The Machine's Child (Company)

by Kage Baker

  Nan made a sympathetic noise over her coffee. Nefer tilted her head back to look at the sky, hot and blue above the high wall.

  “I guess that’s how they’ll get me, in the end,” she mused. “One of these nights I’ll dream that dream again, and I won’t be able to stand it anymore. I’ll just get my field kit and walk out of the house, leave the walls behind me, walk into that yellow landscape. Follow the coast down through the western Sahara or go back through the mountains and strike out inland, make for the Blue Nile and follow it up. Actually?” She turned her head to look at Nan. “Actually, if I’m still around when 2355 comes? That is what I’ll do. I’ve promised myself. Let the Silence find me out there, with the herds.”

  There had been a time when Nan would have hastened to say something dissuasive and morale-boosting. Now, however, she simply nodded.

  “Good for you,” was all she said.

  They stood there, watching the little horses for a while in silence, and then Nefer said:

  “How in the world did it ever come to this?”

  They went back into the great house through a side door—Nefer remembered to step out of her gumboots before she came in, this time—and walked together as far as the library. There at the door they paused, looking in at Suleyman and Latif, who had just arrived with a guest—

  “Sarai!” Nefer screamed at the top of her lungs, closely echoed by Nan, and they hurled themselves across the room at Sarai, who screamed, too, and there was a very loud moment of tears and sirenlike mutual greeting. Latif stood back, wide-eyed, and Suleyman just laughed.

  “Can we assume from this you’re all still friends?” he inquired.

  “Omigod,” Nefer gasped, “I thought you were one of the Disappeared!”

  “I’ve been working in Hell, I’ll tell you,” Sarai replied, grabbing a handkerchief out of Latif’s breast pocket and wiping her eyes. “But I reckon this close to the end of time, Suleyman wants all three wives under one roof again.”

  “The Three Graces,” said Nan, striking a pose. Suleyman came close and put his arms around them, pulling them together.

  “Family reunion,” he said. “For as long as we have, ladies.”

  The mortal servants came crowding into the doorway to stare. Latif cleared his throat and caught their attention.

  “Tea,” he ordered. “And pastries. Lots of them.” They hurried to obey and he turned back to the other immortals. “I also brought in the mail,” he informed Suleyman, gesturing to a package on the table.

  “We got a delivery?” said Nefer hopefully, letting go her hold on the others and stepping over to see what the package was. “Is it that collection of National Geographic Presents holoes I ordered?”

  “Nope,” Latif replied. “It’s from London HQ.”

  “Darn,” said Nef. “Would anybody like to tell me why, in this day and age, it still takes four to six business hours to ship something to Africa?”

  Suleyman joined her at the table and opened the shipping printout. The others watched his face as he read it.

  “What is it, Suleyman?” Nan asked him.

  He paused a moment. Then he cleared his throat.

  “Next year is the Company’s thirty-fifth official anniversary,” he said. “In celebration of this fact, the Board of Directors has a little token of its esteem for its immortal personnel! A special way to say thank you for our millennia of faithful service. I’m to distribute these throughout the North African Sector. All cyborg operatives are to receive one, and wear it proudly in the future.”

  Nobody said anything. They stared at the package. At last Latif reached out and struck the foam casing in the appropriate spot. It cracked and fell away to reveal a brightly-printed gift box. Suleyman removed its lid.

  The box was full of round cloisonné badges, each about an inch in diameter. There were hundreds of them in the box, all identical.

  Latif swore and turned away. Nan remained where she was, clutching her coffee cup. Sarai scowled at the box. Nefer moved forward in disbelief and scooped up a handful of the little pins. Looking down at them, she let them fall through her fingers; then raised her shocked eyes to Suleyman’s tired ones.

  The badges represented an old-fashioned dial face, of the kind still to be seen on historic clocks like Big Ben, simple white enamel with black Roman numerals. No time was represented, however, for the clock had no hands.

  “It’s starting,” whispered Nef. “After all these years.”

