The Sons of Heaven (22 page)

Sir Henry has already offered to maroon Edward somewhere, if I’ll say the word, and take off with me himself, once little Alec’s with us again. Very sweet of the old dear, but I don’t think he could do it. I think Edward would part the seas and come stalking after us, or something equally impressive. He’s a demon when he wants his way.

And to whom would I flee? I have only connected emotionally with three other people in my entire immortal life, and one of them (Joseph) I would gladly shoot on sight. Nan has a happy and nearly normal marriage; what would she make of mine? Lewis, perfect gallant that he has always been, would cope with the Captain somehow, and we’d undoubtedly find a way to hide from the Company, but we couldn’t hide from Edward. And … I have hurt Lewis enough.

No, I remain with Commander Bell-Fairfax.

He’s been courting me. Charming little picnics for two on idyllic deserted shores, with delicacies he’s stepped sidelong through time to procure. Moonlit suppers and dancing on deck, the waltz of course because that’s what he
remembers best from mortal life, with Sir Henry grumpily providing accompaniment on a cyber-concertina. Treats and pretty things he imagines I’ll like, and I have to admit I do, though I’m afraid to ask where he got them.

He serenades me, primarily nineteenth-century airs and bits of opera, rendered in best nineteenth-century bel canto style. He has full access to the entire repertoire of music from all eras of history, mind you; but he happens to think that civilization reached its full flowering in the nineteenth century, so I get a lot of Donizetti and Hubert Parry. Especially
Jerusalem
, which he adores, with its William Blake lyrics. And how delighted he was to discover that the Black Dyke Mills Band will still be recording in 2355! Four and a half centuries’worth of stirring brass marches, God help me.

And he’ll draw me a hot bath, with perfumed crystals and fragrant soap, and usher me in with great ceremony, and attend on me in his shirtsleeves, and pour champagne … and scrub my back … and lavish care on me, to the point where I’m moaning and half-drowning in the tub, until he swathes me in a towel and carries me off to bed, the smug bastard … and all the while, deep down inside in a place he won’t even admit exists, he’s terrified I’ll stop loving him.

If I were a nastier woman than I am, I’d feel this was sweet revenge, after all the centuries I’ve mooned hopelessly after him in all his incarnations. But…

I have seen, now, into that secret place in his heart. I’ve seen the pathetic idyll he’d never admit to himself he wanted. It shone in his imagination like a beacon, through all those years he walked down dark alleys in his masters’ service: quite an ordinary little terrace house, with a respectable back garden, respectable polished furniture, respectable afternoon tea properly served by… a respectable little wife?

Ah, not quite. Rather, a black-eyed Lady Death haunted his dreams, a phantom in crinolines. The consummation he never feared and came in fact to long for, as the list of his crimes grew, the only bride he felt he deserved.

How miserably lonely my bad darling has been, so much of his life.

And they planned for that, didn’t they, those three odd little men who created him? Cut him off from all human affection, so his immense capacity for love had no focus but the abstract ideals with which he was programmed.

I think about this and I can forgive him anything, anything, all the little irritations of his pompous and patronizing speech, all his ingrained habits of deviousness and subtle bullying, his propensity for mental rape … I can even, almost, forgive what he did to Alec and Nicholas, especially as their return to life is now definitely scheduled.

For Edward has decided it would be a great experiment to produce a pair of Extreme Superbeings, the latest thing in evolution and all that. Infants
born
to immortality, as opposed to poor dull mortal children pithed and filled with hardware, as I was. Of course, they will need central memory files, for which Nicholas and Alec will do nicely. “It’s bound to be an improving experience for both of them!” he said.

And I’m to bear their bodies in my womb, as I bear their memories in mine.

I can feel around the location in my data files, a sort of cleverly masked information bulge. I wonder if this is what it will feel like in the flesh, in another month or so? This the logical outcome of Edward’s idyll, of course: a pair of Baby Deaths in one cradle, in a respectably appointed nursery.

I walk such a tightrope, over such a yawning gulf, between love and horror.

