by Kage Baker
"Yes," I said. So she settled into the cushions beside me and began:
"Once, long ago, when the world was very new, there was a queen and a wicked old king. This king's name was Time. Now, he had heard a prophecy that his children would be greater than he was. Do you know what a prophecy is?"
Of course I did. I nodded.
"And he didn't want this prophecy to come true, because he was very wicked and jealous. So, King Time did something very terrible. Do you know what he did?"
I could guess.
"Whenever the queen had a baby, the wicked king would steal it away. And then he'd eat it—whole—just like you'd swallow a grape."
No way. He'd have to cut them up with a sword first. I folded my hands in my lap and waited to see what she'd say next.
"Yes, it's terrible, I know, but the story has a happy ending. Because, you see, at last the queen thought of a way to fool the wicked king. The next time she had a baby, she hid it, and wrapped a big stone in its swaddling clothes, so the king swallowed the stone instead. The little baby was hidden far away on a magical island and tended by beautiful nurses.
"He grew up into a hero whose name was Blue Sky Boy. He was king of all the thunderstorms. He had a spear made of lightning! But he thought, always, of his poor brothers and sisters who were trapped inside King Time. So, as soon as he could, he went and did battle with the wicked king.
"Oh, it was a dreadful battle! Against his son, King Time sent his years. They were giants, those years, and they fought hard with Blue Sky Boy. His handsome body became thick with muscles, his smooth face became rough with black curly beard. But in the end he defeated the years and hurled a big bolt of lightning right through the heart of Time. Time stopped dead. He fell helpless on the ground.
"And Blue Sky Boy cut open Time and, guess what? Out popped all his brothers and sisters. There they were, alive again. And even though Blue Sky Boy was the youngest of them all, he became the new king over them because he alone had conquered Time. And they were all so grateful to him, they became his faithful subjects.
"Now, this is a very important story for you to remember. Did you like it?"
"Yes," I said. "I know a story also. Want to hear it?"
So I told her the one about a man who kicks a skull out of his way as he goes along the road, and for a joke he invites it to come to his house for supper by way of apology, and that night it comes to his house and tears out his throat at the table. The señora didn't seem to care for it much.
The little red lady was telling the Mixtec boy a story too. Probably something involving a fratricide.
CHAPTER FIVE
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I wouldn't have said Terra Australis was lots of fun. It was even hotter than Spain. But, oh, was everybody nice to us.
We crossed a lot of water and flew over a dry red land, remote and silent. We touched down within the high walls of Terra Australis Training Compound 32-1800. It had been there about fifteen hundred years when I was enrolled, and had had time to install all the little amenities: air conditioning, laser defense, a piano in the gymnasium. Within its towering walls were gardens and playgrounds and the domes of cool subterranean classrooms. And hospitals. And warehouses. In fact, most of the place was underground.
It wasn't all that different from any particularly demanding boarding school, except that of course nobody ever went home for the holidays and we had a lot of brain surgery.
That was the first thing they did to us, too, the Mixtec and I and a couple of other shaven-headed kids our size. They put us to bed though it was midday, stuck us all over with needles, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up with my head turbaned in bandages. Then everything was different, because they had installed the first of the high-tech stuff, had begun the Process that would transform us from mortal human children into something else entirely. I could now understand the excessively cheery nurses when they spoke to me. They brought me games to play with boxes full of winking lights. I made the right guesses: I touched the right pictures with the light pencil. A doctor pronounced me fit for further processing, and they sent me on down the line.
One day I was given fine clothes to wear, the uniform smock for the neophyte class, with the Company's device emblazoned on the front pocket, of course. The hat that went with it wouldn't fit over my bandaged head yet, so I swaggered along after the nurse pretending I was a Morisca. She took me into a big room.
