The Sons of Heaven (30 page)

Victor sat up with a hoarse yell. He stared around him, half expecting to see the pool of his own blood on the paving of Market Street, the fog hanging wraithlike. No; only the gentle melancholy of an afternoon in Grosvenor Square.

But in his brimming mouth—

He scrambled to his feet and ran for the bathroom. With trembling hands he pulled a little chlorilar cup from its dispenser and spat into it. What he saw there, green and swarming, brought him to his knees. He vomited uncontrollably into the toilet, all the while managing to hold the cup out and away, like a chalice full of something precious.

He had tracked Budu, he had confronted him in a cellar in Chinatown and heard out Budu’s invitation to rebel. But Victor wouldn’t be turned, not then; he’d defeated Budu and taken the child back. He’d defeated Budu by spitting out the poison in his heart… literally … and the old giant had gone down as the virus got to him… and just this foul taste had been his mouth, then, hadn’t it?

It was a moment before Victor was able to lean his head against the seat, gasping and sweating. He glanced down into the toilet bowl and panicked. Stumbling, nearly falling, he got into the sitting room and put the cup down by the credenza; then came back and opened the cabinet below the washbasin. He drew a bottle from the full case of bleach stacked there, broke its seal and emptied it all into the toilet bowl. It wasn’t enough, it couldn’t be enough, even though all the pipes in this room fed into the building’s fusion duct.

Victor grabbed out another bottle and broke the seal. He tilted, poured, and then the compulsion was irresistible: he lifted the bottle and took a mouthful, swilling bleach like mouthwash before he quite knew what he was doing.

When he did realize, he gasped and spat frantically. Five, six times; poured the rest of the bleach into the toilet and flushed at last. Then he staggered backward and collapsed into a sitting position, his back to the wall, crying like a mortal child with the pain of his burnt mouth.

Afternoon had deepened to twilight by the time Victor emerged from the bathroom, ghost-pale. He went unsteadily to the credenza and sat to prepare another slide, applying with careful hands a few drops of his deadly hatred
from its cup. He slid it into the port and ordered the credenza to tell him what it could.

And an image formed.

There had been a series of clever toys in the late twentieth century, jointed plastic things resembling animals or robots, that with the rotation of certain parts and the folding or unfolding of others became something entirely different: rocket cars, war machines, space ships. Something like this appeared to have happened to the innocent little biomechanical bug on the credenza screen. It had reconfigured somehow, thrust out spiked and plated limbs, changed its length.

Here came the text to outline function on this changed thing and, oh yes, it was a formidable abomination. Programs for designer viruses, all Labienus’s work. Here was the toxin to drop an Enforcer in his tracks. Here was the so-called Karremans Recombinant Defensive. Here were others, with notes on their intended targets. Had they ever been deployed?

How would Victor know?

How many times had he been armed and sent out, smiling arsenal of customized pestilence, before he’d begun to suspect what he was?

Victor closed his eyes. The waves of hatred came again, the sick rage, but no venom came seeping from under his tongue; there was no program for any poison to rot Labienus where he stood, or raise suppurating boils on his smug face.
But there might be
.

Victor opened his eyes. He got up and went to his kitchen, where he prepared something cold and soothing to drink. He came back and sat, sipping, studying the programs. His mouth was healing itself rapidly. The burns had vanished by the time he discovered how to open one of the programs and customize it.

Time for the news.

One after another the holoes flickered on, but Hearst failed to rise and follow the moving images in his customary dance. He sat staring out at them, blinking back tears as the terrible sounds came again, the little
boom
followed by the high-pitched screams, followed by the much louder
BOOM
that was Mars Two being destroyed. It was New Year’s Day.

Intangible fire, bloodred light faded, and now his stations were running the footage taken from the surveillance camera in Hangar Twelve. There he was: the arms smuggler unloading his crates to the MAC terrorists. What a tall man. Hearst frowned and leaned forward, peering at the multiple images of the person responsible for it all. There was something familiar about him …

In his arms, Helen
whuffed
feebly and turned her blind face. Hearst glanced over to see Joseph peering through a high window, gesturing urgently. Hearst rose, set the dog in her basket, and got the hooked pole that opened the transom. A second later Joseph was standing beside him, panting. “Hi, Mr. Hearst,” he said. He glanced at the holo footage and grimaced.

