In the Company of Thieves

by Kage Baker

  I had a route worked out, from HQ to Sutro Park, and I carried my lunch in a paper bag, the same meal every day: wheat bread and butter sandwich, apple, bottle of water. I didn’t want anything else. I was safe on my track. I was happy.

  I sat in the park and watched the fog drifting through the cypress trees. I knew, after so many years, how to be invisible: never bothered anyone, never did anything to make a mortal notice I was there. There weren’t many mortals, anyway. People only cut through Sutro Park on their way from 48th Avenue to Point Lobos Road. They didn’t promenade there anymore.

  When Kristy Ann wandered back into the park, she was rail-thin and all her hair was gone. She wore shapeless, stained sweat clothes and a stocking cap pulled down over her bare skull. She found a bench, quite near mine, that got the sunlight most of the day except when the fog rolled in, and she stayed there. All day, every day. Most days she had a cup of coffee with her, and always a laptop.

  I found I could tune into her broadband connection, as she worked. She spent most of her day posting on various forums for San Francisco historical societies. I followed the forum discussions with interest.

  At first she’d be welcomed into the groups, and complimented on her erudition. Gradually her humorlessness, her obsession came to the fore. Flame wars erupted when forum members wanted to discuss something other than the restoration of Sutro Park. She was always asked to leave, in the end, when she didn’t storm out of her own accord. Once or twice she reregistered under a different name, but almost immediately was recognized. The forum exchanges degenerated into mutual name-calling.

  After that Kristy Ann spent her days blogging, on a site decorated with gifs of her old photographs and scans of her lovingly colored recreations of the park. Her entries were mostly bitter reflections on her failed efforts to restore the carpet beds. They became less and less coherent. A couple of months later, she disappeared again. I assumed her cancer had metastasized.

  Ezra? Gleason was uncomfortable about something. Ezra, we need to talk. The Company has been going over its profit and loss statements. They’re spending more on your upkeep than they’re making from your recordings. It’s been suggested that we retrain you. Or relocate you. This may be difficult, Ezra...

  I don’t think anyone but me would have recognized Kristy Ann, when she came creeping back. She moved like an old woman. She seemed to have shrunken away. There was no sign of the laptop; I don’t think she was strong enough to carry it, now. She had a purse with her meds in it. She had a water bottle.

  She found her bench in the sunlight and sat there, looking around her with bewildered eyes, all their anger gone.

  Her electromagnetic field, the drifting halo of electricity that all mortals generate around their bodies, had begun to fluctuate around Kristy Ann. It happens, when mortals begin to die.

  I wondered if I could do it.

  I did; I got to my feet and walked toward her, cautious, keeping my eyes on the ground. I came to her bench and sat down beside her. My heart was pounding. I risked a glance sideways. She was looking at me with utter apathy. She wouldn’t have cared if I’d grabbed her purse, slapped her, or pulled off her clothes. Her eyes tracked off to my left.

  I turned and followed her stare. She was looking at an old stone basin on its pedestal, the last of Sutro’s fountains, its sculpted waterworks long since gone.

  I edged closer. I reached into her electromagnetic field. I touched her hand—she was cold as ice—and tuned into the electrical patterns of her brain, as I had tuned into her broadband signal. I downloaded her.

  I didn’t hurt her. She saw the fountain restored, wirework shooting up to outline its second tier, its dolphins, its cherubs. Then it was solid and real. Clear water jetted upward into a lost sky. The green lawn spread out, flawless.

  White statues rose from the earth: the Dancing Girls. The Dreaming Satyr. Venus de Milo. Antinous. The Boy with Bird. Hebe. The Griffin. All the Gilded Age’s conception of what was artistic, copied and brought out to the western edge of the world to refine and educate its uncultured masses.

