The Sons of Heaven (40 page)

“Is it indeed?”Tiara sniffed, retreating farther. “Well, let me tell you this—” And then she turned and slithered down the culvert, fast and frantic as a little eel, but the big eel came rippling after her.

Then it was all roots, and black slime and fumbling over ridged pipe, and
the gasping harsh echoes filling the narrow space, and far ahead the tiny white window to make for, and her little heart pounded and the heroines cheered her on. WOULD SHE MAKE IT??? But his old fingers were around her ankle like a loop of wire as she burst at last into clean air and moonlight.

Uncle Ratlin pulled. She fell face-forward into black water and was writhing around, turning to bite him—

When the whole world exploded!

The huge thing squealed loud enough to wake the dead, it started back on sharp hooves and sank in the place where it had been quietly drinking; then advanced menacingly, murder in its little red eyes, and its black-bristled back was like a ridge of mountains against the moon.

Tiara and Uncle Ratlin froze, staring at it. “Oh shite,” breathed Uncle Ratlin, which wasn’t a very elegant thing to say at such a dramatic moment, but Tiara silently agreed with him.

Now with the presence of mind that made her a heroine of true distinction, Tiara moved her leg back, as though to retreat into Uncle Ratlin’s clutches, and he slacked his tight hold on her heel, which she then booted hard in his old face, bash, so his lip split and he saw stars. In a dazzling second move she used the impetus of her kick to shoot forward like an apple seed spurted between finger and thumb, pop, under the onrushing monster and flying up the high bank on the far side.

And she heard, from the hazel branch where she’d lighted, she heard the deafening bang as the pig hit the mouth of the culvert and stuck there, working its shoulders as it tried to squeeze down into the darkness after Uncle Ratlin.

Tiara stayed up there the rest of the night, until the moon had set and the gray dawn was coming out of the east, and dewfall pearled on her bare skin. At first she sang little wild songs of triumph to congratulate herself, as the pig grunted and screamed after what it couldn’t get. After a while it pulled out and trotted away, disgusted, and then Tiara fell silent. She thought of Uncle Ratlin perhaps waiting on the other side of the bridge; she thought of her slave waiting for her, wondering where she was. Worst of all was when she remembered what Uncle Ratlin had told her about the Ruin! Had it fallen yet? Had Suleyman gotten her slave’s warning in time? She must tell her slave what she’d learned.

But she didn’t dare come down until she was sure Uncle Ratlin had gone back to the hill, and that wasn’t until the last stars had faded away and the terrible light was coming. No cool clouds to protect her from the fire of day this
morning, no polarized goggles either. At last she slipped down from the hazel and ran home, making a green trail across the gray dew fields of high summer.

And it was already too late.

For even as she paused in the heather and looked around before slipping into the dark, the first of the agtrucks was roaring along the road from Knockdoul, and she saw the others behind it, two and three and four and five as the slave had taught her to count. What a lot of traffic for this country lane, wasn’t it?

But blowing and blasting they came to a halt and settled just at the base of the hill, and Tiara had a panoramic view of what happened next.

It was just what the Memory had always said would happen, the towering figures in their armor piling out, running with weapons, out of sight round the flank of the hill. Tiara knew where they were going: to the main entrance, where perhaps Uncle Ratlin had just crawled home to bed.

With a quavering scream she scrambled inside and ran down the corridor, faster than ever she’d fled Uncle Ratlin or the pig, and leaped into the bone room and slammed the door after herself. “Princess?” Her slave raised his head where he’d been sitting in the dark, rocking himself back and forth in his worry. “What is it, child?”

She ran to him and flung her arms around his neck, trying to hide from the terror. He held her close and heard her blood thundering in her veins.

“What’s happened?” he said. “You’re frightened! We’ll be all right—”

That was when the first of the explosions came, the dull
BOOM
that started the bone room door on its hinges. The slave was on his feet instantly, lifting Tiara with him. “What’s that?” he demanded, in the clearest and sharpest voice with which she could ever remember him speaking. It nerved her enough to gulp back her sobs and cry: “The big men have come! They’re breaking into the hill, they’re killing us!”

There were shouts now, and thin high screaming, and the keening of weapons. Another explosion puffed air into the bone room, air with a faint acrid smoke that made Tiara choke and cough.

