The Graveyard Game (Company)

by Kage Baker

“Now, you understand,” Suleyman resumed, “that I can’t trust you.”

  Joseph sighed.

  “We’ve known each other a long time, and I mean it as a compliment when I say you’re the most Company man I’ve ever seen. You’re also a lying little bastard when you need to be. That’s a good thing, given your line of work. Unfortunately, I think you lie to yourself, too.

  “If you’re working for the Company and reporting on what I’m doing—well, it isn’t as though I haven’t tried to tell them. I think the Company knows about Budu’s group, and they’re tolerating him because the Company can benefit from his work without getting its own hands dirty.” Suleyman pulled up before the necropolis and switched off the engine. “However, the devil will call for payment one of these days.”

  They got out and trudged toward the gleaming white terraces. The heat was astonishing, making the horizon dance and waver in currents of boiling air.

  “The other possibility is that you’re here from Budu himself,” Suleyman went on composedly. “You’ve made it clear you still think of him as a hero. You wouldn’t feel that way if you walked with me through a children’s hospital in Uganda, though, unless you’ve changed a lot from the days when you and I worked together. And we immortals don’t change. It’s one of the things that makes us immortals.”

  “My point exactly,” said Joseph. “Budu wouldn’t change either, not to the point where he’d orchestrate something like this.”

  “Maybe. Anyway—if you are here from your old Enforcer, if you’re leading me into a trap, disabling me won’t help you. Quite apart from the fact that little Latif would be very, very annoyed with you, and he knows where you live, by the way, I’ve taken a lot of pains to see that my work will go on without me.”

  “I work alone, myself,” Joseph said. “I wish I had the kind of resources you have.”

  “I made some good investments when Dr. Zeus started permitting us private incomes,” Suleyman conceded. “Latif, too. And it helps, of course, to have advance knowledge of the market.”

  “How did you manage that?” Joseph asked, as they made their way up a long mud-brick stair between walls so white, their shadows were iridescent blue, under a sky blue as blue tile. “You’d have to get a look at the Temporal Concordance to get information like that, and everybody knows we’re not allowed to see that stuff.”

  “Nor do we,” Suleyman said imperturbably. “If we could get a look at the Temporal Concordance past the present calendar date, we’d be all omnipotent as gods. Latif just analyzes the Company investments, and we go with his projections. I said he’s a clever child. Strong, too. I recruited him out of a slave ship, you know. Watched him, down there in the hold, beside his dying mother. Frightened little baby, but he was angry. His anger made him strong. We’re all of us angry when we come into this immortal life; keeps us motivated to fight for humanity against evil.

  “The question is, how long can we fight without coming to see humanity itself as the source of evil?” Suleyman stopped on the stair, turning to Joseph. “Of course, we’ve been given immortal wisdom, with immortal strength, to avoid such a pitfall.”

  “Well, there’s that old saw of Nietzsche’s about becoming a dragon yourself if you fight dragons too long,” Joseph said, drinking from the thermos again. “I still don’t think Budu’s guilty. And I haven’t led you into an ambush. In fact, I’m going to show you something really useful, to somebody with the ability to use it.” He climbed again, scanning as he went, until he abruptly stepped off to the left into one of the white terraces.

  He paced along a short distance, Suleyman following closely, and stopped at one particular tomb midway along the line.

  “Ah.” Suleyman looked close. “This door is in good repair. Very unusual.”

  “Isn’t it?” Joseph ran his hand down the frame. He found what he was searching for, what any operative with Facilitator clearance could have found, if he knew it was there. The door clicked and swung inward.

  There were several dead persons in the tomb, in varying degrees of becoming dust. The front and side walls of the tomb were of mud brick; the back wall was the hillside itself, an irregular rock outcropping. Joseph pointed at it silently, and Suleyman nodded.

  “Clever,” he remarked. Had any one of the mortal occupants of the tomb come to life again for a moment, he would have been astounded to watch as Joseph and Suleyman walked toward the rock wall and through it, vanishing into a gloom deeper than even a corpse would be comfortable with.

