by Kage Baker
“You found paper to make a parcel?”
“How much would you expect to pay,” she sang, fetching out the present kit, “for this beautiful parcel-post-wrappy thing? Thirty punts? Forty? Fifty? Well, you can have it all today for our low, low price of only free!”
“Oooo,” chortled the slave, and felt about for it until she set it in his hands. His thin fingers turned it and turned it, as his face grew thoughtful. “Yes,” he said. “I know what this is. It folds into a box, doesn’t it? Here are the seals and tabs. Well done, well done. We’ll need only to pack the sample with something so it doesn’t rattle about.” He set it by. “Did you find a pen, my love?”
“The very beautiful Little Book of Kells Calligraphy Master,” Tiara replied, putting it into his hand with a flourish.
“Really?” The slave ran his thumb over its shaft until he found the activator button, which he pressed. The pen came on with a little beep, and its red light winked to show it was readying the laserjet. “How exciting! We must have a scriptorium.”
Tiara had no idea what that might mean, but it turned out to be a broken lighting panel laid across the slave’s lap and underpropped by four skulls of roughly matching sizes. The torn paper sack was torn further, into a sheet of serviceable size and flatness, and Tiara arranged it before the slave and held it for him as he lifted pen to paper.
Here he paused a moment, sucking in his lower lip as he thought very hard. At last he began to write, slowly and carefully shaping the letters he could not see. In straggling but beautiful Latin, he wrote:
HAIL SULEYMAN,
I, LEWIS, OUT OF THE DEPTHS GREET YOU. WE HAVE FRIENDS IN COMMON. JOSEPH WAS WITH ME WHEN I WAS SO UNFORTUNATE AS TO BE BETRAYED BY OUR MASTERS, WHOSE DEEDS YOU HAVE SUSPECTED. THEIR DEVICES YOU MAY KNOW BY EXAMINING CAREFULLY THE ENCLOSED, WHICH IS MY OWN BLOOD HORRIBLY INVADED. I IMPLORE YOU, DEVISE REMEDY FOR THIS INVASION, BEFORE IT IS SET LOOSE ON OUR KIND. BEWARE GIFTS OF THEOBROMOS, FOR THEY WILL BEAR THE INVADERS AS THE TROJAN HORSE BORE GREEKS. PLEASE EXCUSE ERRORS IN PENMANSHIP AS I HAVE NEITHER LIGHT NOR EYES. BE WARNED BY MY MOST MISERABLE EXAMPLE.
“If only there was a way to render ‘biomechanicals’ in Latin,” the slave fussed, laying down the pen.
“What is Latin, my treasure?”Tiara looked admiringly at the flowing uncials.
“A secret language,” the slave told her, laying a finger beside his nose. “No one’s spoken it in centuries, but Suleyman will be able to read it. You see? We’re terribly clever, darling. Where’s that box got to, now?”
The parcelmistress turned, frowning, and looked about her tiny office. Where had the voice come from? She started involuntarily as it sounded on the air again. “If you please,” it insisted, “I want to send a parcel to Compassionates of Allah. It’s a present for Uncle Suleyman.”
A bright-wrapped package came over the edge of the counter. The parcelmistress leaned forward and stared down at the little girl who had spoken to her. There was a moment when her brain raced wildly to make sense of what she was seeing.
The child was white as ashes, wore polarized goggles, a lot of bulky clothing and a stocking cap, though her tiny dirty feet were bare. Was she a Traveler’s child from one of the caravans? Was she an albino? The Compassionates of Allah were all black men, so perhaps—
“A nice birthday present for your uncle?” the parcelmistress inquired, pulling the little box onto the mailer. It was weighed, enclosed in a mold, and the mold was injected with foam that expanded into a protective shell and dried instantly. The mold withdrew, leaving the parcel ready for its label.
“Yes indeed,” the child replied, in such a piercingly sweet voice the parcelmistress very nearly forgot what she was doing. She shook her head in confusion and turned to the microphone.