I stopped in my tracks. There were about twenty other little children in the room, each one my size, each one dressed just like me with a turban of bandage. There all resemblance stopped. I saw blackamoor children and yellow-skinned children and red and brown children. I saw children pale as mushrooms. They were all lined up in rows of identical desks, and I was ushered to one vacant one. I sat there staring around. I saw the Mixtec boy not too far away. He met my eyes and said:
"They cut open my head."
"I know that," I said.
"Did you get cake?"
"Yes."
Then some grown-ups came into the room, and one of them rapped on the wall and shouted, "Children! Attention please!" We all fell quiet as mice. Some of us cringed.
They were three big men who smiled at us. They were really something to see. One was a white man, dressed like all the men I had ever seen, in an ordinary doublet and hose. One was a yellow man, in a beautiful silk robe. One was a blackamoor man, who wore a long caftan. Worked into the snowy cotton of the caftan, and into the embroidery of the silk robe, and stamped on the doublet buttons was the same device I had on my uniform pocket.
The men told us their names were Martin, Kwame, and Mareo, and they were there to welcome us and tell us about Dr. Zeus. In the splendid polycultural speech that followed, I found out that the most amazing series of coincidences had occurred! Not only I but every single child in that room had been orphaned, or kidnapped, or abandoned. Every one of us had been facing certain death when we met a nice man or nice lady who promised us eternal life if we'd let ourselves be rescued. I wasn't so sure my Biscayan had been a nice man, but he'd certainly rescued me.
Anyway, here we were, all safe now, guests of a wonderful hero named Dr. Zeus. This Doctor was very kind-hearted and also very smart. He wanted to save the whole world. It was a shame he hadn't been able to save our mommies and daddies, but at least he'd saved us, and some day we'd all live with him in his magic kingdom, which was called the future. The future was a long way off, though, so until we got there, we were going to pass the time being the Doctor's helpers. We'd save all sorts of things for the Doctor, save them from the evil destructive mortal people like the ones who'd taken away our families: we'd save beautiful paintings and books, animals, flowers, even little children like ourselves. It would be easy for us to do all this, too, because we'd grow up stronger and smarter than poor defective mortals. And we had all the time in the world to do these things because we would never, ever die, and because Dr. Zeus was the Master of Time.
After they had explained all this to us, smiling with beautiful clean white smiles, other people came in and served us ice cream. If any of us hadn't yet been convinced, the ice cream won us over. We all decided we loved Dr. Zeus.
Later they ushered us out, two long lines of little ones, to the playground. It was in a cavern of white glass, open at the top to show a disk of blue sky, as though we moved under acreage of staring eye. There were trees in this cavern, and vast green playing fields. There were big kids playing ball. Boys and girls, they all wore their hair cropped close to the skull. We cowered together at the sight of them. But then our nurses led us to our own special playground, which made us feel safe because it had a nice high fence all around it. There were playbars and swings painted in brilliant colors, but we were told we couldn't play on them yet because our heads were still healing. So we moped around and stared at one another.
I wanted to look at the blackamoor children up close. I followed one little girl who had retreated behind some bright crawl-barrels to tear at her
bandages.
"Did you get left in the bed by Almanzor?" I wanted to know.
She stared at me as though I was crazy. "Who's he?"
"You know, he leaves black babies with people."
She shrugged and went on pulling at the bandages. I studied her. She wasn't black like soot at all but brown, with copper lights under the brown. The palms of her hands were as pink as mine. Abruptly she said, "We look awful in these hats. I hate them. We look like the Smoke Men."
"Who?"
"They come in the night. They ride the animals that smell. My daddy went out with his spear and they cut his head off."
"Oh."
"This hat is hurting my hair."
"Your hair is all gone now," I pointed out. "They shaved it off. They shaved everybody's hair off."
She looked sullen. "I know mine is under there. And I won't wear this ugly hat."
"I thought Moriscos wore hats like this."
"What is a Morisco?"
"You know." I was confused. "You are."
"No, I'm not," she said firmly. "I'm Spider People. What are you?"
Good question. "I think I'm a Jew," I said at last. "But maybe not."
