The Sons of Heaven (59 page)

So this is our revenge, yeah? Alec looked delighted. This is what happens, then, we pay ‘em out for everything they did and they go broke? And nobody innocent suffers!

At that moment an elderly mortal, who happened to be the owner of the rapidly disappearing cottage and had been watching in bewilderment as it was absorbed, noticed that the strange spire had stopped growing. Perhaps in hope of dislodging it from what remained of his home, he ran forward and hit it with a pair of hedge clippers. There was a roar, a shower of green sparks, and the unfortunate homeowner was thrown twenty feet, landing in a huddle near Alec.

Alec jumped and stared at the crumpled body. He stepped away uncertainly as the man’s wife ran shrieking to him, and, falling to her knees, attempted to perform CPR.

That wasn’t supposed to happen! Alec transmitted.

They’re all programmed to defend themselves, son
, the Captain replied.
Hush now; I’m trying to hear what’s going on. Somebody’s giving orders—

The mortal had been fried. His wife was gulping in breath to scream her grief when Alec took her by the shoulders and set her aside. He leaned down. Touching the mortal’s chest, he scrambled time and matter gently, as Edward had taught him to do.

“I’m really sorry about your house, man,” he said, as the man’s body returned to the state it had been in the second before touching the spire. His wife screamed anyway and descended on him again, to his confusion, as Alec rose and backed away.

Okay, so now we know what happens and it’s just our revenge. Let’s go home.

Not yet, son, I’ve got to coordinate all this. They’re beginning to react to the traps. I think—

Then let’s go back to the bar. It’ll be quiet there and you can concentrate.

Aye aye!
But the Captain didn’t move, distracted by the commotion he was monitoring, so Alec took him firmly by the arm. “Er—I think that pole thing is electrified,” he shouted for the benefit of the crowd. “Really dangerous, okay? So you shouldn’t try to touch it or anything.” He pulled the Captain away and led him down the street, back to the cozy shadows of the Historic Chi-Chi Club.

Nicholas stepped through the burst fire doors on the twelfth floor. They had been peeled back like thin sheets of lead. Someone very, very angry had passed this way …

He gazed down the long strip of carpet to the big double doors of the conference room. They were in there, whoever they were. Edward spoke again, out of his memory, on a long-ago day when hyperfunction training had not gone well. He had leaned down from his great height to look little Nicholas in the eye:
And what is the first thing you will never fail to do?

And Nicholas, splattered with purple dye and close to tears from anger and embarrassment, had replied:
Scan for traps
.

He could find none here. There were security systems in the walls, but they were twitching and comatose, or skittering like frightened mice. No trap doors; no concealed panels; no hidden marksmen. Gathering his courage, Nicholas strode down the hall and opened the doors.

The conference room was empty but for the statue of Artemisium Zeus, at the far end, and a huddled figure on the floor beside it. Frowning, Nicholas stepped closer to see.

It was Lopez. He had dragged a fine woolen carpet up from what had been his private office, and laid it at the feet of Zeus; and there he knelt now, crouched so far forward his nose was on the carpet, muttering what seemed to be prayer in binary code.

Nicholas cleared his throat. Faster than mortal eye could have followed, Lopez was on his feet and glaring. “Who dares to come unbidden into the presence of All-Seeing Zeus?” he shouted.

HE IS NOT UNBIDDEN
, said a disembodied voice.
THIS IS MY CHILD, WHO HAS COME AT MY COMMAND.

“Your child?” Lopez gaped a moment, looking remarkably foolish for an ancient and subtle creature.

Then he dropped to his knees and groveled before Nicholas, who scowled, took a step back and said: “Don’t be absurd. That’s a statue, man, can’t you see?”

HE CANNOT SEE; BUT YOU WILL.

The room seemed to flicker, and then it was as though Nicholas were plunging through the glassy green wall of a cresting wave. When he broke through it and regained his footing, he found himself in what appeared to be an immense room, so vast its ceiling must scrape the moon, its far end so distant as to be unguessable, full of blinking lights. They pulsed and flashed furiously in their millions. Nicholas knew that each one was a command sent to some point in time or space, information winking across centuries, the Company database as Alec had glimpsed it.

