Seeklight

Daenek pulled her away from the door and substituted himself. After his eyes had adjusted to the blaze of lamplight inside the building, he spotted the sociologist. It was leaning on a long counter at the far end of the room, pounding rhythmically with a nearly empty bottle and shouting something that he couldn’t make out. One of the great feathered wings, like an arch of snow, had come loose from its back and was now propped against the counter beside it. A crowd of citydwellers were huddled together a little distance away, gazing at the sociologist with expressions of dumb horror.

“Now what?” said Daenek, turning away from the door.

Rennie shrugged. “I guess we go in and get him.”

He nodded and pulled the door all the way open. The two of them stepped cautiously down the few steps that led to the floor of the inn. They threaded their way through a maze of empty tables, and came up on either side of the sociologist at the counter. It was singing.

“Oh, we work all day and now we’re done . . .” It paused to take a swig from the nearly drained bottle, then set it back down on the counter with exaggerated care. “Mm. I forget the rest.” It turned to Daenek and smiled, then, perhaps because of their clothes, spoke in the mertzer tongue. “Hey—friends. You’re not afraid of the big bad—” It broke off, squinting with concentration. “—angel. Are you?” A long finger waggled at Daenek.

“That’s right, ace,” said Rennie from the other side. “We’re your friends. Why don’t we go somewhere a little more private?”

The sociologist swivelled his head around to glance at her, then looked straight ahead at the wall behind the counter to consider the proposition. It had sunken-cheeked, ascetic features, made loose by the alcohol, as though it had touched some inner dissolving core below the skin. “Sounds good,” it announced finally. It pushed itself away from the counter, staggered backwards and collided with a table.

Daenek looked around and saw the citydwellers watching the process in horrified fascination. He stepped to the sociologist’s side and took its elbow. “Come on,” he said, “just lean against me.”

“Wait a minute.” It righted itself with immense dignity and pulled away from Daenek. “Forgot m’ wing.”. Retracing the few steps to the counter, it tucked the soiled curve of feathers under his arm and staggered back. “What good’s a whatever it is without its wings? Mm?”

Together, Daenek and Rennie got the sociologist up the steps and out into the street. It followed meekly between them, Rennie lea’ding the way.

“Where are we goin’?” said Daenek across its white-robed chest.

“Back to the empty part of town.” She pulled harder on the sociologist’s arm, forcing it into a stumbling trot. “We can find some place to hole up there.”

They eventually came to a low building that seemed to satisfy her. She kicked at the rotten wood of the door, the echoes rattling from the surrounding structures, until it splintered and gave way. Daenek pushed the sociologist inside.

There was nothing inside the building except the dirt-caked floor. The sociologist collapsed in the first corner they carried it to, and was soon snoring gut-turally.

“Nothing to do until morning,” said Rennie. “It should be dried out by then. You get some sleep and I’ll stay up the first part of the night. Then we’ll switch—OK?”

Daenek nodded and laid down in the corner farthest from the drunken sociologist’s liquid noises.

The morning sun seeped through the spaces in the boarded-up windows. Daenek stood up from where he had been sitting by the door. Rennie remained asleep in her corner of the room, but the Sociologist’s eyes began to struggle open.

Daenek walked over and looked down at the figure in the white robes, now stained and dirty. “How do you feel?”

The sociologist propped itself up on its elbows and ran its tongue over its teeth. “Not so bad.” It looked around the room as it gradually became less dim, and spotted Daenek’s pack. “Say, uh, you wouldn’t have any spare clothes you could loan me, would you? I never did like these damn silly robes.”

“Sure.” He went to his pack, opened it and tossed a shirt and a pair of trousers across the room.

It stripped off the robe and started to undo the straps that held on the remaining wing, now battered and filthy from having been slept on all night.

Daenek noticed another thing as well. “You’re a man,” he said aloud.

The other nodded, drawing on the trousers. “That’s part of the whole angelic image we’re taught by at the Academy—sexless and inhuman. But we’re really only people, just like everyone else.”

Daenek absorbed the information without surprise, even though it took an effort of mental re-orientation to think of the person as he.

“What’s going on?” Rennie sat up and blinked away the last remnants of sleep. She reached for one of the wings and examined it as Daenek related what the sociologist had just said.

“Yeah, well, another phony,” said Rennie, tossing the wing aside. “Should have known.”