vN (37 page)

  "You're the dad," Javier said.

  Jack nodded. "So are you, apparently." He held out his hand. "Jack."

  "Javier." They shook. Something passed between them in that single moment; Javier hadn't touched another human being since they left the mainland, and his systems ramped up their cycles to feverish speeds at the sudden taste of Turing material. Javier quickly withdrew his hand and shoved it in his pocket. He nodded up ahead. "She's talking to the island." He pointed at Jack's bag. "Should I take that?"

  "No, I'm good."

  "Right." They started walking. Behind them, the trees knitted the path closed. Ahead, Xavier bounded toward the house. "So. You've done your time."

  "Yeah." Jack peered over at him. "It's harder for von Neumanns, I hear."

  Javier shrugged. "Just different."

  "But you're still OK living in the penal colony?"

  Javier pulled up short. Amy's dad looked different from the man whose image Javier had seen in Amy's memories. This one was thinner, more alert. He wore the pinched, allergic face most men developed after too long in solitary. Javier wondered exactly how long Jack had spent putting that little retort together. Maybe this conversation existed for the tracer's benefit. Or maybe this man had left prison with bigger balls than he'd had coming in.

  "It's not a penal colony, and I'm not a prisoner, here. I can leave anytime I want."

  "And do you plan to?"

  Javier's brows rose. Now he understood. He really had been spending too much time away from humans, if his affect receptors were this far off the mark. "Are we seriously having this conversation?"

  Jack had the grace to look a little trapped. Then he firmed up and said: "She's my daughter. I have every right to ask."

  Javier shook his head and started trudging uphill. "Chimps."

 

They gave Jack the grand tour. They started with the house, where Amy asked her dad what dimensions he'd like and where the windows should go and how soft he preferred his bed, before unfolding the thing from the island's surface like an origami box. She smiled at her dad, and after the briefest pause he smiled back, his eyes flicking between his new daughter and his new bedroom and the old diamond tree casting broken rainbows over all of them. Then Xavier tugged his hand and dragged him to the beach, showing him how high he could jump along the way, bouncing between the boughs, until their feet met the water and Jack could see the other islands: seven of them today, though tomorrow there might be more or less, depending on what the latest calculations had to say about efficiency. Ignacio and Leòn and Gabriel lived out there. He saw them every few days when they came to see their brother, and they said neither hello nor goodbye. The Rorys and the Amys had their own islands too, where they mostly kept to themselves, and the children had an island, and Amy usually generated a small one when the pirates came along to sell their wares.

  "Where's quarantine?" Jack asked, shading his eyes with one hand.

  "That would be telling," Amy said.

  They kept Portia in quarantine, Amy and the island. Javier had no idea where that was. He had asked Amy once, but she had lifted a curl free from his eyelashes and told him not to ask again, because if his memory were searched, she didn't want him to be responsible for lying. He knew Amy could access Portia, if she wished. So far, she had not wished to. But he still ran the simulations, sometimes, about what it would take to bring her out, about whether she would speak through Amy or whether the island would sculpt her a new body wholly separate from her granddaughter's, about whether Amy had chosen to hide her in the safest place she knew: her own shell. With the island to distribute her cognition and computation, she could probably hold Portia back more securely than she'd ever done alone. Maybe she'd filtered nothing out when the island swallowed her. Maybe she'd just tapped the mute button.

  "Can I show him to the other kids?" Xavier asked, already pulling Jack in that direction.

  "No," Amy said.

  Jack frowned. "Why not?" His lips quirked. "You think your old man's a bad influence?"

  "I just promised the other vN that I wouldn't, that's all." She shrugged, as though it couldn't be helped. "You're human. The children might fall in love with you."

 

"I have this rule about drinking alone," Jack said later that night, when he stopped by Javier's room.

