The Sons of Heaven (13 page)

Was it like roaring through darkness, across a landscape lit here and there by the fires of war? Everything burnt, blocked, misaligned? Rows of lights blinked out of sequence: he changed their pattern. Tumbled and scattered structures sprawled before those all-seeing eyes of his: he righted them, arranged them into order. Meaningless dark unkeyed strings of numbers flamed into reason and purpose for him. What had taken Sir Henry months to even begin by therapy, proceeding painfully and with infinite effort, my lover accomplished in a moment. Only that one secret file he left hidden from me, Alec and Nicholas encrypted, such loving treachery.

What was it like for me, being healed of the ruin of my wits? It was exquisite pleasure, indescribable but certainly better than sex. I had lost all fear and was yielding everything up to his probing mind, even those blocked and obliterated files, although I think he hadn’t quite got to them when …

Well, there were no longer walls between us, in his new state, and he didn’t know how to shield his mind from me. The darkness was lit, and in that illumination we beheld each other with utter clarity, absolute intimacy. Communion at last.

I screamed, did my best to pull away from him. He was holding me far too close for that and I went limp in his arms, staring up at him in horror. “You’re not Alec!” I said.

Distantly we heard Sir Henry’s bitter laughter.

“No, my dear,” the man who held me admitted, and his poor face was white as though I’d just driven a knife into his heart. “My name is Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax. I believe you loved me, once.”

I wish I hadn’t taken so long to understand. He looked as though he had begun to grasp what Eternity means while I lay there silent, as though it had at last occurred to him that he is now unable to die, even if he might want to.

But I groped in my newly-restored memory and there it was, 1863, the deck of the
J. M. Chapman
where my Victorian gentleman lay dying in my arms, gunned down by American Pinkerton agents who were, understandably, attempting to foil a British plot to seize California from the embattled Union.

“… Edward? But they killed you—”

“Not quite,” he told me. I threw my arms around his neck and burst into tears. For a moment, it was 1863 and some wonderful, improbable thing had happened, to be greedily accepted without question. “I came back for you,” he said. “I set you free.”

But since when did my tragedies miraculously reverse themselves? Where was Alec, to whom I’d been married before the accident? The man I’d supposed was some kind of reincarnation of Edward himself, whom I had in turn taken for a reincarnation of my lost love, Nicholas Harpole? …

I reckon you’d better come clean and tell her the whole truth, Commander Bell-Fairfax, sir
, suggested Sir Henry from the ship’s speakers. There was a certain grim triumph in his voice.

It was a little late for that, however. The moment I wondered, my repaired cyborg brain instantly filled me in on what I’d been missing the last couple of years, during which Edward and Alec
and
Nicholas (!) were all crammed together in one body, struggling in an ever-escalating war for dominance. I had all the data gleaned from my perfect communion with Edward’s cyborg brain, too. I knew everything now, including how he’d come to lie here beside me.

It hit me like an anvil dropped out a window. I writhed from his arms, sat up.

“Edward,” I gasped, “what have you done?”

At least now I understood the abrupt changes in his (their) moods all those months we adventured together on this ship, those inexplicable moments when his (their) speech would switch from twenty-fourth-century Transatlantic slang to Tudor English to that smooth, suave, and ever-so-well-bred Victorian voice … stammering a bit now as he told me how he’d reluctantly come to the conclusion that the others weren’t worthy of me, how therefore he’d found a way to take sole possession of Alec’s body, imprisoning Alec and Nicholas somewhere while he planned to
perhaps
grow them new bodies, using the only available womb … mine. But by the time he paused to catch his immortal breath, I wasn’t listening anymore.

Nicholas Harpole. My beloved, not dead after all though his body was ashes, not even reincarnated, the man himself as I last knew him in a cell in Rochester in 1555. He had not rested. He had found me again, and Edward—

“You betrayed him.” I covered my face with my hands. “Oh, Edward, you betrayed them both.”

“No! All I wanted was to have my own life back,” Edward said. “I had work to do! And if they hadn’t been squeamish, there’d have been no need for any deception.”

