The Sons of Heaven (27 page)

Linked as our minds now are, he always knows sooner or later when I’m staring at him, and so—yes, his snores break off, he’s grunting and opening one eye—

No, I was just making a few notes. It’s all right. Mmmm …

The little town of Garrapatta was blessed with many advantages, but stability wasn’t one of them.

For nearly six centuries now it had clung to the black mountain above Cape San Martin, with varying degrees of success. Every so often it lost its grip, for one reason or another; either the winter storms would precipitate a slide or the San Andreas Fault would shrug, and greater or lesser portions of Garrapatta would plummet into the sea.

But its handful of citizens were a hardy lot, long accustomed to minor inconveniences like abrupt changes in elevation or rappelling down cliffs to purchase groceries. There were so many reasons to stay there! The breathtaking view of the Pacific, the grandeur and isolation of the coastline, the bubbling springs, the fresh air …

All the same, when the last bad El Niño had relocated the entire business district (five of the town’s eight public buildings had landed in a colony of elephant seals) there was reluctant talk of abandonment. The Protector had come to Garrapatta’s rescue, however.

Yes, Mr. Hearst had kindly evacuated the refugees and provided shelter for them down the coast at San Simeon while he brought in engineers, architects, and the most expensive antigravity technology. Over a period of five years the townsite was stabilized, the road restored, the businesses rebuilt. The citizens of Garrapatta now had every assurance that, regardless of how much the mountain moved in future, antigravity would keep their community exactly where it was. Any problems related to floating in midair could be solved with a few sturdy foot bridges.

The return of the natives was quite a gala event. They were loaded into
Mr. Hearst’s own superyacht, provided with box lunches and taken up the coastline to the new boat landing he had built next to the former seal colony. There they disembarked and rode in the new antigravity elevator up to Garrapatta, where a brass band on the deck of the new general store played “Home, Sweet Home.” One of Mr. Hearst’s public relations people (he seldom appeared in public himself) then provided the townsfolk with a guided tour of the civic improvements.

Every least shack and vegetable patch had been faithfully restored, the general store was more spacious, the Vertical Café had lost none of its crusty charm, and the Garrapatta Springs Hotel had plumbing and new towels in case they ever had guests. Nor was this all: Mr. Hearst had even provided Garrapatta with a
ninth
structure, the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Cultural Center.

This was a great improvement on the old Garrapatta Cultural Center, which had been housed in the hotel lobby and consisted of three holoes and a broken holoprojector. The new cultural center loomed grandly above the town, a building of reinforced concrete dug well into the mountain, with an ornate façade in Spanish Renaissance style. Within was stored a library of over a million entries in holo entertainment, games, music, and even literature, though the only one of Garrapatta’s citizens who could read was the cultural center’s new curator, Joseph X. Machina. Smiling and urbane, he shook hands with his new neighbors and hoped they’d all attend the Saturday night film fests he was planning.

The brass band went home, the public relations person went home, and life returned to what passed for normal in Garrapatta.

“Say, would you folks like to take some popcorn away with you?” Joseph inquired, hefting a large sack. “It’s free.”

His audience—all three of them—brightened at that, and, when they had pulled on their coats, helped themselves. Joseph bowed them out through the grand lobby of the cultural center, and stood watching as they slipped away down the mountain into the night. He sighed and looked up at the million stars, looked out at the vast dark sea. He shut and locked the door, and walked back through the cultural center to the concealed entrance that led into the stronghold beyond.

“You’d think I’d get some takers for
Gone with the Wind,”
he complained, as he entered the inner sanctum. Budu scarcely looked up from the console where he worked, scanning through geological survey maps of California.

“Mortals who choose to live in isolation aren’t interested in public entertainment, son,” he informed Joseph.

“Yeah, but
—Gone with the
goddam
Wind!
Romance! Action! The burning of Atlanta, for crying out loud,” Joseph said, keying in the security lockdown.

Budu looked briefly interested. “William Tecumseh Sherman,” he said, and nodded. “A mortal who understood war.” He turned his gaze back to the survey maps.

Joseph yawned and stretched. “Wow, it’s late. I’m starving. You want a sandwich or something?”

“No,” Budu replied.

“Okay,” said Joseph, and trudged off to the kitchen.

