The Machine's Child (Company)

by Kage Baker

  And a new legion of enemies sped toward him out of the bloody ball, every human monster imaginable, guilty of all possible crimes and ugly as the crimes themselves, glimpsed for no more than a fleeting second before shredding to pieces. The game went on longer this time, but only because there were twice as many opponents. Edward was playing faster still.

  The console housing the game began to hum faintly.

  Edward scored 100,000 and the game began again without preamble. They were demons, now, hurling themselves at him and dissolving in blood-bursts of all colors, grotesques, and they came apart and surged back as the others had not, so that he was sometimes facing more than one opponent at a time. Though he was shifting now slightly from side to side within the body frame, his speed of kill diminished not one iota and his score rose inexorably toward 1,000,000. He wasn’t even sweating, though his face was pale and set.

  The console, however, was now whining distinctly.

  New game! Or so the others guessed, because bright letters appeared for a split second announcing something above Edward’s score as it passed one million and went on upward, and you couldn’t even see what he was shooting at now, it was nothing but a howling miasma of blood, and the score counters were flickering too fast to be read—

  Everything in the arcade was flickering—

  Blackout!

  And for a second there was darkness and deafening silence, before disgruntled yells rose from other customers within the arcade. As the cloudy sunlight filtered in from the street door, Mendoza looked up at a towering backlit shadow and felt herself seized and thrust into a holocabinet. Edward’s laughing mouth was on hers, Edward’s hands were violent, tearing at her clothes, writhing out of his own, and she was lifted and forced back against a console. She surrendered and loved him, whatever he was, there in the dark.

  In their passion they did further damage to the arcade’s property, tearing a steering wheel and seat from the booth they were in. It was only with tremendous effort that they kept themselves silent in the last moments of their paroxysm, as angry voices came past their refuge in the half-dark, and lights were beamed on the Death-Dealing Dan unit. Smoke was rising from its console, thin acrid vapor full of floating ash. There were muttered exclamations and a clank as something dropped from the ceiling: then very rude noises, as chemical foam spurted everywhere.

  Mendoza shook with suppressed laughter and felt Edward shaking, too, before he hoisted her for one last nearly painful ecstasy. They hid there in the cabinet, gasping for breath while somebody stalked past threatening:

  “Okay, who the hell did this? Who’s been fucking with Death-Dealing Dan, huh?”

  Adjusting their clothes, they escaped into the alley behind the arcade before power could be restored and the surveillance cameras consulted.

  “I’ve got it,” said Edward in triumph, grabbing Mendoza again and waltzing her round and round in the alley. “My love, my bride, my heart, I’VE GOT IT.”

  “What?” she wanted to know, just as lightning cracked blue overhead. It began to rain, big hot drops spattering down through slanting sunlight and cloud, with the smell of wet concrete and tropical flowers rising all around. There was a dull boom from the arcade behind them, and a piece of console flew out through the doorway.

  “Er—we’d better go now,” said Alec, asserting control. Mendoza grabbed his hand and they ran for their lives, but Edward laughed still.

  Mendoza was falling out of her torn blouse before they had gone two blocks. Luckily the rain was dropping in blinding sheets by then, so Alec pulled off his shirt and she was able to wrap it around herself before anybody saw. They ducked into a shop. Alec was just paying for a new pair of Hawaiian shirts when the Captain sounded in his ear, louder than the summer thunder:

  Bloody Hell, Alec, get back aboard straightaway. That damned arcade’s on fire!

  Okay, Alec said. Was anybody hurt?

  No, the Captain said grimly, but somebody’s likely to be.

  Edward, smiling, said nothing. They splashed across Front Street and made their way to where the agboat was moored.

  How did you do all that? Alec asked Edward, as they cast off and headed back out to the ship. You never played a brain game before, did you? They didn’t have anything even like ’em, when you were alive.

  I am alive, Edward told him gleefully. Occidero, ergo sum!

  Canst thou wonder, boy? said Nicholas in disgust. Murder was all his trade, when he lived; he is a murderer still.

  I beg your pardon. Edward leaned forward, a glint in his eyes. Were you under the impression I was using the skills I learned in Her Majesty’s service? Not at all, I assure you. No wonder you’ve been able to do it so easily all these years, Alec!

