by Kage Baker
Any mortal standing there in the dark, gazing up in the light of one shaky candle, would have seen a creature with dead white skin, enormous black insectile eyes, fangs and claws and a general strange misshapen muscularity. That sensible mortal would promptly have fled in terror. I, lumpish immortal, stared in bewilderment.
I saw an immortal in the direst extremity of self-protective fear. Blood had fled from his surface capillaries, leaving his skin pale; the protective lenses over his eyes had hardened and darkened. His gums had receded to give his teeth the maximum amount of cutting surface and his nails had grown out with amazing speed into formidable claws. He looked like nothing so much as Lon Chaney, Sr., in London After Midnight.
The thing worked bulging jaw muscles and inquired, “DUCITNE HAEC VIA OSTIA?”
“Courier, for God’s sake! What’s happened?” I cried.
It turned its head and the black surface of its eyes glittered as it fixed on me. “DA MIHI IUSSUM!” it croaked. What world, what time was it in?
I fell silent, as the horror of the thing sank into me, that one of us could suffer such an alteration. We, perfect mechanisms, in our endless lives see mortal men reduced by every degradation that disease andmischance can impose, skeletal horrors, sore-covered, deformed—but never we. Why had he become this thing?
He dropped on me, screaming.
Think. How many times in your long life have you avoided mortal assault? It’s easy, isn’t it? One can sidestep a blade or a fist or even a bullet without turning a hair, because mortal sinews are weak, mortal reflexes slow. Poor brutes. But could you ever have dreamed you might have to defend yourself against another immortal? How would you do it?
I tell you that I myself began to change. That writhing horror dove for my throat, and even as I grappled with it I felt an indefinable metamorphosis commencing. I was not frightened, either, me, can you believe that? One split second of vertigo, and then the strangest glee filled my heart. All my senses were sharpened. I fought with the demented thing in that room and it seemed clumsy and blundering to me, though it moved with a speed mortal eyes couldn’t have followed. Equals as we were in immortal strength, I had the advantage of sanity. My hideous new wisdom told me how to win and I pulled the creature’s head close, in both my hands, to—
To do something; to this day I haven’t remembered what I was about to do. In any case I never did it. What happened, you see, was that I looked into the creature’s eyes. Black reflecting mirrors, its eyes, and what they showed me was a nightmare thing like the nightmare thing I was fighting! So taloned, so razor-grinned, with just such a glittering stare. A monster in the disintegrating clothing of a Russian gentleman. Me.
I fell back from it, staring at my hands in horror: my nails had grown with fantastic acceleration into serviceable claws. My horrified cry joined the creature’s as it leapt at my face. I rolled away from it, shielding myself as best I could, and burst out through the doorway. Babin and the others, drawn by the commotion, were just arriving at the end of the corridor. I flung myself down, covered my face with my hands and yelled, “A dybbuk! Run for your lives, it’s a dybbuk!” My speech was hissed and slurred, but I doubt if anyone noticed, for the thing hesitated only a moment before plunging across the threshold after me. As it tore strips out of the back of my coat, what was I doing? I ask you to believe I was biting my nails, frantically. I didn’t want to be a devil with talons. I was a man, a superior man!
“Run, you fools!” I cried. Yes, yes, I was speaking with a man’s voice now, I was changing back. Babin at least took a step backward, crossing himself, and the others shuffled back behind him. Courier’s head snapped about to stare.
“QUANTO COSTA IL BIGLIETTO PER MARSIGLIA?” he demanded.
I used the opportunity to open my door and scramble in on my hands and knees. Courier’s neck snaked around with the fluid movement of a Harryhausen demon. He snarled and sprang into the room after me.
“MIXAHAM BERAVAM! BAYAD BERAVAM!” he roared, coming for me with talons raised to rake. I scrambled backward, I hit the wall with such force the building shook and the planks of the wall, thick as Bibles, cracked and started. Something was knocked loose. 1 caught it in midair as it dropped past my face. My Imperial Navy saber. In the same second I had put my boot up to halt Courier’s oncoming rush and kicked him in the chest with all my strength. He flew backward and hit the opposite wall with a crash, and more planks split. There was a thunder of running steps as the mortals rushed down the hall to look through the doorway.
