“That’s very interesting,” said Suleyman at last.
“It sounds like some of it was just a nightmare,” said Latif.
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve always thought, too.” Donal sighed. “I still see that big bear sometimes in my sleep, and the bunks down there, and the dead men. Uncle Jimmy, Victor I mean, arguing with him.”
“Victor,” said Suleyman. “The Facilitator Victor? Little white man with a red beard, usually plays an Englishman? Did you ever ask him about it?”
“I only met him once, since then,” Donal said. “I couldn’t ask, somehow. He was, I don’t know, sort of stiff and formal, not at all like when he was being Uncle Jimmy. Do you know him?”
“He stops in to see Nan, when he’s in this part of the world,” Suleyman said. “And he is a little unapproachable, I must admit.”
“The big-bear guy,” asked Latif, “what did he look like?”
“Big
. Twice as big as Uncle Jimmy. A giant, an ogre. And he smelled awful. It’d knock you down, that smell, not like dirt but like musk. He had huge teeth, a big nose.”
Joseph splashed a little. “What color were his eyes?” he asked, perhaps a shade too casually.
“His eyes? I don’t remember. Yes, I do. Really pale blue. Like, uh, Coke bottle glass used to be?”
“Weird,” Joseph remarked.
“And you say he was arguing with Victor,” said Suleyman. “Can you remember what they were arguing about?”
“It must have been a hell of a fight,” said Latif. “What kind of mortal could draw blood on one of us, no matter how big he was? It’s impossible.”
Joseph said nothing.
Donal groped for his drink. “This is creeping me out. I don’t want to think any more about this. Not to be rude—”
“No, it’s all right,” Suleyman assured him. “We all have our own nightmares. Let’s change the subject.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry, I just—”
“It’s okay, kid, perfectly okay,” said Joseph.
Latif looked narrow-eyed from Suleyman to Joseph. However, one of the qualities that made him an able second-in-command was his ability to sense, without being told, when to leave something alone. So he yawned, stretched, and said, “How about those Pirates? What were you thinking, Joseph? You
knew
Wilker’s averages.”
Joseph, about to reply colorfully, caught his breath as a woman emerged from the lamplit terrace and came down the steps into the garden.
She was tiny, like an ebony figurine, with exquisite aristocratic features. Over her nightdress she wore a blue silk robe, the same shade as the evening sky. Her bearing was upright, she walked unconcernedly with her hands in the robe pockets; but there was a certain darkness in her gaze that brought to mind storm clouds.
Instantly the mood in the garden changed. Suleyman rose to his feet.
“My apologies, Nan,” he said gently. “Were we keeping you awake?”
She shook her head. “I hadn’t retired, to tell you the truth. I thought I’d sit out here and watch the stars for a while.” Latif was already up and opening a lawn chair for her, arranging the woven cover and pillows with the deference one shows a princess or a widow. She
stood watching in silence, unnervingly motionless. When he stepped back with a gesture of presentation, she gave him a smile.
“Thank you, dear,” she said, and sat down.
“How’s the work going?” Donal asked.
“Quite nicely, thank you,” Nan replied. She wasn’t referring to the mosaic she was restoring, and neither was he; but no one there wanted to speak of what she had been doing, alone in her room at her workstation, making endless inquiry for information she could never seem to get, searching for a man who had disappeared.
Joseph watched with compassion as she stretched out and sighed, turning her face to the sky, making an effort to relax the stiffness of rage. He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t seem clumsy, but he remembered that she loved the music of the twenty-first-century composer Jacques Soulier. He began to sing, very softly, Soulier’s wordless
Sea Lullabye
. His baritone resonated off the water, off the high walls that enclosed them. He hadn’t a bad voice.
After a moment Suleyman took up the bass part, and the two voices wove together, becoming the slow currents in the night sea. Donal listened for the first tenor part, describing the reflection of the evening star, and joined in on cue. Latif took the second tenor part when its turn came, the music of the breakers on the reef, that was always played by trumpets when the piece was done symphonically.
