The Machine's Child (Company) (7 page)

Alec, who had had the opportunity to look into more mirrors than the other two men, understood first and grunted as though he’d been punched. Edward managed to smile.

“You know, I do believe you’re right,” he said. “Do you suppose we’re related, somehow?”

“Not a doubt in my mind,” said the other. “You’ve got some of our genetic material. So the Company’s trying again, huh? I knew they’d come around in the end. Well, this feels like a birthday or something! Can I offer you a beer?”

“No, thank you.” Edward kept smiling. “But please indulge yourself, by all means.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Marco, and sidled past him to reach out to the refrigerator. He began to smile, too, a funny little smile that stiffened Edward’s spine. Neither of them were turning their backs on the other.

Marco held up a beer in a salute—Edward had calculated its suitability as a weapon in a microsecond—and twisted its neck off.

“To the Old Guard!” he said, and drank.

“To the Old Guard,” said Edward. “And its last bastion. So this is what they’ve got you doing, is it?” He gestured at the table and its writhing occupant.

“That’s right,” Marco said, belching. He wiped foam from his mustache. “Reaching for the unreachable star. Every time I think I’ve figured out a way to make one of the little bastards die, they reroute or regrow or whatever—and I’m back where I started.”

“You seem to have damaged this one pretty badly,” Edward said, strolling around the steel table, to put it between them under pretext of examining what lay there. Alec had his eyes shut tight. Nicholas, weeping, couldn’t look away.

“It always starts out easy,” Marco said, setting down the beer. “They come here wanting to die in the first place. The sense of guilt—for whatever reason—is strong enough to override the basic defense programming. They let me strap them down, and then there’s nothing they can do but go along for the ride.

“That’s the honeymoon, then, that’s when I can take off their arms or their legs and ask them questions about what they’re experiencing. Only problem is, when I’ve worked on them long enough so they’ve lost voluntary control, the involuntary reflexes kick in, and those are unbeatable. So far,” he added, reaching for his beer again.

“There are no poisons?” Edward frowned down at the subject.

“None. Their systems neutralize them.”

“But—surely if you removed the heart—?”

“They start growing new ones. I could do that with this thing.” Marco pointed with the beer. “You know what would happen? He’d fugue out, and I’d put him back in his box and pump in bioretardant to keep the heart from growing back, and it wouldn’t—but nothing else would happen. The biomechanicals in his system would fight the retardant to a standstill. If enough time passed, they’d start converting molecules from the bioretardant into new tissue! He’d still be alive in there, shut down, until the next time I thought of something to try.”

“How tedious.” Edward swallowed.

“It is. For the first few thousand years I used to just whittle away at them, until finally they were down to the skulls. That’s where the last defense action gets fought, you see?
Nothing gets into their skulls.
Can’t penetrate the things. Can’t crush them, either.”

“Really?” Edward looked up.

“Oh yes.” Marco grinned, leaning across the table companionably. He jostled his subject in doing so. It went into a fit of silent shrieking. He ignored it and had another sip of beer. “I’ll bet you haven’t been briefed on this, but because you’re some kind of little brother, I’ll let you in on a secret. It isn’t the design of an immortal’s skull that makes it impenetrable. It isn’t even the decapitation support package in there. It’s the fact that it incorporates its own time transcendence field.”

“Fascinating.” Edward attempted to appear intrigued. He felt the focus of attention that meant that the Captain was listening and recording.

“Swear to God. Inside their skulls, existence is always just a split-second out of phase with the rest of the universe. No matter when I go in to try and saw one of them open, they’re always in some other
when
just as soon as I do, and nothing happens. Well, to them. Saw blades explode, or turn to rust flakes in my hand. This is why you can lop off our heads, but you can’t kill us,” Marco said. His smile widened, became slightly malicious as he regarded Edward. “And you can bet our masters won’t install this stuff in
you,
little brother. It doesn’t matter to them if you die; they can always make more of you. But you’re probably too well indoctrinated to mind that, I guess.”

“Naturally.” Edward smiled back. “What about fire?”

