“Not anyone,” Jarl said. “That was part of its charm. It was completely automated for what I needed, which was not much. I wonder if it’s still there.”
Doc shrugged.
“I say we try to go there. I had a communications room. Had to. It was part of being able to get away, that I had to still be able to keep an eye on things? So…They might still work.” He edged towards the pilot seat, lurching, as though unsteady on his feet. “Let me take us there,” he told Zen.
Zen turned around in the seat to face him and glowered. “I don’t—”
Tell her to let him, Thena, it was Kit in my mind, sounding distant and faded like when he was sedated or hurt or falling asleep. He doesn’t mean anything bad by it. He just wants to get away from here, badly. So does Doc. Horrible memories.
Kit?
Yes. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m not letting go, but right now you need him in control. I don’t know Earth as he does, even after three hundred years. He used to rule most of it, through his influence over the other Mules. He can do things I couldn’t.
“Zen, let him do it. Kit says to.”
Zen frowned momentarily, then stood up. I noted that Jarl had looked surprised at the mention of Kit, then smiled at me, and dropped into the pilot seat.
He took us off the ground in a smooth glide, but stayed close to the ground as we flew an odd path, straight to the center of the desolate area, past the ruins. Watching him pilot, it was easy to imagine he was Kit. There were the same assured movements, fingers tapping so fast on controls that it was hard for the eye to follow their movement.
After the ruins we took a sharp turn, and there was what looked like a perfectly smooth and flat rut, carved into the ground, hundreds of feet deep and side. Even though it had weathered over what must be centuries, and there was no trace of man made anything around, it was obvious that this space, too, was manmade. Natural canyons were never this even. “It used to be a highway here,” Jarl said, as his fingers moved on the controls. “And it led to the big industrial complex where the…what even we called Mules labored. And on the edge of it to the resort where visiting managers and vips lodged.” He gestured towards the walls, now on either side of us, while his other hand continued minutely correcting the course. “The highway ran across most of Europe. Perhaps it still does, but clearly this part is nonfunctional. Once you got in, you could program your exit, then turn the controls over entirely, while you relaxed. But there…on the walls, on either side, there were advertisements. Tri-D projected advertisements. Since people didn’t have to drive, they could lean back and watch…” Doc made a gesture I didn’t understand, and Jarl continued, sounding distant, “I used to escape from our lodgings at night and tamper with the controls, so that the displays changed. Tagging, they called it, after an earlier way of defacing public buildings with paint.”
“Jarl…” Doc said, the tone hard to interpret.
But Jarl spoke on like someone in a dream. “The authorities who were looking for me called me Angel because my trademark was to project the image of an angel flying away. I have no idea why, except perhaps I often wanted divine rescue, or perhaps to be able to fly away. Anyway, I was out, tagging one evening, and I didn’t know all hell had broken loose on the Mule compound and they’d stopped all the flyers in the highway, and I almost got caught, because the police were out and giving instructions to the stranded travelers. And they had this…thing that detected bioed markers in DNA. So they saw me, and tried to catch me, but this woman, traveling alone, let me in her flyer and said I was her boyfriend. I must have been…eighteen? Nineteen? Anyway…she took me to that resort.”
“Jarl, if you’re going to turn, you need to slow now. There’s no warnings, but the turning is just ahead, to the right.”
Jarl shook a little, like a man wakening, and his fingers danced on the panel. We slowed and turned gracefully into a narrower defile.
I was wondering how there could be a resort here. Oh, sure the place had been abandoned for years, and few would brave it to explore. There was nothing there, not even vegetation. But flyers overflew it all the time. If there were a verdant patch, they’d land and look. Or at least it would be known that there was an oasis there and the protective membranes would have been forcibly ruptured. I started to fear Jarl was in for a disappointment. But at the end of the defile I realized there was another possibility.
