The Children of the Company (39 page)
Read The Children of the Company Online
Authors: Kage Baker
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #C429, #Extratorrents, #Kat
I first saw the boy through the wavering light of a flame; rather ironic, as things turned out.
It was in a pleasant suburban villa out beyond the Vondelpark. We’d had to leave the car a good distance off and walk, Labienus and I, because so many people had already arrived for the party. The night was clear for early December, with a black sky full of stars, and the red windows of the house looked warm and inviting. As we drew near we could smell the fragrances of a midwinter celebration: evergreens, spices, mulled wine.
“How festive,” remarked Labienus, smiling. “If only they knew, eh?”
I found his remark in the worst of taste under the circumstances, but I smiled back. Labienus is very much my superior in rank, however much I dislike him.
And he had told me, after all, to play this lightly, for my own emotional health; stress levels would be reduced if I resolutely put gory details out of my mind. I wasn’t even being told everything about the job. Better that way.
The door was already open as we came to the bottom of the steps, for our hostess was welcoming in a young couple and their child. Anna Karremans was a plain smiling woman in her mid-forties. Her guests edged past her into the hall, and she stood gazing down at us expectantly as we started up the steps.
Yes, that was the first unnerving moment, for me: the mortal woman seemed to be standing in the open mouth of an oven, smiling as an inferno blazed behind her. But it was only the scarlet light of the holiday decorations, after all, and it was a gentle heat that flowed down on our cold faces.
“Michel Labeck,” Anna exclaimed, recognizing Labienus. “Oh, we were beginning to be afraid you’d had an accident!”
“Not at all, Dr. Karremans,” Labienus greeted her, and his smile widened as he stepped up to the door and took her hand. “I wouldn’t let an accident derail a media event like this one! And the party does seem to be proceeding successfully,” he added, looking in through the hall at something I was unable to see.
“They’re all here,” she leaned forward to tell him in an undertone. “All the journalists. Everyone on the list you gave me. You’re a miracle worker, Michel.”
“Not at all,” he told her, still smiling, and beckoned me forward. “But I’ve kept another promise: here’s the assistant Doss and Waters has sent you. Nils Victor. Nils, this is Dr. Anna Karremans.”
“Delighted, madam.” I bowed slightly and attempted to smile.
“How nice to meet you,” she exclaimed. “Oh, but you look so serious! Not to say half frozen. Please, come in, let me take your coats—”
So I entered the mortal woman’s house, and stood in her bright hall looking in at the party.
Yes, there were plenty of journalists in evidence. I recognized several from the Amsterdam Wire and the global Wires, too. There were a number of kameramen, but they were all unplugged; so far as they knew, yet, there was nothing to See. No, they stood in small groups chatting, like the other mortals, helping themselves from the buffet or admiring the Yule tree, or gathering about the piano to argue over the lyrics to the new Yule songs. Ranks of real candles were burning on the buffet table, long red tapers in bright-painted wooden candlesticks, quite old-fashioned and charming in a rural sort of way. It might have been a room from the twentieth century, or the nineteenth.
And here were children running to and fro, in and out of the rooms, circling the furniture and yelling happily. Really, one expected Herr Drosselmeyer to make a swooping entrance with a nutcracker. But there was no Clara for him to woo here. All these children seemed to be little boys, six of them, all between the ages of five and eight. Not much to tell them apart: tousled hair, cheeks pink with exertion, bulky-knitted sweaters with patterns of reindeer or fir trees or snowflakes. A fair-haired boy, an ash-blond boy, a boy with hair red as mine, two brunettes who seemed to be twins … well, he wouldn’t be one of them. A boy with sable hair … ?Yes. I spotted him standing still for a moment on the other side of the buffet table, beyond the bright candles, and his image shimmered through their flames.
I found I didn’t care to look at his face.
I concentrated on the buffet instead. What a feast: smoked salmon, goose, turkey, baked goods in profusion, spiced apples, chocolates. Theobromos would help …
“Nils?”
I managed to avoid starting guiltily as I turned from sampling a truffle. Labienus saw, of course, and his eyes glinted as he touched the shoulder of a mortal man with a stupid gentle face.
