The Machine's Child (Company) (32 page)

She must not.
Moving fast, Nicholas removed the plaquette case and the saddlebag from the box. He slid the long drawer shut, and grabbing up their finds ran for the entrance, where Mendoza was ceaselessly scanning.

“We’re safe,” she said. “Was it in there, your loot?”

“No, love,” Nicholas said, stuffing the case and smaller bag inside the saddlebag they’d brought. “Naught but time’s trash.” He turned and pulled the door shut. Unlooping the reins, he bent to give her a hand up into the saddle; swung up easily on his own mount. She cantered ahead
of him up the old road, and he waited only for Alec and Edward to catch his stirrups before following her.

They rode along in nervous silence a while. Mendoza was wondering why he had switched his speaking idiom again.

“What was in there?” she asked at last.

“Ghosts,” Nicholas told her.

They returned to the ship, where Billy Bones accepted the saddlebag and hurried off with it. Mendoza watched this, but said nothing. Nor did she remark when they lifted anchor and sailed away at once for Panama.

Edward was finally able to wrest control from Nicholas as they emerged from the bathroom, after showering away the dust of their ride. Without a word he pulled Mendoza to the bed, where he made violent love to her in silence. Though he sank down exhausted at last, the mute agony did not leave Edward’s eyes.

Mendoza asked no questions. Edward lay his head on her breasts. She put her arms around him and sang, some wordless and soothingly monotonous little tune. Gradually the despair went out of his body, and Edward slept.

Alec, who had been waiting patiently with Nicholas, said:

Council of war, Captain sir?

I’m still analyzing, lad. Them tissue samples—

But at that moment Mendoza, who had been stroking back Edward’s hair, spoke quietly.

“Sir Henry.”

—Aye, Mrs. Checkerfield!
the Captain said aloud.

“What was it, in that place? What did he see to upset him like this?”

—Well, now, dearie, I’m sure it ain’t nothing for you to worry over—

“To Hell with that,” she said, and both Alec and Nicholas jumped. “Tell me the truth.”

Er—aye, ma’am, to be sure. It was more evidence of Dr. Zeus’s perfidy, d’y’see? Something nasty the Company did a long while back. He
wouldn’t talk about it, good lad that he is, lest it rake up old sorrows for you, but it bothered him powerful.

“Obviously. What did he bring back, that he took such pains I might not see?” Mendoza said.

Just something as might be useful—as a matter of fact I was just starting to analyze it, as is me duty, when you called, ma’am, and I’ll be happy to get back to it when we’re done chatting—

“Then get back to your duty,” she said wearily. “I remember this, I remember when he’d come to bed like this. Hard as steel, heartsick, and nothing I could do comforted him. Something bad always happened, then, didn’t it? Fire and blood. What will take that look out of his eyes?”

Missus, you mustn’t be afeared. Nothing’s going to hurt my boy, nor you neither, ever again. Not with the plans old Captain Morgan’s laid. But yer tired, dearie; that was a long ride and a rough wooing. Shut yer eyes and sleep, eh?

Mendoza nodded, looking down at Edward. She drew the blankets up over his shoulders. He started, wild-eyed, clutching at her, but she stroked his face and murmured to him, and he lay his head down again without really waking. She leaned into the pillows and gazed up at the improbable pirate carvings, wondering for the twentieth time why on earth Alec had decorated their bedroom in Early Captain Blood.

The Captain did the electronic equivalent of wiping sweat from his brow, but he wasn’t off the hook yet.

She’s starting to remember everything, isn’t she?
said Alec.
She’ll know we’ve lied to her, and worse—what if she remembers Options Research?

Now, lad, there ain’t no danger of that.

Yes, there is! She’s remembering the way
you
changed, when she lost you in England.
Alec glared at Nicholas.
Stiff-necked Puritan bastard.

Nicholas was outraged.
He took her sulking rude, and lieth there now sprawling on her! Not I.

He can’t cope, man. I don’t think I could either, if I saw my own corpse laid out in a drawer,
Alec said.

