The Machine's Child (Company) (50 page)

There was a long moment of disturbance in the fast-flowing water, before they broke the surface again.

The first rule of all, the one on which Dr. Zeus Incorporated was founded, is: not everything is extinct simply because it seems to be. Regard, for example, the coelacanth, or . . .

Glistening in the cloudy air, tossing its knife-jawed head from side to side and whipping Edward around by one leg like a doll, grinning bloodily despite the fact that Mendoza, on its back, was raining blows on its head in an attempt to kill it . . .

The ichthyosaur.

Its rule of life was uncomplicated: bite its food and hold on. If the food struggled, if it was too big to kill with one bite, beat it to and fro until it stopped struggling or pieces tore off. However, this other thing, the one on its back, was hurting it. So it lashed and leaped, clear out of the strong-running current, beached itself, but failed to dislodge the other thing. At least the food had stopped struggling.

Edward lay sprawled on the sand, staring at the sky with wide astonished eyes. Mendoza, screaming, terrifying in her transformation, dug her heels into the ichthyosaur’s head and caught hold of a broken willow-snag. Its top burst into green leaves as she gripped it.

With all the strength in her body she plunged the makeshift spear into
the ichthyosaur’s eye, and rammed it up into its brain. Its head jerked, the idiot-grin gnashed, the whole body trembled. Roots and spreading branches tore through its flesh. In puzzlement Edward observed the severed leg still in its jaws. Whose was that? Oh, no, had it got Alec? Or Nicholas? Where were they? He was unable to turn his head to look for them.

“Meu amor,”
sobbed Mendoza, stumbling from the ichthyosaur’s back and falling to her knees beside him. She worked frantically at the gunbelt and tore it loose, binding the stump of his left knee in a tourniquet. “Ai,
meu amor,
please—oh, your beautiful legs! Please hold on—listen, can you hear the motor? Sir Henry’s sending the agboat for us, here it comes. Oh, God and Saint James, Alec, don’t die now!”

Alec? Edward closed his eyes, grimacing as he remembered what he’d done. He was wet and broken and cold, and quickly growing colder, but he held tight to his plan.

You little devil, I told you what would happen—
roared the Captain distantly.

“Why, I’m afraid I’ve lost a leg,” Edward said, in an attempt at bravado. “Now I’ll be like Long John Silver, won’t I, my dear?”

“Yes, darling, just like Long John Silver, you’ll like that, won’t you?” Mendoza said wildly. “So you must stay with me for the wonderful experience of a wooden leg, yes? We’ll even get you a parrot.”

“I’m afraid we won’t be dancing at the Avalon Ballroom . . .”

“Sweetheart, we’ll go dancing some other time,” she promised, looking over her shoulder for the agboat.

“Not if I’ve got a wooden leg,” Edward said, wincing. Something hurt. Badly.

“We’ll think of something. Just live!”

“Yes. I tell you,” Edward gasped, “I will live. I won’t lose you. I’ll—”

She caught his hand as he faltered. “Yes! Stay with me, darling! Look. Here I am. Do you see me?”

“I will
not
die—” He attempted to draw breath to say something more and choked, as blood came bubbling from his mouth.

“Alec,” Mendoza cried, reaching to turn his head so the blood wouldn’t suffocate him. In doing so, she placed her hand between his neck and the torque. Inadvertently she connected, flinching.

Edward seized the opportunity, and downloaded into her. Into Mendoza’s skull went Alec and Nicholas, still fighting to escape from their claustrophobic Victorian library as it skewed and shook, as virtual books rained from the shelves about them.

But in Edward’s extremity the floodgates were opened. All the information in the world, everything the Captain had plundered from Dr. Zeus,
everything,
went roaring through Edward’s brain into hers, when even two tiny pieces of the Temporal Concordance had been enough to send Joseph (a far older and stronger operative) to bed with a headache for two weeks. With either the Captain or Alec or both selectively giving her a little at a time, Mendoza might have survived it without harm.

Edward watched in horror as she went rigid, as her mouth opened for an agonized scream that never came, as the data boiled into her indestructible skull and turned its contents into very, very expensive garbage. Realizing what was happening, he got his arm up and pushed her hand away, breaking the connection. She toppled over and convulsed galvanically, arching her spine. Blue flame flared and pulsed over her body.

“Mendoza,” cried Edward. He caught at her hand. “Oh, no,
please
no. Mendoza!”