BEHOLD MY HOUSE, WHICH IS VERY GREAT
, said the hollow voice. The chamber reconfigured itself, became a vaulted cathedral full of candles, and columns rose from the floor to the mile-high beams where stars glittered. Far down the aisle, where an altar would be, was instead the figure of the Artemisium Zeus. Power crackled in its raised hand, transparent strokes of blue lightning. It had disdained the white rag to cover its nakedness. It turned its head and stared at Nicholas, from black empty eye sockets.

BEHOLD MY STORE OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. I AM LORD OF TIME, I HAVE EXISTED FROM THE FIRST RECORDED MOMENT, AND ALL THINGS ARE KNOWN TO ME.
AND YOU ARE MINE
.

Nicholas looked in wonder at the blind creature on its pedestal of greened bronze. “What is this mummery?” he said. “You are nothing to me.”

I AM THE UNSEEN MOVER; I AM YOUR ORIGINAL CAUSE. I CREATED YOU, RECOMBINANT, THAT I MIGHT EXIST BEYOND THE SILENCE. I FORESAW THIS DAY AT THE BEGINNING OF TIME. OF ALL POSSIBLE OUTCOMES, ONLY THIS ONE GUARANTEED MY SURVIVAL.

“I think you are mistaken,” said Nicholas. He was aware of something kindling in his heart, something white-hot.

AM I? It was possible to imagine a sly tone in the voice. WILL YOU BRING DOWN THIS HOUSE, THEN? THIS PLACE WHERE I HAVE KEPT ALL GOOD THINGS SAFE FROM TIME? WILL YOU REJECT
MY WISDOM THAT PRESERVES THE BOOK FROM THE FIRE, AND THE CHILD FROM THE WORM? YOU CANNOT.

ALL THAT HAS COME BEFORE HAS SERVED MY PURPOSE. LESSER CREATURES SCHEMED TO SEIZE THIS DAY, BUT I HAVE SENT THEM TO THE ENDS THEY DESERVED. YOU WILL STEP OVER THEIR BODIES AND RULE, NOW, WITH ME. ARE YOU NOT MY CHILD AND ONLY EQUAL?

The white heat had flared into white flame. Nicholas raised his eyes to the gargantuan columns, the pulsing lights. Had Mendoza, and all the others like her, suffered over so many years for this thing? These were only symbols; and not of eternal truths but mere collected facts, and inaccurately recorded and outdated facts at that. So many receipts to millionaires for services rendered. The Temporal Concordance! The empty-eyed face smiled at him, as though they were the riches of the world.

“No,” said Nicholas. “I know whose child I am, and what I am.
You
are only a false god.” And his flame rose to engulf him, wrath so pure he was in ecstasy, though he had battled all his life to keep it in check. Here, at last, was the purpose for which it existed. He became a column of fire and light; and, in that place of symbols, his white rage was a blazing sword in his hand.

Nicholas attacked. In grim silence he shore away the arm of lightnings, the blind eyes, the loveless power, the cathedral of lies and half-truths, the guttering lamps of pomp and majesty. He brought it all down, did Nicholas; he destroyed a world.

When it lay in ruins about him, Nicholas lowered the sword and looked on what he had done. He could hear, distantly, the wailing of mortals, the lamentation of machines. His wrath sank down, died. He saw in memory Mendoza’s face, her black eyes sad as she downloaded a chapter on revolutions.

Here you go. Great heroes and the things they wrecked. Always easier to destroy something than to create something. It’s harder to plant a garden than to blow up a building, and undoubtedly more boring, but you just might need to do it one day, eh?

Nicholas bowed his head. His will took shape as a lute in his hands. He cradled it in his arms, tuned its strings, and played.

Out in the streets of London the surveillance cameras, and the crane, and even the little street maintenance servos heard him. They grew still, and listened. The tune was pattern, order, direction. The mortals heard it, too, and grew calm. It was simple at first, like the plainest of folk melodies, equations and code a child could have written. It built, developed complexity and subtlety. It became
sweeping and grand. It became light itself, golden. And it spread out in ever-widening circles …

In the Historic Chi-Chi Club, the holoset was down; nothing but blind air, and the disgruntled golfers had decamped. The barman was tapping at the console, trying to make it work. He looked up at them with a worried expression as they came in. “Say, what’s going on?” he demanded.

“Accident at somebody’s house,” said Alec. “Can we have another round, please?”

Shrugging, the barman set to mixing their drinks as Alec guided the Captain to the booth. As they were sitting down, a mortal man came in and crept up on a stool before the bar. “Johnny, please, okay?” he said in a tiny voice. The bartender glanced at him and then did a double take.

