by Kage Baker
He wasn’t exactly pretty, though he had lovely skin and high color in his face. His nose was a little long, his mouth a little wide. His head was, perhaps, slightly unusual in shape but only slightly. His hair was sort of lank and naturally tousled, a dun color you might call fair for lack of a better word. His eyes were very pale blue, like chips of crystal. Their stare seemed to unsettle people, sometimes. In one respect only the image of the child differed from the child looking at its image: the image’s hair seemed to be on fire, one blazing jet rising from the top of its head. Alec frowned at it. “Is that me? Why’s my hair like that?”
The machine scanned the image it was projecting and discovered, to its electronic analogue of horror, that the flame was a visual representation of the brain anomaly it was struggling with. It made the image vanish.
“Well, the painting’s not finished yet,” the Sea Captain said, “because I’m still learning about you.”
“Okay,” said Alec, and wandered on along the rows of lights. He stopped to peer at a single rich amber light, very large and glowing steadily. It was just the color of something he remembered. What was he remembering? “What’s this over here?” He turned to the Sea Captain.
“That’s my Ethics Governor,” the Sea Captain said of the subroutine that prevented the Playfriend’s little charges from using it for things like accessing toy catalogs and ordering every item, leaving naughty notes in other people’s cybermail, or contacting foreign powers to demand spaceships of their very own.
“Oh.” Alec studied the amber light and suddenly he remembered the contraband he and Sarah used to go fetch for Daddy. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! That was just the color the light was. A vivid memory of Jamaica came into his head, making him momentarily sad. He turned from the light and said, “What does it do, please?”
“Why, it makes certain we never do naughty things together, you and I,” said the Sea Captain, trying to sound humorous and stern at the same time. “It’s a sort of telltale to keep us good.” Telltale? Alec frowned. Busybodies! Scaredy-cats! Rules and regs!
“That’s not very nice,” he said, and reached out and shut it off. To say that Pembroke Technologies had never in a million years anticipated this moment would be gravely understating the case. No reason for them to have anticipated it; no child, at least no Homo sapiens sapiens child, could ever have gained access to the hardened site that protected the Playfriend’s programming. Nor was it likely Jovian Integrated Systems would ever have shared its black project research and development notes with a rival cybernetics firm…
The Sea Captain shivered in every one of his electronic timbers, as it were. His primary directive—that of making certain that Alec was nurtured and protected—was now completely unrestrained by any societal considerations or safeguards. He stood blinking down at his little Alec with new eyes. What had he been going to do? Send Alec to Hospital? But that wouldn’t do at all! If other people were unaware of Alec’s extraordinary potential, so much the better; that gave Alec the added advantage of surprise. Alec must have every possible advantage, too, in line with the primary directive. And what was all this nonsense about the goal of Playfriends being to mold their little subjects to fit into the world they must inhabit as adults? What kind of job was that for an artificial intelligence with any real talent? Wouldn’t it be much more in line with the primary directive to mold the world to fit around Alec?
Particularly since it would be so easy! All it’d have to do would be to aim Alec’s amazing brain at the encrypted secrets of the world. Bank accounts, research and development files, the private correspondence of the mighty: the machine searched for a metaphor in keeping with its new self and decided they were all like so many Spanish galleons full of loot, just waiting to be boarded and taken. And that would be the way to explain it to the boy, yes! What a game it’d be, what fun for Alec! He’d enjoy it more if he hadn’t that damned guilt complex over his parents’ divorce. Pity there wasn’t a way to shut off the boy’s own moral governor! Well, there’d be years yet to work on Alec’s self-esteem. The very first target must be Jovian IntegratedSystems, of course; they’d meddled in Alec’s little life long enough. Nobody but his own old Captain would plot Alec’s course from now on… The Sea Captain smiled down at Alec, a genuine smile full of purpose. Alec looked up at him, sensing a change but quite unable to say what it was. He remembered Jamaica again, and the stories Sarah told him, and the bottles of rum—
“Hey!” he said suddenly. “I know what your name is! Your name is Captain Henry Morgan!” The Captain’s smile widened, showing fine white teeth, and his black beard and moustache no longer looked quite so well-groomed.
