“P-pull your legs up.”
He leapt.
The lioness on his back growled and shook her head, trying to maintain her grip. But Javier had leap-frogged over one more big cat, and he managed to dislodge her on the landing. He jumped again. Powell’s shirt rode up and he had to grip him again. His skin was unbelievably hot, and surprisingly smooth. He had an appendix scar and what felt like an old bullet wound, all thick and knotted. They landed roughly in the grass. The lions bounded after them. Javier leapt again. Powell kept suppressing little screams. They caught in his throat like a stifled sneeze. But he lifted his legs a little higher with each jump and held himself tight until the jumps fell into a rhythm, higher and further and longer, their toes just barely touching ground before kicking free again.
“We’re flying,” Powell said.
“We’re es-escaping,” Javier said.
The snarls behind them grew softer. They were out of the Veldt. They cleared the fogbank and sailed over water, landing in a twist of roots beneath a massive black mangrove from whose arms a series of mummy bags swung like giant chrysalises. The bags swayed for a moment, but none of the vN inside woke.
Powell was panting. “You OK?” Javier asked.
The preacher nodded. “Yeah. Actually. I thought I was fucked there, for a minute, and then
bang
, you swoop down like Superman.”
“I did not
s-swoop
. Real men don’t
swoop.
” Javier rolled his neck. The stammer was his least favourite part of the failsafe. It made him sound like such a
pendejo
. It was worse when he was speaking English. The adaptive behaviours got all entangled with the stemware programming. “Though I guess I’m n-not a real man, either.”
“Like hell you’re not.” Powell was staring at Javier. “What about you? Are you good?”
Javier looked down at himself. His shirt – the nice cotton one – was ruined. Carbon streaked across the front. He turned around. His back was sticky. She’d pierced his skin. He sucked his teeth.
“Take that off,” Powell said. Javier did as he was told. Powell whistled low. “Damn, son.”
“Is it bad?”
“Not as bad as it could be. Your legs, though…”
Javier flexed his feet. “They feel just fine.”
“We should check, though. Be a shame to damage a donkey kick like that one.”
Javier looked up at him. “Are you asking me to take off my pants?”
Powell smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll still respect you in the morning.”
Javier started unbuttoning. “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” he said, as he stood. “I find people tend to respect me
more
with my clothes off.”
His pants fell, and the preacher’s brows rose.
“Shit,” Powell said.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Javier said. He turned. “How’s it look from the back?”
He heard a soft crunch in the dirt as Powell stepped up behind him. He was still too warm, in the way that humans were all too warm when they were afraid or angry or aroused. Javier didn’t know which one it was. He was still safe, he reasoned. Still on the right side of his relationship. Still faithful to his mechanical bride (who hadn’t said yes, who saw no need to say yes, who wouldn’t change him, even when it led to moments like this). His own responses wouldn’t kick into high gear unless Powell’s did. You couldn’t want them until they wanted you. You could make them want you, of course, just to set things in motion, but you couldn’t force them. It was part of the failsafe. They could force you, but you couldn’t force them.
Powell’s fingers lit on the base of his spine. “Looks all good to me.”
“Why did you provoke them?” Javier asked. “I told you to stay put.”
“I just wanted to see.”
His warmth moved down Javier’s back. He was kneeling. He was widening Javier’s stance, like a police officer searching for weapons. Between the legs.
“What did you want to see?” Javier asked.
“I wanted to see you,” Powell said. “That’s why I came to your room.”
Javier swallowed. He focused on the tree. He focused on the details of its bark, Amy’s fingerprints all over it, the backyard she’d never had and always wanted, the space she’d made for him and his children. Amy. Amy. Amy.
“Why are you really here?”
“Here on my knees, or here on the island?” His fingers traced up the insides of Javier’s legs as he stood. He pulled up Javier’s pants, reached around, and buttoned them. “That’s a good question, Javier. That’s a really good question. Because if Amy really does see everything on this island, she saw what just happened. And she didn’t stop it. Any of it.”
Javier turned. “What are you saying?”
