Angels! Read online

  "Yes, you are, little friend. I haven't made you any less human," he said, and coughed some. "I'm not sorry I wouldn't mate. I couldn't mate with my own. It was too . . . I don't know, too little of me, too much of them, something. I couldn't bond, it would have been nothing but emptiness. The Great Sin, to be unable to give, because the universe knows only less or more and I insisted that it would be good or bad. So they sent me here. But in the end, you know, they got their way, little friend." I felt his hand on me for a moment before it fell away. "I did it after all. Even if it wasn't with my own."

  The bubbling in his throat stopped. I sat next to him for awhile in the dark. Finally I felt it, the Angel stuff. It was kind of fluttery-churny, like too much coffee on an empty stomach. I closed my eyes and lay down on the grass, shivering. Maybe some of it was shock but I don't think so. The silver fireworks started, in my head this time, and with them came a lot of pictures I couldn't understand. Stuff about the Angel and where he'd come from and the way they mated. It was a lot like how we'd been together, the Angel and me. They looked a lot like us but there were a lot of differences, too, things I couldn't make out. I couldn't make out how they'd sent him here, either—by light, in, like, little bundles or something. It didn't make any sense to me, but I guessed an Angel could be light. Silver fireworks.

  I must have passed out, because when I opened my eyes, it felt like I'd been laying there a long time. It was still dark, though. I sat up and reached for the Angel, thinking I ought to hide his body.

  He was gone. There was just a sort of wet sandy stuff where he'd been.

  I looked at the car and her. All that was still there. Somebody was going to see it soon. I didn't want to be around for that.

  Everything still hurt but I managed to get to the other road and start walking back toward the city. It was like I could feel it now,

  the way the Angel must have, as though it were vibrating like a drum or ringing like a bell with all kinds of stuff, people laughing and crying and loving and hating and being afraid and everything else that happens to people. The stuff that the Angel took in, energy, that I could take in now if I wanted.

  And I knew that taking it in that way, it would be bigger than anything all those people had, bigger than anything I could have had if things hadn't gone wrong with me all those years ago.

  I wasn't so sure I wanted it. Like the Angel, refusing to mate back where he'd come from. He wouldn't, there, and I couldn't, here. Except now I could do something else.

  I wasn't so sure I wanted it. But I didn't think I'd be able to stop it, either, any more than I could stop my heart from beating. Maybe it wasn't really such a good thing or a right thing. But it was like the Angel said: the universe doesn't know good or bad, only less or more.

  Yeah. I heard that.

  I thought about the waitress with no face. I could find them all now, all the ones from the other places, other worlds that sent them away for some kind of alien crimes nobody would have understood. I could find them all. They threw away their outcasts, I'd tell them, but here, we kept ours. And here's how. Here's how you live in a universe that only knows less or more.

  I kept walking toward the city.

  Curse of the

  Angel's Wife

  by

  Bruce Boston

  Bruce Boston has published poetry and short fiction in a wide variety of markets. He is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize for short fiction, has won the prestigious Rhysling Award for poetry, and has twice won the annual Asimov's Readers Award poll for the year's best poem. His most recent book is a poetry collection, Accursed Wives.

  The milk silken embrace of his six-foot wingspan drapes her in a coverlet of staid domestic desire. The loose feathers she must vacuum on a daily basis

  drive her up the wall. He is perfect to be sure. Just like their marriage. Just like their lives. A spacious townhouse in an affluent suburb

  of the Celestial City.

  Two and a half children. Summer vacations in Jamaica. Thanksgiving with her parents in Denver or his in Rochester. Christmas at God's doorstep

  with the Hallelujah Chorus. Only there are no Roman candles. No dicey dives into the ink blue waters of some icy Adriatic while the stars shine on. What should be the limitless

  reaches of Heaven have become for her a precise Purgatory. And as she moves incessantly from one color-coordinated room to the next, upstairs and down, she knows it will always be such.

  Always she will welcome him home. Always she will be a mother of two pregnant with this barely half a child. "Hallelujah!" they will shout and they will sing until their lungs are bursting. Loose feathers blowing everywhere.