  "I've heard that one, before." Javier rolled his reader shut and edged along his bed to make room. A sunflower lamp unfurled as Jack entered the room; human eyes required more light. Jack sat down with a grunt and brought out a flask. He'd brought his own food, not knowing that Amy had obtained MREs and other rations from the last pirate visit. Xavier liked watching Jack eat it, had watched him eagerly until Ignacio told Xavier to quit staring.

  The house had grown again; Amy had asked his boys to stay the night. Javier heard them now, knocking around and accusing one another of cheating at some game or another. "I hope the noise doesn't bother you," Javier said now.

  "Not after being where I've been." Jack crossed his ankles and tried to look casual. "Thirteen boys," he said. "Must have been rough."

  "Not really. I'm a terrible father."

  Jack smiled tightly. "We all just do the best we can."

  Javier picked up a fab-rubber ball from the floor and bounced it against the wall. It described a perfect triangle before re-entering his hand. "I thought you came here to get a pep talk, not give one."

  Jack picked up the ball on its second bounce. "I don't need a fucking pep talk." He bounced the ball against his bicep, fumbled it, and bent down to the floor as he reached for it. "I just thought that we could, you know, get to know each other."

  "I'm not banging her, Jack."

  Jack grabbed the ball and sat up. The high points of his cheeks had pinked. "This isn't about that!" He rolled the ball in a circle over his palm with his thumb. "This is about you being doomed to fail. Maybe you can forget about the rest of the world here on your Island of Misfit Toys or whatever this place is, but it's out there, and it doesn't like you."

  "You're afraid," Javier said.

  "You're damn right I am! And with good reason! The whole world wants to take you out before you get too uppity, and you're sitting here playing house!" Jack's chest rose and fell lightly with his excited breath. He blinked. "Wow. It felt really good to say that aloud."

  "Only because you haven't said it to her, yet."

  Jack sighed. His shoulders slumped. It was a classic Amy gesture, and seeing it in her father, Javier felt a wedge of tenderness slip in between his frustration and contempt.

  "Maybe." Jack passed him the ball. "She looks just like my wife. The spitting image."

  "What was she like?"

  "My wife?"

  Javier shook his head. "Amy. Before."

  Jack shrugged and sat against the wall. "The same as she is now, I guess. More innocent, of course." He lifted his hands. "At least, I thought so. And then I watched her eat her grandmother. She just–" he skimmed his palms together with a sharp clap, to indicate speed "–took off like a shot, trying to save her mom. I didn't teach her that. Nobody taught her that. That was all her."

  "Yeah," Javier said. "I know how that goes."

  Maybe Amy's dad had a point. Javier dribbled the ball a little bit between his hands. What if Portia had only augmented what was already there? Her threats, her strategy, the lengths she was willing to go – maybe they came in the original packaging. Maybe he wasn't afraid of Portia hiding inside of Amy so much as he was of Amy, the real Amy, who she'd always been and who she'd always be.

  Jack knocked on the wall behind him. "But I can tell you that what she's doing now is what she loved to do then. She has a mighty big sandbox to play in."

  Javier remembered another sandbox, on another night, under another sunflower lamp. It felt like years ago. "You've got that right."

  "What was she like after that?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I know what happened with the island, Javier. I know she rebuilt herself." Jack tried to smile. "I guess I just want to know what the 1.5 edition was like."

  "You mean when she had Portia with her." Javier looked at his hands. "She was scared. And she kept trying to–" The words snagged in his mouth. "She made some pretty dangerous choices. Most of them for me. Us. Me and Xavier." He rubbed the invisible seam in his belly. "She helped me iterate him, you know? I was out of my mind, simulating the worst possibilities, but when she touched me it just…"

  "Faded away," Jack said.

  Javier nodded. "But then…" He tried harder to say it this time. "It was like she really did have a failsafe after all, only it worked on a delayed reaction timer, or something. She kept trying to k-keep everyone safe from P-Portia, and then, she j-just…" He covered his face with both hands. "
Fuck
."

