The Sons of Heaven (18 page)

“Like the banquet you held at Cliff House,” said Victor quietly.

“Eh?”

“The night before the 1906 earthquake, in San Francisco.”

“Yes! Just so. And, this is the really original part, a grand musical menu! All the selections to accompany our meal will partake of Doomsday. We’ll want a good recording of the
Dies Irae
, and the climactic scenes from
Damnation of Faust
and
Don Giovanni
—and of course that piece by Libbens with the clever name.”

“Die Liebestod von Adolf und Eva,” said Victor
.

“Exactly. I’ll leave the rest of it up to your discretion. You’re generally clever at arranging these things.” Labienus waved a hand. “And as for the guest list—all the chief leaders of the Disloyal Opposition, naturally. Dear old Aegeus himself at the head of the table. No mortals, I need hardly mention; the Board of Directors can be taken out later, at our leisure. The servants will all be our own. Armed security techs, every one of them.”

“Armed, sir?” Victor raised an eyebrow. “Surely you don’t mean armed with disrupters.”

“Don’t be obtuse! Even stuffed full of dinner, Aegeus could dodge a disrupter beam. I’ve seen him do it.” Labienus smiled at the memory. “No; simply with carving knives. Close-quarters grappling, a few slashed throats, a few expert beheadings before they regain function. A mere matter of numbers carrying
the day. We might do anything with them then. Might even revive some of them, after we’ve taken over and completed the extermination! They’ll have to admit they were given an imaginative evening’s entertainment and a damned fine meal. Once they’ve got over their pique at losing, they’ll agree it was all for the best.”

“Brilliantly clever, sir,” said Victor. “What a sense of style you have. Had you contemplated a suitable location? Here, perhaps, or Transylvania? Or the Paris Opera House?”

“No, it’ll have to be Catalina Island,” said Labienus with a sigh. “Shame, really, but timing will count for a good deal; we’ll need to go straight to the command center after we dispose of the opposition. We’ll still have the final stages of the plan to oversee, after all. All the same, I think you’ll manage to dress up the banquet facility there. Won’t you? Use your imagination.”

“Of course, sir.”

“But start now,” Labienus admonished him. “I shouldn’t think it’ll be easy finding the ingredients for an old-fashioned feast in this day and age, let alone a mortal who can prepare one. At least it’ll divert you from dwelling on the Silence. Don’t disappoint me, Victor! I want that night to become a legend in itself.”

“It will, sir,” Victor replied. “You may rely on me.”

“He wants a banquet, does he?” speculated Aegeus. “Well, points on style, I must say. Though I do think this proves what I’ve always said: he’s mad as a hatter.”

He pivoted sharply in his chair to look as a sudden gust sent rain cascading down the leaded windows behind him. Rain, and then hail, so much the tiny knobs and balls of ice rattled like a firing squad. The faceted crystals of the chandelier winked in the gray light, reflecting the tumult beyond the glass.

“Regrettably, some of us do go mad,” said Victor.

“The defectives do,” Aegeus told him. “Those of us with any strength of character seem to keep perfect hold of our wits. Very well! We’ll give him his dinner party. We’ll even help with the catering. If I’m to endure an attempt on my life I’d just as soon enjoy a hearty meal first, wouldn’t you? But we’ll turn the tables on him in that little matter of throat-cutting. He’s appointed you to manage everything; you’ll just see to it that the techs on duty are loyal to
us
, and target his people instead.”

“With carving knives?” said Victor.

“Why not?” Aegeus watched the storm. “Brutal, but undeniably effective. Labienus wouldn’t have got as far as he has if he didn’t have flashes of genius now and then. It won’t serve him this time, however. I’ll see his head on a pike before the night’s out, Zeus Kosmetas be my witness!”

“No inquiry before a tribunal?”Victor inquired, shifting in his chair. It was gilt, seventeenth-century, exquisite, and quite uncomfortable.

“Come, come, Victor, when would we find the time for a trial?” said Aegeus, smiling in disbelief. “No. It’ll be quick and dirty, and so much the better, if you ask me. With the blood on his hands, he deserves a worse fate. All those poor little mortals! How many millions would you say he’s murdered, he and his people? You ought to have a pretty good idea, poor fellow. You’ve been obliged to watch most of his crimes.”