"What's a Hue?" She put her head on one side to stare at me, tape trailing down.
"It's…" I had no idea, after all. She went on:
"You know how I got here? I'll tell you. The Smoke Men rode around and around, like big ghosts flapping, and set fire to all our houses. But I ran and climbed up in a tree. Dogs came and ate the dead people. Then it was night and I woke up in the tree and Spider was up in the tree with me. I could see Him, all black against the stars.
"Well, He said, You know who's down there? Dry Bone Dog. You don't want to go with him, do you? And I said NO.
"So then Spider said, I can steal you away from Dry Bone Dog if you want me to. I can turn you into a cane stick and carry you away.
"But I said, I hate You and all Your magic. You were supposed to look after my daddy and everybody. What's wrong with You anyway? Why did You let those Smoke Men come?
"He just went like this—" She shrugged again. "And He said, I'll help you now anyway, if you want me to. And I could see Dry Bone Dog down there under the tree. I could see his eyes down there. So I said YES and we climbed up into the Sky Boat, I don't remember how. But He left me, now I'm here and He's gone. And I won't ever be His Spider People again! He's no good." She clenched her tiny fists. "And they put this ugly, ugly hat on my head."
"No, no, no, dear!" A nurse found us. "Leave the bandages alone. They're good for you." She produced a roll of tape from nowhere and bound up the trailing ends again, while the little girl glared. "Now, come over here with the other children. Nurse Uni will show you nice pictures and we'll have story time."
So, sulking, we went, to hear all about the wonderful Oz Wizard and the magic body parts he gave people.
In this way our education began.
They didn't waste any time; they made us little geniuses right at the start. Languages, sciences, facts by the zillions, we got them as fast as they could spoon them to us. Speed reading, sleep teaching, hypnosis: when our cranial adjustments were far enough along, they could cram bytes straight into our heads. Encyclopedic knowledge and perfect recall by the age of six. Not bad, eh?
Making us immortal was more time-consuming. Our class had operations the way other students have midterm exams, thirty bandaged neophytes moaning in a ward at once. Always some new symbiote or nanobot or hardware to be put in, or some nasty defective mortal part to be excised. I don't recall anyone mentioning the ugly word cyborg, however.
We had years upon years upon interminable years of Phys. Ed.—not to get us into shape, for we were already perfect, but to train the new reflexes that enabled us to dodge bullets at point-blank range. Hypnotherapy to convince us it was impossible we should ever age or die, drugs to heighten our powers of unconscious observation, cellular tinkering I can't even begin to describe.
Do you have some mental image of a gymnasium full of us Überkinder, flawless mechanized specimens training to smash the supervillains of the world with our bare hands? Well, you would imagine that, if you were a stupid mortal monkey. We knew better.
Smashing things is the violent way stupid mortal monkeys solve their problems. We were taught so many other ways of resolving difficult situations: negotiation, compromise, bribery, strategic falsehood, or simply running away at amazing speed. You see, being immortal just means you can't die. It doesn't mean you can't be hurt.
Besides, we weren't made to battle villains, because there weren't any. No nation, creed, or race was any better or worse than another; all were flawed, all were equally doomed to suffering, mostly because they couldn't see that they were all alike. Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely. They did enjoy killing one another and frequently came up with ingenious excuses for doing so on a large scale—religions, economic theories, ethnic pride—but we couldn't condemn them for it, as it was in their mortal natures and they were too stupid to know any better.
No, our job was to protect them from their own butchery, and (better still) to protect the other inhabitants of the Earth from the destruction wreaked by human nature.
Pretty lofty, isn't it? Imagine being told that it hadn't mattered whether the Christians or the Moors got Spain! I can still remember my shock. I got over it fairly quickly, though, because by that time I had learned enough history to know that in the long run it never mattered a damn where any particular race of people planted its collective ass. And, really, why should I care? I wasn't one of them anymore.