It was the mouth to a cave. It didn’t look natural, though it might have been, but it was vast. And in front of it was the sort of shimmer you see on a road in the middle of summer. In this case, since it was neither hot nor bright, it must be the shimmer of a shield-membrane—soft as cobweb, but impenetrable to radiation and bacteria and any non-authorized life form.
We stopped just short of it, and I was trying to imagine how we’d get in, because most such fields open, automatically, like doors, when the flyer emitting the right code approaches. This flyer wouldn’t have the right code.
But instead, Jarl brought us to a gentle stop on the ground, in front of the field, and opened the one window near the front of the flyer touched the same place on the wall.
Something extended from the wall. It looked like a periscope ending in a circle, and in the middle of the circle was the grey membrane of a genlock. “We’ll see,” Jarl said. “If the genes are close enough. I told you, didn’t I, that I’d got a little paranoid—justifiably so—towards the end.”
The genes must have been close enough because the periscope thing withdrew and then the membrane retracted and vanished. Jarl closed the window and we flew in to the cavern. The membrane closed behind us.
Only it didn’t look like a cavern any more than Eden looked like the interior of a rock. Light must have been piped in from above, and we were flying above what looked like lush forest. At the end of it, a building looked much the worse for the wear—as though the plants around were trying to overtake it.
“Welcome,” Jarl said, “to my refuge.”
IN A STATE OF NATURE
In fairy tales, which I’d read exhaustively shortly after my mom disappeared, there is often an enchanted land, a place where time stops.
This place shouldn’t have been like that, and I’m not a gaian priestess nor a nature worshiper. As far as I’m concerned, the best thing about nature is that we can get away from it. And a satisfactory contact with nature is a stroll in a garden from which all harmful pests have been eliminated.
But that was exactly what this place was. A garden, from which all harmful pests had been eliminated, and which had then been allowed to run riot by being unchecked for centuries.
After my time in Eden, it seemed surreal and unlikely. While Eden had vegetation, there were no areas big enough to allow vegetation to grow like this, nor did it have trees this large and old.
Zen stared around in wild-eyed wonder. Kit said in my mind, Wow. And Jarl, himself, stood stock still and blinked. “I’d forgotten what it could get like, if places weren’t kept up. I used to have gardening robots, but I turned them on only when I visited, since I might change my mind about their programs and decide to let something grow. Come. We’ll go see if the communications work, shall we?”
We followed him along what had doubtless been some sort of path. You could only tell that now, because it remained relatively flat among otherwise broken ground. But if it had been paved, or if the ground had been hardened against plants growing on it, that was gone. Huge roots crossed the path, and a few times we had to detour around large trees or wild bushes.
Birds called overhead, another strange experience since birds in Eden, other than grown for food, were only found in exhibits at aviaries and zoos. Here, you could hear them winging overhead, you could hear their calls, and you could see, sometimes, a flash of color among the branches.
“I’d forgotten what it could be like,” Doc said.
“So had I,” Jarl answered, ahead of us. “This place was stocked with plants and birds from all over, when I bought it. The fact that it’
s roofed overhead makes it a constant sixty degrees year round with watering via underground feed, and so species grow here that would never grow in this area.”
“I never understood why you bought it or at least why you bought it and closed it to the public. As a resort, it was, of course, a growing concern, and I can understand wanting to buy it and make money from it. But as a private retreat…”
Jarl shrugged. “I bought it because to me it was a vision of paradise. I didn’t know how humans, real humans lived. This was the first time I saw something designed for them, the first time I consorted with them, the first time I tasted non-institutional food…the first time I saw women. It was like…in my mind, this is what it was like to be a normal human. I think it still is. So I wanted it to be mine, to be part of what I was and how I lived. And buying it for myself…by the time we were done with the war, I just needed a place to go and be alone. I used to come here and spend days hiking around. You can go to the end there, to the cave wall, in about a day. I would sleep on the ground, return the next day…Sometimes I fished.”
