Angels and Exiles (2 page)

He returns to the tender. To his surprise, the angel is still there. Dimly, the man feels there may yet be something to be accomplished. What more does the angel expect?

—Now I will tell you a story, Other, says the angel. (Its face is set in a strange expression that might be sadness, or even grief.)

The man settles down uncomfortably. He does not think he wants to hear a story. He thinks of telling the angel this, but holds his tongue. He realizes that the angel is not paying him back, but rather that he is bound to listen to its tale, that he is the one making the payment.

Some of us were present when the Others first came to Earth in ships of metal that flew without wings. We were puzzled and somewhat afraid. A few conquered their fear and went to observe more closely, perhaps to speak with the Others, if they should know how to speak.

Those were captured and put in cages. The Others did not listen to their talk; they only talked among themselves, and then they cut their prisoners with metal knives and wounded them with needles. Later, our captive brethren escaped; when they bore their tale to the rest of us, it was decided never to approach the Others again.

At first we thought it would be easy; but the Others grew in numbers, as more and more dropped down from the sky; and they built castles of metal, and surrounded them with gardens under glass.

And soon something strange happened: the land around the castles of the Others became poisonous. Plants withered, animals died, and when we ventured there, we could not breathe the air for long.

What could we do to change things? There was nothing that could be done to the metal and glass of the Others. So we retreated to the high mountains, where the air was thin, but still pure. And from the mountaintops we watched the Others spread onto the world like a bloodstain.

One day a ship without wings came to one of the mountains where we lived. Many were afraid and said this was the end: the Others had come to take us all and cut us apart with their metal. Many said nothing, but gathered up their hunting bows and their best blades.

The ship was not so large as the first ones we had seen. It landed on a plateau, and a door opened in its side like a hut’s. An Other walked out, and it was naked. Several of us had come out of their caves, and they now pointed their bows at it, and drew.

The Other looked them in the eye, calmly. Then it spoke. It said, in the male mode, What do you want with those weapons? Please do not harm me. Do you speak?

Later we understood he did not know the meaning of the words he had spoken. He had merely repeated the sounds one of our captive brethren had made when he had tried speaking with the Others who were about to cut him. Thus we would know he was the Prophet.

We began to talk with him. He pointed at himself and gave his name, which is too holy to repeat. We gave him our own names, and then he made a gesture, and a second Other came out of the ship. She was his mate. And thus it all began. It proceeded slowly, but we had all of time.

Eventually we understood one another. The Prophet told us why the Others were the Enemy. He explained how the poisoning would one day kill all of us. He said he had come to teach us the Others’ magic, if we would learn it. That, this way, we could fight them. He used a word:
sabotage
. He said that the castles were fragile, that the metal way for trains could be destroyed, that we could regain our land, one day.

We knew that he was holy, for nothing he said made sense, and at the same time, we felt it was deeply true. So we let him live and began to learn from him.

It took years. He taught us better ways to count, and to measure distances, and so many other things that our souls could not hold them all. Every day, he taught us. He filled us with the magic of the Others, and when we were full, we started the war.

What we liked best was to make bombs, to place them next to the castles or the rails, and to make them explode. Soon the Others installed weapons that threw bullets at us, but they could not protect all the rails, and where they were not protected we destroyed them easily.

Careful as we were, many of us were injured by the Others’ defences, and some died. So we began to make young again, to readjust our numbers.

One day the Prophet went to witness one of our young being made into an adult. When we performed the Time rite, he inquired what we did.

We answered, We do not know how the Others do it, but this is how we make her undying.

He repeated, Undying? But all things grow old and die.

At this we were stunned. But
we
do not, we said. Don’t the Others know how to work that magic?

He had us explain. We showed him our magic, how we changed a person’s twin fires with our souls, how we made them keep always in balance, neither one devouring the other. He was amazed. He named our magic
psychokinesis
. He demanded that we prove our claims.

So we did. We showed him how we could make a leaf whither with our souls, driving one of its fires hard and repressing the other. We showed him the rock mice, how by reaching with our souls we could make them die or live longer, although it demanded more effort and more care, as they were very different from us.