“This is the most horrible tragedy,” said Hearst unnecessarily. “Wasn’t there anything the Company could have done?”

Joseph gave a bitter laugh. “To prevent it? No. They knew, we’ve all known from the beginning of time, what would happen to Mars Two. Look, I was feeling like getting bombed myself and wondered if you might like to join me.” He opened his coat to reveal a box of chocolates, slightly battered from his climb up the wall but with its sta-seal unbroken. “Quintilius has quite a stash hidden away, did you know?”

Hearst stared at the box. “‘Ratlin’s Finest Assortment,’” he read aloud in a
lifeless voice. “I don’t usually partake of Theobromos, but—oh, heck, let’s sit down.”

They collapsed into armchairs and Joseph tore the box open. Hearst looked up at the holo footage again. “That damned arms smuggler,” he said. “Tell me something, if you know: will he ever be brought to justice? Is there anything we can do to hunt him down, using the Company’s knowledge?”

Joseph shuddered and grabbed up a handful of chocolates. He crammed them into his mouth, not even bothering to pick them out of their little frilly paper cups. “Uh-uh,” he said, chewing. “Know why? You’re really going to feel like some Theobromos now: the Company set up the whole disaster. It was going to happen anyway, so why not arrange it so Dr. Zeus came out ahead, right? That shuttle in the background is a Company time shuttle, though there’s not enough of it visible in the footage to tip anybody off.

“And the bastard who delivered the bomb? Not even a human being. Company black project. They were experimenting with creating a New Enforcer. They made another goddam Recombinant, can you believe that? Only this one doesn’t spread diseases. Just disasters.”

Hearst stared at him, horrified. After a moment he reached out a shaky hand and helped himself to three or four chocolate creams. “Oh, dear God,” he said. “That’s what’s so familiar about him. A New Enforcer? He doesn’t look quite human at that. He’s not… not related to us? Is he?”

Joseph looked at him sourly, still chewing as he popped two more truffles into his mouth. “That’d bother you, huh, being related to him? How’d you like it if he abducted your daughter?”

“I never had a daughter,” said Hearst in a distracted kind of way, and bit into a chocolate. “Though there was that granddaughter who got kidnapped. She wrote the nastiest book about me, too,” he added plaintively, groping through the chocolate box to secure his favorites, for Joseph had just taken another fistful.

“How’d you like it,” Joseph continued through a mouthful of rum nougat, “if your daughter got married to the Hangar Twelve Man? Huh?”

“I wouldn’t,” said Hearst, biting into another chocolate and slurping the liquid center. His eyes widened. “You don’t mean
your
daughter—!”

“Oh, yeah. Some swell son-in-law! The only consolation is, the big jackass was set up by the Company, too. He had no idea what’d happen when he smuggled arms to the MAC, apparently.” Joseph popped three nut clusters into his mouth in quick succession and crunched with violence. “Now he’s a
fugitive from every kind of justice there is, and he’s taken her with him. Hey, do I care? They’re in love, so everything’s just peachy!”

“I’m so sorry for you,” murmured Hearst, thinking that this was far worse than a forgotten twentieth-century scandal. He wasn’t sure this didn’t beat
Citizen Kane
. He ate another chocolate and felt better. “But he’s not a real Enforcer, then, I take it.”

“Yes and no.” Joseph poked savagely through the box. “Where’d all these damn Brazil nuts come from? Nobody likes Brazil nuts. He’s a Recombinant, like I said, a design to replace the Enforcers. He was supposed to be easier to manipulate. He was, too. Did just what they wanted him to do at Mars Two.”

Hearst unwrapped a foil-covered bonbon, shaking his head. “Golly, that’s awful,” he said. He looked up at Joseph, very stern. “That just proves that our rebellion is long overdue. The Company is without a doubt the most evil and insidious conspiracy ever to wind its tentacles … uh … through the lives of decent, hard working Americans! And other people.”

