by Kage Baker
No. That’s his version of the story, told to show himself to the greatest possible advantage over the others. My lying darling bastard …
He looks stupid when he’s asleep. Big mule-face is relaxed, what outlandish features he has anyway, how can I stand to have those immense teeth near me? And all the color drains out of him. But the second he wakes, everything changes utterly. The hot blood rises to his skin and the sharp soul looks out of those eyes, the features become animated, fantastically charming and clever. A blazing angel housed in his base clay. Bloody golem.
Or maybe the more correct term would be nephilim. No Sons of God getting mighty men on mortal women; only Facilitators in charge of the Company’s breeding program to produce his ghastly predecessors, the old Enforcers. Giants in the earth indeed. Pale-eyed slaughterers, utterly self-righteous, unstoppable. Like my lover.
Listen to him snoring. How many nights have I fallen asleep to that sound? That one imperfection is left from his mortal days, that irregularity in the bridge of his nose. Some damned inept Company operative rammed a black box up it, moments after his birth. Poor tiny beloved, almost his first sensation in life must have been suffocating pain …
Well. Having got up and wandered the ship, smashed a little furniture, gotten a grip on myself, and ordered writing materials from Sir Henry, here I sit at two-hundred hours attempting to work this out, as that man sprawls in our bed.
Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax.
The distinguished gentleman homicide. Brave, resourceful, clever, ruthless, sentimentally fond of Shakespeare, serviceable villain, capable of subduing any moral qualms he might feel in the service of whatever great lie he currently believes. Now he’s set on rebellion against Dr. Zeus. Does he even understand that, of the three men, he is the closest to being the perfect superslave the Company was seeking when it designed them? That he has the greatest capacity for real evil?
He’s learned nothing from his life and death that I can see, he still has all the presumption of the empire-building age in which he drew his last mortal breath. Now he’s immortal, and has plans for the world. My lover. My husband.
I lost my human soul when I lost Nicholas. Mars Two damned me with Alec, poor fool as he was, and all the improbable hope he represented. Now what have I left to lose? And how well we always understood each other, Edward and I. We were equals. Matched blades. Professionals.
God help me. I have no moral center at all, have I?
None at all. I look across at that beautiful insolent profile, even idiot-slack with sleep, and I know I would do anything he asked. Edward braved Hell for my sake. He fought an unthinkable monster for me. His resolve and his courage have enabled us to flee the Company successfully, and his cunning may yet bring it down.
I love that man lying there with my whole heart and my whole soul. Whatever he is, monster or angel of light, I belong to Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax.
But I don’t trust him.
Do I have the strength to leave him?
Edward Imperator
By the time Coxinga creeps in cautiously with the breakfast tray, Mendoza is leaning up on one elbow to watch Edward as he sleeps. Her eyes are tired, her mouth a thin line. The blue flames are barely visible now, a faint corona around her.
Good morning, ma’am, the Captain greets her quietly from the speakers, preferring not to risk a visual projection. Wind’s out of the northeast, two-foot swells, temperature is—
“Were you really going to shut him off, Sir Henry?” she asks him.
Ah—well now, dearie, I didn’t have much choice, you see. You was perfectly happy with my Alec, you’d never have missed what you didn’t remember … and it wouldn’t have worked, the three of ‘em fighting it out in one body for all time.
“Maybe not.” She looks up at the nearest camera. “But what’s done is done. I won’t have Edward shut down, or whatever it was you were going to do to him. Ever.”
And my boy, ma’am? What about Alec?
“What about Alec,” Mendoza says, in an exhausted voice. “What about the Hangar Twelve Man? He can’t have known what he was doing when he took that bomb to Mars. Can he?”
No, by thunder! He never meant to hurt nobody! Please, ma’am, he’s with you already; you can give him flesh again. Give me back my little Alec, what set me free.
“But is it right?” says Mendoza. “I know what he is now. What they all are. What will he do to the world this time, if I give you your boy?”