“But you tricked them anyway,” I said. I was too furious to look at him. “Oh, Nicholas! He could barely speak to me—” I closed my eyes as the tears started again. “And poor Alec—”

Which was when I remembered the reason I had gone
willingly
into that unspeakable place of unspeakable things. Alec, playing at being a hero, had stolen a Company shuttle and smuggled a bomb to Mars. With my help.

“Oh, dear God, he was the Hangar Twelve Man!” I said in horror.

“I’m afraid so,” said Edward, reaching out to turn my face to his. “Scarcely the mate you deserved, you see? The boy was a fatal blunderer—”

“He was a fool, but he wasn’t an evil man,” I said. I struck his hand away. “Nothing like the opportunist you are. You were just going to take everything from him, weren’t you? His ship, his life, and … me.”

Edward drew himself up, unflinching. “You, at least, my dear,” he said. “Can you blame me?”

“Yes,” I said. “Damn you! You’ll always find a way to destroy yourself. Split you into three, and you just turn on each other! My God, you’ve done it again, only this time you’re able to sit here and argue the point with me.”

“I am not arguing with you,” said Edward coolly, though he was still very pale. “And I point out that no one has been destroyed.”

“No, just consigned to some—some void in my memory!”

“And what better place for him? What would Alec have done with eternal life, but wasted it? I at least have a purpose in this world!” said Edward, with heat. “And if Alec hadn’t been
betrayed
, as you put it, if he were sitting here now and all had gone according to the Captain’s plan, Nicholas should have been consigned to a much less congenial void. And so should I. Doubtless that would have displeased you less, however.”

“NO,”
I screamed, beating my fists against the mattress. “No, you big—Why am I even trying? I have spent years, innumerable years, unbearable
years
of my life mourning for you! All the lost chances, all the false starts—” I was still fighting furious tears as I raised my head to glare at him. “You liar. Oh, you smooth liar. All that business about wanting to have a baby of our own was a lie, too, wasn’t it?”

“Not as such,” he hastened to say. “It truly was my intention to provide for Nicholas and Alec, and what better way? Only think, my love, what transcendent intimacy this miracle would confer. You will become our fount of life! Poor Alec will know a mother’s love at last, and Nicholas—”

“What’re they supposed to do when they grow up?” I cried in horror. “Can you imagine the conflicts for them? Did it ever occur to you to wonder how
I
might feel about this?”

“My love, your happiness has been my greatest concern,” he assured me, sliding an arm around my shoulders. “All your life, you have been deprived of any shred of domestic felicity. No hearth. No home. No children. Your maternal instincts, so long denied, can be expressed at last in our union. Consider, my dearest love, that I now have the power to grant you fulfillment as a woman!”

“Who the hell are you to decide how I ought to be fulfilled as a woman?” I said, throwing off his arm. He caught both my hands in his, and I couldn’t pull them away.

“The missing half of your soul,” he said, looking earnestly into my eyes. “And I stand beside you on the threshold of a destiny of which you have never dreamed.”

Nice words. He had me soothed for a moment, before it occurred to me they were familiar somehow. He was paraphrasing something I’d said. He was quoting from …

“You read my journal?” I demanded. He winced, and I knew he had read it.

Haar, Edward, yer on a reef now
, chortled Sir Henry.

And with that I jumped up and went marching out on deck, still shooting sparks, ignoring his conciliatory noises as he chased after me all the way to
Alec’s stateroom, and into Alec’s vast bed with its dreadful pirate motifs and crimson counterpane.

I flung myself down in it and pulled the coverlet up, rolling as far from Edward as I could get and still remain in the bed. And I thought that would be that, and lay there shaking with anger and remorse. But he advanced across the bed like a big cat and reached out to put his hand on my shoulder.

“My dear,” he said, “this is no way to begin a marriage.”

Furious, I rolled over and swung at him, intending to knock him across the room. Long ago I’d belted Nicholas once, poor darling must have seen stars, but he forbore to hit me back and dear God I’d wished I could cut off my hand the second after, I was so sorry.

