Read The Children of the Company Online
Authors: Kage Baker
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #C429, #Extratorrents, #Kat
The Children of the Company (12 page)
He crawled the next few meters, for golden flowers on either side of the path tilted their trumpet-throats and sent jets of acid arching clean across. As he crawled, he continued indefatigably: “‘There all the rest of my good comrades perished, but I myself caught in my arms the keel of my curved ship—’” He scrambled to his feet as soon as it was safe, and dodged the stone post that came bashing across the path. “‘—and drifted for nine days.’”
An espaliered tree let fall a little crimson fruit, which rolled down the embankment to fall at his feet. He snatched it up and flung it from him, reciting: “‘Upon the tenth, in the dark night—’”There was a bright flash and detonation from the far end of the greenhouse. “‘—gods brought me to the island of Ogygia, where dwells Calypso—’” He paused at the edge of the pretty meandering stream, just long enough to crouch and spring into the air, some ten feet above the inviting stepping-stones. From the shadowy water beneath them great eels darted up in frustration, following Lewis with their dead eyes.
He landed safely on the opposite bank and went on: “‘—the fair-haired, powerful goddess. Receiving me, she loved and cherished me—’” He began to sprint now, past the inviting bench that would have tipped him backward into a pit. “‘And often said that she would make me an immortal—’” Whirling automata rose from the lilies beside the path, armored figures bearing razor-edged scythes, and the last ten meters of his journey were an intricate dance at tremendous speed through their zone of hazard. “‘—young forever!’” Unshredded, he somersaulted through the air and landed beside me again.
“Not bad,” I told him, comparing his time to the optimum score. “Care to try it again on intermediate?”
He improved time on the second round, giving me some of the
Elder Edda,
and went on to advanced with a bit of second-rate stuff by Ausonius.
Elder Edda,
and went on to advanced with a bit of second-rate stuff by Ausonius.
“Though frankly Ausonius is rather second-rate at his best,” Lewis admitted, crashing to the pavement as he completed the third round. “Nice enough fellow, as I remember, but the muses kept their distance.”
“You remember Ausonius?” I inquired, unlocking the gate.
“Yes! Quite clearly. Beautiful estate in Gaul. He quite knew how to entertain a guest, even if he couldn’t write an original line to save his life.” Lewis followed me out and I led him down the hall to the sauna. “I remember Ausonius, I remember everything.
Except what happened in Ireland
. Didn’t the Company send in investigators? In ten years I’d have thought they’d have found out something, talked to people at least. I remember monks and nuns they might have interviewed—”
Except what happened in Ireland
. Didn’t the Company send in investigators? In ten years I’d have thought they’d have found out something, talked to people at least. I remember monks and nuns they might have interviewed—”
His questions were certainly good ones, just what I’d have been asking myself if by some unthinkable chance I were in his position. A distraction was in order … I watched his face sidelong as we passed the door to the gymnasium baths and kept going.
“Excuse me, but wasn’t that the door we wanted?” He pointed back along the hall, slight panic in his eyes. Was this another hole in his memory? I grinned and threw open the door to the executive baths.
“Well, old man, if you like—but I thought you’d enjoy a bit of rarefied atmosphere, after what you’ve been through.” I strutted into the deluxe bathing accommodations reserved for Facilitators and their guests. Lewis stepped across the threshold after me and stared.
“I don’t remember this,” he said, taking in the bathing grotto with its elaborate mosaics in porphyry, in gold and semiprecious stones. The attendant mortals hurried forward to disrobe us—I suppose they got rather bored in there all day, with so few of us to wait on—and in short order we were being steamed, splashed, and scrubbed with fragrant oils. For some little while there was no conversation other than groans of pleasure. I couldn’t imagine a drone got an experience like this very often, and Lewis certainly seemed to be enjoying it to the fullest.
Though he did look over at me during our third soak in perfumed waters, when the servants had temporarily retired for fresh towels, and murmured: “Please understand that I don’t want to complain, but—is this really appropriate? Having mortals wait on us this way?”
“They’re enjoying it!” I scoffed. “Can you imagine what they’d be doing if they weren’t working here? Starving, most likely. Scratching out a living on miserable little stony farms and dying young.”
“I suppose so,” Lewis agreed reluctantly. “But, you know, it never used to be the policy—we’re their servants, really, not the other way around.”
