The Sons of Heaven (25 page)

How neatly he fits in the angle of my arm. As though it had been designed for his rest. I suppose in the larger scheme of things it was, wasn’t it? Ohh, look: rapid eye movements. When he’s awake they focus sharply, as a mortal child’s could not at this age; and they were from the moment he opened them that same pale blue, the color of Spanish glass… shh, shhh, Nicholas … little Nicket.

Do mortal women maunder on in this inane way, about the children they bring into daylight? How do they bear it, holding this tiny little thing in their arms, knowing all the perils it has to go through once it stands alone? This is terrifying.

In fact—I can’t imagine why I’m not crouching in a corner with my hands over my head, whimpering in fright. You know, you go along for three thousand years of immortal life and one day is pretty much like another, even with catastrophic tragedies now and again, and you just assume nothing will ever change. Then, one fine day, everything changes forever. I am the first of my kind to do this reproduction thing, and I haven’t the faintest idea how to proceed.

Mortal women have mothers, aunts, sisters, and grandmothers to consult and advise and Greek-chorus for them generally, and I have … a pirate.

No offense, Sir Henry. The modifications on Flint are impressive, the bottle holder and the padded waldoes or whatever those are, and the concertina-playing apparatus and the, ah, dangly mobile thing. I’m sure Alec likes it. He gurgles and stops crying whenever you make the pirate doll dance for him.

And the cradle is lovely. How clever of you to build it to match the rest of the bedroom décor. I’m sure any little boy would love a cradle built to look like a pirate ship. All that gilded carving, and the blanket and hangings in red velvet, with those gold-embroidered skull and crossbone motifs … It’s just so
huge
… Yes, I know Edward had that Whiteley’s one with the bunnies picked out, and I was thinking maybe something in powder blue and pink, but—no, no, I don’t mind at all. Edward doesn’t, either. Really.

And I understand about the health benefits and all that, and I know you’d love to feed Alec by yourself, and I was quite impressed with the way you gave him the vitamins. But I’m not certain I can hook myself up to that thing. In fact, I’m certain I can’t. I’m sorry… yes, of course, later he can have juice and I don’t know what. You’ll do a wonderful job then, to be sure. Mm-hm. It’s an adorable dimple, you’re right…

… And there goes Flint, wet nurse of the Spanish Main …

No, darling, I was just talking to Sir Henry. Everything’s all—what? No, I think it’s just drool. Go back to sleep. There … Poor thing, sprawled flat on his back and so he’s snoring most amazingly; but it doesn’t seem to disturb Alec. It’s sweet of him to cuddle Alec like that, considering Alec pees on him whenever he gets the chance. There have been several unfortunate incidents on the changing table already.

Oh, no, no, no, Nicket, are you having a bad dream? You open your eyes and you look so bewildered. What other place to you go off to when you’re asleep, Nicket, to be so surprised to wake in my arms again? Shh, shh.
Ay la le lo … dum de dum
… If you were a mortal baby I’d wonder what could possibly be in your little memory, to give you bad dreams. As it is … Nicholas Harpole is in there somewhere. Once you were a man, and I loved you in a green garden. What are we to do now, my dearest? …

He’s like a tiny stroke victim, nearly as helpless as a mortal baby. Presumably all his adult mind is there, but its powers of expression are limited. Same with Alec, apparently.

We were alarmed by the impairment at first, but Sir Henry assured us their brains aren’t damaged; they simply haven’t been programmed yet, haven’t the
software to make their new bodies work. They haven’t even been augmented, though they have all the potential of neophyte cyborgs. And, since there is no immense Company educational system to feed data into their tiny heads, Edward and I must do it.

Edward was in favor of one immense download to each of them, but Sir Henry reminded him, with a remarkable minimum of four-letter words I must say, about what such a mass transfer of information did to
me
. Edward was instantly horrified and contrite. So Sir Henry showed us, patiently, how to make up careful infant-sized data packets, and supervised the first installation session.

We sat together here on the bed, and I took Alec in my arms and Edward took Nicholas, because at that point Alec was still screaming every time Edward even looked at him, though Nicholas began to shriek too the minute Edward picked him up, and Edward looked so nervous … Sir Henry told him where to set his index finger between Nicket’s eyes. Remembering the sessions from my own childhood, I followed suit.

