by Kage Baker
“Great. Thank you very much. Where is the man?” I inquired, hurriedly because I could feel a confrontation building.
“Go through that door at the end of the hall,” said the mortal girl, just before Mendoza said, “Did you know you’ve got an impacted wisdom tooth, Stacey? I’d have it checked out if I were you.”
Stacey’s hand flew to the corner of her jaw, and my hand flew to Mendoza’s arm and I pulled her away with me down the hall.
“Mendoza, that was not nice. Scanning them without permission is impolite.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass! Did you smell the way she felt about us? If she’s got a problem dealing with immortals, why’s she with the Company? Nobody told me there’d be mortals crawling all over this place.”
“Are you going to do this to me again? Don’t do this to me again, Mendoza.”
“What’d she think we were, for crying out loud? Androids?”
“You’ve never worked with any Company mortals, have you?” I paused, scanning the long featureless hall in confusion. What was that pinging noise?
“Sure I have.” Mendoza turned her head irritably, picking up the sound too.
“I don’t mean native busboys. I mean officers and shareholders of Dr. Zeus, from the future. We make them uncomfortable.” I paused outside a door and scanned the room beyond. There was a mortal inside, interfacing with an entertainment console. That was it. Somebody was playing a holo game.
“But why? They made us, didn’t they? We do exactly what they built us to do, don’t we?”
“I know. I’m not sure what the reason is. Maybe some of them feel we’re not much more than superpowered slaves and they feel guilty about that?”
She took that in for a minute, as we walked on down the hall.
“Well, that’s just ducky,” she hissed, and I knocked on Mr. Bugleg’s door before she could tell me just how ducky it was.
We were let in by a mortal kid, I guess he was a junior clerk or something, and there was Mr. Bugleg standing at the other end of a table set for four. He’d put the table between us and himself, but otherwise you couldn’t have told he was a bigot at all. Nice plastic smile like the girl Stacey. He was mortal too, of course. The food looked lousy. Ob, boy, this is going to be some tour of duty, broadcast Mendoza. Shut up, I broadcast back. She looked around the room, which was otherwise bare of ornament or furniture save for a plain day bed and a wall console with an enormous private entertainment center. Quite a change from New World One. Bugleg cleared his throat.
“Mendoza. Joseph. How are you? I’m Bugleg. Have a seat.” His smile faltered off. He looked like a scared toddler at a birthday party. He was a thirtyish mortal, not quite beginning to sag yet, fairly pasty-faced, and his head was a funny shape. (But, then, all their heads look funny to me.) He wore the same drab clothing as his staff: no medals, epaulets, or gold braid.
“I’ll ring for my aide now,” he told us, and he did, and after an uncomfortable moment of silence a door opened and another man walked in. This one was an immortal and decently dressed, too, with a good wig and a spiffy brocaded coat. He had a black silk steinkirk knotted casually about his throat. To judge from the heels on his shoes, he wasn’t any taller than me, but he strode up to us with authority. The man had style.
His eyes were gray and cold, and his grip was a little too firm as he shook our hands.
“This is Mr. Lopez, my aide,” ventured Bugleg.
“Joseph. Mendoza. It’s a pleasure meeting you. I’ll be briefing you on the mission as we”—he paused significantly—”dine.”
He pulled out Mendoza’s chair for her. Bugleg sat down and watched in horrified fascination as Mendoza seated herself, settling her acreage of rustling silks less inconveniently.
“Why did you wear all those clothes here?” he asked. “You should put on clothes like we wear. You’d be more comfortable.”
Mendoza was too surprised to say anything, for which I was grateful.
“You must remember, sir, that we field operatives spend our whole lives in the past,” Lopez explained smoothly. “I’ve told you about this before. For us, the past is real time. We wear these clothes because they’re what’s being made this year, which happens to be 1700 A.D., by the way. Mortals would notice us if we dressed differently. Besides, if we wanted to wear clothes like yours, they’d have to be specially imported from the future, which would be expensive. It’s much cheaper simply to wear what everybody else is wearing in this time period. In fact, we’re quite used to these fashions. It may be hard for you to believe, but she’s just as comfortable in her clothing as you are in yours.”
