by Kage Baker
“Here, now, that’s hardly fair,” the assistant clerk complained. “We sat out our run of bad luck; you should do the same!”
“He played damned well for somebody who didn’t know much about cards,” muttered the junior manager. As I sought for the right words to defuse the situation, Courier was scooping up his little bag of coins unconcernedly.
“I’ll just take these,” he said. “You can have the scrip stuff back; I can’t use it anyway.” Everyone looked at him, dumfounded.
“Yes, capital idea, all debts canceled!” I cried in false heartiness. “Let’s end our evening on a friendly note, shall we?”
The junior manager stared as that sank in and then smiled desperately. “All right! All debts canceled, fellows, what do you say?” And as I exited the room, hastily pushing Courier ahead of me, I could hear Babin’s roar of denial over the timid chorus of agreement.
“What on Earth possessed you to do that?” I exploded, when we were a safe distance down the corridor. “It’s all very well for you to be careless of your own cover, but you’re endangering mine! I’m obliged to live with those men for the next few years, and what will they think of me?”
His face was so stupidly blank I felt guilty at once. If he were indeed some indestructible simpleton, anger was wasted on him; and I was already thinking poor fellow, it’s not his fault after all when he opened his mouth to speak.
“Say, have you got my orders yet?”
It was as if he had thrown vodka onto a bonfire. My rage, which had shrunk so rapidly into little blue coals, flared to the ceiling again, and higher than the flames of anger and impatience were those of loathing for the scarecrow, the defective, the badly made machine that he was. Bigotry? Yes, I suppose so. Humbling thought, isn’t it?
“Fool!” I snapped. “Don’t you think if any orders had come in I’d have told you? Here!” I grabbed out my credenza and thrust it at him. ” You look from now on! Keep it until your damned orders come in, and leave me alone!”
I set off down the corridor to my room, but he followed me swiftly. “Can’t we go somewhere else? Isn’t there anything else to do around here?” he pleaded.
“No! But here’s an order for you, you imbecile!” I turned on him. ” Go to your room and stay there !!”
His reaction was extraordinary. All the color drained from his face; with a queer frightened look he dodged around me and stumbled down the corridor to his room. I went into my own quarters, feeling guilty again. What could be wrong with the creature? Well, I hadn’t made him the way he was, anyway; and surely I’d played host beyond the call of duty. Perhaps he’d let me get a full night’s sleep now.
Dawn next day found me creeping from my room, carrying a real volume of Schiller and the envelope containing the access code strip. I left the stockade and descended the steep path into the cove. The old shipyard was still being used for carpentry, and the forge and tannery were down here too; but it was still so early that there was no one about to see me hurry across the footbridge and disappear into the woods on the other side of the stream. I found a clearing under a stand of red pines with a floor of dry brown needles; and there I settled down happily, took out Mendoza’s letter, and accessed the code at last.
Instantly my mind was ringing with Latin names and three-dimensional images of growing things and their uses. To my astonishment I realized that acorn meal from Quercus agrifolia, if left to mold, produced a useful antibiotic. And the leaves of Rubus ursinus could be used against dysentery? Really? And, my goodness, what a lot of uses for Asclepias speciosa, which was nothing more than milkweed!
Oh, well. Doubtless I’d find dozens of interesting little weeds next time I went exploring. For now, however, I intended to stay where I was until Courier got his damned orders and took his much-desired leave. I was thoroughly weary of him. I yawned, stretched out my boots and immersed myself in Schiller’s poems.
What a pleasant morning I had. Before long the forge started up, and a breeze brought me the hot smell of charcoal and the bell-note of hammer on anvil. At the bottom of my glade the stream rushed and chattered along, brown as tea. It was a holy stream, I remembered with amusement; not long ago a visiting priest had blessed it, and consecrated it, and now we had an unlimited supply of holy water. How thoughtful of the reverend father! Just what was needed on the frontier.
