by Kage Baker
“Well, the only thing we can do is not make any more of them,” decided Rappacini. “And keep trying to find a way to terminate them ourselves.”
“Ah, but how?” said Freestone.
“We were too smart,” said Bugleg, shaking his head.
The meeting broke up, as it usually did, in hand-wringing. Bugleg was still wringing his hands as he left the conference room and followed the tunnel to the parking garage.
He was a rather pale man, going bald early and attempting to hide it with a comb-over. There were a lot of medications he might have taken to regrow hair, but he distrusted them. Bugleg distrusted most things. He had big dark worried-looking eyes and weak features, and was a genius in his particular field, which happened to be chemistry. He knew very little about anything else, however.
Certainly he didn’t know enough to look before he got into the agcar that pulled up at the garage mounting block. It was his habit never to look at the driver, because the drivers were cyborgs, and Bugleg was frightened of cyborgs, even though he had helped to create them. He didn’t notice, therefore, that there was no head visible above the driver’s seat. He just edged well away from the door once it closed for him and sat there watching his own white fingers as they knotted themselves together in his lap.
But he did notice, eventually, when the agcar failed to pull into the parking garage in his hotel. He looked up in alarm and finally realized that there was wild countryside out the windows. This was because his agcar had long since left York behind and was now merrily speeding along the A59.
Bugleg made a little terrified sound.
“Took you long enough to catch a clue, didn’t it?” said a voice from where the driver ought to have been. To his horror, a face came leering around the side of the driver’s seat. Bugleg screamed at it.
“Oh, come on,” said the owner of the face. “Not so bad, am I? I’d have thought you’d cry hello, and isn’t it Old Home Week? Perhaps you’d like a closer look, so you can see there’s nothing to fear you in little me.”
Bugleg shrank away as the creature scrambled nimbly into the backseat beside him, and settled itself in comfort. The agcar sped on.
“Don’t mind the floatymobile,” said the creature, waving its hand. “I’ve tinkered with the console. It’s programmed to drive itself now. No nasty big cyborg slaves to hear us, you see? Just kin here. You and me.” It poked him, grinning.
It was something like a wizened child—or perhaps a little man. It wore a man’s clothing, a fine-cut business suit of Harris tweed. It was shod in similar elegance, wore expensive sun goggles and a shapeless hat. Somehow, though, there was something inexpressibly dirty about it. A sense of leaves and twigs in its thin gray hair, mud on those polished shoes, a faint hint of a moldy smell. Bugleg gasped and burst into tears.
“What’re you wetting your knickers for?” scolded the creature. “Haven’t the eyes to see, have you? But they’re our eyes, I can tell. Stop that weepiness now!” It reached out and slapped him, quite hard. Bugleg gulped and cowered, but he stopped crying.
“You haven’t caught a clue yet, alas.” It sighed, pulling off its sun goggles and hat, and leaned forward to stare very hard at Bugleg. “Look, you dim booby. Don’t you see it?”
Anyone else looking on would have already realized—as Bugleg was only now beginning to realize—that there was a certain similarity between the two of them. Big head on a spindly neck, dead-pale skin, sparse hair, same weak features and pursed mouth. Only, the creature had a meager gray beard and mustaches like bits of gray string hanging down, and its big green eyes were sharp, malevolently intelligent.
“You—you—how come you look like me?” said Bugleg at last.
“Like I said,” the creature told him, “we’re kin.”
“I don’t have any family,” said Bugleg.
“Don’t you, though? Adopted by somebody, I’m sure. Raised among them, like all the others. You’ve had brothers and brothers your Dr. Zeus Incorporated has bred and raised, generation on generation down, cousins by the dozens, too. Mixing their big blood with ours to get themselves brainy little hybrids, since their tribe’s too stupid to come up with their grand inventions by their own selves.”The creature bared its teeth, tiny teeth like a baby’s. Bugleg himself had never lost his baby teeth. He blinked now, trying to comprehend what he was being told.
“You’re lying to me,” he said. “You’re some kind of monster.”