To be honest, I don't think I would have got on all that well with the human race anyway. The Company did not put that fundamental dislike there. Possibly the Inquisition did. Very likely my Biscayan saw that quality in me and knew it would make the estrangement from mortality easier.
In any case, my aptitude test scores determined that I should not be one of those immortals who works much with human beings. I was trained as a botanist instead. I became one of those cheerful and useful children out of our own books, trudging around my garden project with a watering can, growing big bright flowers.
It was a good decision, because I really loved the things I grew. The leaf that spreads in the sunlight is the only holiness there is. I haven't found holiness in the faiths of mortals, nor in their music, nor in their dreams: it's out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don't know what it is, this holiness: but it's there, and it looks at the sky.
Probably though this is some conditioning the Company installed to ensure I'd be a good botanist. Well, I grew up into a good one. Damned good.
CHAPTER SIX
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Mr. Silanus paced across the front of the classroom. On the chalkboard at his back, a few names: MASADA. WARSAW. JONESTOWN. MARS TWO.
"So as we've seen, not one faith has ever lived up to its promises. The world has never become a paradise, quite the opposite, in fact: think of the millions upon millions slaughtered, tortured, imprisoned for this great idea, this good news, this revolution. The visionary who works against human nature to impose his—or her—sweeping vision on the world is inevitably its worst enemy.
"Now, who isn't? Consider the work of certain individual mortals who set themselves simple tasks. They saw no need to raise armies; they saw no need for revolution or bloodshed; they worked instead for realistic goals with the tools they had. And they succeeded, and their works have been of lasting benefit to humanity." He erased the board with relish and chalked a new set of names: DICKENS, PASTEUR, LISTER, FLEMING, TERESA, MUIR, KOBIAR, LUONG.
"People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will. They number in the millions, these mortals, but they don't make it into the history books much. They don't do anything sweeping or controversial. They live their lives, contribute their bits of good work, and die quietly in their beds without recognition or reward. Usually. But they
make a difference for the good that no true believer ever can.
"Before we meet again on Friday, access the biographies of these mortals and review their lives. Read the complete works of Charles Dickens and be able to explain them in their historical context. Accessing on your own, see if you can add more names to this list and be ready to explain your choices. All clear? Class dismissed."
We drifted out of the classroom, we wonder children.
"Isn't he the most handsome man?" breathed Nancy, twisting at a lock of her wig. She'd never stopped trying to get her hair to grow. We'd both vowed to let it grow down to our ankles once the lab techs stopped tinkering with our brains.
"Double-plus wowie," I agreed.
"I've heard he went to the Crusades to rescue Moslem babies. I'll bet he looked divine in armor." She pressed the elevator button. The door opened, and we stepped in, our hoop skirts crowding the other passengers.
"You couldn't get me to work in the Holy Land for absolutely anything," I stated.
She clicked her tongue derisively. "As if you had a choice!"
"I do," I said, smug. "I'm fixing it. I'm making my specialty New World flora, so they'll have to send me there. Hardly any mortals out there at all. No bloodthirsty zealot fanatic murderers."
"What about the Aztecs?"
"They're just in one part of the New World, aren't they? It's two big continents and there's miles and miles where mortals have never even set foot. You can keep your Europe."
She rolled her eyes. "You're fooling yourself. There are mortals everywhere. You'll have to work with them sometime, you know."
"Not me. Not Mendoza. The only fieldwork I'm doing is in empty fields. No totally disgusting killer apes for me, thank you very much."
"My, I can see why they didn't make you an anthropologist. You're headed for trouble with an attitude like that, you know." She shook her finger at me. She was right, too. And far wiser than I: she became an art preservation specialist and didn't even have to set foot in the field until the seventeenth century. And then she got to pose as a wealthy art patron's Algerian mistress. In Italy. Some people have all the luck. I wouldn't mind lying around in a gondola in some nice civilized country but oh, no, I had it all figured out, hadn't I?