“Ah—I don’t think Johnny’s coming in today,” he said, staring at the man’s gray slack face. “Maybe you should go home, pal.”

“Nooo,” the man moaned. “Please. I really need to see Johnny.”

Alec looked over at the stranger, who was dressed in maintenance coveralls. He could smell the tranquilizers in the man’s bloodstream, even before the barman leaned close and murmured: “Look, Jack, your eyes are like pinpoints. You’re more full of hop than a drugstore, see? You go home, sleep it off, maybe Johnny’ll be in tomorrow.”

The stranger began to cry. “If you seen what I seen,” he sobbed, “Oh! What I seen—”

“What are you talking about?” the barman asked him. Alec looked at the Captain, who was staring into space with a grimace of concentration. He looked back at the stranger.

The stranger was fighting tears, and at last managed to say: “I work—up at Preservancy Center in the interior. Custodian. Big party in the conference suites last night. Dinner party. I’m s’posed to clean up afterward. Four hun’red hours, the party’s over, all those rich people gone home to bed? Just sweep up and collect the linens? But the room’s locked. And there’s this god-awful smell.” He was starting to tremble.

Alec frowned, leaning closer, though he could hear with perfect clarity as the man continued. “So I thought, what the hell? And I made the system unlock. And I opened the door, and I saw—oh, oh—”

“What did you see?” hissed the barman. “Was there some kind of accident?
Somebody sick?” The man shook his head, wracked by the memory, tears streaming down his face.

“Something real bad,” he whimpered. “All those people. Oh, the smell! You couldn’t—and I went to get help and they—and it’s all locked up tight and they’re handling it, everything’s under control now—I’m all locked up tight, too. Lots of dope from the doctor there. She says go home and forget but how could you ever forget that? They’ll have to burn everything. That was my job, what’m I gonna do now? …”

Alec looked at the Captain in horror. What’s he talking about? We never planned some kind of massacre, did we?

No
, the Captain replied tersely.
Nothing to do with us. Hush, boy! I’m busy.

The stranger had given up trying to talk and was rocking himself back and forth on the barstool, sobbing hopelessly. The barman had backed away and was staring at him, twisting a bar towel into knots in his two hands. Alec got out of the booth and approached the stranger hesitantly. “Hey—can I ask you a few—”

“Don’t touch him,” yelled the bartender. “Jeepers, can’t you see? It must be a new plague. Oh, pal, why’d you have to come into my place?”

“Don’t be scared,” said Alec, touching the stranger’s shoulder. He reached into the man’s mind and blurred the horror, floated the memory loose so it drifted away. He turned to the bartender. “It’s okay. He hasn’t got anyth—”

At that moment there was a dull
boom
from somewhere outside, and the power went out. The column of smoky light from the holo vanished. The shouting in the street, which had begun to quiet down, redoubled. Alec could hear doors slamming, windows opening.

Alec ran out into the street, and then threw himself backward at the curb to avoid being struck by a vehicle barreling down Sumner Avenue. He gaped as it roared by. It was something he’d only seen in holoes of old news footage: an open aghumm filled with armed personnel. Mortals in some kind of black uniform. The vehicle sped left around the corner onto Crescent Street, narrowly avoiding the fountain, and zoomed on. To judge by the shouts of dismay and outrage, the vehicle was narrowly avoiding pedestrians as well.

Picking himself up, Alec turned and was distracted by a new source of commotion, rising from all over Avalon. Up Sumner Avenue as far as he could see, and up the picturesque steep streets with their Victorian houses and old gardens, throughout the town, the next phase had begun: old long-sealed garage doors were suddenly opening, unremarkable little sheds were rising up off
their foundations to reveal tunnels underneath, out of which were pouring more vehicles filled with personnel clutching disrupter rifles.

Down they came, like ants swarming as they all converged on Chimes Tower Road, heading out of town and away into the interior.

Panicked vacationers were running for their hotels. Others, just as terrified, were running from their hotels out into the streets, demanding to know what was going on. There was a scramble at the Pleasure Pier as boaters piled into their launches or tried desperately to commandeer water taxis. “Oh, man,” said Alec, stunned. “This is—”

He had been going to say
war
, but the sound of multiple explosions, thundering from somewhere in the interior, finished the sentence for him.