Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

by Kage Baker

  “Courier. My dear sir, I’m afraid I haven’t received any transmissions from Base since I’ve been here. Clearly there’s been some mistake. I’m sure they’ll send your orders any day now.”

  “But what am I supposed to do?” His knuckles whitened on the handle of his bag.

  “Well—” I looked around uncomfortably. I could understand if he were irritated, but his flat incomprehension baffled me. “Perhaps you’d like to visit the colony here?” Instantly his face cleared. “Okay!” he said cheerfully. I glanced over at the little crowd of Indians and frontiersmen beginning to gather by the stockade.

  “We need to address the question of your cover identity, however. Your choice of clothing is a little unusual for a Russian,” I explained delicately. “Are you programmed to speak our language at all?”

  “Sure!” he affirmed. In a flat Kievan accent he inquired, “Say, Comrade, what time does the boat leave? Where can I catch the diligence for Moscow? Is this the road to the Volga ferry?”

  “Very well… er… we’ll say you’re my late aunt’s lawyer’s clerk, and you’ve come all this way to deliver this important letter with news of her demise. You’ve also brought papers I must review and sign concerning her estate, so I’ve asked you to be my guest for a day or so.”

  “Got it.” He made a circle with his index finger and thumb. “I’m a clerk. So, let’s go! Show me around the place.”

  He surveyed the view in evident enjoyment as we crossed the headland toward the stockade. Everything pleased him: our villainous-looking Aleuts scraping a sea-lion skin, the windmill turning on its low eminence, a field of pumpkins blazing red like harvest moons amid withering vines. “Hey, neat!” He elbowed me, pointing at them. “I guess in a couple of days you’ll have some swell jack-o’-lanterns, huh?”

  “If these people had ever heard of Halloween, certainly,” I replied. “You must remember, Courier, this is Russian America. And 1831.”

  “Oh.” He looked momentarily confused. “Sure it is. Sorry, I forgot.” He glanced down into the cove, where the stream flowed into the sea. “Gosh! What’s that down there? Say, is that a shipyard?” He ran to the edge of the bluff to look. “I don’t see any ships. Just some kayaks.”

  “Bidarkas,” I corrected him. “We used to build ships. They fell apart. And our wheat gets wheat rust due to the winter fogs, and our Aleut hunters have nothing much to do because the sea otters they were brought here to hunt had unfortunately been hunted nearly to extinction by the time this settlement was founded.” I shrugged apologetically. “We don’t seem to be able to accomplish much here.”

  “I guess not.” He gazed around. “But it’s so beautiful. “ I felt a glow of friendship toward him. “Exactly, Courier! Look about you. No one is hungry here, because we do manage to raise enough to feed ourselves. Everyone is working together in peace, regardless of race. The climate is mild. Could you ask for a better description of Paradise? If only we weren’t supposed to be making a profit!”

  But he wasn’t listening to me. He was hastening ahead to look at the cemetery.

  “I have to see everything,” he shouted over his shoulder. He was quite serious. He wanted to have the colony explained to him, from the gopher holes and plough-scored rocks to the flag atop the mast in the stockade. Then he wanted to meet everyone. Everyone, I say: he even reached through the bars in the jail to shake hands with poor little Fedor Svinin, the ex-clerk who had embezzled ten years’ worth of salary to cover his gambling debts. “You don’t say?

  Poor old guy!” He would have pumped hands with equal enthusiasm with Kostromitinov, the general manager, had Piotr Stepanovich not been visiting our farm at the river. That was all right: he shook hands with all the local Kashayas he could find, who stared at him in mute incomprehension; he shook hands with every one of our Aleuts, who smiled politely and then wiped their hands on their sealskin shirts. Courier didn’t notice; he didn’t hold still long enough, leaping away to exclaim over some new feature of the settlement he’d just noticed. Everyone, everything enchanted him.

  And really it was delightful, if a bit exhausting, to accompany someone who took such intense pleasure in the smallest details of mundane life. One saw through his eyes and the great trees looked bigger, the Indians more mysterious, the coastline more wild and romantic.

  Though I must say I seem to have been the only one who enjoyed his company; Babin had already been talking to the other Russiansabout my mysterious visitor, and the ones who weren’t superstitious drew their own smirking conclusions about this effusive pretty boy. So much for my ever earning their respect.

