by Kage Baker
So who gave the orders to put Mendoza in harm’s way? Who put away the Enforcers? Who the hell thought it would be funny to resurrect Nicholas Harpole Edward Alton Whatever-His-Name-Was and use him as a mortal Company operative? And how did they do that?
Why should the Company hide the fact of its origins from its own operatives?
And who was Victor working for, and where the hell were you, father? Were you masterminding a really evil bunch of people from a subterranean lair in Chinatown? Or were you living there in quiet gradual retirement, a victim of slander? How did you manage to disable your datalink?
Every time I thought I’d found an answer to something, it turned out to be a fistful of questions instead, and they were multiplying geometrically. Lewis was no help, plunging ahead with more enthusiasm than good sense, like a man digging for treasure and tossing sand into the hole somebody else was digging, completely unaware that a tidal wave was coming in . . .
So I left his chilly little garret and flew back to my cozy little box in Mazatlán, and tried to push everything to the back of my mind in the hopes it would straighten itself out.
My plan was, I’d go looking for you next. Eventually. I wanted to hear the story from your mouth. I knew if push came to shove, I’d have to side with Suleyman’s people. But maybe he was mistaken about you. I hoped like hell he was.
Though Suleyman is almost never mistaken, about anything.
But I had to wait and let a good amount of time go by before I took any spur-of-the-moment vacation weekends to San Francisco. The Second American Civil War was just about to start, and Company personnel were quietly getting the hell out of the States. Even without benefit of the Temporal Concordance, we all knew the Yanks were headed for trouble.
I guess the main difficulty was that their founding fathers never did really solve the problem of E Pluribus Unum back when they put their constitution together, in that locked room with the press kept firmly away so the American people wouldn’t know what they were doing. Small wonder the succeeding generations of government felt they weren’t accountable to the public; things had been done that way from the beginning, hadn’t they?
Eventually, though, the public had enough. Everybody knew the government lied to the people. It lied about assassination conspiracies, unidentified flying objects, unpopular wars. So the powder and fuse of resentment were ready and waiting for the spark.
It went off in 2150. The West had fallen on hard times. Industries shut down or moved east. There were plagues. There were earthquakes and floods. The government made things worse by closing down the military bases. Dumb move, as it turned out.
You know your history, you know what happens when people think they have nothing to lose but their chains. A handful of cranks with a lot of guns took the California state capitol building and read an antifederalist manifesto. They were in the right place at the right time and hit the right nerve. Suddenly California was seceding from the Union. Nobody was surprised when Montana and Utah seceded, too, but then Nevada went, and Colorado. What really tore it was when Texas joined the secessionists, because Texas had money and an intact infrastructure.
Within hours, most of the other western states had declared, and the South woke up in astonishment and jumped on the wagon, too. Everything was happening so fast, and everyone was so confused, there might have been a real shooting war, with bombers and disrupter rifles this time, if the earthquake hadn’t hit.
It was estimated at a ten on the Richter scale, and it hit the Eastern seaboard. The last time that happened, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Mississippi river ran backward for three days.
It did it this time, too. New York was destroyed, Washington D.C., was destroyed, any place with high-rise buildings and a dense urban population was destroyed. Millions of people died. The remaining United States found themselves with no way to refuse the secessionists.
Funny thing happened, though. The Americans were aghast at what had happened, abruptly aware of how vulnerable they were. Hurried meetings were held among the survivors. A loose federation was patched together, all parties agreeing to disagree.
The result was a bloc composed of most of the northeastern states, a bloc of southern and central states, an independent Republic of Texas, and a handful of Native American nations. The Mormon Church got Utah. Canada debated whether to accept the few bordering strays who petitioned for admittance. California fragmented into about five little independent republics. Hawaii set up a constitutional monarchy, since it had thoughtfully kept its royals. All parties retired to lick their wounds and burn their dead.
