Not Less Than Gods (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “He says we are not permitted to land here, obviously,” said Mihalakis. “I told him you are foolish Britons who wish to go riding in the interior and are willing to pay. I told him if he is clever he will take your money now, because you will be disappointed when you get into the valley and see that there is nothing picturesque there. He refused anyway. I asked to speak with his superior and he said that would be the Russian governor.”

  A servant came to the door. The official pointed at them and spoke loudly. The servant vanished back inside.

  “I don’t suppose we can get them to rent us some horses, then?” said Ludbridge.

  “I’m not sure this is the sort of place that has horses,” said Pengrove, clutching the tripod.

  “Even if this fails, I may be able to suggest—,” Mihalakis was saying, when the governor himself emerged, looking harried. From the open door could be heard the ceaseless crying of a baby. The official saluted and shouted something. The governor turned to stare at them.

  “Come with me, Bell-Fairfax,” said Ludbridge, and started purposefully up the shore toward the governor. Mihalakis went with them. The governor began shouting back at the official, a heated declaration that resolved into “Nyet, nyet, nyet, nyet, NYET—”

  “D’you speak French, Bell-Fairfax?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Ludbridge addressed the governor. “Mon cher monsieur, parlez-vous Français?”

  “Shto? Oui,” said the governor, narrowing his eyes. He was just drawing breath for another bout of nyeting when Ludbridge said to Bell-Fairfax:

  “Talk to him. Persuade him to let us land and rent horses. All we want is a jolly little picnic.”

  “What?”

  “That’s an order, son.”

  Bell-Fairfax went a bit pale, but he stepped forward, doffed his hat and spoke to the governor in French. Ludbridge watched the governor’s face first; the Russian listened, scowling, openmouthed, yet gradually the anger died from his eyes. Ludbridge glanced at Bell-Fairfax, and nearly dropped his own hat, for the change in Bell-Fairfax’s countenance shook him to the soul. The normally plain and horse like features had somehow become handsome, charmingly handsome without altering a line, no wonder the chap’s a seducer! The pale eyes shone with earnestness and good humor. Bell-Fairfax seemed to be letting the governor in on a private joke he knew would delight him. His voice was smooth, encouraging, warm, as comradely as though he’d known the man for years. Ludbridge found himself desperately longing for a glass of Maraschino.

  Mihalakis had drawn back a pace, watching in disbelief. The governor, by now, was smiling and nodding. So was the official. Bell-Fairfax finished his entreaty and the governor replied at some length. He gave an order to the official, who turned and ran.

  “He says there are no horses for hire, but he will loan us his own mount and the carriage and pair from his stable,” Bell-Fairfax told Ludbridge, in a low voice. He turned back and continued exchanging pleasantries with the governor, as the official first brought forth a splendid bay gelding and then returned leading a pair of mares hitched to an open calèche. Mihalakis made the sign of the cross.

  There was a great deal of bowing and laughter and courteous talk, as Pengrove and Hobson loaded in the photography equipment and then scrambled wide-eyed into the calèche. Ludbridge joined them there, heaving himself onto the driver’s seat with an effort. Mihalakis climbed up beside him and took the reins. The governor, meanwhile, clapped Bell-Fairfax on the shoulder and presented him with the bay, saying something enthusiastic about it. Bell-Fairfax smiled, replaced his hat and tipped it to the governor, and swung up into the saddle. The governor, beaming at them, pointed inland and offered some final helpful remarks.

  “Let’s go,” said Bell-Fairfax to Ludbridge. The suave, assured mask had dropped; he looked a little frightened at what he’d just done.

  They rode along a track that led off inland, between the frowning stony sides of the gorge. Ludbridge, still wishing he had a glass of liqueur, watched Bell-Fairfax riding along beside them.

  “You sit a horse rather well, for a Navy chap,” he observed.

  “I was taught to ride as a boy,” said Bell-Fairfax.

  “Your people kept horses, did they?”

  “No.” Bell-Fairfax colored a little, looking down at the trail, and then lifted his head with a touch of defiance. “My headmaster saw to it I had lessons. Dr. Nennys said I showed promise, and ought to be trained to ride and fight.”