  Courier even approached Babin with his hand out, crying “Pleased to meet you, sir, my name’s Courier,” before Babin stepped back indignantly.

  “By the Black Goat hisself!” he spat. “As if I’d want to touch the likes of him, after the way he cut up on the Polifem!”

  Courier lowered his hand, looking hurt and bewildered, as Babin turned and stamped off. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked me.

  “He, er, formed rather a poor opinion of you, I’m afraid. Apparently. When you were fellow passengers on the Polifem, “ I explained. “There seems to have been some unfortunate incident—?”

  “There was?” Courier stared after Babin. “Oh. I guess I didn’t recognize him, huh?” No amount of hinting could prompt him to tell me just what had happened on board the Polifem, but I thought perhaps he needed a little more briefing on Russian customs before he’d fit in at the officers’

  table; so when time came for the evening meal I arranged for two plates of venison stew and we carried them to one of the rooms kept ready for visitors. Courier took his tin dish and clambered onto his bunk with it, settling his back against the wall. He sighed in contentment.

  “Look at this! This is real frontier living. Look at these bare timber walls. Look at that old oil lamp—it’s burning seal blubber, isn’t it? And this is a real wool trade blanket I’ll be sleeping under tonight! Gosh. What an experience.” He spooned up a mouthful of stew and chewed ecstatically.

  “Mm-mm! So this is venison, huh? Kind of like beef, isn’t it?”

  “You mean you’ve never tasted venison before?” I stopped eating in surprise.

  “Not that I know of.” He swallowed and washed it down with a big gulp of kvass. “Golly, that’s good! Never had that before, either.”

  “Now that I can believe.” I smiled. “I take it, then, you’ve been primarily posted to cities during your career?”

  “Well, sure.” He put another spoonful in his mouth.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Oh, here and there. You know.” He waved his spoon vaguely. It occurred to me that he might not be at liberty to reveal previous assignments, and therefore it would be good manners to refrain from further questions. I gave an impromptu talk on Russian manners and mores during the rest of our meal, occasionally interrupted as he noticed yet more picturesque things to exult about, like the tin reflector behind the lamp or the framed print of the tsar.

  When we had dined I took our tableware and made to leave him forthe night, but a sudden anxious look came into his eyes and he stopped me.

  “My orders,” he said. “Have you got them?”

  “Why—no,” I told him. “Here. Wait, I’ll see if any transmissions have come in yet, shall I? Though I haven’t heard the signal—” I put down the dishes and took out my credenza. “No… no, not a word. See? I’m sorry.”

  “But why haven’t they sent my orders?” He fidgeted.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea, my friend. I can transmit an inquiry for you, but we may not get a reply for hours, or even days.”

  “That’s all right, you send it. I know my orders will come.” He nodded his head confidently. So I typed in the inquiry, and as I’d suspected the green letters just sat there and glowed. But Courier seemed to have been comforted, and so I bid him goodnight.

  On my way to the kitchen, a figure loomed into view, blocking the corrid
or, and my heart sank. It was Kostromitinov, the manager. He did not look pleased with me.

  “Kalugin!” he intoned. Oh, dear; he hadn’t even taken off his riding boots. “We have a guest, it seems, Vasilii Vasilievich? A stranger? And in my absence you’ve given him a complete tour of the colony, fortifications and all? Let him count every one of our cannons, I suppose?”

  “It’s not like that at all, sir,” I protested. He was backing me up against the wall. “He’s simply a messenger, and I was obliged to offer him hospitality.”

  “Did that mean you had to show him the armory, you idiot?”

  “Sir, you don’t understand.” I let my lip tremble. “He brought a letter from home. There’s, er, been a terrible tragedy in my family—my dear aunt, my sainted mother’s only sister—she raised me from infancy— she—she—” a tear rolled down my cheek.

  “She’s died, I suppose?” He took a step back.

  “She was run over by a pie wagon!” I broke down and sobbed. Well, it was the first thing that came into my head. Kostromitinov exhaled and folded his arms.

  “All right. All right. My condolences. But, Kalugin! This may seem an idle sleepy place, but do I have to remind you that we are on disputed soil? And you know nothing about this Englishman, do you, really?

  What if he’s a spy? What if he murdered your lawyer’s clerk and took the letter in order to get an opportunity to study our defenses for his government?”

