Babylon Sisters Read online

  A look of bemused consternation squalled across Shelly’s features. “Rand is so kind to me. There’s no denying that, or his charm. But Brewster has something that pulls at me, a demanding quality that’s almost frightening.”

  “You should be nicer to him then. More appreciative.”

  “I try. But I get distracted too often.” Shelly bit her underlip. “Fabiola—do you ever recall your death?”

  Fabiola laughed easily. “My death? I’m right here beside you! How could I have ever died?”

  “But you did. You drowned. Your heart was stopped until the angel restarted it.”

  Ignoring Shelly’s speech, Fabiola fluffed up her abundant damp curls. “The sauna always butchers my hair! I’m definitely going to speak to the mockie-proctors about altering the proteinoid mix in the final rinse.”

  * * * *

  From across the form-strewn chamber, as if across a vision of some steam-cloaked afterlife, a desultory Elysian Fields, Brewster and Rand more or less discreetly watched the two girls. In relaxed fashion, Rand stood leaning against a wall, arms folded across his hairless chest; contrarily, Brewster twisted energetically from the waist up in an exaggerated display of calisthentics, snapping his limbs about.

  “Gaia!” exclaimed Brewster. “Fabiola gets me so primed! Look at her breasts arch as she primps her hair! What a kick.”

  Rand’s tone was dry. “You two certainly seemed on the same protocol in class. Do you expect to see much of her after graduation?”

  Brewster ceased swivelling and began to trot in place, coincident with a blast of cold. “Not likely. The one drawback with Fab from my point of view is her excessive brains. She’s off for more schooling, which is certainly not the case with me.”

  Rand straightened away from the wall, plainly intrigued. “Oh? This is news. I had no idea your future plans were so solid. Tell all, please.”

  “I’ve already signed on with the Rewilderness Institute. They promised me my choice of assignment after a short training stint. I’m leaning toward the Sacramento Rainforest.”

  “A noble mission.”

  “Noble my prickly arse! I just can’t stand being cooped up in these prissy modern safety zones any more. I want to be surrounded by some wildness, to use my muscles more than my head.”

  “Engineered wildness. And of course the angels will still be watching over you and your mates.”

  Brewster snorted like a guard minotaur. “Don’t remind me. There’s no place free from their intrusive ways. The damn seraphian layer girdles the whole globe like a straitjacket, put into place long before our generation had a say in it.”

  Rand smiled. “An interesting comparison. Most people compare the turbulent home of our angel friends to a vital safety net.”

  “Most people are lazy, complacent fools. A warm autonohome, uninterrupted entertainment, and the cackle of the flock. That’s enough to make them happy.”

  “Cheep, cheep.”

  Brewster stopped jogging. “Be fair now, you know I don’t mean you. You’re a good friend, Rand. You and me, Fabiola and Shelly—we have some kind of special bond among us. I predict we’ll always hang together somehow.”

  “Sentimentality and a nod toward the future. This must be that ‘maturity’ I’ve heard so much about.”

  “Joke all you want, dummy. And by the way, I haven’t learned your plans yet. Maybe you and Fabiola have some kind of zingy co-hab agreement.”

  “Not at all. But we are going to the same school next year.”

  “A-ha! Don’t tell me you’re going to muck about with squirmy aliens too.”

  “No. Not unless you count Jovian volatiles as such.”

  Brewster shouted his approval and slapped Rand on the back hard enough to cause the slighter boy to stagger a step. “So it’s to be mining after all! Congratulations! And you let me rave on about my shirt-pocket wilderness! Out among the stars, there’s the real frontier.”

  Rand spoke modestly. “Oh, most of the work is done from Earth via d-links. And on-site autonoclaques handle much of the rest. I doubt I’ll find myself in space more than a few times a year.”

  “More than most of the rest of us. Well, if it weren’t for needing to feel the wind on my face, Rand, I’d join you in a minute.”

  Rand quoted their secular scripture only half-archly: “’Each seeker his own guide.’”

  Brewster delivered the expected well-circulated parody: “’Each thrillseeker his own androgyne.’”