  “Nennys was your headmaster, was he?”

  “He was, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax. Urging the bay to a canter, he rode ahead, scouting out the track. Ludbridge mulled that over. So the boy was groomed for a Residential from the start. Never knew Nennys was a headmaster. He’d never cared for Nennys, with his perpetual smirk and superior air. Nennys seemed like the last person who might take upon himself the tedious business of running a school; from a couple of remarks he’d made at the club, he’d given the impression that he disliked children. Hardly a man to act in loco parentis . . .

  And there had been some absurd scene at the club once, hadn’t there? Some old harridan accosting Nennys practically at the club’s door, screaming that he was her husband who’d deserted her? Half the club had come to the windows to stare, and of course it had been ridiculous because the woman must have been eighty if she was a day. They’d had to send out a pair of porters to hustle her away at last. Nennys had laughed about his infernal charm and someone else had joked that he might be the culprit after all; he was damned well preserved for a man in his forties. And it was only much later in the evening that two or three fellows deep in after-dinner brandy had debated, in Ludbridge’s hearing, on whether Nennys were forty or fifty, or in fact (as one befuddled member insisted) nearer to seventy, because he’d been a member at least as long as old Hamley, who had died over last Christmas, hadn’t he? . . .

  Ludbridge roused himself from frankly absurd speculation and looked about him as they emerged from the defile. He saw a wide valley crossed by a causewayed road, east to west, and on the far side steep bluffs rising to the north and west. Nothing on the floor of the valley but vineyards, a few small orchards and a stone farmhouse or two. It all looked rather dry and hardscrabble, and distinctly unimpressive.

  “Don’t see any fortifications,” said Hobson.

  “What’s Greene thinking?” said Pengrove. “What use will photographs of this be?”

  “It isn’t our place to ask,” said Bell-Fairfax, as he rode alongside them again. “There’s a spot off here to the left that will do for a picnic, however.”

  They drove across and stopped, and opened the basket. The Heron’s cook had put together sandwiches, or something very like them, the round flat bread of the Turks cut open and filled with slices of cold lamb; there were olives and pickles, and baklava, and a canister containing ice within which nestled a bottle of champagne. They ate in the calèche, and Bell-Fairfax in the saddle, contemplating the quiet valley.

  “I suppose it could be important, you know,” said Pengrove at last, through a full mouth. “I suppose that road leads to Sebastopol. Suppose you landed an army back there in the mud, and marched it out here and down to the road?”

  “Bravo, son. Suppose you did?” said Ludbridge, turning back to look at him. “Beginning to think that Greene might know what he’s doing, after all?”

  “If anyone was trying to stop an army marching along the road, that would be the place to put guns,” said Bell-Fairfax, pointing with his champagne glass at the bluffs to the north.

  “I shouldn’t care to be on that road if they did,” said Ludbridge. Mihalakis shifted uneasily in his seat.

  “Is your Mr. Greene attempting to prevent some calamity of which he has been warned?” he inquired.

  “He might be,” said Ludbridge.

  “His efforts are commendable, but must fail,” said Mihalakis, shaking his head. “We have attempted it ourselves, many times. When we received the Informant’s warnings about
Alexandria. When Byzantium itself fell! All our efforts to preserve it went for nothing, when the hour arrived. I think the Turks are right and our fates are immutable, whatever we may do.”

  “One wonders, sometimes, whether the Informant mightn’t be a bit more informative,” Ludbridge admitted. “But he isn’t, and so we soldier on. Come along, chaps; pack up the basket and get the camera out.”

  And for the rest of that day they wandered up and down that valley, taking pictures and measuring distances according to a list Ludbridge had, of information Greene had particularly asked for. The causeway to the right, and the bluffs to the left, were carefully photographed, in a series of images that could be assembled later into a panorama; so were some low bluffs at the eastern end of the valley. Bell-Fairfax rode at full gallop the whole length, paralleling the road, while Ludbridge timed him on his watch and noted it down, and then rode back at a canter. The bluffs to the west were throwing long shadows when they gave it up and rode back to Balaklava at last, somewhat bewildered by the exactitude of Greene’s requirements and wondering whether any of it would ever matter.

