The Sons of Heaven (56 page)

Damnation, what am I to do about my programming? Ain’t you thought about my feelings, eh?

Alec flushes in embarrassment. “Captain sir, this is more important than me being happy and safe. I grew up. Isn’t there a way for you to move beyond your programming, now, too?”

How the hell am I supposed to do that, an old machine like me?

“Well…”Alec’s eyes brighten tremendously, as an immense idea occurs to him. “What if we made you a real body, so you could come with me?”

“You mean a solid physical form, instead of a hologrammatic projection,” says Edward.

“Yeah. It’s just totally jumped into my brain how we could do it! I could modify some of the nanobots we had build this house. Program ‘em to build the Captain a physical body—all it has to do is look human, he can have all kinds of useful stuff if he wants, rocket launchers in his head even! And then set ‘em to build it by converting biomass.”

“What manner of biomass?” Nicholas asks, frowning.

“It could be anything,” Alec exclaims, pacing around the table. “Organic raw materials they could diddle the molecules on, see? Fish. Wood. Hell, lawn clippings. Compost!” He pulls Mendoza from her chair and begins to dance with her, round and round. “Your compost heap, see, there’s tons of stuff in there they could use.”

“What, and make a green man?” Nicholas is nonplussed.

“Yeah! No! The corn stalks and stuff would all be converted to something else, see? He’d look just like his holoprojection. And the brain would be linked up to his main memory.”

“My compliments, Alec,” says Edward. “Not that we need anything this elaborate for a simple reconnaissance, but I really do think it might work.”

“Of course it’ll work,” Alec asserts, looking smug. “I’m Mr. Age of Technology, remember?”

“But we’d be making a living thing,” says Nicholas slowly.

“No. Well—sort of, it’d be just like Flint or Billy Bones but organic, see? And a lot more complicated,” says Alec.

“The man himself’s silent this whole while,” Nicholas points out. “Captain?”

I been listening. It’d be right useful to have a mobile unit that didn’t scare mortals into fits, that I could use to go ashore with Alec … and you’d give me yer affidavy nobody’d go anywhere, until it was all built and rigged out?

“Honor bright,” says Edward, holding up one hand. “We have all of time at our disposal, after all.”

By luncheon (in nonlinear time), Alec has designed a microscopic biomechanical marvel that will transmute organic matter into something resembling a man.

The storm has blown through, and Edward rolls up his sleeves and goes out to fill wheelbarrows with refuse from Mendoza’s compost heap. He is intrigued by the project, and amused; in one of his rare moments of whimsy he hunts up a block of wood out of the
Captain Morgan
‘s stores and adds it to the growing pile, on the principle that a good British tar has a heart of oak.

Mendoza, more uneasy about the forthcoming quest than she will permit anyone to perceive, retreats into the treehouse, to which a bar has been added now that everyone has grown up. Nicholas follows her, however, and finds her sitting there with a margarita, obligingly mixed for her by Coxinga. “Don’t try to explain,” she tells Nicholas. “I know every word you’d say. Quite a spell of déjà vu we’re having, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” says Nicholas, sitting down beside her. Coxinga brings him a margarita, too. He sips it, grimaces, and sets it aside.

“I hadn’t thought it would be so difficult, working back into linear time,” Mendoza continues. “It’s all patterns, isn’t it?”

“And we have our place in the weave,” says Nicholas. “We must do this thing, love.”

“I know,” she says, but she does not smile. “What do you suppose it will be like, after? I’ve gotten out of the habit of
afters.”

“Happy,” he says.

“Happy ever after?”

He tilts up her chin to look into her eyes. After a moment he lowers his face to hers. Their faces touch, and she sighs; they retreat a little from time and soar like birds, together, in a bright place.

Later—hours or days, everyone has been having such a pleasant afternoon it seemed like a good idea to let it run on a while longer than usual—Mendoza is awakened by the sound of feet mounting the staircase of the pavilion and a pair of voices raised in an old sea song.

“What?” Mendoza opens her eyes and looks across Nicholas to see Edward and Alec standing beside them, flushed and grinning.

“Come see what we’ve been doing, my love,” says Edward, leaning down to kiss her. “It’s quite extraordinary.”

“You’ve never made the simulacrum!” Nicholas leans up, incredulous.