A few old bones,
Nicholas said impatiently.
And look, boy, here is the lesson: He and all his Age of Reason were so proud, and so haught, in their science and their power, they held themselves very gods on Earth. Now, see! His
worldly Empire’s perished and so hath his vain flesh. He is confounded by mortality’s blind emblem in his own face.

It’s still not fair to be cruel to him about it,
Alec insisted.
If you hadn’t been burned at the stake the Company’d have a drawer like that for you, someplace. And what are you both? You’re just ghosts.

Ay,
said Nicholas.
But there was no place for spirits in all his philosophy, boy. I died, I know it well; he will not know, though the truth lie stark before his eyes, and so he lechers with his ghostly prick to deny it. Yet he’s a spirit still.

So what’s he supposed to do now?
Alec snapped.
Are you so happy being dead? But maybe you are. You went out of your way to get yourself burned alive. You wanted her to burn with you!

Nicholas grimaced.
I knew not what she was. I—
He brought his fist up close to his chest and struck, painfully.
Nor I knew not myself, neither. I lived in lies no less than Edward did. But the truth—

That is one dark house your God lives in, man.
Alec shook his head.
You can keep your Age of Faith. Whyn’t you find somebody to worship who isn’t a shracking psychopath?

Let it alone, now, Alec. Yer lady ain’t going to remember Options Research. Her brain’ll fit together enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to give her a nice picture she can live with, and lock away the rest. I reckon there’s some memories you’d be glad to be rid of, yerselves.

And that’s true, too,
said Nicholas, shuddering.

Yeah.
Alec thought of Mars.

Right. Now, about that council of war.

What were those things in the plaquettes?
Alec asked reluctantly.

Pieces of Edward, what d’y’think? And I’ll thank you not to tell him. No end of data in them little files, too, which is lucky; forensic analysis reports with references to another location. See, they left the skeleton and these bits here, once they’d done with ’em, but the jewel of the lot’s at their storage facilities in England.

What jewel?
Nicholas frowned.

The brain,
the Captain said,
which was the same as yer own little anomalous beauty of a brain what set me free, Alec, and yers, too, I reckon, Nicholas, but unlike any others as ever was. It weren’t dissected, but sent back to Stratford.

Stratford-on-Avon?
Alec said in disbelief.
Where Mr. Shakespeare lived?

Aye. There’s a Company storage facility hid in a place what ain’t never going to be bombed, nor demolished, nor catch fire. I’ve already checked its manifest. Another unit with yer file designation is there.

That’s way inland, though, isn’t it, Captain sir?
Alec said.
How are we going to manage?

ONE MORNING IN WARWICKSHIRE, 1600
AD

It does stop raining in England, occasionally. In the month of August, it even stops raining long enough for the roads to become disagreeably dusty, or at least it did in the year 1600, when few roads were paved.

So the dust lay in a fine powder on the starched linen ruff about the throat of the tall gallant who trudged along in the bright morning, and on the brim of his copatain hat, and on his thigh-high boots, and on all the bright brass buttons on his well-cut doublet. It powdered the velvet hat of his lady friend, too, and her ruff, and her bodice and brocade overskirt; which was perhaps why she was looking a little sourly on the green paradise of Warwickshire.

They had been walking along that road since before sunrise, when they had hidden their conveyance in a ruined barn and set off on foot for Stratford. They had passed only three travelers: a respectable spinster, riding back from London with a basket of hornbooks for the pupils of her dame school; an adolescent boy with vomit on his doublet and torn hose, looking sick and furtive as he slunk along the narrow lane; and a sturdy beggar with a crutch, a purported veteran of the Armada battle twelve years previous, who eyed the couple thoughtfully before deciding that the man was too big, and too well armed, to attack.

Had he decided to attempt to rob the couple, he would have noticed the winged shape floating directly above them, to all appearances a common hovering hawk. He wouldn’t have noticed it for very long, however, because it would have blown off his head with a small guided missile within seconds of his making any threatening moves toward his intended victims.