We downloaded the packets. It was so strange; from screaming in outrage, suddenly the boys grew still, and Alec got such a
listening
look. I could feel the data running out of me. It made me catch my breath; and I glanced across at Edward and saw his eyes wide, his pupils dilated. I leaned against him, partly for strength and partly to comfort him.

Afterward the little boys fell instantly asleep, as their greedy brains processed what we’d given them. We just continued to sit there, watching them in a stunned kind of way. Posthuman parents. Sir Henry assures us we’re doing fine.

When they woke up again, we could see at once that the downloads had had an effect—Nicholas seemed to have gained control of his hands, and Alec wasn’t going cross-eyed when he tried to focus at all—so I suppose Sir Henry’s right.

Now we coordinate programming with feeding. It’s easy for me when I nurse them, a little more complicated for Edward as he holds a bottle of mineral supplements in emulsion, but he manages anyway. He’s very brave.

Even after we’ve finished installing all their augmentation, they’ll have to be trained in physical skills like hyperfunction, and taught how to assimilate all that fantastic knowledge with which they’ve been gifted. Edward was right: nobody’s ever done this before.

And so of course no cultural frame exists for this peculiar relationship of ours, Nicholas. The man I loved, to passionate madness, is now this tiny little boy in my arms. We will never dance that particular dance again. I don’t think.

Doesn’t matter. Nicholas Harpole, here you are, a refutation of pain. Your mortal agony, your martyrdom in greasy ashes by the Medway River: all undone. You’re warm and whole and full of milk and Death has finally died, the bony bastard. His scythe lies broken at my feet.

Oh, Alec, no, no … don’t wake up poor exhausted Daddy.

I can’t tell yet whether Alec’s forgotten his old life. I wonder if he’s forgotten what he did on Mars? Please, God, let it be so. Even damaged as I was, all those months we traveled together, I was generally able to identify which of the three of them was in control of Alec’s old body. And Alec, at the times we should have been happiest, used to get the most wretched look in his eyes …

On the first day I ever met him, I was struck by what a knot of self-loathing was caught about Alec’s heart. That was the Company’s plan, wasn’t it? To so motivate him with guilt and shame he’d do anything to try to redeem himself? Even something as profoundly, quixotically stupid as smuggling weapons to the Martian Agricultural Collective … And then he was supposed to conveniently die, as Edward and Nicholas died.

That he didn’t do so has left us with the problem of a broken hero on a downward spiral. What are we going to do about that, Alec darling? Can we heal you? Has providing you with a new body changed anything?

But for now Alec crams his fist in his mouth, and sucks on it contentedly as he falls more deeply asleep. There is a round spreading patch of milky Alec-drool on Edward’s starched shirtfront. It will stain.

Once it was blood … I’m not quite sure what to make of the change in Edward.

What, oh what has come over the all-powerful master of temporal equations? What has shaken his confidence in his ability to fulfill his divine purpose? (And isn’t it remarkable how a confirmed atheist like Commander Bell-Fairfax was able to entertain such a delusion in the first place?)

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was going through postpartum depression. I’ve certainly no trace of it, myself; I seem to lack that possessive, desperately unhappy love I have observed in mortal mothers. Edward, on the other hand, has become fanatically protective of the children. He gets up five times in a night to check the cradle to see if they’re still there, still breathing. He turns white if one of them rolls too near the edge of the bed.

I thought it might be fun to have Smee make up tiny jammies for Alec, in loud Hawaiian shirt print, but Edward won’t hear of it; he feels the material’s unsuitable,
might give the infant a rash!
Or perhaps it just offends his slightly rigid sensibilities. So, as our lives continue to be remade in his Victorian image,
the little boys are decked out in white lace and smocking. There are going to be some awe-inspiring conflicts when they get older, I can see that already.