“And where would he live, your uncle Suleyman?” she asked. The child simply stared at her, expressionless behind the great black optics of her goggles. “Er—nearest charterhouse of the Compassionates of Allah, would it be?”
“Yes indeed,” the child repeated.
“That’ll be in Dublin,” the parcelmistress told her, and asked the printer for a label with the correct address. It came whirring out on an avery, and she tore it off and affixed it to the parcel. “Two and seven, dear.”
A grubby ball of money bounced up on the counter. The parcelmistress decided the child was certainly from the caravans; nobody but tinkers and road trash used cash anymore, even here. She took the old bills gingerly and turned to make change, but when she turned back she was alone in the room. She stood there, blinking a moment, as her memory of the visitor faded, shifted, altered. Without thinking she dropped the change in her pocket and set the package with the others, where the van boy would pick them up that afternoon.
And he did so, and the little parcel began its long journey. The first stop was the tall house full of robed black men, where a Communications Brother peered at the address and frowned in puzzlement. He took it to the office of the most reverend of the gentlemen there, and after a brief discussion they lasered open the foam case and beheld the package. They opened it cautiously and found the letter.
Within three hours the parcel had been sealed up again and locked in a case, which the reverend Brother carried with him as he boarded the transport to take him out of that rainy green purgatory, away to a blessed land of light and warmth …
CHAPTER 11
Extract from the Journal of the Botanist Mendoza:
In the Infirmary
So I suppose we’re omnipresent now. Omnitemporal? But not truly omnipotent, as Edward hastens to correct me: “Only to the limits of my observational ability, my dear.”
It appears that the truth about Time is rather more complex than we were told in school. Dr. Zeus explained to its little cyborgs that mortals perceive time in a linear way, because they have no other frame of reference; but in reality (they said) it is more of a spiral than a line, and when you learn to step across from one part of the spiral to another, you can travel through time. It would seem, however, that the Company wasn’t telling the truth. As usual.
Whoever first learned how to travel in time, whether it was the Company or those little pale people from whom it stole its technology—it appears they took one look at the awful incoherent vastness of it all, screamed, and hastily projected conduits of artificial linear time with which to travel through the mess in a more or less orderly way. The restriction against being able to travel forward in time was a result of the conduit system. Real time is nonlinear, chaos, all-simultaneous, extending through every direction and dimension at once, and Edward alone knows what this does to causality. Entropy is an artifact of mortal perception.
We, of course, are beyond all that now, ascended beings that we are.
Here outside of time, it doesn’t seem to make that much difference. I must admit it’s pleasant, terrifically liberating. We can stop the sun in the sky if we choose, we can prolong the nights indefinitely, we need never eat nor drink again if we aren’t so inclined; but avoiding linear existence grows unsettling after a while. There is that suspicion that if we simply blissed out and meshed with Eternity and each other permanently, we might… oh, I don’t know, be transformed into beings of pure energy or some other cliché, and of course that would never do. Not with the plans Edward has for Ruling the World.
I do feel better knowing that the Crome’s radiation is gone, I must say, even if Edward did shut it off without my permission. He does a lot of things without my permission.
Though even if I had ever been able to use the Crome’s for psychic powers, I wouldn’t need it now.
Edward’s still stalking about Byronically exulting in his newfound immortal senses. (Ha-ha!) His mortal senses were pretty hot, so I can only imagine what he’s experiencing.
No, that’s not true … because I can do much more than imagine. I have only to poke around a little and I can summon up every one of Edward’s memories, some of which are pretty ghastly. But I see with equal clarity how h
e hated the work he was set to do, so I forbear to judge. After all, I have killed mortals in my time.
I am equally an open book, wherein he reads at his pleasure. This makes our sex life exquisite and truly interesting, but we’re learning to be careful about doing it out of bed. Honesty can be painful.
He knows, for example, that I was more than a little peeved at his appalled pronouncement on the tininess of my mental faculties compared to his own. He has repeatedly apologized. In this new world, where he strides like a self-assured god, his only remaining worry is how I feel about him.
