The Children of the Company (16 page)

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Authors: Kage Baker

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BOOK: The Children of the Company
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He was a cold-looking young man, Lord Victor; so when I saw that coldness laid aside and real compassion in his eyes, I knew something terrible had happened. I scrambled to my feet.
He said, “Master Simeon, Maeve is delivered of a son.”
And I said, “Has she died?”
He shook his head. I said, “What is it, then?” and he cleared his throat before he answered me. When he spoke it was with such delicacy, and such chill, and such anger I was almost more concerned for his discomfort than my own. He said: “I have been delegated to inform you that you have the Company’s profound thanks for your contribution to their breeding program. A hybrid was successfully delivered this afternoon and, although he does not have the desired characteristics, his survival proves that the program still has a fifty-three point three percent chance of producing its objective. Do you know what that means, mortal man?”
I stammered, “No, my lord.”
He said it meant I was divorced now.
I dropped the maul where I stood. I don’t think I said anything. He closed his eyes before he went on to say: “The girl will be assigned to another mortal male. They’ll try her again, to see what another genetic mix might produce. You’re a clever fellow, you must have seen that the Company had plans for Maeve! And you will be rewarded for your efforts, at least: bigger and finer rooms for you, and your operating budget will be tripled.”
I said, “May I see the boy?” and he said, simply, “You don’t want to see the boy.”
It wasn’t until years later that I knew what Lord Victor meant.
I found my boy by chance, in the warren of residential rooms attached to the infirmary. It doesn’t matter what I was doing there.
I looked in through a door and saw the youth who might have been dead Fallon, except that what clumps of hair he had were the color of mine. He had his mushroom-white hands pressed over his eyes and was rocking himself to and fro on his bed, thumping his big head against the wall. But all across that wall, and on the floor and even in corners of the ceiling, were scrawled equations
of such complexity I was dumbfounded, though my grasp of engineering mathematics is better than most mortals’.
Do you know what it is to be cuckolded by a dead man, when he is no more than a film of ashes in his sunless grave? I know.
And it wasn’t the first time I felt like a cuckold.
When Maeve had recovered sufficiently from the birth, they gave her to a mortal I barely knew, who worked in their kitchens. He got her with child but did not treat her well, so the immortals took her from him even sooner than they had taken her from me. The child was another boy.
She was passed then to the lady Belisaria’s mortal valet, and had another son; and then to the mortal who cleaned the pipes in the baths and reflecting pools, and produced yet another son. I lost track of her bridals after that.
Which is not to say I never saw her. I did glimpse her, now and again, wandering in the gardens to pick flowers or fruit. It was seldom, though, because she was seldom in any condition to walk far. And as the years went on Maeve’s tiny perfect face became somehow a parody of itself, the features too sharp, the sweet mouth twisted.
But I finished her garden.
It far surpassed my topiary walk. The lord and ladies said so. How clever of me to make a moon-garden, all white and scented flowers and silvery herbage, best enjoyed under the stars! The scale was a little inconvenient for the immortals, as all the stone seats were set low and the stair risers, too; but the neophyte classes, the children being transformed into immortals, found the place and made it their own. They played there in the long summer evenings. The dark trees echoed back their laughter. I had wanted children to laugh in that garden, but they were not my children.
Still, it was good that the place was used and loved. There was a moment, after I had planted the last narcissus bulb and opened the valve for the fountains, when I wanted to spray it all with Greek fire and destroy it in its completed perfection; but, really, that would have been a very stupid and ungrateful thing to do. If there is one thing the lords and ladies despise, it is wanton destruction, and surely I was better than the mortal men of the villages below us.
So I maintained it, and kept it beautiful. I was kneeling there one day when the lord Victor came and sat on the steps beside me, watching awhile. I was
pruning the miniature roses. This must be done as carefully as paring a baby’s fingernails, for they are not hardy bushes.
After a time he said, “How are you feeling these days, Master Simeon?”
I told him I was very well, and thanked him for asking.
He was silent, staring at the little bushes. At last he said, “I’m leaving this mountain soon. I’m going off to do some field work at last.”
I said, “Are you, my lord?” and he made an affirmative sound. He stared out over the lawns, not seeming to see them. His hand went up to stroke his mustaches. He said, “It’s a miserable posting, really. I’m being sent out to chase around after Totila. The Ostrogoth fellow, you know. He’s all set to crush Rome again, and the Company needs someone on the spot to protect certain of its interests. I’ve been accessing data all week. Aegeus thinks I’m out of my mind.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just made sympathetic noises, and anyway I could tell that he was only speaking to me as a mortal man speaks to his dog. He went on: “He’s right; it’s not a good way to begin a career. Not for an Executive Class operative. I’ll be wading into the mortal muck with the Preservers! If Aegeus knew I’d requested it, he’d really be horrified.