  The official ran out to meet them when they came back, all good fellowship gone. He watched suspiciously as they climbed down, and grabbed the reins of the mares from Mihalakis. He demanded something, money presumably, and Mihalakis paid him. They roused the boatman, who had stretched out and gone to sleep in the boat, and returned to the Heron.

  As they went steaming back out to the open sea, they noted a Russian naval patrol boat standing off, who signaled for them to lay to immediately. The Heron’s captain shouted orders into a speaking-tube, and a moment later Ludbridge heard a series of muffled thumps below, as of rolltop panels sliding down; he assumed they must be concealing the turbine and other machinery.

  The Heron lay by obligingly, and when presently the Russian lieutenant came aboard, he found one very agitated Greek tour guide and a party of drunken Englishmen. They giggled foolishly as the Russian questioned the Greek, who explained that he had, yes, taken the Englishmen into Sebastopol on the previous day, and he wished to apologize profusely if they had behaved badly, but they drank like pigs and, really, what could he do?

  The Russian demanded to know whether they had or had not taken a number of photographs of the fortifications at Sebastopol. Sheepishly, the Englishmen confessed that they had.

  The Russian lieutenant then demanded to see the pictures. A weak-looking little fellow, clearly drunk as an owl, stepped forward and proffered a handful of damp negative prints. The lieutenant examined them cursorily and, on seeing that they amounted to nothing more than some landscape studies, ordered the Englishman to produce the images that had been taken the previous day at Sebastopol. When this had been translated for the Englishman, he staggered to a valise and pulled out another sheaf of talbotype negatives, which when examined did indeed contain several shots of the defenses at Sebastopol, before which the other Englishmen had seen fit to make fools of themselves in a variety of undignified poses.

  The lieutenant, very stern indeed, informed them that he was confiscating the talbotypes immediately. The Englishman burst into tears, saying he was very sorry and they had only been having a bit of fun, what? The Greek dragoman had a fit of hysterics, denouncing the Britons and begging the lieutenant to arrest them, if he liked, but please not to confiscate his tour vessel.

  Thoroughly repelled by all this pandemonium, the Russian lieutenant departed with the talbotypes and returned to his own vessel. He turned the pictures over to his superiors and made his report.

  His superiors read it through and shook their heads in disgust at such clear evidence of rampant degeneracy among English youth. One of them found the picture of Bell-Fairfax trying to pull Hobson’s head out of the cannon rather funny, however. He had a print made from the negative, and tacked it up on the wall of his office. He took it with him when he retired, and eventually it ended up tacked to a rafter in the attic of his dacha in Yalta. There it remained until 1919, when the sound of gunfire shook it loose and it drifted down, indistinguishable from a dead leaf, and was swept out with the other debris on the floor when the new owners came . . .

  “I thought the blubbing was a nice touch, don’t you?” Pengrove said brightly, watching the patrol boat depart. “Lent it a certain verisimilitude. The chap looked as though he wanted to kick me, and the only thing that was stopping him was fearing he’d have to clean me off his shoes.”

  “And now perhaps there’ll be an end to complaints about carrying the bloody equipment around,” said Ludbridge, looking sour. “Hobson, you’ll transmit the real photographs tonight. Damn! I had hoped we might sneak inland and get some shots of Sebastopol from the rear, but it ain’t likely now.”

  “In fact, that might still be arranged,” said Mihalakis, with a smile. “Perhaps you have noticed the large basket lashed down on the rear deck?”

  A black wind buffeted the balloon’s gondola, whining in the cables and causing the whole affair to creak alarmingly. Ludbridge looked over the side and wished he hadn’t; the Heron far below looked like a toy, the whipping tether and hydrogen gas line seeming ridiculously inadequate to hold the balloon secure above it. And I’ve got the easy job, he thought.

  “But how in God’s name do you propose to steer a kite without string?” Pengrove’s terrified shriek cut through the noise of the wind. He presented an even more bizarre spectacle than was his customary wont, wearing infrared goggles with a scarf bound over his hat and tied under his chin to keep the camera firmly in place.

  “It is not a kite,” said Mihalakis soothingly. “It is a flying machine. The Magi have employed them successfully many, many times.”