“Oh,” said Bugleg.
The food was just as lousy on closer inspection as it had seemed at first glance. At each place was a shaped tray with compartments containing various pureed or textured substances, brightly colored. We all made courteously exclamatory noises over it, though I noticed Lopez’s elbow twitch as he stopped himself from reaching for a claret decanter that wasn’t there. I lifted my plastic sipper bottle to see what our beverage was. Distilled water. Bugleg lifted his and slurped as happily as though it were champagne. He put it down and said:
“It’s so great you’re here at last. Now we can really get some work done. We couldn’t start without you, uh, Joseph. What do you need to know about your mission?”
Mendoza raised her eyebrows, but I said, “Well, as I understand it, we’re kind of lifting an entire biosystem off the face of the Earth in situ, right?”
Bugleg’s jaw hung slack. He doesn’t know what the big words mean, transmitted Lopez, and out loud he said, “Right. To be specific, we’re collecting the Chumash village of Humashup. The people, the animals they hunt, the plants they gather, the fish they catch, their culture in its entirety, even samples of the local geology and seawater.”
“Yes,” affirmed Bugleg.
“No wonder you’ve brought so many specialists in on this,” remarked Mendoza.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Lopez almost reached for claret again. “You’ll find access codes for all relevant anthropological information in your assigned quarters, and I believe you’ll find the texts by John P. Harrington and Alfred L. Kroeber the most useful. To give you an overview, however: the Chumash are the aboriginal inhabitants of this region of the California coast. Our preliminary studies show a Neolithic level of technological development but an extremely complex social and mercantile structure. They’re hunter-gatherers but also industrialists, if you can imagine that. They produce a wide variety of objects manufactured specifically for trade with other local tribes. They’ve developed a monetary system that other tribes have had to adopt in order to do business with them, but they’ve retained sole rights to the manufacture of the shell money they use. The word Chumash is a corruption of the name given to them by their neighbors, which can be roughly translated as ‘the people who make money.’ Which they certainly do, literally and figuratively. By local standards they’re millionaires.”
“Savages with an economic empire.” Mendoza looked amused.
“Hardly savages. Their standard of living is quite high. Life is easy for the Chumash. They haven’t had to develop agriculture or domesticate animals, because the wild food sources are abundant. The climate in the interior is temperate, so clothing is largely unnecessary, though they enjoy elaborate jewelry and hair adornment. And they bathe more frequently than contemporary mortals in Europe.”
“Well, who doesn’t?”
Lopez put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “These people have saunas. They have municipal centers for organized sporting events. They have ballet. They have stand-up comedians. I think most people would define that as the Good Life.”
“Sound like stereotypical Californians to me.” I bit down on a hard lump of something. Analysis proved it to be an unrehydrated nugget of protein paste. I made it vanish discreetly into my paper napkin. “Do they have any less attractive qualities?”
Sighing, Lopez settled back in
his chair and pushed his food away. “They have their problems. They seem to get most of their aggressions out on their neighbors by controlling commerce, but there is some territorial warfare. Their infant mortality rate is suspiciously high. Seems to be a high level of domestic violence, too.”
“Nobody’s perfect.” I drank the rest of my water and looked around for more. Lopez’s elbow twitched again. No crystal decanter to refill my bottle, and Bugleg seemed oblivious to the possibility that his guests might want more. Lopez and I both sighed. “So, what’s their religion like? I understand I’m playing a god?” I continued.
“More or less. They’re loosely pantheistic, animistic, and their astrologers are quite accomplished astronomers as well. They do debate philosophy to some degree. Their principal semidivine totemic hero is Sky Coyote. You’ll get all the available data on him when you access your orientation material, but he’s your standard Trickster figure who’s also the friend and helper of the human race. Hence our choice of him as our liaison.”
“I don’t know what that word means,” complained Bugleg. The conversation came to a screeching halt, and we all stared at him.
“Which word, sir?” inquired Lopez.