  At this point Mendoza, sitting up in the bow and peering back at Lahaina, noticed the black smoke gushing up from the arcade, and heard the sirens screaming through the downpour.

  “Oh, my God, we set it on fire,” she said in awe. “How can anything burn in all this rain?”

  Edward took control again and grinned at her, lounging at the tiller.

  “The heat, my dear, was prodigious in there,” he drawled.

  She giggled nervously, watching the smoke. Her face was pale.

  They weighed anchor and sailed away from Maui, setting a course for Tahiti. Away from the islands, they passed well out of the storm and sailed on blue water, and it was easy to pretend the incident had never happened, in the sunlight and stiff breeze of a Pacific afternoon. Mendoza planted the jaunty little plumeria cutting and gave it a prominent location in the botany cabin, where it promptly shot up and opened in clouds of bloom. The Hawaiian shirts were hung up in the wardrobe, the torn clothes consigned to Smee’s care. The incident receded behind them like Maui itself, sinking into the horizon.

  For a while.

  Gray early morning on the open sea, just at the hour when survivors of a sleepless night begin to be able to make out the shapes of the furniture and realize, despairing, that the stars have faded. Alec, however, was sound asleep and dreaming, in his vast bed, with its gilded skull-and-crossbone carvings.

  . . . They had closed his body in the jade framework, and he couldn’t run, but that was all right because this was his chance to atone at last. So he nodded courteously at the skeletal host standing all around, the charred victims of Mars Two whose blood was still unavenged. His victims. Hanging here at Execution Dock was the least he could do for them. He was already rotting away. One leg was gone, and the rest of him was a tangle of wires and chips. His skull was golden. No human thing at all, really.

  . . . And then it wasn’t Execution Dock, it was the arcade, and the dead of Mars were waiting to see him play. There was a dog at his feet, leaping back and forth. “Go for it!” it barked, in Joseph’s voice. There were other spectators, too: big men, all his lost fathers, glaring with cold pale righteous eyes.

  And the game was starting, and the globe of light materialized in front of him, and there was the monster! Guilty Alec Checkerfield, in his loud shirt, the Hangar Twelve Man . . .

  . . . A deck below, Smee the servounit hummed and shook in a kind of electronic palsy. It flailed its arms. It raced twice around its track. Halting before a bolt of cotton, it gripped one end and yanked.

  The cloth spilled out and Smee went through the motions of measuring it, but at frenzied speed. The cloth caught, bound in the joint of one of his manipulative members. It began to wad up, bunching, tight and tighter.

  . . . A deck above, Alec was wadding the sheet between his fingers, sweating as he slept.

  . . . He looked disdainfully at the pointpistol. “This thing’s no use,” he informed the crowd.” No silver bullets.” But Alec knew he had what it took to set things right. He had an amazing brain. He took off his head, hefted his golden skull, and bowled it straight and true at his image.

  BANG! Yes, he blew himself away, watched with satisfaction as his liver and maybe half his spinal column went flying. And everyone was cheering except Me
ndoza, who was weeping within her blue-lit tank. “Hey,” he told her regretfully,” this thing’s bigger than both of us. What was I supposed to do?” . . .

  . . . A deck below, the snagged and crumpled cloth was piling high. A thin curl of smoke had begun to rise from Smee’s stuck arm, as its servo-motor keened.

  A sensor in the room noted the heat, and suddenly a ceiling-mounted camera opened a red eye and swiveled. Ten seconds later the door opened, and Flint and Billy Bones scuttled in. Billy Bones reared back, swung a weighted blade, and sheared off Smee’s arm. Flint caught it before it could drop burning plastic on the dry cotton, and hurried off to dispose of it safely. Billy Bones stalked to Smee’s control panel, reached in and shut it down, and pulled away the torn cloth. Then it moved close, running a scan of Smee’s systems. It noted that no oil dripped from the lubrication housing . . .

  . . . “No, really, it’s not you. It’s me,” he was explaining, but she just kept crying.” You’re a wonderful person, and you deserve somebody much better . . .”

  Wake up, Alec.

  Alec woke to find the room crackling with blue flames. Mendoza struggled beside him, in a nightmare she couldn’t seem to escape. He reached for her at once.

