Angel Fire Read online

  “Creatures of light?”

  “I like to think of them,” Blackie added, “as creatures of fire, passionate fire even.”

  “Interesting.” Sean nodded his head. “But hardly to my point. Might they really be lurking around, singing Palestrina or maybe Orlando Lassus for my friend Stacey?”

  “If they lurk—and I would rather think they do—it would take more than artifacts as puny as a fifth-generation computer to capture them.” Blackie’s normally soft eyes glinted. “And one would be ill advised to mess with them. Passionate light, fireballs of love might be very dangerous creatures.”

  “You think they might lurk?”

  “I wouldn’t write off the folklore completely.”

  “Well ...” Sean Desmond felt a shiver run through his body. “Presumably they would not be angry with me if I suggested that they too were part of the evolutionary process.”

  “I hardly think that likely.”

  “Good”—the Professor rose from his couch—“I think I have enough for a talk at the Royal Swedish Academy. Pure speculation, of course.”

  “Nothing to worry about, is there? I mean it’s mostly a joke “

  “Half fun and full earnest.”

  “Comic speculation.”

  The priest considered the professor very carefully “Fireballs of love can be dangerous, Sean Seamus Desmond, if you get caught in one of them.”

  “A guardian angel is worse than a wife,” Sean complained, “especially when she is a woman guardian angel.”

  Gaby’s laugh was warm and rich, a mezzo-soprano in the angelic choirs.

  “The trouble with you, Sean Seamus Desmond, academic immortal, is that you have a weakness for passive-aggressive women. So you think a suggestion is a demand. My species doesn’t nag. It suggests. It leaves you all your freedom to resist with no threat of withdrawal of love.”

  “How many times do you suggest?” He did not want to deal

  with the hint of love.

  “Until you do what you’re supposed to do”—she laughed again—“or until you tell me to shut up.”

  “Which you will do?”

  “Which I will do.”

  “So ...”

  “The problem,” she said crisply, “is that you are so burdened with guilt about your failures as a husband and father that you don’t realize how much your daughters love you. So you don’t phone them every day making yourself feel even more guilty.”

  “Is that any of my guardian angel’s business?”

  “Everything, Professor Desmond”—she arched her eyebrows—“is a guardian angel’s business.”

  He wasn’t sure that she was telling the whole truth. Even after a few minutes’ conversation, he had concluded that angels—well, this angel at any rate—were very clever with words. Somehow he had to get a list of ground rules for this game.

  “But if I say forget it, you’ll forget it.”

  “We may be a little devious with words.” She walked to the window and glanced out of it. “But we don’t take away the freedom of other species, as I have told you several times already. If you tell me not to mention a phone call to your daughters ever again, I’ll do what I’m told.”

  Despite the lovely shape of her posterior as she stood at the window, Sean doubted her pledge. Oh, the woman would never bring it up directly, but there’d be lots of hints. However, she probably wouldn’t sulk.

  “Okay,” he said, “that subject is off limits from now on.”

  “You’re the boss,” she said evenly. “Now, about the press conference tomorrow morning...”

  “What press conference?”

  She returned to the dresser opposite his bed and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his cloth briefcase. “The one at the American mission to the U.N. The one for which you’ve written notes”—she reversed the paper—“about the goals of the evolutionary process.”

  “Oh.” Sean felt sheepish. “That press conference.”

  How quickly, he thought, the impossible becomes commonplace. Yes, I have a guardian angel who takes the form of a gorgeous woman and proposes to administer my life for me.

  Better than I can.

  And how quickly the alleged guardian angel’s personality had emerged. She was efficient, prickly, at times bossy; on the other hand, she was also witty, considerate, and—Sean hesitated at the word—sweet.

  Before their fight about the phone call to his kids, she had ordered “tea” from room service, told them that Professor Desmond would like the same tea that was being served downstairs. Earl Grey tea, scones, clotted butter, sandwiches, and pastry. For two.

  “What kind of sandwich? Professor Desmond has an enormous appetite. Three of every kind.”

  “They don’t normally send tea up from the Gold Room, do they?” he asked.

  “For special people, like Nobel Prize winners, they do.”

  “If the tea is ordered by their guardian angel.”

  “That helps, of course.”

  “Will they send up one of those pretty college girls who serve tea?”

  “More likely graduate students or young actresses. I suppose they’ll do that too. And you’ll charm her, like you always charm women until they get too close.”

  “Touche,” he admitted ruefully.

  “The trouble with you, Sean Seamus Desmond, is that you have yet to make peace with the feminine side of your character.” She had put on her aloof, judgmental expression, which included shrewd brown eyes that cut through the outer walls of his soul. On judgment day the Lord God would not be more dispassionate.

  “Huh?”

  “You are acutely sensitive to other people, especially women; you feel their fears and their hopes, their anxieties and their needs. You respond to these signals with care and even tenderness. When a woman is treated that way, she is prepared to unveil herself to such a man in trust. Can’t help it. Then you run. Watch this young woman who is about to knock on our door with tea.”

