Mendoza in Hollywood (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “That is the cause in which I labor. What force can bring the greatest good to the greatest number of men? Only the modern empire, with its constitution to guarantee their individual rights, and its power to bring them prosperity. A missionary may persuade a painted savage to worship a cross rather than an idol; but he will not make laws that send that savage’s children to school, where they might learn to make the desert they inhabit another Eden by means of the advanced sciences. He may persuade his flock to love one another for his God’s sake, but he’ll invariably urge them to slaughter any neighboring tribe that still worships stone idols. This is the failure of religion as a force for the common welfare,” he said.

  “Señor, you have the truth of it,” I said from my heart. How had Victorian England brought forth a man like this? “And surely this is the way to a better world, is it not, this secular enlightenment? Even the Americans have deduced this, with their separation of church and state.”

  “Ah, the Yankees.” He sneered elegantly. “What have they achieved but violent chaos? And I’ll tell you why, my dear. Liberty (as they conceive of it) and loyalty are opposing concepts. Having rebelled against the hereditary ruler who was the embodiment of their nation, to what will they be loyal? Their flag? But see what has happened now: half the nation, asserting its liberty to keep slaves, has rebelled and taken up arms to defend that liberty. It won’t end there, either, you know. Any brute will demand his right to be a law unto himself, beating his wife and his children as he pleases, and defend that right with his father’s rifle and think himself a patriot.” He used his big hands so well when he spoke, with graceful economical gestures to make his point.

  “The difficulty, I think, is that liberty is too abstract an idea for human nature to grasp. It is too easily twisted into lawlessness, as has happened in America. Most men are incapable of reverencing a mere principle; that principle must be embodied in a living person to effectively hold their allegiance. This is where empire inspires, and democracy fails in inspiration: love of one’s monarch.”

  What a spell he was weaving, jarred only by my mental image of dumpy little Victoria and her priggish prince. No, I certainly couldn’t agree with him on that one. But he swept on and took my breath away by saying:

  “Mind you, royals and their attendant baggage of toadies, cretins, and thieves are seldom an inspiring lot in and of themselves, but in a constitutional commonwealth they need not be. I believe that my sovereign has deplorable taste in art, is devoid of much talent to rule, and certainly couldn’t compete with Venus for beauty. But she in her person is the empire personified, the driving force of civilization, and as such I serve her, reverence her, and will, when necessity commands, die for her.”

  The wickedly confidential way in which he said this was so delightful that it took a moment for the last part to sink in on me.

  “I trust, señor, you’ve no intention of dying soon,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed, and he shrugged. “No intention at all. But my occupation carries that risk, always. I imagine I came rather close to the awful specter this evening. Certainly I’d hate to lose my life as the result of some fool’s incompetence. Should there come a time, however, when my death would serve the purpose of empire, then I hope I will die without hesitation. As the bard of Avon says, ‘Live we how we can, yet die we must.’ And that being the inevitable case, one can at least have the satisfaction of accomplishing something with one’s death.”

  It has probably already occurred to you, señors, but it was only at that moment that I realized that this was the same man I had loved. He had exactly the same inner drive that had got him burned at the stake; only the focus of his devotion had shifted. As I stared at him in horror, he leaned back and went on:

  “I don’t imagine I’d much care to live to decrepit old age, to tell you the truth. End one’s days being pushed about in a bath chair? Not for me. Better a brief life lived intensely, with a keen appreciation of its pleasures.” He gave me a meaningful smile. “It’s no more than the bargain soldiers make, after all, self-sacrifice for the greater good.”

  He was the perfect operative. Brilliant intellect, no life of his own, utterly focused on his duty to make the world a better place, thoroughly convinced that his masters were wise and good. He was just what I was supposed to be.

  “But—isn’t human sacrifice one of the barbarisms you’re working to put an end to?” I protested, rising up on my knees. “Whether willing or unwilling? And how can you know, señor, that your death will really have accomplished anything? Secrets of espionage are the most transitory. And who can ever say how history will play out? Consider, consider those same English martyrs!”

  I felt my voice shaking and tried desperately to control it, but everything I’d wanted to say to him for three hundred years came howling up from my heart. “They let themselves be burned in droves, señor, and for what? They died for nothing. If they’d only kept their mouths shut and lain low, they’d have lived to see a better day, because in short order Bloody Mary died and Elizabeth succeeded her, and restored their stupid Protestant faith to power. So how can you know, señor, that you wouldn’t be throwing your life away, that you wouldn’t serve your cause better as a living man?”

  Was I convincing him, señors? No, I was only arousing him. He found the throb of my voice, the firelight on my hair, and the angry blood in my cheeks exciting. But he did make an effort to reply seriously rather than simply grab me and pull me down.

  “I am astonished at how well you know English history, my dear,” he said. “Granting your point—without foreknowledge of history, what else could those Protestant heroes have done? Nor can you say with real certainty that their deaths accomplished nothing. If they hadn’t died as bravely as they did, if they had not so publicly denounced Mary’s tyranny, might not her husband Philip of Spain have been emboldened to seize the crown after her death? Setting aside the immediate salvation that martyrdom is reputed to confer on the martyr.” His eyes glinted, reflecting fire.

