The Machine's Child (Company) (23 page)

“You wish to make a purchase?” Mr. Green stammered, ready to scream because the only customers he’d seen in a week wanted something he didn’t have.

“That is why I inquired, sir,” said the Englishman frostily, looking down his long nose. “My wife has had an unfortunate accident with her trousseau, and desires to replace certain items of apparel.”

“Well—well—I have got Chinese shawls,” said Mr. Green, flinging open the door of his shop and waving frantically in the hopes he could get them to go inside. “Though no clothes for the ladies ready to wear, a thousand pardons, but I do have fine cottons, broadcloth or calico, linens, silks, bombazine, woolens—” He remembered the moths and bit his tongue, but the tall Englishman was nodding thoughtfully.

“That would suit,” he said. “Yes, very well. And have you dressmakers’ goods? Thread, buttons, whalebone?”

“Gardening tools?” the girl asked.

An hour later Mr. Green was standing on the wharf beside an empty wheelbarrow, smiling and waving at the couple as the man bent to the oars of a whaleboat. It bore the girl and all of Mr. Green’s inventory in bolt cloth and notions out to their ship. The ship was strangely indistinct and blurred by distance, though it didn’t seem to be anchored all that far out. It looked to be the size of a man-of-war at least, which was strange, too.

Mr. Green didn’t care. He had a pocketful of twenty-dollar double eagles, bright and gleaming as though they’d been minted that morning (which in fact they had been, though they were all stamped with the date 1852).

Whistling, he turned and trundled his wheelbarrow back up Clay Street, avoiding the sinkholes and gullies. He was getting the hell out of San Francisco.

Returning to his shop, he paused in the act of removing his apron. His eyes widened. All across the bare plank floor, where trails of spilled flour had lain an hour since, lay fresh stalks of green wheat just silvering in the ear.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON

Mendoza reclined on a cushion and watched as Alec fitted the steel skull-mask over the sensor mounting. He welded it in place with a few deft touches; stood back and surveyed the new servounit.

“Why do you give them all faces like that?” she said.

“Because they’re my skeleton crew, get it? Ha ha.” Alec leaned down and waggled a jointed limb to be certain there was adequate play. It was important that this unit’s arms work smoothly, because it had no legs. Unlike the other four, it was built into a stationary console, with only limited motion along a rolling track. It had nine arms, however, fitted with all the tools necessary to enable it to measure, mark, cut, stitch, and sew, as well as a host of other functions related to the manufacture of accessories such as hats, gloves, and shoes.

Nicholas and Edward stood looking down at it in grudging admiration.

It seems you’ve a talent for automata, boy,
Edward admitted.
Of course, we haven’t seen it work yet.

You will,
Alec told him. “Captain, let’s run a test, okay?”

Aye aye! Activating new servounit now.

With a gentle hum the unit rattled to blank life, all its arms flexing, shear blades clashing, needles pumping experimentally. It focused red and glowing eyes. It took a turn around its little track. Alec grinned at it.

“Cool. And your name is . . .” He leaned forward and tapped its skull. “Smee!”

All systems shipshape. Shall I download costuming data?

“Make it so,” Alec said, and Smee halted as the Captain shot into its brain all the plundered costuming information Dr. Zeus had accumulated over the centuries, data on clothing from every nation on Earth in every year of recorded history, complete with patterns.

That’s done, by thunder! And programmed, too. Just let it have a look at ye for measurements, now.

Alec stripped off all his clothes and stood naked in the center of the area circumscribed by Smee’s track. It turned its head and fixed its red gaze on him; circled him slowly, scanning and measuring the topography of his body. When it had finished and filed the data away, Alec stepped free. Mendoza disrobed and took his place, whereupon
Smee repeated the process. The gentlemen watched with keen interest.

“I wonder if we could make more?” she said, as the red light played over her body. “They’re so useful. What if they could swim?”

“What?” Alec pulled his attention back to what she’d said and replayed it in his mind. His eyes widened.

“Brilliant!” he cried. “Bloody hell, I could make, like, robot dolphins! Remember Long John, Captain? The little telemetry drone?”