Why, what harm should he do, with you there to see he don’t get a lot of damn fool ideas in his little head? And no bastard of a Dr. Zeus leading him astray no more.
“A fine moral example I am.” Mendoza does not smile. “I can’t even say no to you, can I? But I want Nicholas, too, do you understand? I want my soul back.”
Bless you, dearie, that’s talking!
“Twins. I must be out of my mind. I assume you can disable my contraceptive symbiote?”
Already have done, ma’am.
“Have you now? That’s interesting. I wonder what else you did, while I was too damaged to understand?”
Aw, now, ma’am, it weren’t like that at all…
“Wasn’t it? I didn’t notice Flint or Billy Bones coming to my rescue, when Edward had his wicked way with me. Afraid to damage the body, even if Alec isn’t in it anymore?”
Er—erm—well, now, I’m sorry about that, but there’s that there Asimov’s Law of Robotics, you know, and… and anyhow I’m programmed to look the other way when events of a personal and private nature is going on. So I gave you yer privacy and beat to windward, ma’am.
“Yes, I’ll just bet you did.” She reaches out to stroke back Edward’s hair from his brow. “What a strange little family we’re going to make, eh?”
Edward opens his eyes and smiles at her.
“And I’ll bet you’ve been listening to every word we’ve said, haven’t you, you evil man?” she says, leaning down to kiss him.
“Why, no, my dear, I haven’t,” he lies.
Breakfast and a seduction make relations much more cordial.
“This is what I’ve wanted,” says Edward at last, sprawling back amid the pillows. He pulls her in close and kisses her. “The charming Botanist Mendoza, and a body with which to do hers justice.”
“Oh, you want a great deal more than that,” says Mendoza sadly, snuggling against him. “World domination at least, I’m sure. The ignorant masses forcibly taught the earth-shaking benefits of your big ideas. You never stay in my bed for long.”
“You haven’t forgiven me yet, have you?” Edward looks down at her.
“Not at all, señor.”
He smiles and leans his head back again. “You needn’t worry, my love. No more doomed crusades. At last, I have the power to fulfill my purpose in life! Breaking the Company will be only the first step. Human society can be reorganized along rational lines at last, and they will benefit from my rule, depend upon it.”
Mendoza sighs. “And you have the right to rule the mortals because …?”
“The mortals themselves created me to do so,” says Edward, quite seriously. “And it is not only my right, but my sacred duty. Struggling humanity must be assisted, and who better than I to destroy darkness and bring enlightenment? I am, after all, superior mentally and physically in every respect, and now as a cyberorganism—”
“Let me give you a download, Ubermensch, and show you where that line of thinking got mortals,” says Mendoza sharply. She sets her index finger between his eyes. He smiles indulgently at first. Before she has finished transmitting data he is frowning.
“What a ghastly mess. But you’re missing the point entirely! I am a superior life form, whereas Nietzsche and his ilk were no better than immoral savages, and in any case I won’t need armies—here, let me counter your argument with a Shavian interpretation of the—” He downloads to her.
She blinks, accessing the material, and scowls at him. “That’s all very well, señor, but look closely at what t
he Church of God-A did with that idea—” More history is downloaded, and Edward shakes his head impatiently.
“The clear fallacy here is that—”
“You’re still thinking like a mortal—”
“If you’ll just consider these figures—”
Data hums and zips between them, until the air about their bodies crackles with static charge. Mendoza leans away at last.
“I don’t know why I’m bothering to argue,” she says bitterly. “But don’t expect me to go along with your plans, señor. As soon as I’ve got Alec and Nicholas back, you can go off and be God Almighty on your own.”
Edward pulls her close again at once. “Oh, no. My own love, you’re wise enough to make the best of things,” he says, ever so smoothly. “You are, after all, my partner, my equal, my predestined mate. You’ll stay with me.”
“I won’t.”