“LE BATEAU-MOUCHE EST EN RETARD!” Courier cried, in a voice that made the mortals cover their ears. I was desperately trying to shake the scabbard off the saber; something was wrong with the mechanism of my left arm. Blood and oil were drooling from Courier’s jaws as he sprang again, straight for me, and my good arm went up and whipped the saber in an arc that passed through his neck. His head flew off, hit the wall and rolled to Iakov Babin’s feet.
All my strength left me. I became aware that I was badly damaged. I slid to the floor. Courier’s body was already still, having gone into fugue at the moment my blade broke the connection between the ferro-ceramic chain of his spine and the titanium gimbal of his skull. Already the neck arteries had sealed themselves off and a protective membrane was forming. His head was doing the same. Eyes, ears, nostrils were exuding a thick substance that would seal them against further injury.
“God damn, Doc!” Babin broke the appalled silence. “That was one fine sword cut! You fought like a man.”
I had, by God. “Thank you,” I said with difficulty. My lips were split and bruised. The rest of my fleshly parts hurt as well. “You were right, Iakov Dmitrivich. He was a dybbuk.”
“I told you.” He stepped into the room cautiously, edging around the body. The other mortals cowered in the doorway. Someone was whimpering hysterically. “I seen devils in this New World just as ornery as any we got in Mother Russia. You ask the Indians. I reckon this one killed that boy, whoever he was, and possessed his body. Are you hurt bad, Doc?”
“I think my arm is broken.”
“And some ribs, too, huh?” Babin squatted down and peered at me in awe. “God Almighty, Doc, you’re beat up black and blue. You sure putup one hell of a fight, though. Wouldn’t have thought you had it in you. Come on, boys, let’s get him up on the bed.”
“What are we going to do with that?” The junior manager pointed with a trembling finger at the body.
“Take it out and bury it at a crossroads.” The farm foreman stepped in and gingerly lifted the head by its hair. “That’s what the stories say to do. And put a stake through its heart, or it’ll come back to get us!” I let them lift me into my bunk, too impaired to protest. Besides, it didn’t matter. The moment Courier’s head had been severed a distress beacon had been activated, transmitting straight to the nearest Dr. Zeus HQ. Wherever he was buried, a repair crew would retrieve both his parts within hours. He’d be whisked away to a hospital and I hadn’t the slightest doubt he’d be good as new within days, assuming they could do something about that nasty psychosis of his. I, on the other hand, would have to heal myself, and my self-diagnostic-and-repair program didn’t seem to be working very well.
The body with its head was stuffed into a sack and hustled out by Babin and a party of others. Someone sent a Creole woman up with a basin of water and a rag to tend to my hurts. Her almond eyes widened at the extent of the damage, but she didn’t say much; and it would have been rather pleasant to lie there being ministered to, but for Andreev, the assistant manager, rushing in.
“Kalugin! What on earth is this story that you’ve killed a man?”
“Self-defense,” I said in my feeblest voice. “It was the visitor. He went mad, sir… tried to kill me… all the men witnessed it… “
Andreev was looking around wildly at the blood and smashed walls. He noticed the saber lying almost at his feet and did a little two-step dance back from it.
“God in Heaven! You killed him with
a sword? What will General Manager Kostromitinov say?” What indeed? I pretended to lapse into unconsciousness. The dybbuk story would sound more convincing if Babin told it, I was certain. Andreev Fedorovich stood there wringing his hands a moment longer, and then ran out of the room. I let myself slide into genuine oblivion…
“Marine Operations Specialist Kalugin?” It was a suave voice speaking cultured Cinema Standard that woke me. I opened my eyes. A man in a neat gray suit of clothes was sitting at the foot of my bed, by the light of my wildly flickering lamp.
“Northwest Regional Facilitator General Labienus,” he introduced himself with a slight inclination from the waist.
“We’ll be overheard—” I tried to rise on one elbow, indicating my open door, but he negated me with a wave of his hand.