“I’d have no difficulty cutting his throat myself,” said Victor, folding his gloved hands. “Will I be permitted?”

“I’d say you’ve earned it,” Aegeus told him, smiling. There was a blinding flash and then a long roll of thunder that set the chandelier pendants tinkling. “Ha! There you are. Divine Zeus sounds his approval.”

“How nice for us all,” said Victor. The thunder grumbled away into nothing; the hail was stopping now, leaving an unnatural quiet in its place. Aegeus leaned back in his chair, studying Victor.

“I know this has all been hard on you, of course,” he said carefully. “You’ve been outrageously used. When all this is over—perhaps there’ll be something we can do for you.”

Victor lifted his head and stared.
“Perhaps?”

“I’m sure it’s possible to rewrite your programming,” said Aegeus. “I can’t promise anything, of course, but I do think the chances are good we can reverse what was done to you.” Victor nodded, not taking his eyes from Aegeus. Aegeus looked away. “How’s that poor fellow at Suleyman’s, the one they found buried in the submarine?” he inquired. “He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”

“An acquaintance,” said Victor. “He’s in a repair facility. May be there for years. He was in appalling shape, unfortunately; quite unable to tell us what happened. His wife is with him now.”

“Wife?” Aegeus lifted an eyebrow. “An immortal marrying another immortal? I’ve heard of that happening, but it seems so ill-advised. You know,
till death us do part?
We’d have no chance of escape at all!”

He laughed heartily, and Victor smiled. Another torrent of ice water swept against the windows, so that they fogged and clouded, dimmed the light on all the silk and gilt and silver. It might have been the ballroom of some doomed luxury liner; briefly Victor saw it tilting, tilting in its last moment before slipping down into eternal darkness.

“I’d like to introduce one of our best and brightest,” said Freestone with pride. “Francis Chatterji!”

Chatterji, resplendent in an early twentieth-century tuxedo and cape any vampire would covet, stood in his place and smiled. The investors nodded at him gravely, but Bugleg stared and cried: “You’re dressed weird.”

Freestone glared at him—Chatterji was
his
protégé—and some of the investors snickered, but Chatterji smiled again and nodded.

“Yes, sir, that’s correct. I’m an Eccentric, but I’ve compensated.”

“And compensated very well!” added Freestone. “It might interest you to know, Bugleg, that many of our most productive idea persons are Eccentrics.”

“You have to put up with that in creative types,” growled Telepop. A lot of worries had descended on his head in the last twelve years, not least of which was wondering what was going to happen in 2355. “Well, Chatterji, what do you do?”

“I work with the stuff of history, sir,” Chatterji replied. “The actual events. Our committee solves problems relating to the Company’s day-to-day activities in the past and provides our operatives with the means to accomplish their objectives. It, er, helps to have a detailed knowledge of things like—well, people’s clothes, and their inventions, and what they ate and drank and everything.”

“Is that why you wear those clothes?” demanded Rappacini. Chatterji looked apologetic.

“Actually I find it really does help me fix on the past. I can focus on it more easily if I’m not all surrounded by modern artifacts. Things,” he added for the benefit of those present who didn’t know what an artifact was.

“And he’s come up with a brilliant new
conceptualization
of the past,” crowed Freestone, throwing an arch glance at Bugleg. “Tell them, Chatterji.”

“Well—it wasn’t me alone, really—” Chatterji demurred. “We found that
things worked much more smoothly if, instead of trying to relate to the past as though it were this, er, long straight ribbon stretching back into darkness, that we had to smooth the wrinkles out of—well, think of it instead as a sort of picture puzzle. You see? All the pieces are already there and we know what it’s supposed to look like. What we have to do is figure out the best and most efficient way to put them all together.”

“Fabulous,” cried Hapsburg, who had no idea what he was talking about. “You see? It pays to recruit geniuses.” The other investors nodded in agreement.

“And then, you see, it’s also a little bit like chess, because you’ve also got your operatives that you can move around to do things for you in the past, which is their environment,” Chatterji explained.

“So this is … a new invention?”Telepop wanted to know.

“No,” replied Chatterji, “it’s a new way of looking at temporal physics, which provides a better means of dealing with the temporal paradox of sequential/simultaneous eventuality.” He lost them completely with that, he could tell. He held out his hands and added brightly, “And it cuts overhead costs by sixty percent!”

