In the middle of the night, listening to the rain, Javier heard Amy stand up and begin pacing her room. He gave himself a good five minutes before he checked on her. She did this, sometimes – she woke up, adjusted things, went back to sleep. He had no idea if she even slept at all. Her body could remain still, but she continued processing all night, she and the island alone together, in constant dialogue about fixes and tweaks.
Jesus, but he was a jealous man.
He got up and made for her room. Her pacing ceased when he paused at her door, and she answered his question before he could ask it: "They've let my dad go. Early release." In the dark, he heard her frown before he actually saw it. "They really want to chip away at us, don't they?"
He entered the room and kept his voice quiet, so as not to wake Xavier. "You think they've sent him to spy on us?"
"Wouldn't you?"
His son found Amy's father first. They met on the path to the house. The path was new; Javier woke to find it spreading down from their door to the ocean, at which point Amy informed him that a secure slipcraft had been hired under her father's name to deliver him there. He'd filed all the permits necessary for island access. Amy needn't have worried about a hidden implant; the qualifiers on her father's release forced him to wear a tracer, and they both agreed it likely held more than the usual complement of surveillance.
Javier watched them, the organic man and the synthetic boy, from a hidden place in the trees. Amy's father looked so pale, his blood so red just under the surface of the skin, his movements so loose and wasteful compared to the economy of von Neumann energy differential. He needed a shave; sweat beaded in the ginger bristles of his beard. But when his bleary eyes settled on Xavier, he smiled Amy's smile: soft, a little tired, but deeply peaceful. Xavier straightened up as though that smile had poked him in the ribs.
The boy stuck one hand out. "I'm Xavier."
"Jack."
"I named myself after my granddad." The boy started walking up the hill. Jack followed. "Xavier was the first Jesuit to make it to Japan. That's how my granddad got the name. Our clade's boss, a long time ago, was really religious."
"I'm named after my father," Jack said. "His name was Jonathan."
Xavier nodded slowly, as though this were some deep and difficult truth to understand. Then he beamed. "So, you're a Junior too."
"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."