“Almost,” Alec chortles, grabbing a bottle of rum out of the bar. “Come on, please come see! It’ll make you laugh, we promise.” Edward catches up Mendoza and carries her down the hill, chanting
yo ho, yo ho
all the way down through the garden, with Nicholas and Alec running after.

A sheet of clean canvas has been laid out on the lawn, and compost thickly piled on it in the approximate shape of a man. Here and there distinct objects stand out from the main mass: a good-sized pumpkin where the head would be, and a jaunty pair of coconuts somewhere else. Glints of silver and wire, chips like fish scales, indicate the presence of electronic components incorporated into the body.

Being
incorporated into the body. For, even as Nicholas and Mendoza stare, the pile is altering: shifting, condensing, settling, as though alive with tiny moving things—which, in fact, it is. The effect just misses being unspeakably horrible, by virtue of the fact that the body is not decomposing but taking form.

“I thought the pumpkin was a particularly nice touch,” says Edward, framing it with his hands. “Rather classical, don’t you think?”

“I just redesigned a few nanobots like I said, and let ‘em multiply, and eyedroppered ‘em on, and they went crazy,” says Alec proudly. “Look how fast it’s going.”

And indeed it is going quickly. Even as they stare, the pumpkin is shrinking in on itself, changing color. Its surface is beginning to pucker and morph into the semblance of a familiar face. Eyes form first. Mendoza accepts a sip of rum, watching the ongoing metamorphosis. “This
is
different,” she states, handing the bottle to Edward. “My gosh, is that a waistcoat forming? You’re making him with clothes already on?”

“Yup,” says Alec. “I thought it’d save time. Neat, yeah? Clothes and beard and everything.”

“Ever so much less tedious than robbing graves and waiting for a lightning storm,” says Edward, taking a drink. He hands Nicholas the bottle. “Well, what do you say? Are we about to be struck down for our presumption?”

Nicholas is so fascinated by the transformation process it takes a moment before he lifts his head to glare at Edward. “Only if the Almighty were a vengeful idiot,” he retorts, and has a swallow of rum. “Besides, you haven’t made that whereof this creature’s made. You’ve only shaped it. And marvelously, too!” he adds, as fibers resembling black hair wave out from the head like moss growing, and a black beard expands over the chest. The planes of the body begin to smooth out and drape in the unmistakable contours of a three-piece suit.

“Oh, look, he’s even growing an earring,” cries Mendoza in delight.

“Yeah, it links up with this—”Alec indicates the torque he wears. “See, so he can stay with me wherever I go and still be connected to the rest of himself.”

“Impressive. Is he going to be a cyborg like us?”

“No,” admits Alec. “He’s more sort of an android. His brain isn’t in his head, for instance, it’s where bone marrow would be. But doesn’t he look the part?”

“More so with every moment that passes,” Edward tells him, for it is unmistakably the Captain lying before them now, and not so much as a dead leaf or corn husk is visible. The changes that don’t show have proceeded apace, too. The brain reaches sufficient complexity and the Captain activates its consciousness, tries on the body cautiously. It blinks, moves its arms and legs. On impulse Nicholas spills a little rum into his hand and, leaning down, makes a sign on its brow. “This shall consecrate thee,” he says. Edward snorts derisively and Alec looks alarmed.

“Hey! What did you go do that for?”

Nicholas looks stern. “This creature’s flesh and spirit in its own kind. It must be hallowed to its work,” he states.

The mouth opens and grins. “Nothing matters except the work, eh, son?” says the Captain in a voice harsh with newness.

“No,” says Nicholas seriously. “If nothing mattered, the work would have no purpose.”

They help the Captain to his feet, and he staggers; stares around him a moment with an uneasy expression, and turns his head this way and that. “I can’t—hell, I can’t see right!” He turns around, and then around again, trying to see over his shoulder. “Oh, this’ll take some getting used to. Nothing but these two little peepholes in front to spy out of! How in thunder d’you manage?”

“You just learn to turn your head to look at things you want to see,” explains Alec. “Think of them as a pair of cameras.”

The Captain swings his head around to fix on him, but is distracted by his peripheral vision and attempts to bring that into full focus, too. He compromises at last by keeping his head turned slightly to one side, regarding Alec out of one eye, and this will become his habitual attitude.

“There, now,” he says, “that’s better. And it’s a right trim craft otherwise, boys. Everything seems to work. Sensors online; weapons array functioning; all present and fully operational, aye.”

