The Machine's Child (Company)

by Kage Baker

  And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.

  Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache.

  Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest?

  None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas. Nor permit abominations like Edward and me to walk in it. He looked down at Mendoza broodingly. Nor deliver a little frightened child into the Devil’s hands. Nor let her lie forgotten a thousand years on the floor of the house of the dead.

  Mm. Can’t answer that one, lad.

  I sought to build the New Jerusalem in my own heart, and my heart failed me. Shall I live like Edward, in my reason alone? But that is all ice and pride. Science will not grant me my soul again.

  What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life?

  Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity.

  When they purchase goods, they pay in hard cash. When they post letters, in those times and places with postal service, the correspondence is always addressed correctly, the postage exact, the paper and ink of the most ordinary for the time. Their occasional transactions with banking firms or attorneys are brief and discreet. Then the man and the woman put back out to sea, and are generally promptly forgotten, and never seen again.

  They figure in few ledger entries and no history books at all.

  But by the year 1863, in nearly every great coastal city on Earth—Venice, London, Amsterdam, Boston, New York—some old banking house or legal firm administers a long-maintained trust, now and then receiving directions from the present heirs or their legal representatives. Were all the dots connected, all the figures added up, Dr. Zeus Incorporated would be rather surprised to discover it has a rival in the very long-term investment game. The Company, however, is too busy taking care of its own considerable business to do such a thing, and anyway, why should it worry? Nobody else has the ability to travel through time.

  So the names on the enduring fortunes ring no warning bells at Dr. Zeus: William St. James Harpole, Thorne Fairfax, Nicholas Mendoza, Alec Bell, Edward Checkerfield, Alton Finsbury . . .

  And of course the Company doesn’t think to check its own signals, bounced back through time to its operatives working in the past, to see if anyone has encrypted an interstitial signal in its own constant flow of messages. Thus the Captain continues to draw on his enormous twenty-fourth-century reservoir of memory caches, with scarcely a millisecond of time lag.

  This is good, because the Captain now has a lot to coordinate: temporal itineraries, hidden funds, fiendishly clever nanobot weapons designs, the ongoing rejuvenation treatments for Alec, and the careful search of records to determine just where Alec’s DNA vial might be stored . . . and research on the subject of Crome’s radiation generators.

  This last business goes ahead more easily for the Captain than for anyone else who has ever attempted to study the subject, for the reason that he is a tremendously powerful artificial intelligence and also because he has a Crome generator to observe, close at hand, around the clock, over a long period of time.

  MIDMORNING ON 17 MARCH 1863 AD

  On an empty stretch of the Pacific, lightning blazed down out of a clear blue sky. There was a wild roiling in the water, as though some great leviathan had been hit by the blast. Gradually the turmoil ceased. The Captain Morgan’s storm bottle retracted, her masts and spars extended, and she clapped on sail. Tacking about, she steered for the South Seas, and white spray struck and ran from her bows like cream.

  “Caramba,” sighed Mendoza, stretching sensually on Edward’s lap. “We must try doing this while copulating again sometime.”

  “It has its points,” said Edward, a little shakily. She looked up into his face at once, frowning.

  “You’re pale. Are you all right, Alec?”

  He looked down at her and she saw his face change abruptly, eyes going wide and guileless. “I’m fine, baby,” he protested, in what she was beginning to think of as his Beach Boy voice. He grinned and patted her behind. She uncoiled nimbly and stood up, and he unfastened the storm harness and stood to join her.

  Alec, well along in his treatments with Pineal Tribrantine Three, appeared distinctly younger now. As a rule he tended to avoid looking in mirrors except to shave, so the fact that the planes of his face had tightened and smoothed discernibly went unnoticed. Some of the weathering of years’ exposure to sea gales was disappearing also. What Alec did notice was that his back felt great these days, and his appetite was enormous. His nightmares, however, had not diminished.

  But he went gladly enough with Mendoza to their stateroom, for they were suffering slightly from temporal lag. It had been close to midnight on the day they had embarked, though a bright midday sun was shining down now.

  They clambered into bed and Mendoza fell asleep almost at once. Alec and Nicholas were also tremendously sleepy, but Edward couldn’t close his eyes.

  What’s wrong? Alec said at last. Oh. It’s the date, isn’t it? This is the day you . . . er . . . died.

  It’s the day I was shot, said Edward in a strained voice. Perhaps even now, miles from here, I’m in the very act of coming aboard the J.M. Chapman.

  Why, man, it comes to nothing at last, said Nicholas. He yawned. For, see, here thou art, and here is she, happy after all.

  I’m perfectly aware of that, said Edward. It’s a deuced odd feeling, all the same. One can’t help but wonder what would happen if—

  If you tried to go there and stop yerself? You couldn’t do it, lad. The Company’s tried. History can’t be changed and even if it could, there’d still be squalls. Two identical objects can occupy the same time, or space, but not the same time AND space, the Captain said.

  I’ve no inclination to intervene on my own behalf, no; I deserved those bullets. But as I lie—apparently—dying, the poor child will be going mad. If only there were some way of letting her know we’d meet again . . .

  Bless you, son, she believed that anyhow.