  Sleepers Awake

  by

  Jamil Nasir

  New writer Jamil Nasir makes his home in Maryland, where he is a practicing attorney. His stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Interzone, Aboriginal Science Fiction, and all three volumes of Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber's Universe anthology series.

  Here's a chilling and yet oddly lyrical look at the end of everything—which may turn out to be not as bad as you feared it would be . . .

  I

  It all started with a flash.

  It had been a mild October Sunday, yellow leaves fluttering down against a blue sky, the barking of a neighborhood dog and the tang of wood smoke coming faintly on the still air, warm enough to sit on your back deck all day. I had sat on mine till evening, reading, dozing, and watching the light turn long and yellow, then blue. Even when it got chilly and too dark to follow my spy book, where a beautiful girl in a parking garage was begging the hero to help her escape from terrorists, I didn't want to go in. I was leaning my chair against the cool brick of the house, listening to the trilling of crickets and an occasional car down on Thayer Avenue, when it came: a split-second of flashbulb blue piercing the neighborhood like an X-ray.

  My chair thumped down on four legs. Another chair scraped back in the kitchen. Vicki slid the glass door open, a magazine in her hand. "What was that?"

  We went and stood by the deck railing. The evening air was still and deep, two early stars shining through the branches of our backyard oak.

  The screen door next door slammed and Mrs. Romer's old, hoarse voice said: "Going to rain, I imagine."

  "There aren't any clouds," said Vicki.

  "What?"

  "There aren't any clouds. It wasn't lightning," Vicki yelled.

  "Maybe an electric short in the circuit box down the street. Big one. Somebody ought to call the electric company," I told Vicki.

  I got her to go in and call. I stood looking up into the darkness, crickets rippling the silence softly. Three houses down, Cindy Lipman stood in her back yard holding her baby, face a white blur looking up into the air.

  "You can bet it's some kind of bad weather, anyhow," said Mrs. Romer sourly, and went back inside, screen door slamming behind her.

  Looking up through the branches of the oak, I thought I heard, very faintly, the ringing of tiny bells blending with the crickets' song.

  Vicki came back out. "The line's busy. Probably a lot of people—"

  "Listen," I hissed.

  "What?"

  I strained my ears. The ringing seemed to have retreated back into my imagination.

  But that night, on the edge of sleep, I thought. I heard it again, sweet and distant, very faint.

  "You hear that?" I whispered to Vicki.

  "Mmm?"

  "Bells."

  Pause.

  "Go to sleep."

  II

  Things were screwed up at work the next day. For one thing, the phones were broken. I had an important call to make to Syracuse, New York, but I kept getting whistling and crackling noises instead. The operator wouldn't answer. I finally told Rose to report it to the office manager, and spent the rest of the morning talking into my dictaphone. When I got back from lunch, Rose had the transcription on my chair. I put my feet on the desk with a

  contented sigh, uncapped a r
ed pen, turned back the cover sheet, and read: Sleepers awake, the voice is calling, On battlements the watchmen cry: Wake, city of Jerusalem!

  The telephone rang. I groped for it.

  "Bill Johnson, please," said a faraway, staticky voice.

  "You have the wrong number."

  "This isn't Johnson's Formal Wear in Des Moines, Iowa?"

  I said no, hung up, and buzzed Rose, handed her the memo as the phone rang again.

  "Bill Johnson, please," said a faraway, staticky voice.

  I hung up. Rose was staring at the memo blankly. "That's funny. Something must be wrong with the word-processing system. I'll try to .. .

  The phone rang. I answered it, watching her out of the office suspiciously.

  "Bill Johnson? Of Des Moines, Iowa?"

  "No, Bob Wilson, of Washington, D.C., the same guy you've gotten the last half-dozen times."

  "Sorry about that, Mr. Wilson. Tom Gibbs from New York City. I'm in Formal Wear. How are the phones down your way?" "Screwed up."

  "Same here. I've been trying to get through to Des Moines all morning. Seems like the trunk lines are out of whack. I can get Washington, Boston, Chicago, and L.A. okay, but the farm lands don't answer. Funny."

