Angels and Exiles (9 page)

The Eldred ushers them into a small room panelled in some dark shimmering stuff, looking like gasoline rainbows filmed in black and white. They are offered seats and take them while the Eldred remains standing.

There are some uncomfortable seconds of silence. Finally it is Kel who dares to speak, asking a question as inane as it is inescapable: “Well, did we win?”

“Yes. The soloist who preceded you placed a close second, but, even if he had not died, you would still have won.”

Edge Nain shivers and gazes at the floor. “Sweet Jesu, I’m sorry,” says Kel, as if whispering a confession. “I didn’t try hard enough. I should have . . . ” Ras stops him, gripping his shoulder and squeezing hard enough to cause pain; Kel barely flinches.

Ras: “He made his choice, brother. He made his choice, and what happened was his own fault.”

Kel: “If we’d gone with him outside, we could have called an ambulance. He could be alive now.”

Ras: “We’d played ambulance once already, and it’s too expensive a game for my tastes. Life is money, and I don’t care to be terminated because I’ve wasted my assets on Yerusalom’s failures. Just grow up, Kel.”

Edge Nain rises and stands before his friends; both of them look up at him. Kel’s retort dies on his lips, and Ras withdraws his hand from the younger man’s shoulder.

Edge Nain: “We saved one life tonight. We’re not doctors; we’re not Sweet Jesu. We’re dreamweavers. I don’t regret helping Harold—but, Kel, Ras is right that we can’t afford to do this kind of good. . . .”

His words trail off because, as a matter of fact, they probably
could
afford it now. . . . All three turn their heads to look at the Eldred who has remained apart from the scene, and who now inclines her head while rotating her upper body slightly: the body language for a polite request.

The Eldred: “Please take a refreshment from the minibar; the first one is complimentary.”

Ras sighs nervously, stands up, goes to a small cube in a corner of the room, and opens its door. After a brief scan of its contents, he takes a small bottle. Kel, who has joined him, picks a bigger one. Edge Nain will take nothing. All three sit back down. Ras and Kel sip at their drinks; Edge Nain fidgets, waiting for their host to speak. She—always
she
, for though the Eldred are a hermaphroditic species, they will only use the feminine pronoun when referring to themselves—watches them in silence, holding herself erect but tilted slightly forward, in a position believed to connote benign attentiveness. Suddenly she turns around, opens the door to the room. The three dreamweavers do not see the lobby, but instead the naked sky. The room is an elevator then, and they have reached the top of the building.

The Eldred commands: “Follow me.”

The trio file out of the room after her, Kel clutching his unfinished bottle. The top of the building is so high it feels as though one’s gaze can encompass the four corners of the Earth. Around them stretch the self-lit, self-constructed edifices of Yerusalom. City from the stars, having come up of itself around the Eldred landing ships that planted its seeds in the hard stony ground. A hundred shades of light, carrying its own darkness within it. Above it all, the roof of the sky, black and spangled with stars, like a circular tent, its fabric pricked with holes.

The Eldred: “Your performance was quite moving. We will pay you two hundred fifty thousand assets each; the work will be made available at theatres throughout the city, and trailers will be broadcast on all major entertainment channels. As far as royalties go, you will receive the standard 8.3 percent of all net profits—divided into three equal shares. This verbal agreement is binding upon the moment of your formal acceptance; printed documents will be issued on an on-demand basis, for a fee. Does this satisfy you?”

Kel murmurs something indistinct. Edge Nain is silent.

Ras asks: “Then . . . you won’t record us?”

“Oh, you already have been recorded. While you waited in the room, you were anaesthetized, taken to the laboratories, and your personalities were recorded in full detail. Twenty-four hours have passed since you left the auditorium.”

Ras nervously adjusts his clothing. He feels cheated, like a child promised marvels to keep him quiet. He who wished more than anything to be preserved for the future, who dreamed of one day basking in the knowledge that his very essence was kept by the Eldred, suddenly wonders why he ever yearned for this. He had dreamed with mingled terror and desire of great scanning engines, complicated procedures. . . . Now it has all been done, without the slightest awareness on his part.

And yet, and yet, what is he thinking? He has achieved what thousands of other artists have tried for in vain: he himself, not just his art, will be remembered throughout the centuries and millennia. . . . In the bad old days before the Eldred came, fame was a thing bestowed at random, withdrawn almost before it had been granted. An artist’s identity always vanished behind his public image; authenticity itself had been reduced to a set of standard poses. He, Ras the dreamweaver, has been
recorded
, and as long as Eldred civilization endures, the image of his soul will accompany it, ready to be replayed. There is nothing closer to true immortality; for all that he in this body will die and rot, his soul in the Eldred’s pattern-storage will endure eternal. . . . Why then this despair that tightens his throat and brings tears to his eyes?

Kel is saying: “Well . . . I guess this is okay by me. Thank you . . . ah . . . how should we call you?”

The Eldred makes a sound they have never heard, a low buzz, almost synthetic. Then she says: “Since you are all so unhappy, I will allow you to call me by my human name of Satan.”

Edge Nain: “I beg your pardon?”

His two partners, he notes, are as surprised as he. Of course, “Satan” is in some ways a trite name: millions of humans call the Eldred “Snakes,” millions more equate them to demons. Eldred, who are known to use several names depending on context, have on occasion chosen surprising human cognomens. But still, why
that
name?

She: “Satan. The fount of evil, the breeder of lies. Also, the staunch ally of humankind against an indifferent god. It is an appropriate name.”

Kel’s mouth is drooping at the corners, like a little child about to weep. He complains: “What are you trying to say?”

