Bitter Angels (48 page)

“Up?” he suggested.

“Up,” I agreed. I shined my light around the curve of the hull that had become our very low ceiling.

I swallowed and pressed my hand experimentally against the hull where it curved overhead. “We’ve still got at least a couple of hundred pounds over us.”

“If it’s clear of the stone,” he said. “Can you see anything we can use as a wedge?”

I held up my gloved hands. He stared at them, then at me.

“They’re armored. Our materials scientists are very good,” I said.

“All right.”

I shifted. Every part of me hurt, but I managed to get my feet under me with no more undignified gasps of pain than strictly necessary. Amerand pulled one leg into place, then the other, and braced himself on the cradle’s edge so he could crouch flat-footed on the stone with his shoulder pressed against the hull.

“Ready?” he asked.

I placed the very tips of my fingers against the thread-fine fissure. “Ready.”

Amerand strained. He screamed and heaved upward. A thunderous cracking like the sound of a great tree falling surrounded us. Slowly, the hull separated from the stone.

Air. Sweet cool air rushed in on us, along with rich yellow light. I jammed my fingers into the space, and I prayed. Amerand shouted and the space widened and I turned both hands sideways and shoved them in farther.

Amerand panted beside me and when I turned my head a little, I could see that his face was streaked with dirt, sweat, and blood.

I held a couple of hundred pounds of broken ship’s hull
supported on my hands. If our tech people were not as good as they were supposed to be, I was in for a whole world of hurt.

Amerand braced himself again, but before he could press up, the crash of rending metal sounded all around us. The hull peeled back and toppled sideways, and we stood blinking in the light and warmth of Oblivion’s port yard.

Half a dozen men stood in front of us. They were Clerks. They wore the high-necked black jackets, but these had been shortened so they were more like tunics than coats. They had black gloves on their hands and their eyes glittered hard and distant as they silently lowered their black guns to take aim at us.

The Clerks said nothing. The guns clattered as they worked the actions.

I lifted my throbbing hands in surrender.

“Who are you?” demanded Amerand hoarsely.

They did not answer. One of them pointed to the floor beside him. Moving slowly, I put my knee on the ragged edge of the hole we’d made and pushed myself out. Amerand, not taking his gaze off these strange, militarized Clerks, did the same.

Five of them held their weapons leveled at us. The sixth strode across the floor made of the salt-and-pepper stone but polished to a high gloss. He laid his hands on a pair of gilded doors that would have been at home in the palaces of Fortress. They opened for him. He stood aside and nodded to us.

The message was plain, and there was nothing we could do. I laced my hands behind my neck. My shoulders cried out in protest, but I gritted my teeth. Amerand, after a moment’s hesitation, copied my gesture.

They surrounded us: two in front, two behind, and one on either side. They moved with eerie precision, and with no sound but the slap of soft-soled boots against stone. They did not look at one another. They barely looked at us. They didn’t have to. They were listening to the voices in their heads.

The Clerks marched forward and we had no choice but to move with them.

I had seen blueprints and photos of the old Oblivion. It was a mass of narrow tunnels lined by single-person cells. What open yards there were had been built with secured guardhouses in the center so that the inmates were never without supervision. That was, of course, not counting the screens, the drones, and the guards in their mechanical armor.

That was all gone now. Swept away. What opened around us was another palace.

We walked along a granite thoroughfare. At our left hand there was a low wall carved from the same salt-and-pepper stone. A garden of blooming plants and miniature trees spread out below us. A stream bubbled over rounded stones and trickled down the middle of a lawn of grass and wildflowers. I smelled lemons and roses.

Mai Erasmus sat on a blanket in the middle of that garden, a perfect picture of pastoral bliss out enjoying the summer sun with her baby on her lap. She looked up as we passed and her eyes widened. She poked at the infant in her arms, trying to make the baby look up where she pointed and waved.

She grinned at me and waved once more, but they marched us around a corner.

This must have taken years. It must have taken dozens of flights back and forth. Now I knew what had been erased from the records I’d sent to Misao.

The military Clerks led us through cavern after cavern of parks and gardens. The chosen of the Blood Family laughed and ran through their exquisitely designed playland, exploring their new domain. There weren’t a lot of them. I counted about thirty. Assuming that was somewhat accurate, the murder Amerand was supposed to have carried out on Fortress would have taken down at least seven hundred and fifty people. That was if you didn’t count the Clerks and the servants, which I was fairly sure they hadn’t.

I had thought the people of the Erasmus System were being exploited as labor to bring their masters profit. They weren’t. They were being used to dig out the new city of Oblivion and serve in immortality experiments.

And to act as distractions for the stupid saints who came to try to help the thirsty population.

The natives of Dazzle hadn’t seen it because they were willing to put up with anything as long as the OBs were kept away from the farm caverns. The natives of Oblivion hadn’t seen it because the only form of government they had ever lived under was slavery and confinement.

