The Sons of Heaven (46 page)

By this time the
Oneida VI
was riding a little low in the water. Joseph had gone below to distribute snacks; Hearst remained beside Budu, shivering in the wind off the sea as the last of the Enforcers came aboard. He had begun to notice, uncomfortably, that the massed Enforcers emitted a certain smell. Not an unwashed smell, nothing of the locker room about it; almost an animal smell. He decided that if he had a much-loved dog that smelled like that, it would be a nice smell. Coming from something nominally human, however, it was unsettling.

It was beginning to get dark when the last Enforcer bounded up the gangway and saluted. “Sir! Technical Specialist Krogen reporting, sir! Last man out of Fez, sir!”

“Get below and report to your squad commander,” Budu ordered. He grinned and turned to Hearst. “We can cast off now, Hearst. Lay in a course for Santa Catalina Island. I want to anchor off Cape Cortes at eleven hundred hours tomorrow morning.”

“She can get you there sooner,” Hearst told him. “Don’t you want the element of surprise?”

“I have the element of surprise,” Budu told him. “Eleven hundred hours. Not before.”

“Yes, sir!” Hearst saluted and ran for the bridge. He passed Joseph coming up a ladder, looking a little wild-eyed.

“Have we got any meat on board at all?” he inquired. “Beef jerky? Canned cocktail franks? Anything?”

“No, but don’t worry. The galley’s got a hundred cases of Proteus Hearty Fare,” Hearst promised. Joseph groaned and ran past him. Hearst continued to the bridge and slid into place in front of the navigational computer, ordering it
to set their course and speed. As he waited for it to respond his spirits were rising. It might well be the last night of the world, but, by gosh, he was spending it the way he’d wanted. Roaring across the sea with the ancient heroes of legend, on his way to put an end to a massively evil conspiracy! No questions, no complications, good and evil clear as day. And why shouldn’t his side win?

The
Oneida VI
drew in her ramps, raised her anchor, backed from her mooring, put about and put out to sea. A flashing light on the console drew Hearst’s attention. He leaned forward and peered at it, frowning. Then he was on his feet and running for the quarterdeck. Joseph saw him running and followed.

They emerged on the quarterdeck just as Budu and his officers were assembling there for a staff meeting. “Sir!” shouted Hearst. “The ship says there’s something fouling her rudder—”

Budu went to the rail without a word and looked down at the stern of the ship.

“There is,” he said. Everyone else crowded to the rail to peer through the twilight. A mortal might have seen nothing but the foaming wake from the fusion drive ports, the shadowy water. The immortals saw two massive hands gripping the rudder just below the water line, and the indistinct pallor of a head and shoulders under the surface. “Show yourself,” said Budu.

The hands flexed. The head pushed upward and a face broke into the air, gasping, sucking in a long breath. Pale eyes stared, long teeth gleamed yellow in the wide mouth, and the long hair and beard floated out like trailing tentacles.

“Holy smoke, it’s Marco,” yelled Joseph.

There were murmurs of amazement from the other Enforcers. Hearst looked confused, and then horrified. “The fellow that ran the Bureau of Punitive Medicine?” he cried.

“The what?” One of Budu’s officers turned to stare at him.

“It was a Company prison,” Budu informed them. “A place where Preservers were tortured.”

“Preservers?”
Ron looked aghast. “Why?”

“Because the Company wanted them tortured,” Budu told him, shrugging. “And that one”—he turned and spat over the rail—”got the job, because he’d repented his disobedience. It was his punishment and his reward.”

“You mean
the
Marco, who killed noncombatants?” demanded another of the officers, beginning to look outraged.

“There was only one,” Budu replied.

Marco meanwhile was still hanging there on the rudder, gazing up blankly
at the faces that had begun to glare down at him. “You want him off there, sir?” Ron inquired, saluting. “I’ll jump down and cut his hands away, sir.”

“No!” roared Marco. “What the hell does it matter what I did, now? We’re at the end of time! The last battle of the world comes in the morning, and I want to be there.”

Budu regarded him for a long moment. It was getting steadily darker. “Throw him a line,” he said at last.

Two of the officers hauled Marco from the water. There were mutters of horror as he came over the rail and collapsed on the deck. He pulled himself up into a crouch. Hearst switched on the deck lights and several of the Enforcers drew back, exclaiming aloud.