  But Joseph and Suleyman, able to see by infrared, clearly saw the smooth and sloping walls of the tunnel they traveled.

  It was just like the tunnel in Yorkshire had been, to look at; had the same faint pleasant scent, too. Presently they emerged into another vast and vaulted room, blue-lit from the rows of regeneration tanks, each with its floating occupant.

  “This is some kind of repair facility,” said Suleyman, frowning.

  “You’d think so, but look at these guys.” Joseph went close. “See! Here’s your proof. These were the old Enforcers.”

  Suleyman followed him reluctantly, staring up at the vaults. His eyes widened.

  “Name of the Merciful,” he said quietly.

  “What else do you do with an immortal you don’t want anymore? You can’t kill them,” said Joseph. “I guess you could blast them into space, but they might find a way back, and then—”

  Suleyman looked up at a chalkboard on the wall. There, in Latin, were the words:

  ABDIEL HAS DONE HIS APPOINTED WORK HERE

  6 MARCH 2143–23 MARCH 2143

  He looked back at Joseph’s anguished face. “All right,” he said. “I bear witness.”

  Joseph began to hurry back and forth among the vaults, looking up at the occupant of each one, and Suleyman followed him.

  “You’re not looking for your child,” Suleyman realized. “You’re looking for Budu.”

  Joseph nodded. “I think they must have caught him at last. I’m betting he’s in one of these vaults. If I can find him, and wake him up—I pity whoever spread all those viruses from that supply tunnel.” He skidded to a stop in front of a vault where a male Preserver floated. “Kalugin might be here, too. Would you recognize him if we found him?”

  “I would,” Suleyman replied grimly, standing beside Joseph. “I performed his marriage ceremony.”

  “They got married? He and Nan? Two immortals?”

  “It happens,” said Suleyman.

  “Amazing.” Joseph turned a corner and started working his way along a new row of vaults. “So I guess we’re wondering just exactly what Donal saw in 1906? How did the Company catch up with Budu? Why did Budu grab Donal? It was right before the big earthquake. Was Budu maybe doing some recruiting?”

  “Unlikely,” Suleyman said. “Unless his people have a way of performing the immortality process themselves, and if they’d managed to infiltrate the Company far enough to get that secret, they wouldn’t have needed to send their own leader into a salvage zone to steal one mortal child.”

  “I guess so,” Joseph said. “Donal said Budu and Victor were fighting, didn’t he? Victor had blood on his shirt. Can you imagine what it would be like fighting with an Enforcer? Why wasn’t Victor smashed like a bug?”

  Suleyman nodded in agreement, stopping in front of one vault to peer at someone he thought he recognized. After a moment he moved on. “Donal said that Victor spat on Budu. That suggests the use of some kind of toxin.”

  “Poison? But no poison works on us. And if the Company finally found one, why wouldn’t they use it to kill off all these Enforcers instead of keeping them here?”

  “I don’t know.” Suleyman looked up at an olive-skinned girl with a sweet-sad face. “Unless it only disabled the old monster.”

  “Here’s another scenario. What if Budu did start some group to try to change Company policy? And what if his people double-crossed him, and somebody else has been running the cabal since 1906? Have your people found any trace of Bu
du in the last two hundred years?”

  After a long moment Suleyman said, “As a matter of fact, no. Not since the end of the nineteenth century. Plenty of evidence of his group, though.”

  “There,” Joseph said. “There’s your answer.”

  “It’s not an answer, little man. It’s many, many more questions.”

  “You know who we have to talk to now, of course.”

  “Victor.” Suleyman came to the last row of vaults and turned, starting back.

  “And Victor’s either on the side of the Company or he’s one of the bad guys.” Joseph strode to keep up. “If he’s still Company, he may be the problem solver who finally caught up with Budu.”

  “A dangerous man to talk to, in either case.”

  “I liked Victor,” said Joseph plaintively. “The guy did me a favor once, when he was stationed at New World One.”

  “He’s always been the most pleasant and courteous of guests, when he stops in to visit Nan,” Suleyman said.