  “Welcome to the future,” Suleyman told her.

  A FEW DAYS LATER IN 2281 AD

  Alec? Mrs. Checkerfield? I’ve got some news.

  “What is it?” Mendoza said, adjusting the spray valve over her maize plants. They had grown none the worse for time travel on the high seas, and good-sized ears stuck out at angles on each stalk. Alec, crouching over a thermostat he was repairing for her, looked up sharply.

  We’re making landfall for some looting and pillaging, me dears. It’s a place goes by the designation Alpha-Omega.

  “Alpha-Omega?” said Mendoza. “The beginning and the end? Where in time would you put a place with a name like that?”

  A long ways back, dearie. Farther than we ever gone, though we can manage it right enough. I’m still evaluating data, but it’s looking like Dr. Zeus ain’t secured it too well! Maybe they reckon it’s so far in the past it don’t need defending. Seems there’s only one maintenance tech in the place, and a mortal one at that.

  “A mortal?” Mendoza was incredulous. “Surely not.”

  “Captain sir, that’s nuts,” Alec said. “Why would they leave an ordinary person in charge of something that important?”

  Haar! Well, he ain’t ordinary, Alec, the Captain said slyly. Turns out this mortal’s been cyborged. Can you imagine that, matey? And he’s there because Alpha-Omega is something the mortal masters of the Company don’t want to entrust to their immortal slaves. Now why would that be, I wonder, unless there was something special kept there? Like maybe the slaves’ DNA templates?

  Mendoza turned bright eyes to Alec. He put his arms around her and clung tight.

  “Well, then, Captain,” he said in as firm a voice as he could muster. “Lay in a course. Let’s have a look at the place.”

  STILL ANOTHER MORNING

  IN 500,000 BCE

  David Reed tried to focus his attention on his console, wishing he could help in the baby shower preparations.

  Mr. Chandra had called Leslie down to his office, ostensibly to discuss changes in Lunchroom decor (they were both members of the redecoration committee, so it was perfectly plausible) but in reality to get her out of the way.

  As soon as she had gone, Brandi and most of the Third Floor staff, as well as three caterers, began arriving in the secret lift bearing the decorations. This included great crowding bunches of blue balloons they’d spent most of the morning blowing up. As a consequence they were all rather giddy and breathless, and everybody was giggling as they climbed on chairs to fasten up baby-blue streamers and blow up more balloons. It seemed like great fun.

  But somebody had to monitor the Recesses beyond the Portal, because it was terribly important work. What if one of the refrigeration units failed? What if one of those rows of gleaming tubes was unable to maintain optimum temperature? The thought was enough to make David shudder. In fact, sometimes he woke with nightmares about it, and had to plug himself in for a midnight visit to the Office, just to make certain nothing of the sort had happened.

  And of course nothing ever had, because the Company had installed all possible backup systems, in addition to maintaining rigorous servicing schedules. Still—

  If the stuff in the gleaming tubes was to spoil, it wouldn’t be stored medicine or experiments that would be lost; oh, no. It would be whole races of humanity.

  As it had been explained to David long ago, genetic diversity was very, very important. The more diverse the human gene pool was, the better were humanity’s chances of adapting to any new and unexpected con
ditions it might encounter, now that it was beginning to push outward into Space, to say nothing of surviving any unexpected natural disasters such as polar shifts or meteor strikes on Earth.

  Unfortunately, humanity had been both unlucky and foolish. Out of the dozens of races that had once lived in the world, only a handful had survived into modern times. Some ancient races had been rendered extinct by war. Some had been simply crowded out, retreating into remote regions and forced to breed amongst themselves, which killed them off with lethal recessives.

  That had been the bad luck. The foolishness had come when people began to form theories about the process of Evolution. They got it all wrong: most people interpreted the concept of “survival of the fittest” to mean they ought to narrow the gene pool, reducing it in size. So this was done, in genocidal wars and eugenics programs, and how surprised people were when lethal recessives began to occur more frequently! To say nothing of the populations who died in droves when diseases swept through them, because they were all so genetically similar there were none among them with natural immunities.

