by Kage Baker
“Nice place the Company’s set you up in.” Joseph waved a hand at the building. “Restored Georgian, isn’t it?” Not quite yet. Anyway we shouldn’t use it this time out. Somebody would be bound to wonder why we fry our circuits every time we get together.
“Yes.” Lewis keyed in the entry combination. “Lots of style, but the closets are impossible and the heating bills are worse. On the other hand, I needn’t commute, and there’s a really first-class vindaloo place around the corner.”
The door swung open, and he gestured for Joseph to precede him. Joseph put his suitcase down in the hall and looked around brightly, scanning. “Quite the bachelor pad, huh?”
“It’s all done in Mid–Twentieth Century Revival,” Lewis said, keying in the security, lighting, and temperature control. The rooms had a certain spartan, masculine style, black vinyl and brass, framed abstract prints, a whole wall given over to books. Everything was spotlessly clean and in perfect order. It looked like a movie set for an espionage film.
“Boy, you must sit here in the evenings and pretend you’re James Bond,” said Joseph, hanging up his coat on the hall stand.
Funny you should say that. “It’s quite comfortable, all things considered. How long can you stay?”
“Oh, just for the weekend. I’m taking a suborbital back Sunday night.” What did you find out?
More than I can tell you subvocally. Are you sure it’s dangerous to discuss out loud, even in here? “Well, let’s make good use of our time. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour. That’s the den, and the kitchen’s in there. Lavatory and two bedrooms upstairs. You’ll want to unpack, I imagine.” Lewis led Joseph up the stairs.
Especially in here. I know what we can do, though. Got any DVDs?
“And maybe you’d like to watch a movie after dinner?” Lewis suggested. “I’ve got rather an extensive collection of classics.”
“Great.” Joseph edged into the tiny guest bedroom and looked around. It was all navy blue and brass, with yachting prints on the walls. We just put on a movie and settle back to watch it. Then we can talk subvocally without having to improvise chatter for some security tech’s benefit.
Seems a bit paranoid, but you’re the Facilitator.
After Joseph unpacked, they walked down to the corner for takeaway curry, chatting pleasantly and audibly on unobjectionable topics. The nearest wine shop had closed for the day, in accordance with the tighter new laws, but Lewis had a cabinet nicely stocked with Californian white varietals. He filled a couple of goblets, and they sat on his black couch in companionable silence, eating from the cartons as they watched Humphrey Bogart face down Conrad Veidt in the latest remastered rerelease of Casablanca.
So, you were saying? Edward Alton who?
Bell-Fairfax. Nice young couple of mortals renovating an old house found an ancient box of papers in the attic and brought it to me, pound signs dancing before their eyes. Among the papers was that daguerreotype. He’s the man the ornithologist sketched, isn’t he? That day we went to the Hitchcock house?
Maybe. What he definitely is is the exact double of a first-class son of a bitch named Nicholas Harpole, whom I had the pleasure of watching burn at the stake in 1555.
The man in the daguerreotype looks like Nicholas?
The spit and image.
How remarkable, transmitted Lewis calmly, though his pulse was racing.
Remarkable ain’t the word, Lewis. I wonder what we’re dealing with here. Coincidence? Genetic hyperstability on this damn little island? You’ve lived here on and off for centuries, Lewis. Did you ever see another Englishman who even remotely resembled that big scarecrow?
Actually he seemed rather well-dressed to me. But—no, I can’t say that I have. I’ve been trying to find out more about him.
You’ve tracked down his death certificate, I hope?
I haven’t, though there’s a registry of baptism in an obscure little country parish, and he’s listed as illegitimate.
That figures.
There’s more. He appears to have written three of the letters in this collection. The young master writing home to the old family retainer, as it were. I’ve been using the references in the letters to track him, to follow his career. He was in the royal navy for a while, but then he left under something of a cloud.
I’ll bet.
I’ve only started seriously looking, but I have several leads to follow up. Did you find out where Mendoza was sent?
Yeah.
Where, for God’s sake? When were you going to tell me?
