Gods and Pawns (Company)

by Kage Baker

  He sent the story for global distribution and began another one, facts inert of themselves but presented in such a way as to paint a damning picture of the Canadian Commonwealth’s treatment of its Native American neighbors on the ice mining issue. When he had completed about ten seconds of the visual impasto, however, an immortal in a gray suit entered the room, carrying a disc case.

  “Chief? These are the messages from Ceylon Central. Do you want to review them before or after your ride?”

  “Gosh, it’s that time already, isn’t it?” the young man said, glancing at the temporal chart in the lower left hand corner of the monitor. “Leave them here, Quint. I’ll go through them this evening.”

  “Yes, sir.” The immortal bowed, set down the case, and left. The young man rose, stretched, and crossed the room to his living suite. A little dog rose from where it had been curled under his chair and followed him sleepily.

  Beyond his windows the view was much the same as it had been for the last four centuries: the unspoiled wilderness of the Santa Lucia mountains as far as the eye could see in every direction, save only the west where the sea lay blue and calm. The developers had been stopped. He had seen to it.

  He changed into riding clothes and paused before a mirror, combing his hair. Such animal exploitation as horseback riding was illegal, as he well knew, having pushed through the legislation that made it so himself. It was good that vicious people weren’t allowed to gallop around on poor sweating beasts anymore, striking and shouting at them. He never treated his horses that way, however. He loved them and was a gentle and careful rider, which was why the public laws didn’t apply to him.

  He turned from the mirror and found himself facing the portrait of Marion, the laughing girl of his dreams, forever young and happy and sober. He made a little courtly bow and blew her a kiss. All his loved ones were safe and past change now.

  Except for his dog; it was getting old. They always did, of course. There were some things even the Company couldn’t prevent, useful though it was.

  Voices came floating up to him from the courtyard.

  “…because when the government collapsed, of course Park Services didn’t have any money anymore,” a tour docent was explaining. “For a while it looked as though the people of California were going to lose La Cuesta Encantada to foreign investors. The art treasures were actually being auctioned off, one by one. How many of you remember that antique movie script that was found in that old furniture? A few years back, during the Old Hollywood Revival?”

  The young man was distracted from his reverie. Grinning, he went to the mullioned window and peered down at the tour group assembled below. His dog followed him and he picked it up, scratching between its ears as he listened. The docent continued: “Well, that old cabinet came from here! We know that Rudolph Valentino was a friend of Marion Davies, and we think he must have left it up here on a visit, and somehow it got locked in the cabinet and forgotten until it was auctioned off, and the new owners opened the secret drawer.”

  One of the tourists put up a hand.

  “But if everything was sold off—”

  “No, you see, at the very last minute a miracle happened.” The docent smiled. “William Randolph Hearst had five sons, as you know, but most of their descendants moved away from California. It turned out one of them was living in Europe. He’s really wealthy, and when he heard about the Castle being sold, he flew to California to offer the Republic a deal. He bought the Castle himself, but said he’d let the people of California go on visiting Hearst Castle and enjoying its beauty.”

  “How wealthy is he?” one of the visitors wanted to know.

  “Nobody knows just how much money he has,” said the docent after a moment, sounding embarrassed. “But we’re all very grateful to the present Mr. Hearst. He’s actually added to the art collection you’re going to see and—though some people don’t like it—he’s making plans to continue building here.”

  “Will we get to meet him?” somebody else asked.

  “Oh, no. He’s a very private man,” said the docent. “And very busy, too. But you will get to enjoy his hospitality, as we go into the refectory now for a buffet lunch. Do you all have your complimentary vouchers? Then please follow me inside. Remember to stay within the velvet ropes…”

  The visitors filed in, pleased and excited. The young man looked down on them from his high window.

  He set his dog in its little bed, told it to stay, and then left by a private stair that took him down to the garden. He liked having guests. He liked watching from a distance as their faces lit up, as they stared in awe, as they shared in the beauty of his grand house and all its delights. He liked making mortals happy.

  He liked directing their lives, too. He had no doubt at all of his ability to guide them, or the wisdom of his long-term goals for humanity. Besides, it was fun.

