The Company Man

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “I’ve no idea,” Hayes said. “I’m assuming this is the excised facility from the budget files.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Samantha peered into the east, where the horizon was overtaken by smoke and the city. Not more than two miles away the bridge network started, beginning with the Kulahee, which reached across to Victoria. Hayes stood along the seawall, not looking at anything, fingers of water running down his face.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Hayes said.

  Samantha nodded.

  “I was very young.”

  “I thought you said she died because of a bastard,” she said.

  “Did I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well. Am I not a bastard, sometimes?” He was quiet for a bit. Then he said, “Do you believe we are made, Sam?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Made. Created. Do you believe that?”

  “I believe in the Holy Maker, yes. Of course I do.”

  He nodded. “Sometimes I wish I could meet Him. God, I suppose, or whoever made me. I’d probably ask them why they made me broken. Why nothing inside me works right, and how to fix it. Am I meant to be broken this way, perhaps? Does this serve a purpose? But even if I met my maker, I don’t think I’d get an answer. They wouldn’t know. I don’t think there’s any fixing anything. Not really. Not for long.” He took a breath and then hopped up to sit on the wall, balefully staring out at the sea. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “The sea. All that water. I still remember the first time I saw the sea. I was a young man, back in India. Barely more than a boy. I’d traveled to the coast, all by myself. I’d heard of the sea, yes, but hearing about it is different from seeing it. You can’t grasp something that big just from someone mentioning it to you. You have to see it. And when I did I didn’t know what to think. It stunned me, something that big. I wondered then if there was anything worth doing. You know?”

  “Worth doing?”

  “Yes. In the face of that. If there was anything you could do that could mean anything. Because it could always be swallowed up. Swallowed up and gone.” He was quiet, his pale face drawn and his mouth a thin line. “I thought all the bad things I’d done didn’t matter and all the good things I could do would never matter either,” he said. “It was all the same next to the ocean. Those waves. They don’t know anything about you. They just know how to sweep you away.”

  The ferry arrived less than ten minutes later. It was a tiny thing and wouldn’t have been able to hold more than a dozen people very comfortably. For once Samantha let Hayes do the negotiating. When he pulled out his billfold the captain’s eyes bugged out and he agreed to do whatever Hayes told him.

  The ride was short. Spinsie’s coordinates were almost exact. There was a nice little inlet on the shore where it would be perfect to dock a small boat. Hayes discussed how long the captain would stay, and after paying the man they stepped off onto the rocky shore.

  They walked for several miles. As the light slowly faded the countryside was sunk into shadow. They did not know what they would do once they got to wherever they were going. They just knew they had to see.

  “I’ve never been in the country here,” Samantha said. “What is this part called?”

  “I have no idea,” Hayes said.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I never really cared to learn.” He stopped. Then squatted to the ground. “Look,” he said softly.

  “What?”

  “There. Down the trees to the shore. You’ll need to get down.”

  She did. It took some searching to find it. It was a small pier, the wood wet and shining, bobbing on the gentle waves.

  “Boat’s long gone,” Hayes said. “But that’s probably where it started.”

  They found a little gravel road that ran from the pier up into the hills. Hayes sifted through the gravel and pronounced it recently used, then squinted up to the countryside but could not see where it led. They followed it quietly, walking in the grass to cover the sound of their footsteps. They wound through the pines up into the hills until they came to a chain-link fence built behind a ring of the trees. A rusty gate hung slightly ajar, kept closed by a band of rusty chains. Hayes squatted and took out some picks and went to work on it. Somewhere in the lock’s heart the pins sank together, and he pulled the lock free and opened it up.

  At first there were only trees beyond the fence, yet as they walked they saw flat white light shining across a large clearing ahead. They crept to the tree line and looked out. It looked like a bunker, small and flat and cement. Unmarked. Doors small and hidden. Hayes pulled out his spyglass and scanned the clearing. Then his eyes shot wide and he grabbed Samantha and flung her to the ground and clapped his hand over her mouth.

  Her first instinct was to struggle, but when she heard it she quieted. A motor, low and buzzing. She heard the tires sighing through the wet grass and saw the headlights flashing on the trunks overhead. The sound of the tires stopped but the engine went on. She strained to hear anyone coming. As she did she noticed Hayes moving, slowly reaching into his vest and pulling out a pistol. He held it with the nose pointed through the grass and then did not move, waiting.

  The seconds dragged on. Then she heard the whisper of the tires again and the headlights swung away. Neither of them moved. Then Hayes released her, eyes still fixed on the retreating car.

  “Where did you get a gun?” she asked softly.

  “Brought it with me, of course. I don’t think you saw, but they had a few as well.” Then he turned to her and said, “You know, you don’t have to come any further if you don’t want to.”

  She sat up and looked back over at the building. “What do you think’s in there?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s good.”

  “I don’t either. Do you think we can get inside?”

  He raised an eyebrow. Then he smiled and nodded.