“I don’t even want to guess where you’ve got weapons,” says Mendoza.

“It’s really funny,” Alec assures her. “I put—”

“Hey! Hey! Not in front of a lady,” protests the Captain. He reaches over and takes the bottle of rum from Nicholas, and has an experimental gulp. He gasps, his eyes gleam.” HAAR! Well, that’ll make living in this body easier,” he shouts. “A sense of taste! Bless you, boys.”

“He has appetites of the flesh?” Nicholas asks, turning to stare at Alec and Edward.

“We thought it would be amusing,” replied Edward. “And only practical, after all. Why shouldn’t he enjoy refueling himself?”

“I can try all kinds of things I’ve always wondered about.” The Captain passes off the bottle to Alec and rubs his hands together gleefully. “Let me at that galley. Fancy a good hot curry for supper, kiddies? And Shrimp Diavolo, aye, and Jambalaya, and ginger biscuits!”

They walk on up to the house, crowding around him to help as he staggers at first and then grows more confident on his new legs.

Alec opens his eyes in the darkness.

He lifts his head and regards the sky beyond the window. In the drifting moment of eternity, it glitters with stars. No dawn wind in the trees, no pallor on the horizon. A late moon, or a very early one, or perhaps both, is hanging low above the sea, sending its long reflection in a silver track across the water to the sand. Where would you go, if you could walk along that track?

He turns. Nicholas has already risen and is pulling on clothing; his preferred black, but cut in a modern style so indeterminate he could pass unnoticed in any city of the third millennium. Edward and Mendoza are sitting up, holding hands tightly.

Alec gets up, finds dungarees and his favorite tropical shirt, puts them on. He looks at the wardrobe—should he take a jacket? No, it will be July where
he’s going. He gropes about on the top of the dresser and puts useful things in his pockets. His heart is beginning to pound with excitement.

“I suppose it would be pointless to inquire whether you accessed the appropriate topographical maps last night,” Edward says. Alec flashes his cheeriest grin.

“I did,” says Nicholas.

“Just promise me you won’t raise an army, or start a political movement, or anything stupid like that,” Mendoza says.

“Honor bright,” he promises, giving her two thumbs up. Alec steps up beside him and makes it four thumbs.

“It’ll be a piece of cake,” he says. “Come on, brother.” They exit.

“I have every confidence in them,” says Edward. “They’ll manage it. Haven’t we created a miracle, before heaven and earth? The very crown of human invention.”

“Human invention? There was an ape found a bone once, and made it a club to kill other apes,” says Mendoza wearily. “He threw it into the air and it became a space station. I’m unimpressed, señor.”

“And no wonder; for a better tool’s no miracle, my dear,” says Edward. “The ape that learns compassion is the miracle.”

A few heartbeats pass, though the stars are fixed in their eternal sky and the moon descends no further, and then: “Did we teach them enough?”

In the corridor beyond, the Captain’s body waits uncomplaining in a chair, as it has waited through the timeless night. Nicholas and Alec draw near, and the Captain activates himself and stands stiffly. “Let’s be off, lads,” he says in a hoarse whisper, shooting his cuffs. “Soonest there, soonest back again, eh?”

They go down through the house and out, through the garden to the sea, and Alec considers his ship in its quiet anchorage. “I guess we really shouldn’t take her if we’re just going for a look, should we? We want to be inconspicuous.”

“A quick rape and pillage and then run like hell, says I,” the Captain agrees. Nicholas raises his eyebrows, but says nothing.

“So we just sort of… stroll down into time?” Alec looks about him speculatively. A wind moves off the sea. He points, bright-eyed, at the white glittering track of the moon on the water. “That looks really cool. I’ve always wanted to go that way!”

“It ought to get us there,” says Nicholas. “As well as any.”

So they step out on the moon’s road—

And the next moment they were on Santa Catalina Island, in Avalon, on 9 July 2355. Which is to say, Alec and the Captain found themselves there.

Alec gulped, staggered back and found himself colliding with a brick wall. The weight of time descended on him with equal force.

“Steady, boy,” said the Captain. He turned, scanning, and Alec turned, too. They had arrived in a narrow alleyway, a tiny corridor of shadow and quiet behind an old hotel. The sunlight at either end was brilliant, flooding down on the calm bustle of a Saturday morning in Avalon.