The Machine's Child (Company)

by Kage Baker

  She pushed him briskly into the severe modern lobby and signed them in as Commander and Mrs. James Hawkins, and was rather high-handed with the staff, and managed somehow to give the impression that Commander Hawkins had been heroically injured in a helicopter accident. Commander Hawkins sat there looking pale, uncomfortable, and very heroic indeed. He did not remove his black sunglasses. His wife did not remove hers. She paid in cash. They departed immediately to their room. They called for room service.

  They stayed there six weeks.

  At first they seldom ventured from their room, and looked warily around when they did emerge, and spoke to no one. Later they dined in the hotel restaurant and Commander Hawkins tottered about their courtyard with a cane, leaning on his wife, who if she was sharp-tongued with waiters seemed to adore him unreservedly. Once when a gardener (a stocky, olive-complected man) rose suddenly from the hedge he was clipping and startled Commander Hawkins so that he staggered and almost fell, she nearly attacked the man.

  During this time a pair of petty thieves, noting the young couple’s prolonged absence from their yacht, took it upon themselves to row out to the big vessel by night to see what loot might be had. They were never seen again, though their sunken boat was spotted by a diver some months later. It appeared to have had multiple holes burned in it by a large hot poker.

  But there were no further unpleasant incidents ashore. Soon the commander was steady on his feet, and he and his wife seemed brave enough to go down to the beach, where they sat at first in beach chairs under the tall palms and later, after the commander’s arm was out of its sling, swam together in the bright blue water amid sporting dolphins, or lay on mats under the bright blue sky. They were seen to laugh. At last they checked out of Bogue House and returned to their big elegant yacht, though they came back for a week or two to sun themselves on the beach in front of the hotel.

  “Just another anonymous couple in Paradise,” Mendoza crooned to Alec, pressing with all her weight as she massaged a photoradiation-blocking oil into his lower back. He moaned an incoherent but ecstatic reply. “Except for your amazing tattoo, Commander Hawkins. You must have had that done by Maori tribesmen, yes?”

  Alec giggled sleepily.

  “Yes, I can see it now,” Mendoza said, working her way up his back. “It was during the war. Valiant young Commander Hawkins was shipwrecked in the South Seas. His enemies torpedoed his battleship. Everyone escaped in the lifeboats except Commander Hawkins. He bravely swam in his lifejacket through miles of deadly shark-infested waters until he crawled up half-dead on a tropical shore. The islanders rescued him, and so impressed were they by his bravery that they made him an honorary member of their tribe, and gave him a splendid tattoo for the occasion.”

  “Mmm,” said Alec.

  “Yes. This particular tribe was ruled by a queen, and she took one look at this dishy Englishman in his tattered commander’s uniform and said, ‘Oh, baby! Come to my private hammock, you gorgeous British sailor boy, and I’ll give you a swell tattoo.’ She was particularly infatuated with his legs.” Mendoza felt cautiously along the tendons of his ankles, smoothing in oil. The painful red marks from the clewline had disappeared fairly quickly.

  “What’d she look like?” Alec said, only hanging on to consciousness because it was so pleasant to be ministered to.

  “Oh, you know. Red sarong. Hibiscus flower stuck behind her left ear. Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane,” Mendoza said, working oil into the soles of his feet.

  “Uh-uh. She has to be you,” said Alec indistinctly.

  “Ah. Okay; this island was peopled by the rare Spanish Maoris,” speculated Mendoza. “A unique culture dating from the sixteenth century, when a storm blew a Spanish galleon off course and the survivors inter-married with the islanders. And so . . . the islanders practiced many unique customs, like . . . oh, I don’t know, maybe they had bullfights or cooked with olive oil or something. What do you think?”

  Alec didn’t answer. Lulled by sheer pleasure, he was having a blissful dream about tropical islands, and so for that matter was Nicholas, who was already snoring beside them.

  Mendoza patted Alec fondly on the seat of his bathing trunks. She was preparing to stretch out beside him when Edward opened a bright wakeful eye and regarded her.

  “My dear, I wonder if I mightn’t ask you to anoint one last spot?” he inquired.

