Ivory Angel #11 [part 2]

This is taking slightly longer than expected. I'll hopefully have all of it posted by the conclusion of voting, but if not and I'm voted out feel free to email me for the rest of the story if you want.

II.

- Miss Angevine, you disappoint me. Your lack of progress is most disturbing.
- Rome wasn’t built in a day; wasn’t destroyed in a day either.
- The task should not be difficult. You have the backing of the most powerful cabals on the face of the planet. It should not be difficult to track down one tiny, little spacecraft and prevent its completion!
- The extensiveness of your patience overwhelms me, Father-Colonel. If you truly supported me, you would give me an army. A scanner, a helicopter, full military support. I think that would make this job significantly easier.
- That alternative is unacceptable and you know that. We are at a somewhat critical junction in world affairs…
- Ah yes, your current political difficulties. A coup attempt in Myanmar, protests sweeping the former U.S.? The civic sphere is not as easy to leash as it once was, is it. Even the believers are whispering about the times before the Calamity, before the Ascendants wielded dictatorial powers.
- They quibble, chirping like crickets afraid of the dark. Our power is only used to benefit mankind, and those who think otherwise are little more than traitors and anarchists. They are not a problem.
- But it’s getting more and more difficult for you to use your military power, isn’t it? You have no war to fight, Father-Colonel. There is no longer an excuse for you to even exist. Your clout with the nation-province governments grows less and less with each passing hour. Without sufficient fear, we are a difficult people to rule, no? And God knows, my grandmother is such an adored figure, so beloved across the globe…interfering openly against her would be political suicide. I think if all those fans ever met the cantankerous coot, they’d stone her to death themselves.
- You underestimate our powers. We merely find it inadvisable to take public steps against her at this time.
- Her islanders are loyal and she is renowned as a hermit. I don’t know why she frightens you so, but it grows clearer and clearer to me that without my cooperation, you have absolutely no power to stop her. I guess that’s why I’m so important to you. And that’s why you’re going to double my future salaryt-
- Impossible. I refuse.
- - AND you’re going to give me a healthy monetary advance, or I leave this room and never return to the island again.
- My, my, now who’s patience is running thin? Out of drugs, are we? I don’t care if you choose to weaken yourself with such ungodly baubles, but I will not waste money satisfying your petty sinfulness. We pay for results and, so far, you have provided us with nothing but excuses.
- But there’s no one else to even make excuses, is there? You really don’t seem to have much of a choice, Father-Colonel.
- Things have changed since last we met. This matter no longer is a top priority for us.
- My, my, now who’s not very good at lying?
- ………There is a possibility.
- A possibility?
- Your demands may be satisfied, but the nature of our contract must be altered.
- Oh?
- We want to ensure Ivana’s dream will never be dreamed by anyone else. You must bring us the Irishman. Intact. We wouldn’t want any embarrassing corpses…
- I don’t kill, no matter what anybody thinks about my mother’s.
- And your former lover. But of course I did not mean to offend. You must understand, in this business it is sometimes important to make clear exactly what it is you want when surrounded by somewhat…overzealous underlings. Violence is the last stronghold of the feebleminded.
- I’m sure Mr. Ferguson will applaud your gentility when he is being interrogated.
- If he is interrogated. You haven’t brought him to us yet.
- You’ll have him within the week. And my advance?
- I will think on it. If you show sufficient progress. Yamita, if you must linger around my office door like that, the least you could do is escort Miss Angevine to the door.
- Good day, Father-Colonel.
- Miss Angevine…one further word of advice: don’t disappoint me. You won’t like what happens when I’m disappointed.

“I know,” Ivana replied, not turning. Chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop-

“Well? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

“The gun?” Ivana chuckled. “What could I do? I’m an old woman, defenseless in her home. Frail. Inflexible. But I have better things to do with my night than quibble with a callow troublemaker who thinks she knows what life is just because she’s had a little sex. I can think of many more productive activities than wasting my time trying to disarm you- making dinner, for instance. I’m starving already. Won’t you join me?”

“I don’t believe this!” Ramona shouted. Her trigger-finger spasmed, and she forced herself to calm down. “I have a gun pointed at your head…I could pulp your face melon-style with the twitch of a trigger…and you just invited me to sit down to a home-cooked meal?”