“Not I,” snapped the creature. “I’m a man! I’m the disinherited right human heir to all their grand places, the original white man, and so are you. Have they bred the Memory out of you, stupid? You don’t know the story we all know, how we were smarter than the big tribe from the get-go of time, flying in our ships when they was still smacking chips off flint to make themselves tools for their clumsy hands? But they chased us, stole our inventions from us, so we had to hide ourselves. How could you not remember? We’ve all got the Memory.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Bugleg. The horrible little man glared at him a long moment, and then looked around the inside of the car. On the seat between them was a small box of disposable chlorilar gloves, kept there by Mr. Bugleg in case he had to touch anything dirty. His visitor pulled on one of the gloves and, before Mr. Bugleg had time to protest, thrust his hand into Mr. Bugleg’s open mouth.
“Wowf—aughf—ack! You scratched me!” cried Mr. Bugleg, when the hand had been withdrawn. The creature ignored him, neatly pulling the glove inside out as he removed it from his hand. He tied the wrist shut and tucked it away inside his coat.
“I’ll do a bloody DNA test, then, and prove it to you. They’ve been enjoying themselves in the sun whilst we’ve hid under rocks in the damp, all these centuries of the world. They stole our children to breed, so we stole theirs. You and me both came from that game! But they cheated, see. They made themselves slaves who could go back through time, and do their thievery for them. They created the cyborgs.”
“No,” said Bugleg. “I did that. I mean, I was on the design team.”
“They was using you to do it,” the creature jeered. “Think they’d ever have come up with Pineal Tribrantine Three by themselves? Not likely! And you did your kin proud anyhow, because their clever weapon’s turned in their hands now, hasn’t it? Fine Dr. Zeus is scared to death of his cyborgs. Wishes he’d never made them.”
“Yes!” cried Bugleg, suddenly comprehending. “They’re mean, and now they’re mad at us, and we can’t make them go away. They’ll take over!”
“That’s right. So Dr. Zeus came crawling to us of all people, sent his big men in their gray coats to ask ever so nicely whether we couldn’t help them. Oh, please, nothing will make our cyborgs die, would you ever give it a try?” whined the creature mockingly.
“What?” said Bugleg. “Dr. Zeus is just a logo. Nobody came crawling to you.”
“That’s what you think, ducky,” the creature replied. “It was before you were born, but it was your Company, don’t think it wasn’t. Old Uncle Zingo was there and he told me the whole of it, how it was sweet to see them go down on their big knees, pretty please! Well, he graciously said yes, and they made sure we got what we needed to experiment. And what I’m here to tell you, my big stupid hybrid cousin, is: we’ve kept our part of the deal. We’ve done it at last. Come up with a way to solve your problems.”
Bugleg’s pulse raced. “You can make the cyborgs—be not immortal?”
“Can and have, I say!” the creature assured him. “I’ve come up with a stuff that’ll kill them dead as doorknobs.”
But Bugleg had turned his face away, was cringing again. “Not kill them,” he said. “Killing is wrong. We just want—”
“Say no more,” purred the creature, holding up a hand. “You want a nicer word? Say my stuff will terminate them. Better still, say it’ll switch them off. Because they’re not really people, are they, now? Just things you made.”
“Yes,” said Bugleg, brightening. “Yes! Just
things. And they’re mean.”
“And you need to switch them off.”
“Yes. Because they do bad stuff.”
“So they do! But we’ll stop them, you and me. I’ve got something that’ll switch them off forever and aye, melt their machine hearts inside them.” The creature pulled a fine enameled case out of his breast pocket. He extracted something and held it up with a flourish. “Allow me to present my card.”
The beautifully embossed letters said S. RATLIN in large type, and underneath in smaller type the word chymist, followed by a commcode and an office address in a Celtic Federation country. Bugleg being unable to read, however, stared at the card in painful incomprehension. “You have to tell me what it says,” he said petulantly.
“Aw, Christ, you’re no fun at all,” said Ratlin, and gave the card a little shake. In a clear voice it recited its text aloud.
“Chemist?” Bugleg sounded it out wonderingly. “But that’s what I do, too.”
