Not Less Than Gods (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “I think I can play an idiot, sir.”

  “I’m certain you can,” said Greene. “And if you others feel unequal to the task, I recommend you take a walk through some of the more fashionable districts of this great city and observe the Well-Bred Imbecile promenading in his natural habitat.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove, in subdued voices, and Hobson added: “Where are we to go, sir?”

  “You will begin with the Holy Land,” said Greene. “As for the other places on your itinerary, you are not to know them in advance. You will be informed when and as necessary. Mr. Ludbridge, you are in command; Mr. Hobson is Dispatch Officer; Mr. Pengrove, you will serve as the mission’s photographic portraitist, providing us with views of certain locations. Mr. Bell-Fairfax, you are Mr. Ludbridge’s second-in-command. Have you any questions?”

  “I assume I’m to see Parker for funds and whatnot,” said Ludbridge.

  “You are. The usual arrangements have been made. You’ll leave on the thirtieth.”

  “Right.” Ludbridge got to his feet. “By your leave, then, Greene, I’ll just take my young gentlemen for a walk in Mayfair. Come along, chaps.”

  Mr. William Jenkins operated a profitable tour service, conveying hundreds of pious Britons each year to Jerusalem and other sites of interest. The tour he was presently engaged in conducting had become a source of some discomfort to him, however. The fault lay not in the Bible students and devout pensioners who made up his list of tourists; rather in the indiscretion of the owners of the packet steamer, who (in addition to providing service for Mr. Jenkins’s tour) had booked a number of more secularly minded passengers as well, who were displaying unbecoming attitudes of irreverence.

  Most notorious among these were four gentlemen who shared a cabin aft. They drank a good deal, wandered the decks and attempted to engage in inappropriate conversation with females, were rebuffed, blustered, were loudly and publicly seasick, monopolized a corner of the saloon and grew riotous at whist there, stuck out their legs to trip elderly gentlemen who passed their table, complained about the fare, smoked cigars in the presence of ladies, told jokes of the most infantile and scatological nature and laughed uproariously, annoyed the steward, and in general made themselves damned nuisances—though of course Mr. Jenkins phrased it in a less offensive manner when he complained to the ship’s officers, which he soon did on a daily basis.

  In addition to their behavior, the quartet was visually irritating as well. One was an older gentleman, who might have preserved a certain leonine dignity had he ever been sober, but as it was his scarlet nose was the warning beacon that lit his entrance to the saloon, and advised decent passengers to gather up their knitting, Scripture commentaries or travel guides and make a hasty departure before his three students, or nephews, or whatever they might be, followed in his train.

  One was a grotesquely dwarfish and whiskered individual who nevertheless managed to fit no less than five different checked patterns into his attire—trousers, waistcoat, jacket, tie, and hatband—while what could be seen of his shirtfront was a jarring lime-green. Another was as markedly tall as his companion was squat, an immense youth who made matters worse with a beaver hat that added some fourteen inches to his stature, and who was forever striking his head against beams and falling down, prompting hilarity in his friends. The third was a shrill and lisping specimen of British manhood, foppishly dressed despite his manifest lack of any feature that might be deemed pleasing or, indeed, symmetrical. He wore a ridiculous straw hat and monocle, the latter of which he dropped into his tea regularly, at which his companions roared with laughter.

  It was with profound gratitude that Mr. Jenkins watched them stagger ashore at Beirut, where they vanished with their considerable baggage into a crowd of mendicants screaming for baksheesh. He very nearly forgot them over the journey across Galilee, through Nazareth, through Jerusalem, as his tourists exclaimed over the ancient villages, the camels, the palm trees, the very stones that might have known the Savior’s tread (though it must be admitted some complained about the heat and the curious smell compounded of dust, donkeys and vinegar). How horrified Mr. Jenkins was, then, to spot the four oafs from the steamer in the throng at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem!

  His own genteel tourists were scandalized to observe that the fop had set up amateur photographic equipment and was profaning the sacred premises with impromptu portraits of his friends, grinning beside the Door of Humility. Much incensed, Mr. Jenkins shepherded his tourists within, where they knelt in prayer, breathing in clouds of frankincense and myrrh from the pierced silver censers that hung above the grotto. For a moment all was peaceful contemplation.