But since he passed by them with no more than a nod and a cheerful good morrow, he lived to eventually father offspring, one of whose distant
descendants did a very large favor for a corrupt prime minister, and was rewarded by being made first earl of Finsbury. The pattern of history sighed in relief, took another loop around itself, and continued on its way unchanged.

When the beggar was well out of earshot, Mendoza said:

“That mortal wasn’t really a cripple.”

“Like enough, ay,” said Nicholas grimly, putting his hand on the hilt of his sword and turning to stare after him. “Well, we’ll hire us horses at the first good inn we pass. Less danger from low rogues, and less dust.”

“Good,” said Mendoza, sneezing.

The first good inn was just beyond the next spinney, as it turned out, so they were able to continue their journey in comparative comfort in a gratifyingly short space of time.

Where are we now?
said Alec.

A greener place than I knew,
said Edward in wonder.
No railway. No canals. No factories. No coal smoke. And, somewhere under this curiously cloudless sky, the Swan of Avon stretching his wings.

The what?

Shakespeare, you imbecile!

Now then, lads, don’t spoil things with a fight.

Mightn’t we at least ride by his house?
fretted Edward.

We ain’t sightseeing, bucko. We got a storage facility to find.

And anyway, he won’t be here,
Alec informed Edward.
He spent all his time in London until he quit show business. He told me so himself, when I used to visit his museum.

That was an actor portraying Shakespeare, Alec,
Edward said with barely controlled contempt.

No, it wasn’t! He was a computer-generated hologram.
Alec glared at Edward.
And he was as real as they could make him, too. Somebody dug up his lead coffin from where it was buried, and scanned the body. They did a forensic reconstruction and then they programmed in every word he ever wrote and did an extrapola-whatever so he was just the way he would have been really, see?

Then he was no more real than your Captain Morgan,
Edward said.

I’ll show you real, you lubber!

Peace, thou, for Christ’s sake.
Nicholas looked around impatiently.

“Here we are,” said Mendoza, as they rode into Henley Street.

And Nicholas stared, more struck than Alec or Edward, at the world he’d missed: a small town quiet and prosperous, secure from Spanish invaders or Papist oppressors, untouched by fire or sword. Comfortably bourgeois, with dungheaps that reeked no worse than in any other little town, and a great many oak-timbered and impressive homes of the well-to-do. A fine guildhall, where traveling companies of players might perform. A respectably solid stone bridge over the river.

And in Henley Street, and Sheep Street, and Ely Street, ducks sauntering boldly; through the windows of the splendid modern school, sullen resentful children droning out their recitation; by the Market House, two goodwives listening breathlessly to the hot gossip a third was dishing out; down the green aisle of elm trees, a self-important alderman in grand clothes cantering along on a self-important horse.

Beyond the bright town, green dreaming hills and blackberry bramble where the fairies were supposed to haunt, and fields where Robin Good-fellow was thought to dance circles in the green corn, when townfolk shut their windows against the night.

Nicholas stared at it all and tried to tell himself that his death had weighed in the scale, that this England might not have existed had he not gone willingly into the fire.

Then he saw an ancient making his way along Bridge Street, hobbling on a stick, clutching a fur-trimmed gown about him with one gnarled hand. Nicholas realized with a shock that he would be just so old, now, if he’d lived, and all this pleasant mundane place would still be here.

It hadn’t mattered at all that he’d lived or died, not to England. She went on without him, self-sufficient. Even God had shrugged off his sacrifice. The knot of misery about his heart tightened once more, and as it did he felt another surge of anger toward Joseph.

He found himself reaching out desperately, and feeling Mendoza take his hand he gripped it tight. They rode on, through Stratford-upon-Avon.

Beyond the outskirts of the town they followed the Captain’s directions to a certain high wood, dark with rooks and less palpable shadows, not an inviting place. No paths led there. They rode in under its gloom all the same, and careful searching disclosed the wavering trick in the air obscuing
a grove darker still. The steel-winged hawk circled once over the forest. As the panicked rooks flapped out in all directions the illusion vanished, to reveal another bronze door.