The Machine's Child (Company) (36 page)

Egypt in 2213 is just beginning to recover from a nasty war and horrifying air pollution. It needs tourist income as badly as it ever has, and the bright animated brochures put out by the Tourism Bureau contrast the eternal pyramids, lit as though from within by their own ancient red light, towering above the modern metropolis of West Bank Cairo, where little electric cars in every color of the rainbow zip through the wide clean streets. In fact the pyramids are shown from every possible angle except any likely to feature the Sphinx, which for the last sixty years has had no head, due to an embarrassing incident involving a miscommunication between the presidential palace and the Egyptian Air Force.

But the resourceful itinerants who make their living from the romance of Egypt have worked around this problem: they have simply programmed their cameras to provide the missing features in any shot taken of the unfortunate monument, which fact they scream helpfully at all persons arriving at the river taxi dock in front of the Cairo Sheraton.

They’re not sure what to make of the young couple in tailored white linen who arrive from Alexandria via some sort of hovercraft, but they do their best to sell them portraits taken with the Sphinx in the background, portraits taken with the pyramids in the background, portraits taken with donkeys, portraits taken with camels, portraits taken with cutout figures of world leaders. The tall man strides through them, towing the fascinated young lady after him, and he waves them away with a firm and practiced hand. He glances up occasionally at the hawk that circles above him, far against the blazing sun. He will not buy beads, he will not buy carpets, he will not buy brass or copper; he will not even buy tequila, which is going at bargain rates since the Greenest-of-the-Green Party cut the subsidies to Upper Nile farmers of blue agave in their continuing efforts to impose Prohibition.

All the young couple wish to buy, it seems, is a Pyramid Pizza. They make for the nearest branch of the nationwide chain, spotting from afar its giant winged pizza-disc logo, and after ordering at the window they take seats on the outdoor terrace overlooking the Nile. It’s a pleasant place to sit. The terrace is shaded at present by a photoreactive transparent canopy, and will one day be shaded in a rather more natural way, for it is in the process of being landscaped. Palm trees are being planted along the edge of the terrace even as the young couple are brought their iced tea. While they wait for their pizza, the young lady strikes up a conversation with the elderly gardener, who is setting a baby tree in the deep hole that has been dug for it.

He’s astonished to discover how well she speaks the dialect of his village, and how much she knows on the subject of date palms. They engage in a lengthy conversation that ends only when the project foreman stalks up, demanding impatiently that the gardener finish planting the damned palm.

The young couple excuse themselves and finish their pizza. The old gardener goes back to shoveling earth around the roots of the little palm.
He does not note the flash of gold in the bottom of the hole, visible there for a split-second before his next shovelful buries it. He finishes planting the palm and says a quiet prayer, hoping the new tree will thrive, as the young couple tidy up their table and leave.

His prayer will in fact be answered. The palm he has just planted will thrive, will grow to gigantic size and venerable age, to such an extent that tourists in the year 2355
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will still be pointing it out as a city landmark . . .

Portland, Oregon, its gray heart beating forever along two great river arteries running to the North Pacific. Its Old Town is gritty and civilized in the midst of improbable forest. Autumn is already as cold as death when the river fog rolls in, and drifts of oak leaves bury the sidewalks, bright as fire, red as blood.

Along the waterfront, not far from the Maritime Museum, there is a fine restored business block with a view of the Willamette, and there a certain legal firm has its offices. In this year of 2023, the name is Dowling, Dowling and Spratt. Over the decades its name will change, but not its location or its purpose. It is and will always be an unadventurous, reliable establishment.

So the elder Mr. Dowling doesn’t think much of the business laid out before him by the cold-eyed young Briton in the impeccably cut three-piece suit. It’s the sort of silly idea that inevitably leads to problems for estate claimants years down the line. The young man, however, seems grimly serious about it. He is willing to pay the hefty fee Mr. Dowling quotes him for the service he has requested. After all, no funds are involved: merely the delivery of a certain item to a certain address on a certain date in the future.

Mr. Dowling would feel better about it, all the same, if he knew what the item was, without necessarily knowing all the particulars. His client decides this request is reasonable. Has Mr. Dowling two envelopes of differing sizes?

