Bitter Angels (8 page)

He shifted around until he faced me fully, sad but calm. “What
are you
going to do?”

There are moments when you know the truth, and it is absolute. “I will not risk war in the Solar System. Not while our children live here.”

He heard me. Finally. David had never seen even a small war, but he’d heard my stories. He’d seen what it had done to me.

Because that was part of the Common Cause. If we did go to war, if it did happen, the draft would be universal. No one who had entered their third decade would be spared. No business, no asset was exempt from conscription or confiscation. The effort would be total until the war was over. It would take Dale, Allie, Jo, him, me. All of us.

Slowly, David reached for me. He took both my hands in his. His hands were so cold. I folded my fingers around his, trying instinctively to warm them, before I realized I had no warmth left to give.

“They broke you, Terese,” he whispered. “They took you and used you and broke you. How do I let you go back to that?”

I shook my head. The artificial breeze brought us the scent of earth, and allowed me to feel the dampness on my cheeks. “I don’t know, David.”

We sat there, awkward, all the weight of history between us, yet unable to let go of each other’s hands. I remembered everything—all the times he’d pulled me out of the cellar of
my despair, all the times I’d fought with him, cried, and demanded so much of him. And here I was, making another demand while I did the thing I swore I’d never do.

My reason was sound. My duty was absolute. That did not change the fact that I had sworn I would not go back to the Guardians. David had limits. There was only so much he was willing to take. Unlike some people, he was not a bottomless pit for punishment.

That was the problem. He’d die for the kids, and for me, but he would not suffer for us. Not for long anyway, and not without a reason he could fully comprehend.

Was that too much? Was that unfair? I’m pretty sure it was, but the thought kept ringing round my head in the heavy silence. Suddenly I missed Dylan. He would have known what to say right now. He would have held my hand and kept me from feeling so alone with my husband.

But Dylan was gone, gone even longer and farther than Bianca.

“Stay with me, David,” I said abruptly. David was not part of the blood and the pain. David was the sunlight, the peace, and the freedom. I could have that for one last moment. Surely, that was not too much to ask.

He considered it, weighing whatever he was able to read in my eyes.

“I’ll stay for tonight,” he said.

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, you’re returning to your old life, and even if there was room for me in there, there wouldn’t be time. I’ll go home.”

It was honesty. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was all I had the right to ask for. I don’t know which of us leaned
toward the other first, but we wrapped our arms around each other and held on like that for a long, long time.

When I finally let go I said, “There’s a couple of things I have to take care of first. I’ll meet you at the Palmer House when I’m done, okay?”

He nodded. “The kids are angry. Not just Jo, either. She called Dale and Allie too. They are truly furious.”

“I’m not surprised. They’re probably in conference right now, trying to decide what they’re going to do about Mother.”

“You owe them an explanation.”

“Yes.”

He nodded once. “Okay, then. I’ll go get Jo on her plane, and I’ll tell her you’ll be in touch before anything else happens.”

“She won’t want to go.”

His smile was brief and bittersweet. “So what else is new?” His fingertips brushed my hand as he turned away.

I didn’t sit and watch him leave. A kind of grim determination settled over me and I rose and walked toward a secondary stairway. I strode down the steps, through the doors, and back down the halls. My peripheral vision was gone. I could only see straight ahead. Nobody got in my way. Nothing shut down in front of me. Misao’s door opened before I had to stretch out my hand.

He was still behind his desk. I swear he didn’t even have to look up. He’d been waiting for me, the son of a bitch. What was more, he’d brought Vijay and Siri in to wait with him.

“I am a Grade 3 for pay and benefits, and it all goes into trust for my kids,” I announced. “If I am hospitalized or killed, they get my pay, and they will keep getting it as long as they live, and it gets transferred down to the first-generation
heirs if that takes a thousand years. You work it out with the bean counters and legal.”

Misao nodded.

“And you are paying all my expenses while I’m evaluated and retrained. All of them. If I want grain-fed beef and caviar three times a day until we launch, you are paying for it.”

He nodded once more and I drew in a ragged breath. “And there’s one more thing.”

“Yes?” Even now there was no impatience in Misao’s tone.

“I won’t have a Companion.” My voice had found its steadiness again, and something of its strength. This was it. My ultimate condition. Not even Bianca’s ghost could argue with this one. “If you require me to carry a Companion, I will not accept this commission.”

Vijay shifted his weight. I could feel how badly he wanted to protest. I wondered what his Companion was saying to him at that moment.

Misao just blinked at me. I think I prayed at that moment, but I could not for the life of me tell you what I prayed for.

“Very well. I will make sure your exception goes through.”

The door in my mind sounded very loud as it slammed. It had been my last out, my last chance, and he wasn’t even arguing.

Misao got to his feet. He touched a command on the desk and a red square lit up in front of where I stood. My palm itched. I laid it on the desk’s smooth, cool surface. Red light filtered through skin and blood, making the edges of my fingers glow.

“Are you Terese Lynn Drajeske?” asked Misao.

“Do you solemnly swear upon this life and all others to come that you will faithfully uphold and defend the laws and conventions of the United World Government of Earth?”

“I do swear.”

The first time I took the oath, I was in my third decade. My palms were sweating and my uniform itched. The oath was being read off the desktop by Marshal-Steward Amelia Dan—a willowy, white-haired woman with a voice like an opera singer’s. Maybe Jo would look like her one day.

“Do you solemnly swear that you will keep the secrets imparted to you by the Department of Peace and Security Maintenance or their duly appointed representatives in the course of your duty?”

“I do swear.”

