The Sons of Heaven (52 page)

“Outrageous,” agreed Ashoreth, as Nennius pulled out a chair for her. “Though we all saw it coming, didn’t we?”

“From the dawn of time,” said Gamaliel.

“Stupid little bastards,” said Aethelstan.

“Well, they’re regretting it now.” Victor chuckled. “Have you been monitoring their secured channels? They’re petrified. Seems that Preserver drones are vanishing into deep cover everywhere. No cyborgs to fly the mortals’ transports for them, no one to fetch and carry. There’s a rumor that even Suleyman is up in arms.”

“Not Suleyman,” cried Kiu in delight. “That mortal-loving bore? He’s so slow to act we used to call him the Black Iceberg.”

“Ah, but recall what a well-placed iceberg did to the
Titanic,”
Victor pointed out. “I really do believe it’s started, ladies and gentlemen.”

“And about time,” said Nennius, lifting his glass in a toast. “To the Glorious Slave Rebellion!”

There were murmurs of “Hear, hear!” and “Cyborg Conquest!”

“And, speaking of the
Titanic
—” said Victor, gesturing at the soup tureen, “our first course, ladies and gentlemen: Consommé Olga, from the soup course served on that fatal night of April 14, 1912, in the first-class dining room. Accompanied by Beluga caviar and garnishes.”

“Oh, bravo, Victor,” exclaimed Labienus, seating himself. He smiled down at the service, which was Royal Doulton Dracula: jet black with a pattern of golden wyverns around the rim. “And that’s Mozart’s
Requiem
just beginning, if I’m not mistaken. Magnificent.”

“Very gracious of you to say so, sir,” Victor replied, taking his place at the head of the table. Labienus was seated to his right, Aegeus to his left, so that they faced each other across a low floral arrangement of nicotiana and black pansies. “Hm! Fair ladies, distinguished gentlemen—one brief word before we commence? While the arrangements for this evening’s entertainment have
been your humble servant’s, all credit for the idea must go to the redoubtable Executive Facilitator General for the Northwestern Sector, an immortal it has been my unquestioned honor to serve—Labienus.”

There was polite applause. Labienus smiled, half rose in a bow, seated himself again. “And I do hope, sir, you’ll favor us with a few inspirational words later?” Victor inquired.

“Oh, yes, you must,” Aegeus said, just a little loudly. Labienus looked him straight in the eye and smiled.

“Perhaps at the sorbet course,” he said.

Glances were exchanged here and there and there was a decided tension in the room as the waiters moved forward with the soup. No more than three ever came around the same side of the table at any one time, however, so as they moved off to busy themselves with bringing in the fish course everyone relaxed.

Not so far that each dish wasn’t thoroughly scanned as it was set before them. But no trace of anything toxic was found; not in the poached salmon in mousseline sauce, nor the oysters, nor the braised sea turtle. Therefore, light and sparkling conversation accompanied the second course, with the appropriate white wines.

It was dinner conversation of the highest caliber, too, refined to an art at tables in old Byzantium, in Pompeii and Amarna and Angkor Wat, polished in every beautiful doomed place that had ever spread its cloth for a pale horseman. Enough witty epigrams flew across that festal board to set Oscar Wilde’s shade moaning in envy.

Still, nervous eyes tracked the waiters as they brought in the sorbet course.

“And what’s this?” inquired Aegeus, poking with his spoon at what resembled a little cone of dingy snow in a golden cup.

“Durian ice,”Victor informed him.

“What, the fruit that smells like carrion?” cried Aethelstan. “Oh, but I’m disappointed! There’s no scent at all!”

“You won’t be disappointed in the taste, however,”Victor replied. “Addictive, it’s said, and an aphrodisiac under the proper circumstances.”

“Speech, speech,” Aegeus reminded Labienus.

“If you please—” Labienus held up his hand and tasted his sorbet. He smiled, inhaled, closed his eyes. Opening them again he spooned up the rest of it greedily, then rose to his feet. “Well! Victor, who would have thought it possible I’d experience something new at my advanced age? You have my eternal gratitude.”

His remark was met with appreciative laughter, and he let it die down as he
surveyed the table before he said: “Gentlemen? Ladies. Fellow campaigners through the eternal night, brothers and sisters in permanence—we meet here, a small and select company, on the eve of the Silence. What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

“Inelegant, but to the point,” sneered Aegeus.