  “He’s not an Englishman.” I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “He’s from Kiev. He, er, lost his trunk and had to borrow those absurd clothes from a fellow passenger who happened to be English.”

  “On the Polifem?” Kostromitinov raised his eyebrows. “How interesting. I heard nothing about any foreigners on board. Still, who tells me anything nowadays? Why should / receive any directives from the governor?”

  “A-actually I believe it was before he left Siberia, Piotr Stepanovich.”

  “I see. So the unpleasantness on board the Polifem had nothing to do with your friend losing his trunk?” Kostromitinov thrust his face close to mine.

  “No, it—that is—was there an unpleasantness on board the Polifem?” 1 tried to look surprised. “My goodness, he seems such an affable young man.”

  “Well, Iakov Babin, who as you may be aware is not exactly a holy saint himself, has formed the lowest of opinions of your friend’s character. He told me so personally. Waited up to tell me, in fact, so that the first sight to greet me as I returned from a long day of wrestling with the failing economy of the Slavianka farm was Iakov Dmitrivich’s scowling face.”

  “As God is my witness, Piotr Stepanovich, he’s no spy,” I sniveled. “And what was I to do, after all, when he’d made such a long journey on my family’s behalf? Bar the gates against him? Give him a kopeck and tell him to get out? I will stake my life on it—he’s nothing but a pleasant fool.” Kostromitinov rolled his eyes. “How should you know? Haven’t you ever heard that he who plays the greatest fool often lays the deepest plots?” Truer than you know, I thought. “But I suppose there’s nothing to be done now, is there? Pull yourself together, Vasilii Vasilievich. Why don’t you go to the pantry and brace yourself with a shot of vodka? And can you vouch for this desperate character’s behavior after I leave again tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir.” I replied weakly, and stumbled past him into the kitchen, where I took his advice and had a shot of vodka. In fact, I took his advice three times.

  “Kalugin!” My troubled sleep ended with a jolt. It was pitch black in my room, but an apparition at the foot of my bed glowed by infrared like the fires of Hell. I felt an involuntary desire to cross myself. It was only Courier standing there, after all.

  “What is it?”

  “Have you got my orders?”

  “Dear God, what time is it?” I groaned, and checked my internal chronometer. “Courier, it’s four o’clock in the morning!”

  “Have you got my orders?” he repeated, louder this time.

  “Ssh! Let me see if they’ve come,” I grumbled, sitting up and fumbling for my credenza. I opened it and looked for messages. “No,Courier, I’m sorry. I’ll look again later. Why don’t you go back to bed, now?” He opened his mouth as if to say something; sighed loudly instead, and went away. Of course I failed utterly to go back to sleep after that. I wondered, as I tried to beat comfort into my leaden pillow, whether mortals would envy us our infinitely prolonged existence if they knew it meant an infinite number of 4a.m.slike this one.

  In any case it was a chilled and blear-eyed immortal who ordered hot tea and settled down by the fire in the deserted officers’ mess to enjoy it. Need I tell you that my pleasure was short-lived? For here came Courier, with his traveling bag in hand, pacing toward me like a dog in search of its master.

  “Have you got my orders?” he wanted to know.

  “Not yet.” I sipped my tea.

  “You didn’t even look!”

  “I’d hear the signal if a message came in,” I told him. “However, if it will make you feel better—” I took out the credenza and showed him. After staring at it a moment he sank down on a bench. He looked so miserable it was impossible not to feel sorry for him.

  “Would you like any breakfast?” I inquired. “I can order you a bowl of kasha. The cook is awake.” He nodded glumly and I went out to fetch it for him. When it arrived he cheered up quite a bit, became pleasant and talkative, praised kasha to the skies for its flavor, its aroma, and its obvious nutritive qualities; but when it was gone he fell silent again, with a queer sullenness to his expression I had not noticed previously. He began to beat out a rhythm on the table with his hands. I finished my tea, drew a deep breath and volunteered, “Well, since it seems you’ll be my guest a trifle longer than we’d anticipated, would you like to explore the surrounding countryside today? We can borrow a pair of saddle horses from the stables.”

  Courier’s face smoothed out like untroubled water. He jumped to his feet.

  “You bet! Let’s go!”

