by Kage Baker
And plowing ahead through the long grass and jungle went faithful Bully Hayes the servounit bearer, turning his steel skull this way and that as he scanned our trail with glowing red sensors, carrying without complaint the mountain of stuff Edward insisted we bring. Both disrupter rifles and their extra power packs, a complete kitchen setup, a picnic hamper, folding chairs, a child-sized pavilion, an umbrella, a sanitary convenience for the children (who are still too little to be able to metabolize waste efficiently), holocamera equipment, a hatchet, a machete, and rain gear! I used to disappear into the Ventana for years at a time packing less. I think if we owned a Victrola, Edward would have brought that along, too. He’s such a Briton, I swear to God.
Or it may be that Edward’s still going through the motions of being human at this point, carrying so much baggage.
And maybe he’s wiser … I left my humanity so far behind in the Ventana I was like a tree or a stone, sometimes; and in retrospect, I’m not sure that green darkness was good for me. Maybe there really has been a struggle for my soul going on all these years. Every time I’ve drifted away from it, the man has come to pull me back to human consciousness.
However immortal we are, we still wear human shapes, live in human patterns. The values of humanity are the only ones we know. Perhaps human love is the closest we can come to the divine, all we can know of paradise.
Though the island is a terrestrial paradise, no question. It looks to have endemic species to keep me diverted for years, and plenty of arable soil. A forested valley running back to the central massif, with mahogany trees bigger than the ones on Catalina. We splashed across bright streams, climbed rocky outcroppings, took holoshots of views. On a high hill we found an open meadow where Edward paced about for a few minutes, taking sightings before he announced: “This will do. Bully, make camp here, please.”
And in a very few minutes we had a camp: baby pavilion shaded by the big umbrella, field kitchen with faithful servounit preparing luncheon. Edward and I were seated at our ease in folding chairs, Edward holding a rifle like a scepter. Alec and Nicholas stood leaning on the little pavilion railing, gazing down at the Captain Morgan white and serene in the bay below.
Champagne, ma’am? Sir Henry spoke out of Bully Hayes’s chest as it crawled close to offer us a tray with silver ice bucket and two glasses. Too surreal. I had to fight a genuine case of hysterical giggles.
“Music, I think, Captain,” Edward ordered.
Aye aye!
Music flowed promptly out of Bully Hayes’s speaker, from Edward’s two-hundred-and-ten-volume Best of Black Dyke Mills Band collection, I believe, as the servo crawled away to continue luncheon preparations. Edward had managed the Victrola after all. “Quite nice.” Edward tasted the champagne.
“Yes,” I said, taking a sip. “Well, here we are. The cyborg family has a picnic.”
“Oooo, champagne!” Alec said, leaning toward me with his most winning smile. I held out my glass for him to have a taste as Edward looked on with a mildly disapproving eye. Nicholas had some too and smacked his lips.
This here landfall’s everything we could have wanted, Edward lad. Sweet water and no mosquitoes.
“What do you think, my dear?” Edward said, gesturing with his glass at the panoramic view. “It seems an eminently suitable location for a residence. Pleasant breezes, artesian well just over there, good solid bedrock in which to anchor ourselves in the event of earthquakes, tidal waves, or hurricanes. Secure berth for the Captain Morgan down there.” He pointed into the bay. “Lagoon suitable for sea bathing. Garden acreage all around.” He swung the barrel of the rifle in a wide semicircle.
“I could live here,” I said, finishing my champagne. Bully Hayes scuttled up to refill my glass.
“What house shall we have?” Nicholas said, turning to look across the meadow. He was bright-eyed and happy today, has been ever since we’ve been here.
“Something gracious, yet defensible,” Edward said. “In a style appropriate for a warmer climate. Italianate, perhaps, my dear, what do you think?”
“Boring,” said Alec, reaching for my champagne again. “Let’s have a Wendy house. Or a tiki hut. Or a tree house!”
“And that, Alec, is why I am sitting here with my own glass of champagne and you are confined to a playpen,” Edward said sternly. “You fail to plan adequately for the future. Drink your orange juice.”