  Sutro’s house lifted into its place again; the man himself rose up through the path and stood, in his black silk hat. Brass glinted on the bandstand. Music began to play. Before us the Conservatory took shape, for a moment a skeletal frame and then a paned bubble of glass flashing in the sun. Orchids and aspidistras steamed its windows from inside. And below it—

  The colors exploded into being like fireworks, red and blue and gold, variegated tropical greens, purples, the carpet beds in all their precise glory. Managed Nature, in the nineteenth century’s confident belief that unruly Nature should be managed to pleasing aesthetic effect. The intricate floral designs glowed, surreal grace notes, defying entropy and chaos.

  She was struggling to stand, gasping, staring at it. The tether broke and she was pulled into the image. I gave her back her hair, with a straw hat for the sun. I gave her a long flounced skirt that swept the gravel, a suitable blouse and jacket. I gave her buttoned boots and a parasol. I gave her the body of young Kristy Ann, who had wandered alone with her sketchbook. Now she was part of the picture, not the dead thing cooling on the bench beside me.

  She walked forward, her eyes fixed on the carpet beds, her lips parted. Color came into her face.

  The fog came in, grayed the twenty-first century world. I heard crunching footsteps. A pair of women were coming up the path from the Point Lobos Road entrance. I got to my feet. I approached them, head turned aside, and managed to point at what was sitting on the park bench. One of the women said something horrified in Russian, the other put her hands to her white face and screamed.

  They drew back from me. I pulled out my card and thrust it at them. Finally, suspicious, one of them took it and spelled out its message. I stared at my shoes while she put two and two together, and then I heard her pulling out her cell phone and calling the police.

  I wasn’t arrested. Once the police were able to look at the body and see its emaciation, the hospital band on its wrist, once they read the labels on the pill bottles in the purse, they knew. They called the morgue and then they called Gleason. He came and talked to them a while. Then he took me back to HQ.

  They don’t send me out much, anymore. I sleep a lot, in the place where the Company keeps me. I don’t mind; at least I don’t have to deal with strangers, and after all I have my memory.

  I ride there on Edwin and the weather is always fine, the fog far out on the edge of the blue sea. The green park is always full of people, the poor of San Francisco out for a day of fresh air, sunlight and as much beauty as a rich man’s money can provide for them. Pipefitters and laundresses sit together on the benches. Children run and scream happily. Courting couples sit on little iron folding chairs and listen to the band play favorites by Sir Arthur Sullivan. The intricate patterns blaze.

  She will always be there, sometimes chatting with Mr. Sutro. Sometimes bustling from one carpet bed to the next with a watering can or gardening tools. I tip my hat and say the only words I can say, have ever said: “Good morning, Kristy Ann.”

  She smiles and nods. Perhaps she recognizes me, in a vague kind of way. But I never dismount to attempt conversation, and in any case she is too busy, weeding, watering, clipping to maintain the place she loves.

  THE UNFORTUNATE GYTT

  An early story of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, featuring Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, secret agent. It includes cameos by an infant Robert Louis Stevenson (and posits and extremely odd source for his great villain, Long John Silver); a clear friend who dabbles in world domination when not busy raising his twin toddlers; and the otherwordly Rosslyn Chapel, home of Templar ghosts and the Holy Grail. This story was one of Kage's first dabblings in steampunk, a genre she loved at first sight and eventually explored in much more detail and three susequent tales.

  —K. B.

  4 SEPTEMBER 1855

  Marsh had been blindfolded and led to the place where he now sat. The air was still, co
ld; he shivered in his thin white garment, breathing hard, and shook with an occasional ropy cough. He was suffering from intractable bronchitis.

  Rough hands tore away his blindfold, but he opened his eyes to unrelieved blackness. A floating apparition formed, and swam toward him. It was a spectre draped all in luminous green, its skeletal face turned to him, its skeletal hand outstretched and pointing to his right.

  Marsh peered in that direction, and saw the faintly glowing outline of a door. All manner of luminous phantoms appeared, circling the portal: other shrouded spirits, veiled and winged figures bearing wreaths, a monstrous demonic countenance and even—weirdly—what appeared to be Mr. Punch and a small dog.

