Angels and Exiles (3 page)

When it rained over the town, Caspar would open his mouth to let the drops fall in and wet his dead tongue. He ran through the streets, his head tilted back, staring at the roil of clouds, letting the rain fall into his mouth and his eyes.

He would run down sloping Boar Street and reach Maar Square, where he would let his accumulated speed bleed away in bone-jarring steps until he was strolling, his head still tilted as far back as it could be. He would wander to the left, navigating by the sight in the corners of his eyes. Passersby stared at him, but he did not notice; he was too used by far to being stared at.

Of all places in the town, he liked best the street that opened to the left of Maar Square, because it was a narrow and twisting street, and it was full of tiny workhouses for the town’s confessors. Every workhouse had a big window in front. By tradition the confessors sat at the window, in their extravagant confessors’ clothes.

When his sister wasn’t busy, she’d open the door of her workhouse and let him in, give him a tiny mug of hot chocolate to drink. She would pat his head when he was done, and tell him to go home before he got too cold.

Once as she was letting him out, he almost ran into a sinner, a man wide as three normal men and nearly twice as tall, with a face like a tape star’s perched atop it all.

“What’s this, sister, you do little boys, now?” The man’s voice was deep but melodious.

“He’s my brother, and you’ll apologize now if you want absolution.” He had never seen his sister truly angry before; he was fearful that the sinner wouldn’t apologize, and of what she would do then. But the big man had said, “Y’r pardon, little master. No offence meant.” Caspar had nodded in acknowledgement and left.

Looking over his shoulder, he had seen the door closing on the sinner’s huge shadow, the window opaquing a second later. He had lingered, curious. He had heard laughter from behind the door after a while, and then screams, and then sobbing. Then he had run for home, not wishing to meet the man again.

Home was one of the two hundred and fifty identical houses in the town. Grandfather, who had owned it all his life, had refused to alter its exterior. Very much a man of regulations was Grandfather, a man who took very seriously his duty to the Fleet, even though he had been retired twenty years and more; and official regulations of the Fleet stipulated that the houses of the Town remain unchanging through the years. In practice, people made subtle alterations, which the Town censors did not object to. But Grandfather was a man of principles.

Even inside, regulations dictated much of the decor. Standard-issue furniture, standard-issue conveniences, kept nearly pristine from constant maintenance. Walk into the Moën house, and you could not tell when you stood in time.

The only exception to the rule was the large painting that hung over the chimney in the living room. It showed a group of people standing in what seemed a clearing. They were talking, some laughing. One was about to catch a large ball that had been thrown to her from a point outside the frame. The metallic wall of a large building could be seen to the left. No one’s house held such a painting, and for many years it had been to Caspar a source of disquiet and obscure pride both.

The painting had as a matter of fact been a source of conflict within the family. Caspar’s father objected to it, but never in words. Caspar, perhaps because he was without speech himself, could read his father’s thoughts and feelings plainly enough in the set of his shoulders and the play of his face.

Matters had stood at equilibrium for some time when Karl came into their lives and troubled the waters. Karl was Flikka’s admirer, and he courted her with all due process. He seemed like a fairly good match: he had been cleared to breed if he chose during the next ten years, and was a kind and gentle man. Flikka acted cool toward him, yet Caspar could tell she was really interested.

However, when Karl finally won an invitation to dinner with the family, he saw the painting and made the error of trying to work it into the conversation.

“Herr Moën, that is a very nice work of art you have on display in the living room.”

Grandfather lifted his eyes from his soup and said in a very dry voice:

“That’s not a work of art.”

“I don’t understand,” said Karl, and all the while, Flikka said
shut up, shut up please
with her eyes and chin.

“It is a live video feed from a ship,” said Caspar’s father. “Maintained constantly, at a high cost.”

“A cost I choose to bear,” said Grandfather.

“A live feed? But the image is completely motionless.”

“Their time-slope is almost vertical,” said Caspar’s father. “It currently stands at something around one second to the year, and it’s steepening. They’ve been on their way for over thirty years, local time. A voyage of exploration outside the Galaxy. You see, my father’s wife is on that ship. That’s her, about to catch the ball. If you waited another year you’d see it make contact with her hands. Wonderful, isn’t it?”

“You will close your mouth, Diet,” said Grandfather. He had been Security and his voice kept the overtones of command.

But Caspar’s father had rebelled against Grandfather when he’d chosen to become Maintenance, and he replied: “No, I won’t. Your stupid wife is dead, dead to you as if she’d been drowned in the North Sea.”

Grandfather had risen from his seat then, white moustache bristling. He might have been funny if everything in his body had not shouted with a rage so vast it could not be encompassed. Caspar’s father rose in his turn, threw his bowl of soup into a corner, where it smashed with an explosion of steaming liquid, then stalked out of the room.