  We departed the colony while it was still half-asleep, white smoke curling up from its chimneys and Indian day laborers straggling in across its fields from their village nearby. Courier’s horse was skittish and uneasy, but I must say he was a superb rider, controlling with an iron hand an animal that clearly wanted to bolt and run. I myself ride like a sack of flour; there were no Cossacks amongst my mortal gene donors, I fear. My mount looked over its shoulder at me in what I fancied was pitying contempt. Horses always know.

  Courier seemed quite happy to spur his horse splashing along darkstreams, in the deep shadow under enormous trees, exclaiming over their vastness. (“Gosh! This looks like where Return of the Jedi was shot!”) Sometimes we’d come down into an open valley and follow a watercourse through willow and alder thickets, near villages where Indians fished for salmon, or we’d skirt wide marshlands where a single egret stood motionless, like a white flame. I played the tour docent and explained as much as I knew of the local natural history, though of course I’d have done better if I’d had a chance to access Mendoza’s codes, but Courier didn’t seem to mind. He shouted his rapture at encountering a madrone tree scarlet with berries, or a spray of flame-pink maple leaves backlit by a sunbeam against moss green as emeralds.

  As the afternoon lengthened I led us back in a loop to the great coastal ridge, and timed our progress up its leeward side so that we came to the crest just as the sun was setting.

  “And we’re home again.” I gestured at the breathtaking view, rather pleased with myself. Across the gleaming Pacific, the red sun was just descending into a bank of purple fog. Far below us, down beyond countless treetops, the Ross settlement looked like a toy village, with its quaint blockhouses and domed and towered chapel. There were still tiny figures moving in the patchwork fields. Mortal places are so beautiful.

  I glanced over at Courier to see if he was appreciating the full effect. No. A moment before, his face had been all bright and animated, gleeful as he urged his mount u
p toward the crest. Now, however, he drooped visibly.

  “We’re going back there?” he complained.

  “Well, of course. It’s nearly dark. Wouldn’t want to meet with a bear up here, after all, would we?”

  “I guess not.” He moved restlessly in the saddle. “Have you got my orders?” he demanded. I drew out my credenza at once and checked.

  “No, Courier, not yet.”

  “They’ll never come,” he cried mournfully. I just shrugged and urged my horse on down the trail. After a moment he followed me, sad and silent, and finally caught up as we crossed the road and neared the stockade.

  “Maybe we could eat dinner with the other Russian guys here, tonight, instead of just sitting in that dark room?” he asked.

  “You mean dine in the officers’ mess?” I was nonplussed. “Er—you might find it a little boring.” The truth was that I was fairly certain he hadn’t paid much attention to my lecture on Russian habits; and as peculiar as he seemed to me, he’d seem even stranger to my fellow officers.

  “Oh, no, it’d be neat!” he told me. “Is it anything like that party in Anna Karenina? The one with Greta Garbo?”

  I paused in my saddle to access and got a mental image of a vodka-swilling Vronsky (as portrayed by Fredric March) crawling under a table. “Good heavens, no! Dear God, if we carried on like that we’d really lose money here!” I chuckled.

  But he insisted, and so that evening we dined at the long table in the officers’ mess. He helped himself to great quantities of salmon, of piroshki and blini and caviar, so I wasn’t too surprised when he turned up his nose at the serving of venison stew. He didn’t want the kvass again, either, but went straight for the vodka; I was half afraid he’d attempt to reenact the window-ledge scene from War and Peace, but he behaved himself. Perhaps that film wasn’t in his internal library. No, he sipped sensibly and stared around him with his usual pleased expression, listening to the amazingly dull mess conversations as though they were fantastic adventure stories.

  When the servant had cleared away the plates, and small after-dinner cigars had been lit, in strode Iakov Babin. He came frequently for vodka and cigars at our mess, and not merely to enjoy the bachelor atmosphere; rumor had it he was an expert cheat at cards. He glanced over, saw Courier and gave him a fierce glare; then, thank heaven, ignored him as he pulled out a deck and settled down to win inordinate amounts of company scrip from a junior manager who ought to have known better but didn’t want to appear timid. Courier watched in fascination; and when I was momentarily distracted by the clerk who kept the company store, who buttonholed me to complain about his rheumatism, Courier got up and went over to the card table to have a closer look.