“Oh,” said Roche. “Wonderful. We’re lucky to have people like you, Chatterton.”

“What are you working on right now?” Rossum wanted to know.

“We’re sort of… to use the idea of a puzzle again, you could say what we’re doing is sorting through the box and, er, picking out all the pieces with straight edges,” said Chatterji. “Trying to establish a frame within which we can work, you see? And then we feel we’ll be in a good position to tackle the prehistory problem. That’s seeing if we can work out a way to deal with that Great Goat Cult thing.”

“Will that be hard?” Roche looked concerned.

“We don’t think so. I mean obviously we’ve already solved the problem, temporally speaking; we just need to figure out when and how, and then do it.”

“Okay,” said Rossum dubiously.

“We’ve made up a five-year timetable, and we’ve got our best people working on it,” Chatterji told him, a little defensive. “All projections indicate we’ll bring it in under budget, too.”

“Of course you will,” said Freestone. “We have the greatest confidence in our young people, Chatterji. Please, sit down.”

Chatterji sank into his chair and half rose for a moment, adjusting his cape.
Lopez, smooth and unobtrusive, set a glass of water at his elbow and he grabbed the glass and drank gratefully. “New business?” Hapsburg asked.

“Yes, new business. What do you have for us, Lopez?” inquired Freestone.

“The report concerning our holdings on Mars,” said Lopez. “As you’re no doubt all aware, Areco has just filed suit against the Martian Agricultural Collective, claiming they have failed to meet the terms of the original settlement contract which will expire at midnight on 31 Christmas, 2351…”

Everyone present made a face. What was going to happen in Mars Two in six years’ time was, sadly, well known to the board members, and the topic caused stress levels to rise in all those present except Telepop, who was already stressed out and preoccupied with a paradox of his own: how
The Revenge of the Cyborg Virgins
, despite being one of the highest-grossing releases in history, had still failed to turn a profit.

When Bugleg left the meeting he followed his usual procedure: he let the cyborg driver take him to his apartment warren, where he climbed out and hastened to the aglift. When he got in, however, he rode it
down
to the garage floor below and emerged again. Blinking around fearfully he went out to the mounting block, where a big sleek car waited. The door swung open and Ratlin grinned at him. “Get in.”

Bugleg looked around, pulling a pair of sun goggles from his coat pocket and slipping them on before stepping into the car. The door slammed shut and the agcar zoomed away from the block with a lurch, almost hitting a fusion conduit as it went around the corner. Bugleg gasped; Ratlin waved an impatient hand.

“What’s to be afraid of? I never hit anything head-on.”

“You should be more careful,” Bugleg told him.

“I’m careful about what counts,” Ratlin snapped. “Do you want to see this place or not, cousin? ‘Cause I can pop the door and leave you crying in the unkind light by the side of the road, and don’t think I wouldn’t do it, too!”

“You’re mean,” Bugleg told him resentfully.

“Damn right I am,” Ratlin retorted. “Takes a mean fellow to get anywhere in this life.”

“But that’s wrong,” Bugleg insisted. “Being mean is wrong.”

Ratlin snarled at him and reached over to the door controls. “I’ll do it,” he threatened. “I’ll pitch you out! Out, crash, on your big stupid sanctimonial head.”

They bickered along like this for the next while, as the agcar sped on in the general direction of Wanstead, veering unsteadily through the sparse traffic, and they barely noticed when it turned in at last under an arch that bore the legend:
MANOR PARK PUBLIC STORAGE
.

“Here we are,” observed Ratlin. The car swerved into a parking space and, shutting itself off, settled to the ground. He ordered the door open and managed to restrain his urge to boot Bugleg as he climbed out. Emerging himself, he set off briskly down the long corridor into the depths of the storage complex.

It was dimly lit and funereal, as all such places are, and made more so by the décor: here and there in niches along the walls, following the Benthamite creed of utility in all things, were mounted the more attractive of the headstones and other memorials that had graced the old Manor Park Cemetery. Neither Bugleg nor Ratlin had much appreciation for art, however. They hurried along in silence and at last stopped in the gloom before a door numbered 666.

“Here.” Ratlin keyed in a code and the door opened with a sad little chime, the first few notes of a well-known funeral march. Bugleg didn’t get the joke, however, and followed him unsmiling into the chamber beyond.