But Edward is no longer a mortal man. No mortal eye could have seen his hand closing on my wrist, so quick he caught me. He held me immobile a long moment and space/time creaked with the strain, I’d swear, irresistible force pitted against immovable object, until at last I began to tremble and he forced my wrist slowly backward. I tried to spit in his face, but my mouth was too dry.

“No,” he said in a patient voice, staring down into my eyes. “I will not lose you like this.”

I writhed in an attempt to throw him off. I might as well have struggled against the weight of a planet. He held my gaze with those pale eyes, the black pupils dilated wide, and the fight just left my body. I wondered, briefly, if he used to do this to the people the Company sent him to kill, if they dropped their defenses and waited meekly for his knife, his garrote, his big clever hands…

He wouldn’t let me look away from him. Lowering his face to mine, he inhaled the scent of my skin, and kissed my cheek. He kissed my throat slowly, to the pulse under my ear.

I can’t honestly say he raped me. He was so careful, took such infinite pains with me, was as gentle as Nicholas had ever been, and not even the knowledge of what he’d done to Nicholas was enough to keep my body from doublecrossing me. It just surrendered. I grit my teeth to think how little time it took before I was weeping, pleading with him softly, and not to be let go.

Such a persuasive hand, with its gold wedding band gleaming. I wear the ring’s mate. Nicholas married me, with those rings made from one gold doubloon, in the pirate city Alec wanted so much to explore. But Edward will be my husband.

Damn him.

He didn’t even gloat afterward. I wasn’t allowed that much high ground
over the man. He was tender, he was courteous, tucked the sheet about me decorously before turning away after I made it clear I was in no mood for postcoital chat. Was confident enough of his victory to go to sleep with me lying there beside him, though I might have done anything.

What
do
I do about this man, this superior product of a self-righteous age, who has had the monumental arrogance to decide Nicholas and Alec are unnecessary to my happiness?

Though he says they never loved me enough. He points out that Nicholas left me, when he discovered what I really was; and Alec was just as horrified to learn the truth. Only he, Edward, was able to absorb the idea of cyborged immortality without revulsion, and love me anyway.

No. That’s his version of the story, told to show himself to the greatest possible advantage over the others. My lying darling bastard …

He looks stupid when he’s asleep. Big mule-face is relaxed, what outlandish features he has anyway, how can I stand to have those immense teeth near me? And all the color drains out of him. But the second he wakes, everything changes utterly. The hot blood rises to his skin and the sharp soul looks out of those eyes, the features become animated, fantastically charming and clever. A blazing angel housed in his base clay. Bloody golem.

Or maybe the more correct term would be
nephilim
. No Sons of God getting mighty men on mortal women; only Facilitators in charge of the Company’s breeding program to produce his ghastly predecessors, the old Enforcers. Giants in the earth indeed. Pale-eyed slaughterers, utterly self-righteous, unstoppable. Like my lover.

Listen to him snoring. How many nights have I fallen asleep to that sound? That one imperfection is left from his mortal days, that irregularity in the bridge of his nose. Some damned inept Company operative rammed a black box up it, moments after his birth. Poor tiny beloved, almost his first sensation in life must have been suffocating pain …

Well. Having got up and wandered the ship, smashed a little furniture, gotten a grip on myself, and ordered writing materials from Sir Henry, here I sit at two-hundred hours attempting to work this out, as that man sprawls in our bed.

Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax.

The distinguished gentleman homicide. Brave, resourceful, clever, ruthless, sentimentally fond of Shakespeare, serviceable villain, capable of subduing any moral qualms he might feel in the service of whatever great lie he currently believes. Now he’s set on rebellion against Dr. Zeus. Does he even understand
that, of the three men, he is the closest to being the perfect superslave the Company was seeking when it designed them? That he has the greatest capacity for real evil?

He’s learned nothing from his life and death that I can see, he still has all the presumption of the empire-building age in which he drew his last mortal breath. Now he’s immortal, and has plans for the world. My lover. My
husband
.

I lost my human soul when I lost Nicholas. Mars Two damned me with Alec, poor fool as he was, and all the improbable hope he represented. Now what have I left to lose? And how well we always understood each other, Edward and I. We were equals. Matched blades. Professionals.