  * * * *

  The roof of the school was generally off-limits. Its attractions were minimal—a perch from which to pelt innocent passersby with popbeads from the pepper trees, a generous view of the landscaped community and the river where Fabiola had nearly met her end—and consequently, so was any tempation to trespass. But this evening, with the end of the official commencement celebrations at midnight, the lure of the forbidden drew some dozen graduates unwilling to call an end to their revelry.

  Rand concentrated on jiggering the school’s heuristics, chattering at the building in high-level autonopidgin. At his back, his festively dressed companions shuffled and whispered. Tristan and Alana, a pair of lovers bound for the Black Gang, kissed with professional abandon. A fellow named Ewen let out a fart, saying, “Let the school parse that!”

  Rand worked intently despite the distractions. “Damn stubborn mockie— There! We’re in.”

  Everyone gave a cheer then, heedless of discovery. All the young men and women exhibited varying degrees of amygdaloid intoxication—nothing illegal, but more than was perhaps wise of the permitted stuff. Half the intruders raced up the stairs, vieing with those in the lofter shaft to be first; the two factions burst out onto the node-studded roof almost simultaneously. Above, a wealth of stars prickled. June breezes carried the scents of water and grass. The happy trespassers rushed to the low parapet edging the roof, the only real focus of the scene. Some ten meters below, the well-lighted town slept.

  Rand encircled Fabiola’s bare midriff with his left arm. She pressed her hip against him. Brewster and Shelly stood rather stiffly side by side, although holding hands. Squirts full of wine circulated; by the time one reached Brewster, its overused muscles, at the ebb of their refreshing cycle, refused to work, and only a couple of drops escaped the living valve. Brewster threw the squirt down squishily in exaggerated disgust.

  “Bah! Who needs alcohol on a night like tonight? Just to be free of this dump forever is intoxicating enough!”

  Releasing Shelly’s hand, Brewter leaped atop the parapet and began to dance like a marionette proxied by someone being tickled to death. Everyone cheered and applauded except Shelly. Even in the dim starlight and backscattered radiance of the street illuminants her expression of alarm shone like a young moon.

  “No, Brewster! It’s dangerous! Come down!”

  As if his imaginary strings had been dipped in liquid nitrogen, Brewster instantly froze. He stared meanly at Shelly for a few interminable seconds, then said, “You don’t own me, Shel. And there is no danger anywhere anymore.”

  With those words, he hurled himself backwards off the roof.

  Shelly screamed, as did several others, not including Rand or Fabiola. Craning forward, the young men and women watched Brewster plummet.

  Halfway in his swift fall, an angel materialized beneath him. The alabaster being caught Brewster easily and lowered him safely to the ground.

  Rand spoke precisely, in the parodic tones of a lecturer, but failed entirely to mask deeper feelings. “Unlike our long-range, machine-based d-links, the angels of course can go discontinuous organically and at will. However, the energy-burden such actions place on them limit them to one or at the most two ionosphere-to-troposphere jumps between downtimes back in the seraphian layer—”

  His humorous pedanticism went disregarded, as his peers clambered to the parapet and jumped in squealing imitation of Brewster. Each of course met midair rescue. The flock of enigma-faced marmoreal angels flew away conventionally as each
jumper was grounded. Finally, only Shelly, Rand and Fabiola remained on the roof. Rand exhibited a cool disdain, while Fabiola’s eyes shone with an aloof excitement. Shelly, though, quivered with rage and the aftermath of her fear.

  Rand moved to embrace her, saying, “Juvenile behavior, of course—really wasteful of seraphian resources—but you have to make some allowances—”

  Shelly bucked out of his offered consoling clutches. “I hate him! I hate you all!” She raced off down the stairs, out the school and down the streets.

  Fabiola watched her go, then said, “Hardly the proper attitude for the start of her career as a martyr.”

  * * * *

  Fabiola’s office-cum-playlab occupied a congeries of expandable Hoberman spheres in the middle of Los Angeles, conveniently close to the main So-Cal d-link offworld transit center. Currently, the complex swelled half-again as large as it nearest neighbor: the Leucothean Institute had mounted a new expedition recently to underexplored regions of the distant world whence came the objects of Fabiola’s researches.

