The Sons of Heaven (63 page)

“No,” said Budu almost absently as he scanned the room. He looked at Suleyman again. “We’re the only ones here, it seems.”

“We are. What do you want?”

“The Company,” said Budu. “Quick justice. Their blood.” He gestured with his war axe at the mortals. “And the heads of my guilty children on pikes.”

Suleyman shook his head. “You’re welcome to your children, when you find them. The mortals, though, are my prisoners. There will be no slaughter here today.”

“There must be,” said Budu. “You know that. They’re mine, by right. Look at them! They betrayed their own kind. Their greed made all the misery in the world.”

“They’ll pay for it,” said Suleyman. “But not at your hands.”

Another silence. They considered each other, quiet as though they sat over a chess table. Their forces were silent, too, watching. The only noise in the room was the whimpering and massed incoherent prayer of humanity’s genius, kneeling in its own piss under the table.

“Don’t make me do this,” said Budu abruptly. “I don’t want to fight you. You’re a righteous man. But if we engage, you’ll lose; you haven’t got a tenth of my forces.”

“True,” said Suleyman. “But most of yours are bottled up in that tunnel behind you. If I order one of my shuttles to bomb it, that should even the odds.”

Marco snarled.

“Sir, please,” Hearst said. He had been unable to take his eyes off the abject mortals. “Does it have to come to this? Look at the poor things! If we just make them stand trial—”

Budu held up his hand for silence. “There is an alternative,” he said.

“I’d like to hear it,” Suleyman said.

“Joseph,” said Budu. “Open the pouch.”

Joseph started, having forgotten he had it on. Looking down, he unzipped it. Budu held out his hand, and Joseph drew out what was inside and handed it to him. Budu held it up where Suleyman could see. It was small, flat, looked like an old-fashioned holo remote.

Latif groaned. Joseph had gone very pale. “What is that?” Suleyman inquired, knowing in that moment that he had lost.

“A launching device.” Budu chuckled. “To summon a guided missile. Not a very big one, but powerful. It ought to take out this mountain.”

“Oh dear God,” said Hearst. Someone among the mortals screamed, a weak sound that trailed away into hysterical sobbing.

“Where did you get a missile, father?” said Joseph in a ghost of a voice.

“I built one,” Budu told him. “While you slept.”

“Oh.”

Budu was still holding Suleyman’s gaze with his own. Suleyman’s eyes were like coals. “Well?” he said.

“Checkmate,” said Budu.

“No,” said Suleyman.

“What do you mean NO?” yelled Joseph in agony, his eyes starting out of his head. “Are you nuts? He’ll blow us all to pieces!”

“Don’t be scared,” said a voice, as the room flashed blue-white.

Alec Checkerfield walked into the room through a solid wall, and stood before them with his hands held up in a placatory gesture. “Let’s all just stop this,” he said in a terrifically reasonable voice. Sarai gave a little scream.

“My baby!”

Alec winced. “Hello, Sarah.”

Latif, staring at him intently, said: “But you’re the Englishman, too. Aren’t you? Bell-Fairfax!”

“Not exactly,” said Alec.

“What are you?” Budu asked.

“I’ll tell you what he is,” Marco said, pushing his way to the front. He pointed at Alec. “He’s nothing but a jumped-up Enforcer replacement prototype. Look at him! And the Hangar Twelve Man, remember that?”

“Yes, that was me,” said Alec. “I ran guns to Mars. And you’re right: I’m not even as human as the rest of you. I’m a Recombinant.”

“And not only that—” Marco began to giggle, looking sidelong at Joseph. “He had this hot little Preserver girlfriend, that I—” He vanished.

Budu looked from the place where Marco had been to Alec. “What did you do with him?” he inquired.

“He was standing there a second ago,” exclaimed Hearst.

“He
is
still standing there,
a second ago,”
Alec said bluntly, though he had gone very pale. “And that’s where he’s going to stay. If the rest of you won’t listen to me, you can go where he went. Okay?”

“Why should we obey you?” Budu asked.

“Because I’m, er, omnipotent,” said Alec.

“Really?” Budu said. “What will you do if I fire the missile?” he said, placing his thumb on the button. Before he could press it, the control had vanished from his hand.

“See?” said Alec. “And I can do that with your weapons, and your bombs, and—and you, if you won’t surrender.”