“I’ll tell you about fire.” Marco drained his beer and flung the container out through the door. “I thought, what if I dumped one of their skulls in a raging volcano? I didn’t have one handy, of course, but I dug a pit out there and filled it with everything I could think of. Special-ordered liquid fuel, solid fuel, all the flammable junk in the world. Lit it and had to jump back: it roared up two stories tall, singed my beard right off to the roots, good and hot like Hell is supposed to be. Burned for two days down, consuming the rock underneath it. I was almost afraid this island was going to sink. But I’d created a nice white-hot inferno in its heart, so on the second day I loaded up my little friends into a wheelbarrow.

“Come on, kids, I yelled, we’re going for a ride! Must have been ten skulls in there, ten old deathless ones holed up inside their ferroceramic caves. I took them out and tipped them into the holocaust. Boom! Something jerked at the fabric of space and time, I can tell you, and I thought I’d done it at last. I danced around that pit, I was so happy. Then I was thirsty, so I went for another beer, but you know what I saw when I looked in through the door?

“There they were, all ten of them, lined up on a shelf like so many coconuts, staring at me with their sockets.

“Man, I was pissed,” Marco said, standing and stretching. “And you know what the worst part of it was? Within two days they were growing tissue back. All the fire had done was scour away the bioretardant.”

“How very frustrating for you,” said Edward. Marco shrugged.

“It’s a job,” he said. “Not so bad, really. The work is fun and I can tinker with my little hobbies. What do you think of my generator? The wind vanes weren’t reliable, and I had all these immortal parts lying around, and I thought—”

“Put them to some use, yes, really rather clever of you,” said Edward. “Well. As interesting as this is, I need to attend to business, I’m afraid.”

Marco’s smile widened, showing his enormous long teeth, and his eyes took on a shine like broken glass.

“That’s right, your business,” he said brightly. “You came for Mendoza. Yes, I remember that one. Funny, though, you know? In all the ages I’ve been here, not once has the Company ever called any of them back. This is a little unusual.”

“So is Mendoza,” said Edward. “As I daresay you must have discovered.”

“Yes indeed.” Marco pushed back from the table and stood. “Crome Girl. How did
she
ever slip by their notice? I bet somebody thinks they’ve found a way to harness Crome’s, huh? So they need her back for experiments?”

“Something like that,” Edward said.

“Well, well.” Marco sidled off toward the racks of shelves. “Let’s go see if we can find her.”

The racks were no closer together than bookshelves in a library, but Marco was so wide he was obliged to turn sideways as he went along between them. Edward followed slowly, acutely aware of the possibilities of a trap. He had the exit at his back, at least, and Marco was at a comparative disadvantage in that he had very little room. So intent was Edward on planning his strike that it did not register on him that they were not walking past cell doors: only steel coffins.

It registered on Alec and Nicholas, though, pulled along unwillingly as they were. Alec began to curse. Nicholas stumbled after him in silence. Then he cried out and froze, arresting their progress until Edward yanked them on again.

What the shrack is it?
Alec turned to him.

I made this place!
Nicholas looked horrified.

What?

Thy Spirit said it. I testified in the flame where I burned, and set in motion this long coil, this hellish circumstance that bore this Company!

Lad, it ain’t true. And even if it was, now ain’t the time to think about it.

All this place is mine,
said Nicholas as though he hadn’t heard the Captain,
and none but I set her on the path that led her here.
He stared along the narrow aisle, row upon row of steel coffins, and heard now clearly the faint terrible sounds that came from within them. The coffins bore brass plates engraved with the names of their occupants, just as though they were intended to be tidily buried.

They came to the very end of the long passage, far from the light, and Marco groped in the shadows and dust. “She ought to be around here somewhere,” he said. He pulled out a box, peered at the name. “No . . .”

Edward, lad, this is where we do it. He can’t get away to either side!

I know. Let him find her first.

“Hold on,” grunted Marco, dropping into a crouch. “Here she is, down on the floor.”

Now, son, now!

“The Botanist Mendoza,” said Marco with satisfaction, pulling out a box.

It was no more than three feet long.

Nicholas moaned, and Alec hid his mouth with his hands. Edward stared, unbelieving: but there was the brass plate, and as Marco brushed the dust away Edward saw plainly that the name engraved on it was mendoza.

“I’d almost forgotten she was back here,” said Marco, wiping off cobwebs. “She got too dangerous to work on. I don’t think I’ve touched her in the last nine centuries, to be honest.”

“H-how long?” said Edward.

Marco looked up into his white face.

An infinite second passed. Edward could hear the Captain cursing, in a really astonishing way for an artificial intelligence. There’d been confusion over the transit entry date, hadn’t there?
Take your best guess,
he’d told the Captain.

“Ohh,” Marco said, as his eyes began to fill with horrific mirth. “
Now
I know who you are.”

Edward, for God’s sake shoot him!

But Edward, just at that moment, wanted to die.

“You’re her mortal lover,” said Marco, gloating. “Oh, yes, I know about you. I get all their life stories, you know, in our long sessions together. All the intimate details. All the little secrets. I open their hearts, you could say, I get to know them all so well. I knew
her
! Would you like to know how intimately?

“Look, here she is.” He grinned, holding up the box. “Still waiting for you. Quite a romantic rendezvous, isn’t it?” His eyes went wide suddenly.

“And you’re—My God. You’re the Hangar Twelve Man, too, aren’t you?” The laughter died out of his face, to be replaced with a sort of stern and holy joy, far more terrible to see. He rose slowly from his crouch, gripping the box tight.

“At last,” he said. “Oh, God of Battles,
at last
! You know what I was created for, little brother? To punish the wicked. To bring justice to the slaughterers of innocents. That was my work. They took away my work and set me here, carving parts off these poor things that never did any real evil in their lives, compared to the likes of you! The only mistake this one ever made was to save your life, so you could take the bomb to Mars Two. And she suffered for it, while you got away. But here you are, now. Delivered into my hands.”

He advanced on Edward through the darkness, his eyes glowing. Alec whimpered; Edward backed away unsteadily. Marco’s voice had dropped to a croon, soft and hypnotic.

“You can’t live with it, can you? That’s really why you came here. You know you deserve to lie on one of these shelves beside her. Think of the families who died in Mars Two, the colonists, their little children, think of what went through their heads when they looked up, and saw the mountain opening in a gout of fire, and knew there was nowhere they could possibly run. Three thousand mortal souls. Oh, little brother, how that must eat at your heart. You were made with a conscience, you’re a
good
man. You’re so very sorry, but you can never be sorry enough, can you?”

No,
gasped Alec,
No, he’s right—I should have died—

“I know how it hurts. You need me, little brother. I’m the only one who can set it right. Come and be punished, boy. I’ll keep you alive, you can’t imagine how long, long enough to know what they felt, every one of them. We’ll see they get justice, you and I. Come now. Come to my arms.”

Alec lurched toward him convulsively. Edward and Nicholas felt their retreat arrested by his forward movement.

COMMANDER BELL-FAIRFAX! YOU DAMNABLE COWARD, FIRE ON THE ENEMY!
roared a voice like a cannon blast in Edward’s ear. The blowpipe was in his hand. The dart flew straight at Marco’s throat, unprotected above his left arm that still clutched Mendoza’s coffin.

It never got there. Too fast to be seen, Marco’s right hand intercepted it. He opened his fist and stared down at the little dart, driven into his palm by the force of his grab.

“What the hell was this supposed to be?” he said, chuckling. “What did you imagine would take me down? Curare? Boomslang venom? Cyanide?
No, no.” He flicked it to the floor. “I’m an immortal, you fool.” He held up his palm, displaying the bright drop of blood that welled there. As Edward’s gaze was pulled to it the hand shot forward, faster than a cobra striking, and caught Edward’s right wrist. Marco twisted it. There was the sound of bone snapping. He did not let go but barreled forward, dragging Edward writhing and struggling behind him, out through the shelves, battering him semiconscious against them as they went. Alec and Nicholas were pulled after Edward like insubstantial shadows, though each felt the pain like a spike driven through his own wrist.

“Move over, Grigorii Efimovitch,” Marco said, shoving the table’s occupant to one side. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry than you now!” He swung Edward up on the table and Nicholas was helpless there beside him, cursing and fighting without effect, and Alec lay panting on the other side. He looked up into a ghastly parody of his own face, into his own cold pale eyes.