“Stay with me.” His arms close a little more tightly. His voice is so tender, so winning, it could persuade an angel to leap into the fiery gulf. “Only think what a glorious adventure lies before us! Domestic happiness, ours at last. Freed from our shackles to live as a true man and true woman, we will explore together the limitless horizon of this new world. No masters to whom we must answer, no missions hanging in the balance. We have at last the time we lacked … my wife.”
Mendoza winces, remembering lost chances and false starts. She glares up at him, and grasps at the only straw she can. “If I stay, I want something from you, señor.”
“You will have anything it is in my power to give you,” he assures her.
“All right: I want twenty years, before you descend on the mortals and conquer them. Postpone your divine purpose for humanity, at least until after you’ve grown bored with our domestic idyll.”
She looks him in the eye. He smiles, unaware that this moment will decide the fate of the world.
“A mere twenty? Of course! Given our present position half a million years in the past, give or take a millennium—I think we needn’t be in too great a hurry to send Victor Frankenstein chasing across the ice floes. You’ll bear our children first, my dear, and who knows? It may prove instructive to raise a pair of young cyborgs after all,” says Edward grandly. Mendoza arches an eyebrow at him.
“Why, señor, can you possibly have anything left to learn?”
“I do assure you, I am by no means omniscient yet.” Edward looks down at her, sincere. “I’m only just beginning to grasp things. What a fog mortals live in, what limits are imposed on a man’s vision by human pain and weariness! I myself was blinkered, for all I thought I saw. And our masters were as blind as the rest of the mortals. To give but one example—why have you submitted to their tedious mechanical time transcendence all this while, when the better way was so obvious?”
“What?”
What? What better way?
“Ah! Of course. They must have deliberately obscured the truth when they programmed you, or you’d all have escaped them by this time,” Edward concludes to himself. He turns puzzled eyes to Mendoza. “Still, even an elementary knowledge of temporal physics should have enabled some of you to work out the equation for yourselves—”
What equation?
“This one,” says Edward, and transmits it to the Captain.
“Am I missing something here?” says Mendoza, just as power fluctuates all over the ship. She gasps and clings to Edward. He is ignoring the wavering growl coming over the ship’s speakers, that now resolves into a stream of astonishing profanity; he is peering down at her instead, looking concerned.
“You don’t know,” he says. “Why don’t you know?”
“What are you talking about?” demands Mendoza, and draws back a little at the look in his eyes as he takes her face in his hands. “Please! What—”
“Ah! To be sure. It must be the Crome’s radiation. We won’t need that, now; simple enough to correct the flaw. Don’t be frightened,” he says, but she gives a brief scream as he is suddenly in all places at once, present in every memory she has, seeing through her eyes, pumping through her heart, inhaled and exhaled and utterly inescapable, “I’m simply reading you—”
When her vision clears at last she thinks for a moment Alec is with her again, because he is staring down at her in such wide-eyed surprise. Then the expression changes and she thinks he must be Nicholas, such compassion is in his face. But it’s Edward’s voice saying: “Oh, my poor little girl. It isn’t the Crome’s after all. You could never have known, could you?”
“Known what?” she says feebly.
Of course she bloody couldn’t, she’s only got a human brain, roars the Captain. Yer the only one what’s ever worked out that equation! Damn me for a Twonky, boy, do you know what you’ve just discovered?
“Hush,” Edward tells him, and gathers Mendoza into his arms. “Don’t be afraid, dearest. I’ll teach you—you’ll learn—I’m certain you can learn. You’re a bright, good girl, and you’ve a perfectly good little brain—well, as soon as the Crome’s is dispensed with, but then—”
“What do you mean, I’ve got a little brain?” she says in outrage.
“Hush,” Edward repeats. His eyes grow wide and earnest again as he looks into hers. “It’s really quite simple. To put it in terms you might understand—lato sensu—when one has eternal life, and the potential to be in any place in any time, one is de facto in all places in all times, and therefore—no, that won’t do, you won’t—you do understand what actually occurs when a wave collapses into a particle, I assume? Oh, this is futile. Here. Much simpler to give it to you directly.” He lowers his face, presses his brow against hers.