“Big surprise,” Ratlin said. “No, silly, you take the card; it’s for you, so you can contact me when you need to. See? Just slide it in the READ port on your console and it’ll give me a knockknock. Now. How do you want to administer the nastiness?”
“What?”
“The stuff I’ve made, to shut down your cyborgs. It has to go inside them,” Ratlin explained. “Can you call ‘em all in and tell ‘em it’s vitaminery they’re supposed to get? Have ‘em all drop their britches for a nice injection?”
Bugleg was astonished at such cleverness. But, as he thought about it, certain objections presented themselves. “They’re too smart,” he said at last. “We made them so they get all their vitamins out of their food themselves. They never need injections. So if we were all, ‘We’re going to stick you with needles now’they’d know something was funny.”
“Hm, hm. And if you gave ‘em pills to swallow they’d suspect that, too, wouldn’t they?” growled Ratlin, knocking his knuckles against his forehead. “Too obvious, pills.”
“They’re programmed to scan everything they eat and drink.” Bugleg sighed. “That makes it hard. They don’t eat or drink anything bad for them.”
“Hmm.”
“Except—” Bugleg’s eyes widened as realization hit him with unaccustomed force. “They do eat and drink bad things! Like, uh, meat. And those drinks people used to drink. Coffee. Wine. You know.”
“Vices?” Ratlin grinned at him. “Your precious slaves have vices, have they? Well, now we’ve got ‘em by the short and curlies. Think, boy. What’s their most favorite vice of all?”
Bugleg wrinkled his nose. “They call it Theobromos,” he said with distaste. “It’s, like, chocolate. It’s full of nasty things like hormones and it makes them … drunk. They eat it whenever they can.”
“Well then,” Ratlin said, rubbing his spidery hands in glee. “We’ll hide the stuff in chocolate. They’ll bolt the nice chockeys down and bang! That’ll be the end of your problem.”
“That’s so smart,” cried Bugleg in admiration. “And … and right, too. Because if they were nice, they wouldn’t eat that stuff.”
“No, of course they wouldn’t. Use their own sinful appetites to bring ‘em down, why, it’s only justice.”
“Yes. Only… we can’t do it yet,” said Bugleg, the excitement fading from his eyes. “There’s the Temporal Concordance. It says they don’t get terminated during recorded history. So the only time we could, uh, switch them off would be after the Temporal Concordance runs out. When the Silence falls.”
“The Silence … “Ratlin tugged at his beard. “Hm. That’s in the year 2355, right? Thirty-seven years away. Hellholes, I’ll never live so long. I’m terrible old, as kin goes, all of thirty. Even you may not live so long. We go quick through the world.”
“We can live that long if we take Pineal Tribrantine Three,” said Bugleg.
Ratlin peered at him in amazement, and then grinned like a saw blade. “So we might. Your clever medicine keeps the years away from your cyborgs, don’t it? Oh, yes, you’re kin and no mistake. How do we get us some Pineal Tribrantine Three?”
“I can make it in my sink,” said Bugleg proudly.
“That’s a boy,” yelled Ratlin, bouncing in his seat. “Devious and deep. Oh, we’ll do great things together, we two. And how do we get us some Theobromos to tamper with? Lots and lots of it?”
Bugleg’s face fell. “It’s hard to get,” he admitted, knitting his brows. “All the nice countries stopped making it. It’s against the law. You can only get it in the countries where they still do bad things like, um, selling meat and alcohol.”
“Like the Celtic Federation?” Ratlin inquired craftily.
“Well—yes.”
“Where I keep a business office, where I strut around unbeknownst to the big tribes, because I’m High Hybrid and can pass for one of them? What if I was to go into the business of making chocolates, eh? Lovely dainties to tempt your cyborgs? And the cleverest part is, we’ve got thirty-seven years to set the trap! By the time we spring it, your slaves’ll fall for the trick, because they’ll have been happily stuffing themselves with Ratlin’s Harmless Chocolates for thirty years and more. They’ll be so used to ‘em they won’t even think to scan.” Ratlin’s voice rose to a happy scream.
