The Sons of Heaven by Kage Baker Page B

smile. “No you’re not! Hellholes, I know you. You’re Barbie’s Baby!”
    She bared her teeth right back at him, but he snatched off his hat with his free hand and danced round and round in the starlight, dragging her with him. Down in the shadow of his cowshed, the farmer Sweeney heard their scuffle and loaded a rock into his sling, straining his eyes to see through the darkness. Uncle Ratlin heard him and stopped abruptly. He crouched and ran through the heather, and Tiara had no choice but to run with him, until they made the shelter of a hazel thicket and vanished into its rustly shadow.
    “Now then,” whispered Uncle Ratlin, “now then, my treasure, my love, and haven’t you grown up sweet! But where’ve you been, darling, all these long years?”
    “I have been in London,” she informed him. “S-staying at Claridge’s and sipping champagne.”
    He gaped at her, and then his eyes narrowed. “Not too likely, lovey. But you’ve been around big people, haven’t you, and learned things?
London
, she says. Where were you really, I’d like to know? Silly bitch Barbie killed you, broke your baby neck and left you outside for a dog to find, or so I always reckoned. She does that now and then, in her little fits of temper. But she didn’t, did she? You must have run off.”
    “Yes,” said Tiara, realizing she had to tell him something. “I ran off.”
    “I was ready to break her neck myself when I came back home and found no Baby,” he told her, his eyes shining. “Well! No more presents for her. Only for you, sweet thing. Who needs blowzy Barbie anymore, with you grown up and cherry-ripe? You’ll come back with me, now, and spit in her old eye.”
    “I will not,” said Tiara, summoning every ounce of dignity. “I decline, thou baseborn churl.”
    “Listen to her, listen to her, what fine words,” Uncle Ratlin cackled. “Oh, dearie dear, I know what it is with you. You’re High Hybrid like me, you’ve got a brain! And you must have been living under a library all these years, too. Well, you’ll have no trouble putting old Barbie in her place. She’s got the weight and the fingernails, but you’ll be quick and smart. Don’t be afraid of her.” He groped under her dress in a friendly sort of way.
    “Never,” Tiara replied, reeling a little at what the Memory was telling her: she might kill Quean Barbie now, if she wanted! And take her place in that warm chamber, and watch whatever she wanted on that holoset herself, and have all the fine clothes and presents.
    … And the game would begin, the endless game of romance, waiting for the keen pleasure of the vacant-eyed big men the Uncles would catch for her. Sometimes they’d be sampled, hairy massive darlings, and returned sleepwalking to wherever the Uncles had caught them, but sometimes they could be kept. Between times she could amuse herself with the Uncles and have little stupid babies, popping them out in litters for the other stupids to care for; but by the big men she’d have fine clever boys, Uncles like Ratlin and his brothers, and perhaps one day after years of Uncles a little girl, clever and lovely, a reflection of her own glory!
    Though one day the girl would grow up and turn nasty… and of coursethe big men never lasted forever, even if they were as beautiful as an Elvis, even so they’d clutch their hearts and groan one day and the stupids would drag them away to the bone room … where her fair-haired darling slave had been thrown when Ratlin killed him.
Thought
he’d killed him. Careful, careful now.
    “I am not interested in your kind offer, sir,” she told Uncle Ratlin, though the Memory was telling her this was the life she was meant for, this was the life that offered everything she could possibly desire for herself, lovers and status and presents!
    “Ah, now.” Uncle Ratlin looked at her anxiously. “You don’t really mean that. I know what it is. You’re scared of the old bitch. Sweetie, precious babe,