“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.”
Christ, he was such a piece of shit. He shut his eyes and hugged the boy tighter and buried his nose in his curls. They smelled of seawater and oil and glue. Love hit him as hard as the failsafe, all at once. He wasn’t worthy of this kid. He wasn’t worthy of Amy, either. He didn’t deserve this island, this home, or any of it, not when he was being such a whiny little bitch about things. He would tell her that. He would apologize. He would do what he always did and come back, like a fucking boomerang, and he would beg forgiveness. He would ask about her iteration. He would stop making it be all about him.
“A generation ship is a starship,” the boy said. “I read about them.”
“A starship? Like for rich assholes?”
“No. For everybody. Well, humans. On a long trip.”
“What, like colonizing other planets, or some shit?”
The boy nodded against Javier’s arm. “They can’t do it, though. Because of the food. They can’t grow enough food.”
Javier considered. “Would printed meat help with that?”
“Maybe. But the meat starts making mistakes, after a while. It misprints, when you expose it to the kind of radiation you get in space. It gets sick.”
Cancer. Shit. The submarine.
Pastor Powell was waiting for him outside, when Javier left to make his amends. “We have to talk,” he said.
“Amy first.”
Powell shook his head. “It’s Amy we have to talk about.”
Javier kept walking. “She didn’t really hurt you. I was the one who overreacted–”
“Portia’s coming back.”
He pulled up short. In the bright light of day, it seemed impossible that they could be having this conversation. Inside the house, José and his parents were singing along to another one of their ancient recordings. The air was full of music. His children were laughing. The air was still and fragrant. Even the botflies looked happy, darting this way and that. He turned around.
“Why would you say that?” he asked.
“I recorded everything last night,” Powell said.
“You what?”
“Including the lions. I watched it over again. It’s Morse, Javier. They’re blinking in Morse. It’s so old you probably don’t know it, but it’s still effective.”