I glared at him as Alec pouted. “Commander Creepy,” he said in a resentful little voice.
“Now, now,” said Edward. “No reason to live like savages, after all. But perhaps we can compromise. Would you like a picturesquely barbaric wigwam in the trees as well? Or perhaps a piratical fort and blockhouse?”
Alec’s eyes widened, but he wouldn’t let go of his sulk. He stuck out his tongue at Edward, then fetched his sippy bottle and held it out to me. “Can I have a Bucks Fizz?”
“Don’t give him alcohol, please,” said Edward.
“It can’t hurt him,” I protested, unscrewing the sippertop and adding champagne. “Cyborg children were allowed champagne in the base schools. We drank it at New Year’s, I remember. So did that little neophyte, Latif. No effect at all.”
“Score to Alec,” he gloated, taking the sipper and sticking it in his mouth. “Mm-mm!” And he sat down, plop, and fell back and waved his little feet in the air lazily.
“Three stories should be sufficient,” Edward said, ignoring him again as he turned to consider the meadow. “With a wine cellar and provision vault below stairs. Laboratory, dining room, conservatory, schoolroom, infirmary… perhaps a billiard room as well. I suppose we shan’t need a library, with all literature available on one text plaquette, but we might devote a room to the Arts.”
Victorian brass oompahed behind us. Music to plan Eminently Desirable Residences by.
“This is going to be a bit more than a simple cottage by the sea, señor,” I said. “I don’t think we’ve got enough lumber in the cargo hold for a mansion.”
“Ah.” Edward looked pleased with himself. “I have had an idea, you see. It’s my intention to obtain building material by designing biomechanicals from seashells.”
“Seashells?”
“Yes, my love. Consider the way certain island cultures use coral blocks. Now, if one designed a nanobot to produce a nacreous substance like abalone shell, strong and durable—and then programmed it to build a suitable living space, with attractive architectural features—for example, doorways, staircases, transparencies for windows; consider also the wide range of ornamental applications for gardens, such as pergolas, balustrades, fountains, Greek temples…”
Greek temples on a South Seas island???
“Given the resources at our command, my dearest love, I think we ought to treat ourselves, don’t you?” Edward looked at me seriously. “We, the superior Adam and Eve in our new Eden (as it were), must make shift to house ourselves, even as primeval Man was obliged to weave forest bowers. I intend to build properly, however. What about a magnificent temple of hygiene? Baths on the Roman plan? All possible plumbing refinements?”
“I suppose it could work,” I said.
“Of course it will work,” said Edward, holding out his glass for more champagne. Bully Hayes poured obligingly. “After which, we can attend to the plantations.”
“Plantations?” I turned to stare at him.
“We require a garden,” he replied. “In this well-watered and unimproved spot, I intend to make one. Lawns. Orchards. Formal flower beds. Pergola walks. And, of course, vegetable fields to supply the estate.”
I set my champagne glass down and counted to ten. “Darling. This is an undiscovered island. There are probably endemic species growing here unknown anywhere else. Don’t you think we ought to do some sort of environmental survey before we plow everything under to plant onions?”
I wasn’t quite able to keep the edge out of my voice, and he turned startled eyes to me. Our consciousnesses collided like an iceberg and an ocean liner. He was
hurt, confused; he was planting the garden for me, wasn’t that what I had longed for? And perhaps he got some idea of the inflexibility of my Preserver programming. There was a long, long, contemplative moment of silence. The little boys watched us.
“Are you going to quarrel?” Nicholas asked breathlessly.
“No, indeed,” said Edward. He stood and kissed my hand. “By all means, my love, survey the land. It’s not as though we haven’t all the time in the world.”
Alec applauded.
We stopped briefly on the beach on our way back, so that Edward could stalk about picking up likely-looking bits of seashell. He retired into the saloon as soon as we got back, settled down with Sir Henry to produce grandiose virtual renderings of Villa Bell-Fairfax while I gave the boys their bath.
Well, the building hasn’t quite gone as planned.
