But there was something else, not alive the way the pithons were. And thicker, a raggy thing of shredded canvas and plastic, knotted around with multicolored wires, their stripped brass ends poking out of the crude rope. He could see it now, looped up through his crotch and across his chest, the sharp bits tickling the raw bruises, a tangled knot sitting on his shoulder, as if the wires were probing for a socket in his ear. Somebody had tied him up here, knitted the awkward rope as a thin saddle for his weight; somebody who didn’t trust the skinny little pithons, who didn’t know just how strong they were – if they’d given out, lost their hold on the wall, he doubted if this straggling mess would have kept him from pitching headfirst down to the clouds. He could feel it parting, the rags and wires slipping out of each other’s clutches, just from his leaning forward to look at it.
The makeshift rope continued from the knot at his shoulder to a loop around his wrist, his right hand lifted above his head. He looked up to see if there was enough slack to pull his hand free. He saw her then, watching him.
“Hello. Hi.” Lahft smiled at him, her eyes sleepy, as though his fumbling around had roused her from a snoozing vigil. “Hi-Ny-hi.” The angel’s smile grew bigger.
Axxter rolled the back of his head against the wall to see her better. A triangular section of the wall’s metal had peeled away from the girder beneath, making a shelf just large enough for her to perch on; her bare legs dangled on either side of the protruding steel tongue. “Hi there.” He nodded and managed a weak imitation of her smile. Now he knew who had knotted the rope around him. To keep him from falling again.
His hand came loose, and he shook the blood back into it. He remembered more now. Falling, and the motorcycle and sidecar spinning away, the Havoc Mass warriors toppling on down toward the clouds…
The clouds. The angel’s big smile disappeared for a moment; all he saw were the luminous gray-and-white banks, the slow ocean of hills and crevices, rushing up toward him.
There had been angels. He remembered that, too. Rows and rows of them, in all directions, in the twilight shade under the cloud barrier. The inflated spheres behind their shoulderblades like muted sunbursts, the traceries of veins all soft blue in the half-light, lace into ash. All around him, in every direction he turned, rolling on his back in air, arms spread wide as he fell, the wind along his ribs, breath solid in his mouth…
That was the last thing that he remembered. There wasn’t any more after that. He saw Lahft again, leaning forward, her hands gripping the edges of the peeled metal, waiting patiently for him.
“Okay.” Axxter nodded. “I get it. You… caught me. When I came falling through. Right?”
She looked away, considering the statement. The little wheels were almost visible inside her skull.
“Caught.” She pursed her lips, staring out toward the edge of the atmosphere. “Falling…” Her eyes suddenly widened in alarm; she reached down and grabbed Axxter’s wrist, locking it tight in her grip.
“No… no.” He gently tugged his hand free. “I’m not falling now. I was falling then. Remember?”
“Then…” Her face clouded with effort. Bright joy broke through: “Catch! Caught!” She hugged herself, pressing some invisible body to her breast. “Caught you then!”
The angels’ elastic sense of time, first a point too small to be seen, then a rubber ball that filled a hand, but never any more than that. Axxter reached down and tugged the makeshift rope away from his chest. “Yeah, well -” It explained a lot of things. She must’ve been hanging around, the way she had been, outside the Mass camp’s firing distance, when all the shit had come literally down. Or else she’d been consorting with her buddies, all happy angels together, underneath the clouds. And it’d just been his good luck to come crashing through the soft roof of their world, right at the best of all possible spots. At any rate, she’d been there for him; had put the grab on him, a great big hug – he wished he could remember that part; battered as he was, the nude body perched above him, the bare pink feet dangling inches away from his face, still twinged the other living part of him. Incorrigible; he sighed and shook his head. The rope parted, and he dropped the two ends swinging away from him. He twisted about, boots freed for a moment until the pithons took hold in their new positions. Face and chest toward the wall now; he let out the lines from the belt, so that he could lean back in relative comfort and look up at Lahft.
“Caught me, right. Okay…” Bit by bit, pieces fitting together. “Christ, I must’ve hit you like a ton of bricks.”
She tilted her head, the smile puzzled.
“When I hit you.” He slammed one hand into the other to demonstrate. “When you caught me. Boom. Then what happened?” Wasting time, he knew. There was a bunch of shit he should be taking care of, rather than just poking into the exact mechanics of his continued existence. Like finding out where the hell he was, and if it was anywhere close to all those who wanted to kick his ass. That should’ve been priority one. Still -
“Boom.” Lahft nodded sagely, arms still wrapped around herself. “Then. Falling – right?”
“Fell.” He could imagine it, his deadweight dropping the hugging angel along with him.
“Long, long way.” She pointed to the clouds, and whatever was below them. “So I go big.” The translucent sphere behind her shoulders expanded in demonstration; she lifted a bit off the metal seat as the gases inside the membrane made her buoyant. “Then. Not falling.” The smile again.
“Not falling – right. Then what? Uh – drifting?”
“Drifting.” She nodded. “Big, and the wind -” She made a pushing gesture with the palm of one hand. “Drifting and drifting. A long way. Then. Here.”
She wasn’t going to be much help in getting his bearings. Location was probably as fuzzy a concept as time for the angels. No difference out there in the air. They could’ve gone drifting over whole sectors of wall, one angel with her flight membrane ballooned out to the max, and her unconscious payload; until some favorable gust had brought her up against the building’s wall, close enough for her to grab on. His pithons had latched on, triggered by the proximity of steel, and she had knotted together that rope from whatever scraps she’d found nearby. Then waited.
Axxter looked to either side, leaning back against the pithons’ tension. Bleak, featureless wall stretched out. Gotta find a plug-in jack, he decided. There had to be one around here somewhere. So he could call his bank – before anything else, he had to do that. He had to know how bad his financial situation was. His bank account was probably wiped out by whatever fine he’d been hit with for cutting the transit cable. Maybe even in the absolute red right now; he’d be hustling for years to get it paid off. Still, if Public Works Department had left him with anything at all, he could make a start at finding out what he needed to know. Like where he was, and how many were out looking for him. Ask & Receive – he could place a shielded, anonymous call to the info agency; by the time the Havoc Mass had wangled a trace, he’d be long gone. If he had the money left to pay for the info. Axxter bit his lip, letting his thoughts spin along without brakes. Gotta find some place to hook up so I can make the call; that was the first thing -
He stopped, his string of thought suddenly broken. The light around him had turned red, the building’s wall deepening with it. That puzzled him, and he couldn’t tell why. Except that it had been all bright, well into the day, when he’d come to, found himself hanging here. The red light tinged darker as he stared about; he could see it on the backs of his hands. It was as though time had decided to run backward; it had become as loose and arbitrary for him as it was for the angels. The dawn following the daylight, coming after it rather than before -