I realized suddenly that we were in the equivalent of Doc’s gnome-cottage. This was the place where Jarl could convince himself he was normal, a person like any other. I wondered that neither Kit nor I had ever felt that compulsion to act human in order to be human. We’d assumed we were human and we knew, rationally, that a few extra abilities didn’t make us something completely different. And then I stopped, arrested by the sudden realization that Jarl had not seen females, either normal or Mule, until he was eighteen or nineteen, the age at which he’d come to this resort the first time.
It made sense, from what I’d seen about the period in holos in Eden. By the time they’d gotten around to creating that variety of Mule they called Oligoi, they’d had twenty years of creating the other Mules. Twenty years where, if the holos I’d seen in Eden were correct, they’d faced countless rampages and rapes of human females by Mules.
At that point they wouldn’t have known if the aggression was part of how they were gestated, or part of how their genetics worked, or perhaps just part of the whole package. So, of course they wouldn’t have risked raising these young Mules around women.
On the other hand, from the perspective of Jarl and his congeners, it must have been like growing up in jail or a uniquely harsh reformatory, to which they had been condemned without committing a crime.
I suppressed a shudder and realized Jarl was walking ahead, treading the uneven path with certainty. “When I stayed here,” he said, “I used part of the hotel. The other part was locked and I had…” He shrugged. “Anyway, right at the front are the communication devices. You wouldn’t know”—a quick look over his shoulder at me—“whether you still use the same communication systems?”
“My areas of expertise,” I said, “related to dressing up and looking good when Daddy Dearest had a party. I also understand that in the future—more so than I thought, frankly—I was supposed to develop an ability to make babies. And meanwhile I learned how to repair machinery and how to keep my lair’s brooms flying. Communication just worked or didn’t. I knew how to tamper with it, but if you’re going to ask me what sort of waves or whatever they used, I don’t have a clue.”
He smiled, as though my rant amused him, and it was a little odd, because it would have amused Kit too. “Ah, well, then we’ll cross our fingers and hope,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll be making that trek through wasteland to civilization, won’t we?”
“We’ll have to cross our fingers a lot,” Doc said, “because the way this looks, the plant growth will have broken through the walls and crept through the windows and your precious communicators will be covered in sap.”
Jarl laughed. “Nah. Not as bad as that,” he said. “Ever. Remember it’s me you’re speaking of. The resort was pretty well built, and when I took over, I had everything reinforced and sealed. There might be some leaks. Three hundred years without maintenance is a long time. But I don’t think so. And I think the main things will be fine. Out here…” He gestured with a hand. “Would you think badly of me if I told you I think I like it better this way than when it was kept down and manicured?”
“No,” Doc said. “Nor would I be surprised.”
The path turned sharply upward and around and we were suddenly at what must, once upon a time, have been one of those grand entrances that are always open—the sort you see in palaces, hotels, and the bigger kind of temple. Someone had outfitted it with a door that clearly was not designed for it, at what had obviously been a later time. I had to assume that had been Jarl, though having heard him extolled as an aesthete among many other things by everyone from Doc to the history videos in Eden, I had to confess myself shocked at the ugly nature of that door, which was panels of dimatough, relieved only by the tiny hole of a genlock in the dead center, where the two halves of the door met.
Jarl slid his finger in, and again, apparently, the lock wasn’t sensitive enough to react to the modifications imposed on Kit’s body. It made a loud click, then slowly and ponderously, the two halves slid apart and into the walls on either side.
Come in to my lair. I couldn’t tell if the voice in my head was Kit’s or Jarl’s, so I didn’t respond, and instead, tried not to shiver as I faced the cavernous and dark interior.
But as Jarl walked in and whistled, the lights came on, also soft, shining from walls and ceiling and even floor in a way that made the entire space seem rich and alive.
It was rich. I hoped it was not alive, because alive would mean that some creatures had sneaked in over the years it had been abandoned. Was it my imagination or was there a skittering like rats from the left? No, it wasn’t my imagination, because Jarl had turned his head that way, just momentarily.