Joseph shifted uncomfortably on the couch, as Paul Henreid ordered a champagne cocktail for himself and Ingrid Bergman.
I was getting around to it. Lewis, we can’t help her. She . . . Did you ever hear rumors about a place called Back Way Back?
Lewis reached out in a leisurely way and picked up his wineglass. His hand shook only very slightly as he took a sip of chilled Chardonnay.
I see, he said at last.
She may be perfectly okay! But she’s out of the picture, Lewis. Permanently. Even if there was something I could do for her—and I’m not ruling that out—there’s sure as hell nothing you could do.
Lewis set his wine down carefully. For a moment his face was astonishingly transformed by rage. Damn them. And damn you. Are you writing her off?
Look, Joseph said, all this is beside the point. Wherever Mendoza is, she’ll be staying put. I’m following another lead right now, something completely unrelated, but it just might give me some leverage. I’ll need all the advantages I can get if I’m going to even attempt to help her. See? So you must bear with me.
What sort of lead?
Somebody gave me a set of coordinates once . . . I’ll tell you the story sometime, but the bottom line is, I need to look them up. What I’m searching for may be long gone by now, but I have to see. One of the locations is in Yorkshire. You know that area?
Yes, actually. I had a job there a few years back.
Great. Do you have a car?
I can get the Austin from the garage. It might be an overnight trip, though.
It’s only a couple of hundred miles. Just pretend you’re back in California. And even if we do stay over, I have my own credit line these days, I can pay for a hotel. All we need is a plausible reason for visiting there, so we don’t rouse suspicions.
Lewis frowned thoughtfully. A literary pilgrimage? Lot of writers in that part of the world. The Brontës, Herriot, Knollys . . .
Sounds unbelievably boring, but what the hell. You’re a literature guy, right? Any Theobromos action up there?
I don’t believe so.
Oh, well. We can always get some Aero bars at a newsagent’s or somewhere for the trip.
Lewis sipped more of his wine. You’re on another jag? I’d better lay in a few dozen tins of spaghetti. So you think this search of yours might help Mendoza?
Possibly. Though she’s been out of the picture since 1863.
Aren’t you forgetting something? You saw her in 2923. And she was with him, wasn’t she? That man in the daguerreotype, who looks just like her Nicholas?
Lewis, that has to have been a hallucination. I couldn’t have seen either one of them. I know that now. Even if she managed to escape Back Way Back somehow, what about him? That picture dates from, what, 1850? By 1923 he’d have been damn near a hundred. But he wasn’t. He didn’t look a day older than the last time I saw him, just before a powder keg turned him into a human torch. Joseph crunched into a pappadum savagely and continued. In any case, what does it matter? We know that the gene pool over here produced not one but two of the rotten stinking lousy guys. We know that somehow, by the worst coincidence in the world, guy number two managed to find my poor little recruit and screw up her life even worse than guy number one did. End of story, except that if this island somehow manages to produce another one, I swear I’ll kill him myself, because God only knows what’s left for him to do to her.
Lewis looked at him sidelong. Would you m
ind not gnashing your teeth? You’re spitting pappadum flakes all over my couch. You really hated the man, didn’t you? It’s affecting your judgment, you know. You’ve completely overlooked one possibility.
Which would be?
Mendoza was a Crome generator, Joseph. There have been no other immortals with that condition. It’s impossible to say what she can do.
True. But all the same—
She loved Nicholas desperately. I know. She was never reconciled to his death. What if she somehow reincarnated him?
Lewis, that is nuts. Have you been reading romance novels?
Of course I have, but that’s beside the point. In the nearly two thousand years I’ve been alive, I’ve seen my share of the inexplicable. And if you tell me you haven’t seen more anomalies than I have in your twenty thousand, then all I have to say is you’re either blind or a damned liar.
Joseph picked up his wine and drank it down like water. He sagged back in the vinyl upholstery, staring at the old film, watching the exquisite play of black shadow on white, on silvertone, on ash gray, silhouettes of palm fronds, window blinds, pale smoke curling in the midnight air. Bogart took another drag on the cigarette that would kill him and pondered the cruelty of chance meetings.