It was late, they’d been drinking a little, felt no need to cramp themselves to sound like mortal men. Within the house an old servant awoke and lay silent, listening in joy and terror. He had lived long enough to know that Allah did things like this, sometimes, beautiful and inexplicable things like sending angels to sing in a garden at night. It wouldn’t do to blaspheme, though, by running to the window to see if they were really there. The music was gift enough.
Nan looked up at the stars and wondered, for the thousandth time, what had happened to Kalugin.
I have a question for you, little man
.
Joseph looked off blandly across the floor of the desert, where
the tombs shone like impossible snow.
I’ll bet it’s the same question I was going to ask you
.
Suleyman shifted gears on the little electric Moke, and it charged the next hill with a whine before he replied, as they went bumping on, leaving the elegant city farther and farther behind them,
Quite probably
.
But I outrank you, and I brought the subject up first
.
Okay
.
You listened pretty attentively when the boys were discussing Donal’s memories. Why?
What, about the Toymaker? You were paying close attention yourself, I noticed. The guy just sounded like someone I used to know
. Joseph looked out at the tombs again and wiped sweat from his brow. “It’s hot,” he said out loud. “I bet this used to take forever on a camel, huh?”
“Just about,” Suleyman said.
Is Budu the name I’m groping after, by any chance?
Joseph’s eyes widened. “Say, is there any tea left in the thermos, or did you finish it off?” he said in a bright voice.
Budu, Budu. Old Hungarian name, isn’t it?
“Plenty of tea. Help yourself.”
Stop this. I need to know
.
Why do you need to know?
Joseph groped about and found the thermos. He gulped thirstily.
Because I’ve been on his trail for the last three centuries
. Suleyman shifted gears again, and the Moke obeyed him, complaining.
So have I, give or take a century. I can’t imagine what he’d be doing in an opium den in San Francisco right before the 1906 earthquake, but it sure sounds like him
.
I see. Why are you looking for him, Joseph?
Isn’t everybody?
Answer me, please
.
I owe the guy. And I need help, and he’s the only one I can think of to ask
.
Tell me why you owe anything to a mass-murdering Neanderthal freak
.
He’s not a Neanderthal, you know, they were really short. All the Enforcers were hybrids
.
Hybrids? What are you talking about?
There was a protracted silence, as the Moke bumped along in the ruts of the road.
Let’s start over
, said Suleyman.
I have been looking for an Immortal named Budu. Very large, resembling a Neanderthal in certain respects, evil incarnate and able to travel nearly anywhere in the world without the Company being able to find him. Officially AWOL since 1099
A.D.
I see
.
Now you talk
.
I’ve been looking for a big ugly guy named Budu who has coincidentally been on the lam from the Company since 1099. The one I knew wasn’t evil incarnate, though. Or a freak. He was just an Enforcer, the best and smartest of them. He never hurt anyone who was innocent. He saved my life when I was a kid. Recruited me
.
Suleyman nodded, narrow-eyed with anger but controlling it well.
All right, now I understand your point of view. You should know, though, that he kills without discrimination these days, and so do his people
.
His people? But—all the old Enforcers have been retired
.
I’m not talking about the old Enforcers, Joseph. I’m talking about a cabal hidden within the Company, operatives he’s managed to talk around to his point of view. He wants the Earth’s population forcibly reduced. Kill them all, and God will know his own, wasn’t that the old motto for soldiers?
Joseph did not reply, staring forward through the dust of the windscreen, clutching the thermos bottle.
Suleyman exhaled and continued.
You remember when the epidemics started up again, in the late twentieth century, even before Sattes? AIDS, all those hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola and Marburg? Do you remember how badly Africa was hit? All we were supposed to do, my people and I, was watch. Salvage certain cultural treasures
the Company wanted and
perhaps
the occasional child for recruitment, but nothing else. Let the mortals die, it’s their fate after all, history can’t be changed. Do you think I could do nothing more than watch? Do you know how many millions on this continent died, while the rest of the world looked the other way? Well, I didn’t look the other way, Joseph. I worked with the epidemiologists. We tracked the outbreaks to their sources. Do you know what we found?
