vN The First Machine Dynasty(95)

"Who's a what, now?"



Javier jumped down out of the trees. He watched Jack's eyes narrow and then widen with recognition; the boy looked more like him with every inch he grew, but they were not yet completely identical. Javier had no clue why the boy wanted to remain a boy for so long; his other sons had all grown and left him by this age, or he had left them. But he had let Xavier make his own choice, and he said he wanted to stay little, and he had the discipline to avoid eating too much. Jack's eyes lifted from Xavier's open, smiling face to examine Javier anew.



"You're the dad," Javier said.



Jack nodded. "So are you, apparently." He held out his hand. "Jack."



"Javier." They shook. Something passed between them in that single moment; Javier hadn't touched another human being since they left the mainland, and his systems ramped up their cycles to feverish speeds at the sudden taste of Turing material. Javier quickly withdrew his hand and shoved it in his pocket. He nodded up ahead. "She's talking to the island." He pointed at Jack's bag. "Should I take that?"



"No, I'm good."



"Right." They started walking. Behind them, the trees knitted the path closed. Ahead, Xavier bounded toward the house. "So. You've done your time."



"Yeah." Jack peered over at him. "It's harder for von Neumanns, I hear."



Javier shrugged. "Just different."



"But you're still OK living in the penal colony?"



Javier pulled up short. Amy's dad looked different from the man whose image Javier had seen in Amy's memories. This one was thinner, more alert. He wore the pinched, allergic face most men developed after too long in solitary. Javier wondered exactly how long Jack had spent putting that little retort together. Maybe this conversation existed for the tracer's benefit. Or maybe this man had left prison with bigger balls than he'd had coming in.



"It's not a penal colony, and I'm not a prisoner, here. I can leave anytime I want."



"And do you plan to?"



Javier's brows rose. Now he understood. He really had been spending too much time away from humans, if his affect receptors were this far off the mark. "Are we seriously having this conversation?"



Jack had the grace to look a little trapped. Then he firmed up and said: "She's my daughter. I have every right to ask."



Javier shook his head and started trudging uphill. "Chimps."





They gave Jack the grand tour. They started with the house, where Amy asked her dad what dimensions he'd like and where the windows should go and how soft he preferred his bed, before unfolding the thing from the island's surface like an origami box. She smiled at her dad, and after the briefest pause he smiled back, his eyes flicking between his new daughter and his new bedroom and the old diamond tree casting broken rainbows over all of them. Then Xavier tugged his hand and dragged him to the beach, showing him how high he could jump along the way, bouncing between the boughs, until their feet met the water and Jack could see the other islands: seven of them today, though tomorrow there might be more or less, depending on what the latest calculations had to say about efficiency. Ignacio and Leòn and Gabriel lived out there. He saw them every few days when they came to see their brother, and they said neither hello nor goodbye. The Rorys and the Amys had their own islands too, where they mostly kept to themselves, and the children had an island, and Amy usually generated a small one when the pirates came along to sell their wares.



"Where's quarantine?" Jack asked, shading his eyes with one hand.



"That would be telling," Amy said.



They kept Portia in quarantine, Amy and the island. Javier had no idea where that was. He had asked Amy once, but she had lifted a curl free from his eyelashes and told him not to ask again, because if his memory were searched, she didn't want him to be responsible for lying. He knew Amy could access Portia, if she wished. So far, she had not wished to. But he still ran the simulations, sometimes, about what it would take to bring her out, about whether she would speak through Amy or whether the island would sculpt her a new body wholly separate from her granddaughter's, about whether Amy had chosen to hide her in the safest place she knew: her own shell. With the island to distribute her cognition and computation, she could probably hold Portia back more securely than she'd ever done alone. Maybe she'd filtered nothing out when the island swallowed her. Maybe she'd just tapped the mute button.



"Can I show him to the other kids?" Xavier asked, already pulling Jack in that direction.



"No," Amy said.



Jack frowned. "Why not?" His lips quirked. "You think your old man's a bad influence?"