The Sons of Heaven (41 page)

… The careful observer may notice a strange play of light around the man and the woman, a shimmer or flicker at the edges, as though they are not quite firmly
there
in the moment the shutters clicked to frame this postcard. This is because they once stepped away from Time into Eternity, and stepped back again. If they are wise, they will not delay too long before returning, and taking the children this time: a sensible precaution, after all, when living happily ever after.

We hardly ever fight anymore.

Well, not real fights where Edward thunders and I scream back at him. Minor disagreements, yes. About furnishing the house, for example, now that it’s finally finished.

I myself don’t see why Edward’s Victorian notions of good taste should prevail in household furnishing, clothing, and every other detail of our lives. He is infuriatingly arrogant still, sublimely certain that though the Almighty (who doesn’t exist, after all) may have created a flawed universe, by God the domestic arrangements of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax are perfect and not to be questioned. Edward is Always Right.

But, having said that—he usually is right. And has such a strength of heart I think he could hold back both wind and tide, bear the Earth on his shoulder. Is marriage like this for mortals, this continually unfolding mystery that is the beloved? I love in him even what maddens me about him. And if I am by no means so wise and glamorous an immortal creature as he once thought me, well, he loves me anyway; and that’s some consolation for self-knowledge.

We live together in so very much more than a cottage by the sea. The absurd house rises on its high green lawn above the bay, with its immaculate garden we have labored in together. He has made me go through gardening catalogues with him, before timewalking sidelong into 1622 or 1913 for purchases. The debate is endless. Shall we put in
Zomerschoon
tulips, or
Wapen
van Leidens?
Roman Blue hyacinths, or Lord Balfours? Seagull daffodils, or
N. hispanicus Maximus?
And if it’s quite a change for Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, R.N. (Retired), it’s no less so for me; Botany drone that I was, I don’t think I ever planted anything so unimportant as a
flower
once, in all the ages I belonged to Dr. Zeus. We grope after salvation, both of us.

He hasn’t brought up the subject of Dr. Zeus’s overthrow in quite a few years, let alone his plans for Ruling the World. He’s been too busy buying furniture.

Edward now has what he feels is a tastefully furnished study, with temporally-imported walnut paneling and a big chair where he can sit and smoke his temporally-imported Cuban cigars, and a big desk/console combination where he can sit and work on
Child Care in the Cyborg Family
while listening to his interminably heroic brass band music. And I have a solarium, even more cluttered with topiary than my botany lab on the ship was after Edward got through with it, and it’s beautiful, of course, with delicate arched ceilings and stained glass and ivy-patterned wrought iron furniture, but I do feel sometimes as though I’m trapped in a perpetual game of Clue.

I have to confess I quite like our bedroom. Clean lines, breathtaking ocean view from the windows, and the immense saltwater tanks full of vividly colored tropical fish aren’t too distracting at intimate moments. A bed of truly Olympian proportions, suitable for absolutely any conjugal pastime that can be imagined. We know, because Nicholas and Alec have their own room at last!

Edward mixes interior styles and periods with reckless abandon, so there was no reason (in his godlike mind) why the boys’ room shouldn’t be all fitted up like a pirate ship, too, though it’s a bit quaint compared to Alec’s bachelor fantasy on board the
Captain Morgan
. Portholes, lots of brass and teak, a pretend forecastle with built-in bunkbeds carved with the names
ALEC
and
NICHOLAS
. A real bookcase with honest-to-God books, first editions of Captain Marryat’s oeuvre and other Boys’ Own Ripping Yarns that Edward surmised they might enjoy.

Alec enjoys them, certainly. Nicholas prefers to practice on his mandolin. He decided he wanted one, and it took an unbearable amount of arguing to get it for him; not that Edward wouldn’t get him one, but took forever to understand that the Cyborg Child, who
ought
to be capable of playing any instrument on earth with preprogrammed ease, might want to plunk along like a mere mortal.

And, of course, once His Godship had established that it was, in fact, laudable and proper that the boy should improve himself by the discipline of
music, he went off to Vienna 1800 and came back with not only a mandolin but a violin, viola, cello, lute, and guitar, and set up a schedule by which Nicholas will master each in turn.