  Jack said nothing. He didn't touch him, or move closer, or anything like that, for which Javier was profoundly grateful. He just sat there, breathing evenly, and eventually Javier calmed. Just as he was about to apologize, Jack spoke up. "I know you arranged that call between my daughter and me, before she built this place," he said. "I didn't come here to have some sort of man-to-man with you, I just came to say thanks for that. It meant more to me than you can know."

  "I did it for her, not you."

  Jack smiled. "I know. That's why I like you."

  A knock sounded at the door. "Dad?"

  "What?" both men asked.

  Xavier opened the door a sliver. He grinned. "Dad, close your eyes."

  Javier scowled. "The last time, this ended with a dead spider."

  Xavier leaned on one foot. "Don't wuss out, Dad. Close your eyes."

  Javier rolled his eyes and squeezed them shut. "Eyes are closed."

  He felt his son's hands circling his wrists. Xavier tugged on them, opening his arms, then rearranging them, his left a little higher than his right. He had seen a sculpture like this somewhere, had admired the folds of drapery in the stone. Then his son placed something warm and alive in his arms, and his flesh knew its flesh before his eyes even opened. But when they did, Javier saw Matteo and Ricci standing before him, arms across each other's shoulders.

  "We got stuck on the name," Ricci said. "Thought that maybe you could help."

  Jack leaned over to look at the child. "Is that your grandson?"

  Javier did the count: ten fingers, ten toes. The fingers of the child's left hand reached decisively for his index finger and gripped – a firm, strong grip, a grip designed for trees. "Yes," he said. "This is my grandson."

  "I want one," Jack said.

  "Hold your horses, old man." Amy leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, a smile at the corners of her mouth.

  "You knew," Javier said to her. "You must have known."

  "I wanted to keep it a surprise," she said. "I hope you like it."

  
I love it,
he wanted to say.
I love you.

  But she didn't give him the chance. She ducked out of the door, saying something about a new design.

 

He found her on a tiny new island at the head of them all, a silhouette against the distant lights of the human world that trembled, barely visible, across the waves. Her hand hovered above the beach. She didn't look up, but she made room for him on the beach and broadened the tree behind them so they would have cover from the few errant drops of nightly rain. He sat beside her. As he did, she wiped away her work in the sand.

  "He's beautiful," Javier said.

  "Yours always are." She hugged her arms. "Matteo and Ricci asked me, when Ricci started feeding heavily. They wanted their son to be safe, here."

  
Safe
. A human woman had asked him once about what he'd wanted to be, when he grew up, and he had said he'd never had enough time wonder about that. But this was what he wanted. He wanted to be
safe
. Secure. Not having to worry about the meal or the next human or the next iteration. Because his designers and engineers and techs had built in autonomy but not freedom, and they had built in free will but not choice, and Amy could give him all these things and more. She could give him the space he needed – not the figurative bullshit "space" but real
space
, room to move around, room to climb and jump and dance if the notion took him. And she wasn't giving him that room because she pitied him, or because she was generous, or because she was obligated to. She
wanted
to build that home for him and his boys. She worked every minute of every day keep him safe, to shield him from the world that he'd left behind, and she did the same for all the vN who arrived on their shores.

  A chill wind lifted their hair from their scalps. "Storm's coming," Javier said, rubbing his arms.

  Amy's gaze remained pinned to the lights of the cities beyond. "I know."

  "Your dad's worried."

  "I know that, too."

  "He told me what you were like when you were little. Says you're not so different, now."

  Amy stood and began circling the little island. "I know I'm different, Javier. She
made
me different. Even though she's gone, and I know you don't believe that, but even though she's gone, she
changed
me, she made me see things,
do
things–"

  "I've missed you," Javier said, before he could think. "God, I've missed you."

  She paused in mid-step, one foot raised, and pivoted slowly to face him. "How could you miss me? I've been right here."

  "I've never known you without her," he said. "And I've never known you without the island. I've never known
you
, Amy. Just you."