The Machine's Child (Company)

by Kage Baker

  No, it was the Brotherhood of the Coast, that loosely organized multinational gang of privateers and pirates. The privateers had licenses and investors backing what they did, the pirates hadn’t, and that was about all there was to distinguish between them. Moreover, a treaty or a fit of pique on the part of an ambassador could shift a man’s professional status in an hour. It was the veneer of respectability on privateering, however, that legally enabled the British holding Jamaica to, as it were, invite the big chicken-killing dog into the yard to protect its sheep.

  A fortress was built on a wide sandy hook of land that projected into the bay opposite the future site of Kingston. A crude and violent little city grew up around it, full of all things necessary to attract vicious clientele and make them happy repeat customers. Taverns and brothels without number, gaming houses, lodging houses, merchants eager to convert plundered goods into cash, purveyors and providers of every item the discriminating cutthroat might need when going on the account, warehouses in which to store it all, and churches for the salvation of any souls that might crawl in between drinking binges. It was Port Royal, and it was deemed the wickedest and most impudent place since Sodom or Gomorrah.

  It was also a fantastic commercial success. So the deal with the Devil stood, and though the rest of Jamaica—which had been settled by God-fearing Puritans, mind!—wrung its hands in shame, it was also able to farm its sugar cane without fear of foreign invasion, and pocket the profits.

  Mrs. Ansolabehere’s situation was far less morally painful. Dr. Ansolabehere was of a most agreeable, not to say docile nature, as husbands went. He had appeared in the common room of the Goat and Compasses one night in 1660 with no belongings other than a small sea chest and the clothes on his back. After a meal, a warming glass of rum, and an hour’s charming conversation, he had somehow taken up the position in Miss Venables’s life that he had occupied, with few interruptions, ever since.

  And really she could not, in any way, admit that she regretted the nuptial arrangement. In addition to his considerable proficiency in the arts of love, Dr. Ansolabehere was quiet and clean, and never attempted to exert control over the household although he was, as she discovered, an excellent financial advisor. He was a capable surgeon (which even the most genteel of taverns required now and then), did not drink to excess, and tolerated her occasional infidelities with the greatest amiability. Best of all, he had an absolutely reliable remedy for the Pox.

  There were only two peculiarities about the man: his obstinate refusal to market the remedy, which Mrs. Ansolabehere found most vexing, for it might have earned them more than six sugar plantations if sold freely in Port Royal; and his sea chest.

  The sea chest was quite small, quite heavy, and never opened. Indeed, as far as Mrs. Ansolabehere knew its lock had no key. This need not present any difficulty for a determined woman with the proper hairpin, but Dr. Ansolabehere seldom let it out of his sight. Moreover, he had informed her that its contents were private; and Mrs. Ansolabehere had heard enough folk tales, and after all had seen into enough sea chests at her age, to respect his wishes utterly in this regard.

  However, he had made one curious request. If at any time during his temporary absence from the house the sea chest should begin to whistle, she was to let him know immediately, regardless of where he might be or what he might be doing. So firmly had he insisted upon this, and with such an unpleasant and unaccustomed light of adamance in his black eyes, that Mrs. Ansolabehere had been quite unsettled for some hours afterward.

  Judge, then, with what vexation Mrs. Ansolabehere received the news from Caroline, her maid, that there was an odd sound coming from Dr. Ansolabehere’s room; especially since this news was conveyed whilst Mrs. Ansolabehere was greeting none other than the Lieutenant Governor himself, Captain Sir Henry Morgan, who had arrived with a party of friends and was intent on aggravating his dropsy with a few hours’determined application of Mrs. Ansolabehere’s best rum.

  “What?” she hissed over her shoulder at Caroline.

  “It be squealing, ma’am,” repeated Caroline.

  “Why then, go—go poke under the bed with a broom, sure,” Mrs. Ansolabehere said. “Away! My apologies, Sir Henry. Here is my best table, with a cool breeze from the door, and here is John to serve. Will you dine, too? For I assure you I have an excellent hotpot on the fire.”