  Of course, in a way this was a good thing, because there had been far too many people in the world.

  All the same, it would be awful if humanity were to go extinct, too. So, to prevent this, Dr. Zeus Incorporated had collected genetic material from every breed of human that had ever existed, from the time the first ones had knapped flints and huddled around fires.

  It was all there beyond the Portal, the stuff with which you might make (for example) an ordinary Neanderthal or a Cro-Magnon. There were supposed to be wonderful things hidden in those tubes! The seeds for cold-tolerant humans, heat-tolerant humans, marine-adapted humans. Giants. Tiny, elfin humans. Humans with astonishing skin colors or patterns, with hair and eyes in remarkable shades. Humans with fur. All the splendor of adaptive humanity for every niche it had ever filled, however briefly, all saved in those silver tubes.

  All waiting in case they were ever needed again. And there were also—so it was rumored—a couple of tubes of seed for things that weren’t human, exactly. But David Reed didn’t believe that. Dr. Zeus Incorporated would never, ever do something like experiment with making Recombinants.

  No, Dr. Zeus was a moral company, and David was proud to work for anyone clever enough to solve humanity’s problems in the way the Company had. Just look! Here was biodiversity enough to guarantee humanity’s survival, without actually having all the tiresome humans themselves to feed and house. Not making wars or polluting the Earth or breeding in outrageous numbers, no. Safe and tidy here in little silver tubes, minding their manners and waiting their turns.

  Why, the unpleasant business of breeding, itself, was now largely unnecessary. Though of course some people still indulged in it . . . David glanced over at the pile of presents all wrapped in baby blue. He told himself, for the hundredth time, that it was right that Leslie was having a baby, that it was only the one, after all, and somebody had to have them, or there’d be nobody to open those vials and call forth those sleepers if they were needed.

  And look at the fun everybody was having, sticking up balloons and setting out party treats. It was a proper community activity, with everyone sharing the happiness. David smiled at Sylvya, as she came dancing up to the yellow track.

  “Can you log off soon? Mr. Chandra’s bringing her up in the lift.”

  David did one last status scan and then logged off hastily. He opened and set out the treats Ancilla had prepared so he wouldn’t feel as though he weren’t sharing: a bottle of blue lemonade, a wholemeal blueberry biscuit, and little sandwiches. The lift chimed and everyone, including David, turned bright expectant faces to the doors as they slid open.

  “Oh!” Seeing them all, Leslie turned pink and clapped her hands to her cheeks in delight.

  “Surprise!” David shouted with all the others.

  LATER THAT MORNING

  IN 500,000 BCE

  Another island in a shallow sea, uncharted, but it has a name: the Beginning and the End.

  This is a larger island. It has rounded hills, and estuaries and lagoons complicate its shores. Seabirds chatter and fight there. Tall white birds—egrets? herons?—stalk through the muck, hunting for frogs and little clams. The place is green with willows and alders, and reeds wave along the marshy tideland.

  There are two knobby eminences of rock at either end of this island. On the eastern rock a low dome sits, presenting a smooth windowless face to its western neighbor. To one side the rock has been leveled flat, where a supply shuttle might land. A door faces the level place. It is the only visible break in the dome’s surface.

  Beyond the western rock, which is bare of anything except alder trees, the Captain Morgan stands on and off, keeping well out of sight of anyone who might be watching from the eastern rock.

  Nobody seems to be watching, though.

  Mighty queer, all the same, the Captain growled. All I can make out scanning is that one mortal lubber, and he’s been cyborged right enough; but he ain’t tuned in to any defense systems like what you’d think. Sounds as though he’s picking up some kind of wide-band signal from Time Forward.

  “Communicating with the Home Office, perhaps?” speculated Edward, who was presently in control. He loaded a fresh power pack into the disrupter pistol.

  Maybe, the Captain said curtly.