Joseph shifted in his seat.
I always heard it was stuff that had been around for centuries, only it’d lain dormant in the rain forests until people started cutting them down
.
No, Joseph. We traced most of them to one point of origin, a cave in Mount Elgon. One cave, Joseph. And there the epidemiologists hit a dead end, literally, couldn’t figure out how the diseases had all originated in one simple little hole in the earth. They left, defeated
.
But it wasn’t a simple little hole in the earth, Joseph. It was the entrance to a Company supply tunnel. That was when I knew
.
Joseph squeezed his eyes shut.
Jesus
.
Someone within the Company was doing it. Using Africa as a testing ground, I think
.
Not Budu. He’d never have done a thing like that, never in a million years. You didn’t know him. Anyway he wasn’t with the Company by that time. He’s been on the run since 1099, you said so yourself. Where did you get the idea it was him? How did you even find out about the old Enforcers? They were way before your time
.
I was old before the first stone was set in Zimbabwe’s wall, you know that. I knew there were warriors once among the immortals, used for a specific purpose and then reprogrammed. Set to constructive tasks. I’m told you’d never know, now, what they used to do, they’re indistinguishable from the rest of us
. Suleyman steered expertly around a dead dog.
Well, there you’re wrong
. Joseph ground his teeth.
They were a different model from us, Suleyman. They were braver than lions, and they loved justice. War was their element, like air for the birds. Dr.
Zeus designed them that way. You think Budu was a freak because you never saw the others
.
They sound like monsters
.
Maybe they were. But they did their job, and you know how the Company thanked them once they’d done their job? Tricked them into underground bunkers one by one and took their brains offline. Budu was the last. He went rogue so it wouldn’t happen to him. I can see him going after Dr. Zeus, maybe, but not doing the kind of filthy work you’re talking about
.
Suleyman looked at him sidelong as he drove.
I’m sorry. But I went hunting, Joseph, I set Latif and the best of my people on this. I can show you the evidence they’ve gathered. There is a group operating within the Company, betraying its ideals. Such as they are. The Sattes virus was their work. The Church of God-A took the blame in the history books, but Budu’s cabal was guilty. It took him centuries to build it up, but he got a circle of disciples among the Preservers. I’ve seen their master plan. By the year 2355 there’ll be so few mortals left, they can be rounded up and kept in patrolled villages. Peace at last. And any of the immortals who dispute their agenda will be taken out. How, I haven’t discovered yet
.
“Boy, it’s hot,” said Joseph, pulling out a tissue. “I’m sweating bullets.” He mopped tears from his face.
I can see him targeting the armies and the criminal population
, he admitted.
But why would he go after Third World civilians? Or homosexuals?
Who would stand up for them?
Suleyman responded grimly.
They’re the easiest target. And look how well the economies of the world are doing, now that there are fewer people. Just like it was after the Black Death. Little towns abandoned and going back to nature. The grass grows greener, the trees grow taller with nobody to cut them down. The air is cleaner. But millions have been sacrificed for this
.
You have proof
. Joseph sighed. It wasn’t a question. Suleyman just nodded.
They drove along in silence for a while. At last Joseph blew his nose and asked,
Is it at the highest levels?
Not really. But it goes deep
.
You know—all I started out to do was find a friend of mine. A kid I recruited, once, who got into trouble
.
The Botanist Mendoza?
Yeah. Christ, you wouldn’t know where she is?
No. Just that she was a friend of Nan’s. I take it she’s become one of the disappeared, like poor old Kalugin?
Yeah
.
This is why you want to see the necropolis, isn’t it? You think there’s a bunker underneath. You think your child might be in there
.
She might be
.
You think Kalugin might be in there?
Who knows? But we can’t check today. You can only get into these places under cover of an electrical storm, so your datafeed to the Company gets knocked out
.