The Prophet went away into the ship by himself then; even his mate could not speak to him. When he came out, he began to explain more things to us. The way stuff is made of tiny balls, and how our souls made them shake, and how the shaking changed the fires in ourselves. And when he was sure we understood as much as we could, he asked us to make him eternal.

We were very worried that it might not work; but he had showed us many things that explained how the Others were different from us, and so those whose souls were strongest among us gathered and performed the rite of Time.

It worked. After it was done, the Prophet looked inside himself with the machines he had brought and said he would live forever.

At this his mate grew frightened; she said things to him in their language, which many of us spoke, by that time. She accused him of leaving her to die, and many other things. He answered he did not want her to be exposed to the risk, because he did not want to be parted from her. He was holy: what he said was both very right and very wrong.

In the end he did the only thing he could do, and our wise ones performed the rite upon the Prophet’s wife.

But with her, it failed. There are little strings in the middle of the cells, where life resides. The strings of the Wife’s cells were unravelling, falling apart into little bits. It is a thing that sometimes happens with our kind; we call it the Rot. Once it starts, the only merciful thing to do is to destroy the afflicted one. But the Prophet would not lose his mate. He used all the magic he had, yet he could not stop the unravelling.

So, in desperation, he went inside the ship and spoke to the Enemy, to bargain with them. He would give himself up to them, forever end his war, if they agreed to save his mate. The Enemy swore to the compact.

I remember how it was just before he left us. He held the Wife in his arms as he carried her inside the wingless ship. She was white as snow; her flesh was coming loose in clumps. He took her inside, then he came back to speak to us. His words made no sense, and too much. His eyes leaked water as he spoke. He asked us to forgive him, as if he had done something wrong. And to continue the war, never to stop. And then he spoke of a future when we would live at peace with the Enemy, a time which he had seen inside his soul. And then he stopped suddenly, and retreated inside the flyer, took off and went to the Enemy.

He was very holy.

The Enemy were true to their word. They had promised they would save his mate; but the Rot was too far upon her, and her body’s destruction could not be halted. So they worked their magic and took her soul and put it into a metal box.

And then they took their full revenge upon the Prophet. They did not kill him; instead, they opened his head and maimed his brain, to shackle his soul. They made him their slave and put him in charge of running the trains that we used to sabotage, because they knew we could not destroy the tracks that he would be crossing.

And so they think they will win. But they will not. We fight on. We will not stop.
We will live forever
. He will live forever. We wait for him. He will come back for us. We have all of Time.

The nameless man stares at the angel. He does not understand the story. But he knows that he should not have listened to it. All the pain that he had held dispersed under the sand is bubbling to the surface.

He puts his hands to his head. His eyes are full of tears. He staggers away from the angel, going to the control cabin, going to his duties, going to make the pain stop.

He hears the great stiff wings being deployed behind him; as the angel is swept away by the wind of their passing, it shrieks like someone dying in pain.

The nameless man stumbles into the cabin. He turns to the meters and gauges, checks and rechecks every one, performs a hundred minute adjustments by hand. The pain is slowly losing its hold on him as he drowns in his work. The man flips the switch that allows communication with the cybersystem.

—Increase speed, he tells it. I want maximum!

—Understood and complying, the cybersystem replies in a toneless voice.

He opens the hatch to the hopper and shovels metacoal inside until the hopper is brimming. He shuts the hatch, checks the meters again, attentive to the slow movements of the needles, the flickering of the blue digits, as the train gathers yet more speed. Through a window he sees the steel arms become a blur of motion. The howl of the wind gathered inside the mouth rises to a near-shriek.

Night has fallen. The pain has left him now. He cannot clearly remember what caused it—perhaps he fell asleep on his break and neglected his tasks. That cannot be allowed. He must never run late. He has a duty to the Company.

The cybersystem indicates all is well. The nameless man goes out into the night, to breathe cooler air. He sits down on a small gray-painted metal seat. He reaches for the bottle and takes a slug of vodka, stoking the furnace of his body. He absently scratches the scar that cinctures his head, left to right to left. On the horizon, the hard pinpricks of light of Sternstadt have become visible. The train roars on; the woman who is the locomotive swallows the night with her screaming mouth.