“But I’m having a, what would you mortals call it? A crisis of faith, perhaps. Not a good thing, when one has a career to consider. I’d really rather not question my beliefs, but the longer I stay here in the midst of all this”—he waved a hand at the pleasure gardens all around us—“the harder it becomes. I think I need to go down into the mortal places and watch
real
cruelty, real stupidity, real vanity. Perhaps then I can look at Aegeus with some sense of perspective. Or at least learn to appreciate his point of view …”
His gaze drifted back to me. He sighed, supposing maybe that I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, “Do you know the myth of Jesus, Master Simeon?”
I told him, of course I did. We are all taught about the dark superstitions that the mortals slave under, down there in their villages. Lord Victor said, “Do you suppose the Christ left Heaven for Earth to save mortal souls? Or is it possible he left because God’s behavior disgusted him?”
I said it might be so.
He was silent a long time after that. At last he got to his feet, and his shadow fell across the work I was doing. He said, very quietly, “Master
Simeon, I do beg your pardon.” I squinted up at him where he loomed dark against the sun and I just nodded, for I couldn’t think how to answer him. Then I looked down at my roses again, and I saw his shadow move away from me.
I heard he went down into the mortal world not long after.
Maeve was passed from mortal to mortal, and bore them all nothing but sons, which would have made her a very desirable wife indeed down in the mortal places where women were slaves, as I understood; but it did not seem to be what the immortals wanted from her. This even though some of the boys were quite presentable, kitten-faced children who could converse rationally and walk in the sunlight. Like their mother, they saw no particular virtue in courtesy or other social graces, and like her they were petted and spoiled by the lords and ladies who raised them. Most of them were little geniuses. They were not given eternal life, however.
And then, miraculously, Maeve bore a daughter to the mortal Wamba, who worked as a masseur in the Executive Gymnasium. What a celebration there was! Wamba was given new rooms and all the finery he could wear, and as a further favor he asked if he might divorce Maeve and marry one of the bath attendants, whom he had loved for some time. This was granted to him.
I don’t know if Maeve cared. She basked for a while in the glory of having produced a daughter, and really a very pretty one. I saw the little girl when they were parading her around. She was not so pale as her mother. Her skin was like rose petals and her hair like white gold, but she had the same great wide eyes and delicate face.
Yet Maeve, it seems, grew jealous of all the attention paid to her daughter. They caught her pinching the baby when she thought she was alone with it. The infant was taken away, to be raised by Lady Maire, and Maeve found herself in real disgrace for the first time in her life.
Lord Aegeus had no time for her now. All his attentions were focused on little Amelie, the daughter. It was decided that Maeve had performed her duties admirably, and would henceforth be allowed to rest. They allotted her a single room adjacent to the infirmary. She would be given no new husbands, as her health had begun to suffer from constant breeding.
So I asked if I might have her back.
The lords and ladies bestowed her on me gladly enough, commending me for my sense of responsibility, but warned me that marital relations were best not resumed. They didn’t need to say so much. Maeve had become a small wizened thing by this time, collapsed and sagging like an old woman, though she can’t have been thirty yet. Her skin had begun to mar, also, with thick white blotches of scar tissue. The lords and ladies told me it was from too much exposure to sunlight.
But I couldn’t leave her indoors by herself, so I swathed her in a hooded cloak and carried her about with me, and set her in the shade as I worked.
She talked constantly. Mostly it was bitter complaints about the way no one ever brought her presents any more, and how unfair life was. Sometimes she would wander in her mind, and hold long conversations with Fallon. I don’t think she recognized me even when her mind was clear. I wasn’t angry about this. There had been so many, after all, and maybe time and memory weren’t the same for her kind as they were for me. Whatever her kind might be.
I wondered if this was how the immortal ones regard my own race. Are we so brief and small and foolish in their eyes?
Anyway, she didn’t last long.
I had taken the midday meal with her, spooned soup into her toothless mouth and napkined her little chin, nodding my agreement to her stream of complaints that never stopped, even while she was eating. Then I carried her to the shade of one of the vast trees I had had transplanted for her, for we were in her own garden that day. I set her down where she could see me, and went to arrange the new bedding plants around the fountain.
I heard her talking to Fallon again, and was grateful, because it meant I wouldn’t have to keep nodding to show I was paying attention. After a while I noticed she had grown silent, and I turned. She looked as though she had gone to sleep.