  The phone rang once more that afternoon. I picked it up, expecting Tom Gibbs, but it wasn't Tom Gibbs; it was a wide, distant hum, a faint gabble of ten thousand crossed lines overlaid with the electronic buzz of some vast malfunction, like a telephone call from Entropy itself. I hung up with a shiver and a quick prayer that It didn't intend to come visit in person.

  III

  I was in a bad mood when I got home.

  "Where's the newspaper?" I complained, after searching the living room for it. "You didn't throw it away again, did you?"

  "It didn't come," Vicki called from upstairs. "I left you some green beans on the stove."

  "Green beans?" I went and looked at them mournfully.

  "I've got rehearsal, honey." She came downstairs, beautiful in a blue skirt and pink, floppy sweater, eyes vivid with makeup, gave me a barely touching kiss that wouldn't smear her lipstick. "And when I get back we have to go over to Mrs. Romer's. She swears she has ghosts. I promised we'd come and make sure there aren't any. I think she's gone crazy, poor old lady."

  "Ghosts? Honey, I don't want to go over there tonight. I'm tired. You wouldn't believe—"

  In the back yard, crickets trilled in subtly shifting patterns, the air still and just a little damp. Moonlight cast a dark deck shadow on the grass. I was leaning on the railing before going back inside to my spy book, when I heard the faint, sweet sound of bells.

  I held my breath. The lights of Vicki's car had just disappeared down the hill. The sound seemed to be coming from around the side of the house.

  I tiptoed down wooden steps and through crackling leaves, poked my head past the gutter downspout at the corner.

  High in a young maple in Arland Johnston's side yard, unseasonable firefly lights floated.

  I snuck forward, the soft earth of iris beds silencing my steps. For a second it crossed my mind that Arland had hung out Christmas lights: I thought I saw tiny haloed saints and angels with trumpets. Then they all winked out at once.

  I stood looking up into the tree, lit pale by the moon. As I watched, a single leaf let go and fluttered down. Then I heard the bells again, faint and faraway.

  The firefly lights were floating around a tree in old Mr. Jakeway's back yard, down at the bottom of the street.

  I crept across silent asphalt that was moon-tinted the same deep, dusty blue as the sky, along the sidewalk in tree-shadows, pushed through a hole in Mr. Jakeway's hedge, getting scratched and poked. I picked my way through his quarter-acre back yard, trying to tell clumps of weeds from junk auto parts that could break your leg in the dark. Gnarled tree-branches hung almost to the ground.

  A cobra blur coiled around my leg and yanked me into the air.

  I tried to scream, but only a faint gurgling came out. I hung upside down, breath knocked out of me, spinning slowly, arms and free leg struggling wildly in the air.

  The rope around my ankle jerked. There were grunts from above, and I started going up again, slowly. Hands took hold of me and pulled me onto a thick tree-branch four stories off the ground.

  An old man squatted on the branch. For a second I thought he was Mr. Jakeway, but then I saw that he was even older, with a sour, wrinkled face, and no hair. He wore a long, dingy robe that the moon lit grey, with big buttons down the front. He peered at me through wire-rimmed spectacles. Around him crouched half a dozen kids in their early teens, watching me solemnly. Three of them held me onto the branch.

  The old man croaked: "I am the Angel of Death."

  I stared at him. Then I did something I would never have expected: I started to cry. I could see our house far below, yard awash in pale leaves, my old Datsun parked in front, a bag of newspapers on the walk waiting for the recycling truck. I had never seen the neighborhood from up here; already it looked faraway and out of reach, like a picture of someplace you used to live but will never see again.

  "Please stop crying," said the old man irritably. "I'm not going to take you yet. At least, not if you promise to stop poking around where you have no business. We're having enough trouble right now without you."

  I wiped my shirtsleeve across my nose hopefully.

  "Do you promise to stop snooping? To leave those little lights alone? And not to tell anyone about us?"

  I nodded eagerly. One of the teenage kids looped the end of the rope they had pulled off my ankle around my chest.

