In the Company of Thieves

by Kage Baker

  As the final crashing chords of the “Wedding March” sounded, the procession stepped forth on stage and hit their respective marks.

  “Gott sei dank,” murmured Reinhardt. Lodge faced front and declaimed:

  “What the hell is going on? Miss Braggiotti was just assaulted!”

  “It was some lunatic, masquerading as an actor,” said Weissberger, who had seen the whole thing. “Please, madam, calm yourself. He probably just wanted an autograph. We will have him arrested if he comes near you again. And now, if you please, Herr Lodge, your line?”

  Lodge harrumphed, but struck an attitude and began:

  “Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have

  To wear away this long age of three hours—”

  “Hey!” Moonshine made an early entrance, waving his arms. “Hey, somebody’s car is on fire back there!”

  “Between our after-supper and bed-time—I beg your pardon?”

  “What did he say?” Reinhardt asked, but an ominous red glow from beneath the trestle was making it plain now.

  “One of you guys dropped a torch and it rolled under somebody’s car!”

  “Someone call the fire department!”

  “Get the fire buckets!”

  “It’s not my car, is it?” John Lodge ran to the crowd that had assembled at the edge of the stage, peering vainly back at the conflagration.

  No, thought Lewis, in sad resignation. I’ll just bet I know whose car it is.

  The fire engines had departed by the time Lewis made his weary way down Highland Avenue on foot. As he passed the American Legion Hall, a disheveled figure emerged from the bushes and fell into step beside him.

  “Say...sorry about your car, Lewis.”

  Lewis considered socking him, and decided against it. He’d only drop Reinhardt’s promptbook, and undoubtedly miss Joseph in any case.

  NINE: WILL IT PLEASE YOU TO SEE THE EPILOGUE...?

  Lewis adjusted the fit of his tuxedo jacket and frowned at himself in the mirror. However nicely his suits draped at the tailor’s, by the time he put them on they always seemed to have expanded a size. He got out an old-fashioned leather hatbox, opened it, and drew out his black silk top hat. It was a veteran of opening nights going back as far as Chu Chin Chow, but still looked as smart as when he’d bought it in Oxford Street. Anything lasted, if you took proper care of it.

  And what if he was reluctant to let go of things, especially memories? Memories were all an immortal could truly call his own. In the end, whatever the end might be, they were all he would have.

  He set the hat on his head and tilted it back at a jaunty angle. All he needed now was a walking stick.

  On his way to the umbrella stand, his glance fell on the promptbook. Reinhardt had taken Lewis’s meticulously faked copy, and slipped it into his briefcase without so much as a second glance. Lewis would deliver the original to the Company’s shipping depot in the morning, but for now...best to be cautious. He scooped it up in one hand, and with the other took down the framed print of Love Among the Ruins that concealed his wall safe. Having secured the promptbook, he rehung the print, looked at it wistfully a moment, and turned away. Time to go; he had a long walk to the Bowl.

  As he stepped out on the sidewalk, however, Joseph’s Ford came around the corner. Its left front fender was now green, its door was blue, and the left rear fender was a sort of a rust color. Joseph hit the horn twice, and threw Lewis a centurion’s salute, grinning.

  “Hey, Lewis, want a ride?”

  “How thoughtful of you!” Lewis opened the door. Joseph reached over and swept a pair of tennis shoes and an empty Nehi bottle from the seat so he could get in.

  “Hey, it’s the least I could do, pal.” He wore a suit that was clean and freshly pressed, if not exactly evening attire.

  “Where’s the Tavernier Violet?”

  “In a pair of long johns at the back of my sock drawer,” said Joseph. “Completely safe.” He looked Lewis over and whistled. “Boy, you’re dressed to kill! I didn’t think people wore white tie and tails unless they could afford box seats, nowadays.”

  Lewis pulled out the pair of tickets he’d been given. “Section D, Row 9, Seats 14 and 16,” he read aloud. “It’s still an evening at the theater. One likes to uphold a certain standard, after all.”

  “Gotta change with the times, though, Lewis,” said Joseph. He pulled away from the curb and stepped on the gas. “Otherwise, the mortals notice.”

