by Kage Baker
“She had an accident,” said Einar sullenly, and led his mount away to the stable.
Porfirio winced, and I thought he was recalculating his operating budget. He looked at me. “And you? Any problems?”
“Not really,” I said. Well, we’d come home in one piece, hadn’t we? I sank down beside the fire.
Porfirio still stood, considering me for a long moment. “Mendoza,” he said, “I’m a security tech. I can tell when people are lying.”
I glared at him, señors, feeling very Spanish. How dare he say I was lying? Even if I was. “All right, something happened,” I admitted, pulling off the stupid high-tech armor that hadn’t worked. He swore. I snapped at him, “I don’t know why you bothered to make us carry all this garbage. I suppose you had some communiqué from the Company about what was going to happen today? Did everybody but me know? One of those rules you’re not supposed to break, about telling people what’s in their future?”
“Something like that,” Porfirio said.
“Why did you ask me, then, if you knew?”
“Because they didn’t tell me much,” he said bitterly. “They never do. Never enough to be of any use.”
“That figures.” I sighed and slumped forward. I was so tired. I was about to tell him about the accident when he took my breath away by asking:
“How long have you been a Crome generator?”
I began to shake. “I’m not! There was just one time, when I was young—only that once. My case officer thought—he said it was probably nothing. Never since then, I swear!”
“Mendoza,” he said, “since you’ve been here, not one week has gone by that there hasn’t been an incident. I’ve looked out and seen the blue light pouring through the cracks in the boards, as if you had lightning in there with you. You didn’t know? You slept through it every time? What’s been happening to you?”
I shook my head. How could I tell him, when I didn’t know myself? Bad dreams? I debated telling him about my dead lover who had risen from his grave to follow me across three centuries, an ocean, and a continent to make my life intolerable in this already intolerable place. What I said instead was, “I appear to be malfunctioning.”
We regarded each other in silence.
“Are you going to ship me out and send for a replacement botanist?” I asked. That was according to regulations. Ironic, isn’t it, seniors? I was holding my breath, petrified at the thought that my field career was over. If only he had shipped me out.
Porfirio shook his head grimly. “I don’t do that to my people. You’ve done a lot of good work, Mendoza. If you throw enough Crome to read by, so what? It doesn’t seem to be hurting anybody but you. I know you have some bad memories, but you never let them interfere with your work. Look . . .the rules are different down here. Don’t give me a reason to have you replaced, and I won’t. Okay? But don’t ever lie to me, because I’ll know. So what happened today?”
I told him, as he took the steaks off the fire with greatest care and arranged them on an iron platter. He listened without a word, going about the business of setting out the evening meal as though I were telling him the plot of a film I’d seen. At last I finished, and he handed me a plate of supper and sat down across from me as I ate.
“Mendoza,” he said finally, “watch your back.”
That was all he’d say on the subject.
Obviously he had an idea of what was coming. And on that day in 1996, Lewis knew, señors, what would happen, knew that I’d sit before you in this place now, telling you this story. He was trying to warn me. It was kind of him, though it did no good in the end, and I hope it didn’t get him into trouble. This just proves once again the only unbreakable law I know: that history cannot be changed.
THE SUMMER WORE ON; it grew hotter and browner and dustier, and then in the evenings the wind began to change. Big purple rifts of fog would come blowing in from the coast. In the brown canyons the big leaves of sycamores began to drift down, smelling spicy and sweet when one crunched through them. Deer began to descend from the brown hills, looking around hopefully for garden produce, which they didn’t find; but we did get venison for a change. The moon got very big, very silver, and the coyotes rejoiced.
Porfirio began to stock up our supplies for the winter. Not that there was ever any snow, and we knew, as the mortals didn’t, that this year there wouldn’t even be winter rains to flood out the roads. But it was a safe bet that some disaster or other was going to strike, this being southern California, so it was just as well to be prepared.