Mmmm. Submersible reconnaissance and defense units? That’s my girl! Smart as paint!

“Why, thank you,” said Mendoza, looking pleased.

“I’d have to give ’em articulated spines, so they could swim like a dolphin does—all kinds of sensors in the head—and maybe a skin of bioprene—” Alec began pacing to and fro. “Maybe launch ’em like torpedoes when we arrive somewhere—or, no, say, four berths on the forward deck—”

Do you know, that actually sounds useful?
Edward admitted.

“Come on, let’s go play with some designs!” Alec seized Mendoza’s hand and they made for the cabin door.

Wait! Don’t you want clothes?

Edward took charge. “One complete set of women’s morning wear suitable for the year 1855,” he said impatiently. “One complete set of gentlemen’s apparel, same. Is that sufficient?”

For California, sir? Or England?

Edward looked scornful. “Good God! England, what do you think?” he said.

They hurried away. Behind them, Smee processed the order and then turned, whirring along its track, scanning the bolts of cloth until it found a white silk it judged suitable for undergarments. Arms extended, pulled and measured material. Shears deployed and began to cut, as other arms selected thread from the available colors and bobbins wound at blinding speed.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING IN 1855
AD

Had Mr. Green been sober, or even conscious, he might have seen his very favorite customers returning in their whaleboat to the pier at the
base of Clay Street. He might not have recognized them, however, since the only thing that presently distinguished them from any other couple was the man’s extraordinary height, which was now emphasized by the fashionably tall hat he wore, in keeping with the rest of his unremarkable ensemble. His high stiff shirt collar and cravat concealed that odd bit of jewelry. The young lady with him was today properly clad in a hooped dress of pink sprigged calico. She wore a wide straw hat for the sun, decked with pink ribbons.

The gentleman carried a capacious leather satchel, which seemed to contain something rather heavy.

Having tied up their boat and proceeded ashore, they made their way up Clay Street. At the corner of Clay and Montgomery they paused, appearing to confer briefly; the young lady pointed and they turned down Montgomery.

Mr. Charles McWay, the clerk who happened to be on duty at a certain bank that morning, was a much busier man than Mr. Green had been. Mr. McWay’s firm was weathering the current depression quite nicely, as in fact it would weather every banking crisis and recession for the next several centuries, which was why the lady and gentleman entered and looked about expectantly.

Mr. McWay was too preoccupied with the shopkeeper he was helping to notice their arrival, and after the customer departed he was busy completing paperwork; so when he looked up and beheld the very tall man who had appeared before him silently, he gave a slight start.

“Good morning, sir! How may I be of assistance?”

“Good morning,” said the tall man, removing his hat. “I am advised that this is a reliable financial institution. I am presently obliged to travel abroad, and may not return for some years. Would it be possible to place a sum of money upon deposit here, against my return?”

He spoke with a well-bred London accent, and there was something so charming, so persuasive in his voice that Mr. McWay froze for a moment, staring in confusion into the man’s pale blue eyes.

“Certainly, sir,” he said at last.

“Splendid! Now, then,” continued the Englishman. He lifted a leather satchel to the counter. “I have here the sum of five thousand dollars.” Opening the satchel, he displayed a welter of bright coin, all twenty-dollar
double eagles stamped with the date 1852. “I should like to deposit this at your best rate of interest.”

“Yes,
sir
!” said Mr. McWay, producing a deposit form with alacrity. He dipped his pen in the inkwell and proceeded to fill it out. “And your name, sir?”

The Englishman’s eyes narrowed in amusement. “William St. James Harpole,” he said. The paperwork was done, the money counted, verified, and locked away in the vault, and a deposit book issued in the name he had given.

“Thank you so much, sir. You’ve been most helpful,” said the Englishman, tucking the passbook away in an inner pocket of his coat. He donned his tall hat, took the empty satchel, and turned to the young lady. All this while she had been standing attentively at the front door, for all the world like a county marshal on guard, which seemed most odd to Mr. McWay.

“Mrs. Harpole? I believe our ship awaits.”

