The Sons of Heaven (The Company)

by Kage Baker

  “LEWIS! IT’S LATIF!”

  CHAPTER 22

  Child Care in the Cyborg Family, Volume Six:

  The Challenge of Psychological Development

  It might be reasonably supposed that the cyborg child, with his naturally augmented intelligence, would be free of the complex neuroses developed by mortal children; yet such is far from the case. This is particularly noticeable if the child is the recipient of memory files from a previous state of being. Unresolved issues of anger, abandonment, or guilt—most particularly the latter—may confer an adult burden of emotion the young cyborg’s psyche is incapable of easily integrating. As might be expected, the cyborg child will not resort to the rudimentary bad behaviour in which traumatised mortal children engage. He will develop far more colourful, imaginative, and complicated complexes with which to engage his concerned parents’ attention.

  At the Seaside

  Turquoise blue lagoon and palm-shaded white sand, and, rising beyond the green trees, Paradise in progress. The nearly-completed mansion lifts pearly spires to the morning sunlight, defying any recognized architectural convention, but undeniably impressive. In the vast garden careful terraces have been built, and little fruit trees planted there. Roses are in their first bloom, along palm-shaded walks. In a meadow under the green mountain Mays mendozaii waves abundantly, quite refusing to produce lysine at the desired levels.

  In a beach chair, Father—in white linen suit, with trousers perfectly pressed—makes notes on a text plaquette. Mother wears a light summer gown, sort of a Jane Austen number, and is leaning against his knees. Beside her, bowing deferential from the waist, a big horribly black-bearded image of a man (butler, perhaps? Father’s regimental batman?) has just offered her a glass of champagne from the tray carried by his servounit. The Black Dyke Mills Band wafts from a speaker, playing something sentimental scored for French horns.

  The six-year-old twins wear matching white sailor suits. With buckets and spades, they are putting the finishing touches on a model, sculpted in sand, of the Tomb of Mausolus. Beyond them, above the tideline, are others of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Pyramids. The Temple of Diana at Ephesus. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Temple of Zeus at Olympia. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

  “That only leaves the Colossus of Rhodes,” says Nicholas.

  “I know,” says Alec. “Let’s build the harbor first.”

  The problem of keeping water in a scale model of the harbor at Rhodes—let alone water in a sandcastle’s moat—presents no difficulty to the Cyborg Child; he merely lines it with sandwich paper under a thin layer of sand. Nicholas trudges back with a bucketful of water and fills the harbor. Boats are handily constructed from twigs and leaves, and given sandwich-paper sails.

  “I don’t think we can manage a Colossus,” says Nicholas, surveying their handiwork.

  Giggling, Alec rises from his hands and knees. “Yes, we can. Watch!” He tosses aside his hat, pulls off his clothes, and stands naked over the little harbor. “There!” Nicholas giggles too, somewhat shamefacedly.

  “Now, watch this!” Alec runs over and finds a pair of dry twigs. Returning, he sets the two twigs together; his hands blur a moment in hyperfunction, and then there is a puff of smoke and a tiny flame. He leans down and carefully holds it to one of the leaf-and-twig boats, until it catches. “Oh, no! There’s a fire in the galley! It’s spreading to the triremes! It’s only 282 BCE and Rhodes doesn’t have a fire department! What’ll we do?”

  “You’re not—”

  “Apollo to the rescue!” says Alec, and, like Lemuel Gulliver, puts the fire out.

  “Oh, that’s childish,” says Nicholas in disgust.

  “Well, so what?” says Alec. “We happen to be children.”

  “But we were men,” Nicholas says, looking sadly across at Mendoza.

  “So I’m informed,” says Alec. “That was then, and if I could remember anything about it I’m sure I’d be as bothered as you are, but the fact is, I don’t. Yes, there was this guy named Alec Checkerfield once. Yes, he screwed up in his life, in some really awful way which I’m glad I don’t remember. And then he died. Deadward killed him. Got what he deserved, probably. I’m somebody else, somebody new and improved.”

  Nicholas shakes his head. “Don’t you remember the Library?”

  “Nope! Nothing really much before that day I fell down the hill and hit my head on a rock,” says Alec, studying the tiny harbor at his feet.

  “Nobody believes that story, you know,” says Nicholas.

  “Yes, they do!”Alec’s raised voice draws the attention of Edward and Mendoza, who turn to stare. He strikes a pose. “Hey, Deaddy, Mendoza, look! The Colossus of Rhodes!”

  “Put your clothes back on at once,” says Edward. Mendoza has hidden her face in her hands, shaking with laughter.

  “See?” Alec steps into his underpants and pulls them up. “They thought I was funny. I’m a child. Deaddy and Mendoza love me, the Captain loves me, we have a family and this cool island to live on, and life is good. Why worry about anything else?”

  “You have nightmares sometimes,” says Nicholas.

  “Don’t remember ‘em,” says Alec, buttoning up his trousers. “Anyway, you get nightmares, too. Let’s talk about you, Nicky. Why were you crying in the night? No, don’t punch me; Deaddy will come over here and lecture you about the Cyborg Child being above temper tantrums. What’s at the root of Nicholas Bell-Fairfax’s neurosis?”

  “I’m Nicholas Harpole!” Nicholas clenches his fists.

  “Whatever. Why were you crying?”

  “Because I had the dream again,” says Nicholas.

  “Ah! The dream with the Frankenstein symbolism,” says Alec, as his fair tousled head emerges from the neck of his shirt. “And how does that make you feel, Nicky?”

  “It wasn’t Victor Frankenstein, you knave,” says Nicholas. “It wasn’t. I don’t know who he was, except he was the one who killed his own garden. He killed everything that touched him.”

  “Sounds like Jehovah to me,” says Alec cheerily, sitting down to pull on his stockings and boots.

  “Stop it,” says Nicholas. He turns and stares out at the sea. It is a serene and warm tropical sea, but he remembers the black frozen ocean from his dream, the white waste and the broken boats of all who had come before him to that silent place. He sees again the dead men frozen on their knees, in unanswered prayer, mocked by the wind singing in frozen shrouds and sheets, their masts toppled by the stars they’d crossed.

  Alec leaps to his feet, frightened by the look in Nicholas’s eyes. “I’m bored!” he announces, and races down to the water’s edge and begins to dance back and forth. “Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down, I am feared in field and town! Goblin! Lead them up and down!”

  But they are spirits of another sort. This is their immortal family life, in all its bittersweet strangeness, for all its charm and sunlight never free of the possibility of heartbreak. You might mistake them for mortals. Except…

  … 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.

  Extract from the Journal of the Botanist Mendoza:

  At Villa Bell-Fairfax

  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.

  CHAPTER 23

  Child Care in the Cyborg Family, Volume Ten:

  The Awkward Years

  …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 …”