“Exactly, and we work a good deal harder for them than they do for us,” I explained to him, as though he weren’t my senior by a good four centuries. But I outranked him, you see, and I thought that gave me insights that might never have occurred to one of his class.Yet I was merely parroting Aegeus as I went on: “After all, our lives are dedicated to preserving the best of their world for them, all their art and literature, and occasionally even their wretched mortal selves. Don’t we deserve a little luxury?”
“This is rather a lot of luxury,” Lewis observed, as the fresh scrubbing team came on duty: a pair of mortal girls, identical twins, looking flushed and lovely in exceedingly brief cotton tunics. Aegeus had personally selected them for the sauna, and I couldn’t resist a smirk as Lewis’s eyes widened at the effect.
“I think, on the whole, that this old place has seen some distinct improvements during Aegeus’s administration,” I said judiciously, looking up one brief tunic as my maiden came to swathe me in a towel and lead me to the massage table. “Worked wonders, hasn’t he? Took a great rambling old training compound, and transformed it with grace notes for all the senses.”
But Lewis wasn’t listening, had actually engaged his girl in conversation,
in her own language.
in her own language.
“You don’t mind this work, child?” he wanted to know!
“I know nothing but happiness, my lord,” she replied in the hushed tones the mortals were encouraged to use. But she dimpled at him, and I had the jealous fancy that Lewis got the pleasanter and more thorough massage that afternoon. There was just possibly a bit of edge to my voice when I inquired, as we went on after we’d been dressed: “Does any of this seem to have helped your memory?”
“Not much, I’m afraid.” Lewis looked apologetic. “I’ve been in awe. This is all quite a contrast to what I remember of Ireland.”
“Well, you were out in the freezing peat bogs, among monks,” I pointed out. “Living in cells like flint beehives! No wonder this place—” But he had stopped, staring at me, or through me, with a haunted expression.
“Beehives, yes,” he muttered. “Hives. Termite mounds. Oh, what was it? The brothers in their hives and the … damn, damn, damn.
Something
almost in my mind. I can’t get it clear.”
Something
almost in my mind. I can’t get it clear.”
“That’s bound to be a good sign,” I said encouragingly, making a mental note to go straight to Aegeus. “Perhaps your access channels are attempting to reroute.”
I changed the subject and saw him to his room, where I left him, promising to return next day for a stroll around the perimeter of the grounds.
Aegeus’s private rooms were what one would expect of the brilliant and sophisticated administrator that he was, magnificently furnished. Clearly, becoming an administrator was the goal to be striven for.
Mere field personnel seldom acquired enough personal possessions to adorn a private retreat, and even if they did, they were generally on the move so much it was scarcely worth getting them out of storage. Might I have a classic bronze like that one day, or that fine Samian ware at just such a table, with its carved griffin-legs? To say nothing of that wardrobe!
“Sir.” I inclined in the informal bow that was appropriate for the occasion.
“Victor.” He waved me in, looking up from his desk. “Sit, please, sit. Tell me how the poor Literature drone is coming along. Any sign of his memory coming back?”
“I’m afraid something seems to be surfacing,” I answered.
“Really? What a shame.” Aegeus reached for his penknife and began to cut a new quill thoughtfully, slicing away at the shaft with sharp, precise strokes. “Something to do with the programming the Literature operatives get, I suppose. His brain won’t stop trying to tell the story … and sooner or later he’ll access the file where we locked it away.”
I felt a slight chill at this, but tried to sound every inch the competent underling as I said with assurance: “I’ll simply see to it that he never manages, sir.”
Aegeus kept his eyes on the pen he was cutting.
“Will you? Good lad.You’ll find what you need in here.” He gestured with his knife at a tiny box next to his inkwell, a lovely thing, a miniature chest banded with silver and semiprecious stones. I reached forward and lifted its lid. There was nothing inside but a sealed phial of opaque glass. Drawing it out, I said: “And this would be … ?”
Aegeus frowned at his pen. “Something to wipe his memory again, of course. Derived from Theobromos, if you must know! You’ll administer it at the first sign of trouble. He may resist; you’ll do whatever’s necessary.”
I sat there speechless a moment. Aegeus lifted his eyes to mine.
“You have qualms? Natural enough. It must seem perilously close to what the mortal monkeys do to one another.”
He was correct, though I’d never have said so much aloud, and there was still more: I had been taught, always, that our immortal brains are perfect and inviolable. The mortal
soul
is an illusion, but our eternal consciousness is surely its nearest approximation. That the Company would force one of us to give up some part of himself … The horror must have been evident in my face. Aegeus leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.
soul
is an illusion, but our eternal consciousness is surely its nearest approximation. That the Company would force one of us to give up some part of himself … The horror must have been evident in my face. Aegeus leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.