  The brown-haired young person in the red jacket and long skirt who did indeed knock on the door was happily flustered and embarrassed by Sean’s grave gratitude. She was even more pleasantly abashed when he asked her if her graduate work was in English. She admitted that she was “into” comparative lit at NYU. After she had served the tea with flushed face and averted eyes, she asked him for his autograph.

  Gaby treated her like she was at least an archduchess. “My dear, the man will be insufferable if every pretty young woman between here and Stockholm asks him for his autograph.”

  The girl smiled admiringly. “You only win a Nobel Prize once in your life.”

  “Who says so?” Sean demanded.

  Gaby and the waitress both laughed, making common cause against him as women usually did.

  “Well, the next time I stop in New York on the way to confront the Royal Swedish Academy, I’ll come here.”

  They laughed again. Gaby signed the check, reached in her purse—which Sean had not noticed on the dresser before—and pulled out a crisp bill for the girl.

  From where he sat, it looked like a fifty.

  I know the purse wasn’t there. She made it appear. The money too.

  “See what I mean,” she demanded when the girl, still confused and happy, had retreated. “You made her day. She felt like she was naked in the presence of a very gentle lover who cared for her profoundly. So naturally her self-esteem soared. Not a profound encounter, but a nice one.”

  “I didn’t run.”

  “In five minutes you would have.”

  “Does my feminine side have the same effect on females of other species?” he asked innocently.

  “That”—she glared at him—“is an unbelievably impertinent question.” She turned to the tea trays. “You drink your tea black, don’t you?”

  “You know very well I do.” Sean was still engaged in trying to keep the blasted woman on the defensive. “Is your job to protect me or to remake me?”

  She looked up from her ministrations
to the teapot and shook her head patiently. “You never can tell what a guardian angel will do, can you?”

  “I don’t have that influence on other species, do I?”

  “That’s an impertinent question which I will not deign to answer___ Tea, master?” She handed him a teacup. “And sandwiches? And a glass of sherry?”

  She hadn’t ordered the bottle of sherry. It had materialized too, a very old bottle whose label was so blurred that Sean could not read it.

  “The best sherry I’ve tasted in all my life!”

  She beamed happily. “We aim to please.”

  “It cost too much here?”

  “They don’t have it here. Or anywhere in New York either.”

  Oh.

  It was all a dream, a projection of his already travel-weary unconscious. She was not real. The sherry was not real. The men with the guns were not real.

  The bullet hole in the wall was real, however. Wasn’t it?

  Except that the neat little hole had disappeared. The woman doesn’t miss a trick.

  Might as well enjoy it. He sipped more sherry and wolfed down a salmon sandwich.

  Gaby’s eyes twinkled at him over her sherry glass.

  “You’re eating?” He put his glass down and watched her devour one of his salmon sandwiches.

  “You object?”

  “You said you didn’t have a real body. What I’m looking at is an, uh, analog. How can analogs eat salmon sandwiches and sip the greatest sherry in all the world?”

  “And drink Earl Grey tea.” She lifted her teacup.

  ‘Yeah, that too.”

  “I didn’t say that we lacked bodies—eat your scones before they get cold, the sherry will keep. On the contrary, I insisted that we do have them. They’re different from yours, that’s all.” She turned up her nose at a cucumber sandwich and took instead a cheese sandwich.

  “Superior.”

  “Different,” she said sharply.

  “Further along on the evolutionary scale.”

  “Different. If we have bodies, does it not follow that we take nourishment? And would it not be logical that when we generate analogs, we could, through such wave patterns, consume and even enjoy your foods. Do not dogs, for example, like an occasional sip of beer?”

  “Uh-huh___Is this your sherry or our sherry?”

  “Oh, it’s yours ... not until you eat another of those delicious scones.” She removed the sherry bottle from his reach. “I assure you, Professor Desmond, that a sip of one of our intoxicants would deprive you, for the rest of your life, of the remnants of sanity you still possess.”

  Braggart.

  He dutifully consumed two scones and then extended his glass.

  “Have you forgotten that I like my sherry on the rocks?”

  She blushed and bit her lip. “I did not notice. I suppose I should have assumed that, shanty Irishman which you are, you’d want to spoil this liquid with ice.”

  “Ah, so angels make mistakes?”

  Instantly she was serious. “Indeed we do; sometimes very serious mistakes. As I’ve tried to tell you, we are creatures just like you. Our mixture of mind and energy patterns is a bit different from yours.... Now let’s not get into the argument about superiority again. That’s your hang-up, not mine. We can do a few things you can’t, which imposes on us somewhat, ah, different responsibilities, but we’re still finite beings.”

  “I don’t believe in infinite beings.”

  “Nonsense. Of course you do. You’re what we call in my species ‘other-haunted.’ God-haunted in your terms.”

  I’m not going to touch that one, he thought.

  “Well, you made a mistake on the ice, and I guess you can’t correct that, for all your clever tricks.”

  “Oh? Why don’t you look in your glass?”

  Tiny blocks of ice had appeared in the glass with his sherry.