  Just as well, I suppose, Edward said, watching Mendoza as she slept. You’re quite certain it’s necessary to be here?

  Aye. This is the harbor bar, in a manner of speaking. If we’re to go any farther, we got to get past this point in time. According to the laws of temporal physics, anything can go backward in time, and then forward again as far as its own place; but not past that point, d’y’see? That was why you had the annoyance of them clothes disappearing the other day.

  But the plants remain with us.

  As to that, sir, I got a theory. They’re living organisms, what was grown right here, inside the time transcendence field. Zeus didn’t never do no science experiments inside a T-field, see? Just crammed his operatives in them little cramped boxes and shuttled ’em back and forth. But this here ship, now, puts out the biggest T-field ever generated. And the plants belongs to the ship’s time, so they can go anywhere it does.

  That doesn’t explain why the plants got so big so fast, said Alec, rubbing his eyes.

  I’m still working on that one, son.

  Yes, very well, said Edward. What about this “harbor bar”?

  Why, we can travel anywhere afore January 2352, because that was our point of departure into the past. But yer lady there supposedly can’t go no farther forward than 24 March 1863, because that’s when she was sent back to Options Research.


  And yet she seems to have gone into 1996, on that one occasion.

  So it’d seem. Not only that, then she went with the clothes she was standing up in, and her horse, and that other poor bleeder and his horse, too. Plus their gear. So it ain’t a hard and fast rule, whatever that lying bastard Zeus says.

  Then we must learn more about her particular ability.

  Aye. Now, we can stay here at the breakwater and just float forward a day at a time into the future, except that our Alec’d be dead of old age centuries afore we ever got back to 2352; or we can experiment with Crome’s radiation and see if we can jump forward to 1996.

  Is there any risk to her?

  Them clothes popped back safe and sound once we went backward again, didn’t they? But we ain’t trying nothing until we know more. Now then: Alec and Nicholas has nodded off, and you were best to do the same.

  Edward was silent. He looked up sharply when the ship’s bell pealed: eight bright little chimes.

  Noon, he said.

  Aye, sir. Afternoon watch just commenced.

  I wonder if I’ve been shot yet?

  I wouldn’t know that, son.

  Edward stared into space a moment, his eyes glittering. He leaned down, put his mouth close to Mendoza’s ear and whispered something.

  THE AFTERNOON OF 18 MARCH 1863

  Mrs. Checkerfield, ma’am, I wonder if I might have a word with you? Long as our Alec’s busy with the servounits? Private-like, just you and me.

  “Of course, Sir Henry,” Mendoza said, adjusting the mist element above the seedling tray. It had been tricky, setting up a hydroponics cabin aboard a sailing ship, but the Captain had done it. An ingenious system of spill catchments and ventilation permitted a garden to flourish without rotting a hole through the deck timbers. Roses bloomed in luxuriance, ivy and grapevines sprawled, waved aggressive green tendrils everywhere.

  Well, ma’am, I been accessing the data we lifted from Dr. Zeus, and I keep coming across references to that, er, Crome’s radiation. Would you know anything about it firsthand, dearie, that you could tell old Captain Morgan? The better to batten down aforehand for any squalls we might hit?

  Mendoza stood absolutely still for a moment, her face immobile as a mask. The Captain did the electronic equivalent of holding his breath. Then she frowned.

  “Crome’s radiation?” she said. “I could download to you, but I don’t seem to have the file. It appears to be the source of what mortals call paranormal phenomena. I don’t think a lot is known about it. Crome’s isn’t a power, or an ability; it’s simply a bioelectric effect produced by certain mortals. You can’t use it for anything. It’s like a birth defect.”

  Ah! But it’s a real phenomenon.

  Mendoza nodded, watching the bright water-beads forming on the little blades of corn. “Yes.”

  Well now! That’s interesting. I were afeared lest our Alec be such a one. From what I’m accessing, the Company seemed to think Crome’s is dangerous.

  Mendoza nodded, biting her lower lip. She opened the maintenance panel on the desalinization unit and checked the filter; wandered along the kitchen-garden rows and through the miniature orchard, as though she had lost something. Finally she said:

  “This is because he’s still damaged, isn’t it? Sometimes, you know, I think he must have a glitch in his language centers. You should run a diagnostic. It’s as though he’s not sure what temporal track we’re going through, whether we’re in the sixteenth century or the nineteenth or . . . I don’t know. He changes. Sometimes when we’re out among the mortals I pick up a stray emotion from a thief or a murderer, someone contemplating robbing us. I can laugh about it; but then I remember, and I could go mad like a dog, and kill them all, to think that he’s vulnerable now.

  “But he’s not a Crome generator! He may be damaged, but he isn’t a . . . a defective.”

  Is that so, dearie? Well, what a comfort to have that settled, aye, purred the Captain, observing her closely.

  He continued to observe her over the next several days, and subtly administered a number of tests, far more devious and oblique than Rhine Institute flash cards but to the same ends.