  “Of course,” she said, observing that he had switched over into his Victorian idiom again, and wondering why. Rising to her knees, she picked up the jar of oil. “Where, señor?”

  “Here at the back of my neck,” Edward told her, indicating with a gesture. “Under the collar, you see? It would be most uncomfortable to sunburn just there. One’s dress shirts do tend to chafe.”

  She drew breath, remembering she mustn’t touch that spot lest she inadvertently download from him, and was about to mention this when he rose on his elbows and worked the torque’s fastening.

  “Here we are,” he said triumphantly, slipping it off. “Now you needn’t fear.”

  “But—is that safe?” she asked. “Didn’t that just break the connection between us and Sir Henry?”

  “Only temporarily,” Edward assured her. “For I can put the collar on again at a moment’s notice.” He waved a dismissive hand at the horizon, where the Captain Morgan was anchored. “If that mad little fellow comes back, our good Captain will pick him off with a broadside, I promise you.”

  “Sir Henry won’t worry?” Mendoza looked out at the horizon uncertainly.

  “The Captain, my dear, is a machine,” Edward said. “And tends on our pleasure, and not the other way around. In any case, I shouldn’t think it’s entirely healthy to wear the collar continually, should you?”

  “Maybe not,” she said, and bent to rub oil into his neck. He arched his back and made an appreciative noise.

  Meanwhile, the Captain had gone immediately on the alert the moment his connection with Alec was broken. Fixing on Alec’s last known position, a powerful long-range camera rose from its concealed housing on the deck and telescoped outward, scanning the beach. It found Edward and Mendoza, spotted the torque lying on a corner of the beach mat, assured itself that Joseph was not lurking in the immediate vicinity, and extended to observe at closer focus just what might be going on.

  “My dear, any more and my spine will positively melt,” Edward growled sensually. “Or stiffen to a degree inconvenient in such a public place.” He reached up a hand and pulled her down beside him.

  “We could always go back through the past and find a time when there weren’t any mortals here,” Mendoza said, smiling. “Make love in the surf, eh, like in From Here to Eternity? Of course, we’d have to bring our own martinis.”

  Edward shrugged, never having seen From Here to Eternity. “And sufficient weaponry for whatever antediluvian creatures might be haunting the place. I’m afraid, my dear, that caution is still called for until I’m restored to my proper state of permanence.”

  She nodded sadly and put her hand on his. Following Joseph’s attack it had been necessary to clear the air on certain matters. Alec had admitted he wasn’t quite as immortal as he ought to be, and Mendoza had admitted she’d known, and there were tears and embraces, and she had been rabidly defensive of him ever since.

  Edward gazed down at their two hands now, each with its wedding ring. He sighed, smiled a little ruefully, and looked up with a wide-eyed and frank expression.

  “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about something, my dear, and I hope you won’t take it amiss,” he said.

  Unfortunately for Edward, he had never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey either. The Captain’s telescope zoomed in to focus on his moving lips.

  “What is it?” Mendoza asked.

  “One gets the oddest notions when one’s been convalescing; perhaps it comes of so nearly losing you, when Joseph had me at his mercy, but . . . I find myself with the strangest desire to . . .” Edward paused as if searching for words. “To establish our u
nion in a more palpable outward form.”

  Mendoza looked at him blankly, wondering what on earth he was talking about.

  “In short, my love,” Edward said, squeezing her hand, “I wonder whether we mightn’t consider having a child?”

  Mendoza was so utterly surprised it took her a moment to answer. He watched her face closely.

  “You mean . . . reproduce?” she said incredulously.

  “That is exactly what I mean,” Edward said, smiling.

  “Like mortals?”

  “Not exactly as they do,” Edward admitted.

  “But . . .” Mendoza blinked. “I’m not sure we can do that, can we? We’re not—I mean, I—”

  “There would be certain technical difficulties, to be sure,” Edward said, “which could be easily overcome by the Captain, if he could be persuaded how necessary an infant was to our happiness. And wouldn’t you like to experience Motherhood at last, my dear?”