“You know what it looks like, señor?” I said unhelpfully, as we stood staring down at what should have been a palatial edifice and was instead a mess of melted-looking foundations. “Like those science experiments we used to do at the Base schools. Moon Rocks! Watch them grow! Just take a little salt, some laundry bluing…”
“That’s absurd,” said Edward. “It ought to have worked.”
The little bastards is working, Commander, but they don’t seem to have no clear idea what they’re supposed to do, said Sir Henry, speaking out of Bully Hayes’s chest. I reckon I could have a go at reprogramming ‘em for you, sir.
“Or we could just slap up a tiki hut,” I suggested.
“No,” said Edward, with a certain asperity.
So back we went to the ship, and Edward took over the saloon and commanded silence while he reviewed his grand plan for flaws. The boys and I went away to the nursery and were very quiet all afternoon, doing hyperfunction exercises until they wore themselves out and went down for their naps. I lay down with them but couldn’t rest, feeling the tidal pull of Edward’s frustration through three bulkheads and two cabins.
At last I got up and wandered out to the saloon. Edward was still sitting where I’d left him, staring into the screen of the composition plaquette and drumming his fingers on the table.
There are no errors, he transmitted. I have been over my calculations repeatedly.
Well, señor, maybe this is just a little beyond nanotechnology, I replied, sliding into the booth beside him. Nobody’s ever tried—
Of course it’s never been tried. That’s not the point. It ought to work! Edward’s finger-drumming increased in speed. I put my hand over his.
Perhaps you ought to set it aside, just temporarily, and then you can approach it again with a rested mind, I told him soothingly. I can think of one way to relax…
Hmmmph. He was still staring at the screen.
The children are asleep, I hinted. That sank in and he looked up sharply. Oh.
Have I mentioned that we’re not, as it were, romping in Venus’s grove much lately? Pretty pathetic for omnitemporal superbeings, eh? But, you know, there are the children, whose presence is, ahem, somewhat inhibiting. Yes, I know that once upon a different lifetime I did everything imaginable with Nicholas and with Alec, too, but somehow seeing them at knee level affects me oddly. Presumably they have memories of those all-night romps somewhere in their little heads, too, but… I cannot deal with this now. It seems unthinkable to me, loathsome …
And what with one thing and another we’ve been pretty busy, and anyway we get tired in linear time, at the end of a long day. Most nights all we manage is a brief blissful consciousness-mingling, which is actually better than sex, to be perfectly honest, and yet we find ourselves strangely reluctant to give up on the old-fashioned physical union because … oh, I don’t know, maybe we feel that if we let go of this crucial bit of the human experience, we’ll have edged that much closer to losing our old selves in the Beings-of-Pure-Energy cliché?
Anyway, we ever so carefully edged out of the booth and crept away to the aft stateroom, where we spent approximately ten busy minutes before our nerves got the better of us and we went tiptoeing back to the saloon. And there we both halted, in mutual coronary near-arrest, and I was exceedingly glad I’d muted my customary wails of rapture, because there was Alec, who had wandered, all sleepy and rumpled-looking, into the saloon. He had climbed up into the booth and was peering into Edward’s composition plaquette.
“Why, sweetheart!” I said, in quite the highest falsetto I have ever mustered, and wishing I didn’t feel quite so much as though I were a wife in a French farce. “You woke up!”
“Mm-hm,” said Alec, rubbing one eye. He looked up at us. “Is this supposed to be programming, Deaddy?”
“Yes,” said Edward, starting forward. “You mustn’t play with it! It’s very important—”
“Well, but you left out a step,” Alec informed him.
“I beg your pardon?” Edward halted.
“Here and here and this bit here,” said Alec, smudging the plaquette screen as he pointed. “Three steps, actually.”
“Don’t touch the screen,” said Edward automatically, as he bent to the table and grabbed up the plaquette. He stared intently a moment; then looked at Alec with the strangest expression. “Oblige me by explaining,” he said.
Alec just beamed, you never saw a child look so smug, and patted the booth next to him. “Sit down, old dead guy.”
