The Sons of Heaven (45 page)

The Enforcers, meanwhile, were busily dressing themselves out of the duffels. There was some muttered amusement, even laughter, at the clothing that had been provided for them. Not
uniforms
by any stretch of the imagination, no, in fact all the garments had in common was that they were all triple-X sizes. There were Levis and cotton fleece exercise pants, there were chinos and Bermuda shorts and pinstriped trousers. And the shirts! Pastel Izods, rugby pullovers, long-sleeved oxfords, T-shirts in all colors printed with every possible advertising logo, though there were perhaps more for the Hearst News Services 2348 Company Picnic than any other. It had not been easy to stockpile so many big clothes, in a world where the mortal race had dwindled. There were no shoes available at all.

Having dressed themselves, the Yorkshire contingent was issued field rations and fed, as the transport hurtled on. They were then ordered to draw from their duffels the last items each man had been issued: two lengths of oak, six meters of ramilar cord, two flint nodules, and a hammerstone. It wasn’t necessary to tell them what to do next. To a man, they dropped into a comfortable crouch and their enormous supple hands went to work, expertly knapping stone. With almost no effort the flint axe heads began to take shape.

They were beautiful things, in a horrible kind of way, faceted sharp as razors at one end and blunt and heavy at the other. They took on nearly identical shape in their makers’hands, to the last tiny careful flake, all nine hundred and sixty of them.

They were also nearly identical to all the axes being made at that moment
on all the other transports, all on their different trajectories, all converging on the mountains behind the little town of Garrapatta.

In Garrapatta it was the hour before dawn, and Budu had emerged from his bunker at last. He strode through the lobby of the cultural center and pushed the door open, and there on the Spanish Renaissance steps he stood, peering into the dark morning. He gave a long sigh. Crouching down in the doorway, he reached inside his coat and took out the flints and hammerstone. His lips moved in prayer as he began to fashion his weapons, each exactly like the other, both identical to the weapons being made on the ships he had summoned.

Joseph slunk out behind him and stood shivering in the cold, buttoning up his long coat. He took out a granola bar and ate it, pausing only as he wondered whether he ought to offer Budu any. He decided against it; Budu was praying and probably fasting, too. After licking the last crumbs from the wrapper, he stuck it in his pocket and waited patiently, looking down on the little houses of the mortals.

They were sleeping, the mortals, except for one or two whose kitchen stovepipes were already hot, sending up plumes of steam. Pale moths were drifting in from the night to shelter under the ramshackle eaves, or hovering still over the half-wild gardens where tomato vines straggled up wire towers, scaling them as though fighting off the wild roses, the bright poppies that pressed through the leaning fences. Shrill pleading scream: a moment later a wildcat paced up the path, silent field mouse in its jaws, and the stare of the predator was as blank and dead as the stare of its prey.

Joseph stood there bidding it all good-bye, the village and the gardens, the mortals curled in their blankets or huddling by their stoves.

The sky was paling when Budu stood at last, hefting his axes. “Let’s go,” he said. Joseph nodded and fell into step behind him as they went down the mountain.

They took the speedboat moored at the pier. Budu cast off while Joseph started the motor; they moved out, away from Cape San Martin.

At San Simeon Joseph ran her aground on the beach below the trees. They scrambled out and crossed the deserted highway, the big man loping, the smaller man trotting close after. They picked up speed and disappeared into the trees, and then no mortal could have spotted them as they ascended the enchanted hill.

Hearst’s hands were trembling. He set them flat on the breakfast table and concentrated on calming himself.
Don’t look at the ring
. There was no reason Quintilius should notice the ring, after all. Hearst had been wearing it for months. It was a careful copy of a ring he’d owned a long time ago. Nothing to arouse suspicion.

He took a piece of toast and spread fruit preserves on it, working very hard to keep his movements smooth and casual. That was the way; now could he pour coffee for himself without spilling? Yes, and cream, too. Good boy, Will! You ought to have gone on the stage.

The door opened and Quintilius entered. Was he pale, was he trembling, too?

“Good morning, Quint,” said Hearst, and to his delight his voice was quiet and careless, without so much as a quaver. Why should it quaver? He wasn’t supposed to know it was almost the last morning of the world. “Sorry to get you up so early. I gather you didn’t retire until around three?”