  “They’re old friends?”

  “So it seems.”

  “Would she talk to him? Can she find anything out for us?”

  Suleyman looked down at him as they walked. “What are the chances that any of this will help her learn what happened to Kalugin?”

  “I can promise to look for him,” said Joseph. “I already have a shopping list of missing operatives.”

  “Then she’ll talk to Victor.”

  They emerged from the tomb unseen. A plume of dust rose up behind them as they headed back for the city. Joseph sagged in his seat, watching the distant minarets against the sky.

  “This is really depressing. At least I’m starting to get an idea of what will happen in 2355. There’s the Company, and then there’s this antihumanity cabal within the Company, and then there are people like you and me who are just trying to do their jobs. I can think of a lot of ways the Silence might fall.”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Suleyman said.

  “And the Company has it coming. Will we all wind up in those bunkers, or wearing those clock emblems? It’s just the kind of thing I can see the twenty-fourth-century investors ordering. We make them nervous.”

  “I don’t blame them for being nervous. It’s sad . . . Now and then, to obtain something the Company wanted, I’ve had to impersonate supernatural creatures.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ve played a djinn, once or twice. There’s some interesting folklore about djinns. The story goes that Allah made men from clay, but the djinns he made from subtle fire. In his wisdom Allah gave them tremendous power, but gave mankind chains to bind that power, lest the djinns prey on them. So djinns were slaves to wise men and served their purposes. King Solomon commanded whole armies of them.”

  “I’ve heard that too.”

  “The story goes on to say that the djinns must continue as faithful slaves until Judgment Day. Then, when the first blast of the trumpet sounds, they all die, since they have no souls with which to enter Paradise.”

  “Talk about raw deals.” Joseph grinned bitterly.

  “Who argues with the Almighty?” Suleyman made a gesture with his hand as though flicking away a speck of dust. “No point. Maybe the djinns don’t mind. Maybe they’re glad to rest at last. Don’t forget that Allah is all-merciful and utterly just. Unlike the mortal masters who created us.”

  “Now I’m really depressed,” muttered Joseph.

  The city grew nearer. After a while Joseph asked, “So. If I wanted to get a message to you without going through Company channels, how would I do that?”

  Suleyman chuckled. “You do count on trust. I’ll tell you, though. Look up a religious order calling themselves the Compassionates of Allah. If you’re in the right city, and you leave a message, it will filter back to me.”

  Fez

  THEY STROLLED TOGETHER through the city, the immortal gentleman and lady.

  He was a dapper white man with small precise features. His eyes were green as a cat’s, his hair and pointed beard red as fire. He wore a white suit of perfectly pressed, tropical-weight linen, rather retro in its cut, and a wide-brimmed hat against the sun. Formal as his appearance was, there was a sense of deliberate parody, a hint of the bizarre. Something too much like an insect’s pincers in the way his oiled mustache swept up; something suggestive of a mime’s exaggeration in his walk. Despite the heat, he wore white gloves.

  Nan wore a peacock-blue afternoon ensemble from the premier designer house in Senegal, with matching hat and veil, like a beautifully dressed doll. Her parasol threw a shadow of deeper blue.

  Slowly they made their way along the old streets, in and out of the islands of shadow from the great palm trees, through arcaded quarters plastered and painted in all shades of white and blue. They spoke quietly together. That either of them could hear what the other said was remarkable, given the small mortal child who danced along behind them, following closely as though drawn on a string. He carried on his shoulder a SoundBox 3000 that screamed out the latest album by Little Fairuza: ten songs of love and longing in the teen world of Islam.

  Every now and then a passerby frowned severely at the child. It wasn’t so much that the music’s content was objectionable—when has any culture approved of love and longing for the under-sixteen set?—but for such a big SoundBox the speakers were execrable, buzzing and roaring with distortion. The child danced along, oblivious.

  The white man cast a dubious look over one shoulder as they walked slowly down Rue Meridien. “You’re quite sure this is necessary?”