Sir Henry has attended to the matter with his customary stealthy efficiency, of course. New custom biomechanicals were designed, and more material was extracted out of the vial we stole from Alpha-Omega. A pair of blastocysts divided themselves from a common ball of cells.

They were implanted in my body. I wasn’t aware, at the time; Edward decided it would be too traumatic an experience for me, so he just took it on himself to render me unconscious, gently, and did it without asking. I would be angry about this, if I hadn’t had the uneasy realization that he was quite correct.

When I try to imagine the procedure or in fact any medical procedure, my heart pounds, my mouth dries. Just the words
cold steel
terrify me. Edward, at least, understands my unnamable horror.

He says children should arise from an act of love.

I would not do this for any reason but love.

My own biomechanicals have been responding to a subroutine Sir Henry installed, and are manufacturing so many hormones I’d probably be hysterical and pimply, were I not already off-balance in this strange new life Edward and I share, where the sun rises and sets when we remember to notice it doing so.

The clock has lost its hands. Time has no meaning for us, we have stepped outside it now and into eternity; but for love’s sake I will take nine months’ worth of its weight on myself again.

The Captain is gleeful.

Two identical embryos, perfectly formed. I’d show you in obstetric holo
but they ain’t no bigger than beans, bless their weensy hearts! Which is beating, now. Yer a right congenial berth for ‘em, dearie. They got little arm buds, little leg buds, and little bitsy buttons what’ll be fine big belaying-pins one of these days, begging yer pardon, ma’am. Nice knots of neural tissue, more brain than a mortal brat would have at this point.

“But can they live in such things?” demands Mendoza. “Is it enough brain?” She is nervous, pacing.

Aye, ma’am, it’s enough. Remember what they are.

“I know. I just—” She unties, reties her robe, and still doesn’t seem to be able to get it right, as Edward takes her elbow and leads her to the bed.

“Come, my dear. It’s more than time.” He helps her in, orders the lights to dim. All is cozy intimacy. “The good Captain will keelhaul me, I’m sure, if I delay another hour.”

Damn right I would, too.

“You see?” Edward smiles wryly. “And he’s a machine of his word, so we mustn’t cross him. Let’s free the prisoners from durance vile. This part will be easy, I do assure you. Even pleasant.”

“Does Sir Henry have to be here?”

Ah! Rest easy, dearie, I’ll just go chart a course somewhere.

“And I’m cold …” she says, shivering.

“I’ll warm you,” Edward replies, climbing in beside her.

Mendoza clutches the lapels of his robe. “Should I be unconscious? Would that work better?”

“Ssssh.” Edward kisses her. “Don’t be frightened.” He clears his throat. Hesitantly at first, he begins to sing.

His is a surprisingly pleasant tenor.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she says. “Shakespeare, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.” He strokes back her hair.

“A fairy song,” she says. Her arms go around his neck timidly. “They’re like tiny little fairies right now, aren’t they?”

“Lying in the heart of the blossom,” he tells her, looking into her eyes. “Warm and safe.”

He grants her time, now, gradually she relaxes in his arms, and slow pleasures melt her defenses. With her guard down, access to the most defended of sites becomes possible, and he unlocks the file …

“… My, gen-tle, p-Puck. Puck? Come … hit—hi there.” Alec frowns at the words.

“Hither,” Nicholas corrects him.

“Hither. Thou, re—remember? Remember. Est. Ssssince, once, I sat, up, on a, pro … pro …”

“That is an M. Sound it out.”

“Promm—onn—torry. And. Heared a, m-merm-aid? Yeah. Mermaid on a d-duh—dolp? … “Alec knits his brows.

“PH sounded as F, Alec.” Nicholas yawns.

“Dolf—in. Dolphin? Dolphin’s, back—”

The floor begins to tremble.

“Oh!”Alec looks up, sees the books vibrating on the shelves.

“God’s holy wounds,” mutters Nicholas, leaping to his feet.

Alec stands too and drops the volume of Shakespeare’s comedies, but it dematerializes before it hits the floor. Alec’s eyes widen and he clutches at Nicholas as more features of the room start vanishing, breaking up. “What’s happening?” he demands.