Their quarters within the stronghold were something more than palatial. Hearst had insisted on grand furnishings for them, sparing no expense, as was his won’t. Budu’s console was housed in an eighteenth-century Italian cabinet. There were tapestries on the walls, bokhara carpets on the floors, stained glass lighting panels set here and there in the coffered ceiling. Somehow none of this managed to disguise the fact that it was still a bunker under rock, a war room, a command center.

No expense had been spared on the bathroom, either, or the well-stocked kitchen; everything was state-of-the-art. Joseph fried potatoes and ate from the skillet, drank Celtic Federation beer from the bottle. When he was done he went off to take a shower, leaving a trail of his discarded clothes as he went. When he had showered, he crawled into his seventeenth-century canopied bed and was snoring within five minutes. He slept undisturbed for the next three hours.

Budu remained at his console during that time, studying the maps intently. At last he rose to his feet, a massive figure in a plain dark robe, and crossed the room to the alcove where Joseph slept. “Son,” he said, leaning down to peer under the canopy.

“Huh?” Joseph sat bolt upright, staring.

“You must talk to the boy tomorrow,” Budu told him. Budu invariably referred to Hearst as “the boy.”

“Tomorrow. Okay,” said Joseph, dazedly checking his internal chronometer. “What do we want this time?”

“A vineyard in the southern end of his dominion,” said Budu. “Chalk hills full of flint nodules. There was a town there once. Without being too obvious, he must mine the flint for us. Two tons should do. The flint must be stockpiled in a cache near San Simeon.”

“Flint?” Joseph blinked.

“He must also,” Budu continued, “supply us with wood, out of the lumber he keeps to maintain his house. I want heartwood of old-growth English oak, four or five trees’worth. He ought to be able to set that aside without drawing attention.”

“Flint and oak, right,” said Joseph. “For …?”

“The axes,” Budu replied.

“Okay,” said Joseph, and then his eyes widened. “We’re taking on the Company with flint axes?”

“Yes,” said Budu.

“You’re not joking, huh?” quavered Joseph.

Budu rose to his full height. “Think. We’re going up against immortals. No bullet or disrupter beam can touch them. Any fighting will be hand-to-hand. Blades are hard to get, in this last age; if we ordered enough to arm my men, we’d draw the Company’s attention to ourselves at once.” He grinned. “But hand-made weapons are untraceable. A heap of stones, a few logs won’t be noticed.”

“Yeah, but—” said Joseph, and paused, for as he thought about it it began to make a certain sense.

“Any of my men can make his own weapon in an hour,” explained Budu patiently. “You remember what a flint axe can do, when it’s wielded by a master. The fighting will be over quickly.”

“This could work,” said Joseph in awe. “Won’t we need thongs, though? Where are we going to get water buffalo hide in this day and age?”

“Son.” Budu looked pained. “We’re making weapons, not historical reproductions. Composite ramilar cord will suit our purposes. Have the boy acquire the principal factory that makes it. We’ll need six thousand meters.”

“Gotcha,” said Joseph.

In the morning Joseph picked his way down the mountain, nodding at his neighbors on their ledges as he went. He descended in the antigravity elevator to the boat landing, where he hauled a subsuit out of his daypack and pulled it on over his casual clothes. It took no more than a moment to wrestle the Seaski 3000 from its storage pod, and then he was speeding away in the direction of San Simeon, skipping along the surface of the water.

Joseph came in just north of San Simeon and cut power, wading ashore and hiding the Seaski in a grove of trees near the beach. There he divested himself
of the subsuit, folded it into his pack and strolled out to the old highway. The twin towers of La Casa Grande gleamed white on the high skyline to the east.

Having crossed the road, Joseph quickly vanished into a streambed thicket. Settling his pack more firmly, he pointed himself along the line of willows that followed the stream down from the hills; a second later he was gone, no less swift than an arrow and leaving no more lasting track than he had on the face of the sea.

He found Hearst dismounted, leading an Arabian mare through rolling oak savanna. She had paused to drink from the stream and Hearst was stroking her neck, talking to her quietly. Joseph was careful to appear in plain sight a few hundred meters away and walk gradually toward Hearst, to avoid startling the horse.