“Well, you’re obviously not going to shoot me, so you might as well leave with something.” Ivana’s voice was patronizing. Ramona’s teeth began to grind.

“You’re giving up the money then?”

“I told you- my money is your money. Everything I have is yours according to the law of the Ascendants. Foolish law. Arbitrary. Somebody ought to write a book about it.”

“If you don’t shut the hell up, I really will shoot you.”

“Well that would make it difficult for me to tell you where the money is, wouldn’t it?”

“So you admit secret accounts exist?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

Chop chop chop chop chop. This was going on too long. Ramona was feeling impatient. Ivana finished hacking at the orange stalk, calmly sliding it into a pot of water that was already boiling. The pop of air bubbles riding to the surface of the liquid sounded somewhat unreal, and Ivana’s face, distorted by floating water vapor, seemed to hover above her glistening neck, a ghostly incarnation of old Marie Antoinette. Ramona shook her head and checked her grip on the gun. It felt rough in her hands. “You’re playing games with me, grandmother, and I don’t like being toyed with.”

“You loved games, once,” Ivana’s hands went to her wheelchair, and Ramona tensed, but her grandmother only wheeled herself to the bucket of water in the corner, where she scrubbed her fingers vigorously. “Naughty girl, you’ve gone and made me cut myself,” she muttered. “You used to adore all kinds of games, short ones, long ones…you’d play with your father for hours, tiny body twisted in impossible positions as you studied whatever pieces you were fiddling with.”

“You’re senile. And dead if you don’t tell me what I want to know now.”

“Patience, dearest. I’m not going to live much longer, but I’d rather die knowing that I didn’t give myself gangrene. It would make my passing so much easier.” Ivana dipped a white rag into the bucket and began washing her cut hand studiously. Finally, she let the cloth drop gently back onto the bucket’s rim. It hung limply, a dead animal. “Knives are very dangerous,” Ivana said, almost below hearing. “And so are promises made to the powerful. Promises that you cannot keep.”

Ramona shivered slightly. There was something in Ivana’s voice that she didn’t like. “If I remember correctly, guns are also very dangerous,” she sounded like ice in her own ears. “I hear they turn talented, investigative reporters into useless, old crones.”

Ivana grimaced. “I deserve that, I suppose.”

“And a whole lot more.” Ramona moved the gun slightly. There was a soft hiss, and the bucket at Ivana’s feet began to spill water from a hole at the base. “If you’re not going to cooperate, then I guess it’s time for you to die.”

Ivana ignored the water that was flooding up around her chair. “Yes,” she said. “I guess it is.” Despite her words, she sounded so calm and so tranquil… not nervous at all. She was even, for god’s sake, Ivana was even smiling.

“All right grandmother, all right,” if Ramona could haven seen the sparkling in her own eyes, she would have been afraid. “You can tell me your little secret or give me your little speech. Do whatever it is you you’re going to do to keep me from shooting you, though if you’re relying on some sense of family loyalty, you must forgive my sudden chortle.”

Ivana finally turned to face Ramona for the first time. “You are so desperate for cash you’re going to shoot me, correct?” She didn’t wait for Ramona’s nod. “I wouldn’t bother with that. I made some changes to my will, this morning, and Martin can confirm it if you want to bother telecalling him. I decided that my time spent on you has apparently been wasted as well, and so I’ve given up on you ever becoming anything close to a decent human being. Upon my death, whatever money my hefty amounts of life insurance garners will go to my friends, my associates…and Evie the Wonder Cow.”

Ramona blinked. “Evie the WHAT?”

“The Wonder Cow.” Ivana shrugged. “It seemed like a good cause.”

“Good cause, my ass! You’ll make me look like a laughingstock. I can see the headlines now: ‘Eccentric Multi-millionaire Snubs Granddaughter for Beautiful Bovine!’ ”

Ivana chuckled. “You always were a surprisingly bright child. If only you’d put the intelligence to use, somehow.” Ivana, still laughing softly, wheeled herself back to her pot with the boiling vegetables. “I know that the people you’re working for can’t have you kill me. You see, they know I have embarrassing documents and state secrets stashed away across the globe, ready to be exposed the instant I die of even remotely suspicious circumstances. It’s an old understanding- the Father-Colonel and I have had it for years.”