Bugleg drew back a little nervously, but his heart was racing. “Then—we’d have all we needed,” he said. “The only hard part would be making sure the cyborgs all ate it at the same time. There are a lot of them.”
“Right. Timing’s everything. Logistics! Got to work that out. Well, you leave all that to me.” Ratlin put his sun goggles back on. “They’ll never suspect a thing.”
Paris, at That Very Moment
“How stupid do they think we are?” said Aegeus, looking disdainful. Ereshkigal—dark, slinky as an immortal Siamese cat—shrugged and set the surveillance device on automatic record again.
“You don’t think it’s true, do you?” she asked. “It’s impossible. Nobody’s ever manufactured a poison we couldn’t detect.”
“And I’m quite sure they haven’t now,” Aegeus replied. “Though all the same … if there were such a substance, we’d want to be certain it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. In fact—”
“In fact, if we had it—” Ereshkigal anticipated.
“It might come in damned useful against any eleventh-hour purges by the other cabals,” said Aegeus. “Yes! Well, well, see what’s to be gained by an adequate budget for intelligence?”
“What should I do now?” inquired Ereshkigal. “Let them go ahead with their plans and monitor their communications?”
“Exactly,” said Aegeus. “Give them all the rope they’ll need. At the last possible moment we’ll step in and confiscate their work. We’ll see who gets terminated then.”
“You’re so clever,” she told him, settling back on the divan.
“Aren’t I?” He settled back beside her, smiling. He made a gesture, an exceedingly ancient one, of sexual invitation.
“Now, now.” She shook a finger at him. “You didn’t call me all the way from San Francisco for this, did you?”
“No,” he admitted, looking annoyed. “You need to know something.”
“I see,” she replied, and her body at once lost its pose of languid sensuality. “What exactly is it I need to know?”
“There’s a … client, of the Company’s, a rather special case,” Aegeus said. “He’s been living in Europe the last few centuries. He’s decided to come home to California.”
“Centuries?” Ereshkigal’s eyes widened.
“Yes. You’re to coordinate his relocation with his handler. See to it that everything goes smoothly. There are a few specific lies that must be told, and you’re the woman to tell them.”
“Centuries?” Ereshkigal repeated. “What do you mean? Is he one of us?”
“Not exactly,” said Aegeus.
“He’s either one of us or he’s a mortal, Aegeus,” said Ereshkigal.
“I said he was a special case,” Aegeus reminded her. “You worked in New York at the end of the nineteenth century, as I recall. Do you remember the millionaire, William Randolph Hearst?”
“Of course I do,” said Ereshkigal. “But he was mortal.”
Aegeus snickered. “Only temporarily, it seems,” he replied. “It’s a long story.”
Montreal, Simultaneously
“It took them long enough,” said Labienus, setting his surveillance device on automatic record again. He looked nothing like Aegeus, yet somehow they shared the same indefinable look of public probity, dignity, and authority.
“How likely is it they’ve actually managed to find a toxin that works?” wondered Nennius, who might be brother to either the aforementioned immortals. He scowled as he sipped from a glass of sherry.
“Oh, very likely,” Labienus assured him. “They’ve had that little drone you gave them to experiment on for, how long now? Five decades?”
“Thereabouts,” said Nennius. “There wasn’t that much to Lewis; you’d think they’d have finished him long ago.”
“Perhaps they’ve been perfecting it, whatever it is.” Labienus poured himself a glass. “Here’s to the waters of Lethe! There really are too many of us anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of our immortal brethren actually jump at the chance to die, when the time comes.”
“And leave the world for us to bustle in? Bravo,” agreed Nennius. “You’ll monitor the tiny cretins closely, I suppose? Be prepared to step in at the last possible moment and grab the goods?”
“What else?” Labienus smiled. Nennius raised his glass in salute.
“I’ll set my best people on it. Now! The reason I came out here in such a tearing hurry is, I’ve got a private collector who’s willing to pay anything for the corpse of Harry Houdini. The only catch is, he wants the monument bust as well. Can you arrange it?”