“Hey, Mr. Hearst, that’s a swell mare,” he remarked. Hearst looked up at him and smiled wryly.

“Thanks,” he said. “Her name’s Rosebud.”

“Good one!” Joseph said, grinning. “I guess you can only ride back here in private nowadays, huh? After those laws you passed for animal rights.”

Hearst nodded, patting the horse’s flank. “People wouldn’t understand. She understands, don’t you, girl? She knows I’d never mistreat her. I’d look like a hypocrite if anybody saw us, but I still think those laws were necessary. Mortals have learned to get along without animal slaves. If they can be taught that, maybe they can be taught anything. I wish half of them were as bright as Rosebud, here … or at least, more like her. Why is it easier to be kind to animals than it is to be kind to mortals, Mr. Denham?”

“I don’t know,” replied Joseph. “Is it?”

“It is for me,” Hearst told him. “Always has been. I had thought that when I became an immortal I’d feel differently. After all, I’m now as far above mortals as mortals are above horses, aren’t I? And I feel pity for them, and I want the best for them, but I don’t… I guess I don’t love them.”

“Good thing we’re not gods, then, isn’t it?” Joseph said, slipping out of his pack and stretching. Hearst turned troubled eyes to him.

“We seem to have inherited their job, though, haven’t we? We’re ruling the world. I’m not complaining, I always thought I’d be good at it, but sometimes I feel as if I’ve been left minding a stranger’s baby.
Somebody
ought to love the mortals, don’t you think?”

“Oh, plenty of us do,” Joseph observed. “You’d be surprised.”

“I suppose it’s all right, then,” said Hearst. He brightened. “Budu must love them, or he wouldn’t be planning this rebellion for their own good. Would he? Has he got another job for me, is that why you’re visiting?”

“Yeah, actually,” said Joseph, avoiding the first question, and explained briefly what Budu wanted.

“Jiminy.” Hearst’s eyes went wide. He began to grin. “Flint axes, that’s brilliant! That’s like something out of an adventure story. The Company will never suspect.”

“They won’t if we’re careful,” Joseph told him. “How well can you hide stuff from Quintilius?”

“Perfectly.” Hearst waved his hand. “I know exactly what I’ll do. I’ve been running the Old American Heroes series on
Examiner
. We’ve just worked our way up to the days of the cowboys. I’ll do an episode set here in California, and I’ll announce that I’m sponsoring an archaeological dig of an authentic old western town! He’ll get his flints, all right.”

“Can you get Quintilius out of the way, so he doesn’t notice what you’re doing?” Joseph asked.

“I’ll send him off to Europe on another acquisitions trip,” said Hearst. “I’ll say… I know. We’ve been trying to negotiate with that old skinflint in the Vatican for his library. Up until now I didn’t like to pay what he’s been asking, but… what’s money if you can’t spend it?” He sobered momentarily. “And if the world is going to end in ten years, it won’t matter anyhow.”

“If we win, it won’t come to that,” Joseph assured him. Suddenly he lifted his head and stared off to the south, in the direction of La Casa Grande. Hearst followed his gaze. Both men appeared to be listening to something. “There’s an immortal coming in this direction,” Joseph said.

“Quintilius,” affirmed Hearst. His face grew dreadfully cold. “What does he think he’s doing? Spying on me?”

“I’d better scram, before he notices me,” Joseph said. “I’ll be in touch, okay?”

With that he vanished into the oak trees. Hearst remained where he stood a moment, calming himself by stroking the horse’s mane; then he vaulted up into the saddle and rode back along the way he had come. By the time he came within a few meters of the signal his face was a mask of affability, though his eyes were stony.

“Gracious, Quint, is that you?” he said aloud. “What are you doing back here? I didn’t think nature walks were in your line.”

There was an apologetic cough and an immortal emerged from the bushes.
He was a small nondescript-looking man, as many immortals were. “I was searching for you, W. R.,” he explained. “Breaking story.”

“What is it?” Hearst decided not to ask why Quintilius hadn’t simply transmitted the alert.

“Areco’s lawyers just served notice on the Martian Agricultural Collective. They want them out in 2352 when the lease expires. They’re claiming—”

“Good Lord!” Hearst whipped out his communicator. “Get me the London, Auckland, Mexico City, and Bikkung offices. Conference call now.”