  The light cast by these apparitions was such that Marsh could make out the faint forms of the other initiates, seated in a row beside him. There were fewer than he had expected. He congratulated himself on surviving thus far.

  A voice shouted behind them in the darkness. “Rise!”

  He obeyed instantly, as did the others. The door opened, revealing the chamber beyond.

  “Enter the Place of Judgment,” commanded the unseen voice.

  Marsh’s fellow initiates shuffled forward, and he followed them.

  The Place of Judgment was a long, low room of stone, from whose vaulted ceiling was suspended here and there a bronze lamp on a chain, providing unsteady illumination and fleeting shadows. Marsh recognized none of his fellow initiates, though he supposed they must all have frequented the same clubs and scientific institutions, must all have received the same mysterious offer from this most secret of societies.

  Three figures were seated at the far end of the room, on golden thrones, before a scarlet curtain. Two were robed in blood-red, and wore golden masks of fearful aspect, grinning caricatures of humanity. The third was robed and hooded in black, apparently faceless, though something in the upper folds of its hood suggested the glint of watchful eyes.

  One of the red-robed ones inclined its golden mask forward.

  “What a puling little collection of creatures,” it said, in a high harsh voice. “What human slugs, what snails, what maggots! Can these have aspired to our Society? Too, too unworthy.”

  “And yet, they dare to bring us gifts,” said the other one in red. “Let them be put to the test.”

  “Yes. Let us winnow them quickly. My gorge rises at the sight of them!” said the first speaker. “Bring forth your offerings.”

  The initiates looked at one another uncertainly. Marsh, deciding he might as well take the initiative, came forward and laid his offering tray on the topmost step. His fellows rushed after him, setting down their trays beside his. They stood back then, heads bowed respectfully.

  “It would appear they have followed the Sacred Plans,” said the second speaker.

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” said the first speaker. It leaned forward, crossing its arms. “Supplicants! Rotate Lever Six exactly ninety degrees.”

  The initiates shuffled forward again to their trays. Marsh peered down at the thing he had made with such care, of copper wire and spools and bright brass. He had no idea what its function might be, nor to what possible use it might be put; but he had followed meticulously the detailed diagrams he had been sent, working long nights through into gray morning. He remembered exactly which part had been designated Lever Six.

  He found it now, and slowly turned it, as he had been bid. Beside him, the other initiates were likewise fumbling with their offerings.

  There was a faint noise from his offering, a hiss, and then a peculiar shrieking warble. Startled, he drew his hand back. He glanced over at the other trays, and saw that they contained offerings nearly identical to his own. But not quite; had he been the only one to follow the Plans exactly? Marsh felt a guilty thrill of superiority. A voice spoke from amid the gleaming wires of his offering, a male voice sounding faintly bored as it said:

  “Testing, testing, testing. This supplicant has been found worthy.”

  “Only one?” said the first speaker. “Hear me, you failures! Leave your trash and depart this place. If we are feeling particularly magnanimous, you may hear from us again.”

  The door into darkness opened. The rejected initiates cowered. The figure in black, that had been silent all this while, rose to its feet. It towered over them, a veritable giant. One by one, the rejects were taken by the shoulders and ushered into obscurity.

  The door shut; the figure returned to its place, and sat.

  Marsh coughed into his fist. His eyes gleamed with fever and triumph.

  “Worthy one,” said the second speaker. “You are about to ascend to a new plane of existence. But, be warned! Your former self must die. Sacrifices are always required before any great enterprise. Are you prepared?”

  “I am,” said Marsh, not without certain qualms. His unease mounted as the black-robed giant stood again, and drew from the depths of its robe a short sword. It approached him, looming over him, and set one hand on his shoulder.

  Marsh watched the blade glint in the lamplight as the blow came; somehow he managed not to flinch, and at the last possible second the giant feinted and sent the blade under Marsh’s arm. He felt cold steel against his skin, and, to his mortification, a hot spurt of terror.