  Alas, the fop and his companions followed them in, and while it was evident they were making some attempt at silence and discretion, they nevertheless erupted in snorting guffaws at the efforts of the very tall individual to walk through the Door of Humility. At last he had to get down on his hands and knees and crawl through. The four offending gentlemen lined up together at the back of the nave, and for a while seemed awed by the holy spot. At last, however, Mr. Jenkins overheard the unmistakable pop of a cork being removed from a flask, and a hoarse whisper of “I say! Don’t you half expect Father Christmas to be lurking somewhere about?”

  This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as far as Miss Hutchings was concerned—she being the spinster daughter of a vicar who was guiding her ancient parent through the Holy Land that he might see its principal sights before he died, though his cataracts presented something of a challenge—and in fury she turned and began shouting for the authorities to evict the blasphemers.

  And here was where matters took a most regrettable turn. From the narthex ran a pair of monks of the Roman Catholic persuasion. From an alcove to one side of the chancel a pair of Eastern Orthodox monks came, no less swiftly. None of them seemed to understand plain English, for some reason, but Miss Hutchings was able to make her meaning clear with gestures, and in any case the guilty parties were in the very act of setting up their photographic equipment!

  The monks converged on them, uttering threats and warnings, but most unfortunately a Roman monk jostled an Eastern one. The offended party turned and shoved his fellow Christian, who promptly shoved back. He, in turn, had his beard pulled. Their co-religionists turned and attempted to part them, getting shoved themselves for their pains. One monk punched another; within seconds the fray had erupted into a full brawl, with candlesticks, silver censers and a prayer book grabbed from a tourist all conscripted as weapons.

  Representatives of the C. of E. present were much distressed, save for the four gentlemen whose trespass had brought about the fracas: the fop pointed his camera at the monks and removed the lens cap, while his friends hurriedly set up a tray with flash powder, and detonated it repeatedly to bathe the scene in glaring light. They were stopped, at last, by the arrival of the Ottoman police, who were much confused but decided the matter would be best resolved by ejecting all parties from the premises. Once outside, both Miss Hutchings and Mr. Jenkins did their best to explain the matter; and, since Mr. Jenkins knew a little Turkish, they did manage to get their meaning across sufficiently for the police sergeant, or whatever his rank might have been, to look about wrathfully for the four infidels in question.

  They, however, seemed to have vanished. Just arriving, unfortunately, was a party of tourists from the United States of America, grimvisaged young men in black and a clergyman of some kind, to judge from his shovel hat. These the police mistook for the errant Englishmen, and there was a great deal of shouting and a very many angry words before Mr. Jenkins was able to explain that the wrong parties had been arrested.

  “I do feel rotten about blaspheming in the Manger, all the same,” said Hobson. Bell-Fairfax nodded agreement. They were enjoying a late and somewhat impromptu supper in the room they had obtained at a caravanserai.

  “Nothing so blasphemous as the bloody monks throttling each other over who had precede
nce in their shrine,” said Ludbridge, deftly peeling a fig. “That’ll set it off, you know. The war.”

  “You’re joking,” said Bell-Fairfax. Ludbridge shook his head. “The Roman Catholics and the Eastern Christians will go to war?”

  “In the persons of their French and Russian protectors, respectively,” said Ludbridge. “Whole thing a shoving match between Louis-Napoléon and the Czar, of course. As I understand it. Elbowing each other for room at the Ottoman Empire’s deathbed.”

  “Then why are we involved?” demanded Bell-Fairfax.

  “Shoring up the Turks, evidently. It won’t do to ask too many questions, you know; best to attend to our business and let the wheels roll on above our heads—” Ludbridge was interrupted by Pengrove, who flung his door wide and entered their parlor in a haze of chemical fumes.