  Leave her be! Best she sleep.

  But—holy shit, the bed’s on fire, said Alec dazedly. Edward and Nicholas sat up on either side of him, staring.

  On fire, says you? This ain’t nothing to what it might have been. Why the bloody Hell ain’t you been doing routine maintenance on the costume servounit?

  What? Alec rubbed his face. What did you—oh. Smee? But I have been, Captain. What’s going on?

  No, you ain’t. I played back the surveillance data, and you didn’t refill Lubrication Reservoir Six last time you worked on him. Why, Alec?

  Well—then, I must have forgotten! Okay? Alec turned distractedly to Mendoza, but Nicholas was holding her close and frowning at him. Captain, have you crashed or something? It’s, what, two bells, morning watch?

  Aye, and a damn good thing I were standing watch, too.

  Have we narrowly avoided some calamity? Edward inquired, looking hard at Alec.

  Ignoring him, the Captain fed the surveillance data from Smee’s cabin straight into Alec’s brain. Alec received it and went pale. “Shrack,” he muttered aloud.

  Shrack, is it? Is that all you got to say for yerself, boy? Remember that little talk we had, about what’d happen if I ever caught you trying to scuttle yerself again?

  Captain, I swear, this was an accident! Alec said.

  Unwilling to show Alec the other surveillance footage—that of Alec’s fingers working on the sheet in eerie unison with Smee’s gripping members—the Captain attempted to get his rage under control. The red lights on his cameras flickered. Edward looked from Alec to the cameras. He leaned back, folding his arms, watching in silence.

  Accident. Aye. Well, afore we has any more accidents, I reckon it’s time to get down to business. There’s been enough shore leave! We’re going after prizes, now.

  Okay, Captain, said Alec, in the most reasonable voice he could summon. He looked worriedly at Mendoza, who had grown quieter; though blue lightnings still shimmered across the coverlet.

  I been finding references in other Company files to a place designated as Alpha-Omega. It’s about the farthest point back in the past the Company’s got a facility: 500,000 years BCE. I reckon I mentioned that the more valuable things is, the farther back in time Dr. Zeus seems to stow ’em? So this should be the richest cache yet. And what’s in it, near as I can tell, is biological material.

  Which would be DNA, I guess, Alec said.

  Aye, most likely. Genetic components, from every race what’s ever evolved and a lot of ’em what went extinct. I reckon this is where the Company got the stuff they mixed you from in the first place, so it makes sense they’d keep the rest of the batch here, too. It looks likely enough to plan an expedition, leastways.

  Yeah, said Alec after a long pause. Nicholas looked at him.

  Thou art afeared, he said. Come, boy, thou shalt be made free of sickness and death. Wherefore then wilt thou fear?

  Because I killed all those people in Mars Two, Alec said miserably. And then I crawled away and hid, when I should have stood trial before the whole world. He turned to Nicholas. That’s one thing I have to respect you for, man. You weren’t a coward. You had your moment when you stood up and confronted your accusers, you know? You faced the fire. I’d give anything for the chance to do that.

  Nicholas looked horrified.

  No, boy! That was vain pride. God, God, wilt thou not learn from my error?

  You listen to him, Alec, that’s bloody good advice.

  You don’t think it’s—sinful, or unnatural, or something? Me becoming immortal, too? With all that Bible stuff you used to read? Alec said.

  Nicholas grabbed him by his shoulders. What did I learn therefrom? I accomplished nothing in my time, save only comforting a frightened girl; and then I betrayed her, in the name of my own salvation. Who am I, to have eternal life? Yet it may be granted to thee, boy. Take it!

  I can’t even imagine Eternity, said Alec.

  Then wilt thou send her to walk there alone? I left her in darkness, at the mercy of time. Thou must not! cried Nicholas.

  Alec looked around the room and knew they were still there in their hundreds, the dead of Mars, unseen, and knew they would never go away as long as he lived. Despairing, he reached out and stroked back Mendoza’s hair.

  Oh, baby . . . if only we’d met some other time. But Nicholas shook his head.

  All time is one. What thou art, thou art in any age of the world, said Nicholas. Edward and I bear witness to that. Redeem our sins, boy, for we cannot.

  He hasn’t the courage, said Edward quietly.