“We’ve activated a hush field over the settlement. None of the mortals here can regain consciousness at present. We’re recovering Courier—what’s left of him, anyway—from his grave out there on the road. I’m afraid we owe you something of an explanation.”
That took a moment to sink in. I opened my mouth to demand answers, but he held up his hand.
“Please. Don’t tire yourself. You want to know how one of us could suffer something like madness when we’re all perfect, don’t you? It’s really quite simple. Courier wasn’t—exactly— one of us.” I stared. Choosing his words with delicacy, he went on. “I suppose you’ve heard the old rumors about Flawed Ones, about fantastic creatures produced millennia ago when Dr. Zeus hadn’t perfected the immortality process. Well, of course those stories aren’t true; but it seems that, back in the early days, one or two individuals were produced who weren’t quite up to Company standards.” He drew from his inner breast pocket a slim silver case and, opening it, selected a silver-wrapped stick. “Theobromos, by the way?” He offered me the case. I took one gratefully, unwrapping it single-handed. My arm hadn’t repaired itself yet. He resumed:
“Now, as you know, Dr. Zeus is a humane organization. Simple termination of the poor creatures was out of the question.”
Especially since they were immortal, I thought to myself darkly. I put the Theobromos in my mouth. Oh, welcome bliss. It was highest-quality Guatemalan. Labienus watched my dreamy smile with amusement.
“Of course the Company found places for them. But in Courier’s case—and by now you’ll have guessed he was one of these substandard unfortunates—there were special circumstances that made it a particular challenge.
“It has to do with his autoimmune system, you see. Dr. Zeus had already perfected hyperfunction, but at that time there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t work equally well on all subjects, regardless of personal biochemistry. However, Courier’s metabolism presented certain problems.
“What’s the simplest way to put this? You could say that his body decided his own RNA was a pathogen, and set about attacking it, breaking it down. The Company stabilized most of his metabolic response, but the spontaneous nature of short-term memory proved beyond them. You’re aware that the brain stores memory in RNA molecules? Of course you are.
“I won’t confuse you with the details, but the end result is that Courier reacts to memory as though it were a disease process. Anyrepeated specific experience and he undergoes an adverse reaction. Consistently repeat a specific sequence of events and paranoid psychosis is the result, with all the attendant physical manifestations you saw.”
“You mean spending two nights in his room made him a demon from Hell?”
“Merely the effect of hyperfunction on the human fight-or-flight reflex,” said Labienus dismissively. “It’s not his fault, poor creature. And, after all, Dr. Zeus found just the job for him! They made him a long-distance courier. As long as he’s traveling, as long as he’s constantly exposed to new sights he’s never seen before, the adverse RNA reaction can’t build up. He can even retrace old journeys, if enough years elapse between visits. Trouble only occurs if he’s obliged to stay in one place for more than twenty-four hours, but of course Dr. Zeus has always taken care to ensure that new orders are waiting for him at every destination.”
“What happened in this case?”
Labienus looked aside. “A minor clerical blunder. His orders were forwarded to the wrong terminal. The clerk responsible has been disciplined.”
“How comforting.”
“I’m sure it will never happen again. And we’ll fasten on his head and he’ll be off on his travels again, to New York or Mazatlan or Warsaw, good as new, with no memory of this unfortunate occurrence. He never remembers anything very long, actually, if it isn’t something hard-wired like a language. Except for the plots of films he’s seen. Those he retains, for some reason.”
“Poor thing,” I mused. Very good Theobromos, this.
“Do you think so? I rather envy him, myself. Imagine a life of endless new horizons! Nothing to bore him or dull his palate, no tedious sameness to his experiences. All his friends will be new friends.” Labienus smiled wistfully and put his silver case away. “Well. Principally what you need to know is that of course there’ll be no disciplinary hearing for you. We quite understand that under the circumstances you had no choice but to badly damage a fellow operative. We would like to know why you didn’t contact us sooner—his psychotic behavior must certainly have been increasingly obvious… “
“Er, well—I did try—and then I didn’t have access to my credenza, you see.” I began to sweat a little. And did I feel just a trace of pain in my fingertips? “I loaned it to him—”
“Yes; we found it in the rafters. Well, no real harm done, it appears; though I’m afraid you’ll have some explaining to do to your mortal authorities. I’m certain you’ll follow standard operating procedures thistime, though, and acquit yourself with flying colors. Shame 1 can’t give you anything to speed up your self-repair; but then, if you got up tomorrow without a scratch on you after that fight, you’d really have some explaining to do, wouldn’t you?” He chuckled and smacked my thigh in a companionable sort of way. It hurt. A short in my femoral wiring finally fixed itself and informed me that I had a massive hematoma there and several torn ligaments. As I was reflecting on this, another immortal appeared in my doorway.