  “Here’s the pictures—turned out rather well—” He coughed explosively, doubling over. “Most of them, anyway—”

  “Ah.” Ludbridge took the sheaf of photographs from him. Of the two talbotypes, one was a reasonably clear study of Bell-Fairfax and Hobson lounging on either side of the Door of Humility. The other was a cloudy disaster in which only the columns of the church could be made out with any clarity; the indignant Scripture tour parties were so many semitransparent ghosts, and the battling monks were a faint blur of darkness. The photographs from Pengrove’s hat-camera, on the other hand, were remarkably clear and sharp: one monk’s frozen grimace as a fist impacted with his jaw, a rosary arrested in mid-lash as it sailed toward someone’s nose, another monk’s open mouth and rolled-back eyes testifying to the effect of the sandaled foot that had just caught him in a place monks might not be supposed to require very much but evidently needed to protect.

  “And it’s war,” said Ludbridge, with a sigh. He selected the best of the shots and tossed it at Hobson. “There you are; run that through the encoder, and then transmit it to London. You two pack the trunks. We’ll need to move on fairly quickly.”

  “Where are we going next?” Pengrove sat down and wiped his eyes with his pocket handkerchief.

  “That would be telling,” said Ludbridge, tucking the other photographs inside his coat. He reached for another fig.

  1850: Now at Length We’re Off for Turkey

  The water of the Bosporus was softly blue, the sky a blazing blue, and Hagia Sophia with its minarets sat like a resigned dowager under guard by four alert sentinels. Ludbridge watched as Pengrove, leaning on the rail, fumbled at his lapel and snapped off a shot.

  “Mind you don’t waste the exposures,” he muttered. “Greene bloody well knows what Constantinople looks like.”

  Their steamer threaded its way through the Sea of Marmara, passing a great many British merchant vessels at anchor in the Golden Horn. Pengrove captured their images too, in one shot showing masts like a winter forest, with Union Jacks fluttering limply. There was an interminable wait once they had got to anchor at Pera, with minor officials who needed to come aboard and accept bribes before anyone could be allowed to go ashore. Then there were porters to be hired before, at last, they might set off through the streets toward their hotel. All their trunks were carried by brawny Turkish hamals, save for the Aetheric Transmitter, which Hobson hugged to his chest as they trudged along.

  He stumbled and nearly fell repeatedly, unable to tear his gaze away from the street scene. There were veiled women in richly colored robes; there were picturesque ruins, and fountains, and green gardens, and jackals wandering in the very marketplaces. Pengrove somehow or other purchased three melons without quite meaning to, and then had to buy a raffia bag in which to carry them. After that they were pursued by street vendors waving every other item imaginable, and by the time they were climbing the steep street to their hotel Pengrove was weighted down also with a brass coffee service, four strings of beads and brass bells, a pair of slippers the wrong size and a heavy ceramic object of dubious utility. Bell-Fairfax, who had been in Constantinople before, proved better able to resist the bargain rate splendors of the Orient but consented to carry the ceramic object for Pengrove, who was nearly in tears.

  “Here we are,” said Ludbridge in satisfaction. They peered up at their hotel. Just beyond it they saw several flags of Imperial Russia, displayed on window standards. “Next door to the Russian Embassy. Remarkable coincidence, what?”

  They were given a long echoing room, innocent of much furniture but with a splendid view of the embassy next door. The hamals set down the luggage, and as Ludbridge paid them he addressed one in Turkish. The other said something in reply, bowing; they departed.

  “How shall I ship all this home?” said Pengrove, setting down his raffia bag. It fell over and a melon rolled out.

  “No idea,” said Hobson, flinging himself down on one of the narrow beds. “Just like the dormitory at school, what?”

  “Busy yourselves,” said Ludbridge. “On your feet, Hobson, and tune the transmitter.”

  “But it’s only—” Hobson fumbled for his watch. “Only half past two. We’re not scheduled to call in until six o’clock.”

  “And you don’t want to waste the first ten minutes tuning in,” said Ludbridge. “You’ll need to be ready at six, not quarter past six. Tune it in and then close it up again.”

  “But, see here, aren’t we to have the chance to see the sights a bit first?” said Pengrove. “I mean, gilded glories of old Byzantium, what? Dusky beauties smiling through the latticework of hareems? Voluptuous charmers offering their delights in the marketplace, and all that?”