“Please leave, Karl,” said Flikka. “I don’t want to see you inside this house again.”

Karl rose and left the room in turn. Caspar, as if obeying the dictates of a complicated dance, followed him out, leaving only his mother and his sister at the table.

The young man had stopped on the porch; his fidgeting said he was confused, reluctant to go down the steps to the street, and thus admit defeat. When he saw Caspar come out, he grunted with something like relief. He sat down on the second step from the bottom and motioned for Caspar to join him.

The boy sat on the third step, so he was even with Karl. It was getting cold already, and his crippled hand hurt him. He cradled it in his whole one, rubbing the twisted fingers gently to ease the ache.

Karl lit a cigarette, drew on it. “She’s a strange girl, your sister,” he said. Caspar shook his head no. “Well, maybe you know her better than I do. Think she’s gonna stay mad at me?” Again Caspar shook his head no. “I don’t think so either.”

Karl sighed. Caspar was looking at him with an imploring expression on his face. “What?” said Karl. Then he understood and handed him the cigarette. Caspar took it carefully in his left hand and brought it to his lips. He took a drag, let the smoke fill his lungs, and bubble up to his head. He did it once again before Karl took the cigarette back.

The cigarette worked its customary magic. Something loosened in Caspar’s head, and he felt his dead tongue come back to life. He could speak now; his mouth was full of tobacco words. He made himself speak, telling Karl all he wanted to say.

It all came out the same, of course,
ahhuunnh-hah
,
hunnh
,
hunnh-huunh
, moanings and sharp exhalations, all the words he would ever be able to speak. Karl could not, no one could, ever understand them, but Caspar knew what they meant, and that was enough for him.

He looked at Karl, and Karl was looking back at him, actually listening at the tobacco words. Caspar grew excited, started another sentence, and suddenly found he was weeping. Karl patted his shoulder.

“Hey, it’ll be all right, you’ll see. Okay?” Those words were like the tobacco words, bursts of sound without intrinsic meaning. It was Karl’s face that spoke, and Caspar loved him at that moment. He told him he’d be a good husband for Flikka, in tobacco words, and Karl smiled at him. He offered him another drag on the cigarette, but Caspar shook his head no.

They waited in companionable silence for a time, but Flikka did not come out, as both of them had hoped. Eventually Karl stood up.

“I’ve got to go home,” he said. “We’re heading out onto the Sea at daybreak tomorrow. Tell Flikka—sorry, Caspar. I mean, I’ll be gone for almost a week. I’ll come visit you when we dock again, okay?”

Caspar nodded yes.

“You know . . . even if you don’t go to school, I could teach you to write.” Karl looked embarrassed as he made his offer. Caspar smiled and shook his head no.

“No pressure, kid. But if you ever want to learn, I’ll be glad to teach you.” He ruffled Caspar’s hair. “Get inside, you’ll catch cold.” Then he went off down the street, the set of his back saying
I love her but sometimes it’s so very hard
.

Starships came once a week or so, and stayed for several days while the sinners took shore leave. Although what they mostly needed was confession, there were also restaurants, showhouses, a casino, and several game halls in town. As he was still a child, Caspar was officially barred from the latter two, but since a cripple was considered lucky at the gambling tables, he’d sometimes get invited inside by some sinner who wanted a charm. He liked the flashing lights and the dizzying smell of neurojoss from the sticks smouldering in black crystal holders.

Once a woman, whose arms were double-elbowed and reached down to her ankles, had kept him with her for an hour and won a small fortune. She’d taken him afterwards to the fanciest restaurant in the town, and he’d gorged himself on cake until he was sick to his stomach. While the woman had been gone to the bathroom, a young waiter had bent down over Caspar and threatened to tell his parents what he was doing. The trembling of his upper lip and his furious blinking said how much he was afraid of the deformed little boy, and so Caspar had made a cabalistic gesture with his crippled hand, and the waiter had retreated in near panic.

He had all his life to waste: he would never go to school, never work, never breed. Station would lodge, clothe, and feed him until he died. It was his right and his curse, and he no longer questioned it. He was twelve and looked no more than nine or ten, though sometimes inside he felt much older. He had lived his whole life inside the town, except for a short trip to a farm when he was five, but he had not liked the endless acres of plants growing in the dirt. Apart from that, there were only two other places in Station: the Sea to the north, which scared him, and the desert far to the south, where no one went save Engineering.

When starships came to Station, they halted straight above the town; at night, you could see them far overhead, glowing shapes like faraway glass toys. Shuttles left the ships to land at the field in the southwest quarter of the town.

When they landed, townspeople were there to welcome the sinners. Caspar was often among them, caring not that some townspeople resented his presence. The sinners were glad to see new faces, and often he got kissed or whirled around in the grip of some particularly huge sinner. He liked that; it made him feel more intensely alive, somehow.