So Einar was sent out time and again, to Los Angeles with lowing longhorns for Dr. Zeus, and he came back with wagonload after wagonload of crates, barrels, and sacks. Porfirio and Einar would haul them into the storeroom, where Juan Bautista and I (and Erich and Marie) would uncrate stuff and check it against the order list. Dozens of sacks of pink beans, dozens more of masa, enough coffee beans to wake the dead, jars of pickles and preserves, cones of brown sugar, boxes of salt . . . and seven cases of canned sardines.
“Jesus, why’d he order all the sardines?” I said, staring astonished into an opened crate. “They’re not even on his list. Hey, Porfirio?” Juan Bautista got a funny look on his face and put up his hands to shush me, but Porfirio had already backed in, carrying one end of a barrel.
“What?” he grunted, backing in the rest of the way so Einar could ease his end down.
“Never mind, I figured it out,” I said, but he turned frowning and noticed the funny-looking cans in the opened crate.
“What the hell are those?” He picked up one of the cans. “These are sardines! I didn’t order these. None of you guys even like them.”
“I like them,” said Juan Bautista in a doomed voice.
There was a frozen moment, which unfortunately was broken by Marie Dressier limping across the room and looking up at Juan Bautista expectantly.
Porfirio blew his top, and then blew it louder when he found out that that opened case was one of seven, but I really thought the roof was going to come off the adobe when he discovered that Juan Bautista had added them to the station’s order list, which meant that they’d been paid for out of the station’s operating budget.
“Didn’t I order the damn bird a sack of pelican chow?” shouted Porfirio.
Juan Bautista hung his head. “She’s too old for it. It makes her droppings runny.”
I left then and at some speed, not wishing to be there when Porfirio came down off the ceiling. Einar was already gone.
I was up in my favorite retreat by the creek, gloomily contemplating my future, when Juan Bautista came wandering along the creek bed half an hour later. Erich was perching on him and Marie was cradled in his arms. He was sniffling a little.
I cleared my throat, so he wouldn’t think he was alone and go into some soliloquy of teenage despair.
“Oh,” he said. “Hi.” He came over and sat down beside me. I edged away slightly, not caring to be that close to Marie’s beak. She had a wicked kind of hook on the end of it, like a mandarin’s thumbnail.
“Is Porfirio through screaming?”
“I guess so,” he said. “I guess I shouldn’t have ordered seven cases. And it was wrong not to tell him about adding to his order. But what am I supposed to do? She’s old. She’s an endangered species. Fish is what she’s supposed to eat. We can’t take any more out of the creek, or the breeding population will go below sustainable levels. He ought to try that lousy pelican chow, see how he likes it.”
This implied that Juan Bautista had sampled it himself, which I didn’t want to think about. “Well, don’t worry,” I said. “If Imarte peddles her papayas vigorously enough, she’ll earn back the budget deficit.” But he wasn’t amused, he was sunk in the self-righteous bitterness that only the very young can feel.
“Darned grandfather,” he muttered.
We sat there a moment in silence. “What,” I asked cautiously, “was that supposed to mean?”
“It was my grandfather got me i
nto this.”
“You mean, a real grandfather? Your mortal father’s father?”
He nodded. After a moment, he drew a deep breath and began.
“We lived on one of the islands. I don’t even know which one, San Miguel or Santa Rosa. All our people had left to go live at the mission, but Grandfather took us back—my father and mother, I mean. He wouldn’t leave his holy place. He was the . . . I guess he was the priest. The word for it sounded like sishwin. Anyhow, his god told him he wasn’t supposed to leave the island, so he had to go back. That meant my father had to go back, too, because he was supposed to be the sishwin after Grandfather died, and my mother went too, because she was going to have me. They went by canoe. My mother was sick the whole way. I remember she used to talk about it.
“She and my father had a lot of fights. I was born over there, and there weren’t any medicine women to help when I was born, just my father, and she was always talking about that. She wanted to go back to the mission, she didn’t mind being a Christian, and she talked about that a lot too. And she was always afraid I would fall off a cliff into the sea.
