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Authors: Kage Baker

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BOOK: The Children of the Company
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“What second phase?” Imhotep asked. “I’ve got Zoser and his court in the palm of my hand, with stage illusions galore. The step-pyramid’s on schedule. I’m dealing out miraculous cures and promoting good hygiene. Wasn’t that the point of this junket?”
“As far as it’s gone, yes,” Atrahasis said, sniffing his beer and setting it aside. “But now you need to know more.”
“I see.”
“The chest is not to be opened until you have it in your private chambers. You will find inside it certain equipment, and a number of scrolls.”
“Scrolls? What do I need books for?”
“Think of them as stage-dressing. They’re to impress your initiates.”
“What initiates?” said Imhotep, reaching for his beer. He turned the cup in his hands uneasily. “I thought the whole deal with me becoming a god didn’t happen until way later in history.”
“Of course. This is another matter entirely. You’re to start a, to put it in the mortals’ parlance, a ‘Hermetic Brotherhood.’ The most secret of secret societies. You’ll feed them snippets of philosophy and arcane gibberish as revelations from the gods. Flashy conjuring tricks to impress them. Hints of real science, with demonstrable results. The equipment in the chest is for that purpose.”
“Don’t tell me there are still Rosicrucians in the twenty-fourth century, and they’re paying the Company to do this?” Imhotep sighed.
“Not at all. You’re simply laying the groundwork for certain others to build on at a later date,” Atrahasis told him. “The real challenge will be convincing your little king that the whole affair is his idea.”
Imhotep looked unhappy.
“Okay,” he said. “I can do that. No problem.” He drained his beer in one gulp and reached for the pitcher. “More?”
“Not for me, thank you.” Atrahasis turned in his chair and surveyed the garden. “Quite a comfortable posting you have here. It must nearly make up for the air pollution and the crowds of mortals.”
“It’s great,” said Imhotep earnestly. “And the pollution’s no worse than anywhere else. You try living in the same cave with the rest of your tribe through a six-month winter—now, that’s pollution!”
“Undoubtedly,” said Atrahasis. “Still, one can’t help wish the wretched things would grasp the basic principles of birth control.” He transmitted the rest of his thought subvocally:
Or that the old Enforcers had been allowed to continue their useful work
.
Imhotep gulped down a second beer even more quickly than the first.
Hey, times change
.
I hear most of them are adapting real well to the new jobs
.
Atrahasis considered him coolly.
You don’t find what was done to them shameful? How professional of you. I’d have thought you could summon a little outrage on their behalf. You were one of Budu’s recruits, weren’t you? Just as I was.
That’s right.
Yet you never spoke out on behalf of our immortal father, when the orders came.
Imhotep narrowed his eyes.
What’s it to you? I went to him and we talked, if you must know. Sure, he had his reservations about closing down the old operation
.
But he was smart enough to see that times were changing, and he’s changed with them. Not like that dumb ass Marco.
Marco was rash, have to admit.
He was a loose cannon! He’d grab any excuse to slaughter mortals. Budu’s smart, and he’s got self-control, and he’s going to be just fine. It’s not like there aren’t going to be plenty of wars to keep him busy.
How true.
At this moment they were interrupted. A tiny brown naked mortal came marching into the garden, fists clenched, scowling in furious determination, heading for the street. Imhotep spotted him and jumped up.
“Excuse me a minute. Benny, come back here!”
Atrahasis turned, staring in disbelief, as Imhotep ran after the mortal infant and caught it. A conversation took place in the ancient tongue that would be translated approximately as follows:
“Whoa! Where do you think you’re going? Remember what Daddy said about chariots?”
“No potty go.”
“Oh. Benny, you have to go potty like a big boy now.”
“No potty go!”
Imhotep looked around. “Okay, okay. Come on. Big boy on the tree like Daddy showed you, all right?”
“Big boy.”
Atrahasis averted his gaze as Imhotep led the infant to a fig tree in the corner, where it urinated. The mortal woman came running from the house, calling for the child, and Imhotep turned and waved to her.
“I caught him, honey, it’s all right.”
“How did you get the door open?” she demanded of the baby. It just glared up at her. “My lord husband, I put the latch on!”
“He’s a magician,” said Imhotep, grinning in embarrassment. “Like me.”
“Horses might have killed you under their hooves,” she admonished the baby, gathering it into her arms. “Crocodiles might have eaten you!” She glanced over at Atrahasis and crimsoned in a blush. “Ten thousand apologies, my lord!”