  The giant stepped back. The more unpleasant of the red-robed ones spoke.

  “Yes, you have been spared. But hear me: if you ever breathe so much as a word, if you ever hint or insinuate to any outsider about what has passed here, we will know. And knives will find you in the dark, and dogs will find your corpse before morning. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Marsh, a little sullenly, feeling the yellow stain spread on the front of his robe.

  “Then I think we can dispense with all this nonsense,” said the first speaker, as he stood with the other masked figure. The black giant mounted the dais and, with one violent blow, swept the thrones to the floor. They fell with a crash. Marsh saw that they were only painted wood.

  “So do thrones topple,” said the first speaker.

  “So are illusions dispelled,” said the other speaker.

  “And we are everywhere,” they said together.

  The black giant pulled the curtain to one side, revealing a rather ordinary-looking door.

  “You are free to enter, sir,” said the first speaker.

  He opened the door and passed through. The first speaker followed him. Marsh started up the steps after them. Just inside, the black figure leaned down and laid a hand on his arm.

  “There is a washroom just to your left,” it advised, in a friendly voice.

  Marsh found not only a lavatory but his clothing, neatly laid out. He washed and dressed hurriedly. He studied himself in the mirror as he tied his cravat: a nondescript man of about thirty, drab as a junior clerk. A disappointment, to himself and all the world, until tonight!

  He found his way down a paneled corridor to a lamplit room. It appeared to be a library in one of the better clubs. The walls were lined with books; a coal-fire burned brightly in the hearth. On a central table was a tray with decanters and glasses, as well as a match stand and what promised to be a humidor, to judge from the wreaths of fragrant smoke drifting above three men sprawled at their ease in comfortable-looking armchairs.

  “Here he is at last,” drawled he who must have been the more unpleasant of the interrogators. He was a dark fellow, slightly rakish in appearance but dressed well. The red robe and mask lay discarded at his feet. “Welcome, brother. Well done!”

  “You grasp the symbolism?” inquired the other interrogator, who resembled the bank manager a drab clerk must serve: portly, in early middle age, all benevolent self-importance. “Darkness and ritual, giving way to light! Here you see walls lined with the fruit of human knowledge and thought, instead of nursery bogeymen. Here you see medieval robes cast aside for modern dress.”

  “Here you see damned good brandy and decent tobacco,” added the other. “Have a seat, won’t you? Edward, fetch him a drink.”

/>   “Happy to oblige,” said the third man, and rose from his chair. And rose, and rose; he had clearly worn the black robe. Marsh frowned at him, wondering what the hulking fellow’s status was. Called by his Christian name; a servant? Told to fetch, and yet he sat as an equal with the other two men.

  “Welcome, brother,” he said, leaning down to offer Marsh a snifter of brandy. “Cigar?”

  Seen close to, he had a long and rather horselike countenance, with eyes of quite a pale blue. He smiled in a good-natured way and offered the humidor.

  “Yes, thank you, I believe I will indulge,” said Marsh, wondering when anyone was going to perform introductions. He puffed appreciatively when his cigar was lit for him, and sipped his brandy, which sent him into a humiliating fit of coughing.

  “I believe, sir, that we can offer you something you’ll find more congenial than brandy,” said the tall man. He poured a glass of colorless cordial from a decanter on the table, and offered it to Marsh, who took it with a certain ill-humor. He sipped it and immediately shuddered. However, after another cautious sip:

  “You know,” he said, “I think—yes, that’s certainly doing me good! Thank you, sir.”

  “Not at all.” Edward inclined in a half-bow.

  “You will feel its full effect presently,” said the benevolent gentleman, in a rather arch manner. “Miraculous cures are the least of our accomplishments. You will learn that there are many compensations for your labor in our service.”

  He cleared his throat and struck a pose before the fire. “And now, friend, to the matter at hand.

  “You have been admitted to our ancient and noble Society. Your climb to the stars has only begun. But you will climb in secret, brother. Your name will be unknown. The bauble Fame is not for us!