The Machine's Child (Company) (19 page)

It’s a key, of sorts. He examines it in awe and disbelief.

Then he’s on his feet, pelting down the corridor as fast as he can go. The giant in the vault opens pale eyes to watch his approach, though he is still unable to lift his head.

“Father,” Joseph shouted hoarsely. “I’ve got it! I’ve got the goddam Holy Grail. Or a piece of it anyway. You know what I’ve just found? Part of the Temporal Concordance!”

What he was referring to, of course, was the—literally—ultimate goal of the quest for knowledge: the record of known history, from its beginning to the year 2355, that enabled Dr. Zeus to send its operatives to the exact times and places that might be best mined for things like winning lottery tickets, race results, and stock futures, to say nothing of more subtle objectives.

The Temporal Concordance resembled a map, in some ways; but those travelers who needed it most were shown no more than a bare inch at a time, by decree of All-Seeing Zeus, since otherwise he would not be exclusively All-Seeing, would he? And every Company immortal is taught, from earliest school days, that it is a wise decision to obscure the future, in greater or lesser degrees, from each operative, lest the griefs of immortal life become too terrible to contemplate.

Also, omniscience isn’t the kind of thing you want to leave lying around.

“Is It A Fragment Of Code,” Budu asked.

“Yeah! Looks like something interstitial.” Joseph swarmed the ladder up the tank. “It’s giving me surveillance reports from the years 2345 to 2353. Look at it and see if I’m not right.”

He reached into the bioregenerant and downloaded his bright bit of key. Budu was silent a long moment, accessing, integrating, correlating, and then:

“It Is Part Of The Temporal Concordance,” he said.

“Boy, oh, boy, nobody’s gonna stop us now,” Joseph chortled. “Look out, Dr. Zeus! And you’re absolutely sure about this, Father?”

“Yes. It Corresponds To The Other Sections.”

“So it—Excuse me?” Joseph blinked. “What other sections?”

By way of answer Budu reached out and downloaded to Joseph in return. He clung to the top of his ladder unsteadily, feeling like a struck bell.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, my gosh, that’s a lot of information. How long have you had this?”

“Since The Fifteenth Century.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I Never Told Labienus.”

“Good point,” Joseph said. He blinked again, still integrating. “I think I’ll just . . . crawl off and lie down someplace quiet for a while, until I can defrag and rearrange this stuff in my memory. Is that okay?”

“Go, Son.”

Joseph fell off the ladder, picked himself up, and walked into a wall. He righted himself and wandered away.

It was a week before Joseph opened his eyes wide in the darkness, and his bloodthirsty look was back with a vengeance. He lay there awhile, smiling unpleasantly to himself; then he got to his feet and trotted off to speak to Budu.

“I’ve found him, Father.”

“Who Did You Find,” said the giant in the vault.

“The guy who took Mendoza,” said Joseph. “The mortal schmuck. Dr. Zeus has a dossier on him. Marco was totally wrong; he’ll be no New Enforcer. Hell, he won’t even be a mortal employed by the Company. All he’ll really be is a weasely hacker who’ll manage to get into some of the Company files, so they’ve got him under surveillance, there in the future. His name’ll be Alec Checkerfield.”

“If The Man Is No More Than That, How Does He Disable Marco.” Budu stared at Joseph from beyond the glass.

“He’ll use poison. Maybe the same stuff that Victor used to take you down. He’ll probably steal it from Dr. Zeus! No wonder Marco was such a mess.” Joseph paced back and forth.

“Why Is He Twin To The Mortal You Hate So Much?”

Joseph opened and shut his mouth.

“Sheer coincidence,” he said. “He’s not Nicholas Harpole or Edward Whoever at all. Just somebody who looks like them.”

“Why Has He Taken Your Daughter,” inquired Budu, marveling at Joseph’s ability to lie to himself.

“He just, uh, accidentally captured Mendoza when he went to Options Research. Maybe he took her hostage or something.”

“Why Would He Go To Options Research.”

“That’s a good question, and I’m confident I can answer it. He went to Options Research, uh, to, uh, hide out after he blew up Mars Two!”

“Would You Seek Refuge In That Place.”

“Well, no, but—he left as soon as he saw what it was like! Okay?”

“Why Has He Taken Your Daughter.”

Joseph gritted his teeth.

“This Man Is More Than You Want To Think He Is,” Budu said.