  When the building announced a visitor that morning, Fabiola paused abruptly in the middle of her work as if the significant yet unexpected name had jarred her concentration.

  “Send her up.”

  Waiting for the arrival of her visitor, Fabiola closed down the experiment she had been working on that morning. Tapping stacatto codes into her communion wafer with her stylus nail, she induced quiescence in the leucotherarium inhabitants. Behind the glass walls of the sealed alien environment, amorphous shapes, their metabolisms damped, pooled on their moss-furred cage floor like heaps of coddled egg-whites.

  Fabiola stepped from playlab to outer office. She entered just in time to greet her visitor.

  Shelly appeared thinner than when Fabiola had last seen her childhood friend. Under the libido-blockers, her body seemed to have devolved to pre-adolescence wispiness, as if time’s arrow had reversed for her alone. A cloud of anxiety fogged her features.

  Fabiola swiftly and heartily embraced her friend. “What a pleasant surprise, Shel! It’s been what, three years? Here, take a seat.”

  Unresponsive to Fabiola’s pleasantries, Shelly collapsed into a chair. “I’ve been dropped from the theresans, Fabiola. Me and hundreds of others.”

  “Oh, that’s awful! But why?”

  “Reduced call for our services. A happier world needs fewer empathetic companions—or so people delude themselves into thinking. Dealing with the shrinkage, the order has applied a strict ‘last in, first out’ policy. Frankly, I’m surprised the axe didn’t fall on me last year at this time.”

  Taking a seat beside Shelly, Fabiola grasped her hand. “I’m so sorry. What will you do now?”

  Shelly pinned Fabiola with the intensity of her gaze. “I can’t simply abandon my calling, just because I’ve lost institutional support. But I can’t continue on my own either. So I’ve applied to the angelmakers. The demand for their services, at least, is still strong.”

  Fabiola’s face registered baffled incredulity. “I don’t understand.”

  “How much more clearly can I say it? I’ve put my name in to become an angel.”

  Clearly agitated, Fabiola stood up. “Along with criminals and the incorrigibly suicidal? You’re neither of those, are you, Shelly? How could you do such a thing?”

  Grimly thinning her lips, Shelly countered, “Every year a few sane and responsible individuals make the same choice. It’s not unprecedented.”

  Fabiola began to pace. “This news upsets me terribly. You’re throwing your individuality away. And for what?”

  “If I can’t save people’s souls, at least I can still safeguard their bodies. That’s all they seem to care about anyway.”

  Growing more distressed, Fabiola asked, “Why are you telling me all this? It’s an incredible burden! I almost wish you had just vanished.”

  Shelly smiled for the first time. “You think mere knowledge of my choice is a burden? Well, I’m about to ask for much more. I want you and Rand and Brewster to be present at the transformation. It’s my privilege to have three witnesses.”

  Color bled from Fabiola’s face. “Witness it? I—I can’t!”

  “Why not? You deal with leucothean lifeforms every day.”

  “But not hybrids!”

  Shelly got up awkwardly from her seat. “Too bad your sensibilities are so refined, dear. I enjoin you to be there, and I know you won’t refuse. I assume you’re still in contact with the men.”

  “Yes, of course. I saw both of them just last month.”

  “I expect to find you all there then. I’ll send the particulars as soon as I learn them.”

  Shelly moved toward the door. Automatically, Fabiola accompanied her. At the door, Shelly turned, gripped Fabiola by her upper arms, and brought her face to within inches of the other woman’s.

  “You’ve often claimed you loved me, Fab. Prove it now.”

  Shelly kissed Fabiola fiercely, released her, and left.

  Fabiola wiped her lips as if they burned.

  * * * *

  Sealed from outside contamination—or interior escape—the operating theater was staffed only by sophisticated mechanisms, partly autonomous, partly telefactored by the hidden, anonymous cadre of angelmakers. Now alertly inactive, the mobile surgical units awaited their initiating commands. The sole human inhabitant of the theater lay naked upon a comfortable monitor-and-assist platform. As yet untouched, Shelly’s thin pale body—stark ribs, hairless mons, composed expression—seemed already well on its way to angelhood. Arms resting laxly along her sides, she stared upward with concentrated fixity.