“Nils, may I present Dr. Geert Karremans?”
“Sir!” I ate the last of the truffle hastily, smiled and reached to shake his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Very, very kind of you,” the man replied with enthusiasm. He, like Anna, was just entering middle age but dressed boyishly.
His
bulky-knit sweater was patterned with little figures of skiers. “So—what do you think? Will it go over well?”
His
bulky-knit sweater was patterned with little figures of skiers. “So—what do you think? Will it go over well?”
“I can’t imagine a more wholesome scene,” I told him, fairly truthfully.
“It’ll go over well,” decided Labienus, surveying the room. “Look at everyone! Happy, well-fed, full of sentimental memories of childhood. This was exactly the approach to take.”
“And all your idea, too,” Geert congratulated him.
“Not mine alone, Dr. Karremans. This is why Doss and Waters has retained its premiere position in public relations counseling for more than fifty years,” Labienus replied. “I think you’ll find you made the right choice in retaining our services.”
“Oh, I’m sure we did,” agreed Geert, stepping aside whilst two of the boys thundered past the table, shrieking as they chased each other with toy dinosaurs. One jostled a corner in his passing, and a candlestick toppled over; I caught it rather more quickly than I ought to have, but Geert didn’t notice. He was frowning after the boys.
“The children are getting restless. Do you suppose it’s time to make the—?” He looked at Labienus with a combination of nerves and eagerness.
“Showtime,” Labienus told him, smiling again. “Leave it to me.”
He strode to the fireplace and stood with his back to the flames, calling for attention with his mere presence. He had dressed for the part, certainly: black trousers and a red shirt cut to give the impression of informal power. Labienus was an imposing-looking fellow in any case, tall, with elegant Roman
features. As one after another of the guests stopped speaking and turned to stare at him, he put his hands up and said, in a pleasing voice that penetrated without effort to the far corners of the house: “Friends? Everybody! May I have your attention, please?”
features. As one after another of the guests stopped speaking and turned to stare at him, he put his hands up and said, in a pleasing voice that penetrated without effort to the far corners of the house: “Friends? Everybody! May I have your attention, please?”
He had it at once, naturally. Beside me a kameraman murmured appreciatively, “Check it out! He’s not even miked.”
“Thank you. Now, I’m going to tell you all a story, so I’d suggest you make yourselves comfortable. Yes, here—let’s bring the children up to the front, this is their time of year, after all. Are you having a good time, boys? Wonderful. And the rest of you, you’re all relaxed, you’ve all helped yourselves to the fine feast our hostess has set out? I haven’t seen a holiday table like that since I was a child, have you? All settled now. Good!
“My name is Michel Labeck, of Doss and Waters Public Relations, and I’ve been retained by the Drs. Karremans for my professional expertise; but I’d like to add that I’m also a personal friend, as are most of you here.” This wasn’t quite true, as the party was fairly exclusively a press event, but he was unlikely to be contradicted.
“Now, you ladies and gentlemen of the press amongst us may have been suspecting that an announcement of some kind was going to be made—and, of course, you’re correct. There will be an official press conference tomorrow, you see, but tonight we’ll make the unofficial announcement to you favored ones we regard as personal friends. We wanted you to know first, to have a unique opportunity for an intimate look at what we’re unveiling.”
The little boys were bored by this, lined up as they were in a row at Labienus’s feet. A velociraptor screamed silently and leapt at a stegosaur, which bashed it back.
“Oh-oh! Looks as though we’ve got a dinosaur conflict, ladies and gentlemen. I think I’d better cut to the chase, here. Are you ready for the story, boys?”
“Ye-es,” chorused half a dozen little voices. There was of appreciative laughter from the adults.
“Good.” Labienus looked out into the room, making eye contact, drawing them all in. “Once upon a time, children, there was a man and there was a woman. They loved each other very much, and they were very happy together. In another age, long ago, he might have been a toymaker, she might have been a milkmaid; but they happened to be born into an age of science,
and so scientists they were. They were good people. The woman worked to keep the children of the world safe from diseases. The man worked to make certain the children of the world would never go hungry. They did this with their research into DNA.”
and so scientists they were. They were good people. The woman worked to keep the children of the world safe from diseases. The man worked to make certain the children of the world would never go hungry. They did this with their research into DNA.”