“Oh, great,” muttered Joseph. “He’s got godlike powers now.”

“And I know how to use ‘em, too,” Alec retorted. “The war ends right here, everybody. So please, shut up and listen to me.”

“I knew it,” snarled Joseph. “So you’re immortal now, huh? So you know so much better than the rest of us that you’re going to rule the world? Ready to play God, Nicholas?”

Alec looked embarrassed. “Nicholas isn’t here, Joseph. Though he could probably do a better job—”

“Most people would have some inkling of humility, but not you, boy! As though the mortals needed another self-righteous egomaniac dictator making them bow down—”

“We’re not going to rule the mortals,” Alec informed him.

“Of all the lousy fanatic—what?”

“The mortals get to rule themselves,” said Alec. “There have been enough fake gods leading them in circles, don’t you think? And that’s why,” he added, as his voice became like steel, “to make sure they get to keep their freedom, we do plan on ruling all of
you.”

“You do, eh?” Budu regarded him.

“Yes.” Alec matched his stare.

“What’s the source of your authority, boy?”

“The same as yours,” said Alec. “We were both created to deliver them from evil, weren’t we?”

“So we were. Know this.” Budu pointed to the squalid huddle under the table, that peered out with desperate eyes. “They created us because they
wanted
us meddling in their affairs. They always have. They’ll find a way to beg for our intervention again.”

“And if they ask for our help, we ought to help them,” said Alec. “But we can’t judge them! We’re nothing more than the things
those men and women
made.”

He looked around, his eyes wide and earnest. “Look,” he said, “what’s the point of punishing the mortals now? You can’t win by breaking the board and sweeping all the pawns into a lake of fire. What kind of endgame is
that
for all-wise superior beings? Or even the kind of things we are?

“We’re not creatures of infinite wisdom and mercy, but even we ought to
know better than to act like babies smashing our toys. Or psychotic prophets who really, really want the whole mess to go up in blood and flames.

“Don’t tell me that supercyborgs like us need a concept like revenge!”

“Speak for yourself,” said Budu. Alec whirled to face him, and his voice was smooth, confident now, strong.

“But you punished criminals to protect the innocent, didn’t you? The whole point of your job was the greater good of humanity. Well, you won’t serve humanity by slaughtering the mortals in this room.”

“Why not?” said Budu.

“Because you’d have to disable Suleyman to do it, and if Suleyman is disabled, Alpha-Omega is lost, and the innocent mortals won’t survive without it. Which ought to give you no end of programming conflict.” Alec stared into Budu’s eyes. “You want to punish the really guilty immortals? Be my guest. There are a few of ‘em left, hiding out here and there. You can see to it that they never set up another dictator or disease. Hunt ‘em down and take off their heads with flint knives. But I can take them out with a wave of my hand, so what’s the point? I
am
the New Enforcer.”

“Then we are obsolete,” said Budu. He said it without anger, or sorrow, or in fact any recognizable human emotion. He was watching Alec very closely.

“If we were machines, you would be obsolete. But we’re
people,”
said Alec. He turned to face them all, and his eyes were shining and his voice had become golden, persuasive as music. “There are better ways for us to spend our eternal lives. Listen to me! I can set you free, all of you. There’s a whole world you don’t even know exists, outside of time, and all you need to—”

“No!” Joseph shouted, quivering with fury.
“No!
He’s doing it again! Can’t any of you hear him? Don’t look at his damn eyes! His voice is getting inside your heads, he’s making you
want
to agree with him!”

“Yeah,” Alec admitted, “because I’d rather you did agree with me. I don’t want to have to do this the hard way. It wouldn’t—”

The wrath of centuries choked Joseph. “You fucking seducer—” he blurted out, and evaded Budu’s restraining hand to hurl himself at Alec. Stepping back, Alec shouted, and—

Joseph hung suspended in midair, twitching. Alec, white as a sheet, covered his mouth with his hands. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Please—Joseph—look, I don’t want it to be like this. I owe you, you know? If you hadn’t saved Mendoza—”

“Where’s my daughter, you son of a bitch?” Joseph said. His tears, falling from so high, spattered wide.

‘Who’s threatening my boy?”
roared a hoarse voice from the corridor. Two of Suleyman’s guard backed into the room, keeping their weapons trained on something that lurched slightly as it came on. Presently Captain Morgan appeared in the doorway.