My idyll was shattered by no end of commotion at the forge. I jumped up and ran to the edge of my clearing, where I beheld Konstantin the smith, hip-deep in the stream, splashing and stumbling in a circle. He was trying to shake off a tiny mongrel dog, which had hold of the seat of his trousers with a positive death-grip and swung by its clamped teeth, growling ferociously. Konstantin sobbed oaths upon the little cur, imploring a whole host of blessed saints to smash it like a cockroach. From the bank of the stream four little naked Indians watched with solemn black eyes.
“What happened?” I ran to them.
“Tsar bit him,” replied the tallest of the children.
“Vasilii Vasilievich!” wept the blacksmith. “Help me, in God’s Holy Name! Get it off me !”
“For heaven’s sake, man, it’s the size of a rat! Why did the doggie bite him?” I turned again to the boy.
“He came running out here with his pants on fire,” the child replied. “It was neat. Then he jumped in the water where we were swimming. We jumped out and Tsar jumped in to bite him. He’s a brave dog.”
That was when I realized that it wasn’t Konstantin’s trousers the dog had seized with such energy. No wonder he was crying. I waded hastily into the stream and somehow prised Tsar loose, but he had tasted blood and yapped viciously for more. I held him out at arm’s length, squeaking and struggling, as I bent to examine poor Konstantin’s backside.
Yes, the seat of the trousers had quite burnt away, and in addition to the dog bite he had a thoroughly ugly second-degree burn on either buttock.
“Tsk! This is a serious burn, my friend,” I told him.
“I know that, you idiot!” he groaned. “I mean—excuse me—can’t you do something about it? I’m suffering the pains of Hell!”
“Well, er, of course. Sit down in the water again while I determine a course of treatment for you.” What a chance to show off my new knowledge of the local healing herbs! I accessed hurriedly. Let’s see, what might be growing here that was useful for burns? Sambucus canadensis, of course! That was the native elderberry tree, wasn’t it? Hadn’t I seen one growing along the bank near here? I turned and waded ashore, holding out Tsar to his master. The dog’s growling subsided like a teakettle taken off the fire.
“Listen to me, children! There’s an elder tree growing up there on the bank. Perhaps your mommies use the leaves to make poultices? Yes? No? Well, will you be good children and fetch me some branches so I can make a soothing poultice for this poor man?” I implored. Up on the bluff a small crowd of colonists had gathered, drawn by all the noise.
“Vasilii Vasilievich, I’m dying!” moaned the blacksmith, writhing in the water. “Oh, Holy Saints, oh, Mother of God, why did I ever leave Irkutsk for this savage place?”
“All right,” chorused the little Indians, and scampered away bright-eyed with excitement. Konstantin howled and prayed until they returned bearing green branches laden down with tiny blue berries. I gathered them up, confused. What did one do with them, exactly? Tsar’s master knew an indecisive adult when he saw one, fortunately.
“You pound them up on a rock!” he yelled helpfully. “Want us to do it?” Without waiting for a reply he grabbed up a water-worn cobble and began mashing the berries into a slimy mess on the top of a boulder. The other children crowded around him while Tsar stalked stiff-legged along the bank, snarling at Konstantin.
In no time at all they’d reduced leaves and berries and all to a nasty-looking goo.
“All right, Konstantin Kirillovich,” I told him, “please rise from the water. I’ve got an excellent native salve that’ll take the pain away.” I scooped up a handful of the
muck and prepared to clap it on his seared derriere, while the children looked on expectantly.
And, well, my nerve gave way. How could this horrible stuff help a burn like that? I found myself digging into my coat for the little book of skin repair tissue we field agents carry. Yes, I know it’s forbidden! But, you know, the truth is, our medicine works just as well on mortals as it works on us. Stealthily I tore out three or four of the sheets and stuck them on the blacksmith’s behind, but he caught a glimpse of what I was doing over his shoulder.