“Hush—” Nicholas looks up sharply. “What’s that?”

Alec shuts his eyes. “That’s … voices?”

They are silent a moment, listening. Nicholas’s eyes light with a desperate hope. “I would know that voice in my grave,” he says. The chairs vanish.

“That’s
her,”
yells Alec. “Mendoza!”

And the world rips apart, becomes blinding light and inexplicable noise as they are hurled together, Alec and Nicholas, into the maelstrom, shot madly from their sphere. Only for a second: then they are lying stunned in a new place, but they no longer have the senses to determine anything about it. Adult consciousness tries to nest in a tiny and barely-formed brain, retains its memory and sense of self but loses all other function.

Blind panic terror! … And then the gradual consolation. Warmth. Music coming from somewhere, an unceasing double drumbeat, a voice.

“File opened; download completed,” says Edward. “What a brave girl you were.”

“Oh, that was lovely.” Mendoza stretches, kisses him. “Merrily indeed.”

“I’m working on my technique, my love. And so, Nicholas and Alec are liberated! We’re all friends again now, I trust?” Edward cocks an eye at the camera. Then his grin fades, his eyes grow suddenly wide. Abruptly he leans up on his elbow. “Good God.”

He throws back the covers, rolls on his side, stares.

“You’re sure they’re in there,” Mendoza says, looking uneasily down at her body.

“They are,” Edward tells her, his face pale. “But I—I can feel them!”

“You didn’t do something like download them into you instead of me?”

“No. You’ve got them. Just—there.” He gingerly touches the approximate spot. “But how on earth can
I
feel that?”

Why, yer the amazing all-powerful Edward, ain’t you? Yer just picking up their little life signs, is all
.

“There are no words for this,” Edward says, looking rather as though he’s going to be sick.

“They’re all right, aren’t they?” Mendoza demands. He nods.

“All life begins this way, doesn’t it?” he says, in a tone of dread.

Recombinant DNA clones implanted in a cyborg? Hell no.

“No! Like—that.” Edward sits up, looks down at Mendoza’s body. “The little person. That exquisite detail. The arteries like threads, the budding limbs, the
potential.”

“Well, yes,” Mendoza replies. She looks into his anguished face. “Darling, what is it?”

“Mortals have no idea what they do,” he says at last. “I had no idea! And now we’re trapped in linear time with them for the next score of years—ye gods, what have we done?” He leaps out of bed in his horror and begins to pace, tying his robe closed, tangling the knot.

“They’ll be so small,” he says, “And anything could take them while they’re still vulnerable, anything! Good God, a wave over the bows. A tumble through a hatchway. The responsibility—we’ll have to prepare. Safety devices installed on everything. Suitably warm clothing. Properly digestible meals. Do you realize we haven’t even planned a nursery yet? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU LAUGHING ABOUT?” Edward turns raging to the nearest speaker, though the Captain’s amusement has been rolling throughout the entire ship.

Haar! Divine retribution be a fine thing, to be sure, that’s all. I’ll just go draft plans for converting one of the guest staterooms into a nursery, shall I?

“Do it,” snaps Edward. “And let me see the blueprints the moment you’ve finished.”

This is driving me mad.

I don’t know what to wear.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that with a closet full of clothing from all the historical eras through which we’ve traveled, I could find garments that weren’t uncomfortably tight or hideous? I can’t. I feel like screaming. All I want to wear are Alec’s Hawaiian shirts, hanging forlorn in the wardrobe. They smell like him and are comforting, recalling happy amnesiac days. But then my horrible swollen legs show.

Edward assures me they are not swollen. Edward is lying. Edward is flawlessly dressed himself, has had Smee the servounit cut him perfectly tailored proper Victorian attire. Edward may be jumpy as a cobra on speed, but there is nothing wrong with Edward’s body. I’m the one who’s distorted, bloated, disgusting …

I am being irrational. I am experiencing a panic reaction because my immortal body has always been the one unchanging, inalterable constant in my life. I have gained
five pounds
. I had never gained a pound in all the years since 1554. It’s not right, not natural,
I’m not programmed for this
.