Marco was naked, and the white light of the deck lamp revealed his skin salt-pale and blotched with livid scars, thickenings, pits, tumors. One eye was clouded with a white film. Several of his toes were missing, and one finger. His matted hair and beard, streaked with gray, were so long they trailed down his body like seaweed.

“What the hell happened to you?” said Joshua.

Marco swung his good eye like a searchlight, and settled his gaze on Joseph. He grinned and pointed at him with a long-nailed finger.
“He
knows,” he said. “Don’t you, Preserver? It’s been a long time, but I remember you. You were the one with the daughter, the Botanist Mendoza! She—”

“Shut up,” Joseph snarled, starting forward. Budu put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve still got the virus, huh? That’s some justice, anyway. It must have been eating you up for, what, fifteen millennia now? Is it painful, you lousy bastard?”

“What virus?” asked Ron.

“The Company made a toxin to kill Enforcers,” said Budu. “It almost worked.”

“Almost,” agreed Marco, scanning him. “You had it too, didn’t you, High-and-Mighty? There are still traces in your blood. How are you going to keep the Company from spraying it all over your legions tomorrow, eh?”

“I developed an antidote,” Budu replied. “It was given to my men in their field rations.”

“Would it cure me?” Marco’s eye fixed on him with sudden intensity.

“Yes,” Budu said. “But you won’t get it. Your suffering is only justice.”

“You still believe in justice?” Marco bared his teeth. “Oh, Budu. Do you know where I’ve been, all these centuries? Bringing justice to the little monkeys. I haunted their night fields, in every wet shadow. I’ve torn their hearts
open and licked out the iniquities there. I caught the murderer in his delight. I snatched the child with the stolen honey.

“I watched through their secret windows, and such things I saw! They prey on themselves more pitilessly than we ever did. We should have let them. We weren’t necessary to protect innocents, Budu. There are no innocents! There’s only sin, and it eats itself.”

“Then may it eat you,” said Budu.

“It’ll eat us all,” Marco cried. “But let me face it with a weapon in my hand. I did good work!”

Budu considered him in silence. Joseph turned, looked up into Budu’s face in dismay. “You’re not going to arm him, are you?” he asked. “He’s broken your code. He’s one of the unrighteous. For God’s sake, lop off his head and throw him overboard! You know the things he’s done.”

“I know,” said Budu. “But we go into battle in eight hours, and I have no men to waste.” He looked at the nearest officer. “Issue him clothing. Let him make an axe for himself.”

Marco began to chuckle. Budu looked down at him. “Don’t think you’ve escaped. The first wave to land will be taken out by the Company’s perimeter defenses,” he said. “You will go in the first wave.”

“Fine,” Marco replied. He made an obscene gesture with his maimed hand, lifted it to his forehead in a salute. “Sir!” he added.

Hearst looked away from him, terrified. He met Joseph’s bleak and furious gaze. As they stared at each other, the music came up from below: the Enforcers were singing. Hauntingly sweet and powerful from a thousand tenor and countertenor throats, came the old anthem promising judgment, incorruptible judgment on all humanity.

With the completion of his final augmentation, immortal life stretches before the cyborg youth, and he may find the prospect a daunting one. After all, he is now ready to take his place in the greater world. He may be mature, considerate, studious, conscious of his duty to humanity and his position in the universe, a source of pride for the cyborg parent. On the other hand, he may exhibit a certain unwelcome brashness and tendency toward insubordination; for to be gifted with the knowledge of the ages, alas, is not necessarily to be granted wisdom. Moreover he may appear to suffer from a sense of inordinate self-pity, loudly decrying perceived injustices to himself. It may be that this young savage requires what is termed by anthropologists a Rite of Passage, before the years of travail on the part of the cyborg parent conclude successfully at last, and the object of his efforts may be freed from the illusion of linear time.

“This is all a crock,” says Alec irritably.

Seventeen now, he wears white trousers, a blazer, and striped tie. Nicholas, who is walking beside him, wears a uniform identical to Alec’s. Flint clatters along behind them, carrying a holoprojector.

Edward is pacing in front of them. He is formally dressed in a suit of tropical-weight linen, in his customary mid-Victorian cut. He turns to regard Alec with a bright and critical eye. “An opinion from Alec! Remarkable. Will you favor us with your no doubt fascinating explanation, Alec?”