We Solarans hadn’t seen it because they’d showed us what we feared and we went tearing off after it.

There were no servants here, at least none that I saw. There were only Clerks. Some wore the short black tunics like the ones marching us forward. Some wore the more
traditional long coats. Whenever we passed them they stopped and turned, standing like statues, letting our little parade go past.

The Clerks walked us about a mile. My knees and shoulders were on fire by the time the thoroughfare ended at another pair of the gilded doors. The lead Clerks laid their palms on panels embossed with the eternal Erasmus family tree, and the doors swung outward.

The room was blank white and shining, like the holding bay on the habitat had been. A white-haired man sat at a black desk in the middle. He wore a gold-and-ruby collar of rank around his bony shoulders, and he had a Clerk’s glittering eyes. A straight row of white chairs was arrayed in front of the desk. They were all high-backed, padded, and sealed to the floor. They all had restraints bolted to the arms.

“Good evening, Grand Sentinel,” said Amerand.

The Grand Sentinel Torian Erasmus steepled his fingers and smiled.

I rallied. I was going to have to talk fast if I wanted to survive long enough for the cavalry to come.

I had no chance.

The Clerk grabbed me from behind. I kicked back hard, but he didn’t even flinch.

“Stop this!” shouted Amerand. The nearest Clerk leveled the gun at him. I stopped struggling and swallowed. The Erasmus System was still firmly in place. If I fought, they would shoot Amerand.

Amerand and I stared wildly at each other and he understood why I had stopped struggling. He threw back his head and shouted wordlessly at the ceiling. He was a hostage again.

Still.

Torian smiled, frozen in place, fingertips pressed together.

I made myself look at him.
It doesn’t matter
, I told him silently.
You’re already finished. You just don’t know it yet
.

The door opened and a slender, freckle-faced young man wearing medical whites entered the room. I was not surprised to see the Clerk’s distant glitter in his tarnished gold eyes, or the pressure spray in his hands.

They slammed me into the chair. They closed the restraints on my wrists. I struggled. I couldn’t help it. They caught my head and I tried to bite and I heard Amerand shouting and cursing and the pressure spray dug into the hollow behind my ear.

It hurt.

It hurt.

It
hurt
.

My eyes flew open. I was in the curving white room, but I was alone. The desk and chairs were empty. My hands were free. But none of that mattered.

He was there. Black leather jacket and stupid tattoo and shit-eating grin. All of him.

“Yes.”

I lurched to my feet. Warm, strong arms wrapped around me in a bear hug. I couldn’t breathe, I could only feel. Dylan. I’d never known he would be so strong. We spun each other around.

He chuckled, setting me down again. “Not anymore.”

I stepped back, just a little, just enough so I could look him over.
God and all the Prophets, it’s good to see you!

“You too, Terese. I’ve missed you.”

“Ah-ah.” Dylan laid a finger on my mouth. “Don’t ask. If you ask, it’ll spoil things.” He took both my hands. “I don’t ever want to have to leave you again, Terese.”

“Okay then. Just enjoy. It’s been a tough time. Catch me up, would you?”

Thirty years’ worth of life, of names and places and things, of my contacts with the Guardians, such as they were, all sprinkled with “You remember who…” and “You remember how…” And when he didn’t remember, I filled him in.

I didn’t think about what I was saying. I didn’t care. This was Dylan, back in my mind, safe and whole. The pain was gone, the black hole was gone, and I wasn’t alone anymore. For the first time in three decades, I wasn’t alone.

I told him about Dazzle. I told him about Vijay and about Siri, and finally about Bianca. I cried while he held me.

“Will they really do an open intervention?”

He pulled away. He walked away, taking his warmth away from me.

“There’s a problem, Terese.”

“Terese, if they come here…Misao and the others. They’re going to take me away.”

“No, they really won’t, Terese, and you know it as well as I do.”

I did know it. They’d do it. I couldn’t seem to think how it was Dylan was back, but I knew it wasn’t an official act. They’d take him away, take him out. They’d leave me alone in the dark. All closed in the dark. They’d broken me into pieces before, they’d do it again.

“It’s up to you.” He walked over to me and laid his hands in mine. I felt the weight of them, and they were as broad and callused as I had always imagined they would be. “You’re the one who brought them in. You’ve got to call it off. Stall them until we can figure out what to do.”

He smiled. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he said, lifting our hands. “It also brings technological improvements.”

Technological improvements. Improvements from experiments carried out on Bianca, on Siri. Cold flooded me, knotting my stomach, forcing me to back away. How could I have forgotten even for a moment?

Dylan’s face fell and he shook his head. “I’m Dylan, Terese. You know me.”

“Look at me. Who else is there?”

I looked. I strained my eyes. There was nothing—the blank whiteness of the empty room, the chairs, the desk, and Dylan.

But this wasn’t right. My hand flew to the curve behind my ear and found the hot welt there.