  Bell-Fairfax looked up from where he was methodically unpacking. “There’s a very good house in Stamboul,” he said seriously. “Quite clean, and they provide you with coffee and pastries downstairs. You will need to be quite specific about wanting a woman, however, or they’ll bring out their boys as well. Oh! Someone’s outside in the corridor.” And, indeed, a second later came a discreet knock. Ludbridge opened the door to reveal a lean elderly dragoman, clean-shaven, wearing a coat and trousers in the Western manner, though he also wore a fez. He bowed to Ludbridge.

  “What becomes of illusions?” said Ludbridge.

  “We dispel them,” said the other.

  “And we are everywhere,” responded Ludbridge.

  “Indeed! Zosimos Polemis, at your service.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Ludbridge waved him in and shut the door after him. “My associates: Mr. Bell-Fairfax, Mr. Hobson, Mr. Pengrove. Gentlemen, this is one of the Magi; what you might call the Society’s Oriental Branch members. Our liaison. I must commend you on your arrangements for our room, Mr. Polemis! Quite the view.”

  “I thought perhaps you would appreciate it,” said Polemis dryly, with a smile. He walked across to the window and looked out at the Russian Embassy. “Yes. If I may point out the window of interest—” Ludbridge followed him and looked across. “That one, on the floor below, ought to reward closer attention.”

  “Duly noted,” said Ludbridge.

  “I trust you will be discreet.” Polemis stepped away from the window.

  “Of course, my dear fellow.”

  “Let me see, let me see . . . The table d’hôte in this establishment is very good; the present chef is French, and has an excellent reputation among the Europeans here. There is also a coffee house nearby, frequented by our members. The hotel’s laundress is more than competent. If you wish to see something of the city, I can arrange for a reliable guide. Do you require servants?”

  “I think not, thank you,” said Ludbridge. “We’re accustomed to blacking our own boots.”

  “You’re quite sure? Our people have second-level security clearance.”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Then I may dispense with further preliminaries and advise you that a certain gentleman was receptive to our offer, and wishes to meet you.”

  “Excellent!” Ludbridge rubbed his hands together. “We are entirely at his disposal. Would this evening be convenient?”

  “I will inquire.” Mr. Polemis
bowed. “Anything further?”

  There was not; and so Mr. Polemis took his leave, and left them to finish unpacking.

  They dined satisfactorily, though the room was somewhat crowded with a miscellany of Europeans: a party of gesturing Neapolitans, two Prussian businessmen who bolted their food and then spoke a great while over a great many cigarettes, a large French family with servants, three Bulgarians who were displeased with their meal, an Aragonese nobleman who sipped his coffee and spoke to no one save the waiter, and many others. All of them glanced over in disapproval, at various times, at the four badly behaved Englishmen who flicked knobs of butter at one another with their napkins and, when that palled, tossed rolls back and forth, as well as the occasional chicken bone.

  “Don’t light the lamps just yet,” said Ludbridge, as they reentered their room.

  “Whyever not?” Pengrove shrugged out of his dinner jacket. “I say, Bell-Fairfax, the laundress is going to have the devil of a time getting these grease stains out. You might have spared my best tie.”

  “Sorry,” said Bell-Fairfax. Ludbridge, meanwhile, walked to his trunk. It was a large and elaborate one, of the sort that opened to reveal a cabinet with drawers. He opened it now and, squatting down before it, felt carefully about until he found a hidden catch. A hidden compartment slid out between the third and fourth drawers.

  “Here we are . . .” Ludbridge reached into the compartment and withdrew what looked at first, in the darkness, like a crucifix. He carried it across the room and by the faint light from the window they could see that it was, in fact, a very small crossbow. “Come here, Bell-Fairfax.”

  “Yes, sir.” When Bell-Fairfax reached him, in three long strides, Ludbridge handed him the crossbow and, taking care to make no sound, opened the window. Stepping back, he murmured:

  “Just below us. Second window back. Look at it. D’you think you can put a bolt in the outer frame of the casement?”