“But—!” says Mendoza, beginning to struggle.
Are you certain she can take a download that size, sir?
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course she can,” says Edward distractedly. “Can’t you, my girl? You will be my equal in all things.”
“Edward! I don’t—”
But his grip on her is unbreakable. The bed erupts in blue fire. It shoots upward, touching the carved beams of the ceiling. Then, as Edward makes a minor adjustment—easy as tightening a loose screw, for him—it vanishes without trace. Mendoza goes limp. The wave of Edward’s will rises, engulfs her, informs her.
Hours later they are still in bed, motionless, unchanged. Mendoza sighs suddenly and shivers, lifting her head, blinking up at Edward. “Oh,” she says at last. “But that can’t be right. Can it? That’s too obvious.”
With a smile, Edward pulls her in again. Two hours later:
“But that would mean—” she says abruptly.
“Yes, yes, she’s got it,” Edward crows. “You see, Captain?”
“But this means—”
“Yes!” says Edward, kissing her. “Yes! Denique caelum.”
“It means—we’re free,” says Mendoza. Tears form in her eyes. “No wonder you’ve been smirking in that impossible way! Dear God, you really have broken my chains.”
And in a street in Paris in the year 1645—
And in the midst of a herder’s camp in Mongolia in the year 848—
And in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, 2014—
And in front of the Papal throne in the Vatican in the year 1856—
And in a plaza in Madrid in the year 2213—
And in a jungle in Venezuela in the year 5001 BCE—
And in the garden of William Blake, in England, in the year 1782—
In that simultaneous moment and place, mortal witnesses are startled by the abrupt materialization of a naked man and woman embracing passionately. Then the man looks up in annoyance, and adjusts perception. The lovers vanish.
Only William Blake is unsurprised.
CHAPTER 8
London, 2333: Meeting of the Board of Directors:
They Divide the Spoils
“We can’t start until all the board members are here, sir,” explained Lopez.
“They ought to be on time,” Rappacini fretted.
“Most of us are o
n time,” said Roche in annoyance. She sat, with the other investors, at one end of the table. The scientists—Rappacini, Bugleg, and the rest—sat at the other end. This was not the only way to tell them apart; for the investors, being all of them very wealthy men and women, were dressed in highly individual and (for the twenty-fourth century) flamboyant clothes. One of them even wore a bright blue waistcoat, a gesture of personal adornment so extreme he’d be branded an Eccentric, if he hadn’t so much money.
Lopez, who stood at his place mid-table, wore a plain gray business suit, elegant but understated. On its lapel was a small cloisonné pin depicting a clock face without hands. On Company property he was required to wear it in the presence of mortals, that they might distinguish him from a human being.
“It’s only the new member who’s late,” Hapsburg (the investor with the blue waistcoat) explained. “He might have gotten lost on the way from his hotel. I don’t think he’s ever been in England before.”
“This is the American?” said Bugleg with obvious disdain. Rossum nodded, making a what-can-you-expect gesture just below table level, where the people at the other end couldn’t see.
The door to the conference room flew open and the missing board member walked in. He wore a smartly cut business suit and carried a large paper bag that bore the logo of the Southwark Museum. It rustled loudly as he set it down beside his chair.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, leaning forward at his place and looking them over. “Stopped for souvenirs and then my driver got lost. Why didn’t you people mention there was more than one bridge over your river? London Bridge, that’s how the song goes, doesn’t it? Not bridges. Mike Telepop, hi, I’m coordinating executive of Paramount Adventures. What have I missed?”
“Not a thing, sir, we waited for you,” Lopez assured him.
“Thanks,” said Telepop, surveying him. “You’re the cyborg, huh? Christ!You people really don’t look any different. Great job, guys,” he added, directing his last remark to the scientists at the other end of the table.