  Hayes led her in a strange pattern across the clearing, ducking and weaving, pausing here and there. It seemed erratic and mad, and she was not sure what he was doing until she realized there were men patrolling the outskirts of the field, walking back and forth with rifles under their arms.

  “It’s not guarded well,” he whispered as they moved. “Probably because they never expected anyone to come here.”

  At the end they stopped and crawled low until they were near the building itself. Samantha saw it was set low in the ground. Mostly windowless, except in certain places near the ground level. Hayes led her to the closest wall, then sank down low and began pushing at the handle of one of the windows, murmuring to keep a lookout. He managed to shove it open but it wedged itself stuck halfway.

  “We’ll have to try another,” he said softly.

  “I can fit,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “We can find out.” She maneuvered her legs around and pushed them through, then slid all the way past the gap, her dress rising up above her knees.

  When she landed she was worried that her feet would make some sound, but the floor was bare cement and she made no noise at all. She let her eyes adjust and saw she was in some enormous dark storage room. Crates and boxes were filed away along the walls with little paths running between them. The ceiling was low and cramped and she had a hard time seeing the rest of the room, yet somehow the layout felt familiar.

  “You all right?” Hayes whispered above.

  “Fine.” She turned back to begin to work at the window when she noticed an insignia on one of the boxes. She stooped to look at it and traced her fingers over the ink.

  “Well? Are you getting this goddamn window open or not?”

  Samantha frowned, then reached up and twisted the handle around to let the window open fully. Hayes slipped through, silent as a leaf falling on the forest floor.

  “Look,” she said, pointing at one of the boxes.

  He squinted to see. When he finally saw the imperial M on the side he
nodded grimly and said, “Well. It’s as we thought, then.” He looked up and around the basement. Then suddenly he froze and tensed up like an animal hearing a gunshot ripping through the trees.

  “What?” she asked.

  “There’s… there’s something else here,” he said. “In here with us.”

  “What else? What do you mean? More guns?”

  “I… I don’t know yet. Something. I can hear it.”

  “Should we go?”

  Hayes swallowed and shook his head. “N-no. No, I have to see. I have to see what this is.”

  “But why?”

  He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Because it’s talking to me. Or trying to. It knows we’re here, Sam.”

  They walked off into the boxes toward the back, where a dark stairway down loomed. Besides the sound of his shuffling feet and the slight moan of a distant fan the storage room was silent.

  They moved down the stairway and came to the next floor. Down below they saw yet more crates with strange shapes covered in tarps between them. She wondered if they should peek under their folds, but for some reason she was afraid that the things underneath would wake and fall upon them. They were sleeping, or perhaps waiting for somebody to stumble by. Like an ancient museum, all shut down while it waited for its next visitors.

  Hayes looked out on the lower floor and said, “No. It’s not here, either.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “There’s something here. Or someone. I’m not sure yet.”

  They went down another floor and looked out at the next level. This one seemed empty, the blank cement floor stretching far back into the shadows. Hayes took one step out and looked into the darkness. Leaned forward as though drawn by an invisible string. His face drained of color and he said, “It’s here.”

  He began walking forward. Samantha looked and saw a set of switches on the far right of the wall. She hesitated and then hit them. Out in the gloom orbs of light flickered, quavered, then strengthened and stayed on, revealing a small doorway at the far side of the floor. Set around that were chairs and charts and small tables set in a circle.

  Hayes staggered toward the doorway, reeling drunkenly. Samantha rushed to keep up with him and called, “Mr. Hayes! Wait!”

  He ignored her, stumbling as he kicked over a chair. Then he fell forward into the small black doorway and was gone.

  Samantha slowed as she approached. She looked in and thought. Then she took off her watch and her belt and whatever other metals she wore, though she was not sure why, and took a deep breath and stepped through.

  She had expected to feel something. Some change in the air or in the ground beneath her feet. But there was nothing. Just more cement, more cold air, more darkness.

  “Mr. Hayes?” she asked.

  “I’m here,” said his voice.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No,” he said quietly.

  She reached out and felt along the wall, searching for a light switch again. When she could not find any she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box of matches and struck one.

  She could see Hayes standing nearby, staring into the darkness. He did not appear hurt. She stepped forward to tend to him and as she did the flickering light struck something mere feet ahead. Something immense and shining and golden.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “What is that?” she asked, and stepped closer.

  The object’s surface was many-faceted, made of thousands of tiny rectangles of paper-thin gold that were as reflective as a mirror. Its side was rounded but the thing was so enormous it disappeared beyond the light of the match flame. As she moved she saw the match reflected in each of the tiny mirrors, even the ones that, by her guessing, were not at the angle to fully reflect it. She was not sure why but suddenly she felt that all the little mirrors were eyes and each one was watching the light, the image of her face trapped in each of their flat golden pupils.

  “It knows we’re here,” Hayes said softly.

  “What?”

  “This. This thing. I don’t know what it is. But it knows we’re here. It’s thinking. I can feel it.”