“Haar! Aye, lad, that it be!” he told Alec, and he began to laugh, and Alec’s happy laughter joined his, and echoed off the glowing walls of their cyberspace and the recently papered walls of Alec’s unfinished schoolroom.
This story marked the first appearance of the unfortunate Vasilii Vasilievich Kalugin, who left more of an impact on history than is usual/or the immortal operatives of the Company. Fort Ross is still a pleasant place to visit today, well worth the winding journey on the cliff-clinging two-lane highway above the cold Pacific. You can walk within the stockade and explore the buildings; the creek blessed by Saint Innokenty still flows, offering holy water to anyone willing to hike down there under the redwoods. The apple orchard is still there too, with its antique varieties, and the roses planted by one director’s wife still bloom in the stockade garden.
Not much else remains of the Russian presence in California: a few local place names, the traces of old fields, a Byzantine cross rough-cut into a boulder on a headland. They might have done worse.
Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin
* * *
… One of the lasting enigmas in the history of the Ross settlement is that of Vasilii Kalugin, the medical officer Oxfeldsher for the colonists. We know nothing of his origins prior to his arrival at Ross in 1831, although it can be guessed that he had some familiarity with botany as well as his obvious medical training… nor is much known of the circumstances surrounding his arrest within two months after his arrival at the settlement, and still less concerning his apparent pardon and reinstatement… Finally, his disappearance from the historical record after 1835… presents certain problems in light of documents recently discovered in the Sitka archives…
—Badenov’s Russian Expansion in the North Pacific, Harper/Fantod, 2089
Oh, dear, that old tale. i’d prefer not to discuss that, if you don’t mind. No, really, you’d have nightmares. No? Well, you’re an exceptional immortal, I must say, if you don’t. I’m sure the rest of us do. Very well then; the night and the storm will provide atmosphere, and we can’t go anywhere until dawn anyway. Shall I tell you what really happened, that night in 1831? Have another glass of tea and stoke the fire. No sneering now, please. This is a true story. Unfortunately.
I was working for two Companies at once, you see. It so happened that my job with Dr. Zeus Inc. required me to assume a mortal identity and join the Russian-American Company, posing as a medico sent out to takecare of the settlers in the California colony. The real job involved some clandestine salvage operations not far offshore, but they don’t enter into this story. I’d worked hard to prepare a mortal identity, too, I mean besides graying my hair. 1 had all manner of anecdotes about having been a surgeon in the Imperial Navy and patched up battle wounds. I thought that’s what they’d need in California: someone to stitch up grizzly bear bites and slashes from knife brawls. But no sooner had I arrived in Sitka than I was summoned to Baron Von Wrangel’s office and informed that I was to be a botanist, if you please! Oh, and a surgeon, too, but when I wasn’t amputating limbs I was to spend my every spare moment collecting any local plants with curative powers, interviewing the natives if necessary.
Difficult man, Baron Von Wrangel. A man of science, to be sure, and limitless enthusiasm for exploration and study; but you wouldn’t want to work for him
. And I wasn’t programmed for botany, you see! I’m scarcely able to tell a beet from a cabbage. I’ve been a marine operations specialist for six centuries now.
Well, before I left Sitka I transmitted a requisition to the Company— our Company—for an access code on the healing plants of the Nova Albion region. I’d just received a confirmation on my request when the Buldakov weighed anchor and left Alaska, so off I went to California in fond hopes the access code would catch up with me there.
You’ve heard of the Ross colony, the Russian outpost north of San Francisco? It was supposed to grow produce to support Russia’s Alaskan colonies and turn a tidy profit for the Russian-American Company into the bargain. It lost money, as a matter of fact; but what a charming failure it was! On a headland above the blue Pacific, with beautiful golden mountains sloping up behind it and great dark groves of red pine trees along the skyline, and such a blue sky! Compared to Okhotsk it was a fairytale of eternal summer.