She smiled and took his arm. To Mr. McWay’s astonishment she actually skipped the few paces to the door beside her husband.

Then Mr. McWay’s attention was diverted by another customer coming in, and when he glanced at the window once more the couple was gone. He never saw either of them again; but his firm was indeed a reliable financial institution, and the double eagles increased their number by compound interest over a considerable period of years . . .

And for a lark, Mr. and Mrs. Harpole immortalized their transitory persona in a holo taken on the deck of the
Captain Morgan,
posed against the rail with the sad little City in the background. Stern husband holding his tall hat in the crook of one arm, freezing the camera in his dignity, and on his other arm the wife, very young to look so haughty but with the suggestion of laughter at one corner of her slightly ironic mouth.

LATER THAT DAY IN 1855
AD

“Given the amount of time it sat in that poor devil’s shop, this is a surprisingly drinkable vintage,” said Edward, pouring another glass of champagne.

He sprawled in a chair in the saloon, having removed his coat, waistcoat, and boots. Mendoza, reclining across his lap, had removed rather more of her clothing.

“At least we have ice,” she said, yawning. “I don’t think we used to be able to get cold drinks. Did we?”

“Not in California,” he said, offering her a sip. She drank and sighed, leaning her head back.

The saloon had undergone a change in recent days. Fruit trees of various kinds stood here and there, lashed to bulkheads, growing in makeshift hydroponic containers. So did the gooseberry bush, which was now very nearly a thicket; so did several muscular grapevines, which had crawled up every available vertical surface, and looked capable of bursting out through a hatch and scaling the masts. They gave the place something of an exotic, hothouse air. All the plants had survived the jumps through time unscathed. The Captain had begun to have an idea why.

“Harpole,” Mendoza said thoughtfully. “I remember that name. You used to be called that, didn’t you? When we talked in the other language . . .”

Nicholas, who had been leaning invisible against her thigh, took control and smiled down at her.

“Ecce, Corinna venit,”
he said,
“tunica velata recincta,

candida dividua colla tegente coma—

qualiter in thalamos famosa Semiramis isse

dicitur, et multis Lais amata viris.”

For a second or so Mendoza’s gaze had a blank, machinelike quality that made Alec acutely uncomfortable; then she smiled and was human again, bright-eyed, happy.

“Ergo Amor et modicum circa mea tempora vinum

mecum est et madidis lapsa corona comis,”
she said.

Laughter breaking on a sob, Nicholas kissed her, and she twined her arms about his neck.

What are they saying?
Alec inquired.

Lot of lewd love-play in Latin,
Edward said, irritable at having been thrust aside.
Ovid’s
Amores,
I think. My Latin was never very good.

Why not? Nicholas knows a lot of languages.

Because I was sent to sea when I was fourteen,
said Edward.
If I’d been able to stay at school, I’d no doubt be able to rattle it off the way brother Nicholas does. Though my headmaster preferred to encourage more practical knowledge.
Edward’s lip curled.
Hardly surprising, given that he was one of the Company’s agents.

Your headmaster?
Alec said.

Dr. Nennys,
Edward said.
I worshipped that man! Ever ready with fatherly advice and intimations that I was a boy destined for great deeds. As good as told me outright I was the bloody second coming of Christ. Hadn’t aged a day when I met him again, fifteen years on. He got me into Redking’s; sponsored my initiation into the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society, too.

I had one like that,
Alec told him somberly.
Tilney Blaise. He was always cheering me on about what I was supposed to do with my life—like go to Mars, now that I think of it. He never aged, either. He tried to get me to go to work for the Company.

He turned to look at Nicholas and Mendoza.
All our lives, we must have had the Company’s agents around us, telling us what to do, pushing us to turn the way they wanted.
Alec winced at a realization.
Even Sarah must have been one of them.

Your nurse,
Edward said.

She took care of me from the day I was born. I used to think she loved me.

Happen she did, lad,
the Captain transmitted in silence,
but she done what the Company told her all the same. The only one of ’em as ever disobeyed orders for you was Mendoza.