Forge of Heaven

Click. Click-click.

It didn’t work.

“We have a problem,” Spider said on a deep breath, a breath doubled in the gathered crowd. Then someone among the spectators laughed, that most deadly of sounds in the Trend.

Whirr-click. The repair bot, right at Procyon’s elbow, hummed. Click-click, went the lock.

“Well,” Isis said with a nervous laugh. “So Procyon brought a key.”

Spider tripped the latch, softly, then flung the door open on light, on a common room full of laughter and riot—that died as they walked right into Michaelangelo’s bar and the bots zipped to one side and the other.

Motion stopped, a tableau of staring faces, not the ordinaries, not the common run of scruffy, self-important Freethinkers. It was a concentrated pack of Algol’s allies, fifteen or twenty grotesques and a few sliding down the path to that distinction. Central among them, huddled in chairs, were a couple of juvvies who looked too normal to be sitting where they were.

The girl of the pair sprang up and bolted, throwing over her chair at her tormentors, bolted straight for Ardath and Isis in the doorway. Bright girl. The boy, hesitating, Algol caught, snatched back, a hostage.

“Well,” Algol said, passing the boy to his friends, standing there in his red and black glory. There came a distracting thump from back in the farther hall on the left, and again on the right, and then a fight broke out somewhere in the corridors upstairs. “Is this a general break-in? Little dog, bringing his sister to protect him? Your friends back there have run into trouble.”

There was shadow enough, and Procyon moved into it. It might not be news, here, that mark of his, but it was there. He saw its immediate effect on the soberer, saner members of Algol’s company, who began to look to the edges of the room.

“A cheap tattoo,” Algol said. “Is this Brazis’s plan, is this little play how he scares fools?”

“Déclassé,” Ardath said, stretching out an elegant arm, her fires fading as she walked into bright light, while Isis maintained an arm around the fugitive girl. “Déclassé, Algol. Past and outcast. You’re responsible for bringing in the slinks on the street. You’re their best friend.”

“Silly, uselesspretty-face! Run away, run, before I change those looks of yours for good and all.” Algol’s right hand flashed with silver. It was a stinger looped about his ring finger, that weapon of the outlaw fringe, capable of injecting mods or deadly poison. Cries broke out among the intruding audience, a jam-up in the doorway as observers crowded back out the door. Ardath stood her ground, and Spider’s hands likewise flashed with metal, two such devices.

But a gray-ski

“Well, well, Typhon,” Spider said, who, depend on it, knew the very darkest layers of Concord. “There’strouble for us. Back away, back away, all.”

“Ardath,” Procyon said, “go. Run.”

“This boy.” Algol flicked his own stinger on, the flash of a green light on its shining top. “Does this foolish boy interest anyone? What is this currency worth?”

“Let him go!” the juvvie girl cried. “Let him go! Please let him go!”

“Friendship. Loyalty. Splendid virtues.” Algol reached out toward the hapless boy, who could not budge from the grip of Algol’s allies. “Will you come here, little girl? Come and take him—?”

In the same moment Isis’s hand lifted from her gold-pleated robes. A weapon hissed.

Algol reacted as if slapped. Looked down at a needle lodged in his black hand, a silver spark in the light. The stinger loosened in that grip, slid. His followers shoved one another to avoid it as it fell. He let go the boy’s arm.

“Kill,”the ondatvoice said. That was what it sounded like. Procyon took a solid grip on the knife hilt, prepared to use the only weapon he had as darts hissed, as Typhon made a lightning move at Spider. Stingers spat. Spider jumped back.

A gunshot deafened the air. Typhon spun back and around in a mist of blood and hit the corner wall. Supporters fled for the back hall, trampling one another in their haste. Typhon slid down, and Algol slumped heavily to the floor, the upstairs boy sitting stock-still, frozen, by his side, in a room rapidly vacated, except for Ardath’s company, and the dead.

The two cleaner-bots sputtered and hummed into action, rushing about madly, sizzling blood spots into nonexistence. The repair-bot moved to the back of the room, flashing investigatory lights into the dark.

A man in a long black coat, the man from the service nook, walked from the streetside doorway behind Ardath, crossed the floor to nudge Algol with his foot. Algol didn’t move. The man kept his right hand in a deep coat side pocket.

The man looked up, then, looked straight at Procyon.

“Procyon Stafford,” he said quietly.

“Yes, sir,” Procyon said. His head buzzed. “Braziss,”the ondatvoice said, and he believed, this time, that the ondatwas telling him what he already knew. “Yes, sir. I am.”

The man looked around at the rest. “I have names, I have image, and the Chairman’s police have the exits blocked. Those of you who don’t belong here, show ID as you leave.”

Ardath would die first. And being what she was, had no ID.

“Magdallen,” Ardath said scornfully, “Magdallen. Are we not surprised?”

“Exquisite, take your people and go. Leave the refuse for the Council police.”

The juvvie boy suddenly broke from his frozen stance, leapt from his chair, and fled for the back door, dodging among Algol’s fallen followers. He got as far as that doorway, where Brulant, red-gold fires glowing in shadow, stopped him with one outflung hand, a gold metal stinger on the other.

“Procyon.” Ardath came to him. Procyon evaded her touch, kissed his fingers and almost touched her face. But he didn’t touch her skin with what had touched his lips at all.

“I have an illicit,” he said, and drew back the fingers. “And I need some help. I’ll go with this gentleman, where I can get it.”

“I know a doctor,” she said. “I know a good doctor.”

“I know others,” he said, meaning the hospital inside Project walls. “And I’ll be all right, Ardath. This is a friendly intercept. Magdallen, you say. We’ve met before. If it’s a while before I see you again, don’t worry.”

“He has no right, here!”

“Complications, Ardath. Dangerous complications. Things you don’t want to have a thing to do with. I can deal with them, the way you deal with the street. I love you. That’s all.”

Tears stood in her eyes. He wished he could fix things. He wished he could make everything right for her, and for the parentals. She stood looking up at him, her true face, the Arden face, her blue and gold tendrils faded in the light.

“Sir,” he said. “Let me walk my sister out of here.”

“Be my guest,” Magdallen said. He had a phone in his left hand, so it was a good guess the Project tap wasn’t functioning here. Or they were communicating with station police.

He didn’t want Ardath deeper involved than she was, not with Earth authorities in the mix. He moved, close by his sister, but not touching, Ardath keeping close the girl who’d run to her for safety, another dubious touch.

Point of good faith, Magdallen kept his focus on the several ex-devotees of Algol who emerged, standing frozen in a clump on the far side of the bar. Brulant moved his group in.

The juvvie boy took his chance and darted to the door, ran to Ardath—not, however, touching her: Procyon interposed his arm to prevent any other contact with his sister, and the boy didn’t near touch him, only maneuvered to stay close to her.

The repair bot passed the doors with them. The two cleaner-bots stayed inside, zapping up the blood, clicking in robotic reproach. A small swarm of cleaner-bots arrived and two of themjoined the repair bot, making up his trio.