Yorkshire
THIS USED TO BE Ermine Street, didn’t it?” Joseph asked, squinting into the wind.
Lewis drove an Austin Taranis electric convertible, gunmetal gray, and the sporty windscreen didn’t deflect much. “Good old Roman roads,” he said, slipping them through the last poky Ai traffic emerging from London and cautiously increasing his speed. “I dare-say you’ve marched along a few of these in your time.”
“Yeah,” Joseph replied, a little gloomily. “This very road, if you want the truth.”
“Really? I wish I’d been stationed here then. Or in Rome. I never really got to know that side of my organic heritage, you know. The Company sent me straight into Ireland as soon as I graduated, and I was stuck there for the next few centuries,” Lewis said. “By the time I was finally stationed in England, Roman Britain was long gone. I’ve always rather regretted that.”
“You like army life?” Joseph unwrapped an Aero bar and took a bite.
“Well, no—at least, I don’t suppose I would. Literary Preservationists don’t see a lot of that sort of assignment,” Lewis said. “But, you know, all those legions tramping through the mists, the sort of thing you imagine when you listen to Respighi’s music. It has a certain romantic appeal.”
“Respighi should have done some time carrying a hundred-pound pack through Cumbria, that’s all I’ve got to say,” said Joseph. “And your feet froze all the time in those damn caligae. What brain trust came up with an open-toed combat boot? Goddam slaves got better shoes. And of course the poor auxiliaries died like flies from the cold, because we had guys from Africa and Hispania sent up here, naturally, and ex-Visigoths sent down to patrol villages in Egypt. Military intelligence.”
“Eat the other Aero bar, for God’s sake.” Lewis shifted gears and sped around a lorry trundling Japanese sewing machines to a minor industrial town.
“Okay, okay. Let’s see, what can I say that’s positive about the Roman army? Good engineers, but everybody knows that. Lots of incentives, and they really took care of their veterans. Had to; most stayed in the service until they were gray and toothless, which wasn’t actually all that long, given the life expectancy in those days.” Joseph balled up the wrapper and stuffed it in the Austin’s map pocket after looking around vainly for an ashtray.
“I suppose I shouldn’t ask further.” Lewis sighed. “Not if I want to keep any illusions about the blessings of the Pax Romana with all those centrally heated public buildings and orderly little towns.”
“A little Rome went a long way, believe me,” Joseph said.
Lewis pulled over to let a speeding Jaguar pass him. “Now—it’s funny, I’ve known for years you’d been a centurion, but it’s only just occurred to me to wonder—what on earth would one of us be doing in any army? How could you possibly have dealt with being on a battlefield?”
“I ducked a lot,” Joseph told him. “And as for what I was doing there, you don’t need to know.”
“Ah,” said Lewis, nodding sagely, and appeared to concentrate very closely on the road for the next few miles.
No, seriously, can you tell me what you were doing?
The Company needed an observer to fill in an event shadow. I was with the Ninth Hispania, operating out of Eboracum. York, I mean.
The Ninth? The famous lost legion?
Yeah.
And the Company planted you among them so you could find out what happened to it?
That’s right.
But I thought it turned out they were never lost after all. Didn’t someone discover they were simply transferred to Cappadocia or somewhere?
Those were the replacement guys. Haven’t you been in this business long enough to know that most questions have to be answered with yes and no? There was a good reason the legend of the lost legion got started.
Well?
We got sent on a stupid march through the Pennines, and about a million Brigantes came down on our heads. It wasn’t as bad as when Quintilius Varus got massacred, but it was bad enough. They cut us into little pieces. All except me, of course. Joseph unwrapped the other Aero bar and ate it in three bites.
That’s all?
It didn’t take long, either, the Ninth was already in such bad shape.
But . . . why were no remains ever found? No rusting armor, no spears, no coins?
Why do you think? Joseph stared out at the green countryside, where a bulldozer was methodically destroying a hedgerow eleven centuries old.