“You said it, kiddo,” Joseph agreed, wadding some empty frilled cups into a little ball. He put it in his mouth and chewed slowly.

“It must be rooted out.” Hearst slammed his fist down on the table. “The more I learn about what they’ve done … those poor people on Mars … or the way they betrayed Budu, for example, one of the noblest creatures who ever lived … well, I just get so mad I could … could … you’re eating the paper.”

“It tastes nice,” said Joseph.

“We’re getting intoxicated,” Hearst realized.

“That was the point.”

“Oh. Well… I guess that’s what fellows do at a tragic time like this,” Hearst sighed. “I wish
he’d
come down too. We could have a council of war, brainstorm or something …”

“Budu doesn’t do Theobromos,” said Joseph, a little uncomfortably.

“He doesn’t?”

“Not a lot, no.”

“Oh.” Hearst drew back his hand from a chocolate-covered Brazil nut. “Superior self-control, of course. Well. Has he got any more orders for me? Anything I can do?”

“Uh … well, you know those air cargo freighters you’ve got?” Joseph shifted in his chair. “The big jobs you have your groceries and all those antiques flown in with? You’ve got, what, three of ‘em?”

“Three,” Hearst affirmed, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it.

“Can you buy four more? Without it looking funny to Quintilius?”

“Leave it to me,” Hearst said, making a sweeping motion with his hand. “Old ones need refitting and overhaul. Buy new ones to use while old ones are in the shop. There! And then I’ll have a fleet—”

SPECIAL REPORT! SPECIAL REPORT! SPESPESPECIAL REREREPORT!

The urgent voices chattered in midair, the holobeams lit again and thirty channels began broadcasting once more. Joseph groaned and put his head in his hands. Hearst glanced up, alert, as grave reporters introduced staring-numb survivors, or asked gentle stupid questions of weeping relatives. Then an interview from Earth, with a middle-aged woman: grim-faced Mary deWit, chairwoman of the Griffith Family Aarean Trust. It was followed by the scarlet light of the hellish Commerce Square footage.

“Oh, look at that editing,” Hearst exclaimed. “Didn’t that turn out well?”

“That’s probably just what the Company brass are saying right now,” Joseph snarled. Hearst looked horrified, and then his face hardened, became the rigid face of a judgmental god.

“They won’t get away with it,” he vowed. “Mars Two will be avenged!”

“ ‘Remember the
Maine,’
huh?” said Joseph. He looked up to see Hearst nodding solemnly. In his cold blue eyes was the light of absolute certainty, unshakable determination. Joseph felt his skin crawl.

In midair replay the superheated air billowed out, consumed again the hapless victims of Mars Two.

“So you’ve got mortals making your tea for you now,” Sarai remarked, sitting back in the cushions and regarding Suleyman. She was lean and fierce, might have posed for one of the Mazangu pawns. She had been one of his wives, once; she had been many things since, including a priestess of the slave rebellion in Sainte-Domingue, a health-care worker in New Orleans, and a nanny for a British peer living on a yacht in the Caribbean. It had taken Suleyman years to track her down again.

He poured tea in a long stream to make it foam in the glasses. He offered one to Sarai. “I pay them handsomely to do it, too,” he said. “Which has backfired, I’m afraid; I’ve got their cousins and nephews and sons lining up for jobs in my house. They think I’m a money tree. On the other hand, I now have a first-class intelligence network.”

“What do you need an intelligence network for, Suleyman?”

“Because I’ve been fighting a war for three centuries,” said Suleyman. “I’ve just been doing it very quietly. It takes as many resources as the conventional kind, however.”

“You’re a lot wealthier than you were in the old days,” Sarai replied. “Quite a slice of the regional operating budget per annum you must get, eh?”

“A few sound investments. Trust me, I haven’t had much Company assistance in my struggle,” he told her, and set down his glass and folded his hands. “What do you know about Alpha-Omega?” he asked.

She arched her eyebrows at him. She had been resting for three days now, had bathed and slept and eaten and caught up on old times with Nefer and Nan, so she was cushioned against shocks a little better. Still, she was surprised by his question.