“All right!” said Joseph, seizing his hair at the temples. “So what am I supposed to do? Go back to thinking he’s Satan incarnate? That he comes back to life over and over and tracks Mendoza down and destroys her every time? To say nothing of Lewis. How much sense does that make?”

“No Sense Without More Information,” Budu said. “Do You Still Want To Find Your Daughter.”

“Yes!” Joseph said fiercely, looking up at Budu. “Because I don’t care who he is, he’s bad for her! If—if she’s damaged, after Options Research—how can he repair her? He’s a
mortal
! And he’s the mortal who blows up Mars Two, so the police of three worlds will be looking for him. What the hell is he going to do, buy her a rose-covered cottage to settle down in? Raise a family? No, no, no. He can’t have her this time.”

“You Have Missed What Is Obvious, Son,” Budu said. “The Botanist Mendoza Is The Only Operative Who Has Moved Against The Current Of Time. She Alone Might Be Able To Learn The Truth About The Year 2355. The Company Imprisoned Her To Prevent Any Enemy From Using Her For That Purpose. Your Enemy Has Now Captured Her.”

Joseph’s eyes went wide. “
That’s
why he took her. What if he’s the one who brings on 2355? Oh, that’s too gruesome. What do we do? What do I do? Help me, Father, we can’t let that happen!”

“Then Take Back This Pawn Before He Can Promote Her To Queen. If You Can Recapture Her, She May Be Of Use To Us.”

“But how do I find them, Father?” said Joseph, pacing nervously.

Budu bared his immense teeth.

“Know Your Enemy,” he said. “Then Hunt Him Down.”

Joseph began with the Hangar Twelve footage. He analyzed the images of Alec Checkerfield frame by frame, expanded them, sharpened them, filtered them; compared them with his visual transcript of the mortal he had known, Nicholas Harpole. He regretfully confirmed that he was looking at the same man, though the one wasn’t even born yet and the other had died in 1555.

He had no idea how time and space as he understood them could accommodate that paradox. Worrying about it gave him a feeling as though wolves were tearing at his liver, though, so he didn’t. He went after more information instead, searching for occurrences of the name Alec Checker-field in the Temporal Concordance fragments.

There he found the transcript of the surveillance report from 2351. He was disconcerted to discover that Dr. Zeus seemed as though it would be watching Alec Checkerfield with an eye to employing him, rather than catching him in theft. He was further dismayed to learn that Alec would be, not some shifty hacker, but in fact a British peer with a considerable personal fortune and a very large yacht.

The surveillance image clinched it for Joseph.

It had been taken outdoors, against a background of some ancient city, and showed the mortal Alec Checkerfield striding along a processional way crowded with tourists. He was dressed badly, in a loud tropical-patterned shirt and bright orange shorts; he wore red canvas boating shoes without socks. Joseph very nearly felt embarrassed for him, until he studied the expression on his face.

Pale-eyed determination, sullen anger: this was a man who would let himself be chained to a stake and burned alive on a matter of religious dogma. This was a man who would risk his life to deliver weapons to political combatants, even if it destroyed both sides.

This was the enemy. This was the man himself.

And it was strange, but somehow this comforted Joseph, even as his sense of rage grew: for in all the shifting and terrifying world in which he now lived, here was one thing that had somehow remained the same. The big Englishman—whatever clothes he wore, whatever cause he fought in—would never change, could always be hated as the reliable symbol of everything Joseph opposed.

Of course, he still had to be killed.

There’s been a lot of traffic to and from this weary island in this desolate sea in this lost epoch lately. The Temporal Fabric has thickened to such an extent as to make targeting the place in a time shuttle nearly impossible.

How many times does the murky dawn wash out the stars, how many bloody sunsets throw terrible shadows as the arms and legs on Marco’s generator race mindlessly round? How many gray waves break on the shore? Nobody on the island could tell you. Time has long since ceased to have any meaning for them.

The only one with any sense of difference is the unfortunate Grigorii Efimovitch, who is still lying out on the steel table waiting for his disassembly to continue. He’s not sure why it has stopped. He has no idea that he’s even begun to grow back a little of what’s been cut away from him over the centuries, but he wouldn’t be surprised to learn it; he’s an immortal, after all.