“Hence. You went, hence. That’s one of those old-time words.”
“Why, yes, sir, but we’re old-time people, aren’t we, sir?” Lopez smiled at him with great effort. “So you mustn’t mind it.”
“Hence means ‘So that’s why,’ “ I explained. “Like, ‘So that’s why we chose Coyote as our liaison.’ See?”
“Oh.” Bugleg looked sulky. “Then you should have gone ‘So that’s why,’ not that old-time word. You shouldn’t use those old-time words. They’re weird.”
Lopez drew a deep breath. I began to have respect for the man. He rushed on: “You’re going to make contact with the Chumash and persuade them to relocate. Then you’ll keep them cooperative as we go through the subsequent stages of the operation. We’re staging it now, because communication among villages is limited at this time of the year and we’re aiming at closure within two months. In fact, we chose Humashup because it’s comparatively isolated and word of our presence is less likely to spread. It’s also the nearest community to Point Conception (known to the Chumash as Humqaq, or Raven Point), which was chosen as our base site because it figures in their mythology as the gateway to the next world. The locals avoid the area for that reason, making it an ideal place for our installation.”
“And if anybody sees anything high-tech and strange, it can be explained away as spirits,” I guessed.
“Exactly. Once we’ve collected them, all the villagers will be airlifted to Mackenzie Base for further study and assimilation.”
“Sounds like I’ll need to do some pretty fancy talking to get these people to go with us, if they have such a good life here,” I said.
“The Company has every confidence in you,” Lopez told me firmly. “You yourself are the product of a similarly primitive culture, after all, which ought to provide you with some insights. We’re also fitting you with complex appliance makeup and bio-mechanical prostheses to turn you into their patron god. In fact”—Lopez took out an octavo memorandum and consulted it—”you’ll report to suite A3 at eight hundred hours tomorrow for preliminary fittings and tissue matching. Shower and shave first, please.”
“Is this an uncomfortable process?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh, well. I guess I’ll need every possible arrow in my quiver.” I shrugged.
“You’re not supposed to use arrows!” said Bugleg, in some alarm.
There was another pause. I give up, transmitted Mendoza. Is the guy brain-damaged or what?
He only speaks Twenty-Fourth Century Cinema Standard, explained Lopez.
But so do we!
Not exactly.
But we’ve read their books! We’ve seen their films! Charles Dickens! Somerset Maugham! Warner Brothers!
Those are mostly drawn from the few centuries preceding his time, Lopez told her. In his era, most mortals find them too difficult to understand. Particularly technocrats such as our friend here. The liberal arts are consequently—how shall I say it?—rather suspect.
Mendoza was stunned into silence. All of their conversation took about a nanosecond, so without even missing a beat I turned to Bugleg and grinned like his best pal. “Just a figure of speech, sir. A metaphor. You know.”
He blinked.
“I won’t really shoot anybody with any real arrows,” I assured him. “Say, isn’t this Proteus-Brand Synthesized Protein we’re eating?”
“Yes.”
“In béarnaise sauce. Well, well. You know, it’ll be great once we’re really settled in here at this base and your catering crew get their act together. Plenty of great stuff to eat in California, you know. There’s abalone and swordfish out there in the sea. Venison’s abundant in this coastal range, too, I hear. Swell fresh cuisine.”
I swear the guy turned pale.
“We feel more comfortable with our own food,” he said.
Okay. I got down the last of my foodlike substance and looked around longingly. No wine, no brandy, no liqueurs or coffee. No dessert either.
“What a great meal,” I said. “Got any Theobromos?”
!!!!!!! broadcast Lopez. Bugleg looked shocked.
“Is that a joke?”
Whoops.
“Of course it is.” I grinned most charmingly. “Take it easy. I guess you’ve heard us field operatives are a pretty wild bunch, but really nobody does Theobromos. Honest. Just pulling your leg.”
“Just—”
“I was only joking with you,” I clarified.
“Oh.”
I hope they don’t search our luggage, broadcast Mendoza.