  How could I tell him that I had known how history was going to play out, and I’d failed to save him, even so? He continued:

  “The instinct to preserve life is natural for your sex, my dear; it’s a fine and appropriate womanly inclination. And when the ideal is reached at last and the world is civilized, I trust there shall be no more need of martyrs to die in any cause. At present, however, we live in a world that requires certain regrettable actions in order to bring about the better world we desire. I myself have been required to commit crimes, to do things I would certainly rather have avoided. And when my blood must be shed to atone for those acts, then at least I’ll face oblivion with a clean score. It works out, you see.”

  “In the minds of wicked old men who make governments, it works out,” I said in despair. “They know they can always count on a ready supply of brave men who’ll die for a cause, like you, and so they continue to wage wars and spend lives to keep themselves in power. But if all the heroes refused to play that great game, what then, señor? If the nations had no means of waging war on one another, wouldn’t they be obliged to find some more civilized means of settling their differences?”

  I thought he wasn’t listening to me, so hungry were his eyes. Even now he was moving forward with one hand out to wind it in my hair and pull my face close to his. He kissed greedily, but when we came up for air he growled:

  “No, my dear, they wouldn’t. Come, come, do you suppose the politicians are the only ones responsible for wars? When one shepherd will steal his neighbor’s flock, when one child will pick up a stone to fling at a child from the next village over? Things are by no means so simply drawn as you imagine, and the causes of war are far too complicated to gloss over with a pacifist cliché.”

  He bore me backward, and we wrestled as he very adroitly unbuttoned and unhooked. “If all the statesmen in the world signed a universal peace tomorrow, some spiteful fool would find a way to bare his bum at his former enemies, and the whole misery w
ould begin all over again. It will take a great deal more subtle work, over a much longer period of time, to bring peace to the world.”

  And of course he was right about that, and I had used a pacifist cliché. Really, what other man could argue like that while in the throes of carnal passion? Only one I’d ever known, a long time ago in a land far away.

  Edward put his face close to mine and looked into my eyes, and I was so spellbound by his gaze and the music of his voice, I very nearly missed the meaning of his words, which would have been a pity, because it was extraordinary.

  “And when there is peace at last, and when men are no longer distracted by the ravages of war and crime, then the real work begins. Mankind has grasped at science and invention to improve his lot; when he truly understands that he can wield those tools to improve himself, he will lay the cornerstone of the earthly paradise,” Edward said. “What might not science achieve, in a world where a nation’s resources weren’t continually drained by strife? What if that nation made a remarkable discovery, one that gave new meaning to old legends of a golden age? What if it were possible to utterly change the human condition? What if it were possible to put an end forever to disease? To age? To death itself? And where will men ever make those discoveries but in a stable and peaceful empire?”

  How did he know? Was the man a bloody prophet? How could he foresee so clearly what the future would hold once the Company was founded? And how the hell could he prophesy so, with our hearts thundering against each other and our bodies locked in the most intimate embrace? I didn’t know, I had never known, but just so had my lover spoken three centuries before. And now as then, I fled from the meaning of his words and lost myself in the worship of his magnificent mortal flesh.

  So we burned together beside that little fire, in the leaning ruin of Fremont’s outpost, and the shades of Manifest Destiny and Imperialism looked on with sardonic smiles. If the flames had risen and consumed us in each other’s arms, señors, we’d have felt no pain. If only we were lying there now, our quiet ashes mingled together!

  I opened my eyes and saw him, in the chilly morning light. For a moment I thought I was lying in a garret room in England, awake at last after a nightmare of terrible sorrow and interminable length. But no, this was my new lover, who by an amazing coincidence was identical in every respect to Nicholas. Limited gene pool indeed! I had never once in all the intervening centuries met another mortal with his face. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, with that broken nose and that wide mouth; but the combination of features that would have made another man a leering gargoyle were elegant in Edward-who-had-been-Nicholas. Part of the trick was the way he used his face, the responsive liveliness of expression, the movement of his eyes. He fascinated, he charmed, he moved well, and one never realized that the big man didn’t quite look human—something odd in the angle of the cheekbones, in the way the head sat on the powerful neck. But he hid his strangeness far better than I, who looked human.

  It was going to be tricky keeping him alive and safe, in his line of work, but I could do it, if I stayed by him the rest of his life. How to manage that? I’d find some way. Porfirio had his pet mortals, didn’t he? The Company let him go to them, stay with them, help them when they needed his help. All I’d need do is learn clever makeup skills, appear to age with Edward as he aged.

  Full body appliance makeup to make me look like an old woman with my clothes off obviously wouldn’t work. What then, live with him as is and hope for the best? The best would be some mortal disease felling him comparatively early, before he could notice that his hair was graying while I still looked eighteen.

  If I took the chance and lived an idyll with him, and if he loved me enough, might I gradually let him in on my little secret? But look what had happened the last time he discovered I wasn’t human.