“How do you know I’m working for Needleham?”

“Does it matter? Dinner’s ready, darling. Now that you know how things stand, will you sit down with me?”

Romana snarled. “I could just kill you for being the bane of my existence.”

“You hate me that much, do you?” Ivana shook her head sadly. “My fault I suppose. I never did teach you proper manners.” She wheeled herself over to the table, pot in hand. Ramona couldn’t help but notice the old woman’s wrists shook slightly. Ivana’s eyes hit Ramona’s own, and surprisingly, the bright hazel did seem to be full of genuine regret. “It’s not from fear, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Ivana murmured. “I’m dying, Ramona, never forget that. What’s the point in killing me now when you could just wait a few weeks for my innards to collapse naturally? I hear bullets aren’t as painful, not as hurtful as Rosencratz Syndrome. It’s like waking up every day only to be burned alive from the inside-out. I almost wish you would kill me, just to end the misery.” Ivana smiled sourly. “I’d think you, with your constant plastic surgery and your drugs and your foolish boyfriend would appreciate the irony most of all. I have all the cleverness, all the money in the world, and yet I can’t stop this death from coming, nor make it any gentler. I hate that, I can’t stand it when I’m helpless or dependent on the doctors and their endless rounds of useless anesthesia that barely blunts the edge of my pain. I’ve always wanted badly to be immortal. I think that’s why we’re compelled to write- to leave something of ourselves when otherwise we leave nothing.”

“Bitch,” Ramona whispered. “No matter how I’d love to see you rot, I’d kill you just for the pleasure of knowing I was the one to do it.”

“Call me sentimental,” Ivana replied, with a laugh “but I’ve made it so in your best interests not to. You can’t stop the launch no matter what you do, I’ve seen to that…but after, I’ve made sure you will be taken care of. You may hate me, but you are the only reminder I have of my beloved son. That sentiment has always weakened me. I acknowledge your damned mother should have drowned you at birth for all the pain you’ve caused everyone, but I find myself unable to do anything about that. If I die in space, as I wish, then you will inherit my hidden millions. Maybe then you will end your reckless living and do something constructive with your life.”

“You’re lying,” Ramona was close to tears. Always one step ahead, always better, always leaving Ramona in the shadows her whole damn life. “You have to be lying. If I were dying of thirst in the desert, you wouldn’t even pause to spit on me.”

Ivana shrugged. “I could be lying. You can telecall Martin, and he could be lying too when he tells you that these really are my wishes, but that’s unlikely. He is a priest, after all. And a believer, even if he thinks his superiors misinterpret the will of God. I don’t think it’d be worth it to lie to you, anyway. If you kill me without direct approval from that ghastly Needleham, you’ll die yourself quickly after me for your presumption. Our fates are entwined, as they have always been, and I’ve never pictured you as the suicidal type.”

Ramona’s heart seemed to be stuck in her mouth. For one instant, she almost did it, almost pulled the trigger and ended it all. But even if they both died, even if it ended, her grandmother would still come out ahead. Ramona’s name would be forgotten, while Ivana was forever known as the woman who shook the world and almost brought the Ascendants to their knees, a hero. Nobody would know her as the vile woman she really was.
Ramona put away the gun. “Good girl,” Ivana was already smiling. “Now come and fill your belly at my table.”

Ramona jerkily sat, letting her grandmother fill up her clay bowl with soup as if she were still a child. “Why do you want to go to space so badly,” she asked after a moment, her hands trembling. “I don’t understand you at all, sometimes. What’s your agenda?”

Ivana sounded sorrowful. “Nobody believes me, but I have no agenda. I’ve just always wanted to be able to fly. Even before my body was broken, my soul longed for wings that would life me to the top of this world.”

“You’re lying. You’re always lying, even when there isn’t any point to it. Just to hurt me.”