And that was it. You couldn’t really call it a war, because Mother Nature was the only one who did the fighting; but Second Civil War sounds good in the history books. A lot of wealthy Asian and European countries looked thoughtfully at the mess and wondered what might be grabbed. Things might have gone badly for the Yanks if some guy in the American Community hadn’t discovered—or, rather, rediscovered—antigravity.
What a joke! Antigravity proved to operate on a principle so moronically simple, most scientists refused to acknowledge it at first out of sheer embarrassment, except for a few rogue Egyptologists who laughed and laughed. The American Community had the sense to see it had been dealt a trump card, though. Cash flowed into the renascent union, and the old experiment of government of the people, by the people, for the people was back up and running. With all their politicians buried under tons of rubble, they just maybe had a chance this time.
It’s easy to rebuild after an earthquake when you have antigravity to help you, and Megalith Nouveau became the next hot architectural style. The Yanks became the world’s first manufacturer of the antigravity car, after having been the only holdouts in the world who were still stubbornly making internal combustion engines.
You can zip all over the known landscape in an agcar, you can even take them across water on a still day, they use almost no power and are a whole lot cheaper to make than electric cars. Everyone in the world wanted antigravity technology. The Yanks made a fortune selling the secret, until other nations figured out how simple it was.
Just as people were congratulating themselves on things returning to normal, the plagues broke out again—in China and India this time. Millions more died. Labienus’s work, I guess. And then a good-sized earthquake hit England, of all places, and took out a lot of high-rise London. That was in 2198.
The Brits rebuilt with antigravity technology. By the year 2205 London was back in business, though there were a lot fewer people. At least the last of the terrorists seemed to have been killed in the earthquake. England had enough of chaos: it reinvented its peerage and gave ruling power to a house of lords, hereditary bureaucrats who promptly formed social committees and tidied up everything. Europe went pretty much the same way: the Hapsburgs (talk about comebacks) emerged from the woodwork and made the antigravity trams run on time, and people were only too glad to let them.
In a way it was the post-holocaust world people had been expecting since the atomic age: old familiar institutions gone, humanity scarce on the ground and returning to feudalism. Instead of grinning leather-clad bandit punks, though, corporate functionaries were the rulers. People clustered together in smaller communities, linked online, and held tight to their comforts. Technological innovation stopped dead after antigravity. We had the global village at last and, surprise, a village was exactly what it was. With a shared culture, mortals became more provincial, not less.
The world looked inward, not ahead, and history-reenactment clubs became more popular than they had ever been. Even the people going out to Luna carried historical clichés with them, proud to be pioneers seeking Lebensraum. The future was looking more and more like the past, especially to anybody who watched Rome’s long slow slide into night.
Oh, and Japan kept sinking. They had one earthquake after another, though none of them did much damage anymore, because most of the Japanese had relocated to Mexico. By 2205 about all that was le
ft above sea level was Mount Fuji, and downtown Mazatlan was really crowded at lunch hour. By that time I was glad to be working again in Spain, which had changed beyond recognition in some ways and not at all in others.
Just like everything else.
London, 2225
LEWIS CHECKED HIS internal chronometer and wondered whether he ought to finish up lunch. It didn’t really matter whether he took one hour or three, because almost nobody ever came into the Historic Books Annex of the London Metropolitan Library. Some days he never saw a single patron. It wasn’t surprising; historic books were the only kind that existed anymore, as nobody had printed on paper in decades.
The fact that the entrance to the annex was on a dark little side street made traffic less likely still. Lewis reflected that he might have indulged in a seven-course meal with brandy and cigars, if he’d wanted to (and if such things still existed); the chances of seeing a mortal before closing time were one in a hundred.
On the Buke screen at his desk a little animated figure of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax stalked up and down on the quarterdeck of a nineteenth-century warship. The sea pitched and rolled most realistically, and about every seventh wave a seagull would swoop across the upper right-hand corner of the scene. It had taken Lewis months to program, getting all the details right, and he was rather proud of it. He no longer kept the daguerreotype on display—it was fabulously antique now—but he liked being able to see Edward.