I buried her in the narcissus bed, and then I went to tell Lord Aegeus. Perhaps I should have told him first, but she was already beginning to crumble in on herself; and I was afraid he might have some further use for her poor body.
I found Lord Aegeus in Lady Maire’s quarters. They each had hold of one of little Amelie’s hands and were pacing carefully beside her as she toddled
along, chatting together over her head like happy parents. He actually looked blank for a moment when I told him my news.
But then he was instantly sympathetic, clapping me on the shoulder and commending me for my careful attention to dear old Maeve, telling me how grateful he was I’d made her last days comfortable. He swung the baby up in his arms and held out her dimpled hand to me. He said, “You must thank your uncle Simeon, Amelie. He was a good friend to your biological mamma.” And the child patted my cheek and smiled at me with an intelligence that was, maybe, just a bit more human than Maeve’s.
Lady Maire exclaimed, “Isn’t the sweet thing clever!” And Lord Aegeus kissed Amelie between her wide eyes and agreed that she was the cleverest, most precious little girl in the whole world. I don’t think he noticed when I left.
I planted a rosebush to mark the grave. It wasn’t one of the elegant ones the lords and ladies so love. It was a wild rose with a single-petaled flower. It bears many thorns, it is half bramble; but the perfume of its white roses is intense, though they bloom in an hour and the petals scarcely last a day.
Labienus sets the documents to one side. He contemplates Victor’s picture a while, and presently he begins to grin. So many expressions can be read into that expressionless face, those blank eyes; is he mournful? Resigned? Bored? Labienus is irresistibly reminded of the drawings of Edward Gorey, of all those stiffly miserable Victorian figures trapped in their airless world.
“Disaffected,” he says aloud. “Disillusioned. Disinclined. Poor Victor. Aegeus is a pompous ass, isn’t he? I wonder whether you’d like a change of masters?”
Yes. Victor must be turned. It shouldn’t be difficult.
Labienus glances up at a red file folder, secure in its locked glass case with other Red Level Deniability documents. This particular document is the record of an experiment. Certain twenty-fourth-century mortals would be horrified to know any evidence of their work was in Labienus’s possession, let alone that their project had been co-opted by him. He smiles wryly, remembering Project
Adonai.
On impulse, he orders the case to unlock itself, and he pulls the folder down. But another file pops out with it, tumbles down, fluttering open as it comes. Labienus seizes it in midair, but it has opened.
He frowns at the picture he sees, and the memory that rises by association. The shot is of a black man with a lean face, fine features, bright hard gaze like a young hawk’s gaze. Labienus remembers the child the man had been. His mouth twists, as though he tasted bitterness.
He has no protégé of his own, no bright second-in-command …
He can see the woman in his mind’s eye, immortal, blue-eyed and blonde, but without any of the chilly grace he likes in an immortal woman. Unacceptably disorganized for an Executive. Untidy, credulous, earthy,
sentimental
. Just the thought brings her voice back into his ears, gossiping on and on …
I was sweeping down my front steps when I first saw him, or rather when he saw me. It’s not as though I swept every day! I mean, we had servants like all other respectable households were supposed to; but if you’ve ever lived in
Amsterdam for any long time, or at least in that year 1702, you’ll know how hard it is to get the damn servants to actually serve. My God, so touchy! I mean, look at that wet nurse of Rembrandt’s, practically sued him for palimony and I know for a fact their relationship was the most innocent you can imagine.
Where was I?
On the steps, sweeping, because Margarite had retired to her bed with the vapors over something, God knows what, probably because Eliphal had been muttering again about the way mortals cook, which I wished he wouldn’t do because she’s very clean really for a mortal, and as for using too much butter, we were in
Amsterdam
for Christ’s sake, not a health spa, and where was she going to get hold of polyunsaturated fats?
See, this is just the sort of domestic calamity our mortal masters failed to foresee when they founded Dr. Zeus Incorporated, though you’d think being up there in the twenty-fourth century would give them a clue. But that Temporal Concordance of theirs only tells them about big things like wars and disasters to be avoided, I guess; they have to rely on us, their faithful immortal cyborgs, to manage the little details of business for them here in the past. I know they’re all scientific geniuses, to have come up with time travel the way they did, but I can’t help thinking they must be a bit lazy.
So anyway I told Margarite, there there dear, you just take the afternoon off, and that was how I came to be out on my front stoop with the broom, in my old black dress with my hair bound up in a dishcloth, which is not really the way an Executive Facilitator wishes to be seen by a prospective Junior Trainee, but there you are.
