“Yeah,” Javier said. “It’s something.”
“Forgive an old preacher for prying,” Powell said, “but you don’t seem as enthused as the others. Are you worried about something?”
Yes, he was. But he wasn’t about to tell Powell what it was. So he picked another niggling doubt at the back of his mind.
“The cats,” he said. “In the children’s section. Where the orphans live. I’m worried about the big cats there. My grandson told me they’d been acting up.”
“Your grandson?” Powell’s lips turned down. “I’m jealous. None of my kids has managed to get that far.”
“You’ve got kids?”
Powell nodded. “I don’t see them very much, anymore, though. My wife and I…” He shrugged. “I couldn’t be the man she deserved.”
“Because you enjoy fucking other men?” Javier asked.
Powell stopped short. He said nothing. He didn’t even look at Javier. “That obvious, huh?”
“It’s OK. We’re built to sense these things better than humans can.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “And as for grandkids, don’t feel bad. Human kids are really tough. They’re intimidating. You’re stuck with them for a long time.”
“If you get to keep them,” Powell said.
Javier nodded. “I’m just saying, our kids are easier. They grow faster. It’s not so much of an investment.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Powell said. “They seem like their own challenge.”
Javier walked through a game of hopscotch where the tiles of the game yelped and squeaked and giggled as he stepped on them. The vN playing were no more than a few months old, but they were all adult sized. Each of them paused as he and Powell drifted through the game. Powell even took the time to pick up an old USB key and toss it across the squares, hopping on one foot to his target and triggering all sorts of shouts and screams. When he finished, the vN clapped.
Javier laughed. It felt good. He hadn’t laughed all day, he realized. Maybe not all week.
“I fucked up the last square.” Powell’s lips made a little “o” shape. “Yes, Javier. We preachers can cuss.”
“Oh, I know you can,” Javier said, before he could think. “I fucked a divinity student before coming here. I know the kind of swear words you all can use.”
His lips clamped shut immediately. The pastor didn’t look embarrassed, just bemused. But Javier was embarrassed. First Amy, now this. The words just kept bleeding out of him. Beside him, Powell slowed to a stop under a tree flush with blue solar leaves.
“Are you trying to confess to me?” he asked. “Because you can, if you want to. Our ministry has a lot of room for that kind of thing. It’s not exactly a sacrament, as such, but we recognize the importance of sharing our truth.”
He leaned up against the tree. He saw Powell do the same. The other man seemed a lot closer than he had before. The heat came off him in damp waves. He was sweating. He smelled of bay rum. He envied that, in organic men. They could wear things that made them smell better, or at least different. He’d heard of vN-friendly colognes, but they all just smelled like new cars.
“Could you marry me to Amy?”
“If that was what you both wanted.”
“What about baptism?”
Powell smiled with only one corner of his mouth. “You want me to take you to the water, Javier? Give you a good dunking?”
“I was just asking.”
“I can baptize you, yes. You or your children, or your grandson.” Powell leaned forward. “You know, you don’t have to be suspicious of me. Unlike the majority of organics, I do believe that you have a soul worth saving.”
“I’m not suspicious of you,” Javier said. “What makes you think I’m suspicious of you?”
“The way you’re looking at me, right now.”
“That’s not suspicion,” Javier said. “That’s how a vN looks at a human being.”
“Quiet. We’re not supposed to be here.”
At night, the Veldt was even more like a fairyland. It was not totally dark, and not totally silent. Being something of a night owl herself, Amy had designed it with the goal of relaxation, not enforced rest. Hammocks hung from the gentle curves of counterfeit oaks, and the trees themselves rocked gently in a programmed breeze. Young iterations, most of them missing shirts or pants or even just one sock, slept in the soft grass or the swaying boughs or in the room-sized clusters of roots beneath the big trees. They piled up together like puppies, or splayed out all alone on the banks of gurgling creeks. They were like lambs, Javier realized. Tiny, human-shaped lambs asleep in the pasture.
“Have you ever read any JM Barrie?” Powell whispered.
“No,” Javier said.
“This is just like Never Never Land,” Powell said, like that meant something.