But here was the agboat at last, and here were Flint and Billy Bones come to minister to him, strapping him still, clearing his windpipe, intubating him, injecting him, replacing the makeshift tourniquet and applying a pressure bandage, hooking him up to a synthetic bloodbag. He tried to turn to her, he tried to call her name; but they were closing up the bubble-stretcher around him now and he lost sight of her. They loaded it into the agboat. He didn’t see Flint retrieving his left leg from the jaws of the ichthyosaur. He didn’t see Billy Bones crouch over Mendoza’s body long enough to tear open her subsuit and remove the glove with his genetic crucible, scuttling away into the agboat with it.

He was closed in, and the bubble-stretcher had become the Easter egg. He had got inside at last, nestled in the green and pleasant land where he was the white lamb. Bring him his bow of burning gold, bring him his arrows of desire, bring him his spear—O clouds unfold . . .

He will
not
cease . . .

The agboat crossed the stretch of open sea toward the
Captain Morgan,
which had come around the western rock at last, having nothing to fear
from the surveillance camera now. It moved in under full sail and stood just offshore. The agboat rose to its davits. The contents of the agboat were offloaded.

It was silent, there at the Beginning and the End, for perhaps a quarter of an hour. But not motionless; the tide turned and the tidal bore ran through the reef, like a god riding white horses inland. Its passing wash tugged at the ichthyosaur where it lay half out of the water and pulled it to and fro, imitating its living movements so nearly that the seabirds, who had begun to light on it and peck speculatively, became alarmed. They rose in a mewing cloud.

One or two landed near Mendoza and ventured close, eyeing her. They didn’t know what to make of the blue flame that coiled and crackled over her body, and moreover she was still giving the occasional kick as something attempted to work, so they kept their distance. The willow tree soared to green maturity beside her, sending its roots down into the sand, and in a small field around her body time went mad. Beach grass sprouted, withered and vanished, sea-grape came and went, sand went to alluvial mud, to gravel shingle, to sand once more.

She was no longer capable of thought, or speech, or effective self-repair, scrambled as she was; but she was not, of course, able to die. She was immortal, after all.

Captain Sir Henry Morgan came out on the deck of the ship that bore his name and climbed quickly over the side. Letting himself down the boarding ladder, he stepped out onto the sea and strode across to the Beginning and the End. Dolphins coursed before him and behind him.

He followed the tide up and stepped off onto the sand, leaving no print as he walked past the body of the ichthyosaur. The shearwaters and terns watching Mendoza backed away as he approached her. His face was set and staring. He stopped beside her and fell to his knees.

Shaking his head, he reached out to her. The blue flames flared; his hand passed through them. Placing it on her forehead, he said:

“Reset! Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Run diagnostic now. Please, Alec, please, boy, please . . .”

In precisely ten seconds the taut arch of her body collapsed, and Mendoza lay sprawling in the advancing tideline. Her staring eyes closed at last. She exhaled, shuddering, and stopped. But the Captain let out a howl of savage triumph that would have terrified the crew of any Spanish galleon, to say nothing of raising the dead. Mendoza’s eyes shot open. She focused and regarded him.

“Come on, then, dearie,” the Captain said, laughing. “Rise and walk.”

“Oh, God my Savior,” she murmured in horror.

“Not exactly,” the Captain said. “More like yer salvager, lass. Haar! Salvager, get it? Bless that fat bastard Zeus.
You
ain’t no Semele!”

“Please,” she said, tears of despair forming in her eyes. “Let me die now.”

“Ahh, no indeed,” he said, gently, pitilessly. “For what would my boy do then? You’ve got my Alec, safe in that ironbound memory of yours. He’ll be needing you more than ever, now. Die? Why, darlin’, if you was hid on the underside of the lowest rock in Hell, I’d come after you.”

She stared at him, exhausted, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“Alec’s not dead?” she said at last.

“No, bless yer heart, he ain’t!” The Captain’s teeth flashed in a grin of fierce happiness, so white in his black beard. “And he ain’t never going to be, by thunder, not with you to help me. No thanks to that murdering son of a whore.”

“Oh,” she said.

The tide was advancing, pouring around her and waving her hair out in a fan. She didn’t seem to notice. The blue fire crackled on the foam.

“Time for you to go back aboard, love. Nice dry clothes for you, and a nap, eh, and then wouldn’t you like to see yer man? He’s all mended, and sleeping peaceful in his tank,” said the Captain.

Mendoza nodded.

“That’s my good girl.” The Captain drew back, encouraging her to rise. She sat up unsteadily; got to her feet. She swayed a moment, streaming with seawater, wreathed in flames the color of sapphires.

“I’m different,” she said, in confusion.

“Ain’t you, though?” the Captain agreed. He leaned down and kissed
her, tenderly, between her eyes. “Come on, mother. You come home with me, now. We’ll take good care of him.”

They walked back to Alec’s ship and went aboard.

After a while it put about, and sailed away from that place.