I was in my sixteenth decade, and my palms were sweating and my uniform collar itched. We were outdoors then, under a canopy, with a brass band waiting beside the stage. Misao, in his dress blues and white gloves, administered the oath he’d memorized so I could take up my new rank as Field Commander. I could feel Bianca grinning behind me then too, and Vijay, and Siri.

“What is the first precept?” asked Misao.

Response was automatic. The words welled up from my center. I could not have kept silent even if I’d wanted to. I was Terese Drajeske, here and now, with Misao, Siri, Vijay, and my own battered self. “Peace is my duty. Peace is what I am called to watch and expand. I hold close the knowledge that any death by my hand may start the war without end. Only peace creates life. Only life creates peace.”

The light under my hand changed from red to green, and
it was done. I blinked and drew in a shaky breath. It was then I noticed the pain had stopped.

I waited for either Siri or Vijay to welcome me back. Neither did. Misao touched another few commands. “Thank you, Field Commander.”

I nodded curtly. Misao, my chief once more, bowed his head. We stood like that in silence for a moment. He was telling me he was sorry. Not for what he was doing, but that he could not pay the price himself. Vijay had tried to tell me the same thing, I think, but I hadn’t been ready to feel it. Maybe taking the oath again had reopened the old channels. Maybe now that I’d actually reached the point of no return, I needed to grab hold of those around me so I would stop feeling so desperately alone.

At the time, I didn’t know which of these was the truth.

I still don’t.

My personal Clerk, Hamahd, was waiting for me as soon as I emerged into Dazzle’s battered port yard. The dusty, open space was the polar opposite of Hospital’s flashy arcade. Anything glamorous, valuable, or useful had been stripped away a long time ago. Bare stone and pitted, dirt-smeared concrete baked beneath the lighting panels.

“Thank you, Hamahd.” I pressed my palm against the pad Hamahd held out, officially swearing that I had gone out with three crew and come back with two because of officially sanctioned and recorded actions taken in the line of duty. The cameras had already recorded my arrival, but Hamahd was particular. His eyes shone bright and beady as a snake’s. He was watching and was not going to disguise the fact. It was one of the things I liked most about him. If I had to have a minder, I preferred that we were both up-front about it.

“Is there anything I should be aware of?” I asked.

“Commander Barclay has asked to see you.” Hamahd tucked the pad under his arm. As always, his long black coat was immaculate. It hung in heavy folds over his prominent belly and brushed the top of his neat boots.

“Right away?”

“Yes.”

I sighed. My head ached.

I wanted to go down to the base streets and the tunnels. I wanted noise and faces. I wanted to talk to people and hear
them talk to me, about life and complaints and trivia. I wanted to see Father.

I wanted the Security to go away for a while. I had done next to nothing on the trip but sit in silence and think. The ship was hyperwired, and small. Leda and Ceshame and I got on all right, but if they saw an opportunity for advancement, they’d take it. It had not been safe to say one word about Emiliya, to pull her letter out of my pocket, or to seek out additional information about Kapa. All I could do was sit in my couch or my pilot’s chair and turn over the thoughts in my own head. I didn’t like the fact that he had turned up and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t believe it was all about Emiliya. Kapa had never run one game at a time. He’d always had something going in the background even when we were kids. If now was his time to try to talk Emiliya into the shadows, it was because it worked into something deeper.

I turned to Leda and Ceshame. “Get back to the station and check in. Start up the get-to files. Then you can check out, unless something new’s come up.” A riot, a murder, something like that.

They yes-captained me and stepped smartly out the gate. Bored secops, all of whom got this post because they were in trouble with their commanding officers, barely straightened as they passed. My crew’s swaggers and stolen glances said clearly they were glad to be getting a half day off, which was why I’d given them one. I keep my people happy, which keeps their eyes fixed outward, rather than at my back.

“Well”—I turned to Hamahd—“let’s not keep Commander Barclay waiting.”

Hamahd bowed and stepped aside, as if I were actually someone he had to defer to. I started through the air lock, and he fell into place, the regulation four paces behind me,
matching his stride to mine. I could just hear the clack of his hard-soled boots against the stone.

With Hamahd watching my every step I set off across the rooftops of Dazzle toward Upsky Station.

When Dazzle’s purpose as an entertainment destination collapsed, its people reorganized themselves. Neighborhoods formed up according to tendencies and strata. The towers, domes, and parks just below the biggest light panels and black-sky windows were conquered and divided into private residences for those who had managed to hang on to some money and authority during the Crisis, the Split, and the Invasion.

Even up here, though, those chaotic times hadn’t been good for the city and we never had enough people to really repair it, let alone clean it. Dirt tracked from the farms and gardens, or blown from pots and window boxes, built up in corners and odd pockets, allowing the local flora to spread. Cobalt-blue and blaze-orange lichen traced patterns on crumbling walls. Fleshy saffron feathers sprouted in dark corners, waving in the breeze from the irregular ventilation. Weeds, spread from the farms, made beards for the gargoyles and obscured the elaborate carvings, providing nest material for greasy feral parakeets as well as for the rats and mice, those eternal companions of human diaspora.

Predators had been imported to try to control the rodent problem. Now prides of wild cats wandered through the city. But the animals that had most successfully made Dazzle their home were the snakes—mostly small varieties, but every now and then you ran into a constrictor as thick as your wrist. Some of the old subway stations were nothing but huge nests of reptiles. Which were useful ways of getting rid of obnoxious new secops. One or two vermin-clearing
assignments and they were glad to get back to Hospital, or even Market. So close to the black sky, they coiled up in the well-lit places, snoozing peacefully. They draped themselves on skylights and cornices, soaking up as much of the artificial light as they could.