“Sir? Recovery operation completed. All personnel are aboard and ready for departure.”
“Then I’m off.” Labienus rose, adjusting his coat and shooting his cuffs. “Well, Kalugin. I hope our next meeting takes place under more pleasant circumstances. You will transmit your Ml report within the next forty-eight hours, I trust? Good. Until next time.” He stepped out into the corridor.
“How old is he?” I blurted.
“Who? Courier?” Labienus looked in at me, arching his eyebrows. “Thirty thousand years, I believe.” He started to walk away and then stuck his head back through the doorway for a second. “Oh, by the way—Happy Halloween.” He flashed a smile and was gone.
So that was the end of it, at least as far as Dr. Zeus was concerned. I myself was in a tight spot for a while. As soon as he heard about the incident, Kostromitinov became convinced it was some sort of loathsome crime of homosexual passion, and had me arrested. Fedor Svinin got a few days’ holiday, because our jail was only big enough to accommodate one person. He used the time to go fishing and caught pneumonia.
At the inquest it was discovered that my pretty Creole girl had decided to tidy up my room whilst I was unconscious, and had cleaned the blood off the murder weapon and put it back in its sheath. Better still, the victim’s body had vanished from its grave and was nowhere to be found when an exhumation order was given. Best of all, I had a roomful of witnesses swearing on their immortal souls that the person I’d beheaded hadn’t been a human being at all. Iakov Babin was particularly vehement on my behalf, and his testimony counted for something: he was a man with a lot of experience at beating murder raps. Thus the case never came to trial, and I was left under a sort of halfhearted house arrest that nobody bothered to enforce. And, you know, the rest of my time there was ex
traordinarily happy! I became accepted, respected, liked. Apparently a man who can deliver babies with one hand and kill dybbuks with the other was just what people wanted onthe frontier. I stayed on at the Ross colony until it was sold to Mr. Sutter ten years later, though I didn’t go home with my fellow Russians right away, but that’s another story.
I can’t say it’s a comfort to think that Courier is still out there on the road somewhere, in endless transit like an orbiting moon. It’s likely enough that at some point in the next thirty thousand years our paths will cross again, so I’m grateful he won’t remember me.
But, think about it: you may well have seen him yourself. In some city, on some tourist boat or in some railway carriage, there is always a stupid young man in the happy morning of his life, chatting with perfect strangers and exclaiming over the scenery; and he is always alone.
“Old Flat Top” was written on a trip up Highway 1, which runs through the Big Sur of poet Robinson Jeffers. This is a great inhuman country of sea and sky and stone, tremendous volume of rock towering above the little two-lane road, its upper heights disappearing in the summer Jog. There are places up there where the human eye refuses to grasp the proportion or scale of what it sees, coming unexpected around a sharp turn.
It’s a haunted country. There are little silent people glimpsed now and again in the gloomier canyons, among the redwoods. There is a famous figure in a cloak and broad-brimmed hat, a black silhouette in the noonday sun, that watches from the peaks. Lost wagon roads, lost mines, ghost towns lost up there in the Jog. No place to travel in lightly.
But it is beautiful.
Old Flat Top
* * *
The boy has the firm chin and high-domed brow of the Cro-Magnon hominids—might be a member of any racial group—and is dressed in somewhat inadequate Neolithic clothing of woven grass and furs. He didn’t bring any useful Neolithic tools with him on this journey, however. He had come to see if God was really on the mountain as he’d always been told, and he hadn’t thought tools would be any use in finding God. In this he was reasonably correct. No instrument his people could produce, at their present level of technology, would help him now.