  "See that you don't," the old man croaked as they lowered me rotating toward the earth. "If you do—"

  When I reached the ground, I struggled out of the rope and ran blindly until I was inside my house, locked the door, drew all the curtains, and dialed 911.

  It took them a long time to answer. After I had given my name and address, I said: "There's a weirdo in a tree at the end of my block who claims he's the Angel of Death. He's got some kids with him. They've got a rope snare rigged up that almost broke my back. This guy is dangerous, officer—if you could see his face—"

  "Angel of Death—up in a tree—rope snare—" the heavy voice on the other end repeated slowly; obviously he was writing it down. "And what address would this be at, Mr. Wilson?"

  "It's the first house on your right as you turn onto Thayer Place. I don't know the exact address. You're sending somebody right over?"

  "It'll probably be half an hour, Mr. Wilson, before we can get to it. We've—"

  "Half an hour? Officer, there's a dangerous maniac—"

  "If you'll let me finish, Mr. Wilson, we've got thirty other emergency calls, and we just don't have the cars to cover them. I suggest you stay inside and keep your doors locked until we can get out there, but I wouldn't panic. The other wild calls we've had tonight have turned out to be hoaxes."

  "This isn't a hoax!"

  "I didn't say it was, sir. But look, we've got a report of a giant lizard prowling around Sligo Creek—ate somebody's dog, says here. We've got a report of a mushroom cloud over on Colesville Road. We've got ghosts all over town. We figure it's one of these kids' Dungeons and Dragons clubs or some people very confused about when Halloween is, so I wouldn't get too concerned. Just stay inside until the officer gets there."

  As soon as I put down the phone, a scream sounded faintly from next door.

  I spent a minute that felt like an hour chewing the end off my thumb. I figured the Angel of Death guy and his kids were murdering Mrs. Romer. I wondered what I should do about that.

  Another scream.

  I banged out along leaf-deep sidewalks. All of Mrs. Romer's windows were lit and her front door was ajar. Mrs. Romer herself was standing in the middle of her small, well-furnished living room, wrinkled hands on her hips, looking around with solemn belligerence.

  "He's back," she announced in her hoarse voice as I stopped in the doorway. "Him and his alcoholic mother and his spon
ging sister."

  "Who?" I yelled, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. "Terrell."

  "I—I thought he was dead."

  "It was such a relief to me. I learned to love him afterward; he left me this house and a lot of money. God bless him. But he's back. Him and his alcoholic, sponging family."

  "Mrs. Romer, I've got a terrible emergency—"

  "You look in the basement," she told me. "I'll go upstairs. If we can't find them, we'll have to look in the attic."

  And she started up the stairs, yelling quaveringly: "Terrell! Terrell! You come out right now!"

  It took me awhile to get her calmed down. She wouldn't let me leave until I had crawled around in her attic, poking a flashlight into dusty, cobwebbed corners. Maybe I didn't hurry as much as I could have; with the Angel of Death guy prowling the neighborhood, Mrs. Romer's attic felt comfortably remote and full of dark hiding places. Thankfully, I didn't find her dead in-laws crouching in any of them. When I peeked out her front door twenty minutes later, I was relieved to see the red and blue lights of a police car rotating silently at the end of the street.

  I walked down to where a policeman and old Mr. Jakeway stood by a purring squad car, the mist of their breath rising into blue depths where the moon shone mistily. Another policeman was crashing around in the brush behind Mr. Jakeway's house, shining a flashlight up into the trees.

  "Hey there, Bobby," said Mr. Jakeway. "Officer here tells me you saw some kids up in my trees."

  "An old man and some kids. But that was an hour ago." "Well, they're gone now," said the policeman.

  "Officer, I know it sounds strange, but they were there. They pulled me—"

  "You're not the only report we have on them," said the policeman, looking at a clipboard with his flashlight. "At least the old man. We got a call over on Pershing Drive, an old man fitting that description trampling through people's flower beds. Went off in a big foreign car, says here."

  "You think they're foreigners? Terrorists?" asked Mr. Jakeway, thrusting his old, grizzled head forward.