  They left the Ford in the lower parking lot and made their way through the mortal crowds. The trestle bridge still stood, only slightly scorched in one area; the charred wreck of Lewis’s car had been hauled away, and in its place a battery of klieg lights raked at the evening sky, sending white beams sweeping across.

  Flashbulbs burst like actinic bubbles: Lewis turned his face to the cameras and glimpsed Reinhardt, posing in a tuxedo with Miss Sibley and the editor of the Los Angeles Times. Reporters were shouting questions in English, which Miss Sibley was answering.

  Reinhardt was smiling, uneasy and uncomprehending. Looking at his eyes, Lewis knew he had already withdrawn from the alien soil, in fact from the mortal world, and was walking in spirit under the haunted trees. The Reichstag had burned, old Hindenburg was dead, and a petty politician whom no one had ever taken seriously had used fear to bully his democratic nation into a dictatorship, almost overnight. None of it made any sense. And Reinhardt was stranded here, in this crazy place, and could never go home again. Who wouldn’t retreat into the Wood Near Athens?...

  Lewis sighed. Joseph jostled his arm.

  “Hey, there’s a guy selling programs. You want one?”

  The benches were wood weathered to silver, pale as marble in the lights, and rose in a semicircle like the marble seats in any theater in the classical world. The night air was Mediterranean-warm, smelled of pine trees, aromatic brush on the hills. You might almost imagine you were in Athens, if you closed your eyes; but only almost. The voices were all wrong.

  Lewis opened his eyes, distracted by the mortal chatter of Southern California’s cultural elite. Down in the boxes he saw furs and pearls, opera glasses, a few silk hats like his own; higher up, in the tiers that rose to the back of the house, were the people who had taken the streetcars to get here, who munched popcorn as they waited for the spectacle, or took stealthy nips of gin from pocket flasks. Most of them had never seen a Shakespeare play in their lives. What would they make of tonight’s entertainment? Reinhardt’s transplanted forest seemed dwarfed by the staggering towers of light from the klieg lamps, small and unreal, nearly transparent.

  It got worse when the president of the California Festival Association came out to make a speech, going on at some length about the forward-looking citizens of California who, in partnership with the California State Chamber of Commerce, deeply and spiritually yearned to establish California in her rightful place as one of the leaders of the cultural and artistic world. Joseph chuckled and nudged Lewis.

  “If only they knew,” he said.

  The lights went down at last. For a long moment there was only starlight, for the three-quarter moon had not yet risen above the hill to the east. Lewis crossed his fingers. Click! The fireflies lit, and a couple of carefully concealed can lights. There was the forest! Suddenly the trees were immense and ancient, suddenly the real world faded away and the dream was palpable. From the audience all around him Lewis heard the indrawn breath, one universal oooh of delight. He relaxed, leaning back.

  All in all, it was a pleasant experience, though the painful parts were uncommonly painful. The lesser actors recited their lines with such flat lack of understanding they might have been reading from a Sears and Roebuck catalogue. The fairies twittered, Oberon overacted, Titania was shrill.

  The mortals, however, didn’t notice. Reinhardt’s spell had worked, as effectively as the juice of the magic flower casting its glamour on the lovers’ eyes. The two immortals looked around them, at the rapt audience. Joseph grinned and
shrugged.

  The wedding procession stepped off on cue, torches alight, and hit the stage squarely as the Wedding March ended. A bit of purple glass sparkled in Hippolyta’s turban. Somewhere backstage, Felix Weissberger soaked his blistered hands in cold water and reflected that an afternoon’s frenzied brush-cutting with a machete, marking out a path thereafter with clothesline, had been worth it.

  Puck stood forth at last, smiling and untrustworthy.

  “If we shadows have offended,

  Think but this, and all is mended,

  That you have but slumber’d here

  While these visions did appear.

  And this weak and idle theme,

  No more yielding but a dream,

  Gentles, do not reprehend:

  If you pardon, we will mend.

  Else the Puck a liar call.

  So, good night unto you all.

  Give me your hands, if we be friends,

  And Robin shall restore amends.”

  Note-perfect. He bowed, scampered away into the trees, and the orchestra played Mendelssohn’s closing music. The last four chords sounded; faded. The forest went dark.