Mr. Dowling has. He reaches into a desk drawer and produces a plain white letter envelope and a larger manila one. He watches as his client withdraws an antique silver card case from an inner breast pocket, and
extracts what appears to be an ordinary ivory-colored business card. Has Mr. Dowling a pen?

Mr. Dowling offers his own Montblanc. The young man takes it and writes on the card: “I will be with you on your wedding night. With the compliments of Edward Acton Bell-Fairfax.” As he writes, Mr. Dowling notes the antique brass cufflinks he wears: very nice fouled anchor design, with a matching pin worn in his fine silk tie. The Englishman places the card in the white envelope and seals it. He writes a name on the white envelope, places it inside the manila one, and seals that. Finally he writes a date on the manila envelope. He offers it to Mr. Dowling, who takes it and looks at the date.
9 July, 2355.
Beautiful copperplate hand, at least. He shakes his head, but when the young man returns the card case to his pocket and pulls out a debit card, Mr. Dowling is all respectful attention.

A considerable amount of money is transferred into the account of Dowling, Dowling and Spratt. As soon as the transaction has cleared, the young man stands, towering over him, and leans forward to shake Mr. Dowling’s hand. With mutual cordialities they go to the door, beyond which the young man’s lady friend is patiently waiting, sipping a café latte. She rises with a smile. They depart.

Mr. Dowling returns to his desk and, staring down at the envelope, shakes his head again. What an absurdly easy way to earn a month’s income! But a client is a client, and Mr. Dowling has every intention of seeing to it that this particular client’s wishes are honored, so far as it is in his power. He and both his associates, as well as every person in his employ, will be long dead by the delivery date specified on the manila envelope. Nevertheless, he pulls out his keyboard and sets up a file with detailed and specific instructions. He scans the exterior of the envelope, and enters its image in the file. He saves and closes.

Having done that, he takes the envelope itself and locks it in his firm’s safe.

On his way back to his desk, he pauses at his window. The young couple are still out on the waterfront promenade, walking arm in arm. They are smiling, laughing at some private joke. Watching them, Mr. Dowling cannot say why he feels a shiver of apprehension, cold as death; but he does, and as they walk away together a gust of wind sends oak leaves dancing eerily about them, bright as fire, red as blood.

________

As a rule, if one walked along the beach at Monterey in autumn, one would have splendid views. Emerald green sea breaking white on dark rocks and shading to a deep and powerful blue farther out; to the south the serpentine forest of cypress and pine rising on a peak, aromatic and haunted in the noonday sun. To the north, dazzling bright sand hills, stretching away to a windy sunlit glimpse of Santa Cruz.

Unfortunately there’s been an El Niño condition in this year of 1879, and the summer fogs have lasted well into autumn, so all one would see on this particular day is a grayed-out closed-down perspective, like a Victorian photograph of a landscape. Sea the color of ashes, sand the color of ashes, wet fog hanging in wreaths through the tops of the twisted and spectral cypresses, all the jewel colors lost. Naturally enough, the frail man, himself more than half wraith as he picks his way among the tide-pools, is depressed. But then, he depresses easily.

He cheers up easily, too. His moods could best be described as hysterically mercurial, which is only one of the reasons the motherly lady he’s courting hasn’t quite made up her mind about him. He perches now on a prominence of rock and rolls his trouser legs up again, for they have become soaked. He can roll them up quite a distance on his pipestem legs. It isn’t just that he’s emaciated from illness; his whole graceful body, slender feet and long expressive hands, is weirdly attenuated. That, and his enormous eyes—too wide, too bright, in his thin face—contribute to his otherworldly appearance.

He notices the whaleboat appearing out of the fog. From whence has it come? A shadowy something on the obscured horizon suggests an immense ship, big as a clipper at least but phantomlike. Why is it standing on and off so far out in the bay? And why are there only two persons in the whaleboat, which is of considerable size to be rowed by only one man? He begins to tell himself a story about the occupants of the whaleboat.