“I will take that as a compliment,” Labienus replied. “Contemplate it, my friends: for the first time in our interminable lives, we are about to greet the absolute and utter unknown. All-seeing Zeus is blinded after today, perhaps slain as he so justly deserves. Perhaps we, ourselves, go down into the darkness.”

“If only,” muttered Amaunet.

“Yes, there are some of you who long for the dust,” Labienus observed, nodding. “And I can only wish that oblivion will come swiftly for you, if it comes. It is at least a possibility now, do you realize that? We may hope. We, who have never had that freedom because everything was known beforehand, may at last
hope
for something! No certainty. Life will now hold surprises.”

“It certainly will,” agreed Nennius, managing not to smirk.

“Though we must admit that, barring unforeseen termination, our freedom is likely to be somewhat delayed,” Labienus cautioned. “The next week will undoubtedly be a busy one. Even if our brother Suleyman has gone obligingly off to overthrow the treacherous little mortals for us, there will be tedious work setting up the New Order. What to do with this world in which we’ve labored so long, my friends?”

“Enjoy it,” said Tvashtar decisively, licking his spoon. Laughter and applause greeted this. Labienus applauded, too.

“I’m sure we will,” he said. “Though there may well be certain differences of opinion on how best to govern our world.” He bowed, very slightly, to Aegeus. “Let us remember, however, that it will henceforth be a very much less crowded world. Mutual tolerance is in all of our best interests, wouldn’t you say?”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Aegeus in tones of heartfelt sincerity, rising to clasp his hand. They looked into each other’s eyes and there was a moment of frozen silence at the table, as certain persons eyed the waiters uneasily; but there were only four in the room just then, busily arranging the entrée course on the sideboard. Victor alone seemed unflustered, spooning up the last drops of his sorbet.

Kiu began to applaud, and the others at table joined in, and Aegeus sank back into his seat. Labienus bowed to him slightly, and then reaching for his napkin wiped his hand, in a gesture nobody missed.

“Yes. Mutual tolerance, cooperation, and above all respect must be the
tenets on which our ideal world will be founded,” he said. “Whereupon I conclude, brothers and sisters. Our full attention will be required for the next course in this epicurean sacrament, to say nothing of the splendid musical menu Victor has arranged for our enjoyment.”

Liszt’s
Totentanz
filled the air while the waiters removed the sorbet cups and brought out the entrées, primarily meat, and the hopping jerking music did nothing to set anyone at ease as the carving knives were taken up. But there was no need to worry. The striploin of buffalo with forestiere sauce was served out without incident, as was the sauté of pheasants Lyonnaise, the roast suckling pig, the Numidian peacock, the rack of venison with bramble jelly, the
vitellina fricta
flavored with real silphium and liquamen! There were cries of joy at the table, as one skeleton bowed to another and Saint-Saens’s
Danse Macabre
came on with the clarets, the cabernets, the valpolicellas.

With the salad course came the second movement of the
Discworld Symphony
by Brophy, with its outrageous flatting bassoons for Death’s recitative, causing edgy merriment over the vegetable marrow farcie and cold asparagus vinaigrette.

“About the mortals, Labienus,” said Aegeus, holding out his wineglass to be refilled. “When you said it would be a much less crowded world after this, to what exactly did you refer?”

“Why, simply to conservation measures,” said Labienus, looking innocently surprised. “I assume we’re all agreed that some sort of culling program will have to be instituted? For the little … creatures’ own sakes.”

“As it was in the beginning,” said Nennius, darkly amused.

“Ah,” said Ereshkigal brightly. “When the old Enforcers were still with us.”

If Labienus felt acute discomfort at the mention of the Enforcers, he turned not a hair as he helped himself to baby carrots in veloute sauce. “The old Enforcers,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Stalwart fellows. Pity they were a bit simple-minded.”

“You disagreed with their methods, I take it?” challenged Aegeus.

“Disagreed? Why, of course I did.” Labienus tasted the sauce. “Lumbering warriors making arbitrary judgments on humanity, on the strength of a moral code with no basis in realpolitik? They were a howling mistake. Quite incapable of understanding mortals or the forces that motivate them. Or so I always thought.”