  The house lights came up abruptly, and Greater Los Angeles sat blinking on the benches. This was the moment when movie goers looked around for their hats and coats and brushed off spilled popcorn. That was what the audience did now, in deafening silence. And more silence. The moment dragged out interminably.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” said Joseph in disgust. “‘GIVE ME YOUR HANDS, IF WE BE FRIENDS!’”

  He began to applaud, and Lewis joined in, and the gentry down in the boxes collected their wits and applauded too. The rest of the audience, those at least who were not already streaming for the exits in anticipation of a massive traffic jam in the Cahuenga Pass and Red Cars packed like sardine cans, finally realized that perhaps a sign of their appreciation was in order. There was some scattered applause.

  Joseph and Lewis stayed in their seats until the crowd had ebbed away, as those few sensible locals did, and then strolled down at their leisure. Lewis glanced out at the Wood Near Athens, which had once again retreated into unreality. There was Max Reinhardt on the stage, shoulders sagging, staring up at the empty seats in dismay.

  “Wait a minute,” he told Joseph. He made his way through the boxes to the edge of the orchestra pit, and took off his hat.

  “Herr Professor?”

  Reinhardt turned his head. He looked as though he vaguely recognized Lewis.

  “They really did enjoy it, you know. They’re just not used to live theater.”

  “You think so?” Reinhardt’s air of despondency did not lift.

  “Wait till you see the morning papers! It’ll be a smash hit. They’ll have to add extra performances,” promised Lewis.

  “And how would you know that, young man?”

  “Because you’re a genius,” said Lewis.

  “Is America a good place in which to be a genius?”

  “Well, of course it is.”

  Reinhardt looked out into the black void of Hollywood.

  “I hope so,’ he said bleakly.

  TEN: BUT COME, YOUR BERGOMASK; LET YOUR EPILOGUE ALONE.

  “Duh I entice yuh? Duh I speak yuh fair? Or rather duh I not in plainest truth tell yuh I duh not nor I cannot act?” recited Lewis in a monotone. Joseph snickered.

  They were seated in a booth in Musso and Frank’s, enjoying a late supper. Though it was near midnight, the place was crowded with the nocturnal denizens of show business: producers making pitches to studio executives, directors making pitches to producers, agents making pitches to directors, and actors begging their agents for work. Here and there a writer, lonely as a leper, sat brooding under the forest mural, over a fourth or fifth drink.

  “I thought it was pretty neat, bad acting and all,” said Joseph, loosening his tie. “Too bad the movie’s going to be such a flopperola. Just as well Reinhardt can’t know that in advance.”

  “People will still be watching it in a century’s time,” said Lewis. “I wish I could have told him that, at least.”

  Joseph shook his head. “You were pushing it, telling him as much as you did. You know the rules. Would they be able to handle it, if they knew as much as we do about the future? Hell no. ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be.’”

  “They aren’t the only ones,” said Lewis ruefully. A waiter appeared out of the shadows, bearing their cocktails on a tray. “Ah! And a perfect martini appeared, as if by magic. Thank you, Manuel.”

  The waiter withdrew. Joseph raised his scotch and soda.

  “Here’s to absent friends.”

  “Oh, gosh, if we drink to absent friends we’ll be here all night,” said Lewis.

  “Good point. What’ll we drink to, then? The rise of the Arts in Southern California? A bullet for Hitler? Good old Will Shakespeare?”

  “To Max Reinhardt,” said Lewis.

  “There you go,” said Joseph, and drank.

  “‘And so good night unto you all,’” said Lewis. He raised his martini. It caught the light from the booth lamp and shimmered frostily, bright as the moon’s silver visage on a landscape of ephemeral sleep.

  HOLLYWOOD IKONS

  Kage Baker and Kathleen Bartholomew

  Before Kage died in 2010, this was one of the stories she told me to look at first. The notes went back ten or fifteen years—she was fascinated by ikons, and came up with the idea that they really could do "things" to the observer. The explanation ended up involving brain chemistry and classical mathematics.

