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?"
"I just promised the other vN that I wouldn't, that's all." She shrugged, as though it couldn't be helped. "You're human. The children might fall in love with you."
"I have this rule about drinking alone," Jack said later that night, when he stopped by Javier's room.
"I've heard that one, before." Javier rolled his reader shut and edged along his bed to make room. A sunflower lamp unfurled as Jack entered the room; human eyes required more light. Jack sat down with a grunt and brought out a flask. He'd brought his own food, not knowing that Amy had obtained MREs and other rations from the last pirate visit. Xavier liked watching Jack eat it, had watched him eagerly until Ignacio told Xavier to quit staring.
The house had grown again; Amy had asked his boys to stay the night. Javier heard them now, knocking around and accusing one another of cheating at some game or another. "I hope the noise doesn't bother you," Javier said now.
"Not after being where I've been." Jack crossed his ankles and tried to look casual. "Thirteen boys," he said. "Must have been rough."
"Not really. I'm a terrible father."
Jack smiled tightly. "We all just do the best we can."
Javier picked up a fab-rubber ball from the floor and bounced it against the wall. It described a perfect triangle before re-entering his hand. "I thought you came here to get a pep talk, not give one."
Jack picked up the ball on its second bounce. "I don't need a fucking pep talk." He bounced the ball against his bicep, fumbled it, and bent down to the floor as he reached for it. "I just thought that we could, you know, get to know each other."
"I'm not banging her, Jack."
Jack grabbed the ball and sat up. The high points of his cheeks had pinked. "This isn't about that!" He rolled the ball in a circle over his palm with his thumb. "This is about you being doomed to fail. Maybe you can forget about the rest of the world here on your Island of Misfit Toys or whatever this place is, but it's out there, and it doesn't like you."
"You're afraid," Javier said.
"You're damn right I am! And with good reason! The whole world wants to take you out before you get too uppity, and you're sitting here playing house!" Jack's chest rose and fell lightly with his excited breath. He blinked. "Wow. It felt really good to say that aloud."
"Only because you haven't said it to her, yet."
Jack sighed. His shoulders slumped. It was a classic Amy gesture, and seeing it in her father, Javier felt a wedge of tenderness slip in between his frustration and contempt.