“I am shocked,” observed a little voice, “to behold the beautiful and celebrated Facilitator Van Drouten engaged in drudgery better left to mortals.”
I looked down with my mouth open and there he was, standing beside the Herengracht in a pose as arrogant as a captain of the Watch, plumed hat doffed but held on his hip in a lordly sort of way. All along the canal other women were leaning over their stoops to look, because you see a lot of unusual stuff along the canal but not often a teeny-tiny black kid with the poise and self-assurance of a burgomaster.
“Hello, Van Drouten,” said Kalugin, who was standing beside him looking sheepish. Kalugin’s an old friend, a big man but one of those gentle melancholy Russians, and why the Company made him a sea captain I can’t guess.
He’s the last person to scream orders at people. “I’m afraid we’ve caught you at rather a bad time.”
“Oh! No,” I said, when I had got over my surprise. “Minor household crisis, that’s all. Goodness, you must be Latif!”
“Charmed, madam,” the child said, and he bowed like—well, like a captain of the Watch, and a sober one at that. “And may I say how much I’ve been looking forward to the prospect of learning Field Command from one of the unquestioned experts?”
I had to giggle at that, I mean there I was looking at my least executive, but he stiffened perceptibly and I thought: whoops. Dignity was clearly important to him. But, you know, it is to most children.
“Very kind of you to say so, with me such a mess,” I said, descending the steps. “And welcome to Eurobase Five. Shall we go inside? I can offer you gentlemen cake and wine, if you’ve time for a snack, Kalugin?”
“Unfortunately, no,” he apologized, taking off his tall fur hat as he ducked through the low kitchen door, which was the one we ordinarily used, and not the grand main entrance.
“Not even for a cup of
chocolate?”
I coaxed. He looked as though he could use a little Theobromos.
“Theobromos on duty?” Latif inquired, looking up at us. “Isn’t that prohibited, indulging in Theobromos before nineteen hundred hours?”
Of course it is, technically, but the young operatives who aren’t allowed Theobromos yet have such puritanical attitudes … almost as bad as the mortal masters, on whom it has no effect at all! Our masters were horrified when they discovered that chocolate gets us pleasantly stoned, because they thought they’d designed us to be proof against intoxicants. They even tried to forbid it to us, but must have realized they’d have a revolt on their hands if they did, and settled for strictly regulating our use of the stuff. Or trying to, anyway.
“I really can’t stay. My ship won’t wait,” Kalugin told me, with real regret. “But I have some deliveries—besides young Latif, here—a moment, if you please—”
As he shrugged awkwardly out of his fur coat he transmitted,
And here’s the
young Executive himself, and good luck with him!
Oh, dear, is he a brat? He seems like such a polite little boy,
I responded, as Latif inspected the Chinese plates ranged along the passage wall.
Polite? Certainly! Even when one doesn’t quite meet his particular standards.
Kalugin unstrapped the dispatch pouches he’d brought with him.
He graciously agreed to overlook at least four flagrant violations of Company protocols he detected on my ship.
“Here we are—diamonds for Eliphal, I believe, they’ve been rather uncomfortable—and these are the credenza components Diego ordered.” Kalugin presented them to me with a slight bow. “Have you anything to go?”
“Not at the moment, thank you.” I accepted the pouches.
“Then I must attend to duty.” Kalugin put his coat back on. “The young gentleman’s luggage will arrive within the hour. Latif, best of luck in your new posting—Van Drouten, I’m desolated to rush but you know how things are—perhaps we can dine at a later date. Have you still got that mortal who works such wonders with herring?”
“Yes, which was why I was sweeping, but I’ll tell you next time—” I said, following him as he sidled into the street and put on his tall hat. My goodness, I thought, he
was
in a hurry!
“Now, that’s interesting,” said Latif thoughtfully, and Kalugin stopped dead.
“What is, young sir?” he asked, and not as though he wanted to.
“I must have missed something. Or am I mistaken in my interpretation of Directive Four-Oh-Eight-A regarding acknowledgment of delivery of all Class One shipments? I thought the Executive Facilitator of a Company HQ signed for all packets above a certain value.”
“Um—” said Kalugin, looking like a trapped bear, but I knew what the problem was now. Latif had been training under Executive Facilitator Labienus, who is a martinet. Not the best influence for a child, even if Labienus is a big cheese. I’ve never cared for him, personally.
“Except in cases where delivery occurs no fewer than six but no more than twelve times within a calendar year,” I told Latif. “And then it’s at my discretion whether I sign or not.”