Sir Henry has already offered to maroon Edward somewhere, if I’ll say the word, and take off with me himself, once little Alec’s with us again. Very sweet of the old dear, but I don’t think he could do it. I think Edward would part the seas and come stalking after us, or something equally impressive. He’s a demon when he wants his way.
And to whom would I flee? I have only connected emotionally with three other people in my entire immortal life, and one of them (Joseph) I would gladly shoot on sight. Nan has a happy and nearly normal marriage; what would she make of mine? Lewis, perfect gallant that he has always been, would cope with the Captain somehow, and we’d undoubtedly find a way to hide from the Company, but we couldn’t hide from Edward. And … I have hurt Lewis enough.
No, I remain with Commander Bell-Fairfax.
He’s been courting me. Charming little picnics for two on idyllic deserted shores, with delicacies he’s stepped sidelong through time to procure. Moonlit suppers and dancing on deck, the waltz of course because that’s what he remembers best from mortal life, with Sir Henry grumpily providing accompaniment on a cyber-concertina. Treats and pretty things he imagines I’ll like, and I have to admit I do, though I’m afraid to ask where he got them.
He serenades me, primarily nineteenth-century airs and bits of opera, rendered in best nineteenth-century bel canto style. He has full access to the entire repertoire of music from all eras of history, mind you; but he happens to think that civilization reached its full flowering in the nineteenth century, so I get a lot of Donizetti and Hubert Parry. Especially Jerusalem, which he adores, with its William Blake lyrics. And how delighted he was to discover that the Black Dyke Mills Band will still be recording in 2355! Four and a half centuries’worth of stirring brass marches, God help me.
And he’ll draw me a hot bath, with perfumed crystals and fragrant soap, and usher me in with great ceremony, and attend on me in his shirtsleeves, and pour champagne … and scrub my back … and lavish care on me, to the point where I’m moaning and half-drowning in the tub, until he swathes me in a towel and carries me off to bed, the smug bastard … and all the while, deep down inside in a place he won’t even admit exists, he’s terrified I’ll stop loving him.
If I were a nastier woman than I am, I’d feel this was sweet revenge, after all the centuries I’ve mooned hopelessly after him in all his incarnations. But…
I have seen, now, into that secret place in his heart. I’ve seen the pathetic idyll he’d never admit to himself he wanted. It shone in his imagination like a beacon, through all those years he walked down dark alleys in his masters’ service: quite an ordinary little terrace house, with a respectable back garden, respectable polished furniture, respectable afternoon tea properly served by… a respectable little wife?
Ah, not quite. Rather, a black-eyed Lady Death haunted his dreams, a phantom in crinolines. The consummation he never feared and came in fact to long for, as the list of his crimes grew, the only bride he felt he deserved.
How miserably lonely my bad darling has been, so much of his life.
And they planned for that, didn’t they, those three odd little men who created him? Cut him off from all human affection, so his immense capacity for love had no focus but the abstract ideals with which he was programmed.
I think about this and I can forgive him anything, anything, all the little irritations of his pompous and patronizing speech, all his ingrained habits of deviousness and subtle bullying, his propensity for mental rape … I can even, almost, forgive what he did to Alec and Nicholas, especially as their return to life is now definitely scheduled.
For Edward has decided it would be a great experiment to produce a pair of Extreme Superbeings, the latest thing in evolution and all that. Infants born to immortality, as opposed to poor dull mortal children pithed and filled with hardware, as I was. Of course, they will need central memory files, for which Nicholas and Alec will do nicely. “It’s bound to be an improving experience for both of them!” he said.
And I’m to bear their bodies in my womb, as I bear their memories in mine.
I can feel around the location in my data files, a sort of cleverly masked information bulge. I wonder if this is what it will feel like in the flesh, in another month or so? This the logical outcome of Edward’s idyll, of course: a pair of Baby Deaths in one cradle, in a respectably appointed nursery.
I walk such a tightrope, over such a yawning gulf, between love and horror.
Sir Henry has attended to the matter with his customary stealthy efficiency, of course. New custom biomechanicals were designed, and more material was extracted out of the vial we stole from Alpha-Omega. A pair of blastocysts divided themselves from a common ball of cells.