  But we were in the modern era now, and this was a man with a strong belief in the virtues of science, unlikely to attribute my inexplicable abilities to Satan. Maybe I could explain, maybe he could be brought to understand, maybe he could become one of Dr. Zeus’s paid mortals with a control implant . . .

  No. But something would suggest itself, something could be worked out. Who knows, perhaps we’d live blissfully awhile and then lose interest in each other, as so many mortals did, as we might have if he’d lived, and go our separate ways without pain. Perhaps fate had brought him back for just that closure on the events of 1555, to heal my life at last.

  When he opened his eyes, though, I stopped thinking.

  “Good morning, my dear,” he said, alert at once. The charm went on as though a switch had been flipped, and his courtly smirk acknowledged that he’d very much enjoyed my company last night, wink wink, squeeze squeeze, yet his eyes also tracked around the room. Saddlebags still there, weapons still there, no intruders. Having ticked these off his mental list, he smiled down at me. “I trust you slept well?”

  “Very well indeed, señor,” I said, smiling back at him, but I had logistical problems of my own: here was a mortal man who’d been without food or water for at least twenty hours. “Though the land of dreams is a poor place to visit after one has been to heaven.”

  “Ah, but I was in paradise all night,” he said gallantly, getting to his feet and offering me his hand to rise. “Now, my dear, our first business is to feed and water the horses. Where did the redoubtable John Charles Fremont attend to such things?”

  I accessed a topographical survey. The nearest water should be a little creek flowing down a ravine just over our turreted hill. What was this footnote? Future site of Harrison Ford residence? I made a mental note not to download map information from Einar again. Movie star homes, my foot. Was the damn creek there in time of drought, that was the information I needed. I smiled prettily at Edward and pointed vaguely north. “Woman’s intuition tells me, señor, that there is a spring in yonder canyon.”

  We led the horses to where there was a little green forage. But the spring had dwindled to a seep, an uninviting trickle in a black muddy bog at the canyon bottom, full of amoebic guests that wouldn’t bother a horse but would be only too happy to give a mortal dysentery. We had to prise up a couple of big rocks and grub out a hole for the water to collect in so the horses could drink. No bullwhip-wielding hero showed up to offer us assistance, but it was 1863, after all. My own hero produced a canteen from his saddlebag and offered it to me.

  “You’ll find it brackish, I’m afraid, but safe,” he said. How did he know about the shigella I had detected here? And see how expertly he was avoiding the poison oak as he looked for a clean place to sit down. He settled on a boulder at the approximate location of what would one day be Mr. Ford’s front step, and nonchalantly proceeded to shave himself with a clasp knife that appeared in his hand out of nowhere.

  I was distracted from my awestruck contemplation of this feat (no soap, no water, and he didn’t nick himself once) by an annoying little signal pulsing through the ether.

  Mendoza?

  What is it, Juan Bautista? I’m busy.

  Are you coming back today?

  No. Fix your own breakfast. Wait, this is important. I need you to put some food together and bring it up to me. Make it look as though you’d fixed yourself a very large picnic lunch. I’m going to lead my mortal friend back in your direction, and we’re going to just accidentally on purpose run into you as you’re out hunting, okay?

  What’s going on?

  I’m doing fieldwork for Imarte.

  Hey, is that guy a real British secret agent? Like in the James Bond movies?

  Uh, yes, I guess he is.

  Edward was standing up, neatly folding away the clasp knife. A day and a night of living rough in the field, and he hadn’t so much as a smudge on those fawn wool trousers of his. Whatever secret device kept James Bond’s tuxedo impeccably pressed, it seemed to have been already in use by the British secret service in 1863.

  Neat! Can I help with whatever it is you’re doing?

  No, just bring us food. And
this is secret, okay, J. BJ I’m trying to keep this man out of danger while I find out more about his plot.

  Right.

  I’ll broadcast a directional signal as we come. Do your best to look surprised when you meet us. Spanish only, and remember, he probably understands it as well as you do, so watch what you say.

  Gotcha.

  Edward was coming toward me. “Well, my dear,” he said. “I find nothing especially edible hereabouts, with the possible exception of rattlesnakes. What are the chances we might purchase food from that farmer you mentioned?”

  “He is an inhospitable man,” I said. It might have been true, too, for all I knew. “I recollect a farm near the Rodeo de Las Aguas where they are friendlier. It would be our wisest course to keep to the heights and work our way over there. We will pass near the stagecoach inn, but not near enough to be seen. Does that suit you, seftor?”

  “Very well indeed,” he said.

  We saddled our horses and rode out, working our way back in the direction of the inn, with me broadcasting a steady signal to Juan Bautista. As we were edging our way down onto what would one day be Mulholland Drive, I spotted him lounging ever-so-casually against a rock.

  “Ay,” he said in Mexican Spanish. “Señora Mendoza, I was afraid when you did not return last night. I am out hunting, as you see.” He waved one of our rifles unconvincingly. Edward raised an eyebrow at him.

  “And I am safe, as you see. Is that food you have in your basket, boy?” I said.

  “Oh, yes—I packed myself a lunch.” Juan Bautista was trying not to stare at Edward. “It’s a very good lunch.”