Alec mutters something barely audible. Edward raises the pointer he carries, interrogatively. “I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t do that,”Alec snaps. “You’re subliminally intimidating me.”

“Poor Alec,” Edward drawls. “We’ve a case of the nerves this morning, have
we? It wouldn’t have anything to do with excessive self-abuse, I’m sure. The remedy is
intellectual
stimulation, you know.” He begins to move the pointer like a metronome, tap tap tap into his palm. “And what about your own assignment? You were to access, summarize, compare and contrast the complete works of Charles Dickens and Audrey Knollys and provide an analysis of their respective impacts on progressive social legislation, with your own recommendations on how the laws might be more effective. Favor us with your no doubt brilliant report, Alec.”

“Shrack Charles Dickens,” says Alec sullenly. “Shrack this whole thing. We’re
cyborgs
, Deadward! We don’t need educations. We downloaded all this garbage years ago!”

Edward raises the pointer and places its tip against Alec’s forehead. “What’s the use of having a library in there if you won’t open the books, boy? What’s the good of augmented intelligence if you won’t use it? Is this the genius who insists he’s ready to be liberated from time?” He gives Alec’s head a little push with the pointer, and Alec grabs the pointer from him and throws it across the lawn.

“Leave me the hell alone!”

“Pick that up at once,” says Edward.

“I’ll break it over your damned head if you make me.”

“I think not.” Edward puts his hands behind his back and considers Alec. “What a depressing prospect stands before us: the young cyborg as ignoramus, unable to comprehend more than a fraction of his infinite knowledge, and unable to employ the unlimited energies at his command in any manner other than compulsive and repeated acts of—”

“SHUT UP!”Alec clenches his fists. “Can’t you say
anything
in words of one syllable?”

“Why should I make it easy for you?” Edward replies, staring him down. “Haven’t you the intellect to face a challenge or two, if you’re ready, as you repeatedly insist, for liberation?”

“I’ve got tons of intellect,” Alec shouts. “And absolutely no use for all this ancient history. I’m ready to go on to the next level now, thank you very much.
Set me free!”

“Ah, the old familiar refrain,” says Edward. “He is grown so wise that he beats impatiently at the gates of heaven. Never a thought that he might, perhaps, have a duty to intervene in human affairs, even as an act of atonement?”

“If
you
were even half as all-knowing as you think you are, Dead, you’d have learned some humility,” says Alec. “As well as how futile it is to intervene
in human affairs.
We
only ever make things worse. Like Alec Checkerfield on Mars. The best thing he ever did for humanity was get himself killed, okay? Can we move on now?”

“By all means,” says Edward. “Your brother was about to give his analysis of the Lunar political crisis of 2315, if memory serves. Proceed, Nicholas.”

Nicholas clears his throat. Flint crawls forward and holds up the holoprojector. An image forms in midair: a dreary-looking grid of streets and quadrangles, and beyond them a world all in silver and black. It is the mountains of the moon. Nicholas lifts his head and speaks clearly.

“Herein the dispute ariseth: the Ephesian Church is suffered to build its Artemisium in the disputed precinct of Mare Fecunditatis,” he says. “Which will lead in turn to the rise of the Ephesian Party within the Council, whereat the Secular Protest Movement ariseth in opposition.

“And so bitter, and so dire their discords, that the miners under contract to the British Lunar Company shall at last emigrate to Earth, as seabirds take shelter inland when storms rage upon the bosom of the ocean, nor can they in any wise be persuaded to return. And with them prosperity shall flee, and in 2217 the Lunar Council will be dissolved.”

Alec snickers and applauds. Edward merely raises his eyebrows. “Very good,” he says. “A reasonably insightful assessment. Fifty demerits for willful use of archaic idiom, full marks for content. Now, your observations? In Cinema Standard this time, if you please.”

“Obviously the principle of separation of church and state should be extended to Luna,” says Nicholas. “Or they’ll all go bankrupt up there.”

“Precisely. A clear call for secular morality!”

“Or immorality,” continues Nicholas, folding his arms.
“Considera bellum mercatorium gestum inter Puellas Sodalitatis Felicis Lunaris et Scorta Templaria Dianae Lunari sacra.”
He narrows his eyes at Edward. “I can go on in Greek, if you’d like. Or Chinese. Shall I, sir?”