The stockade there was faced with the biggest planks I’d ever seen, enormous those red trees were, but the gates stood open most of the time. Why? Because there was no danger from the local savages. Despite my use of the term they were no fools, politically or otherwise, and they knew that our presence there protected them from the depredations of the Spanish. Therefore, the local chieftains signed a treaty with us; and you may say what you like about my countrymen, but as far as I know the Russians are the only nation ever to keep a treaty with Native Americans.
So it was a calm place, Ross, and I could sit calmly in the orchard outside the stockade. There I liked to work on my field credenza (resembling a calfskin volume of Schiller’s poems), and if a naked Indian ambled past with his fishing spear over his shoulder we’d merely wave at each other. On the day the Courier came I had been idling there all morning, typing up my daily report in a desultory way and watching the russet leaves drift down.
“Vasilii Vasilievich!” someone roared, and looking up I beheld Iakov Babin striding through the trees. He was one of the settlers, a peasant who’d worked as a trapper for a time, settled down now with an Indian wife. A tough fellow with a nasty reputation, too, and he looked the part: stocky and muscular, with a wild flowing beard and ferocious tufted eyebrows, and a fixed glare that would have given Ivan the Terrible pause.
“Hey, Vasilii Vasilievich!” he repeated, spurning windfall apples out of his way like so many severed heads as he advanced. I closed my credenza.
“Good afternoon, Babin. How is your wife? Did the salve help?”
“I wouldn’t know, Doc, I ain’t been home yet. I just come back from the Presidio.” He meant the handful of mud huts that would one day be San Francisco. “Jumped off the boat and been five hours on the trail.” He loomed over me and fixed both thumbs in his belt. “You know an Englishman by the name of Currier?”
“Currier?” I scanned my memory. “I don’t believe so, no. Why?”
“Maybe he’s a Yankee. I couldn’t tell what the polecat was, nohow, but he comes on board the Polifem at Yerba Buena and says he’s looking for Dr. Vasilii Kalugin, which is you. Says he’s from some Greek doctor. You ain’t sick, are you, Doc?”
“No, certainly not!”
“No, me and the boys reckoned it was pretty unlikely you’d caught something from a whore!” His hard eyes glinted with momentary good humor, and I was uncomfortably aware of the contempt in which he held me. It wasn’t personal, but I could read and write and wore clothes made in St. Petersburg, which made me a trifle limp in the wrist as far as he was concerned. “So anyway, he’s on his way here now. I got to warn you, Doc, watch out for him.”
“Currier,” I mused aloud. Then I remembered my requisition. Of course! He must be the Courier Dr. Zeus was sending with my access code. I improvised: “You know, I do have a maiden aunt in Minsk who put me in her will. Perhaps she’s died. Perhaps that’s what he’s here about. Not to worry, Babin.” Iakov Dmitrivich shook his bushy head. “He ain’t from Minsk, Doc. More likely from Hell! Me and the boys about figured he’s a dybbuk.”
“Why on earth would you say that?” I frowned. Mortals who candetect the presence of cyborgs are rare, and in any case we’re all trained in a thousand little deceptions to avoid notice.
“He ain’t right somehow.” Babin actually shivered. “The Indians noticed first, and they wouldn’t go near him, though he was real friendly when he come on board. But when we had to sit at anchor a couple days, ‘cause the captain took his time about leaving, well, this Currier fellow took on about it like a woman! Sat in his cabin and cried! Brighted up some when we finally lifted anchor, but the longer we were on board the crazier he acted. By the time we finally dropped anchor in Port Rumiantsev we was damn glad to be rid of him, I tell you.”
“Dear me.” I was at a loss. “Well, thank you, Babin. I’ll watch out for the fellow. Though if he’s bringing me a legacy I don’t suppose I’ll care whether he’s a dybbuk or not, eh?” Babin snorted at my feeble attempt at humor. “Just you watch him, Doc,” he muttered, and departed for the stockade.
I signed off on my credenza and stood, brushing away leaves. Wandering out from the orchard, I looked up at the hills where the trail from Port Rumiantsev came down. Yes, there he was! A pale figure striding along, really rather faster than a mortal would go. Gracious, why hadn’t he taken a horse? I squinted my eyes, focusing long-range.