They ate in silence for a while, until they were finished and the bowls were dumped in a new bucket full of water that Ivana kept filled by the door. The old woman started washing them with her palsied hands alone, refusing, even now, to ask for her granddaughter’s assistance. Slowly, Ramona lit a cigarette, pressing it gently to her lips. It felt good, just to sit there in silence and breathe in the soft, relaxing smoke, but of course her infernal grandmother couldn’t just leave well enough alone and let the blessed quiet linger. Her eyes remained focused on simple things, dishes and soap and an old white rag, as she asked in an almost trembling voice: “Why do you hate me so very much, granddaughter?”

Ramona hesitated. The cigarette fumes wafted down into her lungs, warm and comforting. What did it matter now, if they talked truth together by the fire? “Because,” she whispered, the memories flickering around her like tiny flames. “You never loved me for me. You only cared about me because I was offspring of my father, and the day I broke with his politically radical legacy was the day your affection for me died.”

There was a pause. “You’re wrong about that,” Ivana finally said. “Do you remember the day in the Sacred Garden?”

“I remember, grandma.”

“My feelings haven’t changed, since then.”

“Maybe, but it’s late, and too much has passed between us, for me to believe you now.”

Ivana stacked the dry dishes on the counter and nodded.

***

Heaven. It was the name of the drug that made souls soar. Ramona too had the urge to fly, but this was what did it for her. There were needle marks over all her thighs from where she stabbed herself over and over again with the needy, filthy addict she was. Howard had loaned her money again, ostentatiously for a new dress, but Ramona needed this right now more than anything in the world.

Heaven was like feeling loved and having sex and eating chocolate all at once. It was the comfort of a warm blanket on a rainy night, the thrill of the fall from a skydiver’s plane. Ramona didn’t even feel the needle sliding into her veins, it was an old friend by now, and the bruises on top of bruises left her blessedly numb.

It took a little longer each time for the drug to kick in, and each time it brought Ramona a little less high, but the pleasure was still there, endlessly with her. Besides, her unexpected poverty meant she hadn’t had a fix for days, and the cool warmth that suddenly coated every nerve fiber made her shiver with delight.

And with fear, when the hallucinations kicked in.

“Grandma, why did you bring me here?”

No…no…anywhere but this…

The sacred pool was clean and deep. Blue, like her mother’s eyes. Ramona was five and she skipped a little, hopping from rock to rock beneath a gray sky tinted green with jungle leaves.

No…no…don’t remember this, not now, not now…

“I brought you here because I love this place. It’s where I go to get away from the sordid matters of this world. The locals believe it is blessed of the Gods.”

“Of God?” young Ramona crossed herself.

“No, of the Gods.” Ramona was too young to hear the bitterness in Ivana’s voice. The grandmother had just been confined to her wheelchair a few months ago, and the locals, in their love, had carved a path to this place for her, so she would not be deprived of even the most simple of pleasures. Ramona didn’t understand why the natives’ kindness made her grandmother so mad, but she saw Ivana’s fists clenching in her lap and knew that for some reason, speaking of religion like this made her grandmother hurt. “ Not all of the world believes in our Merciful Lord.”

“Don’t the Ascendants know this? Mama says they make the world pure.”

“They know, but as long as people give outer obedience, they don’t give a damn about anyone’s saving anyone’s soul.”

Ramona absorbed this solemnly, but it seemed too big for her, somehow. She shrugged and smiled. Her mother would explain it all to her later. Her mother had told her to pay very important attention to everything grandma said, because she was very wise and sometimes her mother had to help her understand what she meant when she said things. Every visit, Ramona had gone home and made very sure she could repeat everything Ivana said word-for-word. “Can I please go swimming now? Pretty, pretty please?”

Ivana laughed. “Go ahead, beloved one. Nobody will mind. You may even be blessed, washing in the tears of the Gods.”

Ramona stripped naked before leaping into the water. It split around her, gobbling her up like Jonah’s giant whale. She laughed at that and bubbles got stuck in her nose, so she quickly kicked out and touched the bottom before she came up again. “I touched the bottom, grandma!” she said, excitedly. “Aren’t you proud of me?

She didn’t wait for her grandma’s absentminded nod to dive down again. The water was very cold, though, and Ramona didn’t stay in the pool for very much longer.

Soon, she found herself stretched out on a rock in the sun, still naked. The stone was warm beneath her, and her skin felt sleepy all over. Hesitantly, her grandmother pushed herself out of the chair, lowering herself to the ground beside Ramona. It took not to laugh as Ramona watched Ivana wriggling out of her dress like a snake before flopping to the rock beside her. Ramona would have to help her get back in her chair, and that would make her grandmother mad again. The thought made Ramona wince in preparation. Ivana seemed to be mad a lot lately, since she had given up her legs for wheels.

“I love the Sacred Garden for another reason, though,” Ivana said in a voice Ramona hadn’t heard her grandma use before. Ramona looked over and saw Ivana’s subtle, hazel eyes close. “Your father is buried here.”

“What?” Ramona bounded upright, “but I’ve visited him, I’ve seen the place where he lives underground!”

“He doesn’t live there anymore.” Ivana reached out and pulled Ramona down next to her so quickly Ramona couldn’t help but giggle. “No, he hasn’t lived there for a long time.”

“Didn’t he like being near to me and mama?”

Ivana was quiet for a long time before answering. “It wasn’t that way. It was that your mama didn’t like being near to him. She told me so herself, one day. She laughed at me and told me…you’re too young to understand.”

Ramona laughed. “That’s just something you say when you don’t want me to know something.”

Ivana smiled, but it was a very sad smile. “You are a very clever girl. It has to do with love. Some people love people. Some people love other things more: wealth, fame, prestige. The Angevine name gives people power.”

Ramona smiled and rolled over onto one elbow, looking at her grandmother carefully. “Do you love people?” she asked, young enough to hold her breath. Young enough to believe the answer. “Do you love me?”

“Of course, dear child,” Ivana said. “If my love for you was a pool, you could swim forever and never touch the bottom.”

Ramona’s heart skipped a bit at that. Her mother never said such things. Usually she only told her to get out of the way. Her grandmother didn’t say such things often, either. Even though she would always call Ramona her “darling, dearest dove” or silly names like that, there was an edge in her voice, a sharp thing that Ramona didn’t understand. It was only years later that Ramona realized what that buried dagger really meant- it meant that when Ivana looked at the child, looked at her hair and her face and deep into her eyes, all her grandmother saw was her mother, stamped into every feature and every gesture by habit and by the jokes of genes. Ramona didn’t have any of her father inside of her, not really, and Ivana’s hatred for Maria could overcome any affinities ruled by blood.

But in the still of the Garden, as twilight began to fall on them gently, Ramona suddenly felt her grandmother’s arm reach around her and squeeze her tightly. The arm was pale and wrinkled and smelled like bad butter, but Ramona realized that she felt good that way. Ivana hadn’t held her since the wheeled chair came into their life, and she didn’t hold her that way after the garden either. Maria didn’t let her daughter visit Ivana again for a long time, not after Ramona explained to her what Ivana said about her father’s grave, and when she did come back, years later, Ivana had never taken her to see the Sacred Garden again.

***

“Don’t you give a damn about her? Or about your duties as a citizen of the Globality?” Ramona was wearing her most alluring shirt. It was white, and cupped her dark, Spanish breasts like a second skin. The Irishman had most likely not had anyone but an ugly village woman for a long time, and if Ramona could get him back to her home in New Rotterdam, he would be hers for the taking. Most unfortunate, she found that not all the sexual perverts had left with the space colony. The Irishman was bigger than any man Ramona had ever seen and was covered with wiry hair and axel grease, all of which made him distasteful to her. Not that it mattered, since he only liked men. Her promises to the Father-Colonel appeared suddenly somewhat rash. “Mr. Ferguson, do you realize that you’re helping one of the greatest women of our time to kill herself?”

Evan Ferguson’s lips twitched. His accent was soft and graceful, almost unnoticeable in his speech. “And I suppose you be doing this out of love for your grandmother, then?”

Ramona forced herself to smile. It was hard. They were sitting in a bench in the village, as Evan refused to meet with her in private. By telecall, they had arranged to meet in a park that was in reality a patch of burned land, where the jungle had been stripped clean to make room for a baseball diamond, long ago. The grass was gone, unable to last long in the acidic soil, and half-naked children played kickball in the dust in front of the pair. Their screams punched into Ramona, (still sick from the after-grip of her drugs) the noise battering her already aching head. She longed to take the dry gourd they were using as a ball and smash it against this smug Irishman’s face. He knew too much about her feelings for her grandmother, and she didn’t like that one bit. “Ivana and I may not always get along, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the witch.”

Evan grunted noncommittally. Ramona sighed and took a cigarette from her purse. She seemed to be going through them like candy, lately. “What give you the right to judge me? You’re the one who’s killing her, not I.”

“She’s dying anyway, I canna stop that.” Evan sighed and leaned back against the bench. “If you truly cared about her, you would let her go her own way, in peace.”

“They are working on treatments. How would you feel if you let her die and they discovered a cure the next day?”

“I’m a scientist, lass. I studied biology long before I dabbled in engineering. I’ve seen the projects- there will be no last minute miracles.”

The smoke from the cigarette wafted softly upwards, hanging in the air like the tails of a ghost. “You feel no duty to her soul, then? She’ll be damned forever if she takes this course.”

“And she’s not already?” Evan chuckled. “She’s an atheist. And by your tenets, I don’t even have a soul, not a good bone in my entire body. Right now it’s taking all your strength not to leap off this bench and run far away from the sexual pervert. If she be goin’ to hell, at least she’ll do it in style.”

“You have a duty to the government. There is a law against suicide, and against space travel.”

“There is no space shuttle, and you canna prove otherwise. Ivana has told me you will no kill me, either, no matter what empty threats you may utter.”

“My grandmother has lied before. She makes you dance to her tune which you don’t here, faithful that this foolish venture will end well for you. That is a mistake, friend.”

“She may lie to you, lass, but not to me. Never.”

Ramona doubted that strongly. Honesty was a tool like everything else in Ivana’s collection, and she used it like a scalpel, and seldom. The gift of the Angevine genetic line was the ability to manipulate people’s emotions, that what had made Ivana such a good revolutionary, what made Ramona so attractive to men. It was as sure as the sun’s consistency that Ivana was using this man, but he was so in love with the image of her shining goodness that he would die before abandoning her. Ramona tried another tact. “You do know that if you are accepting funds from her, you are in direct violation of the orders of the Council for Interior Affairs and can be imprisoned for the rest of your life. By law, her money is mine as long as she continues her insanity.”

“Obviously then,” Evan’s smile was a flash of crescent white teeth, “any work I may or may not be doing for Ivana is completely pro bono.” He stood up, stretching his tree-trunk arms with an expansive yawn. “I believe you be out of slick lines to feed me,” he bowed before her, surprisingly graceful for a man of his size. “If you have nothing else to say to, I have work I should be gettin’ done”

He didn’t wait for Ramona to leave, didn’t offer to escort her home either. Didn’t anyone on this island have any sense of courtesy? Ramona snubbed her cigarette out on the side of the bench. The children were yelling louder now, voices raised in obscene catcalls as they abandoned all rules of the game to pile violently on each other, rolling across the ground like little biting tornados. She watched them, holding her head between her hands, and groaned softly. One step ahead of her, always. Would nothing in her life ever go right?

She could only hope that Howard was doing better. By association, thinking of Howard led her mind to Nick, but she quashed those thoughts with practiced brutality. Unlike her first lover, Howard was unskilled and unintelligent. He’d never pull it off.

But she could still hope, couldn’t she?

***

There was no bell to ring, no intercom to push, so Howard rapped his knuckles against the splintering wood door hesitantly. He had telecalled the woman ahead of time, informing her he was going to come and was surprised not to find her in the yard, waiting for him. Howard was used to people waiting for him. It all came, he supposed, from using a fake name- he was denied the proper respect due to him and to the Littleli family. The holocaster buzzed softly at his neck, and he tugged at it, annoyed. The machine was letting out obscene amounts of heat for a day like this, and the vibration in his skull made it hard to think. Howard didn’t understand the need for it, for the holographic disguise and the sham name, but Ramona had made it very clear they were necessary, and when Ramona wanted badly enough, Howard found it very difficult to deny her anything.

He knocked again, and this time the door squeaked open. The woman stuck her head out and Harold had to suppress a little, delighted shiver. She really was old and spotted with age, her long, hatchet-edged nose almost obscene for its lack of rhinoplasty. No anti-aging treatments at all, Ramona had told him. Howard wasn’t used to seeing people so appealingly ugly. Especially the natives, many of whom had lost their front teeth. It was all so primitive, so exciting! It gave Howard a small, secret thrill in those places inside him that Ramona snickered at.

“Yes?” Ivana J. Angevine asked when the silence seemed to have thickened for too long. “You want something, young man?”

“Good evening, ma’am,” Howard cleared his throat and tipped his hat the way supplicants often had to him. He tried to remember what their smiles looked like, how their voices had somehow managed to sound so pleasant, but he wasn’t sure he was doing it right. “My name is H-Harold Ziegler. I, uh, talked to you over the telecaller?”

“Oh yes. Of course. Well, you might as well come inside. I don’t talk business on my doorstep.”

The house was surprisingly cool and dark. Once his eyes had adjusted, Howard realized that the old woman was wearing a brilliantly colored raincoat despite the humidity, just like Ramona said she would. She really is insane, Howard thought. How magnificent!

“Well?” Ivana gestured to a chair. She was already sitting in some wheeled contraption, not at all like the sleek modern wheelchairs with their prosthetic limbs, and Howard had to suppress the urge to grab her skirt and see if her legs were really as atrophied as Ramona said. Instead, he sat down and folded his hands in his lap politely. Ivona folded her arms sternly across her chest: “You said you had a business proposition for me?”

She didn’t seem much for pleasantries, so Howard launched directly into his prepared speech. “Ms. Angevine,” he began formally. “I have journeyed these many miles to your island to ask for your aid. My name is Harold Ziegler and I am director of a charity foundation, the Blessed Light Society, that is devoted to raising money for treatments of the blind. As you know, most defects in a person’s sight can now be cured through the power of prosthetics-”

“I do know this.” Ivana’s eyes narrowed. “Get to the point.”

Howard cleared his throat nervously and pulled out a pocket handkerchief. The air on this island was much too damp and heavy for human comfort, and the holocaster collar was beginning to itch. He hadn’t really planned on being interrupted, and it took him awhile to collect his thoughts and start again. “Th-the prosthetics are often unavailable to people in poor or underdeveloped areas. Our organization is completely dependent on donations, botj from the church and from wealthy men and women such as yourself. Mrs. Angevine, your generosity is legendary…”

Flatter her, Ramona had said, running her tongue around his ear ever so fetchingly. “Flatter the bitch, make her ego feel lovely. She’ll be coughing cash into our laps by the millions before the day is out.”

“But there is no charity, is there? No Blessed Light Society?” Howard had been confused. “Wouldn’t taking her money be…illegal?”

“You know I have authorization from the Council to work around such formalities. And if she’s holding my money in defiance of their wishes, wouldn’t getting it for me merely be restoring the legal balance?”

That did make sense, in a way.

“So, you’re asking me for an investment?” Ivana asked, startling Howard.

He jumped in his chair. “Hmm?”

“I said, ‘so you’re asking me for an investment?’ That is what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

Howard nodded, “if you could find it in your heart…to think of all the impoverished children…”

“Child,” Ivana said with a smile, “I would dearly love to invest, but I’m afraid my granddaughter currently has all of my funds, rendering me powerless to give you aid. If you want to ask her for money, I do believe she’s in the village somewhere. And I’m sure you’ll find Ramona…very munificent. Her heart truly aches for all the underprivileged people in the world.”

Howard scratched his neck nervously. Ivana wasn’t supposed to know Ramona was on the island. “A-a-are you sure you can’t help? The children truly would be grateful.”

“I am very sorry, and I would if I could, Ziegler,” the woman replied. “But I’m afraid that it’s beyond my powers at this time. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I have some work I must do.”

Before he knew it, Howard found himself sitting on Ivana’s doorstep. He switched off the holocaster with a grateful sigh- he was almost beginning to believe a bee had lodged itself in his brain somehow. The relief immediately fled as he realized that he was going back to Ramona empty handed. She wouldn’t like that a bit. If there was one thing Howard knew to be true, it was that things went badly for him when Ramona didn’t like something. Ivana’s knowledge of her whereabouts was sure to make her furious.