Powell looked just as calm as ever. “I’m saying that maybe there are things in Never Never Land that Amy doesn’t see,” he said. “I’m saying that her control of this place might not be as complete as she wants us all to believe.”
Javier picked up his shirt. He buttoned it as best he could. “If you’re talking about the attack, that was just a default.”
“A default that almost failsafed you.”
“Well, what else could it be?”
Powell reached over and started rebuttoning Javier’s shirt. “I think we both know the answer to that.”
“The answer to what?”
Amy was lit by a halo of botflies, green and red and white, circling her lazily. Her hands were fists.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“We…” Javier looked toward the Veldt. Her gaze followed. “There’s something going on–”
“I can see that, Javier.” Her mouth was a thin line. “You took a human being into the Veldt.”
“Yeah, but–”
“Where the children are.”
“The kids are all fine, they’re asleep–”
“These people rape children, Javier. That’s what they do.” Amy stepped closer. Her voice got lower. She pointed. “That’s why their leader – his boss – is in prison. LeMarque raped children. He raped his
own
children. He made a
multi-player game
about raping children. And now his followers keep their vN small, so they can keep fucking them. And thanks to the failsafe, they can’t possibly say no.”
Powell held up both his hands. “Miss Peterson, that’s not me. I’m here to–”
“You’re here to spy,” Amy said. “You’re here to–” She blinked. “Are you… Is that…” She stared at Powell’s groin. For the first time, Javier noticed that Powell was at half-mast.
“It’s not what you think,” Javier said.
“That was quick,” Amy said. “First you do the
one thing
I’ve explicitly outlawed on this island, ignore the
one request
I made, and then you start…” Her lip trembled. “Did he failsafe you?” she asked. “Is that why you did it?”
“We didn’t do anything!”
“We didn’t,” Powell said.
But tears were rising in Amy’s eyes. “Why is your shirt all wrong?” She pointed. “Why are your knees all dirty?”
He tried to take her by the shoulders. She batted his arms away. “Is this because I didn’t say yes?”
Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus. He was so far beyond fucked.
“Amy,
querida–”
“Miss Peterson–”
“Shut up!”
Amy pointed, and the earth beneath Powell’s feet opened. He stumbled and it closed, burying him up to his thighs. He couldn’t stand but he couldn’t kneel, either, so he was reduced to scrabbling for balance in the dirt, quite literally bowing and scraping. Javier’s vision started to change; the edges of everything sharpened. It was happening again.
“S-stop,” he said. “Stop this. R-right now.”
“Did he failsafe you?” Amy was staring straight at Powell. Her fingers pinched closed around her thumb. Her gaze traveled to Javier. She spoke in a whisper. “Did he rape you?”
Javier’s mouth opened. Nothing came. He tried again. “W-what?”
“Did he rape you?”
“I didn’t!” Powell was sweating. His eyes roved wildly in his skull. Javier thought of the puppet on the beach. “I swear to God–”
“Fuck your god,” Amy said, and buried him deeper.
Javier looked between them. His vision was a series of lines, now, like CRT, pulsing white hot where it lit on Amy, her palms open to widen the void. He charged. He grabbed her around the waist and jumped. They sailed eight feet in the air, into another tree. It wasn’t far from here to his own garden. He crossed the distance in two more jumps with her wriggling around in his arms.
“I told you to let me go!”
“You were gonna kill him!”
“
He deserved it!”
Now he did let her go. She stumbled back a bit, onto the nearest bough. “Don’t say that,” he said.
“He deserved it. He failsafed you. He raped you.”
Javier was about to tell her that no, Powell hadn’t raped him, that it wasn’t that simple, wasn’t that easy, but that thought branched his focus elsewhere and he said: “If you’re so concerned about that, why won’t you hack me?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re worried about me, you think I’m so vulnerable, but you’re the one who’s keeping me vulnerable.” He swallowed. “If you’re really so concerned about it, you should make me stronger. Make me able to refuse.”
She gripped the limbs of the tree with white knuckles. “You’re saying this is
my
fault?”
