Bitter Angels (5 page)

I hugged my daughter at the archway covering the space between the train platforms and the entrance to the plane gates. Jo hugged me back, pressing her face against my shoulder, and I felt the love surging out of her, warmth into my cold. I held her there for a long moment, and she let me.

Then she pulled back, holding me at arm’s length. You could see the little girl who was still inside if you knew how to look behind the sophisticated shield in her pale blue eyes.

“You’ll call, right?” she asked earnestly. “You won’t go without calling?”

“I’m not going anywhere, Jo.”

Her face twisted up in disbelief and I instantly wanted to take back my words. Jo turned away and waded into the crowd, finding her way confidently and not looking back once.

I stood where I was while all the warmth from her embrace turned to an extra layer of ice inside.

I could have turned back then. I could have said it wasn’t worth it and gone home. I was retired. I was free. This war,
if it was a war, was for other people. I was too old, too wounded, too long retired.

Instead, I stepped onto the bullet to Chicago. I found an empty seat by the curving window in the lounge and watched the green-and-grey blur of the world I’d already left streak by.

Now it is one of the tallest cities in the world, a place of laser-lit and solar-powered towers: marble white, sandstone red, granite pink, crystal, diamond, ruby, amber, emerald, and sapphire. Cable cars, elevated maglev trains, and pedestrian walkways with stained-glass windows lace those towers together. This shining urban web straddles the remains of the ground-level city with its ragged parklands and urban antiquities. Some of those old ground-level neighborhoods are living enclaves existing in the twilight of the new city, while others are quietly crumbling monuments to the old days, both good and bad. The crowds for the ghost tours on Halloween and St. Valentine’s Day in Chicago rival the ones down in New Orleans on Katrina Day.

Among the most enduring of these ghosts is Union Station.

“Attention, passengers. Union Station is an active advertising zone. If you do not wish to input/download/receive
personal advertisements, please turn off all information-input facilities.”

I made sure my handset was switched off and gathered up my coat and gloves and slung my pack over my shoulder. Setting my jaw, I joined the river of my fellow passengers spilling out into the antique sandstone-and-marble hall.

I don’t have eye or ear implants, so I had nothing to shield my senses from the riot. The onslaught of noise and color threatened to drag me under. A hundred billboards flashed images too fast for me to take in. Dozens of different songs blared in my ears. Artificial breezes wafted the scents of food and perfume at me, alternately making me salivate and tightening my stomach from the unpalatable combinations. The whole place seemed to be a hangout for the hyperchic, the exotic, and the truly bizarre, as paid actors and models tried to compete with the billboards for my attention.

I gulped air and found that, as thick as the artificial miasma was, I could still breathe. It took a moment, but I was able to narrow my focus down to the real and scan the crowds that waited for the disembarking passengers. No one came forward to meet me. Of course not. I had deliberately not told anyone when I was coming.

I strode across the main terminal, automatically adopting my “not a tourist” walk: eyes straight ahead, shoulders square, put on your coat as you walk, don’t let the people or the ads catch your attention, and for the love of all that is sacred, don’t let an ad-bot catch up with you.

In the express elevator, I endured two giggly, much-enhanced and tattooed actors talking enthusiastically about the new game they’d been playing the night before. It seemed to involve death, zombies, acrobatics, and a lot of VR sex.

I had to stop myself from sprinting down the walkway
toward the Dearborn Zone El train. I crossed out of the confines of Union Station accompanied by a fanfare of “come back soon” and “you’ve still got time to take advantage…” messages from various motion-sensitive billboards, and instantly relaxed.

At least until I saw Vijay Kochinski on the bench.

He was already in the act of taking off his glasses and tucking them into his jacket pocket as I threaded my way across the half-full platform. I stopped directly in front of him as he stood up.

“Hello, Terese.” He said it with that extra weight people give an inadequate greeting that comes after a long absence.

“Hello, Vijay.”

Vijay had been Optimized as a child. Some parents will do everything they can afford—and a few things they can’t—to give their child an advantage, materially or genetically. It has long been known that people automatically respond more favorably to tall men, and to handsome men, and to men with blue eyes (which I’ve never understood, but there it is). So Vijay had been inspected, injected, and worked over until he had all that, and a bit more.

Like a lot of other Optimized children, Vijay had nearly killed himself with drugs and dangerous stunts, which degenerated into actual disfiguration gestures. Years of individual therapy and opto-support groups, combined with some remod surgery to take down the hyperhandsomeness, had straightened him out. But he’d kept the height. Liked the view, he said.

“Took your time,” he remarked at last. He looked me up and down, taking in what had stayed the same and how much had changed. Vijay had let himself age, but not like I had. After I had the kids, I let myself go, happily and comfortably. I
now was as round in the hip and midriff as I’d always been in the bosom and had streaks of grey in my curling black hair. Vijay’s sleek green thermal jacket was tailored enough to show he was still in very good shape. His hair was salt-and-pepper, but still full and shining. His face was lined, and had that weathered quality that spoke of real sun and wind rather than cosmetic treatment.