And, of course, Nicholas thought he could just pick up the mandolin and play it effortlessly, as he did when he was a mortal in 1555; and he couldn’t. His memory knew how to play, but his little fingers had to learn all over again. He took the mandolin off to the vast echoing music room, and sat alone in there for hours, struggling forlornly to play chords.

I heard him crying and got from my kitchen garden very nearly to the door of the music room in 2.6 seconds before Edward caught up with me and pulled me back. I am afraid I kicked Edward pretty hard, but he pointed out that no boy wants to be embarrassed by female sympathy at difficult moments, and never having been a boy I had to concede his point.

So Nicholas struggles on. Alec is quite another case altogether.

I have sweated blood for years over that bump on his little head. No scan ever revealed any serious damage, nothing permanent; and yet he still insists he can’t remember the life he once lived. Sir Henry’s consoling words to me:
Haaar, now, dearie, he’s only lying. Don’t let it trouble you none. All boys lie, and my boy ain’t no exception
.

And, never having been a boy, I had to concede his point, too.

…
above all, patience is required. The youthful cyborg sees, as it were, through a magnifying lens each single fault or flaw in his parent. He is quick to catch any omission or inconsistency in his elders, and will point out parental errors, be they never so trivial, with immoderate smugness. This behaviour would seem at odds with his superior intellect; but it must be remembered that, however widely this young eagle stretches his wings, he remains at heart a child, as vulnerable to self-doubt and uncertainty as any mortal youth. It is necessary for the cyborg parent to be mindful of this, and resist the temptation to respond to provocation. Rather, he must strive to respond with dignity and forbearance.

As treehouses go, it is luxurious indeed, though nothing on the order of the mansion on the hillside below.

Granted, it’s made of a bioengineered plant substance that enables it to adapt to the branches of the vast mahogany tree wherein it is securely nested, and it does connect to the ground via an ingeniously designed spiral stair, leading up from the palisaded blockhouse below; but it is walled with railings and woven matting, and its roof is the canopy of leaves. Through them a flag-mast protrudes, flying a defiant little Jolly Roger.

Nicholas is seated on the deck, with a cello. Before him is a music stand and score; but he has his eyes closed, scowling as he feels out the melancholy tune through the bow and his fingers. He would appear to be about ten years old, coltish now, wearing blue trunks and vest in accordance with Edward’s notions of sea-bathing propriety.

He finds the note he sought and draws it out, a resonant sigh of lament;
until his concentration is broken by an abrupt
boom
and the flight of birds from all the greenery within a mile’s radius. There follows a whoop of triumph from below. A moment later Alec comes scrambling up the staircase, closely followed by Flint.

“Nick! Nick, you should have seen!”

“I heard,” says Nicholas.

“Yes, well. It was brilliant! The black powder worked like anything. So did the stone ball.
Pow!
Hit the big boulder across the gulley and just shattered into atoms. And you said I hadn’t got the mixture right!”

“You weren’t supposed to try it until Edward was there to supervise,” says Nicholas.

Aw, now, I wouldn’t let my boy do nothing dangerous
, says the Captain from Flint’s speaker.
I done all the loading and packing, and made him get well ahind the tree trunk.

“Don’t tell him that!” says Alec indignantly. “I lit the slow match, anyway.”

Nicholas shakes his head and picks up his bow again.

“Oh, leave the stupid cello,” says Alec. “Let’s go do something. Maybe the grapes are ripe. We could go see. We could go ride the dolphins. Or have a race over the treetops.”

Nicholas turns the page, ignoring him, and settles down to play.

“Or we could go turn over rocks and see if God is hiding under one,” says Alec slyly. Nicholas drops the bow and turns to him, fists clenched.

Now then, son, that was mean. You apologize to Nick.

“I apologize,” says Alec. “Really.”

Nicholas looks mulishly stubborn, turns away.

Come on now, lad. Alec said he were sorry. Talk to him.

“I’ll crack thy crown, for mocking me,” mutters Nicholas.

“Idiom, Nicholas, if you please,” says Alec, in Edward’s voice. “You’re no longer a Tudor savage, after all.” Nicholas swings back with the light of rage in his eyes.

Belay that!
The Captain maneuvers Flint between them.
The last thing the missus would want’s to come back from her nice holiday to find the two of ye whimpering with blacked eyes and bloody noses. A fine thing that’d be!