But then he didn’t say anything, so it must mean that it was nothing, just some function of the way the air circulated. Because if it were unusual or alarming, Jarl would have given it more time.
Instead, he turned to a wall, which seemed entirely taken up by a gleaming array of…something I couldn’t begin to understand. Surely, this whole thing couldn’t be a com.
Then I blinked again and suddenly realized what it was. My father had a similar one, in his study. Not his regular study. The one that was behind the genlock I’d learned to circumvent by the time I was three.
When I’d first seen him use it, I had no idea what it was. It wasn’t until I was much older I realized it was a center where you could collect and view data from many, many spy cameras. And father had a lot of spy cameras installed over the centuries—anywhere from the servants quarters of our own house to all the Sinistra properties across the world, to the offices of other Good Men, to places I didn’t even know how to identify. Apparently that thing about the Good Man’s eyes being everywhere was true. At least when it came to my father.
As I got older, I’d come to view that array of constantly changing screens, through which he could keep track of almost everything on Earth, as a sign of Father’s controlling mania and incipient paranoia. Which, apparently, Jarl had in spades and with little bells on. His array was twice as large as Daddy’s and twice as complex.
He must have caught something in my eye, because he chuckled. “Yes, well, without it, I’d not have had enough warning of the riots, or that my friends were in peril. And I’d never have been able to give the orders that got a significant portion of those under my care and of my…brothers, to the Je Reviens and unscathed, or relatively so.” Then he stepped up to the console, and twisted a button and touched a panel screen, which came to life. “I presume you have someone in mind to contact who will help to get us out of here. What’s his code?”
“Simon,” I said, and then because I thought that was not good enough explanation I added, “The Good Man of Liberte Seacity, Jean-Batiste Simon Ignace Michelle de Montaigne St. Cyr.”
And Jarl’s face froze and paled.
MAYDAY
He flicked the button back. “No,” he said. It echoed of finality.
“What? He’s my closest friend and the leader of my lair, and I—”
“No.” Jarl turned around, an almost snarl on his features. “I know you regard me as an invader, an interloper, a creature who is killing your husband, and I even understand that. But I don’t feel that way about you. As far as I’m concerned you’re the daughter of my old friend Alexander Sinistra. Or if you prefer you’re his much younger twin sister. Same thing. I left ’Xander behind because I needed to, not because I wanted to. I left him behind fully conscious that the chances were good he would be dead by the morning after the evening of our departure. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. For all that ’Xander was…what he was, he was that through design and training, not of his own making. And for that, it was like an illness, a fatal weakness, and Bartolomeu and I had made it our duty, our…responsibility to look out for him, to keep him safe. To keep others safe from him. He was, despite that, a good and…a…”—he swallowed—“a worthy human being. He had the virtues of his faults, in courage and loyalty and…and we betrayed him, and I find that he didn’t die, which is worse, and that he became…worse. Because of that, because of what I owe ’Xander and for the betrayal I’ll never be able to expunge, I must guard you. And guarding you has no part with letting you go near dear little Jean-Batiste.” His jaw set and he put out a hand to touch my chin, but pulled away just before he did. “Remember, those we left behind we left behind for good reason. Overwhelming reason. And you couldn’t have paid me to let Jean-Batiste aboard, not even if the price you gave me were redeeming ’Xander of his fatal weakness.”
“What?” I said again, and swallowed hard. What the hell was he saying about Simon? Simon had been one of my closest friends and the mainstay of our broomers’ lair. He’d been the one who made sure that the lair had enough food and drink, the one who made sure we were never caught at anything terribly illegal, the one who cleaned up our messes, and looked after us, in general. Oh, I suppose I’d done some of that too, but not nearly as much as Simon had. I’d never cared enough. “Simon is not a danger to me,” I said. If he’d been, I’d have known that long ago, since we’d been casual and non-exclusive lovers since our early teens. “Simon is trustworthy. He’s helped me in the past.”
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