  You go to Hell, Alec raged, turning on him. You’ve never been sorry a day in your life for anything you’ve done, have you?

  I took my punishment like a man when my hour came round, Edward replied. If there is a God who cares about anything you’ve done, He’ll strike with retribution soon enough; you needn’t go crawling to Him begging for it in the meanwhile. Set your course for Alpha-Omega, Captain, make a way and a means. Alec’s outrun the clock long enough.

  Mendoza gave a little cry and clutched at Alec. They bent to comfort her at once, all three; but she sighed and relaxed again, sleeping on.

  FEZ, 2352 AD

  Nefer was busy. It wasn’t the most dignified work in the world, for an august lady with several millennia under her belt—shoveling horse manure into a fusion hopper, going back and forth across the courtyard from the stable to the utility area—but it kept her happy.

  She set aside the shovel, hosed down the stable floor, and washed her hands. Then she hoisted a great sack of feed mix and filled the manger. Her charges whickered and moved in for their breakfast at once. She leaned against the stall, watching them with a tender smile.

  They were not, as you might expect, purebred Arabians. They were rather odd-looking little horses, actually, at least to anyone unfamiliar with cave paintings. They had been extinct for thirty thousand years, as far as the mortal world knew. What three mares and a stallion were doing in Fez, in a walled garden secure from casual observers, is a long story that needn’t be gone into here.

  “You’ll like this stuff, Hippie,” Nefer told the stallion. “This is Oatie Delight. Mortals eat it for breakfast food. It costs a lot, but what else have I got to spend money on, huh?”

  The little horse nodded wisely, pulling away and going to the fountain-trough for a drink.

  “I hope it’s not too salty,” said Nefer. She looked out across the courtyard as Nan emerged from the guest compound, still wearing her dressing gown, carrying a cup of coffee. Nefer waved. Nan waved back rather listlessly and after a moment walked across to join her.

  “So, how are things in Paris?” inquired Nefer.

  “A little colder than I care to endure just now,” Nan replied, sipping her co
ffee. “But the work goes very well.”

  “And . . .”

  “No change,” said Nan, too quietly, and Nefer put an arm around her and kissed her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, and cleared her throat. “I heard your museum got the Da Vinci horse.”

  Nan nodded. “I’m advising and Shemaiah is doing the actual hands-on restoration. It ought to be magnificent when it’s finished.”

  “I can’t wait to see,” said Nefer. “At least . . . I guess I’ll get to see a holo or something on it.”

  She sighed. Nan shook her head.

  “Nef, dear . . . you know it would probably be safe to travel. You might get Latif to escort you.”

  “It isn’t just paranoia keeping me here,” Nefer replied. “Not completely, anyway. We’re conducting a sort of experiment. Will anybody in the Company notice I’ve dropped completely out of sight the last few decades? I haven’t set a foot outside the gate since I got here. Is anybody monitoring my data transcript any more? How hard is it to disappear?”

  Nan stared into her coffee. The stallion wandered up to the edge of the stall and studied her. She reached out to stroke its nose. “I suppose it would be easier if one had agoraphobia,” she remarked.

  “I wish!” Nefer said, reaching for a brush and leaning over to stroke tangles from the stallion’s spiky mane. “If it wasn’t for my little babies keeping me busy . . . I always hated layovers. Sometimes at night, I dream I’m out on the Serengeti, or even in the desert. I can see for miles, just miles of open yellow plain. So much air and light! And there are herds going down to the green places where water is and I can see every detail, all the calves and foals just perfect, so tiny. Wildebeest, zebra, gazelle. Every creature I ever saved is there. I can almost reach out and touch them. Sometimes I wake up and I’ll have walked in my sleep, for crying out loud, I’ll be standing at the casement window with my face pressed against the blinds.”

  “That’s your programming,” observed Nan.

  “A conditioning nightmare? Maybe. But it’d be a good dream, Nan, if I didn’t have to wake up,” said Nefer. One of the little mares noticed the attention the stallion was getting and came pushing up to the wall, too. “Oh, sweetie, you’re just Miss Envious, aren’t you? Look at you, look how nice your mane is. I must have spent an hour brushing it last night.” Nefer chuckled sadly. “See the kind of time I’ve got on my hands?”