“It’s all right,” said Imhotep. He put his arms around her and kissed her. “I’ll be in soon. Send Aye and Pepi and a couple of the others out, okay? And unlock my study. I want that chest taken inside and set against the far wall.”
“Will our guest stay for dinner?”
“I don’t think so,” Imhotep said.
“No potty go,” the baby informed them.
“We’ll see about that, kiddo,” Imhotep told him sternly, and the mortal woman bore the protesting child away to the house. He returned to the stone bench to find Atrahasis regarding him in scandalized disgust.
“We adopted,” explained Imhotep, looking a little shamefaced.
“No wonder you don’t mind the pollution,” Atrahasis said at last. “You’re actually living in intimacy with them!”
“It’s part of my job,” said Imhotep. “She was a gift from the king. What was I supposed to do? You know the procedure on this kind of mission. And anyway, since when is sex with them against the rules?”
“True enough,” Atrahasis said, but mentally he crossed Imhotep off his list of possible allies.
“I know she’ll die one of these days,” Imhotep went on defensively. “The kid will die, too, maybe fifty years down the line, but in the meanwhile he’ll have had a good life and … well, they all die, don’t they? And I’ll be somewhere else by then anyway. I’ve been through this before. I can handle it. The Company doesn’t care, as long as I get the job done, right?”
“Whatever it takes,” Atrahasis agreed.”
He didn’t stay to dinner.
Imhotep might be besotted with mortals, but he had indeed gotten the job done. In founding an occult society that promised secret knowledge and earthly power to its members, he had forged the first link in a long chain that would ultimately terminate in that remarkable cabal of scientists and investors calling itself Dr. Zeus Incorporated.
Not quite in keeping with the high moral purpose expressed in the Company’s mission statement. However, Atrahasis had learned—long before he became Labienus—that the mortal masters were the first to jettison their principles, when it was necessary to get something they wanted.
From time to time, Labienus has considered compiling a book of wisdom of his own, perhaps an immortals’ version of
The Prince
or
The Art of War
.
He has never done so. For one thing, when one is immortal, there is no point in passing on wisdom to the next generation lest it be forgotten, for it cannot be forgotten. Nor would it do, after all, to empower up-and-coming young rivals by letting them in on one’s secrets.
And Labienus has no bright subordinate in training, in any case, no youthful immortal he can impress or mentor.
So his desire has never progressed beyond a list of maxims. The first one is,
It is not enough to tend one’s own garden. One must assiduously sow weeds in one’s neighbor’s garden, and encourage snails there.
He unlocks a drawer now, and draws forth another paper file. It is bulky, it is clumsy, but hard copy has certain advantages to a conspirator. And there is something so satisfying, really, in holding in one’s hands the tangible damnation of one’s enemies.
The file is labeled simply HOMO UMBRATILIS.
Labienus opens it. The first thing to greet his eye is an image, a straightforward Company identification shot of another Executive Facilitator. His designation is Aegeus, and he looks as benign as the chairman of some philanthropic foundation.
His expression makes Labienus’s lip curl in distaste.
Hypocrite
, he thinks. Their rivalry is an old one.
They were assigned to the same mission once, in the dead ages past when
he had been Atrahasis. The job was above and beyond the usual level of Company need-to-know obscurity. They had been sent with troops to an island in the Pacific and told to kill all the mortals they found there. Long before their transport had touched down, Atrahasis had discovered that his partner was no higher in rank than he was, and moreover that Aegeus was pompous, self-important, and crude.
Atrahasis had entertained himself awhile subtly insulting Aegeus with exquisite courtesy. When they finally reached their destination, Aegeus had let him do most of the killing; and this proved to be a complicated affair, for the mortals turned out to be neither the Neanderthal brutes he had expected nor even their cave-painting cousins. And they were rather better at defending themselves than Atrahasis had been advised. Given the hazardous nature of the job, he expected a plum posting as a reward.
So it had annoyed him a great deal when he later learned that Aegeus, rather than he himself, had been appointed the new sector head for Southern Europe.
Labienus has never forgotten the slight.
Both men have built private empires within the Company. Both have made plans to seize power, on that distant day in 2355 when the Company is expected to fall, and both have taken certain drastic and occasionally bloody steps to guarantee supremacy then. Only their methods have differed.
Aegeus has gone for show, for extravagance, flaunting his power base. He has committed tremendous resources to long-range plans. In doing so, he has presented his enemies with an immense target. The question, therefore, is simply one of strategy: which arrow to use, and when, for the most satisfying result?