“ Prayers you’re putting on my ass?” he screamed. “Are you crazy?”
“No!” I smeared the elderberry poultice on to disguise what I’d done. “That was merely, um, medical parchment, very useful in forming a base for the compound, you see—”
“Listen, you big St. Petersburg pansy—” he grated; then a remarkable expression crossed his face as the drugs in the skin replacement were released into his system. “The pain’s gone!” he gasped. He reached behind and felt himself; then crouched down in the water to wash off the salve. By the time he rose, dripping, the synthetic skin had fused with his own and looked fresh and pink as on the day of his birth.
“Hooray!” yelled the children, jumping up and down in triumph, while Tsar went mad with barking.
“It’s healed, ” Konstantin stated in wonderment. Then he stared down at the swirling water. “It must have been this stream! I was here when the little father blessed it! It’s a miracle! The holy water has worked a miracle!”
I squelched wearily back up the bank, as his cries brought spectators from the bluff down for a closer look at the Miracle of the Holy Stream. Courier was not among them, at least. Ought I go see if he’d finally got his orders and gone? Perhaps I should go call on the Munin family to see how Andrei Efimovich’s leg was mending. Perhaps I should look for specimens of Asclepias speciosa. There were a thousand better things to concern myself with than a difficult fellow operative. I was supposed to be a doctor, wasn’t I?
And so I resolutely put Courier out of my mind and spent the rest of the day trudging from hut to house, with the intention of getting to know my patients better. I was not particularly successful; anyone who had the least ache or pain had run down to the Holy Stream and was bathing in its icy waters. Not necessarily bad for business: I might have a few cases of pneumonia by the week’s end. But I did lance an abscessed gum for a Kashaya woman, and recommend a salve for a Creole baby’s flea bites; so I was of some use to my mortal community.
There was no sign of Courier when I returned to the stockade that evening, through pumpkin fields, with the late red sun throwing long shadows of corn shocks where they stood in bundles. There was no sign of him when I sat down to dinner in the officer’s mess, and attempted to join in the general conversation in a pleasant and comradely way. Not that I had much to contribute, with my pocket edition of Schiller, and nobody invited me to play cards with them. I was the recipient of a few distinctly dirty looks, in fact, especially from Iakov Babin.
I took a candle and wandered off to my room, my volume of poetry tucked sadly away in my coat. When I got there, I had the most peculiar feeling that something was somehow not quite right. I held up my candle and looked around.
My bunk, with its blanket, was undisturbed; so was my sea-chest. My Imperial Navy saber still hung in its place of honor on the wall. My little stack of books was where it ought to be. Of course, my credenza wasn’t there … perhaps Courier had left it in the guest room? I decided to wait until morning to look for it. Oh, yes, I know, you’d have gone straight in to see if he really had gone. I simply didn’t want to. I lit my lamp and blew out the candle. A plume of greasy smoke curled, pungent, from the snuffed wick.
That was when I heard the growl.
A growl, I say. It wasn’t a dog; it wasn’t a bear. God only knew what it was, but it had emanated from the other side of the plank wall. From Courier’s room. Oh, dear.
I scanned. I couldn’t make sense of my readings. Courier seemed to be in the room, and yet—
I lit the candle again and went out into the corridor, where I knocked at Courier’s door. There was a scuttling sound. No light showing under the door, or between the planks. What was going on here? I drew a deep breath and pulled open the door.
Darkness, and as the wavering light of my candle moved through the doorway I beheld a tangled mass on the floor. I prodded it with my boot. Strips of something? A trade blanket, torn to shreds. Interspersed with brittle glinting fragments and scraps of paper that had once been a framed picture of the Tsar. Where was Courier?
Cautiously I raised the candle and looked upward.
It was on the ceiling, wedged in an angle of roof and rafters. It was Courier up there clinging to the rafters: or had been.
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 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 and mischance 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 thi
ng 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. I 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, 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 Sinclair 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.