He lies there, unable to sleep, unable to rest, unable to stop repeating endlessly to himself the last sound he heard. It was an order. He was supposed to do something. He remembers perfectly, though he does not understand. He will obey, if he ever has the opportunity to do so, because he has learned that he must never, ever,
ever
disobey again.

So anyway, is it days or weeks before the still air of that island is displaced with a table-rattling
boom,
and roaring shadows streak across the sky? Who can say? Certainly not Grigorii Efimovitch, for reasons that would unduly stress the reader if related here.

But he feels the table rattling under him, he hears the shuttles screaming in, and he hears too the shouting after they’ve landed; brusque orders given, thundering running feet. He does not see the armed mortals come pouring through the doorway, or the unarmed immortals who accompany them.

Everyone sees Grigorii Efimovitch, however. Well trained as they are, some of the mortals stop in their tracks; and the ones whose stomachs aren’t strong fail to keep their breakfasts down. For that matter, the immortals present are shocked.

Then Grigorii Efimovitch flaps and moves, screaming in silence, and is answered by half a dozen very loud screams from his audience.

A weeping mortal runs forward, pointing his disrupter rifle at Grigorii Efimovitch’s head, to do what he thinks is the only humane thing. Faster than the eye can follow, an immortal is beside him, forcing the barrel of the rifle down.

“No,” says Suleyman. “It won’t kill him.”

“But we can’t leave him like this, lord,” sobs the mortal.

“We won’t,” Suleyman says. Latif strides up to the table, reckless rage in his eyes, anger focused like a shield to keep the horror at bay.

“Secured. There are dozens of them here!” he shouts.

Suleyman by contrast is calm; his voice when he speaks is more quiet than his speaking voice normally is, more measured and slow in its cadence, almost devoid of emotion. “There’ll be an inventory somewhere. Hard copy. Look for it. That file cabinet over there, probably.” He points and Victor, who has been gazing around in silence, goes to the file cabinet and bends slightly to read the cards on its two drawers.

“Merchandise, A through M; Merchandise, N through Zed,” he says in his clear cold baritone.

“Merchandise?” says Latif. “Oh, man. One of those bastards probably thought that was funny.”

“I don’t think they know enough history to be aware of the reference,” says Suleyman carefully. “Gentlemen? Ladies? Let’s begin the evacuation, please. All the coffins. I want the file cabinet, too.”

“You heard the man. Move,” Latif orders, and his voice breaks on the last word. Mortals and immortals stop milling about in horror and begin to clear the long steel shelves of their occupants, transferring the coffins one by one out to the fleet of waiting shuttles.

Nan comes walking from the dark interior, carrying herself preternaturally upright. “Kalugin isn’t here,” she says. “Nor Mendoza.” Suleyman simply puts out an arm and folds her against him. Victor paces close, watching as she weeps in silence.

After a long moment, Victor clears his throat.

“There’s no sign of Lewis, either, I’m afraid,” he says.

“No?” Suleyman says. “Well, I suppose we ought to be grateful. Wherever they are, they haven’t suffered this.”

Victor nods slowly.

“There will be an accounting now,” Suleyman says. “There’ll have to be, when the rest of them know. With a thousand voices all shouting the same question, they won’t dare silence any one voice. They’ll have to answer.”

“And pay,” says Victor.

“Some of them,” says Suleyman.

“They’d damn well better pray that none of these people are in any shape to testify,” snarls Latif.

“Oh, they’ll testify,” Suleyman says, a dark edge coming into his voice at last. He turns to a mortal who is wandering about in a dazed fashion, carrying a holocam. “Agaja, start with the generator outside. Good shots of the arms and legs. Then this poor devil here, you see? And perhaps after that we’ll open some of the coffins, let the world see what’s in them. They’ll speak for themselves, whether or not they have tongues.”

LATER THAT SAME MORNING IN 2318
AD

Time might have long since lost its meaning on a weary island in a desolate sea in a lost epoch, but in the year 2318 it had a great deal of meaning, particularly in regard to tactics.

Within an hour of the return of the time-shuttles, holoimages were abruptly being broadcast before the eyes of every Dr. Zeus board member, Facilitator General, Sector Head, and Executive Facilitator on Earth. They were also broadcast simultaneously in every Company HQ and safe house, every research facility and base. As Suleyman had ordered, the
images began with Marco’s generator and moved inside for a lengthy study of Grigorii Efimovitch on the disassembly table.