Labienus tilts his head on one side, considering Aegeus’s image. Smiling at last, he takes a fine silver pen from his desk and dips it in an inkwell of Bavarian crystal. He sketches a beard and curling mustache on Aegeus’s face. Aegeus has his lips closed in the picture, sadly, so Labienus is unable to black out one of his teeth; but he settles for drawing little horns on Aegeus’s head, and adding a pair of vampire fangs over his lower lip. He sets the picture aside, chuckling as he reflects that a petty impulse, properly directed, can do one a world of good.
So, with a light heart, he considers the other Company portraits in the file.
Two immortals. One is a drone, a Literature Preservationist designated
Lewis. The other is an Executive Class Facilitator whose promising career has been oddly derailed. He is designated Victor. Lewis smiles from his portrait. Victor does not.
Lewis is fair-haired, handsome, clean-shaven. There is determination in his features. There is an earnestness that verges on absurdity. There is no doubt he is plucky. Also thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
Fool
, thinks Labienus.
Victor has white skin, red hair. His neat beard is sharply pointed, his mustaches even more so. His green eyes are as unreadable in their expression as a cat’s. He has posed stiffly, formally. He looks reserved. Unapproachable. Labienus smiles at his picture, almost with real affection.
Hitching his chair closer to the desk, he turns his attention to the documents. Some appear to be transcripts of testimony. He has compiled them over long years, with terrific patience. A lucky find; a careful decryption of private journal entries; an interview with an ancient mortal that had cost him nothing more than a bottle of good wine and a sympathetic-seeming ear.
The topmost stack looks fabulously old, vellum inscribed in brown ink, uncials decorated here and there with flowers and strange tiny marginalia. It is written in a mixture of sixth-century Gaelic and Latin.
The edges crumble as Labienus reads.
When my name was Eogan, I lived in the community at Malinmhor, having gladly embraced my vows for the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I thought I had the best of the bargain. No heavier tool to lift than a pen cut from the quill of a gray goose, and the beauty of the red and green and yellow and black inks was a pleasure for my eyes, and how smooth were the sheets of fine white calfskin waiting for me! And how sweet to refresh myself with the Gospel that I copied, there in the little scriptorium, when I could still believe in it!
What a world of grace fell away from me when that pagan man came among us, three weeks before Beltane in the five hundred and seventh year since Christ’s birth.
But no blame to him, poor man; God knows he had the worst of it. The truth is the trouble started well beforehand, and I knew nothing of it, happy and alone as I worked. So blinded with the beauty I made by day, that I never noticed the frightened faces when I joined my brothers and sisters for supper in the refectory of evenings.
And we didn’t speak aloud much—it was a monastery, after all—nor would I have believed in the trouble, had anyone explained it to me. If our community lay in the shadow of the high bare hill Dun Govaun, what harm in that? No rational Christian had anything to fear from a mound of dead stone. If pagans had feared the place in the past, if they’d told stories of babies carried off or folk seduced by small demons—well, they were pagans, weren’t they? At the mercy of darkness, as we brothers and sisters in Christ were not. Though I remember being awakened by the screams of a brother in his nightmares, I do remember that much now; but it signified nothing to me at the time.
When the pagan came, it was neither by day nor night but in the long hour between when the light had not faded, and when we neither fasted nor fed but sat at table with our meal not yet begun, and our brother the Cook had just brought out the oat-kettle, and Liath our Abbess was neither silent nor speaking, for she had just drawn in her breath to lead the grace. The pagans believe such in-between moments make doorways into the next world, you know.
In that unlucky moment the door opened indeed and our brother the Porter led in a young man in very fine clothes, which were perhaps too large for him.
“This is the guest Christ has sent us, who comes requiring meat and shelter for the night,” said the Porter, and he withdrew to his duty. The man stood surveying us all with a pleasant face; and from the dust on his rich garments it was plain he’d traveled far, and from the harp he bore, slung in its case on his back, plain his profession of
fili,
of chronicler after the manner of the heathens. I thought he looked too young to have learned so much lore as those people are required to know.
“A blessing on this table,” he said, and our Abbess corrected him:
“
Christ’s
blessing on this table, and all here.”
“Oh, by all means,” he replied mildly, and smiled at the Abbess.