“Maybe it would make your
amnesia
go away,” says Nicholas. He turns and launches himself into the branches above the platform, and climbs up into the sunlight and the wind.

“That wasn’t very godly,” Alec calls up to him.

“And what has God to do with me?” Nicholas shouts back. “No voices speak to
me
out of any burning bush. No word at all. Hideous vacancy, monstrous indifference, and a senseless universe!”

“Well,” says Alec cautiously, “I would think that was a
good
thing. Shouldn’t you have grown out of this by now? What do you want meaning in the universe for, anyway? Nothing means anything! We’re just here to go along for the adventure.”

“There speaks the voice of the twenty-fourth century,” says Nicholas. “Purposeless and pointless.”

“Well, so what?” says Alec. “Why do I have to have a purpose? They’re dangerous things. Look at that Alec Checkerfield, since you keep bringing him up. I don’t personally remember, of course, but as far as I can tell he thought he ought to change the world. If he’d just relaxed on his party ship and stayed drunk, he’d never have hurt anyone. Instead …”

“You know what happened,” says Nicholas, peering down at him through the waving leaves.

“A lot of really awful things,” says Alec, and scrambles up into the boughs after him. “Or so I would guess. But that was somebody else. And here we are, and isn’t this enough? We’ve got the Captain and Deadward and … and …”

“Rose,” says Nicholas. “Except that we haven’t got her.”

“Yes, we do!” says Alec desperately. “She’s with us all the time and she loves us and she forgives us and, and kisses us and … supplies all the psychological stuff that, for example, that Checkerfield guy never had from his mother. She tucks us in at night.”

“Yes,” says Nicholas. “And then she goes away to Edward. And don’t bother to deny how that makes
you
feel. I can hear a lot more in that upper bunk than you think I can.”

Alec goes pale.

Now, Nick, let him alone
.

“You may not remember what it was to be a man,” says Nicholas. “But I do. One day, we’ll be men again. And what will happen then?”

“Shut up,” says Alec.

“I’ll tell you: nothing,” says Nicholas wretchedly. “Once I loved a girl in a green garden … but we will never dance that particular dance again.”

“You read her journal!” says Alec, outraged. “Mr. Righteousness went behind her back and—”

“—Did just as little Alec had done, or else he wouldn’t recognize the quote,” says Nicholas. Alec glares at him and finally looks away.

“This is creepy. We’re only children. Why worry about all this now? It’s too Freudian. Anyway, it’ll all turn out all right, because as soon as our heads are permabonded or whatever, Deaddy will let us escape out of linear time, and that’ll be great! Mendoza writes about it like it’s some kind of ultimate orgasm or something. So we won’t miss anything. And we’ll all live happily ever after. So there.”

“Haven’t you forgotten something?”

“Yes. Tons of stuff.”

“
The Cyborg Child
,” intones Nicholas, perfectly mimicking Edward’s voice,
“with his superior cognitive powers, and unique perspective that will better enable him to fulfill what one might almost call his divine purpose as he takes his place in the immortal universe!
Edward has a purpose for us. Ruling the world, I assume.”

“He can’t,” says Alec, aghast. “That’s what villains do! Deadward’s different now. He looks after us—and he loves Mendoza and makes her happy—besides, he must know it’s
wrong
to run other people’s lives. It never works out. Even if you mean well, something always goes horribly wrong, and then—then you’re guilty again, and—”

There is a flash in midair, far out, and a certain boiling in the water of the lagoon far below.

They’re home, lads!

Alec winks out, and Nicholas winks out too, and Flint goes slowly clanking down the spiral stair. A second later the boys arrive at the landing pier, just as the
Captain Morgan
is retracting her storm bottle and opening out her masts.

“There they are,” cries Mendoza, emerging from the wheelhouse. “There are my babies. Hello! Oh, I’ve missed you. It feels so miserably awkward traveling with all this encumbrance now but we did bring back the loveliest things and, Alec, I’ve got some signed first editions for you! We met Robert Louis Stevenson again, can you imagine? If I don’t get out of this thing immediately I’m going to explode.” Presumably she is referring to the whalebone corset she is wearing under her circa 1885 travel ensemble.