“Yes,” Kalugin agreed, throwing me a grateful look. “Well. I’ll just be going, shall I?”
“Marine Operations Specialist Kalugin,” Latif executed another perfect bow. “
Dos vedanya!
”
“The pleasure was all mine, I assure you,” Kalugin called over his shoulder, and was gone down the Herengracht like a shot. Beside me, Latif cleared his throat.
“Insofar as my arrival seems to have been unexpected,” he said with beautiful delicacy, “I would be happy to report to my quarters until a more convenient time for my briefing.”
“No, no,” I told him. “We can chat as I work. So, you’ve been studying with Labienus at Mackenzie Base?”
“Yes, madam, for the last eighteen months.” He fell into step beside me as I took the deliveries and climbed up into the house.
“Well, that’s nice. He’s a very efficient administrator, Labienus. Very military, isn’t he? Of course, personal styles vary widely,” I said, and Latif snorted.
“I’ve learned that much already. During my first semester I studied under Houbert.”
“Ah. I’ve heard he’s … a little creative.” It was the politest word I could think of.
“Yes, madam, I would say that’s one way to describe him,” Latif replied. “In any case, this will be my first experience at a Company HQ actually within a mortal urban community, observing field command and interaction with mortals in a situation where cover identities are used.”
I nodded, and told him: “Sounds scary, doesn’t it? But, really, you know, it’s not that difficult. Especially here in Amsterdam. This is a very civilized town.” I lifted my skirts to clear the last step, which is just a little higher than the others, and really I’ve been meaning to get that fixed, but somehow I never get around to it.
“It’s even a boring town, nowadays. I wish you’d been stationed here back in the fifties! I could have taken you around for a sitting with Rembrandt—the Company bought so many of his canvases!—or maybe a chat with Spinoza. We used to buy a lot of his lenses, though of course he had no idea he was grinding them for credenza parts, but he never minded special orders and I used to love to get him talking …”
We had been making our way down the narrow passage, with Latif obliged to stay a bit behind because my skirts were so wide, but when my hoops caught that damn little hall table as they always do he was agile enough to grab the Ming vase before it leaped to its untimely death.
“Nice catch!” I congratulated him, knocking on Eliphal’s door. He just stood there gasping with the vase clutched in his arms as Eliphal opened the door and stood peering down at us.
“What?”
“See?” I waved the packet at him. “Diamonds.”
“Oh, great!” He took them and looked over his spectacles at Latif. “Who’s that?”
“Eliphal, this is Latif, who’s going to be studying with me. He’s an Executive Trainee, you know that experimental program where they’re sending some neophytes into the field for early hands-on acclimatization?” I explained. “He’ll be playing—gee, I guess I can tell people you’re my page, would you like to tag along after me when I go shopping and hold my fan and stuff like that? And, Latif, this is Cultural Anthropologist Grade Two Eliphal; he’s playing a diamond-cutter who rents a room from me. I was just telling him about Spinoza, Eliphal.”
“Well, what a little fellow to get such a big assignment,” said Eliphal, leaning down to him like a kindly uncle. “And how old are you, Latif?”
“Five, sir,” said Latif coolly, putting down the vase and bowing. “I recently read your dissertation on Manasse ben Israel, and may I say how impressed I was with your insights into the influences at work during his formative years?”
“Uh—thank you.” Eliphal straightened up, blinking.
“You’re quite welcome.”
“Come on, sweetie, let’s deliver these. Dinner’s at five, Eliphal. So, let’s go on upstairs and you can meet Lievens, not the painter of course though he’s our Art Conservationist, he’s supposedly a cabinetmaker I’m renting to like Eliphal, and so is Diego ourTech, and Johan and Lisette—they’re our Botanist and Literature Specialists—they’re playing my son and daughter and help me run my business, and then we’ve got the mortal servants—you’ve worked with mortals before?—well, ours are very nice though a bit temperamental, Margarite and Joost, childless couple, they’ve got Code Yellow security clearance,” I informed Latif as we climbed up to the next floor.
“I see,” Latif answered. “Which would mean they actually share residential quarters with us?”
“Yes, in fact their room is next to yours. They don’t snore or anything, though,” I added, turning to see if Latif was looking upset. Sometimes young operatives are afraid of mortals, until they get used to them. I think it’s because of the indoctrination we all get when we’re being processed for immortality, in the base schools. But, you know, it takes hardly any time before you learn that they’re all just people and not so bad really, and I think half of what
you learn in school you just sort of have to take with a grain of salt, do you know what I’m saying?

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