Paul McAuley - Recording Angel

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Recording Angel - a novelette by Paul J McAuley

IP fiction

Recording Angel

a novelette

by Paul J McAuley

Mr Naryan, the Archivist of Sensch, still keeps to his habits as much as possible, despite all that has

happened since Angel arrived in the city. He has clung to these personal rituals for a very long time

now, and it is not easy to let them go. And so, on the day that Angel's ship is due to arrive and attempt

to reclaim her, the day that will end in revolution, or so Angel has promised her followers, as ever, at

dusk, as the Rim Mountains of Confluence tip above the disc of its star and the Eye of the Preservers

rises above the far side of the world, Mr Naryan walks across the long plaza at the edge of the city

towards the Great River.

Rippling patterns swirl out from his feet, silver and gold racing away through the plaza's living marble.

Above his head, clouds of little machines spin through the twilight: information's dense weave. At the

margin of the plaza, broad steps shelve into the river's brown slop. Naked children scamper through

the shallows, turning to watch as Mr Naryan, old and fat and leaning on his stick at every other stride,

limps past and descends the submerged stair until only his hairless head is above water. He draws a

breath and ducks completely under. His nostrils pinch shut. Membranes slide across his eyes. As

always, the bass roar of the river's fall over the edge of the world stirs his heart. He surfaces, spouting

water, and the children hoot. He ducks under again and comes up quickly, and the children scamper

back from his spray, breathless with delight. Mr Naryan laughs with them and walks back up the steps,

his loose belted shirt shedding water and quickly drying in the parched dusk air.

Further on, a funeral party is launching little clay lamps into the river's swift currents. The men, waist-

deep in brown water, turn as Mr Naryan limps past, knuckling their broad, narrow foreheads. Their

wet skins gleam with the fire of the sunset that is now gathering in on itself across leagues of water.

Mr Naryan genuflects in acknowledgement, feeling an icy shame. The woman died before he could

hear her story; her, and seven others in the last few days. It is a bitter failure.

Angel, and all that she has told him -- Mr Naryan wonders whether he will be able to hear out the end

of her story. She has promised to set the city aflame and, unlike Dreen, Mr Naryan believes that she

can.

A mendicant is sitting cross-legged on the edge of the steps down to the river. An old man, sky-clad

and straight-backed. He seems to be staring into the sunset, in the waking trance that is the nearest that

the Shaped citizens of Sensch ever come to sleep. Tears brim in his wide eyes and pulse down his

leathery cheeks; a small silver moth has settled at the corner of his left eye to sip salt.

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Recording Angel - a novelette by Paul J McAuley

Mr Naryan drops a handful of the roasted peanuts he carries for the purpose into the mendicant's bowl,

and walks on. He walks a long way before he realises that a crowd has gathered at the end of the long

plaza, where the steps end and, with a sudden jog, the docks begin. Hundreds of machines swarm in

the darkening air, and behind this shuttling weave a line of magistrates stand shoulder to shoulder,

flipping their quirts back and forth as if to drive off flies. Metal tags braided into the tassels of the

quirts wink and flicker; the magistrates' flared red cloaks seem inflamed in the last light of the sun.

The people make a rising and falling hum, the sound of discontent. They are looking upriver. Mr

Naryan, with a catch in his heart, realises what they must be looking at.

It is a speck of light on the horizon, where the broad ribbon of the river and the broad ribbon of the

land narrow to a single point. It is the lighter towing Angel's ship, at the end of its long journey to the

desert city where she has taken refuge, and caught Mr Naryan in the net of her tale.

Mr Naryan first heard about Angel from Dreen, Sensch's Commissioner; in fact, Dreen paid a visit to

Mr Naryan's house to convey the news in person. His passage through the narrow streets of the quarter

was the focus of a swelling congregation which kept a space two paces wide around him as he ambled

towards the house where Mr Naryan had his apartment.

Dreen was a lively but tormented fellow who was paying off a debt of conscience by taking the more

or less ceremonial position of Commissioner in this remote city which his ancestors had long ago

abandoned. Slight and agile, his head clean-shaven except for a fringe of polychrome hair that framed

his parchment face, he looked like a lily blossom swirling on the Great River's current as he made his

way through the excited crowd. A pair of magistrates preceded him and a remote followed, a mirror-

coloured seed that seemed to move through the air in brief rapid pulses like a squeezed watermelon

pip. A swarm of lesser machines spun above the packed heads of the crowd. Machines did not entirely

trust the citizens, with good reason. Change Wars raged up and down the length of Confluence as, one

by one, the ten thousand races of the Shaped fell from innocence.

Mr Naryan, alerted by the clamour, was already standing on his balcony when Dreen reached the

house. Scrupulously polite, his voice amplified through a little machine that fluttered before his lips,

Dreen enquired if he might come up. The crowd fell silent as he spoke, so that his last words echoed

eerily up and down the narrow street. When Mr Naryan said mildly that the Commissioner was of

course always welcome, Dreen made an elaborate genuflection and scrambled straight up the fretted

carvings which decorated the front of the apartment house. He vaulted the wrought iron rail and

perched in the ironwood chair that Mr Naryan usually took when he was tutoring a pupil.

While Mr Naryan lowered his corpulent bulk onto the stool that was the only other piece of furniture

on the little balcony, Dreen said cheerfully that he had not walked so far for more than a year. He

accepted the tea and sweetmeats that Mr Naryan's wife, terrified by his presence, offered, and added,

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Recording Angel - a novelette by Paul J McAuley

"It really would be more convenient if you took quarters appropriate to your status."

As Commissioner, Dreen had use of the vast palace of intricately carved pink sandstone that

dominated the southern end of the city, although he chose to live in a tailored habitat of hanging

gardens that hovered above the palace's spiky towers.

Mr Naryan said, "My calling requires that I live amongst the people. How else would I understand

their stories? How else would they find me?"

"By any of the usual methods, of course -- or you could multiply yourself so that every one of these

snakes had their own archivist. Or you could use machines. But I forget, your calling requires that you

use only appropriate technology. That's why I'm here, because you won't have heard the news."

Dreen had an abrupt style, but he was neither as brutal nor as ruthless as his brusqueness suggested.

Like Mr Naryan, who understood Dreen's manner completely, he was there to serve, not to rule.

Mr Naryan confessed that he had heard nothing unusual, and Dreen said eagerly, "There's a woman

arrived here. A star-farer. Her ship landed at Ys last year, as I remember telling you."

"I remember seeing a ship land at Ys, but I was a young man then, Dreen. I had not taken orders."

"Yes, yes," Dreen said impatiently, "picket boats and the occasional merchant's argosy still use the

docks. But this is different. She claims to be from the deep past. The very deep past, before the

Preservers."

"I can see that her story would be interesting if it were true."

Dreen beat a rhythm on his skinny thighs with the flat of his hands. "Yes, yes! A human woman,

returned after millions of years of travelling outside the Galaxy. But there's more! She is only one of a

whole crew, and she's jumped ship. Caused some fuss. It seems the others want her back."

"She is a slave, then?"

"It seems she may be bound to them as you are bound to your order."

"Then you could return her. Surely you know where she is?"

Dreen popped a sweetmeat in his mouth and chewed with gusto. His flat-topped teeth were all exactly

the same size. He wiped his wide lipless mouth with the back of his hand and said, "Of course I know

where she is -- that's not the point. The point is that no one knows if she's lying, or her shipmates are

lying -- they're a nervy lot, I'm told. Not surprising, culture shock and all that. They've been travelling

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