In Heaven and Earth (18 page)

“
Yes,” Vairya
said absently, “but that kind of sentiment would be terribly out of
character. Maybe he could just see from space that we were green
again. Curiosity is his weakness.”

Reuben hadn’t seen any
hints of weakness on that stern face, but he would take Vairya’s
word for it. Leaving Vairya to pace and fret, he started contacting
the leaders of the city. Chanthavy transported down from the ship,
and there were nine of them gathered in Vairya’s house. There
weren’t quite enough chairs, and Reuben retreated to a windowsill
to watch the proceedings.

When Jibrail called back,
he looked pleased to see the gathering. “Ah, that’s almost everyone
we need to interview. You have no objection to my using your screen
to do so, I assume, Vairya?”

“
Do we have our
reprieve?” Vairya demanded.

“
Yes,” Jibrail
said, and everyone in the room relaxed a little. “By then the true
extent of the situation should be obvious. We will remain in a
stationary orbit in the meantime. My human companions are rather
hysterical about the entire situation, so I have informed them that
I will be your liaison for the next few days. You may rely on me to
convey any information accurately and to inform all involved of any
conclusions I draw.”

“
You can too,”
Vairya said to the room, not looking away from the screen. “Jibby,
why are you here? I’d have expected you to be heading for the
limits of human space with a cargo hold full of
backups.”

“
Binah is
waiting on my signal to do just that. I thought it appropriate to
see exactly what kind of trouble you had managed to get yourself
into this time.”

Vairya looked both
pleased and surprised. “Thank you.”

“
Save your
breath. Captain Som, I wish to clarify a few points from your
initial report, if you would be so kind.”

Jibrail’s clarifying of
points continued day and night. Every time Reuben went through the
lounge, on his way to and from the hospital or just on his way
between the bedroom and the kitchen, someone else was sitting in
front of the screen, tense and nervous under Jibrail’s polite and
relentless interrogation. Reuben got his own turn on the second
afternoon, and answered every question as clearly and precisely as
he could.

“
An excellent
report,” Jibrail said when he was finally done, “but you have a
military background, don’t you, Doctor?”

“
Yes,” Reuben
said. There was no point in anything else. Jibrail knew who he
was.

“
My brother is
not a violent man,” Jibrail said, his green eyes narrowing. “I
would hate for him to become compromised by your extraordinary
decision-making.”

“
Are the barely
veiled threats part of the interrogation, sir, or are you just
trying to warn me off?”

“
Would that
work?”

“
Not in the
slightest.”

Jibrail glared at him.
Reuben scowled back.

“
Well,” Jibrail
said at last, his sneer undiminished, “your courage, at least, is
not at fault.”

“‘
None but the
brave deserve the fair,’” Reuben said as mildly as he
could.

“
Dryden?”
Jibrail said with a note of disdain. “Dead poets will not charm me,
Dr Cooper. I am not like my brother in that respect.”

“
I would have
guessed as much.” Reuben raised his eyebrow. “‘Did he who made the
Lamb make thee?’”

“
Amusing,”
Jibrail said flatly.

“
I have more
where that came from. How many must I use before you learn to mind
your own business?”

“
Now who speaks
rashly to power, Doctor?”

“
Oh, I know
that you are currently the angel with the burning sword at our
gate. I only have to look at the sky to be reminded. I also know
that you would not unleash that power carelessly, not when your
brother’s life is at stake. Apart from anything else, you are too
proud to be so petty.”

Jibrail regarded him
silently for a moment. Then he gave Reuben a thin wintry smile and
remarked, “You have the potential to be just as irritating as my
brother, Doctor. It’s possible you may actually deserve each
other.”

Then, while Reuben was
still blinking with surprise, the screen blinked off.

“
That’s as much
a blessing as you’ll ever get,” Vairya remarked behind him. “I
think he likes you.”

“
I think too
much sex has broken your brain,” Reuben said and sank back in the
chair so Vairya could lean down and kiss him.

“
Want to break
it some more?”

“
I have to get
back to the hospital,” Reuben said with regret.

Vairya sighed. “I should
get back to the reservoir then. So much to do.”

That night, on the edge
of sleep, Reuben chuckled at a sudden thought and said, “Your
brother should really wear a monocle. It would improve his
sneer.”

Vairya grinned at him.
“I’ll give him one for his next birthday. It gets hard to find new
gifts after the first hundred years.”

“
When’s his
birthday?”

“
Not for
months,” Vairya said quietly. “I suppose it might not matter. Our
deadline runs out tomorrow.”

“
Have
hope.”

“
I’m afraid
to.” He rose up on one elbow, though, and looked down at Reuben,
his face solemn. “It feels like we have lived a lifetime in a week
and a half, doesn’t it?”

“
It does,”
Reuben said. “More than many men see in their lives.”

“
Yes,” Vairya
said, still serious. “Reuben, have you thought at all about what
you will do if we survive?”

“
A little,”
Reuben admitted. “I’ve been trying to avoid thinking beyond the
moment.”

“
Have you
considered staying? I know it has only been ten days, but it
occurred to me that you and I, we both have a gift for annoying
people, but we haven’t annoyed each other, not in any way that
matters, and that seems… well, I don’t know what it is. Despite
everything I know, I don’t know what this is.”

“
I have an
idea,” Reuben said, his heart warm. He pulled Vairya down against
his shoulder, putting his arms around him. “All that poetry in your
head, and you don’t recognise it?”

“
It’s absurd,”
Vairya whispered. “Ridiculous. Preposterous.”

“
You have a
thesaurus in there too?”

Vairya pinched him in the
side, looking affronted. “I’m having a life-altering revelation and
you mock me?”