  “Gentlemen, the wind is rising,” said Bell-Fairfax, turning his goggled face.

  “Yes. Nearly ready now,” said Mihalakis, climbing into the wicker framework. Above him, the great black wings fought the gusts and tried to lift away, even folded as they were. “Mr. Pengrove, please take your seat.”

  Pengrove managed to get his safety line unfastened, but there his mortal form balked and refused to obey him further. He clung to the side of the gondola, staring helplessly at the sort of wickerwork bosun’s chair fastened immediately behind Mihalakis’s harness, and the black void beyond it. “I—chaps, I—”

  Ludbridge turned his face toward Bell-Fairfax and nodded. Bell-Fairfax stooped and picked up Pengrove bodily. “Come on, old man,” he said, not unkindly, and thrust Pengrove over the side and into the seat. Pengrove came to life, with a galvanic clutching spasm, catching at the harness and buckling it extraordinarily swiftly.

  “Very good!” shouted Mihalakis. The goggles rendered his eyes expressionless, but his grin was wide and manic. “The levers, gentlemen!”

  Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax reached out, one to either wing, and with all their strength hauled on the levers. The wings sprang outward, unfolding with the mechanical rigor of an immense umbrella. Instantly they caught the wind, with a thunderous crack. Mihalakis leaned forward, bracing his heels against the gondola, and yanked the release pin.

  The wind shot them upward and out of sight immediately, against Ludbridge’s expectations. He heard Pengrove’s terrified yell growing fainter as the wings ascended. Clutching his safety line, Ludbridge leaned out as far as he dared and peered upward, trying to spot them. Even with his goggles adjusted to infrared, he peered in vain for any trace of them, and for a moment his heart sank.

  “There they are!” cried Bell-Fairfax, from the other side of the gondola, and a moment later Ludbridge saw the flying machine circling around from behind the balloon. Mihalakis had clearly gained control of it now. He brought it down in a long swoop, past the gondola, and Ludbridge saw a gauntleted hand raised in salute. He heard another piercing scream as the wings swung around and bore them off in the direction of the Crimean mainland; Pengrove was alive and well, clearly.

  Another blast of wind rocked the gondola. Ludbridge saw whitecaps far below, and the Heron laboring on the swell. He groaned a
nd withdrew into the depths of the basket, pulling out his flask as he did so. After a fortifying gulp he handed the flask to Bell-Fairfax and looked up into the billowing envelope of hydrogen that was all that kept them from a shattering plunge into icy waves. It was black, as the wings were black, for nocturnal operations. He felt rather as though he were looking up Death’s robe.

  “Are you unwell, sir?” Bell-Fairfax crouched beside him and handed back the flask.

  “Simply getting too old for this sort of thing, I expect,” said Ludbridge.

  “I’m sure they’ll be all right,” said Bell-Fairfax, standing again to regard the night into which Mihalakis and Pengrove had vanished. “By Jove, don’t I envy Pengrove! Do you suppose we’ll ever get flying machines for the Society?”

  “That sort? I expect so,” said Ludbridge, having another drink. He put the flask away. “There’s generally some exchange of useful information when we do business with the Magi.”

  “Are there other branches of the Society?”

  “Oh, yes; there’s a branch in the north, and another in the far east, for example. Group of Chinese calling themselves the Brothers of Liu Xin. I’m told that was one of the few successes to come out of Macartney negotiating over there back last century, you know; one of our chaps recognized a certain symbol one of their chaps had embroidered on his robe. Something similar happened in India. Lot of branch offices got cut off and isolated during the Dark Ages, and we’re only just finding one another again. Swapping research and inventions.

  “I expect the process will speed up no end now we’re in the modern age. That’s where the railway and the telegraph will really come in useful.”

  “What a wonderful idea,” said Bell-Fairfax, looking up at the stars. “The great minds of the world all working together in one common cause. What can stop us now?”

  “Anything,” said Ludbridge. “Politicians. Money. All sorts of things. Same struggle it’s always been, my boy. We fight on, all the same. This fool war of Louis-Napoléon’s will be fought and over with in a few months, I’d imagine; but our war never ends.”