  “I’ve never thought about it,” Mendoza said truthfully. “I just always assumed it was one of those things mortals do and we don’t. Are you sure it wouldn’t be impossible? I don’t think I have all the parts, for one thing.”

  “You have everything I need, my dearest,” Edward said. “It may, in fact, be impossible to produce a child of our combined genetic heritage. But I did a great deal of reading on the subject, you see, during those long evenings when pain prevented me from sleeping—”

  Mendoza remembered waking once in the night at Bogue House to find him staring tensely into a text plaquette, his pale eyes flickering over the words at high speed.

  “Oh, my love, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t distress yourself. One ought always welcome the opportunity to improve one’s mind, don’t you think?” Edward leaned closer. “And I’d not have awakened you for the world, my dear, after you’d cared for me so devotedly all day. But to continue: there is, I find, a procedure wherein the bare beginnings of life can be artificially initiated elsewhere, and then implanted into the receptive womb of the mother-to-be, there to grow to fruition over nine brief months. This procedure requires no surgery and may involve only the slightest discomfort, if indeed any.”

  “Really?” said Mendoza, watching his face as he spoke so earnestly, and knowing already that she couldn’t deny him what he wanted.

  “Yes. It would appear that this was not only possible, but quite commonly done in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, before certain ‘Zero Population Growth’ laws were enacted,” Edward said. “Need I mention that the results were, unfailingly, happy mothers with bonny babes? Only the mortals’ need to curtail their own numbers caused the practice to be discontinued, and, naturally enough, such mortal laws do not apply to us, any more than their absurd prohibitions on coffee and tea!” He waved a contemptuous hand.

  “But—” he continued, avoiding her gaze and drawing a deep breath, “the question is, my dear—do I dare ask you to make this sacrifice for my happiness? Any inconvenience, however minor, would be yours alone. I have proceeded on the assumption that you would be grateful for the restoration of a prospect the Company had so cruelly taken from you—I mean the sacrament of maternity—but perhaps . . .”

  “I would be cut to pieces for you, señor,” she said, and she meant it, and he knew it. He shivered, but did not falter in his intent. “Of course I wouldn’t mind having a baby, if you want one. Though it might be better to wait until you’ve dealt with the Company, don’t you think? And until we’ve recaptured your DNA vial.”

  “Oh, certainly not until then,” he said. “Indeed, we’d require the vial to produce our boy.”

  Mendoza noted that he wanted a son, and shrugged mentally. She didn’t mind.

  “We might design him all of a piece, with the accompanying nanobots to render him impervious to harm. And then, my love, we’d be doing something new in this world,” Edward said gleefully. “Producing a child born to immortality, with eternal life as his birthright! All those clever tiny mechanisms transmuting him from his first heartbeat, all those tedious and painful years of surgery unnecessary. Every mortal flaw tempered out in your—what was that apt phrase of Shakespeare’s?—your nest of spicery.” With an expression indescribably rapacious and yet reverent, he set his hand under her heart. “Good God, how I’d envy the little fellow, nestled safe and warm in there! Rocked to sleep by your dear body, berthed in the water of life itself. And only imagine what he might do, as a man! He might be the hero to bring the world back to a Golden Age, at last.”

  Mendoza gazed into his eyes. His pupils had become enormous. “If this is what you want, señor, we’ll try. I promise. As soon as it’s safe,” she said.

  “Not a moment before,” he vowed, taking her in his arms. They sank back down and she looked up at him with a wry smile.

  “Of course, we’d have no fun at all in bed for a while,” she said. “Though I don’t suppose you’d be much interested in me.”

  “My love, I’d want you desperately,” Edward said. “How else, when you became the vessel of my immortality?” He kissed her chin, her throat, her cheek, and murmured into her ear in a soft pleading growl she’d never heard him use before: “Oh, give me life!”

  “All the life I have,” she promised him, a little frightened by his passion. She put her arms about his bared neck and kissed him back. “I think it’s time to go back to the ship.”

  “My thought exactly,” he said, releasing her, and sat up. With swift hands he slipped the torque around his neck again.