The slave’s grip on her tightened. “You won’t die,” he promised her. “Oh, for two good arms—or my sight, for that matter. We’ve got to get out of here.” He set her down. “Lead me, beloved. Point me the way we’re to go. If you fall, I’ll carry you. Now!”

She took his hand and they stumbled out into the corridor. There was a horror of red light in the tunnel, filling up the way toward the exit. There was a thunder of boots and shouting. Tiara whimpered and turned, dragging the slave
with her deeper into the warren, back into the darkness and the ancient trash, back where the Memory told her to go, where Getaway was.

But they were pursuing, the dreadfuls, the
cyborgs
who somehow hadn’t succumbed to the Ruin after all, who weren’t dropping in the disruptor fields as they ought to, who were impossibly defeating her people again.

There it was, the smooth silver side of
The Flee
. Trembling she found the portal and smacked her little palm on the access panel, twice and three times, would it never open?

“Princess?”The slave was gasping. “Where are we? What is this?”

“It’s
The Flee,”
she cried in relief as the door unscrewed itself. “We’ll be safe in here! Come, my own.” She pulled the slave through after her even as the smoke came belching in strangling gusts, as big boots crashed, kicking aside bones and garbage to get through, and a dark shape was looming against the red light, so tall—

But here came more tumult and concussion from the other side of them as well, from within the ship. She heard screams and whinnyings from the stupids who were crowding in at a far door and a cawing voice that could only be Uncle Ratlin, and another voice nearly forgotten and dearly hated, countermanding Uncle Ratlin—

“Oh God Apollo, that’s
him—”
babbled the slave. “Oh no, no, not again—”

The door was irising shut so slowly—

And the shouting from the tunnel resolved itself into one word, being shouted over and over by the big man who rushed forward through the redness, close enough now to be heard clearly:

“LEWIS!”

The slave’s head came up and snapped around.

“What—”

The door was irising shut—

And Tiara saw what the slave could not, the lean black face raging, glimpsed only a second before the door sealed itself, as the voice yelled:

“LEWIS! IT’S LATIF!”

It might be reasonably supposed that the cyborg child, with his naturally augmented intelligence, would be free of the complex neuroses developed by mortal children; yet such is far from the case. This is particularly noticeable if the child is the recipient of memory files from a previous state of being. Unresolved issues of anger, abandonment, or guilt—most particularly the latter—may confer an adult burden of emotion the young cyborg’s psyche is incapable of easily integrating. As might be expected, the cyborg child will not resort to the rudimentary bad behaviour in which traumatised mortal children engage. He will develop far more colourful, imaginative, and complicated complexes with which to engage his concerned parents’ attention.

Turquoise blue lagoon and palm-shaded white sand, and, rising beyond the green trees, Paradise in progress. The nearly-completed mansion lifts pearly spires to the morning sunlight, defying any recognized architectural convention, but undeniably impressive. In the vast garden careful terraces have been built, and little fruit trees planted there. Roses are in their first bloom, along palm-shaded walks. In a meadow under the green mountain
Mays mendozaii
waves abundantly, quite refusing to produce lysine at the desired levels.

In a beach chair, Father—in white linen suit, with trousers perfectly pressed—makes notes on a text plaquette. Mother wears a light summer gown, sort of a Jane Austen number, and is leaning against his knees. Beside her, bowing deferential from the waist, a big horribly black-bearded image of a man (butler, perhaps? Father’s regimental batman?) has just offered her a glass of champagne from the tray carried by his servounit. The Black Dyke
Mills Band wafts from a speaker, playing something sentimental scored for French horns.

The six-year-old twins wear matching white sailor suits. With buckets and spades, they are putting the finishing touches on a model, sculpted in sand, of the Tomb of Mausolus. Beyond them, above the tideline, are others of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Pyramids. The Temple of Diana at Ephesus. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Temple of Zeus at Olympia. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

“That only leaves the Colossus of Rhodes,” says Nicholas.

“I know,” says Alec. “Let’s build the harbor first.”