  She was also very interested in WWII Hollywood at that time, and the two ideas got fused together in her research. And by the time I sat down to write this from Kage's handwritten notes and speculations, it was a lot easier to find a street-view of 1943 Los Angeles—Google is a great time machine. Kage had already assigned Joseph as the hero of this one, so all I had to do was channel her and connect the gold-limned docs. I hope you enjoy the result.

  —K. B.

  America! The New World! Dr. Zeus Incorporated loved the place. We operatives who worked for the Company were as eager as any desperate immigrant to get there, too, especially after the U.S. got its feet under it.

  And one of the big reasons was chocolate.

  Dr. Zeus is a vast, nearly omniscient cabal of scientists and businessmen based in the twenty-fourth century. The scientists developed time travel (and guilty consciences); the businessmen used both of those to rescue select bits of the past for social good and amazing profits.

  Now, you can only time travel one way, into the past. But if you can store or hide or just carry things long enough, they get to when you need them naturally. To handle that work, the Company applied neurochemical and mechanical enhancements to us, the operatives, making us into immortal cyborgs. We grab endangered plants, animals, art, and cultures back in the past and bring them into the future, just like ordinary mortals, for the benefit of mankind. And the enrichment of Dr. Zeus.

  We’re immune to illness, old age, most weapons and drugs. But in a lucky stroke, we’re exquisitely sensitive to Theobromos. Chocolate. It’s our only vice, as old Dr. Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein declares. Dr. Zeus hates the fact that anything affects us, but for us who toil in the good Doctor’s endless vineyards, it’s our only buzz.

  And the good old U.S. of A was the place to be, all right. Europe perfected chocolate to a high degree, but the United States made it available to the vulgar masses. And I’ve always been a pretty common sort of Joe. Whitman’s, Blommer, Ghirardelli, Mars, Hershey’s, Wilbur’s, Guittard, the Mast Brothers...you could find decent chocolate in any five and dime in America, right through the first half of the twentieth century.

  Of course, just before that mid-century mark, a great big rock went crashing through happy storefront windows everywhere: World War II broke out. The United States rose to the challenge (eventually) and by 1942 they started rationing most things that made life interesting; nylons, rubber, shoes, cheese. S
ugar. Gasoline. Chocolate.

  My name is Joseph. I’m a Facilitator for Dr. Zeus—a fixer, the kind of clever guy who can manage to get a rare piece of art stored and maintained for a couple thousand years, until some rich fanatic can pay an obscene price for it. I was born 30,000 years ago in what would eventually be the Basque country of Spain, but I’m a thoroughly modern guy. The U.S. is my kind of place. I love the movies; I’ve got a closet full of fedoras and trench coats.

  I was in L.A. as the Resident Field Facilitator in the 1940s. The war times, as war times always are, were rich and busy years for the Company. But as my local cover, I was also working a PI gig for MGM Studios in Culver City. Most of the time I was running as fast as I could, day and night. I was a victim of the war rationing: the local See’s chocolate stores were down to being open one day a month. It was a damn good thing for most folks that Prohibition had been repealed, let me tell you. Me, I saved my chocolate ration coupons like everyone else, and hoarded the good stuff for free weekends.

  May 1943 was warm and gray. It’s always like that, springtime in Los Angeles. I’ve been in and out of the Basin since 1700 C.E., and even the Tongva back then complained about the Valley of the Smokes.

  The nights were mighty dark that year, too, what with the occasional blackouts and the wartime light-reduction measures. The pleasure piers and the gambling ships down in Santa Monica were all dark—not that the party stopped, but it was a more subdued one. The ballroom at Lick Pier was very romantic with all the blackout curtains drawn; the Rosie Riveters liked to go there after their shifts and dance with any guy they could find. It was a hot scene at the Hollywood Canteen, too, but it was no good going there unless you were a man in uniform. The celebrities only danced with soldiers.

  The great Battle of Los Angeles had been only six months prior, with rumors of Japanese planes and over 1,000 rounds of mortar ammunition shot by our own guys into Long Beach. Long Beach survived. No one was ever quite sure just what the hell was flying over the city that night, but all the light standards were promptly painted black on their seaward sides, and cars drove with only their parking lights on. Not that anyone usually had any gasoline.