He looked very much the worse for wear; one of his legs had been reduced to its skeletal core, in fact, and his suit was torn and bleeding. “Captain sir!” Alec strode to his side. “What happened to you?”

“Only the same as what would happen to you if you had to fly through a goddamned war zone,” the Captain growled. “But I’ll thank’ee for building in them rockets anyway, lad.”

“Flying pirates. And I thought things couldn’t get any more surreal,” said Joseph with a sigh of resignation.

Alec reached out to the Captain, gripping his hand, and the ruined leg reconstituted itself: red tendons, bare hairy skin, and, at last, impeccably pressed trouser cuff. There were murmurs of astonishment from the immortals present. “Aye, ye may well stare,” said the Captain, grinning at them. “See what my boy can do? Best mind yer manners, says I, or there’s liable to be unpleasantness.”

“No! I don’t want anybody else getting hurt,” said Alec unhappily. “You were monitoring everything. What happened with all those bombs?”

“Haar! That’s finished, lad. Everything’s up and running again, no further cause for alarm, so sorry for the temporary interruption. You should have seen our Nick! That’d be Nicholas Harpole. I reckon
you’d
remember the name, aye,” he added, lurching up to Joseph where he still dangled in midair.

“Up yours,” said Joseph. The Captain chuckled.

“That’s enough, Captain,” said Alec, letting Joseph sink gently to the floor. He hastened to help him to his feet. “I’m so sorry—you’re practically my grandfather—or sort of a father-in-law, I guess, but it’s hard to explain—”

Joseph struggled free, staring at him in consternation. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Or maybe Budu’s our grandfather, and you’re—she’s fine, Joseph,” Alec assured him. “The thing is—er … “He looked around at the gathered immortals, aware that he was not quite making the impression he had desired, and reddened.

At that moment there was a tremendous peal of music, an echoing roll like thunder, or at least a full orchestra approximating thunder, and golden light poured into the room. All heads turned, expecting to see a wall blown away. But it was only Nicholas, entering from thin air.

He stepped down beside Alec and turned, taking in the room, his gaze resting only very briefly on Joseph. His face was serene. He held up what he had brought in one hand.

It was a crushed and half-melted thing of greened bronze that had been the head of a copy of the Artemisium Zeus. Nicholas cast it down. It hit the floor with a crash, ringing like a gong. “Behold the end of sinful pride,” said Nicholas.

“Okay,
that’s
Nicholas Harpole,” said Joseph. The music moved out from Nicholas in a wave, and as it did so the great viewscreen lit with cells of images coming in once more from England, from Europe, from New York, from Luna, from China, and cautious messages murmuring faintly:
Power has been restored … We’re still here … Is anyone receiving? Disruption seems to have … No fatalities reported … Hello?

“See?” said Alec brightly. “Everything’s under control.”

Latif snorted. “Let me see if I got this straight. From now on, the universe is going to be run by a Recombinant in an aloha shirt, a pirate android, and some other guy who carries his own background music around with him?”

“No,” said Nicholas. “That would be blasphemy.”

“But what
was
the Company is ours now,” said Alec. “And there are going to be some changes.”

Latif looked from one to the other. He set down his gun. “Pretty impressive,” he said. “I need a little more proof than that, though. So here’s a challenge for you: can you bring Lewis and Mendoza here, into this room?”

Behind them, the vast screen above the console flashed blue-white, in a swift manipulation of time, space, and perception. They turned and tilted back their heads to look up at the screen.

Edward and Mendoza sat close together somewhere, staring down into what would have been a window, had it not been a manipulation of time, space, and perception. Palm fronds waved gently behind them under a blue sky. They were still holding hands. They wore identical expressions of worry. “But where
are
they?” Edward was saying.

“Darlings, I hope you won’t mind; we just thought you might need a little—” Mendoza began.

“Mendoza!” Joseph croaked, clutching his chest.

Her eyes widened as she spotted him, and then they became like chips of black flint. “That’s Lady Finsbury to you,” she snapped.

“You’ve got a
third
one,” cried Joseph, aghast.

“No thanks to you, you murdering little son of a—”

“You’ve got some nerve calling me names! I gave you eternal life, and this is the thanks I get—”