“I’m saying you’re a hypocrite!”
The wind picked up around them. Hearing it rushing through the leaves – the real leaves – was different from hearing its progress through the solar and carbon ones. It sounded better, softer, more alive. Something deep in his clade’s original programming preferred it. He was suddenly grateful to be in this space, and knew why he had chosen it for this conversation.
“I’m going to spend the rest of the night with Xavier and the boys,” he said. “I think it’s better if I just take some time away from home right now.”
Amy remained frozen. She obviously had no idea what to say. It was one of the few advantages he had over her – he had experience with this kind of thing, and she didn’t. He let himself fall out of the tree, and started walking.
“Well, that didn’t take very long at all,” Ignacio said, when Javier arrived.
Unbeknownst to Javier, it wasn’t just his youngest who chose to spend the night with Matteo and Ricci and their oldest. The others had all joined in, too. They were crammed into the second tier of a stack of old containers. Unlike the others, it was insulated, and well lit. It was meant for guests. They were listening to some terrifically antique Eliades Ochoa recordings on a thing called a “turntable” that a really rabid fangirl had sent them from Boston. Ricci was serving a bunch of vN rice rolls, which looked exactly like the organic version, except the fibrous meat inside was really asbestos. A box of them had come in on the boat. Apparently he had to stream a review of them, later.
“So is this it, or what?” Ignacio asked, in Spanish.
“I don’t know,” Javier answered.
“Is the missionary OK?” Ricci asked.
“I jumped over there, but he’d dug himself out already.”
The boys nodded as one. “You’re better off,” Ignacio said.
“It’s his life,” Matteo said. “Leave it alone.”
“She’s not right in the head,” Ignacio said. “Anyone could see that. For Christ’s sake, she
ate her grandmother
.”
“She was protecting her mother,” Xavier said quietly. His youngest looked up at him. “She was just protecting you, Dad. She does that.”
Javier sipped his electrolytes. He felt them fizz on his tongue before swallowing them. His iterations, particularly this one who had booted back from a bluescreen, had a way of reminding him of the things he’d forgotten. His youngest was right. Protecting others was in Amy’s nature. It was who she’d been from the very beginning. It was why they’d met in the first place.
“What was she saying, about a generation ship?” Gabriel asked. “Why did she mention that?”
Javier shrugged. He finished his drink. “No idea. I guess she and the island were talking.”
“About the sub?”
“I guess.”
“You didn’t
ask?
”
“I had other things on my mind!”
“Dad,”
Matteo hissed. He pointed to the tier above them. “The baby. Asleep. Remember?”
Javier nodded, closed his eyes, and lay down. “We should follow his example,” he said. “I just want to sleep.”
They unrolled a futon for him against one wall. Xavier unrolled one next to his. Léon slept against the opposite wall. Ignacio slept outside, on a bough three feet from the window. Gabriel moved to the bottom tier with a scroll reader. Matteo and Ricci joined their son upstairs.
His son patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll be better in the morning, Dad.”
Javier rolled over and rested an arm over his son’s middle. “Are you too big to cuddle, now?”
After a moment, his son shook his head. “No.”
“How’s your treehouse coming?”
“Slow. I had a platform and everything, but that was when I was smaller, and now I think it should be bigger because I’ll be growing.” He wriggled. “Besides. My sister is going to live there with me, so I should have at least two rooms.”
“Your sister, huh?”
Xavier nodded emphatically. “Mom says she’s not ready, yet.”
“Well, there’s a lot your mom isn’t ready for just yet, so I wouldn’t get too excited.”
Xavier flicked his arm. “Not like
that
,” he said. “I mean, my sister isn’t ready. She’s not finished, yet. She’s still being worked on.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know why you thought Mom was going to hack you,” Xavier said. “She’s not even done with her first baby, yet. How can she change
you
if she can’t even iterate? You’re the bigger job, you know. You have all kinds of memories and adaptations and stuff. Plus she has to take care of the island, and all of us, and the orphans, and the other islands, and everything.”