Quite apart from the fact that he was lying to get his own way when he told me we should start a family, Edward really did believe all that business about the maternal instinct being the foundation of a woman’s soul. He actually thought I wouldn’t be psychologically fulfilled as a woman until I managed to reproduce. Well, surprise! He seems to be the one going through the transformation. For an omnitemporal immortal, he’s a nervous wreck. Nine months ago, he thought he was almost a god. But now … no one knows what helplessness is, until they have children.

He dutifully set up a feeding/installation schedule, and managed to control his temper when the boys’ tummies refused to go along with it. He will lie quietly beside me when we have them both on the bed like this, simply watching them, for hours. Can it be that
Edward
always wanted children, on some buried level of his psyche? Do men really want to be fathers?

He has kissed the babies once or twice, furtively, when they’re asleep, though I know he despised the men that Alec and Nicholas were. If he has forgiven them their imperfection, has he forgiven himself? He broke my chains; can he break his own?

The Ephesians would have us believe that men can’t nurture, that they’re mere sex-and-violence machines, useful for producing Y chromosomes and best banished from the home once their reproductive task is finished. Men themselves buy into this lie, often, I think. I know Edward was bullied into believing it, by the Company agents who trained him. So the deep protective instincts he really did have were twisted, and what a sad accommodation he made with the life’s work they set him to do: killing to make a better world for the children he’d never be allowed to have.

Wise programming, I suppose. How could he ever have been induced to sacrifice himself for the greater good, unless love was what drove him? Plain base appetite produces nothing more than a plain predator. To make a really effective monster you need to begin with a good man, and tell him lies …

He sips his port and reflects, smugly, that it’s all turned out for the best. He’s properly dressed for dinner at last! And she looks ravishing in that gown. The style of the 1830s suits her very well, even if she seems a bit peevish at the moment
.

He’s certain she won’t remain displeased with him very long. Look at this splendid dining room he’s had furnished for her! Look at the great polished table, the silver epergne, the mahogany sideboard where is spread, in glittering display, the bewildering wealth of specialized utensils no proper home should be without. Asparagus tongs, lobster forks, runcible spoons!

…
Though now he notices that this is the dining room in the house where he was a boy. Why on earth would they go back to No. 10 Albany Crescent? Where are the servants? He hears a high thin wailing and looks around, puzzled
.

“My dear, the children are crying. Ring for Mrs. Lodge.”

Mendoza looks at him sourly from the distant end of the table. “What good will that do? You ate the babies, remember?”

“What?” he cries, horrified. She just goes on trying to open her tamale with a marrow spoon
.

‘You assimilated them,” she says in a chilly voice. “I asked you not to, but you insisted. You said they tasted like a brace of skinned grouse.”

“No!” He tries to jump to his feet but he’s oddly heavy, breathless. She stares at him, unsmiling, and she is a great distance away and the room is much longer, much colder, much darker than he remembered
.

“You insisted,”she repeats, in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “God forbid the son should be greater than his father! Cronos did it to Zeus. Zeus did it to you, and now you’re continuing the tradition.”

“But—” The crying is still going on, and he realizes it’s coming from inside himself, and looking down in dismay he sees an immense bulge under the white silk waistcoat of his faultless evening dress
.

“Of course, they’ll get out of there one of these days,” Mendoza informs him. “That’s what always happens. You’ll be sorry then.”

He feels a lurch and hears a tearing noise, and though he feels no pain the gleaming steel blade of an aspic knife emerges abruptly from his starched shirtfront. As he watches it begins to move, methodically cutting a circular hole
.

“See?”Mendoza tells him. He clutches at himself in anguish
.

“Help me!”he howls—

“Help me!” says Mendoza tearfully. “I’ve only got two arms!”

He sits up in a cold sweat, gasping. Alec is nursing at Mendoza’s left breast, but Nicholas is doubled up and screaming shrilly. It is otherwise still midnight on a quiet sea, the dim lamp barely swinging on its gimbal.

“Nicky drank too fast and now he’s got colic,” Mendoza tells him. “How the hell could you sleep through this?”

Shaking with relief, Edward gathers up the tiny agonized figure and holds
it close. “Shh, Nicholas. Shh, son. There, there—” A blast of incoherent wrath roars in his ears, dire threats, humiliation, revenge!