“My choice was determinant in the competition; and I chose you above all the others because your performance demonstrated, among other things, that you would not be content with what we offered. You”—pointing at Ras—“have gained the brand of immortality we promise, but I can read the disappointment on your face; and I will tell you furthermore that although we recorded all three of you, the available space is not unlimited. We will be forced to discard two of the three recordings and commit only one to long-term storage. I cannot promise you will be the one we keep.”

She points to Edge Nain: “You did not truly want to win, did you? Now that you have reached your goal, you do not know what to do.”

Edge Nain corrects her: “I did not expect to win. But I
am
glad we did.”

“No, you are not. You are lying to yourself. And you”—her clawed finger points to Kel—“have realized that although your art is successful as a mating display, it was not reproductive prowess that you craved, after all.”

Kel splutters and coughs; theatrically or not, Edge Nain cannot tell. He speaks up to forestall Kel’s angry words, which he can sense coming.

“Hold on. Never mind whether you’re correct about us or not. Why would our discontent make us win?”

Satan: “Why do you think we record you in the first place?”

Ras answers, hesitant: “Because you seek to understand humans. Isn’t that why you gave us dream-inducers? Because we reveal more of ourselves in the dreams we make?”

“We gave humans dream-inducer technology because we wished to record artists working in a fresh, untainted medium, but this is no longer a major focus of our attempt to understand humans. Most of your race believe that artists are more deeply in touch with the human condition, so initially we expended considerable effort to record them. The return on investment was disappointing. We have recorded tens of thousands of humans, from all places and social statuses. It is our consensus opinion that any one of the fifteen million indentured labourers of southeast Asia comes much closer to the essence of the human condition than do any of the artists in Yerusalom. Most of us feel that artists have no depth to them at all, only a mild form of mental illness.”

Edge Nain, taken aback, asks: “Then why do you still sample us? Why all these competitions, all the wealth you shower down?”

Satan leans to one side, against the railing, and rotates a knee outward. This form of body language the trio have never seen. Perhaps it means nothing special.

She answers: “Market research has its own inertia. The total amount invested was relatively small and had the potential for a large payoff: it was a worthwhile risk.”

Ras quotes: “‘The Universe is commerce.’”

Edge Nain: “And why, then, are you telling us all this? When the Eldred have never told us exactly what they seek on Earth?”

She: “We never sought your art; we sought to understand you only insofar as we must evaluate your future commercial status. We gave you seed technologies to accelerate your technological development, to send you out into your solar system. In two or three hundred years, you might become worthwhile trading partners; not before. And the reason why I tell you these things is because I have become convinced—you, in fact, have finished convincing me—that our presence on your planet has already distorted you beyond reasonable bounds. I believe we will destroy you, ruin any hope of bloom for your civilization.”

Kel speaks at last, in a voice thready with outrage: “But that’s nonsense: you’ve given us so much! We’ve learned from you. Earth is better off than it was before. You talk of indentured labourers, but they’re being freed even as we speak. How can wealth be bad? All the people in Yerusalom, the artists, the scientists . . . we’ve benefited from your knowledge, and the rest of Earth has too. And humanity hasn’t really changed much. It’s adapted, that’s all.”

Satan says quietly, in her hissing voice: “Maybe I am mistaken. But I am a High Administrator for my commercial sept, and it is my function to reach such understandings. I have dealt with three species before, and I have access to a thousand years of records. And it is my evaluation that any prolonged presence among you will destroy your species. The loss would be severe.”

Edge Nain, after a pause: “You speak of financial loss, don’t you? If there was no question of profit involved, you wouldn’t care at all.”

“That is correct. This is an aspect of us most humans do not seem to understand, despite our explanations; I am pleased that you do.”

Ras speaks up: “You said you didn’t want our art. That soloist who died . . . I couldn’t believe you placed him second. But then, it didn’t matter how shitty his performance was, did it? You’ve never cared about the artistic value of dreamweaving.”

“It has always been irrelevant. The soloist almost won because he showed us his naked mind, in all its terror. He was a good candidate for recording, but you three are in some ways even better.”

Edge Nain: “Then, as long as you’re answering all our questions, tell me: why does Sweet Jesu walk our streets? Or do all of us simply imagine Him?”

“He is real. We’ve made Him real. Since human cultures traditionally associate commerce with forces of evil, this was taken to be a necessary balance for our interactions with you. We have over twelve dozen teams of operatives monitoring the city constantly and striving to apply immanent justice to human endeavours. Indeed, without the intercession of one of those teams, you would not have been allowed to enter the theatre. Globally, however, results of the Jesu operations have been inconclusive.”

Edge Nain blinks at the Eldred, then shuts his lids for a few seconds, withdrawing into a private darkness. He is not truly surprised, not really disappointed. It is not as if this hypothesis had not been floated in his hearing before, a hundred times. He knows the mystics’ answer also, that the real Jesu could choose to enlist the Eldred to work His miracles in Yerusalom. If the magician shows you the trickery he used, that does not prove he cannot truly work a spell. When Edge Nain opens his eyes again, he looks at Ras, who is smouldering with anger, at Kel, his youthful face like that of a bereft angel. And for a split second, like a pivot-point in a dreamweaving, he thinks to grasp the Eldred’s perspective on the Jesu experiment, and horror rises in him at what humanity has become. But then the epiphany leaves him, and he returns to his former bewilderment. He was five years old when the Eldred came down upon the Earth; their arrival spelled the ending of his childhood. He remembers, dimly, a time when his parents constantly squabbled about money, when they refused to let him play outside for fear of the gangs roaming the suburban streets. In front of him stands one of the race that brought his family, his entire country, out of despair. The Eldred are the core of his existence, those from whom all blessings flow. That they should also embody Sweet Jesu is unavoidable, is it not?