Lewis leaned back in his chair and picked again at the mixed green salad, wondering sadly how a country so thoroughly vegan as Britain had gone could somehow fail to produce decent lettuce. He peered at what might have been a wholemeal crouton or a piece of romaine and gave up in disgust, tossing the catering box into the dustbin. No matter. He’d skip over to Paris this weekend and treat himself. He could afford to do such things nowadays. The gold letters on the inner door read LEWIS MARCH, CHIEF CURATOR.
Yes, the wheel of Fortune had turned; now he had a nice modern house in one of the New Parks that had been created on the site of the former high-rise district. Plenty of central heating and plumbing, all the sunlight London ever offered, and something else that hadn’t used to be available at all in an urban area: fresh air. His present assignment—buying old books for the library and smoothly making off with the rare ones Dr. Zeus wanted—was unbelievably dull, but it left him a lot of time for his private research. Lewis didn’t mind gradual retirement much.
He had been quietly monitoring the present-day activities of the Kronos Diversified Stock Company, and had noted that two of his fellow immortals sat on its board of directors. He had also hacked into the American classified archives—as he had suspected, this became a great deal easier after the war—and was able to confirm a great many details of the 1863 incident, including the unsolved disappearance of six Pinkerton agents. There was no record of any capture of a British agent, however, or even of one being shot while trying to escape, and nothing about any woman that might have been Mendoza.
The nightmares marched on relentlessly. He dreamed, often, about a sixth-century monk with the sort of sideways tonsure the Irish had defiantly worn. A big man, bearded, with ink on his hands. Lewis almost knew the mortal’s name. He didn’t want to.
It wasn’t that he was afraid of the mortal—the man seemed quite nice, in fact he was trying to remind Lewis of something—but Lewis invariably woke in a cold sweat just as the man was about to tell him what it was.
He brushed away the crumbs of his lunch, standing up to be certain he hadn’t got salad oil on his beautifully pressed trousers. Satisfied, he settled down and cleared the screen for the personal project he was working on, his secret indulgence. He opened it and reviewed what he’d written that morning, frowning thoughtfully.
Lieutenant Dumfries saluted and said nervously, “But, Commander, how are we to penetrate the mangrove swamps against the tide? There’s not a breath of wind to fill the longboat’s sails!”
By way of answer Edward drew his cutlass and vaulted ashore, where a few brief efficient chops at a stand of bamboo produced three serviceable poles, each some eight feet in length when trimmed.
“Were you never at Cambridge, man?” he snapped. “Pretend the damned thing’s a punt. Now, gentlemen, step lively! We’ve got a good deal of this damned swamp to cross if we’re to rendezvous with Jenkins’s men before Señor Delarosa and King Dalba—
Before they what? Lewis ran a hand through his limp hair, sighing in frustration. What exactly was the point of the rendezvous? And did bamboo grow in Africa? And wouldn’t it be faster for them to sail across the lagoon rather than work their way through the swamp? And how had King Dalba met up with Señor Delarosa again so quickly?
Lewis wrote a few more lines and then stopped, realizing he hadn’t mentioned Edward’s vaulting back into the boat before it pushed off. He was busy deleting when the outer door opened, and Edward had just leaped athletically onto the gunwale (a move that would almost certainly have landed the heroic young commander in four feet of swamp) when the inner door opened. Someone came to the counter and stood there.
Lewis turned in his chair. “May I help you—?” was as far as he got before he choked and levitated out of the chair so quickly, he knocked it over. He stood behind it, shaking. The nightmares were coming again, he could hear them baying for his blood in the distance. His visitor did not seem to have noticed the accident.
“I have to use a terminal,” said the visitor.