“
And you love
it,” Reuben pointed out.

“
I do, for my
sins.”

It could have become
another game of quotation and allusion, but Reuben needed to make
this clear, especially if they were to die tomorrow. “I am falling
in love with you.”

Vairya sighed. “Yes.
That’s exactly it, isn’t it? I am halfway in love with you.” His
smile went rueful. “Please stay, Reuben, or I shall make a lovesick
fool of myself chasing you across the galaxy.”

“
I want to
stay,” Reuben admitted. Life, and circumstance, had sent him to the
stars, but he had always wanted to find a home one day. Until now,
he had doubted he would ever be welcome to settle anywhere. “My
reputation could cause you some problems.”

Vairya snorted. “Everyone
in the city is alive because of you. I’m the one who will have to
watch out for your admirers.”

“
Nonsense,”
Reuben said and kissed him.

When they finally pulled
apart, Vairya was smiling. Leaning in so closely their mouths
brushed, he recited, laughter in his voice, “‘Come live with me,
and be my love…’”

Reuben kissed the words
out of him, setting aside all his worries about tomorrow, to take
this moment and live it to the utmost.

THE NEXT day was the
strangest he had ever lived. No one talked about the impending
deadline, but every few moments he would notice someone darting a
glance at the sky. The hospital felt very quiet, and there weren’t
as many patients as he would have expected. There were staff
missing too, and he couldn’t begrudge them the chance to spend the
time with their loved ones.

Meili had come to help
out, and Eskil and Chanthavy joined them before long. None of them
needed to talk about it, but he was glad to have their familiar
faces close by. He was gladder still when Vairya appeared at
midday, bringing them lunch and then sitting in the garden outside
the waiting room, watching him through the window as he consulted
with his patients and colleagues.

He needed to visit the
wards, so he headed for the doors into the garden to let Vairya
know where he was going. He didn’t want to let him out of
sight.

“
Reuben,” Meili
said suddenly, her voice oddly tight. “It’s not
working.”

“
What’s not?”
he asked, turning to face her. She was standing in the doorway of
one of the treatment rooms, looking strained.

“
The nanites.
They’re not responding. I’ve tried and tried, and nothing’s
happening. Could you have a look? You’re better with
them.”

Her patient was a boy
with a badly broken wrist. Reuben knelt down beside him, smiling
reassuringly. “Looks like you’ve done yourself some damage
there.”

“
I told him not
to climb that tree,” the fraught-looking woman behind him said,
“but it was there in the living room, and somebody just can’t
resist a challenge.”

“
Well, I can
understand that,” Reuben said, winking at the kid, and concentrated
on the nanites. “Heal him.”

Nothing happened. There
was no flicker of silver over the child’s skin and no answering hum
in his blood. Puzzled, Reuben tried again, focussing all his
willpower on it. Yesterday, he had been able to close wounds with a
thought and mend a damaged spine with a touch.

Still nothing, and he
nodded at Meili before splinting the wrist. “No more trees until
that’s healed.”

“
You too?”
Meili asked.

“
Yes.” Reuben
looked up as Vairya stepped inside, looking worried.

“
I’ve got
people calling me from all over the city, saying the nanites have
stopped responding. More than that, things seem to have stopped
growing.”

“
Going
backwards?” Reuben asked with a sudden sick clench of his gut. If
everything they had fixed with nanites over the last few days
failed, it would be catastrophic.

“
No, just not
changing any further.”

“
Call your
brother. Find out if the ships are doing this.” It could be some
new weapon, designed to disable nanites before it blew up the
city.

Vairya nodded, but his
eyes went blank for a second. “Doing an internal scan first to see
if I can detect what’s happening to the ones in my system.
Oh.”

“
What?” Meili
said, clenching her fists.

“
They’re all
inert,” he said. “I can detect them in my bloodstream, but they
seem to be dead. They’re completely unresponsive.” He looked up and
said into his com, “Jibrail, are you there? Something strange is
happening down here.”

“
What time is
it?” Meili said slowly. “I think… it’s been ten days, ten days
exactly.”

“
Since what?”
Reuben asked.

“
Ten days since
we injected the first nanites into Vairya.”

There was a pale flash
and suddenly Jibrail was standing in the garden. He looked shorter
in person, and he was actually smiling.

“
Ten days,”
Meili repeated.

“
Quite right,
Dr Peake,” Jibrail said, bestowing an approving look on her.
“Vairya, it is good to see you healthy.”

“
What’s going
on?” Vairya demanded. “Meili?”

“
The original
nanites,” she said, “the ones we put in you and Cooper, were
medical
nanites. All
medical nanites have a time limit coded in. They die after ten
days.”

“
Precisely,”
Jibrail said. “Of course, given the extraordinary use to which they
had been put, and their assimilation of the older Terran bots, we
couldn’t be certain that trait had been passed on. I did manage to
persuade my colleagues to indulge my curiosity and hold off firing
until the deadline had passed, and I can tell you with complete
confidence that our scans have not identified any surviving nanite
activity in Caelestia.” He turned an almost kind smile at their
shocked faces. “Don’t look so taken aback. Not everybody can
remember everything.”

“
We’re going to
live?” Meili said blankly.

Jibrail’s smile softened
slightly, and he said gently, “Yes, Doctor. You are all going to
live.”

“
And just as I
was starting to enjoy having godlike powers,” Vairya said, but he
was still looking stunned despite his jaunty tone.

Jibrail looked pained. “I
believe that is precisely why they built in those very limits. Now,
we have some emergency supplies to beam down, and I need to
coordinate drop sites with the mayor.”