“Now, young man, we’ll see what you’re made of. You’ve been shown something classified, and you understand its importance to the Company. You’ve had ample opportunity to observe what a comparative nonentity is Literature Preservation Specialist Lewis. You’ve been given a task, an unpleasant one certainly, but undeniably necessary, and well within your abilities. So much depends on what you do next, young Victor.”
He waved his pen in a general sort of way at the splendid room wherein
we sat. “A future like mine, in rooms like these, isn’t that what you’d like? It’s certainly what the Company has had in mind for you, ever since that bright day when your aptitude testing indicated you were Executive material. I can’t think for a minute you’ve any intention of throwing away that future. You weren’t given immortal life to spend it down there wading in muck amongst the mortals. That’s for talentless little Preserver drones—who’ll never miss a memory they’d only find disturbing, after all.”
we sat. “A future like mine, in rooms like these, isn’t that what you’d like? It’s certainly what the Company has had in mind for you, ever since that bright day when your aptitude testing indicated you were Executive material. I can’t think for a minute you’ve any intention of throwing away that future. You weren’t given immortal life to spend it down there wading in muck amongst the mortals. That’s for talentless little Preserver drones—who’ll never miss a memory they’d only find disturbing, after all.”
“I shall manage the matter to your satisfaction, sir,” I assured Aegeus. He smiled.
“See that you do,” he told me.
“I thought we’d go more easily today,” I informed Lewis next morning. “Just the stroll around the grounds, and then another session in the baths, eh?”
“Yes, thanks.” Lewis accepted the fine cloak I’d brought for him—even in summer, the Cévennes can be chilly—and followed me down the hall with alacrity. “I woke up this morning and realized I’d been dreaming of sunlight, and that was when it occurred to me I haven’t seen it in ten years! It feels positively unnatural. Do I look pale?”
“Not at all,” I said tactfully. We climbed the staircase to the exterior portal and I activated the panel. A moment later we stepped out onto the mountainside, to a wide view of heath and stony ranges. Lewis’s face brightened at once. He drew in a deep breath of air. “You’re a nature enthusiast, I gather?” I said.
“Not particularly,” he admitted. “But even the middle of nowhere has a certain savor, when you’ve been out of commission as long as I have. Look at this! Rabbit tracks. Birds. Smoke at fifteen kilometers—that’s a village of mortals, isn’t it? It’s, let’s see, it’s early summer—they’re haymaking down there, can you smell it? And there are cattle pastured over there, somewhere, and I can smell apple orchards. Chestnut trees. Ah!” He rubbed his hands together and started forward, his cloak trailing after him through the brush. I followed dubiously.
“We ought to go no farther than the perimeter,” I said. “I thought we’d walk along the edge to the gate and go back in through the quadrangle. There are some really exquisite pleasure gardens concealed back here—”
“Oh, by all means.” Lewis stopped and allowed me to take the lead. “I’d
love to see a fountain again. Never in my life imagined I could be so hungry for sheer sensation! Do you suppose we can arrange to go out tonight? What on earth will the stars look like to me now?”
love to see a fountain again. Never in my life imagined I could be so hungry for sheer sensation! Do you suppose we can arrange to go out tonight? What on earth will the stars look like to me now?”
“Do things really seem so different?” I asked, eyeing him as he strode along beside me. He looked different in the sunlight, certainly. His pale features had lit up with warmth and color, his eyes shone.
“Yes, absolutely,” he told me. “It must be the near-death experience. You wouldn’t have any idea how long it’ll be before I’m given another posting, would you?”
“The Company will want to be sure you’ve fully recovered,” I told him, rather peevishly, because we had just come to the pavilion gate and he was failing to react to the grand spectacle of the pleasure gardens. But he was only a drone, after all, wasn’t he? “I should think you’d be in no hurry to go back down there. Not when you’ve got the run of all this.”
I waved an arm at the expanse of perfect lawn, the fragrant stepped terraces of flowers arranged in subtle gradations of height and shade, white through cream pink through deepest rose, the trees artfully clipped and trained to render each one the flawless expression of an artist’s conception of a tree. And Lewis was old enough to remember the classical world, and so surely he could appreciate the statuary that rose in graceful postures here and there! Extravagant passion in tones of snow, masterworks by Praxiteles that had never known defacement by mortal vandals, having been bought new from the master himself and shipped straight here to this garden
from his studio
. Really, what drab mortal place could compare?
from his studio
. Really, what drab mortal place could compare?
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