  “No damn’d soup,” growled Sir Henry, lifting his haggard face. “I’ve enough water in me as it is.” He did not resemble the dumpy self-satisfied fellow depicted in Exquemelin’s notorious Buccaneers of America (a careful examination of its illustrations will reveal that all the pirates in that lurid compendium seem to be drawn from one model) but rather the other attributed likeness, the shadowy three-quarter portrait of the dark saturnine man in red, smiling enigmatically as the Mona Lisa. “Rum, madam! And ginger biscuits if you’ve got ’em.”

  “To be sure,” Mrs. Ansolabehere said. “Sent hot to the table, sir, within the hour!”

  She and Annie, the cook, were frantically getting a pan of ginger biscuits into the oven when Caroline reappeared in the doorway of the kitchen, clutching a broom.

  “It be still squealing, ma’am,” she said, close to tears. “And it ain’t under the doctor’s bed, ma’am. It be the little chest what’s squealing, ma’am.”

  Upon hearing this, Mrs. Ansolabehere swore an oath, gathered up her skirts, and ran upstairs to see for herself.

  There could be no doubt: the little sea chest was whistling where it sat in its accustomed place against the wall on the other side of the bed. Not a live whistling, as though a tiny man or demon were in there, but a shrill mindless noise like an ungreased axle on an oxcart. Mrs. Ansolabehere poked the chest with her foot a few times, experimentally, but the sound changed not in pitch nor stopped; so Mrs. Ansolabehere sensibly shut the door on it and went back downstairs, where she bid Abraham the ostler ride to find Dr. Ansolabehere and give him the news.

  Joseph was rather enjoying lying in wait for dreadful and bloody revenge. He had a nice dry place to sleep, decent food, pleasant enough mortal company, and an adequate sex life. All he had to do was stitch up a cutlass wound every now and then and keep a good supply of penicillin on hand.

  He had found a reasonably dry limestone cave and fitted it up as a primitive laboratory, which was where he was, preparing another batch of his miracle cure, at the moment the alarm in his sea chest went off.

  Probably he was subconsciously aware it had gone off, for he found himself unaccountably restless. Why should he be uneasy? Budu certainly wasn’t in any danger. He was recovered enough now to deal with the situation if intruders entered the bunker under Mount Tamalpais in Joseph’s absence. Moreover Joseph had gotten the impression that his father was looking forward to a little peace and quiet in which to continue his relentless perusal of classified Company files.

  Nor was there any likelihood the time-transcendence container would be discovered, not where Joseph had concealed it. No, his edginess probably came from a pessimistic sense that sooner or later, according to Murphy’s Law, the damned alarm would go off when he was here in his secret cave, the one place nobody would be able to find him.

  And, of course, this was precisely what had occurred.

  What was in the sea chest was equipment that constantly monitored the signals being broadcast through the geosynchronous Company satellite immediately overhead. Budu had identified for him the telltale resonance that would indicate Alec Checkerfield’s AI was piggybacking its signal through that satellite, interstitially hidden. The equipment in the chest was programmed to sound an alarm the moment it detected that resonance. The alarm would mean that Alec had come at last to Port Royal, as Budu had predicted he must, sooner or later.

  But the Pox was in full flower at the moment, and Joseph had a lot of penicillin to prepare. What with one thing and another it was tropical dusk, full of fireflies and perfume, before Joseph came trudging back to the Goat and Compasses.

  “Doctor.” Abr
aham came running out to meet him. “Oh, sir, we been searching for you these four hours! Ma’am says you must come straightaway.”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Joseph, instantly alert.

  Before Abraham could make reply, however, a snarling figure lurched into the doorway and fixed Joseph with an unwavering stare, which must have been difficult given that he was seeing at least four of Joseph.

  “You. Doctor! I wan’ bleeding, d’y’hear?” croaked Captain Sir Henry Morgan.

  “Well, of course, Sir Henry,” Joseph said cheerily, assuming that a drunken and belligerent Lieutenant Governor was the emergency for which he had been summoned. “At once. Shall we retire to a private room?”

  “But, Doctor—” said Abraham.