“My father didn’t want to be there either. When they were speaking to each other, he’d tell her how mad he was at my grandfather, how our old god was fake nowadays and Grandfather was just being stubborn about staying on the island. I remember he said he could never be a sishwin, because even if the old god cared, Grandfather would never think my father was good enough.
“But they never said anything when Grandfather came into the house. They were scared of him. He was scary-looking. He looked at Daddy like he was dirt, and at Mommy the same way.
“He liked me. He used to take me out to his holy place. There was a big wooden statue of the god there with the sun and the moon on his head. There were big black ravens, and I guess they were bigger than the ones here on the mainland, because I’ve never seen them that big since I came back. Grandfather used to show me how to feed them. Some were tame and would hop on my hand and let me scratch their necks. Some could talk. I used to think that was magic, because back then I didn’t know how smart the corvidae are.
“Grandfather told me a lot of stuff about how I belonged to his god, and how if Mommy and Daddy were bad weak people, I wasn’t, and I was going to be a powerful sishwin just like him, and someday our god was going to send the bears to get all the bad weak people who stopped paying attention to him.
“I just kept quiet and played with the ravens. I liked to stroke their feathers. They were so shiny black, they were blue and reflected the sky. I thought they were the prettiest things.
“Then something bad happened. I don’t know what it was. Daddy and Mommy were yelling at each other, and I sneaked away to play with the ravens. There was one that liked to have his neck scratched, behind the feathers, and he just wanted you to go on and on and he’d close his eyes like saying, I can’t stand this, it’s so good.
“Grandfather came and got me and put me in the canoe. He said a lot of scary things. We went across the sea, and sometimes he’d stand up in the canoe and shout at the sky. I curled up in the bottom of the canoe and closed my eyes.
“We came to the mainland, and Grandfather hid the canoe in a cave. We sneaked across the hills, so the soldiers wouldn’t see us, and we came to the big mission. It was the biggest place I’d ever seen. There was a Christian priest sitting on the steps. I don’t know why he was sitting out there in the middle of the night.”
“I do,” I said tensely. “Short man, was he, in a brown robe? Stocky? Little black eyes?”
“Uh-huh. Grandfather carried me up to him and said, Here, you take children, take this one. And he turned and walked away. He left me there. I never saw him again.” Juan Bautista’s eyes were red, but he didn’t start blubbering, thank God.
“Well, the Christian was really surprised. He sat up and asked me what had happened. I told him everything I knew, which wasn’t much. He was nice. He asked me a lot of questions and told me everything would be all right now. We went into the big kitchen in the dark, but the Christian could see in the dark, and he got me some food. Then he took me to his room and put me in his bed and told me to sleep. I asked him where he was going to sleep, and he said he didn’t sleep.”
“He doesn’t,” I said. “Not much, anyway.”
“He hid me in his room a couple of days. He shaved my head, because of bugs, he said. He measured me and looked in my eyes. He let me play with a glass. I’d never seen glass before. It broke, and I cut my finger, and he took some of the blood and put it in something that was probably a machine, but it didn’t look like one.”
“And let me guess,” I said, clenching my fists. “He sat you down and gave you a talk about how sad it was to get old and crazy like your grandfather, but you didn’t ever have to get old or die.”
“That’s right.”
“And I’ll bet he told you that it was sad you’d lost your family, but you could have a wonderful new family who would help you become smart and live forever.”
Juan Bautista looked at me. “I guess that’s what we say to all the kids we rescue, huh? The next day, he brought me out and told the other Christians that I was a little orphan who’d been left at the mission, but that he’d discovered I had family at a rancheria up the coast, so he was going to take me there, because the mission couldn’t provide for orphans anymore.
“We walked and walked, and after a couple of days we came to a big hill above the sea. You could see the islands from there. We stopped and built a fire and waited until dark. In the middle of the night the ship came, a big silver ship. It scared me half to death, but the Christian explained what it was.
