontent is always there, ready to erupt in those who deal with the passage of souls from one state to another. The hearts of doctors eventually sicken and grow cold.”

Edgar looked at Amanda again. Rahman thought, She stands there, motionless, emotionless. Why? Why isn’t she glad to see him? She seems almost... afraid. Hard ram of pity and anger inside. I don’t want to see another hero-woman fall. Let her be... brave. Please.

Edgar said, “Will you send me back as well?”

The angel nodded. “Of course. You have your place, your job to do.”

“And...”

“The woman? Of course.”

Sorrowing: “It won’t be the same, you know.”

“Nothing is ever the same. It’s in the... nature of souls to change.”

“Still...” Rahman could see it in his eyes, going back... to Hesperidia? Going back to Hesperidia, everything the same. Except what was in their hearts.

Khazmal, Fire-Speaking Angel, stepped forward, stepped up to Knight-Errant Amanda Grey, reached out, touched her lightly on the forehead. Her stolid eyes suddenly lit from within. Lit with fear. She said, “Oh, no. Oh, no,
please
...” Desperation in her voice. Crawling-on-my-belly begging in her voice.

Agony then in Squire Edgar’s eyes as well. “Khazmal. Khazmal I...”

Another touch and the light in her eyes went out momentarily. Empty eyes staring. Empty eyes waiting to be filled. Then a final touch, eyes suffusing with...

Rahman looked away. Feeling sick. I don’t want to watch.

Edgar’s voice. “Not like this, Khazmal. This isn’t what I want.”

The angel said, “You can’t always have what you want.”

Rahman thought, Platitudes. Platitudes from God, sent through His Angels to excuse... Amanda Grey’s hard voice, soft now, beseeching, “It’ll be all right, Edgar. You’ll see. I love you now. Let’s go home.”

Edgar’s voice, full of despair: “Oh, my God.”

When she looked up, they were gone. All three of them, and...

o0o

Jump cut.

Ling Erhshan stood flat-footed, bare-footed, on the cold, shiny white floor of his swiftly-emptying white world, and thought, Where did our clothes go? All of them naked again. Genda and Amaterasu in the background, seeming now to edge away from the little group, afraid perhaps...

But where would they go?

There is nowhere else.

Kincaid looking down at her lovely breasts, empty handed. Looking down, maybe looking to see if her rifle is there? Then looking up again. Angry. Defiant. As always. Looking at me.

He felt a sudden urge to cup his hands over his genitals. Hide them from her eyes. Eyes of judgment. Sudden memory of the little graduate student from the plane-crash dream. She seemed so... disappointed when I took off my pants. Disappointed in what she saw? They say women don’t care. But then so many of them seem to...

I only slept with her twice, then she quit the program and transferred to another school. Maybe only disappointed that she saw anything at all. Why didn’t I know that then? Perhaps, because you were blinded by her breasts and thighs and lovely dark eyes?

Passiphaë Laing grappling suddenly with naked Subaïda Rahman, arms around her, hands palpating breasts, sliding downward, dropping to her knees, mouth open, trying to slide between the other woman’s legs.

Rahman shoving her away, staggering back, eyes filled with... I don’t know what. Women’s eyes, to me at least, empty, unreadable. Only full of lies. Full of my own emptiness, perhaps. Full of my reflection. Eyes like mirrors.

He heard Laing whisper, “Please.” Rahman just staring at her. What do women see in each other’s faces? Things invisible to men, or so it says in a thousand learnèd journals.

A soft, watery crackling now. Sound coming from everywhere at once. What will we see next? Another formless angel? Or merely one more mythic humanoid? Where could that dream have come from, an angel with the form of Tom Swift? From inside me, from inside the icon-smothered heart of this pagan soul? What did the others see? Mideastern angels, devolved from Zarathustra’s dream? Magic djinni like smoke from the Lamp?

It was only another double helix that wound down out of the sky, filled with a nimbus of almost-colorless light. Pastel. Barely blue at all. Ling looked around, and thought, We’ve lost all our spokesmen. No Edgar to shout defiance for us now. Kincaid? She could only speak through her gun. Through her gun and the eloquence of those lost silver eyes. Empty eyes, like pools of molten metal. Anonymous eyes she could hide behind.

Rahman’s voice, full of honest loathing: “What devil are you, come to torment us now?”

Call me Metatron
.

Defiance suddenly turned to atavistic fear. What does she see?

Rahman shouted, “Metatron is Satan’s Name!”

Soft, cold laughter, striking a chill into Ling’s old bones.

The Devil gives you what you want
.
Only the Lord takes away
.
I know what is in your heart, Subaïda Rahman, sham of a Lesbian, sham of a woman
.

Passiphaë Laing crawling forward, crawling on her belly before the God-Image, voice lost in the wilderness: “Please, God. Please don’t take her away...”

Blue glow only brightening, then an icy softness:
Go
.

Bang
.

A cloud of dark smoke.

And Rahman gone.

o0o

Floating. Floating in the softest sea.

Subaïda Rahman awoke and opened her eyes slowly. Floating on her back, almost, but not quite touching the left-hand acceleration couch, head tipped back and upward, looking out the triangular left-hand rendezvous window, into black space.

Not empty space, no. Never empty space. Sliver of the Earth hanging out there, suspended against the void. Moon is behind us now. Hidden behind the mass of the service module. Must be getting pretty big by now, the Earth getting so small. Small. Blue. Fragile. Far away.

Soft static from the cabin speaker, then a voice, a man’s voice, laconic, roughened by transmission: “
Apollo 24
, Houston.”

A woman’s voice replying, close by: “
Apollo 24
. Read you five-by.”

Radio voice: “Please be advised
25
has completed TLI.”

Another voice, man’s voice, also close, also soft: “Yee-hah...”

The woman: “Copy that, Houston. Good show.”

Radio: “Johnny says you should wait for him under the lamppost at 42nd and Main.”