“That’s all right, Mr. Hearst.” Quintilius gave a ghastly smile. “Touch of insomnia.”

“Insomnia,” said Hearst, taking a mouthful of toast. “Say, that’s too bad. You’d think they’d have figured out a way to make us immortals proof against life’s little discomforts, wouldn’t you? Maybe that’s something we can propose at the next stockholder’s meeting, what do you think?”

“Sure, Mr. Hearst,” Quintilius replied, setting something on the table. Hearst looked down at it. Eighteenth-century English silver, a footed bonbon dish. In it, on a paper doily, were arranged a dozen chocolates. All his favorites, from that little company in the Celtic Federation. Ratlin’s.

“Theobromos?” Hearst was even able to sound jovial.

“Mary thought you might like them after your coffee. She said the brandied peaches you wanted aren’t ready. They need another couple of days to be perfect,” said Quintilius, not meeting his eyes. Any qualms Hearst had been feeling fled in that moment. He smiled and rose to his feet.

“Why, that was awfully thoughtful of her,” he said. “You tell her I said so.” And he reached out as though to clap Quintilius on the shoulder in a comradely way, but instead his arm went around the smaller man’s neck. He gripped Quintilius to him with all his immortal strength, and Quintilius, with all an immortal’s adroitness, went writhing out of his grasp; but not before Hearst had managed to turn the bezel on the ring.

Quintilius stared at him from the opposite end of the room, panting, running a self-diagnostic. “You—what did you just do?”

“Shorted out your datalink to the Company,” said Hearst, holding up the hand that wore the ring. “I know what’s in the chocolates, Quint.”

Quintilius went white. “Look, Mr. Hearst, I—”

“You have failed your masters,” said Budu, appearing in the near doorway. He ducked his head and stepped inside, and Joseph appeared behind him. “You betrayed the mortal race. You stand condemned, Preserver.”

Quintilius turned and gaped at him in horror. His eyes widened, his lips drew back from his teeth; a second later he had winked out and the closest window had exploded outward, its glass shattered, its stone mullion broken away.

Budu winked out after him, with a roar like a freight train. A heartbeat later there was a pleading scream from somewhere in the garden, abruptly cut short. Hearst flinched, and Joseph grimaced and closed his eyes. “That could have been me, you know?” he murmured. “I used to get jobs like his all the time.”

Hearst found his mouth was dry. He swallowed and said, “Well, but you had the moral gumption to, uh, stand up and oppose them at last. You did what was right. Quint worked beside me all that time, I trusted him, and then—why, he did just what you said he’d do.” He poked the dish of chocolates uneasily.

A door slammed somewhere below them. They heard a heavy footfall approaching. As it came up through the house, Joseph went to the dish and picked up one of the chocolates, handling it carefully by its paper cup. He scanned it. “Son of a bitch,” he said, in dull surprise. “They
are
full of something. It’s not the virus that disabled Budu, though. Somebody came up with a new approach.”

“ ‘I fear the Greeks when bearing gifts,’“ quoted Hearst. “Did they really think we’re such dumb bozos they could take us out with poisoned candy?”

Joseph shrugged. “It wouldn’t fool me, but I guess they thought you were far enough out of the loop not to suspect.” He turned the chocolate in his fingers, staring at it. “I wonder if Lewis—” He set it down without finishing the sentence and wiped his hand on his coat.

They turned as Budu stepped through the doorway. In his right hand was one of his axes, and hand and axe were red. In his left hand was a fistful of Quintilius’s hair, with the severed head swinging beneath.

Hearst’s eyes widened. He staggered back against the table but said nothing.

“I hid the body in one of the rooms above your pool, Hearst,” Budu informed him.

“The changing rooms?” Hearst stammered.

“Yes. Is there a tour of your house scheduled today?”

“What? Uh—yes.”

“Then give an order that the changing rooms are not to be shown. The water in your pool is a little red, but it circulates through a filter, doesn’t it?”

Hearst nodded. Joseph looked at him and went to a carved and gilded seventeenth-century chest. He lifted the lid, peered inside. “You can stash the head in here,” he suggested. “That’ll buy us time if he managed to get off a distress signal anyway. They’ll have to hunt for the pieces.”

