K Jeter - Farewell Horizontal

Copyright 1989 by K. W. Jeter

When he awoke, he saw angels mating overhead.

For a few seconds longer, Axxter watched them, fragments of a dream. The sun broke over the distant edge of the cloud barrier below, tinting red the metal wall against his shoulder. All through the night his body had huddled close to it, as though his acrophobic spine had been trying to burrow through the buildings skin and back to the remembered safety of floors and ceilings. His own dreams were of falling, spinning free of the great curve and impacting into clouds filled with small, biting faces; or, pleasantly, of sleeping itself, cradled by gravity and solid steel. But never of floating, of drifting locked in embrace, turned slowly by a bed of winds. Thus it flashed on him that the angels were real.

Shit. Teeth clamped to lip even as he twisted about in the narrow sling, to silence any further outburst. Gas angels were notoriously skittish; they could decouple and split, flight membranes deflated for a parawing dive down-wall and overcurve, before he could get a lens on them. And he needed the money, equally real. The little, biting faces in his dreams were the zeroes on his bank account readout.

He came up with the camera, out of his gear bag grappled onto the cable below the sling for a dizzying second he had hung half out of the swaying fabric, head down toward the clouds and the big step to them, as hed fumbled around. Mercenary spirit overrode the usual nausea; he rolled onto his back, the slings pithons adjusting to shifting weight, their triangular heads finding and biting into holds tighter than those needed for corpselike slumber.

A scan across, from the upwall bulk of Cylinder to open sky. There they were, centered in the cameras viewfinder. Axxter sighed, shoulders unknotting. They didnt hear me. Coital oblivion apparently equal among all species; he focused, hit RECORD, and crawl-zoomed in on the airborne lovers. Hold it right there, you beauties.

The sun had risen far enough that all the air had turned gold. The spherical membranes behind the angels shoulders were filled with light, radiant, as though the hemodialyzed gases that kept them aloft had ignited with the friction of the two forms between. Axxter went in closer, his hand trembling at the controls, until the camera filled with intricate red lace, the angels veins swelling taut the papery skin.

As if in sympathy, another vein pumped through heavier, gravity-bound flesh. Axxter ignored it; he knew how long he had been vertical, out here hustling business. Knock it off, already; dont remind me. He went on taping, rolling onto his shoulder to follow the angels drift.

The golden-and-pink knot turned, their waists the equator of a bifurcate planet. At the dark margin of his vision, the cameras data fed through the metal contact on his fingertip to the display feed spliced into his optic nerve: distance to subject ranged between 100 and 125 meters. The red digits effectively tracked the eddy currents at the buildings atmosphere boundary. Axxter, squinting and likewise tracking, wondered if the angels enjoyed that effect. Maybe it enhanced the pleasure, like being tickled all over by invisible fingers. Who knew? Ask & Receives files on angelic sex were pretty thin. Something to think about, though. Christ, not now, he pleaded to his own distracting flesh.

In the distance above, the males downward rotation brought the females face into the viewfinder. Axxter zoomed in tighter. They did look like angels, what angels should look like, beyond the simple floating in air. Where no vertical or horizontal existed. The fragile bodies, substantial only against the translucent membranes ballooning from nape to buttock; the golden light seemed to pass as well through the females small, delicate breasts as she arched back from the others chest, her eyes closed and mouth soundlessly open, her small hands gripping the males fulcrum hips to her own. A shining trail of kisses and sweat spiraled over her throat and face, and his, that slow moisture being the only response to gravitys tug as they had turned and pivoted about.

So pretty; Axxter, slung and bound against the metal wall, taped and watched. The thin wands of the angels collarbone above her luminous breasts; he could almost believe there was no flesh at all, only fragile and weightless skin, taut with the bloods tracery, the same as the two buoyant spheres that held the two aloft. In the viewfinder a deeper blush welled up into her face. Her lashes trembled against her cheek. Instinctively, Axxter pulled back, reverse zoom, until there was sky all around the couple. On tape he caught the shudder that ran through their limbs, a shimmer echoing in the inflated membranes behind each of them, a seismic event in that light-permeated world.

They moved apart, drifting on separate currents. Though the male was in sight longer, angling on a slow diagonal out from the buildings face, Axxter kept the camera on the female. A stronger wind lifted her farther overhead; she stretched her thin arms above herself, smiling, eyes still closed. A sleepy nude against the sky. Hair all tangled, dampened black. When she became a speck, untrackable, and then gone, Axxter lowered the camera. The machine had sweated in his hands, but he found it took him a moment to realize what was missing that other urgencies had been forgotten. As if the flesh had also been disarmed by the angels beauty. You know - He spoke aloud, put in a good mood by the mornings omen, hugging camera to chest. Maybe just maybe you arent completely forsaken, after all. A string of cold electrons ticked over in the camera, downloading to his internal archive; he tucked the machine beside himself in the sling and gazed out over the cloud barrier to the lifting sun.

Feelings of universal benevolence dissolved when he remembered his bank balance. The angels were gone, evaporated back into Cylinders surrounding atmosphere. Except on tape, Axxter reminded himself. For which we are truly grateful. That, in itself, was not enough of a break to save him from bankruptcy. But it would put it off awhile longer, in which time all sorts of things could happen. The little gem of hope radiated in his heart, as if a drop of the angels sweat had fallen and crystallized there.

The sling rocked uncomfortably as he scrambled to his knees. He had left the deadfilm for his terminal pinned to the buildings metal wall, right where hed be able to find it first thing in the morning. For most of this excursion hed been traveling off-line, the Small Moon being over-curve, all signal to or from it being blocked by the building itself. And in this scurfy territory, the buildings exterior desolate and abandoned in every direction, Ask & Receive hadnt been able to sell him a map of plug-in jacks. So finding this one had been a break, as well. Maybe thats when my luck started. Axxter rattled his fingertip inside the rust-specked socket; a spark jumped from the tiny patch of metal to the ancient wire running inside the building. Last night, when I found this; maybe its all going to just roll on from here. At last.

YES? The single word floated up in the center of his eye, bright against the deadfilms black drain of ambient light. More followed. GOOD MORNING. THE GLORIES OF OUR BLOOD AND STATE/ARE SHADOWS, NOT SUBSTANTIAL THINGS/THERE IS NO ARMOR -

Jee-zuss. Axxters gaze flicked to CANCEL at the corner of his eye. The trouble with buying secondhand; his low-budget freelancers outfit had all sorts of funky cuteness left on it from its previous owner; he had never been able to edit it out.