  “No cameras or anything?” Mendoza looked up, frowning, from pulling on a subsuit.

  Aye, there’s a surveillance camera, doing a half-hour sweep. The datafeed goes to an AI in there, but all it seems to do is monitor life support for the mortal. There ain’t no lasers, no missiles, nothing you’d expect. But then, maybe they can summon help straightaway from Time Forward.

  Makes sense, Alec said, watching as Mendoza adjusted the fit of her subsuit and zipped it up. Edward returned his attention to the disrupter pistol. He stood to fasten on its shoulder holster.

  “Very well,” he said. “Then I propose the following: we’ll go ashore directly opposite, using the natural cover to conceal ourselves and lying flat at intervals to avoid the surveillance, which you will of course monitor.”

  I will, eh? You planned it out mighty smart, ain’t you, now?

  “Yes,” said Edward. “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  Mendoza looked at him uneasily.

  “Doesn’t it seem like a good plan, Sir Henry?” she said.

  Oh, a fine plan, to be sure, ma’am. See if you can keep yerself from killing the mortal, though, eh, bucko? Don’t want his AI set on us, now, do we? That’d draw Dr. Zeus’s attention for certain.

  “So it would,” Edward said. He sat to pull on the boots that went with his subsuit. “But I expect you’ll see to disabling the electronics where necessary, won’t you? Which ought to render the mortal cyborg harmless without resorting to anything unpleasant. Then a swift search and plunder, if we’re lucky. Are you game, my dear?”

  “Yes, señor,” Mendoza said. Rising to his feet, Edward pulled her close and kissed her, hard. He set her back at arms’length.

  “With any luck we’ll be back aboard before sunset and sailing free, with all this wretched business behind us. Will you trust me, then?”

  “Always,” she said, as though it were absurd even to ask.

  “That’s my girl,” he said, with a tight smile. “Let’s be on our way.”

  They moved out together, over the side and into the water, escorted by the dolphins. Once they waded ashore, Mendoza followed like Edward’s shadow. They vanished into the first willow thicket and came silently around the western rock.

  I see it. Alec pointed at the domed base.

  No battlements? No watchmen? Nicholas frowned.

  How’s the surveillance, Captain, sir?

  Lie low there! The camera’s just about to sweep yer way.

  Edward signaled to Mendoza. They flattened themselves among the willows, and waited patiently while an unseen eye studied their hiding place without finding them.

  It’s moved
on. Go, the Captain said at last.

  How long do we have before the next sweep? Edward said, splashing forward across the murky lagoon. Mendoza came after him, scanning as they went.

  Twenty-eight minutes. More’n enough time. Bloody Hell, this place is wide open! Careful of the water, though, I’m reading some damned big fish.

  Edward grinned mirthlessly and waded on. They scrambled out of the lagoon and ran on down the beach, increasing their speed, so that when they came to the estuary mouth they were nearly flying. They crossed half of it in one leap and easily forded the rest of the way, coming ashore on hands and knees. Mendoza turned and stared back at the lagoon. Edward went sprinting on, and after a second’s hesitation she followed him.

  The last stream was narrow and they bounded across, moving in unison. They fled into the shadows of a stand of alders and leaned there, breathing hard, as Edward checked the disrupter pistol against water damage. Assured that it was unharmed, he holstered it again and inquired with his eyes whether Mendoza was ready. She nodded. They turned together and made the final assault, charging up the hill toward the windowless dome.

  In a very short time they reached the top, and flattened themselves against the dome’s gentle curve. Edward was drawing out the disrupter pistol when he saw Mendoza lift her head with an expression of astonishment. She looked at him, tilting her head toward the dome, and held out both hands palm up in a what-do-you-make-of-this gesture. He set his ear against the wall and listened intently. Faintly he made out laughter; then a voice lifted in conversation.

  He raised his eyebrows at her. She signed Two?

  He shrugged. Taking a firm grip on the pistol, he advanced along the wall to the leveled space.