So there they were for the next two hours, really the sweetest picture; you’d have thought they were Daddy and Baby reading an alphabet book together. Alec had a gleeful field day pointing out all the flaws in Edward’s design, but Edward listened without his customary irritation. He even let Alec fill in the missing code, and apparently there was quite a lot of missing code. When Alec had had his fill of crowing, Edward thanked him and sent him swaggering back to the nursery with a piece of toast and jam.
Then he turned to me (I had been unobtrusively tending to the potted plants all this while), seized me around the waist, and bent me backward in a profound kiss. “You’re taking this well, I must say,” I gasped, when we came up for air.
“We have created something better than ourselves,” he said, with an expression of—what? Holy joy? For a moment, he looked almost like Nicholas, my Nicholas as he had used to be.
We have now been here six months linear. Villa Bell-Fairfax is not quite finished, in part because the señor keeps coming up with improvements on his original design. It’s going to be awesome when it’s done, I suppose. I was afraid Edward’s little seashell-building nanobots would produce something like a pink plastic dollhouse, but the effect actually resembles white pottery or glass, gently translucent and only faintly pearly in certain lights. It looks like no Italianate mansion I ever saw—those cupolas, those balustrades, those arches, that gingerbread! Still, I’m sure it’ll all come together in a style of its own. If it’s ever finished.
For one thing, the wainscoting is entirely carved mahogany, which Edward is getting, piece by piece, from some shop up in London circa 1845. I do wonder what the mortal shopkeepers make of the profoundly tall man who turns up in their shop now and then, purchasing great chunks of their best quality polished paneling, paying for it with suspiciously new-minted gold sovereigns and politely declining assistance as he carries it out of their shop, then adjusting their perception so they don’t notice as he steps with it sidelong back through time. In the same way he is accumulating marble, tiles, oak planks for flooring, plumbing… though the baths on the Roman plan are proving a little tricky, even for an all-powerful superbeing.
He labors all day at the building site, installing this, adjusting that, assisted by Bully Hayes and Billy Bones. I, by common consent, take the little boys with me as I slog on with my environmental survey. The survey was taking longer than Edward thought it should, because of course there are no roads for easy access in our untouched island paradise, so one night Edward sent the servos out to grade some. I was so furious with him I could have screamed, but of course I couldn’t in front of the children and anyway I
saw at once he had thought I’d be delighted! He was startled and contrite when he picked up what I was feeling, but what’s done is done.
And I suppose the scars will eventually green over again. Most of them.
I have a feeling I’m going to have nightmares tonight. Yes, thank you, Flint, I will have some of that rum.
We went out this morning, the boys and I. A kiss for Deaddy at the Villa Bell-Fairfax worksite, and then away into the depths of the island, exploring.
It’s difficult being a cyborg botanist drone, when you have two little boys waiting, with greater (Nicholas) and lesser (Alec) degrees of patience, for you to stop studying some damn plant so we can go somewhere. Is that a cave over there? Is that a volcano? Can we build a house in this tree? Are there deadly piranhas in the lagoon? Are there coconuts in that palm tree? Can I climb up and pick some? Why can’t I? Look, is that a crocodile?
This is why my environmental survey is taking forever, because after an hour of this I just give up and play Wendy or Tinkerbell or Tiger Lily or whatever they want me to be. Figuratively speaking, of course. They’re much too intellectually advanced for mere make-believe. They’re Cyborg Children, after all.
We got all the way over to the windward side of the island, on the graded road that snakes along like a black gash through the screaming green foliage. We came to the crest of the ridge, very like my old prison on Santa Catalina, along its rocky spine: same sea wind pushing up the hillside to fan my face, same ferny trees waving below. Nicholas pointed at the far horizon. “Clouds,” he said. “Is that a storm?”
“Run a scan,” I suggested. “Check the meteorological data.”
“Yup! It’s a typhoon coming our way,” announced Alec.
Nicholas looked frightened, and I shook my head. Nicholas closed his eyes, scowling as he ran the numbers; then opened them and glared at Alec. “It is not,” he said. “It’s just rain. You only said that to be dramatic.”