To his delight, they are rowing straight for the cove where he sits. They near him and his imaginings go from crime to romance, for he observes that one of the two is a lady. He leans his chin in his palm and stares at them, fascinated, as they approach his rock. The lady has bright hair, is
simply dressed in brown calico and a shawl. It is impossible to tell her age, for though her face is rounded and young, her gaze is mature, assessing.

The man is striking in appearance, too, wearing sea boots and rough serviceable clothes cut well. How effortlessly he bends to the oars and sends the boat flying along! Too homely really to be a hero, but a character and no mistake. What kind of character?

They pass their observer, as dolphins play in their bow wake, and a moment later they make landfall. As the man leaps out to pull their boat up on the sand, splashing through the surf foaming about his boots, it becomes evident that he is remarkably strong. And quite tall, towering above the young lady! The frail man rises and hurries across the rocks to get a better look at the couple, trying to make it appear as though he is just sauntering in a casual sort of way.

He is in luck, for the pair stand there several moments beside the boat, discussing something. They seem irresolute. Are they worried about leaving their boat? Why are they going into the old Spanish capital? Her long braid and golden earrings suggest that the lady is Iberian, despite her pallor. The daughter of an exiled Spanish don, returning in secret to claim some birthright? She reaches up to stroke back the sailor’s lank hair in an unmistakable gesture of intimacy. Are they lovers? Must be!

The frail man halts, for he is out of breath. He stoops to pretend to examine a clump of sea-wrack. Unfortunately this brings on a coughing fit, which is the end of his unobtrusive scrutiny. The young lady turns and fixes her black stare on him and it connects like a blow, not hostile but terrifyingly intense. She advances and asks him a question, in beautifully aristocratic Castilian. He knows enough Spanish to understand that she is asking him if he’d like to earn a few dollars watching the boat while they go ashore, but he isn’t proficient enough in that tongue to reply gracefully, and so he stammers:

“Perdon yo, por favor, Señorita, pero—parlez-vous français?”

“Mais oui, certainement,”
she says, in the perfect accents of a native Parisienne. Then she puts her head on one side, frowning at him.
“Etesvous ecossais, Monsieur?”

“Oui, mademoiselle,”
he admits, thinking peevishly that his accent can’t be that pronounced.

“Well then, we can talk in English!” she concludes, in flat American. At that moment the sailor gasps as though he’s seen a ghost, and he cries:

“Robert Louis Stevenson!”

And to Louis’s astonishment the sailor strides forward and seizes him by both fragile shoulders, and stares down into his eyes with burning adoration.

“Er—” says Louis, as the woman looks swiftly from him to the tall sailor and back again.

“Ah! Of course. You must be the author of”—she appears to be thinking rapidly—”
An Inland Journey.
Are you not? That very entertaining travel narrative, Alec.”

“Man, oh, man, I love your stories,” says the sailor hoarsely, with tears standing in his eyes. He seems to be English, and though his voice is pleasant his accent is strange and uncouth.

“Yes, he does,” affirms the lady in a nervous sort of way. She thinks again and rattles off: “We’ve read
A Lodging for the Night, Will o’ the Mill, The Sire de Maletroit’s Mousetrap, The Latter-Day Arabian Nights,
and
Providence and the Guitar;
and that’s all we’ve read, of course, because that’s all that’s been published
at this time,
Alec,” she adds with what might be a warning in her voice. “But we enjoyed them very much and do hope you’ll write more.”

“Oh, we do,” says the man, letting go Louis’s shoulders and grabbing his hand to pump it vigorously. “You—er—you won’t mind if I shake your hand?”

“No,” Louis says, for the extraordinary warmth of the man’s skin seems to go right through his own thin chilled fingers, and anyway he wouldn’t care if the fellow had the clammy grip of death, because he’s read Louis’s stories! “Actually I’ve a number of new pieces drafted, you know. I’m, er, gathering material from life.”

“Brilliant.” The man shudders pleasurably. He can’t seem to take his eyes off Louis. Suddenly he turns his head a little to one side, just as the girl had done. His nostrils dilate, he inhales, and a puzzled look comes into his eyes. “Oh—you’re diff—” he begins, and then stops himself.

“Well, rather obviously we can’t ask you to watch our boat for an hour or so,” says the girl quickly.