The Children of the Company (10 page)

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Authors: Kage Baker

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #C429, #Extratorrents, #Kat

BOOK: The Children of the Company
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“I wish I could believe that, Lewis.” I leaned my head in my hand.
“I suppose I don’t believe it, either. But how can we know for sure? Wouldn’t you like to believe that your God would let me into your Christian Heaven? Assuming I died, of course?”
“More than anything, Lewis. If there is such a place, you’ll be there. But I don’t know,” I replied, anguish coiling in me like a snake. “I used to know.”
“Oh, who knows anything? If you’re simply the result of my nutritive solution being a bit rich, then I’ll wake up when the Company decants me and go on about my business of making money for them, forever and ever and ever. And if I’m nothing more than your dream—maybe sent to you because your Christ wanted to cheer you up a little—then you’ll wake up in the morning, and go on with your mortal life until it’s over. Let’s be happy, Eogan.Your life’s too short, and mine’s too long, to mourn. Do something that gives you joy.”
“What?” I demanded. “What, in God’s name, can I do?”
“Well …” He waved his hand. “You used to enjoy writing, didn’t you?”
That was when the stranger, arriving late and pounding on my door, woke me to a black room and unrelieved night.
But then I dared this thing, to write down what I’d seen, and my heart hasn’t been so light in ages. Lewis was right: this is real joy to me, the dance of my goose quill across the bare page. Perhaps it would violate nobody’s trust to begin it again, the copying down of knowledge? I’m not fit for the Gospels any more, but I remember so many of the hero-tales Lewis told me. The community at Malinmhor has only the one copy we made. I could set them down again.
I will, I’ll uncover the harp and watch as the sunlight moves across the fine wood and glints on the strings. I’ll imagine Lewis sitting there talking to me, sipping the heather-honey mead, or singing as the birds chatter in the soft air beyond the stone windowsill. We’ll set Finn galloping with his band of heroes,
and Cuchulainn will perform terrible wonders, and it will all flow out of my pen like gold. God have mercy on me, a miserable sinner; what other grace can I hope for?
Labienus shakes his head, looking pained. It is with some relief that he turns to the next transcript, for though it is of paper no less crumbling and ancient, it is printed in a straightforward and easily readable font, written in simple Cinema Standard. Is it a diary entry? A private confession? Some immortals write compulsively, out of a need to put distressingly eternal lives in perspective. Labienus considers it a weakness. He tsk-tsks at Victor’s portrait before reading …
The man was floating in blue space, motionless, and his gentle expression suggested that he was enjoying the pleasantest of dreams.
“This is the one I mentioned the other day,” said Aegeus in a low voice. “He’s been in here for a full decade. It’s taken that long to regenerate him.”
“Poor devil,” I murmured, scanning him and recoiling at what I perceived; nearly every major organ had had to be regrown. “Does it really take that long to replace an immortal heart?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” replied Aegeus, watching my expression. “There was extensive damage to his biomechanicals as well, you see. To all intents and purposes, this man died.”
If he was anticipating incredulous horror on my face, his expectations were rewarded. “But that can’t happen,” I cried. “The biomechanicals are impervious, aren’t they? What about his brain?”
“Victor.” Aegeus was smiling as he stepped closer to me, but there was no warmth in his eyes. His voice dropped still lower. “You’re a Facilitator. We’re in a class of our own, you and I. There are certain half-truths told to the others, surely you’ve come to suspect that! Not lies. Truth Dilute, if you will. If we didn’t present the facts in the most advantageous way now and then, the common rank and file would grow unduly alarmed, to say nothing of those idiots in the twenty-fourth century who
think
they’re running the Company. All they have to see are the valuables we collect for them, here at our end of time. As long as their shareholders get results, they don’t really care how we obtain them.