Howard didn’t pray often, but he decided a plea to the Merciful Divine wouldn’t hurt.

***

It was Nick who first taught Ramona the love of gambling, just as he had been the first to teach her the wondrous taste of Heaven and the process of sex.

“Between the flip of the cards, the roll of the dice, the turn of the wheel, nations rise and fall. Men live and die.”

Nick had always been somewhat poetic, and back then, his touch had been gentle, his hands sure. They held Ramona’s own, stroking them gently, pulling them up to his lips to kiss them again and again. “Taking a chance makes you feel alive. Risking it all for something unsure is the only way to make life interesting, some days.”

Ramona wouldn’t have called her life boring, but she didn’t know how dull, how certain everything was until Nick had brought her to her first casino. She had won a lot of money that night, and it wasn’t because of her name or her wealth. It was something Ramona did on her own, without her family’s influence, and there wasn’t anything quite like that thrill of sudden, sure independence.

Of course, she learned later that Nick had helped her by cheating. She had been angry at first, then she realized it was part of the game. It raised the stakes so much higher.

Nick had taught her so many things, until his drinking and debts had turned him from a civilized man into a brutal savage. Ramona had cried the day he was murdered, even if she had been the one who paid the killer to do it. She killed the assassin herself after he allowed himself to come to her bed as part of payment. The sight of blood on her sheets had made her queasy. Bleeding still made her feel a little sick.

Today, she was playing in the rural part of what once had been named Brazil, where the casino’s anti-cheating mechanisms were less than advanced. The roulette-boy with his perfect, shining teeth didn’t realize that one of her earrings was magnetic, and with a flip of the switch, she could change the color of the chips set before her from blue to red to yellow and back again, ensuring she won or lost as little or as much as she liked. Of course, there was the chance of being caught, but she doubted it, not with the chaos of so many screaming locals placing bets and the wheel-boy’s eyes distracted, sucked straight down into her near-exposed cleavage like a sailor thrown overboard.

The money was nothing, the chance of being caught was everything. That was where real excitement was.

“Fourteen, black,” the wheel-boy muttered, and Ramona allowed herself a girlish whoop as her holochips were joined by real ones that could be turned in later for hard currency. The couple next to her, a pair of artificial blondes from the coastline, laughed in rueful disgust and waved to the boy before walking across the floor, hand in hand. Howard’s hands had been shaking as he shoved money at her last night. Here, here, he had said. I’m sorry I’ve failed my dear but you must forgive me, here, go have some fun tonight.

Ramona still wondered how her grandmother had known she had been in the village. It seemed impossible that the Father-Colonel, the only person who knew about her movements, had asked her to stop her grandmother’s flight only to hamper her every move. Besides, their hatred for one another was legendary. Ivana had made a very public accusation concerning both the failed assassination attempt on herself and the strange circumstances surrounding her son’s death. Crispin Angevine had died in a stairwell, a bullet in his brain. The registration number had proved the bullet belonged to the Ascendants, though the local storehouse had recorded the bullets “stolen” the year before. In return, it was a well-known rumor that Angevine funds were behind the coup in New Zealand that had left the Needleham’s only sister dead. There was no way he would be feeding her grandmother information, unless he was being blackmailed somehow. Ivana had mentioned some suspicious documents, once…perhaps…

Ramona was so deep in thought, she didn’t feel the sudden quiet press down against her skin, didn’t notice the wheel-boy’s smile becoming more and more forced. Or rather, she did notice, but it was too late for that. She abandoned her chips, turning to run for the exit, but thick arms suddenly wrapped around her stomach, expertly lined with her solar plexus. She thudded into them with a grunt and folded against a body that was fat and hard.

The knife pressing against her throat had the chill of ice. “Hello, my Ramona,” a familiar, accented voice whispered in her ear. “Have you missed me, love?”

Ramona made a strange choking sound as one of his hands game up and buried itself into her dark hair, forcing her still. She felt the knife begin to slit.