  Beside the patient an opaque sealed canister sat in isolation from the other equipment, a grail-like focus of vision for the assembled watchers.

  The ceiling of the lighted theater was transparent. Beyond this barrier, in cloaking darkness and ringing the edge of the theater, seats with full non-interventionist telemetry held medical students, professors, and Shelly’s three witnesses. Fabiola was flanked by her two friends. Rand, to her left, held her hand. On her other side, Brewster sat with arms folded like logs across his chest. Rand’s expressive face revealed an inner tumult mixing fascination, dismay and a sorrowful nostalgia. Fabiola’s countence expressed pure despair. Brewster exhibited an angry scowl, as if personally affronted. Amidst the murmurous audience, his sudden exclamation registered as an egregious slap.

  “Damn her! She’s deserting us! Is she really that weak?”

  “’That weak?’” Rand repeated. “Why not ‘that strong?’ Could you undergo such a transformation?”

  “Why not ask if I could have my legs sawed off for no good reason? It’s not bravery in either case, just masochistic stupidity.”

  Fabiola’s voice was pitched higher than normal. “Will you two just shut up! Show some respect for Shelly’s committment. Please.”

  Brewster opened his mouth to reply, then obviously thought better of such a move. He braced his implacable arms more firmly. Rand squeezed Fabiola’s hand more tightly and pecked her brow with a kiss, but she seemed to esteem his solictious affection no more highly than she did Brewster’s truculence.

  The machines in the theater suddenly stirred to life. Ignoring the offered close-up telemetry, Fabiola bent forward, as if only unmediated vision across the shortest possible distance could sanctify this transaction. Unwittingly, Rand and Brewster mimicked her.

  Below, Shelly had already received a local sensory block across her sternum that still left her completely conscious. Surely her light-swamped eyes could not discern any of the watchers above, yet her expectant gaze seemed locked on theirs. Now clamps and blood-flow inhibitors came into play, as a small incision was lasered into her side, revealing the common human scarlet wetness.

  As if unable to interpose a censor between his thoughts and his speech, Rand whispered, “Buddhists claim Shakyamuni was born of such a wound in his mother’s side. But Christians honor the piercing of a spear in the torso of a crucified J
esus.”

  The sealed canister now resided in a mechanical grip. Obedient to the application of a security code, the canister top began to unscrew itself, as if its living contents sought egress on their own. The spatulate limb of a mechanical poised itself above the lid, ready to cap the vessel. When the lid had fully disengaged and the spatulate blocker had slid into place, the container was brought nearly into contact with Shelly’s incision. Then the intervening shield-hand withdrew.

  The observers saw in the tiny slice of space between the vessel and the body the merest suggestion of a sentient pulsing gelatinous influx. Quickly, the container was pulled away, while at the same time a transparent shell rose up from within the M&A platform to fully enclose the patient.

  Beneath this perspex carapace, Shelly began instantly to metamorphose.

  The lips of her incision drew closed of their own volition. Her stomach swelled noticeably, then just as significantly concaved, as the leucothean lifeform introduced into her abdomen swiftly absorbed organs, bloated, then shrunk into extensions that blew through her like a wind of pure somatic change. The expression on Shelly’s face betokened no pain, just shock, and then, amazingly, a species of bliss. Her eyes rolled back into their sockets; when they revolved again a full minute later, they revealed themselves transmuted into the flinty optic roundels of all angels. Attenuating and wavering, her limbs went through various test modes of ectoplasmic configuration before settling down to the angelic perfection of human similitude.

  Most astonishingly, Shelly’s body began to float above the M&S pedestal, constrained only by the clear lid.

  Above, in the observation galley, Fabiola began to retch. Brewster struck the dome of the theater a resounding blow. Rand sought tranquility in dull recitation of facts.

  “The imago will automatically seek the global seraphian layer and the company of its kind. The canopy prevents its flight until it can be brought into the open. Already the new angel is part of the leucothean group mentation, able to detect and respond to human distress in all its forms via contact with our wafers along non-local dimensions—”