Aliens, said others, and Rae had mentally filed them away with the Rapture and Singularity people because they were, at bottom, all the same thing.
There were those who said nano, and they believed that Mankind had suffered a nanotechnological apocalypse, that the tiny machines had turned against the human race and almost destroyed it. That was harder to argue against, because nano was obviously involved somewhere along the line.
Then there had been that man in Eindhoven who believed that the universe had somehow split in two, like a document being copied, but most of the people had stayed in the original.
And there were those who believed that they were really dead, that this was Hell, or at least Purgatory.
She said, “I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I really don’t.” They stood a while longer in silence. Rae asked, “You didn’t really think your brother-in-law would be here, did you?”
Eddy Colorado nodded. “The angel told me he would.”
The angel had arrived two days after the Polish nuns and their patient. Rae was still trying to work out what to do with Elżbieta; obviously she was afflicted with a form of nano, but Rae had never seen anything like it before. It wouldn’t respond to any of her commands. She’d even taken a trip to Peter’s company and accessed the secure servers to see if there were any kill-codes she didn’t know. She’d never needed to see the codes before, she’d always known instinctively what they were, but she was completely out of ideas. Nothing worked.
She was sitting in her room considering this one morning when she heard a commotion in the gardens outside. She looked out of the window and saw three nuns running for their lives through the flower beds, which was an unusual enough sight in itself for her to stand there watching them for a while without wondering what they were running from.
There was a knock on the door and Willem looked in as she turned to face the sound. “Someone’s asking to see you,” he said calmly.
“Who?”
“It’s probably best if you just come and see,” he told her.
The angel was standing in the middle of the physic garden. Its body was skeleton-thin and it had enormous white-feathered wings. From the cuffs of its jeans protruded big clawed feet, absurdly like the feet of a budgerigar. Naked from the waist up, the angel’s skin was tanned a wonderful golden-brown, it had long blond hair, and its face was the most beautiful Rae had ever seen. Like something from a collaboration by Breughel and Raphael.
“Well,” Rae said, “this is new.”
“It wants to talk to you,” said Willem.
“To me?”
“Asked for you by name.” He smiled. “You have interesting friends.”
Rae glanced about her. All the nuns had fled. “We’re being awfully calm about this, aren’t we?”
“You are,” he said. “I just wet myself.”
The angel looked at them. “Rae,” it said. The voice was like a heavenly choir and it carried effortlessly across the distance between them.
“I’m not coming any closer,” she said. “We’ll have to talk from here.”
The angel looked at her. It looked at Willem. “Okay.”
“Who are you?” Rae asked.
“I’ve got a message for you,” said the angel. “Just you.”
“I have no secrets from Willem,” she told the creature. “Who sent you?”
The angel thought about it. “I don’t know.” It held up a slender, beautiful hand as Rae started to protest. “I really don’t. It’s no use asking me, because I don’t know. I just know I have a message for you.”
Rae and Willem looked at each other. She shrugged. “I don’t know either,” she said. She looked at the angel. “Well, you’d better give me the message, then.”
The angel nodded. “You will take the little girl to Hyde Park in London,” it told her. “Someone there will cure her.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You will take the little girl to Hyde Park in London. Someone there will cure her.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Shall I repeat the message again?”
“No, thank you. I heard you the first time. I just don’t understand. Who wants us to go to London? Who’s going to be there? How will they cure the little girl?”
“I don’t know. You will repeat the message.”
“Sorry?”
“I have to hear you repeat the message, or I have to stand here saying it over and over again.”
No, Rae thought, the world is obviously not surreal enough already. She said, “I will take the little girl to Hyde Park in London. Someone there will cure her.”
The angel nodded. “Thank you,” it said. “Have a nice day.” And with a single great clap of wings it sprang into the sky. A moment later it was just a tiny dot against the clouds.
“You know,” said Willem, craning his neck to watch the creature soaring across the sky, “I really didn’t think there were any surprises left in the world.”
“You’re not serious,” Willem said.
“He says the angel appeared in front of him a couple of days before we passed through Antwerp,” Rae said. “It told him to sit by the side of the road at a certain time and someone would come along and take him to Arsenal’s football ground to find his brother-in-law.”
“Little bastard,” Willem said wonderingly. “He might have mentioned this.”
“Don’t say anything to him, Willem,” she said. “He’s upset enough as it is.” The little man had cursed the angel through tears all the way back from North London, inconsolable. He’d stormed off when they got back to the hotel and she hadn’t seen him since.
“No sign of the brother-in-law, then.”
“No sign of anybody.”
“Which does call into question just how reliable the angel is.”
“Yes, dear, that had occurred to me,” Rae said irritably. They were sitting in the hotel’s bar, drinking mineral water. Outside, a clear, lambent summer evening’s light was settling over London. Members of the convoy periodically passed through the bar and waved hello. Rae waved back to them all, even though she had actually begun to tire of all these people looking to her for guidance. It had been bad enough back in Eindhoven, but at least there the people who needed her were really ill. These people had just… attached themselves to her as she and Willem and Marta and Beata drove towards the French coast. Mikhail and his caravan of Lithuanian expats, the Leclerc Sisters, Bongo Fry and his common-law wife Theresa, Eddy Colorado. You’re going to London? That sounds like fun; can we come along with you? Oh, and while you’re at it, will you lead us and make all the decisions for us and make sure we’re fed and happy? She rubbed her eyes. “I’m tired.”
“We’ve come a long way,” Willem said. “Of course you’re tired.”
“It’s not that far, Willem,” she said mildly. “Before La Silence you could do Eindhoven to London in less than a day.”
He put his glass down and steered it in a little circle on the tabletop. “Listen, Rae —” he began.
“I know, Willem.” She sighed. “You told me so.”
He gestured at the ceiling. “We don’t know what that thing is —”