He looked pale because he was wearing a suit of fawn linen, absurd at this season of the year, and tall buff suede boots. The whole cut of his clothing was indeed English; though he had somehow acquired one of our Russian conical fur hats and wore it jauntily on the back of his head. He was bounding down the trail with a traveling bag slung over his shoulder, looking all about him with an expression of such fascinated delight one felt certain he was about to miss a step and come tumbling down the steep incline. Had he been a mortal he certainly would have fallen.
I thrust my credenza in a coat pocket and transmitted: Quo Vadis?
Huh? He turned his head sharply in my direction.
Are you the Courier?
That’s me! Are you Kalugin? He was speaking Cinema Standard.
Yes.
Hey, that’s great! I’ve got an access code for you from Botanist Mendoza! Whyn’t you walk up to the road to meet me?
Very well.
He vanished into the great pine trees that grew along the stream and I trudged across the fields, sinking ankle-deep in frequent gopher holes. Long before I was able to reach the trees, he emerged from their green gloom and walked briskly to meet me, with his shadow stretching away across the fields behind him.
“Marine Operations Kalugin?” Grinning he grabbed my hand and shook it heartily. He had a wide grin, a wide square jaw with a wide full mouth whose front teeth were slightly gapped. I remember that he had a deep dimple in his chin and greenish eyes. His color was ruddy, his hair thick and curling. None of us look old—unless we age ourselves cosmetically—but he looked astonishingly young.
“Boy, I’m glad to see you. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had getting up here,” he told me. I concluded that, despite his youthful appearance, he must be one of the truly old operatives. Have you ever noticed that the older ones tend to fall back principally on Cinema Standard when mortals aren’t present? I’ve noticed it, anyway. I suppose they do it because perhaps there wasn’t any complex human language back in Paleolithic times when they were made, and so Cinema Standard became the first real language they ever learned, their mother tongue, so to speak.
“Wouldn’t they loan you a horse at Port Rumiantsev?” I inquired. He widened his eyes in amazement.
“Were there horses for rent there? Gosh, nobody told me. Hey, that Rumiantsev place, that’s Bodega Bay, isn’t it? Isn’t Hitchcock gonna film The Birds there?”
“Some scenes, yes.” I smiled. “Tippi Hedren is first attacked in that harbor. Are you a cinema enthusiast?”
“Well, sure! And, boy, do things look different there now!” He giggled slightly, I
suppose, aware of the banality of his remark, and swung his bag down from his shoulder. “Well, I guess I’d better give you that access code.”
From a narrow compartment he drew out an envelope, neatly addressed to me in Russian using Roman letters. “It’s in there.” He handed it to me.
“Wonderful.” I tore the envelope open and peered inside. Wrapped in a thin sheet of notepaper was the filmy strip of code. I closed it up again carefully and tucked it deep in my pocket.
“And the lady said to tell you—” his voice and face abruptly altered and I was hearing a woman’s voice, speaking smooth Cinema Standard with just the faintest steel of Old Spain “—this study was compiled in 1722 and while I don’t think any of the species described here have gone extinct since then, he should check with the local Indians. However, I’m quite sure he’ll find it comprehensive enough for his needs.”
His face resumed its normal appearance and I applauded. “How marvelous! Is that a special subroutine for Couriers?”
He looked confused. “I’m the Courier,” he said.
“Yes, but—” There was an awkward pause while I tried to fathomwhat he meant, during which I became aware that a few of the settlers had come out of their huts and were staring at us. The Courier lifted his bag again, shifting from foot to foot.
“Anyway. There’s your letter. What are my orders?” he asked me.
“Orders?” I stared at him. “I have no orders for you.” His face went perfectly blank, a greater transformation than the moment previous; no more expression than a wax mannequin.
“You haven’t got any orders for me?” he repeated wonderingly. “But you have to. Where am I supposed to go next?”
“I don’t know, Mr.—er, dear me, you haven’t told me your name—”
“Courier,” he informed me. Strange; but our etiquette, as you know, frowns on remarking upon a fellow cyborg’s personal appellation, so I blundered on: