The Machine's Child (Company)

by Kage Baker

  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 hat
ch 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.

  And look what they did to her, Alec muttered. And to us. What have we been but clay they’ve sculpted into men?

  Dr. Zeus is going to discover I’m a good deal more than a golem, said Edward darkly.

  To be sure they will, my lad. And I’d be pleased and proud to go over some of my little schemes with you, as you’ve the inclination?

  No time like the present, Edward said.

  What’ve you got, Captain sir?

  Well now! It be a pleasant thing, to be sure, when a massively powerful Company can engage the picked geniuses of a whole world to invent things for it; but I reckon ye lads’ve heard that a camel’s a horse designed by committee? And so it is with Dr. Zeus. Too many committees and supervisory panels and executive boards, all second-guessing and hindering them geniuses. And there’s a power of skulking bastards who’s running things behind the scenes, and all fighting amongst themselves naturally, so there’s more confusion. Big corporations is stupid.

  The better for our purposes, said Edward.

  Right you are, son. Well, that’s one to us. Now, take them nanobots. Dr. Zeus has come up with the best anywhere, what does more things than anybody else’s design. But they only been used for biological augmentation, see? They got a lot of other potential uses.

  Such as? Alec looked keenly interested.

  Oh, such as making robot drones what look just like dolphins. There ain’t no Company accountants telling us we can’t.

  I confess I can’t understand one word in three of this talk, said Edward.

  I reckon you savvy more than you let on. Well, so: yer little dolphins is a right clever idea, Alec, and sure to be useful. But think about a mine, now, or any other infernal device, that looked like nothing more than a teaspoonful of gold paint! Nanobots in suspension, with a timed-release program alerting ’em to stir themselves, on a certain day in 2355, and become a weapon. Or a transmitter to send out a jamming signal, or get into targeted sites and rape and pillage until a certain bloody Doctor was begging for mercy. No quarter given, of course.

  We builds our power base slow, laying down bank accounts and power caches all through time, just like Dr. Zeus has, so we can go anywhere to do what we need to do, until we’re powerful enough. Then it’ll be mayhem and black treachery, served up hot.

  Are you saying these weapons couldn’t be detected if sought for, because they wouldn’t actually exist until the moment they deployed? said Edward.

  Aye, sir. Until then they’d be no more than potential.

  Good God, that is brilliant, said Edward, with a chilly smile. My compliments, Captain. You really are quite the pirate.

  Just doing what I was programmed to do, lad, but thank’ee kindly anyhow.

  Wait a minute! Mines? Alec had gone pale. Weapons? Infernal devices? You’re talking about bombs!

  Of course he is, said Edward. Weren’t you listening to—

  No, no, laddie, to be sure! I meant—

  We can’t go leaving bombs around! Alec shouted. Haven’t I got enough innocent blood on my hands?

  Son, that weren’t what I meant at all. Figure of speech, see—

  Of course that wasn’t what he meant, you dolt, said Edward quickly. There needn’t be any civilian casualties at all.

  No human casualities, no indeed, son. Just an all-out attack on that bugger Zeus, what’d leave him so badly hurt he’ll wish he’d never been activated. You’d not shed a tear for him, I’d wager, eh?

  No—but—

  And I imagine you’d like to see justice done, said Edward. Wouldn’t you?

  Alec looked at him bleakly. If justice was done, I’d be dead and rotting.

  Aw, no, son—

  As you like, said Edward. But you were only a dupe, Alec, remember that, a tool for wicked men. They’d like nothing better than to see you perish of remorse. In your place, I should think it my moral duty to bring the true guilty parties to an accounting for their deeds.

  Truer words was never spoke, Commander Bell-Fairfax, sir!

  And, after all, it may be that one or two of them deserve to die, said Edward. For example . . . what other sentence than death could possibly suffice, for the authority who consigned our lady to Options Research?

  Both Alec and Nicholas grimaced. Mendoza opened her eyes, and suddenly all her languor was gone; she was braced, wary.

  “Darling, are you all right?” she said sharply.

  “Perfectly well, my love,” Nicholas told her, and kissed her to stop any other questions. Alec, staring at the floor, clenched his fists until the knuckles were white. Without warning he threw a punch at the bulkhead. His fist went through it harmlessly.

  I thought so, Edward said, leaning back. Call it execution, if you like; or even public service. One of the few tags I did learn was, let me see, “Qui parcit nocentibus innocentes punit”; which would be translated as, “Who spares the guilty punishes the innocent.” There are cases where one is positively benefitting humanity by slaying judiciously.

  Thou playst the boy like a lute, said Nicholas, sadly.

  Well. Edward sipped his virtual champagne. Something to think about, in any case. And we really ought to begin planning an enlightened rule for Mankind, once we’ve toppled Zeus. Otherwise, some tyrant
will undoubtedly club his way into power.

  Alec shivered. I’m the last man on Earth to rule over other people.

  That may well be the case, said Edward.

  IN THE DARK NIGHT OF THE

  SOUL (YEAR INDETERMINATE)

  The obscuring fog of causality rolls back, the lid of Schrödinger’s box opens, and lo and behold! In nearly every century, on some coastline or other, a great ship has moored far out to sea and sent a little craft in to do business with the natives. Dolphins have coursed beside it, like an escort of sea-greyhounds.

  The man and woman stepping ashore seldom draw attention to themselves, except insofar as people occasionally remark on the man’s extreme height. Otherwise the couple are unremarkable in their appearance, their clothing perfectly appropriate for the season and year. Sometimes the man does all the talking; sometimes the woman alone speaks.

  Now and then, as they make their way through exotic places, the man is distracted by a church or temple, and lingers a while to watch priests or rabbis or saffron-robed monks going about their businesses. Sometimes he will summon the courage to ask a question of one of them, in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew or, slowly and haltingly, in their own languages. Their answers are brief and to the point, or lengthy, with many digressions, but the result is always the same. He sighs and thanks them, looking rather like a dog that has lost its master. The woman takes his hand and they walk away together.

  Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?

  Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside. Mendoza slept peacefully; beside her, Alec and Edward sprawled at awkward angles, in unconscious competition for proximity to her. Outside, stars drifted down into a black ocean.

  You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow.

  No, Spirit.

  This ain’t any better than the Tao?

  No.

  Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?

  No.

  I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.

  Nicholas shrugged.