by Kage Baker
“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 for the 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 corridor, 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 I 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 ?” I 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 Four A.M.s like 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 his 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 dark streams, in the deep shadow under enormous trees, exclaiming over their vastness. (“Gosh! This looks like where The 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 were appreciating the full effect. No. A moment before, his face had been all bright and animated, gleeful as he urged his mount up 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 Officer’s 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, he 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.
“That looks like fun,” he told them hopefully.
“Would you like to join the game?” responded the junior manager, even more hopefully.
“Oh, I don’t know how to play,” Courier replied, and every head in the room turned toward him. A young man, supposedly a Russian, who didn’t play cards in that day and age? How much more conspicuous could he make himself?
“Yes, Andrei Andreivich, that does sound serious.” I looked over at Courier, wondering what on Earth he was doing. “Er—look here, it sounds to me as though a violent purge is needed. Rid yourself of poisons, you know.”
“You’ve never played cards ?” the junior manager was gaping at Courier.
“A purge!” Andrei backed away a pace or two. “Do you think that’s really necessary, Doctor?”
“You never know. Of course he’s played cards, gentlemen, but he’s from Kiev, after all; he’s never learned Frontier Rules.” I moved swiftly to the table and addressed Courier. “You play Picquet, I’m sure, and Whist, don’t you?” Tell them you play Whist, for God’s sake!
Okay. “Yes, I play Whist,” he agreed.
“Well, shall we have a game, then?” I pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Whist!” Iakov Dmitrivich exhaled a cloud of noxious blue smoke and bit down on his cigar viciously. “Well, I’m out! That ain’t no game for me.” He folded his cards and threw them on the table, pausing just long enough to chalk his winnings. The junior manager looked relieved, nevertheless.
“Whist, yes, what a grand idea!” he babbled. “Haven’t played in ages! Be a bit of a change, won’t it? Shall we, ah … shall we wager?” He must have seen foolish-looking Courier as his chance to repair his losses.
“I’m not certain my friend has much money—” I began, but Courier smiled and reached into his coat.
“I’ve got lots of cash! See?” He emptied his purse on the table. Out jingled a collection of Coins of the World; gold pieces from Chile, American dollars, French francs, British half-crowns, Russian rubles and a mongrel mass of small change.
“Looks fine to me.” The junior manager shuffled the deck with slightly shaky hands. “Stiva, will you partner me?” His assistant clerk pulled up another chair and Courier sat down too, and the junior manager dealt the cards.
I transmitted the rules of Whist to Courier, who nodded with a shrewd expression and sorted quickly through his hand. We lost the first hand; thereafter he watched the cards keenly, and with
in a few more hands we began to win, and then win every time.
I looked up in horror as I realized what he was doing. You’ve never used your cyborg abilities to win at cards, and neither would I, of course: but it didn’t seem to have occurred to Courier that he’d draw attention to himself by memorizing the positions of the cards, and using his knowledge to win. The chalked figures on the table grew higher and higher as we won more sums in scrip from the junior manager, who sat in a veritable pool of sweat. The room grew unpleasantly silent; Iakov Babin, who had been leaning by the fire regaling a small crowd with bloodcurdling tales of an Indian massacre, left off talking and stared across the room at us with an ironical grin. I met his eyes and he nodded as if to say, What did I tell you? Dybbuk !
Courier, for God’s sake, what are you doing? Let the mortals win some of the time!
He looked up at me in puzzlement. But I thought the object of the game was to win.
Now, it will undoubtedly have dawned on you by this time that there was something wrong with Courier. It had even dawned on me. We aren’t made stupid, and yet he was behaving like a perfect ass! And then I had what I thought was a moment of blinding revelation: he was a courier because that was the only job he was fit for, running from one place to another with a bag of papers! I looked across at his innocent face and all the old horror stories of early experiments came into my mind, before the Company perfected us, before they had managed to give us immortal minds to compare with our immortal bodies. Was he one such Golem? Yes, you shiver: imagine how I felt, sitting across the table from him!
“Babin, I declare you’ve got the Evil Eye!” I tittered. “You’ve broken our winning streak.” And I put down just the wrong card. There was a gasp of relief from the junior manager. Courier started and stared. “But—” he protested.
Enough! There’ll be trouble here if you win any more!
Oh. Okay.
“I’m done.” I yawned prodigiously. “Gracious, the air’s blue in here! Time I went to bed. You’d better turn in too, young man; you’ll have a long journey ahead of you once we’ve got those papers signed.”