“That was the idea,” said Budu. He lowered the head into the chest. Joseph closed the lid. Budu turned to look at Hearst. “May I use your bathroom?”

Hearst extended a trembling hand and pointed. “Through there.”

“Thank you.”

Budu left the room and Hearst leaned against the table, gasping. Joseph came quickly to his side. “Hey, I know this is a little rough. You understand, though, nobody’s been killed here? Stick that guy’s head back on, give him a couple of months in a repair facility, and he’ll be good as new.”

“Yes,” said Hearst, and he reached out for his coffee and took a gulp. “Yes, I must remember that. And he’d have done the same to me! Wouldn’t he?”

“Worse,” said Joseph grimly. “If you’d eaten any of that Theobromos you might be
really
dead right now, and he’d be smirking as he inventoried your property for the Company.”

“That’s right,” said Hearst, squaring his shoulders. The coldness was returning to his eyes. He took the silver dish and tossed its contents into the fireplace. “This is war, after all.”

As Budu was emerging from the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel, there came a sound mortals wouldn’t have heard; but all three men turned their heads and looked north. “That’ll be the guys from the Mount Tamalpais bunker,” said Joseph. Budu nodded. He looked at Hearst.

“We’ll go to the troop carrier now,” he stated.

“You bet,” said Hearst decisively, and picked up his communicator and ordered an agcar, and ordered further that the Neptune Pool area be off limits for tour parties today. They went down to the grand front steps by one of his secret passages. Hearst emerged alone as the limousine pulled up. He dismissed the driver and got behind the wheel himself. Budu and Joseph crowded in as soon as the driver was out of sight.

They sped through the gates, along the pleasant drive with its orange and lemon trees, and down the hill to Hearst’s private pier where the
Oneida VI
lay anchored.

At the same moment, the cargo door of the first air transport to arrive was opening. They filed out in a long line, the four hundred and thirty-two Enforcers who had been sequestered under Mount Tamalpais, and each one swung a flint axe in either hand. One after another they peered around in the bright morning, got their bearings, and then faded into the California landscape as invisibly as though they had been ninjas, though they had the benefit of neither black suits nor camouflage.

Overland they made their way, down through the mountains and then along the coast, unstoppably advancing on their programmed coordinates. Nobody saw them.

The gateman at the pier entrance did notice them, as they streamed from the woods and ran past; but Mr. Hearst had told him he was hosting a party for marathon joggers, and they weren’t to be stopped. The gateman observed their enormous size, their inhuman faces. He withdrew into his booth and thought very hard about how well Mr. Hearst paid him, and in the end decided he couldn’t have seen anything out of the ordinary. He reopened his Totter Dan game and spent the rest of the afternoon intent on improving his score.

The
Oneida VI
waited patiently at the end of the pier. She was a vast and stately fusion craft, less rakish of line and more tastefully furnished than the
Captain Morgan
, and she had, up until this moment, been put to much more dignified and law-abiding uses. She had an immense banquet room and ballroom, and a cargo hold capacious enough to receive any thirteenth-century Italian monasteries to which Hearst might take a fancy while abroad.

He stood now between Joseph and Budu, watching openmouthed as the line of giants came thundering along the pier.

“Sir!” The first Enforcer to step aboard saluted Budu. “Squad Commander Joshua reporting for duty, sir!”

“Take your men below,” Budu told him. “Tell them there’ll be a briefing when we’re under way. When all personnel are aboard, report to me with your lieutenant.”

“Sir yes sir!”

“This is unbelievable,” Hearst murmured to Joseph. “Look at them. Goliaths, every one! How on earth were they trapped in those bunkers by mere mortals?”

“They trusted the Company,” said Joseph sadly. “And I don’t think they ever understood just how much they frightened their masters.”

“They understand now,” remarked Budu, chuckling.

The wind changed, a summer fog came rolling in to obscure the coast, and the Enforcers kept coming. The Sangre de Christos contingent arrived, and then the two ships from Norway and Siberia arrived at nearly the same moment, having taken polar routes. Hour after hour the big men came running, appearing suddenly out of the fog like flat-headed gods in aloha shirts, so bizarre that the few mortal motorists who spotted them along Highway 1 resolutely refused to believe their eyes. Later the Yorkshire group arrived, and later still the group from the Pyrenees. The men from the bunker near Fez were the last.