By that evening, as I reclined on my uncomfortable twenty-fourth-century mattress accessing anthropological data, I had Bugleg all figured out. You know those Victorian big-game hunters who’ll insist on bringing all the apparatus of their civilization into the jungles with them? Formal dress for dinner, London Illustrated News, teatime? Every little British social custom rigorously observed, so they don’t go native? That was what was going on here. Bugleg couldn’t have volunteered for this mission, he must have been horrified to have been chosen; and so he’d compensated by wrapping his whole sanitized twenty-fourth-century world and all its values around himself, and we were expected to conform, like native bearers obliged to wear white jackets to serve dinner.
What kind of rank did he hold in the Company, though, to have pull like that? It must have cost a fortune to ship a whole chunk of the twenty-fourth century here, just so he could cope. He seemed like such a moron.
The Chumash were a lot easier to understand. Even before I’d finished the material by Harrington and Kroeber, I felt I knew them. Everything Lopez had told me was true, and if you don’t believe me, access the files yourself. They really did have an economic empire and a sophisticated lifestyle, for people living in a Neolithic world. To tell the truth, they were a lot more advanced than the tribe I’d been born into, back in France or Spain or wherever it had been.
I didn’t think I’d have any problems, though. The truth is, Homo sapiens sapiens is pretty much the same the world over, regardless of skin color or technological development. Racists and provincial types have problems with this fact, but it is a fact. All mortals have the same potential, and only chance determines who’s playing a spinet or who’s clubbing dinner to death with a big rock. And, you know what? Mortals adapt to the environment in which they’re placed. Switch babies between savages and technologicals, and nobody notices! I know, because I’ve seen it done. I’ve seen the son of a club-carrying cave dweller fuming because his accounting software wasn’t quite adequate for his needs. All humans have the same brain package.
Nowadays, anyway.
CHAPTER TWELVE
NINE HUNDRED HOURS, DAY TWO of my time in Alta California, and I was gingerly withdrawing my hand from a Fineplast casting. Matth
ias, the tech, nodded approvingly at the hole I’d made and handed it off to a mortal assistant. Matthias was one of our Old Ones, like me; except he had the big face and unflappable calm of the Neanderthals. I’d always gotten on well with these guys. Nowadays, of course, they couldn’t work in the field much, due to the fact that the human gene drift had moved away from their kind of looks and made them really noticeable if they went out among mortals; but they seemed happy enough working as technicians and pilots around Company bases.
“Now, here’s a model of the hardware we’ll use for the paw prosthesis. It fits over here”—he took my wrist and demonstrated—”and we’ll graft the implants here, here, and here. The nerves will run right down through the flesh frame to your own, so there’ll be no loss of sensation and no lag time in response. The digits may look short, but we’ve practiced with a model and you can manipulate them perfectly well. You can eat, drink, take care of sanitary functions …”
“I’m so glad.”
“Yeah, we thought you’d be.” Matthias put down the skeleton model and took up a graphics plaquette. “Now, we have quite a few possible heads, here. We can go the full-head approach or we can go with appliances, which might be more comfortable for you but would have fewer effects. Your choice.” He held up a series of sketches for my perusal.
I surveyed my choices. The full-head model was spectacular; on the drawing board it could do enough tricks to have me convincing Rin Tin Tin I was his brother. Still, I passed on it. I’ve worn prostheses with fancy effects before, and they never work right, no matter what the techs tell you. Besides, I’m a minimalist. A good actor doesn’t need all that stuff to make mortals believe in him.
We settled on a combination of appliances I felt would work, and while Matthias was making notes, I inquired casually, “So, where do discriminating palates dine around here?”
Matthias looked into my eyes, glanced at his mortal assistant, and said:
“Petrie, I want a Fineplast five-eight, medium olive range.” And when Petrie had gone off to make it, whatever it was, Matthias leaned close and said: “So far we’ve been able to have a couple of seafood bakes. There’s a place farther down the beach, still inside the perimeter but out of sight of the base, and there’s some shelter from the wind. If you can get away Saturday night … You like venison?”