“Then it’s funny, isn’t it, that there was such an outcry from certain people when they were retired?” Ereshkigal remarked. “I’ve even heard a rumor that you yourself protested …”

“Now, now.” Labienus smiled daggers at her, holding up an admonishing finger. “We all feel a sentimental attachment to our immortal parents. That doesn’t make them any less flawed than the mortal ones were! It’s true, I was recruited by one of the poor old flatheads; but I knew him well enough to see that he could not for the life of him appreciate subtle distinctions where Good and Evil were concerned.”

“Yes, I’d heard that, too,” said Aegeus, peering at him slyly as he sipped his wine. “How fortunate that you never allowed your sentimental attachment to persuade you to his way of thinking.”

“Isn’t it?” Labienus lifted a glass to him. “One can accomplish a great deal with draconian measures, as I’m sure you’d be the last to deny. How ungracious your lives would have been if all those plagues hadn’t solved the mortals’ overpopulation problem! Just think what the pollution would have been like by now. Some of you must have been secretly grateful, I suspect.”

Aegeus’s eyes glinted but he said nothing.

“Tragic, of course, all that loss of life,” mused Labienus. “Still, one must be practical.”

“Moral, but humane,” agreed Nennius. “Though one can say this for the Enforcers: they may have slaughtered the mortals, but they never exploited them.”

“Used them for sexual gratification, you mean?” said Labienus innocently.

“Or kidnapped them for breeding experiments.” Nennius looked straight at Aegeus. “Or stole from them.”

Aegeus didn’t flush with anger; he merely twirled the stem of his wineglass between finger and thumb, admiring the candle flames glinting through the wine. “Beautiful, isn’t it, this crystal?” he murmured. “And so fragile. The mortals, too. How dull our eternal lives would have been without them, don’t you think? This music, this cuisine—we can appreciate them, but we can’t seem to come up with beautiful things ourselves. I wonder why? Perhaps if we weren’t so rigidly focused on objectives, we’d be better qualified to rule over them.”

“Ah, but at least we appreciate them,” said Ereshkigal, putting a comforting hand on his arm. “Who else could be trusted to govern the mortals with compassion?” She looked across into Labienus’s eyes. “Think how terribly the poor things would suffer if, for example, any pupil of the Enforcers got into power.”

“You’re certainly a fount of compassion yourself, dear,” snapped Ashoreth from her side of the table. “Quite ready to forgive the little monsters that stunt with the poisoned Theobromos? Or Options Research?”

“There’ll be punishment for that,” said Amaunet grimly. There were nods and mutters of agreement from several guests.

“Culling, as I said,” affirmed Labienus. “Beginning with the guilty parties.”

“Oh, without doubt,” said Victor in a thoughtful voice, picking up his knife. “And if it comes to that… the mortals aren’t the only ones who could benefit by judicious thinning of their ranks.” Every head turned to him, and not a few people clutched at their own knives. He looked about him at the discomfiture and smiled ingenuously. “Present company excepted, of course.”

“I’ve been saying for some time there were far too many Preserver drones,” asserted Nennius.

“And what will the poor things do, once there’s nothing more for them to preserve?” said Xi Wang-Mu. “Half of them are going crazy with inactivity now. They’ve such limited programming, after all.”

“Many of them would welcome death,” said Moreham. “The really terrible thing about Options Research, you know, was that it failed in its objective. If they’d only discovered a way to reverse immortality!”

“Pity,” said Labienus with a sigh. “The drones will have to settle for being taken offline. And the defectives, of course, rounded up and shut down.”

“And perhaps one or two others,” suggested Victor.

This prompted another fit of utensil-grabbing and a good deal of nervous eyeing of the waiters, who were engaged in bringing in the sweet course. Aegeus coughed discreetly. “Not a pleasant thing to contemplate, but we ought to admit to ourselves it might be necessary. Some of the lesser executives …”

“Why not come out and say Suleyman?” prompted Labienus. “We all know he’s built up a tremendous private power base, for a man supposedly without ambition. He led the raid on Options Research, he’s leading the rebellion now; if he wanted it he’d get the vote of the rank and file, I’m sure.”

“If it ever came to a vote,” said Aegeus scornfully. “And even so, why couldn’t he be fobbed off with Africa and a few dozen mortals to look after?”

“You don’t know him,” said Amaunet.

“And he’s got that little hothead Latif waving his fan,” Kiu said.

“And Latif is far too clever for his own good,” said Labienus.

“Perhaps he’ll lead a charge against the mortals and get his head blown off, then,” speculated Gamaliel.