The problem of keeping water in a scale model of the harbor at Rhodes—let alone water in a sandcastle’s moat—presents no difficulty to the Cyborg Child; he merely lines it with sandwich paper under a thin layer of sand. Nicholas trudges back with a bucketful of water and fills the harbor. Boats are handily constructed from twigs and leaves, and given sandwich-paper sails.

“I don’t think we can manage a Colossus,” says Nicholas, surveying their handiwork.

Giggling, Alec rises from his hands and knees. “Yes, we can. Watch!” He tosses aside his hat, pulls off his clothes, and stands naked over the little harbor. “There!” Nicholas giggles too, somewhat shamefacedly.

“Now, watch this!” Alec runs over and finds a pair of dry twigs. Returning, he sets the two twigs together; his hands blur a moment in hyperfunction, and then there is a puff of smoke and a tiny flame. He leans down and carefully holds it to one of the leaf-and-twig boats, until it catches. “Oh, no! There’s a fire in the galley! It’s spreading to the triremes! It’s only 282
BCE
and Rhodes doesn’t have a fire department! What’ll we do?”

“You’re not—”

“Apollo to the rescue!” says Alec, and, like Lemuel Gulliver, puts the fire out.

“Oh, that’s childish,” says Nicholas in disgust.

“Well, so what?” says Alec. “We happen to be children.”

“But we were men,” Nicholas says, looking sadly across at Mendoza.

“So I’m informed,” says Alec. “That was then, and if I could remember anything about it I’m sure I’d be as bothered as you are, but the fact is, I don’t. Yes, there was this guy named Alec Checkerfield once. Yes, he screwed up in his life, in some really awful way which I’m glad I don’t remember. And then he died. Deadward killed him. Got what he deserved, probably.
I’m
somebody else, somebody new and improved.”

Nicholas shakes his head. “Don’t you remember the Library?”

“Nope! Nothing really much before that day I fell down the hill and hit my head on a rock,” says Alec, studying the tiny harbor at his feet.

“Nobody believes that story, you know,” says Nicholas.

“Yes, they do!”Alec’s raised voice draws the attention of Edward and Mendoza, who turn to stare. He strikes a pose. “Hey, Deaddy, Mendoza, look! The Colossus of Rhodes!”

“Put your clothes back on at once,” says Edward. Mendoza has hidden her face in her hands, shaking with laughter.

“See?” Alec steps into his underpants and pulls them up.
“They
thought I was funny. I’m a child. Deaddy and Mendoza love me, the Captain loves me, we have a family and this cool island to live on, and life is good. Why worry about anything else?”

“You have nightmares sometimes,” says Nicholas.

“Don’t remember ‘em,” says Alec, buttoning up his trousers. “Anyway, you get nightmares, too. Let’s talk about
you
, Nicky. Why were you crying in the night? No, don’t punch me; Deaddy will come over here and lecture you about the Cyborg Child being above temper tantrums. What’s at the root of Nicholas Bell-Fairfax’s neurosis?”

“I’m Nicholas Harpole!” Nicholas clenches his fists.

“Whatever. Why
were
you crying?”

“Because I had the dream again,” says Nicholas.

“Ah! The dream with the Frankenstein symbolism,” says Alec, as his fair tousled head emerges from the neck of his shirt. “And how does that make you feel, Nicky?”

“It wasn’t Victor Frankenstein, you knave,” says Nicholas. “It wasn’t. I don’t know who he was, except he was the one who killed his own garden. He killed everything that touched him.”

“Sounds like Jehovah to me,” says Alec cheerily, sitting down to pull on his stockings and boots.

“Stop it,” says Nicholas. He turns and stares out at the sea. It is a serene and warm tropical sea, but he remembers the black frozen ocean from his dream, the white waste and the broken boats of all who had come before him to that silent place. He sees again the dead men frozen on their knees, in unanswered prayer, mocked by the wind singing in frozen shrouds and sheets, their masts toppled by the stars they’d crossed.

Alec leaps to his feet, frightened by the look in Nicholas’s eyes. “I’m
bored!” he announces, and races down to the water’s edge and begins to dance back and forth. “Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down, I am feared in field and town! Goblin! Lead them up and down!”

But they are spirits of another sort. This is their immortal family life, in all its bittersweet strangeness, for all its charm and sunlight never free of the possibility of heartbreak. You might mistake them for mortals. Except…