  So it’s Edward, is it? said the Captain in his inner ear.

  Yes. My apologies; but I only took it off a little while. I was having Alec’s neck massaged, Edward explained, nudging Alec and Nicholas awake. Their snores broke off in unison as they sat up, bewildered.

  The Captain did not respond.

  What’s the matter? Alec demanded.

  Nothing’s the matter, Edward told him, laughing. But if we don’t go back to the ship and blessed privacy soon, we’ll shock the good citizens of Montego Bay.

  As it happened, they set the boat to rocking wildly before Alec sat up and took hold of the oars again. Mendoza leaned back in the prow and trailed her hand in the water languidly. As they came alongside the Captain Morgan, she laughed out loud. When Alec looked at her inquiringly, she said:

  “I was just thinking it’s a good thing we can’t reproduce just like mortals. Otherwise we’d be up to our ears in babies!”

  “Wouldn’t we, though?” chuckled Alec. Edward just looked smug. He was still looking smug, in fact he was positively swaggering as they paced along the deck to the saloon; until he disappeared.

  Alec, walking ahead after Mendoza, heard Nicholas’s cry of surprise. He turned and stared into Nicholas’s shocked face, and looked around for Edward, who was nowhere to be seen.

  Where’d he go?

  I know not! He vanished away like—like a candle blown out.

  Captain! Alec cried in silence, running absurdly to the rail to look over. Mendoza turned.

  “Alec?”

  Stand by, Alec.

  Captain, Edward’s gone!

  “Alec, sweetheart, what is it?” Mendoza was beside him in an instant, taking his hands and staring into his face.

  “I—” Alec gulped painfully for breath. “I just thought I saw him again. Joseph.”

  “Where?” she asked, her eyes going flinty at the mention of his name.

  “But he’s not really there,” Alec said. “It was just shadows.”

  “Darling, you’re white as a sheet,” she said. “Post-traumatic stress. Come on. We’re quite safe; the Captain’s here, and any miserable little dog-men the Company sends after us will be sorry they tried again. Am I correct, Captain?”

  Aye, ma’am, said the Captain tersely.

  “Let’s go inside, now,” she coaxed. “Would you like to shower first? Nice relaxing hot water? And supper afterward, and then perhaps we’ll weigh anchor and cruise off for a change of scene. I think we
’ve been here long enough.”

  “Right,” he said shakily. He and Nicholas followed her into the saloon, watching each other in terror.

  Edward found himself, abruptly, in darkness and utter silence. Worse: he had no sense of feeling in any limb. He was nothing but a point of consciousness in a vacuum. He screamed and heard nothing, not even the sound of his own pounding heart.

  Did he have a pounding heart? But he was dead, wasn’t he? A skeleton in a drawer, a few corpse parts preserved in formaldehyde?

  “NO!” he raged, and heard himself. There! And he could hear his heart, now, yes, and his own breath coming raggedly, yes, and he had eyes, by God, he just couldn’t see with them at the moment but that was because he was sitting in the utter darkness somewhere, and it was somewhere familiar, too, and any minute now he’d remember where it was.

  Sitting. Sitting, not standing, he was certainly crouched, he could feel the cramping in his muscles and an unpleasant splintery surface under his buttocks, because he was naked. Or, no, not completely naked: there was something cold and heavy around his wrists, about his ankles. He moved, and heard clanking. Metal? Shackles.

  He’d been in a place like this, once. This must be a ship’s brig, like the one on the Zagreus, where he’d awaited trial after assaulting Captain Southbey. He turned his head, half-expecting to see the remembered pattern of light through the hatch cover in long stripes. Behold, there it was! And he could see himself. So his eyes had simply been getting used to the darkness, that was all.

  Edward had all his senses back, now, he could smell the salt tang in the air, and the heavy tarry reek of the ship. He could taste his own salt sweat on his upper lip. It was stifling in here. He looked down and saw in sharp detail his chains and what secured them: a great eyebolt sunk in the timber of the bulkhead. Gritting his teeth, he pulled on it with all his strength. There was an audible creak, but it held him.