They were implanted in my body. I wasn’t aware, at the time; Edward decided it would be too traumatic an experience for me, so he just took it on himself to render me unconscious, gently, and did it without asking. I would be angry about this, if I hadn’t had the uneasy realization that he was quite correct.
When I try to imagine the procedure or in fact any medical procedure, my heart pounds, my mouth dries. Just the words cold steel terrify me. Edward, at least, understands my unnamable horror.
He says children should arise from an act of love.
I would not do this for any reason but love.
My own biomechanicals have been responding to a subroutine Sir Henry installed, and are manufacturing so many hormones I’d probably be hysterical and pimply, were I not already off-balance in this strange new life Edward and I share, where the sun rises and sets when we remember to notice it doing so.
The clock has lost its hands. Time has no meaning for us, we have stepped outside it now and into eternity; but for love’s sake I will take nine months’ worth of its weight on myself again.
Edward Progenitor
The Captain is gleeful.
Two identical embryos, perfectly formed. I’d show you in obstetric holo but they ain’t no bigger than beans, bless their weensy hearts! Which is beating, now. Yer a right congenial berth for ‘em, dearie. They got little arm buds, little leg buds, and little bitsy buttons what’ll be fine big belaying-pins one of these days, begging yer pardon, ma’am. Nice knots of neural tissue, more brain than a mortal brat would have at this point.
“But can they live in such things?” demands Mendoza. “Is it enough brain?” She is nervous, pacing.
Aye, ma’am, it’s enough. Remember what they are.
“I know. I just—” She unties, reties her robe, and still doesn’t seem to be able to get it right, as Edward takes her elbow and leads her to the bed.
“Come, my dear. It’s more than time.” He helps her in, orders the lights to dim. All is cozy intimacy. “The good Captain will keelhaul me, I’m sure, if I delay another hour.”
Damn right I would, too.
“You see?” Edward smiles wryly. “And he’s a machine of his word, so we mustn’t cross him. Let’s free the prisoners from durance vile. This part will be easy, I do assure you. Even pleasant.”
“Does Sir Henry have to be here?”
Ah! Rest easy, dearie, I’ll just go chart a course somewhere.
“And I’m cold …” she says, shivering.
“I’ll warm you,” Edward replies, climbing in beside her.
Mendoza clutches the lapels of his robe. “Should I be unconscious? Would that work better?”
“Ssssh.” Edward kisses
her. “Don’t be frightened.” He clears his throat. Hesitantly at first, he begins to sing.
“Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.”
His is a surprisingly pleasant tenor.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she says. “Shakespeare, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” He strokes back her hair.
“A fairy song,” she says. Her arms go around his neck timidly. “They’re like tiny little fairies right now, aren’t they?”
“Lying in the heart of the blossom,” he tells her, looking into her eyes. “Warm and safe.”
He grants her time, now, gradually she relaxes in his arms, and slow pleasures melt her defenses. With her guard down, access to the most defended of sites becomes possible, and he unlocks the file …
In the Library
“… My, gen-tle, p-Puck. Puck? Come … hit—hi there.” Alec frowns at the words.
“Hither,” Nicholas corrects him.
“Hither. Thou, re—remember? Remember. Est. Ssssince, once, I sat, up, on a, pro … pro …”
“That is an M. Sound it out.”
“Promm—onn—torry. And. Heared a, m-merm-aid? Yeah. Mermaid on a d-duh—dolp? … “Alec knits his brows.
“PH sounded as F, Alec.” Nicholas yawns.
“Dolf—in. Dolphin? Dolphin’s, back—”
The floor begins to tremble.
“Oh!”Alec looks up, sees the books vibrating on the shelves.
“God’s holy wounds,” mutters Nicholas, leaping to his feet.
Alec stands too and drops the volume of Shakespeare’s comedies, but it dematerializes before it hits the floor. Alec’s eyes widen and he clutches at Nicholas as more features of the room start vanishing, breaking up. “What’s happening?” he demands.