“It landed, and the door opened, and nice people came out and took me inside. I was happy, for the first time I could remember except when I was with the ravens. Nobody ever fought or yelled. There was lots of food. And when they found out I liked birds, they made me an ornithologist.” Juan Bautista sighed. “So I guess I’m better off now. I really shouldn’t blame my grandfather. Because if he hadn’t taken me to the Christian, I’d probably be dead or a slave. And it isn’t Porfirio’s fault that Marie is old and can’t eat the pelican chow.”
“No, it isn’t.” I gazed into the brown water of the creek.
“You want to go eat some sardines, old lady?” said Juan Bautista, burying his face in the spiky feathers on Marie’s neck. “They’re good for you. We’ll go get some treats, and I’ll play for you, how about that? I’m learning Nunuz’s Sinfonia Asturias. She really likes the slow movement.”
Erich von Stroheim reached down and groomed behind Juan’s ears, tugging a long tail of silver hair and pulling it slowly through his beak until it stood out at an angle. He cocked his head, studying the results.
PART TWO
“THIS IS THE BIG ONE!” Einar said, leaping down from the wagon.
“What big one?” Porfirio asked uneasily, looking around at the hills as though he expected them to rock and roll.
“The epic. David Wark Griffith’s Intolerance,” Einar flourished a big silver film can at us. “It just came in. Polish up your rhinestones and press those tuxedos, ladies and gentlemen, ’cause we’re going to Babylon tonight!”
There’s nothing like a sense of occasion to lift your spirits. Imarte was delighted when she heard what was on the evening’s bill, and prepared a special treat; in addition to our popcorn and non-bathtub gin we had little rose-flavored chunks of gummy candy, prepared (she assured us) exactly as it was served at Belshazzar’s feast. She would know, I guess. Nor was that all; she and Einar made a last-minute trip over to Sherman and managed to get roses from somebody’s garden, big trailing fronds of yellow rambler, and spent most of the afternoon picking off thorns and weaving them into serviceable crowns. We settled down amid the cushions wearing chaplets of roses, and a big yellow rose waved above Einar’s right ear as he stood up and pretended to talk into a microphone.
“And welcome once again, my fellow immortals, to this evening’s
edition of the Cahuenga Pass Film Festival. Tonight’s offering is maybe the quintessential Hollywood film, the first cinema epic, and has been hailed as one of the greatest films ever made and one of the worst. How did the inimitable D. W. manage to grab the brass ring while simultaneously falling off the painted pony and landing on his head?
“Budget and bad timing, folks, combined with the same wholesome naïveté that left him astonished when black audiences failed to enjoy his film glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. Nobody could ever say Griffith was a slow learner, though, and so for his next film he singled out a slightly safer group to pick on: prissy old ladies of both genders. You may not agree with his unique insights on psychology or his scholarly footnotes as the evening progresses, but I can promise you this much: the visuals are killer.
“Now, this print will not be accompanied by the original score, but we are fortunate enough to have in our audience an expert who will provide us with fascinating commentary and insights of her own.” He bowed at Imarte, and we all applauded politely. She waved a gracious hand. “On matters Babylonian, Persian, and prostitutional we defer to thee, O scarlet one. So, everybody, breathe a silent prayer to Ishtar, the goddess at Heaven’s Gate, and hold on to your cushions, because it’s gonna be a truly bumpy ride!”
He clambered over Juan Bautista and Erich (Marie was more obliging about being left in her cage) and started the projector. We were briefly treated to his black shadow on the screen while he blew out the lamps; then we were silently told that we were watching INTOLERANCE, a Sun-Play of the Ages.
“What’s a sun-play?” Juan Bautista asked.
“Photoplay, get it?” Porfirio explained.
“Oh.”
The screen advised us that we were going to watch a story of the battle of the forces of Hatred and Intolerance versus Love and Charity. Great, I thought, as though a roomful of immortals hadn’t seen that plotline a few hundred times already. But this was supposed to be a great classic, so I opened my mouth only to stuff in some popcorn.