  “Yes. The generator renders our conversation unintelligible.”

  Victor nodded, stroking his beard. “Well. Lunch alfresco? I seem to remember a place in the next street over that does a splendid b’stila.”

  “I’d like that.” Nan took his arm, and they bore right through a winding maze of connected courtyards, emerging at last in a dim garden where a central fountain played. There a waiter served them from a cart, presenting them with two neat chlorilar plates of b’stila and uttering brief harsh words to the child, who hopped over the garden wall, turned up the volume, and busied himself with an exhibition of ape dancing for the edification of onlookers.

  Nan and Victor set their plates on the wall and nibbled away tidily at their crispy pastries. Victor made sounds of dignified pleasure, lifting a forkful of savory filling to admire it.

  “Of all the things one never thought one would miss,” he said, “I must say chicken is the most unlikely. Do you know it’s impossible to get over there at all, now?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Thanks to the Beast Liberation Party, chickens are no longer being bred. They’re very nearly extinct in England.”

  “Extinct?” Nan looked astonished.

  “Poor creatures were apparently too stupid to make use of the gift of civil liberty,” Victor said, carefully brushing confectioner’s sugar from his beard. “Wandering onto motorways or into the path of packs of feral dogs, who have made much better use of their civil liberty.”

  Nan shook her head. “Why do all these attempts to stop cruelty result in greater cruelty?” she said.

  “Cruelty is a natural element in the world, like sand,” Victor said, smiling thinly. “Mortals may shovel it out of one place, but it merely accumulates in a pile somewhere else. Clear your house and bury your neighbor’s. Yet the futile efforts persist.”

  “As we do,” she said.

  His smile faded, and he looked down at his plate again. “Have you had any success?”

  “I haven’t found him, no. Though I wouldn’t say my efforts have met with complete failure.”

  “May I hear what you’ve learned?” Victor asked, taking her empty plate on his and dropping them, with the forks, down the nearest fusion hopper. He then pulled off his soiled gloves and tucked them away in one pocket. From another pocket he produced a fresh pair and pulled them on. Nan waited patiently, setting her parasol on her shoulder again.

  He offered her
his arm, and they strolled from the garden. The mortal child took up his SoundBox and moved after them.

  As they paced across the courtyard outside the university, Nan said, “I was able to break into his personnel file, but there isn’t much after 2083. Kalugin was at Kamchatka, he finished whatever he was doing there, he returned to Polar Base Two. He requested recreational leave, and then he was transferred to a location designated only by a number. After that his record simply stops.”

  “Perhaps he’s still on duty at that site?” Victor suggested. “Involved in something classified.”

  “He’d have sent me word, in all these years,” said Nan quietly. “You know that.”

  Victor reflected that she was right, that violating a mandatory communications lockdown to talk to his wife was exactly the sort of thing Kalugin would have done. He didn’t say this, however. He simply watched Nan from under the brim of his hat and wondered, for the thousandth time, what his life might have been like if Nan had not loved Vasilii Vasilievitch Kalugin.

  “So he would have,” he said. “You’ve found nothing further, then?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Nan glanced over her shoulder, and the mortal child walked nearer. She spoke in a measured, dispassionate way, as though she were discussing a subject of only mildly mutual interest. “It occurred to me to study the phenomenon of disappearance itself. Does it happen often? To whom, and why?”

  “Sensible way to approach the problem,” Victor said.

  “I accessed Company personnel files, traced them, cross-referenced them. Never mind how I obtained the codes. I learned that disappearance is not recent, not the result of our masters’ paranoia as we approach their time period.

  “It has always happened. There are any number of files that simply stop, Victor. After a certain date they contain no entries. Sometimes it happens following injury.”

  Victor nodded. “Pretty damned infrequently, I’d think.”

  “More often than you’d think. An operative will be sent to a base for repair—and never released. Sometimes, it follows an arrest. An operative is sent to the nearest base for disciplinary action and counseling. After that, the operative is reassigned, but to a numbered location that cannot be traced in the Company files, regardless of what search parameters are used.”