Sky Coyote (38 page)

I only read enough to glimpse her name and some mention of a disciplinary hearing before I filed it away, unwilling to integrate the rest of the information it contained. That was in 1863, and to this day there it sits on some buried level of my consciousness, right next to the access code that Budu forced on me. I’ve never found out what that says, either.

I did
think
I saw her, once, in the early years of this century. That was a hallucination, though; had to have been. She couldn’t possibly have been sitting at that table in the Hotel St. Catherine in 1923, and even if she had, she couldn’t possibly have been sitting with the other person I thought I saw there. Anyway, by the time I managed to push my way from the crowded bar to the place where I’d seen them, the table was vacant, two wineglasses empty, the terrace door open. Had they run away? No. They’d never been there at all. Mendoza was somewhere else, I knew that, stashed away in some secret Company place because of something that would probably turn out to be my fault.

But they can’t have done anything too terrible to Mendoza, because she was a good operative, she did good work. It’s not like they could kill her, anyway, right? She’s an immortal, after all, as indestructible as I am. She must be out there someplace.

Budu must be out there someplace too.

The year 2355 approaches, though, and not one of us can hide from it or outrun it. I guess I’m going to have to access Budu’s
message eventually, decrypt whatever it was he wanted me to know. I’ll probably read that memo on Mendoza then, too. I have a feeling that I’ll find a new role to play after that, which is okay. Between you and me, being a minor studio executive with a leased sports coupe is beginning to pall a little.