Free The Sons of Heaven by Kage Baker Page B

Joseph. “I promise. Really.”
    He winked out.
    Hearst was only momentarily surprised. Turning his head and scanning for the trajectory of Joseph’s departure, he exhaled in annoyance. “Stay,” he told Helen, setting her down in his chair, and then he winked out, too.
    Down through La Casa Grande he sped, faster than mortal eyes could have followed, over his high fences, pursuing the fading blip that was Joseph in hyperfunction; but the head start was too great. On a knoll of rock he halted and stood peering out across the miles of his domain (for everything within mortal sight, and immortal sight too, for that matter, was his). He could just make out Joseph’s signature, fading into the coastal mountains to the north.
    “Darn,” he said. After a moment he put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly back up his hill, thinking very hard as he went.
    Just as he came to the wide staircase below the Neptune Pool, a tour vehicle pulled up and he heard the docent say excitedly: “Ah-yah! This is very special, everybody. See that man? That’s Mr. William Randolph Hearst the Tenth! His ancestor was the one who originally built this wonderful place. He came here from Europe and saved it all when there wasn’t any more money to keep it open to the public! Wasn’t that nice of him? We don’t get a chance to see him much, because he’s very busy—”
    Hearst ducked his head in embarrassment and considered hurrying away, but reflected that it wouldn’t really be polite to do so; there were a dozen mortal faces pressed to the windows of the tour vehicle, staring at him eagerly. He gave them a shy smile and stood there on display while the tour group disembarked and came rushing over. It was largely a party of reenactors, wearing passable early-twentieth-century costumes. One carried a SoundBox blaring out early jazz music. Hearst winced. He preferred modern music, on the whole.
    He shook hands, answered a few questions, and hoped they’d all enjoy their visit to his house before he departed with the excuse that he had work to do.
    As he stepped across the threshold of La Casa Grande, he wondered plaintively why contact with mortals made him so uncomfortable. It was easy to love them in the abstract, delightful to plan for their welfare; even now his heart warmed at the thought of their enjoyment of the splendors of his great house. He loved listening to the tourists’ reactions, as the docents pointed out this particularly fine Flemish Madonna, or that marvel of Persian figured tile.He was a little lonely when there weren’t guests downstairs, trooping through his echoing halls. He liked watching their progress on the surveillance cameras.
    But he never liked looking into their mortal faces, clasping their mortal hands, talking to them. He never had, honestly, even when he’d been a mortal man himself. Only the endless building plans, only the work made him truly happy.
    Nothing really mattered, except the work.

PART II

CHAPTER 5
Back in the Hill
    Still no way to measure the hours or the years, in the darkness, but they went by. There were times when icy sweat beaded the walls and ran down to pool on the floor, and the slave’s teeth chattered in his head as he told Tiara the love story. In those nights Tiara struggled through frozen weeds to the farmhouse, and had to use every ounce of her will to make the big man rise from his bed and open the back door, gazing asleep into the darkness while she slid past him and rifled his shelves.
    There were times when the air was heavy and stale, hard to draw into the lungs. A living reek came floating down into the places of the dead, nasty smells from Quean Barbie’s domain. But then the wind would shift, and a faint sweet breath from outside would find its way down, telling them about stars and grasses and blossoming thorn. Those were brief nights, but Tiara found she could range farther, run more swiftly then. She brought back wild plums for her slave, and hazelnuts,