Murmurs from the crowd as heads turned to Geert and Anna, smiling selfconsciously by the buffet table with their arms about each other, flushed with the warmth of the candles.
Labienus cleared his throat. “Now, as I said, this couple were very happy together. There was only one sorrow in their lives: they had always longed to have a child of their own. But the years went by, and no little child came to them. Perhaps, they thought to themselves, it was for the best. After all, there were histories of certain kinds of illness in both their families, and maybe they oughtn’t pass on their genetic inheritance. They tried to adopt, but so few babies were available in this country they’d have been awfully old by the time their names came to the top of the list to get one. It was very sad.
“And then, one day, the woman had a daring idea: they might combine their knowledge of DNA to make themselves a child.”
A stunned silence in the room. The mortals looked at one another, wondering if Labienus was really going to say what they imagined he might say.
He nodded, acknowledging their excitement. “Yes! Now, this was a very unconventional idea, I need hardly tell you. After all, ignorant people find the thought of creating anything from recombinant DNA quite scary. They think of white-coated mad scientists from the movies creating terrible things, creating, oh, I don’t know, tomatoes with claws and teeth. A ketchup monster! Or some strange hybrid like this—” He leaned down and took a toy dinosaur from one of the boys, and, grabbing an apple from the mantelpiece decorations, stuck it on the dinosaur’s head and held it up for everyone to see. “Look! Applesauce monster.”
The children squealed with laughter, and the adults laughed, too. Smiling, Labienus returned the dinosaur to its owner and continued: “Of course, that’s not really what happens when you work with recombinant DNA at all, and scientists are not mad characters from the movies. But people in other countries made their governments forbid research into recombinant DNA, even though it might hold the key to eliminating disease and hunger throughout the whole world forever. It’s sad when people are stupid.
“Ah, but this is Amsterdam! We have a tradition of tolerance and enlightenment
going back to our very beginnings. We have never fallen into step with the bigots and the short-sighted. We have gone our own way, triumphantly and successfully, for centuries now. We have never passed laws to forbid the pursuit of human knowledge, and as a result our scientific and technological discoveries have brightened the world, and made it a better place for children everywhere to be born into. We’re not afraid”—he pulled an absurd face—“of applesauce monster, eh?”
going back to our very beginnings. We have never fallen into step with the bigots and the short-sighted. We have gone our own way, triumphantly and successfully, for centuries now. We have never passed laws to forbid the pursuit of human knowledge, and as a result our scientific and technological discoveries have brightened the world, and made it a better place for children everywhere to be born into. We’re not afraid”—he pulled an absurd face—“of applesauce monster, eh?”
Laughter throughout the room, and a pleasant sense of smug superiority. Labienus regarded us all, smiling. He put his hands in his pockets and went on: “Now, our friends, the two scientists, knew perfectly well how to make a child from recombinant DNA. We’ve known how for decades. But, probably because of worries over applesauce monsters, nobody had ever made one. Well, the man and the lady sat down and came up with a simple design. All they wanted, after all, was an ordinary, healthy little child.
“And then the lady remembered her poor brother, who had been in the Civil Guard before his life was cut short by the Sattes virus.” Labienus’s face grew very somber, and there were sighs as people remembered the death toll from that terrible interlude, when the virus had spread through the armies of the world.
“And the man remembered his own childhood, how clumsy he’d been, how hopeless at sports, and how mercilessly other children had teased him for it.
“This was why they decided to improve their simple design. What if it were possible to make a child with an immune system engineered to resist viral infections? What if it were possible to make a child with a brain engineered to better process information, to send signals more quickly and clearly to the body? What would they have then? Why, they’d have an ordinary little child who could catch a ball with ease, and more: a child who would be able to survive any plagues that might evolve. You see?
“No superman. No atomic genius. No applesauce monster. Only a healthy, well-coordinated child you wouldn’t notice if you passed in the street. This was all they wanted, ladies and gentlemen.”
He paused to let them think about that.
“And the purpose of this party is to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that—with the help of dear friends, doctors, and other scientists—a healthy, average child is exactly what they got.”
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