He dined, then, with us, and revealed that his name was Lewis, that he was indeed a pagan well trained in his craft of relating the old histories, and had come to offer us a bargain: he would give us all he carried in his head, the wonder-tales and songs of the old pagan heroes, in return for food and lodging. Our Abbess looked across at me with the eye of a cat after a mouse,
for both she and I collected these tales avidly (though we did not believe them at all).
So the bargain was made, with the understanding that the pagan should observe no pagan rites whilst among us, especially on the old feast day that was three weeks off, but attend Mass daily instead. To which Lewis agreed, readily, without anger. After dining he was shown the bath-house, and then the guest-house, and he took his leave of us for the evening with the urbane manners of a king’s son, which we thought he must be.
When it grew light next day he met me in the scriptorium, for the purpose of fulfilling his end of the agreement, and settled himself on a stone seat. He took his harp from its case, and frowned to himself as he tuned it. I will record here that Lewis was small-boned, high-browed, with fine clean-shaven features and fair hair, though it did not curl. His eyes were just the color of the sky in that twilight time in which he had come.
When he had tuned the strings to his satisfaction, he said to me: “Brother Eogan, tell me first what tales you have collected thus far, from other travelers, so I waste no time in repeating them. Have you
The Cattle-raid of Cooley?”
“Yes, in good truth, we have.”
“Have you
The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel?”
“Yes, in good truth, we have.”
“Would you mind awfully if we switched to Latin for this?” he inquired in that tongue. “It’ll go quicker.”
“Fair enough,” I replied in the same language, and we conversed in Latin after that.
“What about the Finn MacCool stories? Any of those?”
“Well, we did get a couple of songs about him from an old man who stayed here last winter,” I told him, noting that my red ink had sat too long and giving it a shake to mix it. “I don’t think his memory was very reliable, though.”
“Ah! Well, I’ve got the complete cycle. Sounds like a good place to begin, wouldn’t you say?” He grinned and fished a horn plectrum from the pouch at his belt.
“Let’s hear it,” I replied, and poised my pen over the lovely white page. Dear God, how I’ve missed writing, just the physical act of moving the pen, making the ink flow!
He had hours and hours of material on the Fenians, tales I’d never heard
before as well as the two stories the old man had given us (and as I’d suspected, the poor creature had garbled them badly). I myself was born Christian, and since my parents were zealous converts, they’d always frowned on their children listening to the old pagan stories. I knew all about Patrick and Moses and Noah, but I could never hear about Cuchulainn or Deirdre until I became a monk. Ironic, isn’t it?
Lewis recounted the whole cycle to me, all about Finn growing up in the forest because evil King Goll had killed his father, so the boy was raised in secret by a pair of druid women, who conjured a wolf-spirit to be his protector. Spellbinding! Lewis was a good storyteller, too. He had a mobile, expressive face, elegant gestures, and a nice light baritone. My pen swept across the page.
We didn’t even take a break until I got a paralyzing fit of writer’s cramp, just after the part where Finn calls his father’s ghost from the Land of the Blessed, and the old chief gives him advice. I got up and walked back and forth in the narrow stone room, swinging my arms, while Lewis took the opportunity to pour himself a cup of watered mead from the pitcher we’d brought.
He sipped and held the cup out to the light. “My goodness, who’s your Beekeeper? That’s great!”
“A former pagan,” I admitted. “Nobody else quite gets the formula right, I must confess. You see, that’s part of the Abbess’s plan here—there’s so much that’s worth preserving in Eire, so much wisdom, such traditions, so much great literature! If only it wasn’t
pagan
, you see. Not that I expect you to agree with me on that point, of course, and no offense intended—”
“No, no.” Lewis waved his hand. “Quite all right. I understand perfectly—”
“But these stories, for example. It’s absolutely criminal that the druids didn’t bother to write any of them down. You must realize that in another generation or two they’ll be completely forgotten, don’t you? And, though we won’t be the poorer for losing our false gods, it really would be too bad to lose Finn.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Lewis nodded. “That’s one of the reasons I’m here, to tell you the truth. I can see the writing on the wall, and my profession doesn’t really encourage me to write on it myself—so to speak—
but …”
He set down his harp and leaned forward. “I have rather a daring proposition for you.”
I stopped pacing. “It’s nothing sinful, I trust.”
“Not at all, at least not by your standards. Look, it’s simply this: I’m a bit more than a simple bard. I have some religious credentials as well, in my religion I mean. I was trained for certain rituals I’ll never be able to perform nowadays, with so few of us left.”
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