  “Naaah,” said Sir Henry, staggering out into the yard in his shirtsleeves. He waved an arm at the tavern dismissively. “Too bloody hot innere. Le’s do it here.” He collapsed on a bench.

  “A wise choice, Sir Henry,” said Joseph, opening his bag and rummaging through it. “The evening air is blessedly refreshing, do you not find it so? And, I’m sure, will speedily revive one, should one grow faint in the course of the operation. Abraham, fetch me a bowl from the kitchen.”

  “But, Doctor—” said Abraham.

  “Not gonna fucking faint!” said Sir Henry, outraged. “Good God! Good God, what d’y’take me for, man? Y’know what I done at Panama? Eh? Y’think I’m a man to swound at the sighta li’l blood?”

  “No indeed, Sir Henry,” Joseph said, rolling up the Lieutenant Governor’s sleeve and swabbing down his inner arm with a handkerchief soaked in spirits. He glanced up as Abraham came hurrying out with the bowl, followed by Mrs. Ansolabehere, who remained near the door, making impatient faces at him. “I meant rather my poor man here might faint. Here, Abraham, hold it close. Wife, I have come, what more can I do?” he snapped at Mrs. Ansolabehere, who straightened up in annoyance and decided she’d done all that spousal obedience required of her. She turned on her heel and went back inside.

  Joseph deftly opened a vein and listened for a while as Sir Henry expounded ramblingly on his personal theories for the cure of dropsy, which seemed to consist principally of restricting his diet to warming substances that might drive out all his watery humors by their fiery and subtle operation on the blood. Highly spiced food was therefore certain to do him good, as was rum, being a flammable spirit, so if he could just manage to drink enough of it . . .

  By the time Joseph had Sir Henry’s arm bandaged and escorted him back to his party, night had fallen. It wasn’t until he was trudging through the hall on his way to the staircase that Mrs. Ansolabehere was able to lean out of the kitchen door and inform him:

  “Your sea chest is whistling, husband.”

  What a look of consternation on his face! With a piercing yelp of dismay he was gone, and she heard his thundering footsteps as he sped up the stairs and across the hall to his room. A second or so later the footsteps came thundering back down, accompanied by the high-pitched whistling, which was now a little louder and more insistent. Mrs. Ansolabehere stepped out in the hall to explain that she had tried to tell him, but she never had that satisfaction: for Joseph, bearing the sea chest in his arms like a crying child, was across the common room and out the door before she could utter a word. There was a clatter of hoofbeats starting up suddenly and fading out as someone galloped away.

  “Ma’am.” Abraham ran in, eyes wide. He was carrying Joseph’s long wig in his hands, having been hit in the face by it as Joseph cast it off. He came close to her and said in an undertone, “Doctor’s just rode off on Captain Marley’s horse without a by-y’leave!”

  Mrs. Ansolabehere uttered another oath, rather worse than the one she had uttered earlier in the day. Putting on her most inviting smile, she grabbed up an onion bottle of the cheaper sort of rum and advanced on the table where Sir Henry and his guests (including Captain Marley) were still carousing.

  “Now, my fine gentlemen, what about a dish of turtle stew with peppers, hotter than Hell and sweeter than Heaven? And more rum all round? Come, it is a black day when I cannot treat such heroes in my poor establishment!”

  Those present who were still capable of understanding what she had just said raised a hoarse cheer. She thumped down the bottle on their table and hurried back to the kitchen for a tureen of stew, hoping to God her husband brought back Captain Marley’s horse before he sobered up enough to notice it was gone.

  THAT SAME EVENING IN PORT ROYAL, 1682 AD

  There it is, the Captain said. What d’you think?

  Mendoza, in a gown of emerald silk and lace that left her shoulders bare as the heroine of any pirate film, sought in the ruin of her memory for comparison. It told her only that Port Royal looked like any other little waterfront city she had seen. It had brick houses, crowded along narrow lanes and alleys. It stank badly, too.

  Alec gaped and wondered. It didn’t look anything like New Port Royal, which was largely an enormous outdoor shopping mall built out on pilings over the archaeological site. “It looks so old,” he said.