  When presented with a situation for immediate analysis where even subliminal data was available to provide a clue to the correct answer, Mendoza scored perfectly, as any cyborg would, to a degree that would seem supernatural to mortals. But when required to make a random guess, where no data, subliminal or otherwise, was available to suggest an answer, Mendoza showed no unusual talent for choosing correctly. Nor did she generate Crome’s radiation at any time.

  She had a cyborg’s physical control and hyperfunction ability, enabling her to move, at need, too swiftly for the mortal eye to follow; but she was unable to move an object by any means other than extending her hand and picking it up. While she could scale a wall or go around a barrier so quickly as to appear to have moved through it, frame-by-frame analysis of her action proved she did not physically pass through the barrier. No Crome’s was generated on these occasions, either.

  On the other hand, Mendoza did generate Crome’s fairly dependably under certain circumstances: extreme physical arousal, usually, though not always, strictly sexual; dancing with Alec invariably produced sheets of blue lightning. However, no paranormal activity occurred. Mendoza never seemed to notice the blazing lights at all. Alec and the others did, of course, but refrained from mentioning it at the Captain’s request, and perhaps from a certain gentlemanly impulse.

  Delving through Company files, the Captain found a detailed study of the phenomenon at Lookout Mountain Drive, where Mendoza had had her temporal mishap in 1862, complete with a record of anomalous magnetic pulses in that area over a ninety-year period.

  He read with interest the files the Company had kept before its experiments with Crome’s had been discontinued. Its conclusions were: that Crome’s radiation somehow caused an individual’s electromagnetic field to bleed over into the temporal field, which perhaps caused what appeared to be precognition or déjà vu in certain mortals. Also, telekinesis could perhaps be explained by Crome’s causing a disruption in the temporal field, freezing objects briefly in time while space (following its normal orbital trajectory) swung out from under them. This perhaps accounted for documented cases of solid objects appearing to leap off shelves or float through midair, or even rain down out of a cloudless sky.

  It might also account for the ongoing phenomena with the garden, wherein plants shot from seed to maturity in a night. Mendoza seldom generated Crome’s on these occasions, but did seem to be able to produce the temporal distortion at will. Just how she did it remained a mystery. She had not volunteered any explanation, apparently under the impression that Alec also had the ability, and neither he nor the Captain had considered it wise to disabuse her of this idea yet.

  The Captain made calculations, drew up tables. He analyzed his log for the time jump during which Edward and Mendoza had been making love, arranged all the data in new tables, cross-referenced everything . . . and began to form a theory.

  THE EVENING OF 25 MARCH 1863

  Well now, Mr. and Mrs. Checkerfield, what’s yer pleasure tonight? the Captain inquired jovially. Before anyone could reply, he went on: You been working on that there maize all day, ma’am, and wouldn’t you like to relax? I’d recommend a nice romantic holo.

  Alec, just stepping from the bathroom after a shower, made a face. Watching holos with Nicholas and Edward was tedious, when they weren’t on drugs. He had to keep explaining the action for Nicholas, who could barely understand the dialogue, which so irritated Edward that fights invariably broke out.

  But Mendoza set aside the sheaf of data printouts she’d been preparing to scan.

  “A holo?” She looked intrigued. “Where we eat popcorn and watch plays in the air? I remember those! Yes, by all means!”

  “Would you really like to see one?” Alec said, glancing at the others. Edward shrugged. Nicholas looked amenable.

  “Could w
e? Do we have a—” Mendoza blanked, searching for words. “Projector?”

  Why, dearie, we got everything we need, including popcorn, the Captain said, just as Coxinga came crawling in bearing an enormous bowl of the stuff.

  That was rather convenient, Edward said. You’ve something in mind, haven’t you?

  Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies, me lad, the Captain transmitted. He sorted through the hololibrary’s several million entries and selected something entitled Sins of the Flesh, a twenty-second-century romance notorious for its use of subliminal cues to sexually arouse viewers. He angled a camera, studying his charges critically.

  Mendoza sat up in bed and accepted the popcorn bowl from Coxinga. Alec, toweling his hair dry, sprawled beside her. Nicholas and Edward were left, as they usually were, to arrange themselves as best they could on either side. Looking over at Nicholas, Alec suddenly had what seemed to him to be a brilliant idea.

  “I know what! Let’s watch one of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays.”

  “Shakespeare?” Mendoza looked vacant for a moment and then her eyes widened. “English playwright? Elizabethan era?”

  “The same.” Alec propped pillows behind them. “I used to talk with him, you know,” he said, referring to the hologram at the Shakespeare Museum in Southwark.

  “Really?” Mendoza seemed impressed.

  You needn’t lay it on with a trowel, Edward sneered.

  No, this’ll be great. It’ll all be in old English, yeah? Nick will be able to understand what everybody’s saying, so I won’t have to keep translating and driving you crazy.

  The Captain did the electronic equivalent of gnashing his teeth in vexation and scanned through his library for Shakespeare plays, subheading ROMANCE.

  The first to pop up was Romeo and Juliet, which he hastily discarded after reading the synopsis. Briefly scanning A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he decided it would do well enough, and scrolling through available versions settled on one from Warner Brothers circa 1935, as being produced in Elizabethan costume and therefore inflicting less culture shock on Nicholas.