  Samantha drew away until her back touched the wall. In the dying light of the match flame she saw the light switch at the other end of the room. She paced over and hit it and the room lit up and they saw the thing fully, sitting in the center of the room like an enormous beached whale, long and tapered at both ends with a mass of strange piping hanging truncated from its midsection. It looked like some nameless organ of a massive clock, some great machine that had spent its long life connected to a dozen others in constant movement, back and forth, patient and ageless. In some places clumps of dirt and ripped-out, ancient-looking tree roots had woven their way into the innards of the device and remained lodged there. Some of the mirrors were broken and missing, leaving its glittering hide patched and dark in places.

  “This… thinks?” she asked.

  “Yes. I can feel it,” Hayes said faintly. “Not like a person. Not like when I’m standing near you. Less than a person. But also more. Like it’s doing only one or two things in comparison to our hundreds, but those things… They’re so big.”

  “It’s doing them now?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not fully. It’s trying to talk to me, Sam. But it’s not… not smart enough. But, Christ, just the fact that it’s trying…”

  She leaned close, then reached one hand out to the many mirrors. They seemed to twist with her though she could detect no movement.

  “Don’t touch it,” Hayes said sharply.

  “What? Why not?”

  “It’s not… not happy, I don’t think.”

  She paced around it, watching the images in the mirrors move. She looked at the mixed jumble of tubing that dangled off the midsection. Looked at the brass and crystalline threads hanging limp like rags. It was as delicate as a dragonfly’s wing. She remembered her wonder at the machine Tazz had shown them in the tunnels, and now that device seemed huge and clumsy and stupid in comparison to this thing of terrifying grace. She looked around and saw the walls were lined with worktables, each one paired with a bench. On all the tables were hundreds of tools, pliers and microscopes and thick drills, and in some places there were white stone slabs each with a small golden piece set in the center. She examined these and saw the pieces were tiny gears or many-faceted rods of incredibly intricate make, and guessed they had been pulled or ripped from the strange machine in order to be examined.

  “How could McNaughton have made a machine that thinks?” she asked.

  “I don’t think they did,” said Hayes from the other side.

  “Then who? Kulahee? Do you think this could be one of his first ones, maybe?”

  “I don’t think this was made by people, Sam.”

  She stopped, then came around to look at him. “What?”

  “I don’t think this was made by men.”

  “Then… What?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I don’t think this could have been made anywhere on Earth.”

  She stepped farther back, eyes tracing over its long, sloping figure, like a golden piece of driftwood washed up on the cement floor. She could see no source of power feeding the machine and yet she knew somehow that it was on and functioning. Unlike Tazz’s mechanism she felt this device could not be stopped, could never fall dead. It was somehow eternal, unending, or perhaps it had been forged in a place where time was as easily manipulated as steel or wood.

  “The machines they make seem like they were never built for people,” said Hayes quietly. “And sometimes the workers think they talk to them, in their heads…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s just what someone said to me not too long ago.” He swallowed. “This building,” he whispered. “It goes down far below.”

  “All of our facilities are seventy percent underground,” Sama
ntha said without thinking.

  “But down there. Below us. I think there’s more.”

  “More of these things?”

  He shook his head. “But ones like it. Being stored. And waiting. And they’ve been waiting for so long…”

  Samantha remembered the sounds of the machines in the deeps, and the faint pounding of strange devices filling the underground chambers. “Waiting for what?” she asked softly.

  Hayes lurched forward, grasped his chest, then turned away and vomited onto the cement. Samantha went to him and pulled the hair out of his face and pounded his back. As he coughed she noticed something lying not more than a few feet away. She picked it up and studied it.

  “What is that?” Hayes asked between breaths.

  “A hat,” she said. “A child’s hat.”

  Hayes looked at her and she knew he was wondering how and why a child could be there.

  “We need to go,” Samantha said.

  “You’re probably right,” Hayes said.

  They slipped back through the patrols easily. The night was moonless and quiet, the whole world sleeping and shrouded in darkness. They passed through the woods and walked along the shore, searching for the boat.

  “What is our city built of?” Samantha asked as they walked. “What’s down there, in its heart?”

  “Do you remember the Red Star Scandal, Sam?” asked Hayes quietly.

  “What? Yes, of course. Why?”

  “Do you remember how, when they were asked how they knew the airship they’d made would work, they immediately said that they just knew?”

  “Well, yes, but why…”

  “How could they know,” said Hayes slowly, “unless it had already worked before? Maybe very, very long ago…”

  Samantha thought about that. Then her eyes grew wide. “My God… Are you saying…”

  Hayes swallowed and nodded.

  “Then what could be down there?”

  “I think it’s something alive,” Hayes said. “Genuinely alive, down under the city. I’ve… I’ve felt it. It’s trapped and broken and old, I think. It’s tried to speak to me, like that thing back there. But it can’t. It’s so old.”

  “What could it be?”