“Now, what you need to know about this poor fellow is: we’ve never before
seen injuries of the kind he sustained. We don’t know what the accident has done to his brain. What happened was a fluke, a singular occurrence. Why, then, upset the hardworking field operatives by letting it be known that they aren’t one hundred percent indestructible, when they’re all of ninetynine point nine? The chances of anything of the sort ever happening again are positively astronomical.”
“I’m exceedingly glad to hear that, sir,” I replied, resolving to withhold my questions.
“And you may be sure the Company has used this unfortunate opportunity to learn, that we may prevent such damage happening in later models,” Aegeus continued, turning to look again at the man. “He was a good operative; doubtless he’d be gratified to know that his misfortune gave us invaluable information. Indeed, with any luck you’ll be able to tell him so.”
“I, sir?” Was this to be my first assignment? I straightened my spine and attempted to look shrewd and perceptive.
“You,” Aegeus said, and my keen looks were wasted on him, for he kept his eyes on the dead man. “He’s scheduled to be decanted and revived in three days’ time. You’re to act as his handler, Victor. His guide. His psychopomp, if you will.” He smiled at his joke. “Ease his transition back to immortal life.” He turned and fixed me with a direct stare. “Find out how much he remembers about his accident.”
Ah. That was the agenda. I nodded, intent on showing him I was a fellow of few words.
In his vat before us the man slept on, with his new heart and his brain that might—or might not—have a half-thousand years of memories within its convolutions.
In my opinion, one of the hallmarks of a true Facilitator is the ability to absorb unpleasant realities while remaining focused on the job at hand. I believe I was rather better at this when I was nineteen; I was not, as yet, aware that there were any unpleasant realities for us immortals.
And so I was able to watch with a certain detachment, three days later, as the dead man was dredged out of his vat in a creel of copper mesh and deposited on a steel table, where technicians intubated him and drew the oxygenated fluid from his lungs. I watched him coughing, jerking to life, shivering
and vulnerable, not really conscious yet. He groped blindly as they hosed the last of the fluid off him—I had enough of a sense of empathy to hope that they were using warmed water, at least—and then lay quiet under the rush of air, as the technicians moved in to perform the necessary diagnostic procedures.
I extended a scan myself: he seemed fully functional, as immortal as any of us once again. The technicians finished with him, lifted him onto a stretcher and threw a blanket over him.
He was taken to the infirmary dormitory, to a private room, and there I waited next day for his return to consciousness. I amused myself by studying his features and speculating on his mortal origins.
My biological inheritance is Saxon and Danish, as my skin and hair bear witness; he had more of the look of a fair Celt about him, and something of a Roman as well, in his even and precise features. We were both men of slight stature, but whereas I am fairly solidly made, he had a swimmer’s build. His body bore no mark of whatever accident had precipitated ten years in a regeneration vat.
I confess that I yielded to the temptation to lift one of his eyelids, ostensibly to determine what color his eyes were but in truth to see if I could prod him awake. He slept on. I threw myself back into my chair with a sigh of ennui.
Callous young brute, wasn’t I? And so easily bored. Most of my classmates had already departed Eurobase One, flown off to exciting missions in the field in places like Byzantium or Spain or Cathay. Of course, they were mere Preservers: a Facilitator requires more subtle and detailed education. No grubbing after rare plants or animals for
him
! His job is to sway ministers and kings, and thereby arrange mortal political affairs to the Company’s advantage. He must, therefore, learn from masters. That was why I was still cooling my heels here, watching the neophyte class toddle through its immortality process and listening to Aegeus pontificate.
Not that it seemed like pontification then. At the time I hung on his every word, and, to an even greater degree, on his meaningful silences. The true significance of silence is another thing one fails to appreciate at the age of nineteen.
I was examining my thin little beard and wondering if I ought to comb my mustaches or curl them when I glanced over the top of the mirror and saw that the man had opened his eyes. Hastily I slid the mirror into my belt
pouch, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at the ceiling in a vacant kind of way. Gradually he began to look around him, to take in the frame of his bed and the wall fresco.