  In fact, he reflected, it was one of the pleasures that made eternal life worth living. He paused for a moment in the shade of one of the ancient oak trees and looked around, smiling his terrible smile at the world he was making.

  Hellfire At Twilight

  On a certain autumn day in the year 1774, a certain peddler walked the streets of a certain residential district in London.

  His pack was full, because he wasn’t really making much of an effort to sell any of his wares. His garments were shabby, and rather large for him, but clean, and cut with a style making it not outside the powers of imagination that he might in fact be a dashing hero of some kind. One temporarily down on his luck, perhaps. Conceivably the object of romantic affection.

  He whistled as he trudged along; doffed his hat and made a leg when the coaches of the great rumbled by, spattering him with mud. When occasionally hailed by customers, he stopped and rifled through his pack with alacrity, producing sealing wax, bobbins of thread, blotting paper, cheap stockings, penny candles, tinderboxes, soap, pins and buttons. His prices were reasonable, his manner deferential without being fawning, but he was nonetheless unable to make very many sales.

  Indeed, so little notice was taken of him that he might as well have been invisible when he slipped down an alley and came out into one of the back lanes that ran behind the houses. This suited his purposes, however.

  He proceeded along the backs of sheds and garden fences with an ease born of familiarity, and went straight to a certain stretch of brick wall. He balanced briefly on tiptoe to peer over; then knocked at the gate in a certain pattern, rap-a-rap rap.

  The gate was opened by a maid, with such abruptness it was pretty evident she’d been lurking there, waiting for his knock.

  “You ain’t half behind your time,” she said.

  “I was assailed by profitable custom,” he replied, sweeping off his hat and bowing. “Good morning, my dear! What have you for me today?”

  “Gooseberry,” she said. “Only it’s gone cold, you know.”

  “I shan’t mind that one whit,” the peddler replied, swinging his pack round. “And I have brought you something particularly nice in return.”

  The maid looked at his pack with eager eyes. “Oooo! You never found one!”

  “Wait and see,” said the peddler, with a roguish wink. He reached into the very bottom of his pack and brought out an object wrapped in brown paper. Presenting it to the maid with a flourish, he watched as she unwrapped it.

  “You never!” she cried. She whipped a glass lens out of her apron pocket and held the object up, examining it closely.

  “Masanao of Kyoto, that is,” she announced. “Here’s the cartouche. Boxwood. Very nice. Some sort of funny little dog, is it?”

  “It’s a fox, I believe,” said the peddler.

  “So it is. Well! What a stroke of luck.” The maid tucked both lens and netsuke into her apron pocket. “You might go by Limehouse on your rounds, you know; they do say there’s all sorts of curious things to be had there.”

  “What a good idea,” said the peddler. He hefted his pack again and looked at her expectan
tly.

  “Oh! Your pie, to be sure. La! I was that excited, I did forget.” The maid ran indoors, and returned a moment later with a small pie wrapped in a napkin. “Extra well lined, just as you asked.”

  “Not a word to your good master about this, however,” said the peddler, laying his finger beside his nose. “Eh, my dear?”

  “Right you are,” said the maid, repeating the gesture with a knowing wink. “He don’t miss all that old parchment, busy as he is, and now there’s ever so much more room in that spare cupboard.”

  The peddler took his leave and walked on. Finding a shady spot with a view of the Thames, he sat down and ever so carefully lifted the pie out of its parchment shell, though he was obliged to peel the last sheet free, it having been well gummed with gooseberry leakage. He spread the sheets out across his lap, studying them thoughtfully as he bit into the pie. They were closely written in much-blotted ink, ancient jottings in a quick hand.

  “‘Whatte to fleshe out thys foolyshe farye play? Too insubstancyal. Noble courte of Oberon nott unlike Theseus his courte. The contrast invydious. Yet too much wit in that lyne and the M of Revylls lyketh it not. Lovers not sufficienclye pleasing of themseylves. Thinke. Thinke, Will. Thinke,’” he read aloud, through a full mouth.