Lewis’s jaw dropped. He put the car on autopilot a moment while he went through the motions of opening out the audio case for a leisurely inspection of its contents. He selected one disc at last, a symphonic piece by Ian Anderson, and slipped it into the music system. Only then did he place both hands firmly back on the wheel and ask, Are you saying the Company had you strip the bodies?
Joseph gave a barely perceptible shrug. Something like that. You know how much future collectors will pay for authentic relics of the lost legion? With the old IX Hispania insignia?
I can imagine, Lewis said. He drove on, pale and shaken, as a flute melody of haunting sweetness wafted out of the Austin’s speakers. At last he shook his head. You know—I’ve been thinking, lately, that all this paranoia and strong-arm work was something new for the Company, some reaction perhaps to the fact that we’re nearing the year of the Silence. I assumed that Dr. Zeus used to operate in a more civilized and humane manner.
Nope.
North and north the car sped on, along the well-metaled road.
They went west on the A635 and meandered westward for a while to the A629, past Denby Dale, past Kirkburton, through Huddersfield and Halifax, and at last Lewis announced brightly, “Well, we’re almost there. Stop one of our Yorkshire literary tour. We’ll see the famous parsonage at Haworth, where the ill-fated but creative Brontë family lived, loved, and died to the last member. You’ve read the novels, of course?”
“I’ve seen the movies,” Joseph said. “I worked at MGM when they were making the Wuthering Heights with Larry Olivier.”
“So you’ve never read the novels?” Lewis’s lips thinned slightly.
“I might have scanned them in school.” Joseph shrugged, refusing to admit to anything. “Real men don’t read Jane Eyre. Unless you’re a Literature Specialist, I guess,” he added soothingly.
“Thank you.” Lewis downshifted with a bit more force than was required. “Well, you’re going to enjoy this anyway, damn it. Look at these heathery moors! Look at the wild and lonely prospects! Imagine those fantastically talented and sickly children in their claustrophobic little parsonage, growing up into doomed, brilliant youth. Not a one of them made it into their forties, did you know that? They burnt out like flares. Is it any wonder they were able to pr
oduce masterworks of savage passion and searing romance?”
“Jane Eyre, that was the one with the governess, right?” Joseph yawned.
“You know perfectly well it was. Look, there’s the parsonage museum.” Lewis turned off and steered for the car park.
“Do they have a souvenir stand?” asked Joseph.
They stopped and got out. There for their edification was the little church with its parsonage, islands in a sea of tombstones, and the moors rolling down on the back of the parsonage like a never-breaking wave. There were a few other cars in the park, but no tourists visible. The two immortals strolled toward the parsonage.
Is this going to help you at all in your investigation?
Not really. We need to go farther north. Still, it’s a good blind. We’ll see the sights, buy a couple of souvenirs, and move on, okay?
How very cloak-and-dagger.
As they came around the corner, they saw an impressive conveyance, a long wagon with a team of six coal-black draft horses in its traces. It was an omnibus of some kind, fitted with rows of seats and roofed over by an awning. A man in nineteenth-century coachman’s dress waited, immobile as a waxwork figure by the horses. Joseph and Lewis halted, staring at the moment out of time.
Before either of them could comment, the door of the parsonage opened, and out filed a line of persons, also in nineteenth-century costume in varying funereal shades, all looking rather self-conscious except for the formidable lady at their head. She spotted Joseph and Lewis gaping at them. Directing her companions to the wagon, she turned and made straight for the immortals.
“If you are interested in the tour, gentlemen, you must purchase tickets in the gift shop,” she said. She was a small stout lady of the iron-sinewed maiden-aunt variety. “However, I must advise you that appropriate dress is required, which fortunately you may rent for a reasonable sum from the wardrobe mistress.”
“Okay,” said Joseph.
“Oh! Oh! This is one of those total immersion reenactor events, isn’t it?” said Lewis in excitement. “How utterly magical! And I imagine you’re Charlotte Brontë?”