Lewis scanned, controlling himself. Nothing to be afraid of after all. His visitor was only a mortal, rather a small one with some kind of developmental disability. Male, about thirty-five, badly dressed, with big weak-looking dark eyes that reminded Lewis of a rabbit’s. Pasty complexion. Big-domed oddly shaped head with an extremely receding hairline. He was carrying a string bag containing a sipper bottle of water and an orange.
“Er, sorry about that,” Lewis giggled in embarrassment. “I’m a little jumpy today. What are you looking for, Mr.—?”
“I have to use a terminal,” repeated his visitor in a drippy little voice.
Lewis walked out into the main reading room and pointed to the closest bank of terminals. “Here you are. Please let me know if you need any—” But the visitor had already marched past him, sat down, and begun to type away with blinding speed. Lewis retreated behind the counter gladly enough.
“I’ll just continue my research, then, shall I?” he said, for no reason he could think of. The visitor ignored him. The rattling of keys in the echoing room sounded like a hailstorm.
Lewis sat down again, attempting to return his attention to the adventures of Commander Bell-Fairfax. What part of a boat was a gunwale anyway? And should it be cane instead of bamboo Edward cut for the poles? Mendoza could have told him . . .
He was accessing internal datafiles for his answers when the pattering of keys stopped. Lewis felt the hair rise on the back of his neck and turned in his chair to see the visitor advancing on him. What was so familiar about the creature?
“That terminal doesn’t work,” said the man.
“Oh, dear,” Lewis said. “What are you trying to locate? Perhaps I can—”
“I need to call home,” said the man, staring at him.
“Oh, I see, you need a public terminal,” Lewis said. “I’m so sorry for the misunderstanding. None of these are linked to a public line, I’m afraid. They’re for accessing information in the archives.”
“Oh,” said the visitor.
“Yes,” said Lewis.
“Got any Nasowipes?”
Lewis pulled out a handful of tissues and thrust them at the visitor, who accepted them without a word, turned, and went back into the reading room. Lewis leaned over the counter, staring after him.
“But don’t you want to—?” The visitor gave no sign of hearing him. Lewis shrugged and went back to his Buke. After a moment of staring at the last line, wherein Commander Bell-Fairfax had just rescued a frantic British tar who’d fallen into leech-infe
sted water, Lewis adjusted his chair and console pullout so he was no longer sitting with his back to the reading room.
“Please, Commander, get ’em off me!” begged Johnson desperately.
“Courage, man.” Coolly, Edward lit up a long cheroot. “This is likely to be a bit unpleasant. Close your eyes.” The other sailors looked on in horror as Edward, having produced a red and glowing ember on the end of his cigar, reached down with his fine hand and applied it carefully to the horrible
“Got any paper clips?” the visitor asked, appearing at Lewis’s elbow like a ghost. Lewis restrained himself from levitating again and groped in a pigeonhole of the desk. He found a handful of paper clips and offered them to the man.
The man took them, turned, and headed back to the reading room. Lewis looked after him, wiping his hand on his coat lapel unconsciously. The man’s hand had been long, thin, and clammy.
Lewis revised:
applied it carefully to the disgusting
“Any magnedots?” asked the visitor. Lewis yanked open the drawer where he kept file labels and fished out a strip of magnedots for him. The visitor took them without a word and trudged away. Lewis sat jittering a moment before he resumed:
applied it carefully to the loathsome, blood-engorged
The street door was opening. Two mortals came hurriedly toward him, a man and a woman, passing through the inner door. They wore uniforms and were radiating alarm.
“Excuse me, please,” said the young woman. “We’re looking for a little man.”
“Ah,” said Lewis.
“We’re from the Neasden Adult Residential Facility,” said her companion. “We were taking our guests on an outing to the library, and Mr. Fancod seems to have wandered off. He’s about five feet tall—”
“Mr. Fancod!” exclaimed the young woman, catching sight of the visitor through the reading room arch. “How clever of you to find your way in here. Come along now, dear, your friends are very worried about you.” She rushed into the reading room, closely followed by her associate.