  “‘How yf a rustick brought in? None can fynde fawlt there by Jesu. Saye a weaver, bellowes-mender or some suche in the woodes by chance. Excellent good meate for Kempe. JESU how yf a companye of rusticks??? As who should bee apying we players? Memo, speake wyth Burbage on thys…’”

  At that moment he blinked, frowned, and shook his head. Red letters were dancing in front of his eyes: TOXIC RESPONSE ALERT.

  “I beg your pardon?” he murmured aloud. Vaguely he waved a hand through the air in front of his face, as though swatting away flies, while he ran a self-diagnostic. The red letters were not shooed away; yet neither did his organic body appear to be having any adverse reactions to anything he was tasting, touching, or breathing.

  But the red letters did fade slightly after a moment. He shrugged, had another mouthful of pie and kept reading.

  “‘Cost of properteyes: not so muche an it might be, were we to use agayne the dresses fro thatt Merlyne playe—’”

  TOXIC RESPONSE ALERT, cried the letters again, flashing bright. The peddler scowled in real annoyance and ran another self-diagnostic. He received back the same result as before. He looked closely at the pie in his hand. It appeared wholesome, with gooseberry filling oozing out between buttery crusts, and he was rather hungry.

  With a sigh, he wrapped it in a pocket handkerchief and set it aside. Carefully he packed the Shakespeare notes in a flat folder, and slid it into his pack; took up the pie again and walked away quickly in the direction of St. Paul’s.

  There was a stately commercial edifice of brick built on a slope, presenting its respectable upper stories level with the busy street above. The side facing downhill to the river, however, looked out on one of the grubbier waste grounds in London, thickly grown with weeds. Little winding dog paths crossed the area, and the peddler followed one to an unobtrusive-looking door set in the cellar wall of the aforementioned edifice. He did not knock, but stood patiently, waiting as various unseen devices scanned him. Then the door swung inward and he stepped inside.

  He walked down an aisle between rows of desks, at which sat assorted gentlemen or ladies working away at curious blue-glowing devices. One or two people nodded to him as he passed, or waved a languid pen. He smiled pleasantly, but proceeded past them to a low flight of stairs and climbed to a half-landing, which opened out on private offices. One door bore a sign in gold lettering that read REPAIRS.

  The peddler opened the door, looked in, and called hesitantly:

  “Yoo-hoo, Cullender, are you receiving?”

  “What the hell is it now?” said someone from behind a painted screen. A face rose above the screen, glaring through what appeared to be a pair of exceedingly thick spectacles. “Oh, it’s you, Lewis. Sorry—been trying to catch the last episode of Les Vampires, and there’s an Anthropologist over in Cheapside who keeps transmitting on my channel, all in a panic because he thinks—well, never mind. What can I do for you?”

  Lewis set the half-eaten pie down on Cullender’s desk blotter. “Would you mind very much scanning this for toxins?”

  Cullender blinked in surprise at it. He switched off the ring holo, removed it, and came around the screen to unwrap the handkerchief.

  “Gooseberry,” he observed. “Looks all right to me.”

  “Well, but when I take a bite of it, I get this Red Alert telling me it’s toxic,” said Lewis, holding his fingers up at eye level and making jerky little stabs at the air to signify flashing lights. Cullender frowned, perplexed. He took off his wig, draped it over a corner of the screen, and scratched his scalp.

  “You ran a self-diagnostic, I suppose?”

  “I certainly did. I appear to be fit as a fiddle.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “From the cook of a certain collector of rare documents,” said Lewis, lowering his voice.

  “Oh! Oh! The, er, Shakespeare correspondence?” Cullender looked at the pie with new respect. He turned it over carefully, as though expecting to find the front page of Loves Labours Wonne stuck there.

  “I’ve already peeled the parchment off,” said Lewis. “But I did wonder, you know, whether some sort of chemical interaction with old parchment, or the ink perhaps…?”

  “To be sure.” Cullender took hold of the pie with both hands and held it up. He stared at it intently. His eyes seemed to go out of focus, and in a flat voice he began rattling off a chemical analysis of ingredients.

  “No; nothing unusual,” he said in a perfectly normal voice, when he had done. He took a bite of the pie and chewed thoughtfully. “Delicious.”

  “Any flashing red letters?”

  “Nary a one. Half a minute—I’ve thought of something.” Cullender went to a shelf and took down what appeared to be a small Majolica ware saucer. He held it out to Lewis. “Spit, there’s a good fellow.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just hoick up a good one. Don’t be shy. It’s the latest thing in noninvasive personnel chemistry diagnostics.”

  “But I’ve already run a diagnostic,” said Lewis in tones of mild exasperation, and spat anyway.

  “Well, but, you see, this gives us a different profile,” said Cullender, studying the saucer as he swirled its contents to and fro. “Yes…yes, I thought as much. Ah ha! Perfectly clear now.”

  “Would you care to enlighten me?”

  “It’s nothing over which you need be concerned. Merely a crypto-allergy,” said Cullender, as he stepped into a back cubicle and rinsed off the dish.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Had you lived your life as a mortal man, you’d have been allergic to gooseberries,” said Cullender, returning to his desk. “But, when we underwent the process that made us cyborgs, our organic systems were given the ability to neutralize allergens. Nonetheless, sometimes a little glitch in the software reads the allergen as an active toxin—sends you a warning, when in fact you have nothing to fear from the allergen at all—a mere false alarm. Don’t let it trouble you, my friend!”

  “But I’ve eaten gooseberries plenty of times,” said Lewis.

  “You may have become sensitized,” said Cullender. “Had a mortal acquaintance once became allergic to asparagus at the age of forty. One day he’s happily wolfing it down with mayonnaise—next day he’s covered in hives the size of half crowns at the mere smell of the stuff.”

  “Yes, but I’m a cyborg,” said Lewis, with a certain amount of irritation.

  “Well—a minor error in programming, perhaps,” said Cullender. “Who knows why these things happen, eh? Could be sunspots.”

  “There haven’t been any,” said Lewis.

  “Ah. True. Well, been in for an upgrade recently?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you ought, the
n,” said Cullender. “And in the meanwhile, just avoid gooseberries! You’ll be fine.”

  “Very well,” said Lewis stiffly, tucking his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Good day.”

  He turned and left the Repairs office. Behind him, Cullender surreptitiously picked up the rest of the pie and crammed it into his mouth.

  Lewis proceeded down the hall to the cloakroom, where he claimed a change of clothes and continued to the showers. He bathed, attired himself in a natty ensemble and neat powdered wig that made him indistinguishable from any respectable young clerk in the better offices in London, and went back to the cloakroom to turn in his peddler’s outfit. The pack went with it, save for the folder containing the Shakespeare notes.

  “Literature Preservation Specialist Grade Three Lewis,” said the cloak warden meditatively. “Your case officer’s expecting you, you know. Upstairs.”

  “Ah! I could just do with a cup of coffee,” said Lewis. He tucked the folder under his arm, set his tricorn on his head at a rakish angle, and went off down the hall to climb another flight of stairs.

  Having reached the top, and having passed through no less than three hidden panels, he stepped out into the Thames Street coffee room that sat above the London HQ of Dr. Zeus Incorporated.

  The coffee room, in its décor, reflected the Enlightenment: rather than being dark-paneled, low-beamed, and full of jostling sheep farmers clutching leathern jacks of ale, it was high-ceilinged and spacious, with wainscoting painted white, great windows admitting the (admittedly somewhat compromised) light and air of a London afternoon, and full of clerks, politicians, and poets chatting over coffee served in porcelain cups imported from China.

  Lewis threaded his way between the tables, smiling and nodding. He heard chatter of Gainsborough’s latest painting, and the disquiet in the American colonies. Three periwigged gentlemen in tailored silk of pastel Easter egg colors discussed Goethe’s latest. Two red-faced, jolly-looking elders pondered the fall of the Jesuits. A tableful of grim men in snuff-colored broadcloth debated the fortunes of the British East India Company. Someone else, in a bottle-green waistcoat, was declaring that Mesmer was a fraud. And, over in a secluded nook, a gentleman of saturnine countenance was watching the room, his features set in an expression compounded of equal parts disdain and boredom.