  Sean Seamus Desmond began to shiver. This dream was turning into a nightmare.

  “Don’t be afraid, Jackie Jim,” she pleaded, tears apparent in her eyes. “I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help you. Forgive my silly litde trick.”

  “It’s a good trick,” he agreed.

  “I promise that I won’t do anything like that again.”

  “Ah, woman, if you know me at all, you know I like tricks.”

  Her cheer returned. “Well, maybe not quite that sudden. I”—she hesitated—“have a reputation among my friends of being a trickster. My—but we won’t discuss that.”

  She walked over to the window and glanced out again. The side view of her was outstanding too, Sean noted—flat belly, solid haunches, outstanding legs. His imagination began to picture her without clothes and then stopped instantly. What he was watching was not a real woman, only an analog. Right?

  And what won’t we discuss? I’d better not ask.

  “Looking for something?”

  “More or less.”

  He returned to his fantasy. She was tall, about his height. Five-ten or so. In heels, that made her six feet. I’ll have to stand on my tiptoes.

  And legs that compared with the sherry: cool, classic, elegant, intoxicating.

  As for her rear end, it was classical. Well, maybe neoclassical.

  Not Venus surely. And not Juno either. No way. Diana? Could be. Or maybe Maeve. Who was no better than she had to be.

  Only an analog.

  “If I had listened to your—“

  “You should always listen to me.”

  “And not opened the door, those men would still be alive, wouldn’t they?”

  He buttered another scone and poured raspberry jam into it. The supply of scones did not seem to diminish.

  “Now we see the tender side of Professor Desmond. Don’t feel guilty about them. They were destined for destruction in any case. As the Teacher said, they who live by the sword will perish by the sword.”

  So that’s what they called Himself. Teacher. Well, He sure was that.

  “That seems kind of heartless.”

  “Pity is not the appropriate reaction.” She drew her lips together primly.

  “Sister Intemerata would have said that I ought to pray for them.”

  “A much better reaction. As the Teacher also said, nothing ever lives except in the Father’s love.”

  “Where did He say that?”

  “It never was written down, alas.” She poured herself another half cup of tea. “But He meant that no one, not even the most apparent evil ones, ever lives in vain.”

  “Leave them to heaven, huh?”

  “Along with Hamlet’s mother.”

  “Did you hear the Teacher say those words?”

  “That question”—prim lips again—“is irrelevant.”

  “May I have another wee drop of sherry? We can’t let it go to waste, now can we?”

  “Of course not.” She filled his glass. “Though it wouldn’t go to waste.”

  “It’s making me kind of sleepy,” he admitted.

  “You’ve had a hard afternoon.” She rose from her chair. “You need a bit of a nap.”

  “I do not!” he contended stubbornly.

  She stood over him, smiling benignly. “Be fair to your colleagues in chronobiology. All your dozens of clocks are askew and you haven’t even flown to England for your lecture at Cambridge.

  You’re at one of the sleep thresholds now. Take advantage of it.”

  She touched his forehead lightly.

  So, willy-nilly, he slept peacefully.

  When he awoke, rested and refreshed, he hesitated before he opened his eyes.

  The dream is over now. When I open my eyes, she won’t be here.

  The thought must have been clearly written on his face.

  “I haven’t disappeared, Jackie Jim. Still here.”

  “A dream within a dream.” He opened his eyes. Sure enough, she was still there.

  “It’s a serious conference tomorrow.” She ticked off comments on her fingers, hardly needing a notebook. “Science writ
ers from the national magazines and the networks. The New York Times, of course. It’s up to you, naturally, but you might want to take the opportunity to be a little bit less the freckle-faced, kinky-haired, green-eyed leprechaun tomorrow morning. It’s an opportunity to raise some important questions that will interest a lot of people.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Sean Seamus Desmond. Angels have tempers too.”

  “No ma’am ... what I mean is that I might be able to get in some serious licks against the fundamentalists who are hassling me.”

  “Without mentioning them explicitly?”

  “Sure.”

  She wants to remake me. Not the first woman to try that. First woman angel to try it, however.

  “Okay.” He pointed at the phone. “You’re supposed to be my assistant. You call my daughters.”

  “May I talk to them?” She clapped her hands, momentarily herself a teenaged hoyden.

  “Why not? They’ll see you near me on TV tomorrow and wonder who you are.”

  As far as Sean could tell, she didn’t bother to punch in the numbers.

  “Fionna? I’m Gaby, your father’s assistant. He asked me to place the call for you. Why don’t you ask Dee to take the other phone?”

  “Dee” was strictly a personal nickname between the two girls.

  “Like I said, I’m Gaby. Some important persons hired me to make sure he doesn’t get into too much trouble during the trip ... kind of a guardian angel.” She winked at Sean. “Hard work, Dee?... Tell me about it.” Giggle, just one of the kids. “Anyway, I’ll make him call you every day.... Oh, he’s fine, just ate too many scones

  for tea___Really! ... Here he is.”

  “Daddy!” Chorus.

  “Is she as pretty as she sounds?” Fionna. “How old is she?” Deirdre.