“Yeah.” I shoved my hands into my coat pockets. I couldn’t help glancing around me. Our fellow travelers were paying about as much attention as city dwellers ever do to strangers’ conversations, that is to say, none.

“How pissed is Misao?” I asked.

Vijay shook his head, very slowly, his lips pursed. “Not at all. This should worry you.”

It did. A lot. I looked away and bit my lip.

The El was crowded. It always is. I grabbed a strap and swayed shoulder to shoulder with Vijay and a mix of sleep-deprived commuters, ebullient college students, bright-eyed tourists, and a hyperactive business wonk. But at least the smells of humanity were as natural as they ever get, and if anyone was trying to sell me something, they had to be quiet about it or the spy cameras would ban them from public transport for six months.

I could have sprung for a private car. I don’t know why I was determined not to. Perhaps to prove I could handle crowds and the unexpected. There had been a time when I couldn’t, but I was over that. I was a new woman. My own woman with my own good life. I had survived something no one else had. I could take whatever came on my own terms.

The El snaked through the landscape of sparkling towers, stark white light, and storm-grey sky. Drone-planes and seagulls skimmed past us. At last, we slowed and stopped, and
the carefully designed, accentless, genderless, and inoffensive voice said, “Daley Tower, Number Four.”

It took several seconds before I could make myself step out onto the platform. In the end, it was Vijay’s patient and sympathetic look that stiffened my nerves. The doors whooshed right behind me and the train slipped soundlessly away, its breeze ruffling the curls on the back of my scalp.

The handle was cold beneath my now-identified palm. I hadn’t been around in such a long time that the door monitor felt the need to flash the small print for me:

“And you have a nice day,” I muttered as I walked through the door. Behind me, Vijay snickered quietly. The door did not answer.

I don’t know why I was surprised to see they’d redecorated the lobby. Somehow, you expect places you’ve left to freeze, like your memories of them have. It’s egotistical, but no one really wants to believe the world goes on without them.

Reception was still a huge, curving wooden desk with the Chicago skyline carved in bas-relief on its face, but the carpets were now an antique Persian pattern instead of institutional beige. They’d put in groves of miniature orange and rose trees under full-spectrum lights. The chairs and sofas had embroidered cushions in wooden frames instead of overstuffed leather.

One of them was taken up by another familiar form.

“Siri.” Surprise froze me in place for a moment.

“Field Commander.” Siri Baijahn’s voice was sour and her arms were folded. She was thinner than when I’d last seen her. She’d changed her hair to a glossy copper color but still wore it in the straight, short cut I remembered. Her skin was darker, either from dye or sun exposure, I couldn’t tell yet. When not on assignment, Siri went in for brilliant-colored clothes, her answer to the dictum that we needed to keep ourselves within local norms when we were in the field. Today, she wore an orange-and-gold-thread wraparound top with flowing sleeves, bright red slacks, and boots that reminded me a lot of the ones Jo had been wearing. Must be the latest thing.

“I’m not back,” I told her, told
them
, tried to tell myself. “I’m just going to hear Misao out.”

She looked me up and down with eyes as acid bright as her tone had been. “Then why bother? You could have done that much on your set.”

“I don’t have the proper clearance anymore.”

The way she turned her back on me said what she thought of this excuse. Siri had been furious when I decided to leave. Even knowing everything that had happened to me, I strongly suspected she still saw what I did as some kind of dereliction of duty. She had been Bianca’s protégé for two decades by the time I left and had swallowed all of Bianca’s lessons about service.

I looked up at Vijay, hoping for help, but he had closed himself off. He had to work with Siri, I reasoned.

“So why’d you come out to meet me?” I asked Siri. “Vijay could have walked me back.”

That stopped her. She turned. “Because it’s important and you’ve always been the best under pressure.” She said it without rancor and without jealousy. “Because I was hoping for a minute to see my friend before you turned back into my ex-commander.”

We locked gazes, each one waiting to see if the other would shift, back down, or be embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Yeah. Me too.” Some of the acid bled away, but none of the wariness did. “Come on,” she said. “The Little Big’s waiting.”

I handed off my coat and small pack for reception to inspect and keep, then followed Siri inside. Like the lobby, the halls had more colors than I remembered. They were
peaceful, contrasting patterns with lots of jewel tones to offset the bone whites and greys that made up the frames and the trims. The screens on the walls alternated news-feeds with landscapes and music. There were more of them than I remembered, too, and they kept catching at my peripheral vision.

The people I passed, however, were exactly as I remembered: Serious, soberly dressed, and traditionally styled, they were absorbed in their own thoughts or conversations. If anyone glanced at me, it was fleeting. I was just another visitor to the office. Except for Vijay, Siri, and Misao, there might not be anybody left who remembered my face. The average life span might be three hundred years in these modern times, but the average career of a Guardian was less than a tenth of that.

Now that Siri was with us, the silence was much less comfortable. My back started to ache from the tension that seized my shoulders.

Vijay tried to break through with some light gossip. “You still with David?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Siri palmed us through an inner door and shot Vijay a scathing glance as we walked past, as if she couldn’t believe he’d bring up such a subject. Vijay just raised his eyebrows at her. She shrugged irritably.