“God Apollo,” he whispered to himself.
“H’em!” I enunciated.
He sat bolt upright—nothing wrong with the fellow’s reflexes—and saw me at last. “Good—is it good morning? I’m afraid my chronometer seems to be offline,” he said.
“I shouldn’t be surprised if it were,” I said, hugely amused at the joke. “How do you feel?”
“Fresh as a daisy, thanks,” he replied. His eyes tracked around the room. “I’m in a repair facility. Aren’t I?”
“Eurobase One, in point of fact,” I informed him.
“Ah! Of course,” he said with some satisfaction, but as he followed the thought further his face grew blank. He was trying to run a self-diagnostic. The results must have been inconclusive, for he turned to me in panic.
“What happened? Something’s wrong with my memory.
How long have I been here?”
At last I was able to let him in on the joke. “Ten years,” I told him, grinning, but when the shock registered on his face I felt like the wretched little worm I was. “Sir,” I added.
“May I ask who you are?” he said, rather quietly under the circumstances.
“Facilitator Grade Two Victor, sir, at your service.” I bowed, trying to do it with military precision. “I’ve been assigned to help you through your period of readjustment. Do you remember your name?”
After a long moment, he spoke with some care: “To the best of my recollection, I’m Literature Preservation Specialist Grade Three Lewis.”
I nodded encouragingly. “You were on duty in Ireland. Do you have any memories of being there?”
He knotted his fingers together. “I remember the village. No, it was a monastery! That was it. I was working with the Christians there.”
“Very good,” I told him. “Your mission was to plant a copy of the
Codex Druidae
there for future retrieval. You were to bury it in a lead casket. Have you any idea whether you succeeded?”
“Lead,” he muttered, wincing. He put up his hands and massaged his hollow temples. “It was shielded in lead. That was the trouble …”
“Was there any failure in the casket seal?” I pressed.
“No. I don’t know. I couldn’t—” He opened his mouth but the words wouldn’t come. After a futile moment he made an eloquent gesture, suggestive of releasing a bird from between his hands. “No use. It’s gone.”
“Do you remember what happened to you?” I ventured to inquire.
“No.” He lifted his eyes to mine, pleading. “
Do you
know what happened?”
“No,” I told him truthfully. “Only that you were so badly damaged it’s taken the Company this long to repair you. You don’t suppose the Christians discovered you were a cyborg? Superstitious peasants and all that, jabbing pitchforks into your circuitry?”
“No!” He shook his head decisively. “I remember that much. They weren’t a bad lot of mortals. I was quite fond of them.”
I nodded, thinking that he was probably right. It would take a lot more than an angry mob to do what had been done to Literature Preservation Specialist Grade Three Lewis.
I let him rest while I hooked him up and ran a diagnostic on his conscious processes. A Literature drone! That was the strangest part of the mystery, to my way of thinking. He wasn’t a Facilitator; he wasn’t even an Anthropologist, and they were famous for throwing themselves into harm’s way with mortals. Just some little Preserver chasing around after old manuscripts. How on earth had he managed to find himself in that much danger?
“There’s storage space I can’t access,” I informed Lewis. “You may have memories in there, or you may have so much oatmeal. In any case, blocked or destroyed, we can’t get at them just at the present time. Cheer up! If you feel up to it tomorrow, I’ll take you to Level Three for some cautious exercise.”
“Thank you,” he said absently, staring up at the fresco again, as though the story of his lost time might be written there. “Victor,” he added, giving me a brief courteous smile.
I went in search of Aegeus to make my report.To my astonishment, I located his signal in that sector of the compound reserved for the mortal servants.
My astonishment increased when, on emerging from the mountain, I found him seated in the mortal children’s play garden, watching a pair of the little monkeys with evident amusement.
“Look at this, Victor.” He chuckled, waving me closer. “Look. The boy’s hopeless, but the girl’s quite a charmer. As they go, of course.”

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