  Well, it ain’t. It ain’t even been here thirty year, and it’s only got another ten to go afore the earthquake sinks it. Mighty short space of time to get the reputation it has, aye; but if you wanted to catch yer-self a disease or lose a few thousand doubloons in an hour, I reckon this here’s the place you’d come. Now, you ain’t staying no longer than it takes to do the deed, matey, understand?

  “We’ll be back by twenty-three-hundred hours,” Mendoza promised, watching Alec as he went to the davits and vaulted into the the boat. He was dressed for the occasion in knee breeches and seaboots and a full white shirt, and over all a long coat of brocade edged in gold, in which she thought he was desperately handsome.

  Under this dashing ensemble Edward had insisted that Alec wear his full complement of stealth weapons, so there were at least three knives, a garrote, and a mid-nineteenth-century pistol on which to rely in the event of trouble, to say nothing of the brace of flintlock pistols and cutlass that Alec wore openly. All the same, Mendoza and the Captain had agreed between them that any mortal threatening Alec would be rendered harmless, one way or another, before the need for weapons arose.

  And where’s the toy, now, lass?

  Mendoza placed a demure hand in her bosom and withdrew something that looked like a rock, roughly the size and shape of an egg. There was absolutely no indication, looking at it, that it was full of what resembled gold paint; or that on a certain day in 2355 it would fulfill its potential and build itself into an antigravity missile. No marine archaeologist encountering it in the sunken ruins beforehand would bother to bring an ordinary lump of stone to the surface. With a smile she tucked it back out of sight and accepted Alec’s hand as he helped her over the side. The dolphins cruised to and fro in an inconspicuous sort of way, scanning the waters.

  Alec rowed out into the harbor, under the hot sky of Jamaica that he had known all his life, over the familiar waters of Kingston Bay that he’d crossed a hundred times: but there before him in the pink evening light lay the utterly alien place of his dreams, enchanting and deadly.

  He stared around as they began to pass between the ships. He knew most of them had to be merchant vessels really, and none of them flew black flags in port. All the same, some had seen fighting, bore the scars of powder and ball. They were stripped-down and sleek, lines taut, everything businesslike and efficient. Though the black mouths of their guns were hollow and silent, they exhaled menace. It was terrifying to pass them.

  They tied up at the Queen Street dock and walked ashore. Edward brusquely took control as they neared their first group of obvious buccaneers, picturesque, filthy, and very drunk, happily looking for trouble. One glance into Edward’s cold eyes, though, and they crossed to the other side of the lane.

  There were pretty black women selling food: roasted yams, bullas and fried cakes, cut coconuts ready to be sipped and nibbled from, star-apples and plantains. There were resp
ectable shops with wares displayed in their respectable windows: blue willow china, porcelain dogs, Dutch faience ware to catch the eye of the idling shopper for an impulse purchase. Banal and ordinary, until one reflected that some ship had been assailed in blood and screaming and fire for these consumer goods.

  There were houses three and even four stories high, that had clearly grown in segments as the fortunes of their owners had leapt unsteadily upward. At their windows, bawds and strumpets watched the passers below in languid boredom, or leaned down their long curls and the occasional badly-secured tit and called enticements into the street. Mendoza sneered at them, clinging firmly to Edward’s arm.

  The churches looked as rawly new, as badly planned, as grubbily busy as the rest of the place. Nicholas regarded them in wonder. He was not so much amazed by the fact that prostitutes and thieves were flocking in to evening prayer (who could be more in need of salvation, after all?), but there was a Roman Catholic church within blocks of a Protestant one and both were doing about equal business, coexisting peacefully.

  Alec gasped at the stench, and then at the displayed carcasses, as they came upon the meat market. Edward was amused at his reaction and Nicholas bewildered, for it was no worse than any meat market he had ever seen. The reek of raw sewage and unwashed bodies was fairly palpable, too, but the pleasant smells were also formidable: perfumes strong enough to knock you down breathing out of the apothecaries’ shops, suppers cooking in the taverns and bakehouses, tobacco smoke, cloves, sandalwood, spilled rum.

  As the night purpled and lamps began to flare, they found themselves looking into a goldsmith’s window, admiring the rings and rough-cut jewels in settings.