Not Less Than Gods (Company)

by Kage Baker

  Pengrove risked another glance at Bell-Fairfax. His eyes, pale as a winter morning sky, shone with earnest good will. The coaxing warmth of his voice summoned a host of memories. Pengrove found himself overcome with nostalgic longing for times past, when he had been a younger, happier man in a happy band of brothers. Constantinople, where he and Bell-Fairfax had played the fools so convincingly. Good old Ludbridge! Good old Hobson! . . . Ludbridge, lying in the street looking up at the cold stars. Hobson, slumped over a table with a bullet in his brain.

  Pengrove shuddered and looked away, out through the brass frame of the porthole, at the stars.

  “I’m gratified, but anyone might have plotted this for you. It’s simply a matter of bringing you down in a park, rather than on someone’s roof or in the Neva,” he said.

  “All the same.” Bell-Fairfax smiled.

  “And you’re quite clear about your exit route?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “You can hardly expect help from the Kabinet on this one, you know. They may detest the fellow, but killing their own czar is a bit much to ask them to accept.”

  “They’ll be grateful, whatever they may say,” said Bell-Fairfax, lighting a cigar. “Their man will take the throne at last. In any case, the war has dragged on long enough. Sure you wouldn’t like to come along?”

  Good God, thought Pengrove, is the man lonely? He held up his hand in refusal. “Too much blood, old chap. I can’t quite reconcile our high purpose with the number of murders it seems to require.”

  “Necessary removals,” Bell-Fairfax corrected him. “Someone must take the responsibility for them, Pengrove.”

  “And you seem to be quite equal to the task,” said Pengrove, with a melancholy chuckle. “Quite the perfect soldier. Is this really the life you wanted, though, when you joined the Society? You were quite the idealist then. I know I envisioned a great deal more . . . philanthropy, you know. Clothing and feeding the poor. Tossing them loaves and fishes from the gondola of a flying machine. Educating them. That sort of thing, all made easier with our glorious technologia.”

  For the first time, a shadow of regret crossed Bell-Fairfax’s face. “I should have preferred to serve my fellow creatures in such a manner, yes. But our duties are not always pleasant ones, are they? And I must do what is required of me.”

  “All the same, did you imagine for a moment that the path to the great day would be strewn with quite so many corpses?”

  “I ought to have expected it,” said Bell-Fairfax quietly. “I seem to be fated to the work.”

  Pengrove shook his head. “And then there’s the question of whether we can do any real good after all. All that intelligence we gathered, wasted!”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Oh, no? I was with Greene when we got the news about the Light Brigade. You should have seen his poor face. When I think of the hours we spent in that valley, mapping everything! How could they have got it wrong?”

  “The finest intelligence in the world is useless if the general won’t study it,” said Bell-Fairfax, with a shrug. “I’m inclined to believe that direct intervention, as it were, is much more effective.”

  “Your present job, for example?”

  “If you like.”

  “Well, there’s no denying you’re effective. You’re getting quite a reputation amongst the Residentials, you know. That incident on the Pacific front last year, when Commodore Price so unaccountably shot himself . . . there’s a rumor that was your work. It wouldn’t have been, would it?”

  “I am not at liberty to say,” Bell-Fairfax replied. “But I can tell you he had accepted money from the Golden Circle, and deserved his miserable end.”

  “Golden Circle? Oh, the filibusters,” said Pengrove, shaking his head. “I understood they’d shifted their interests to the Ca rib be an now.”

  “That may be the case,” said Bell-Fairfax, with an opaque look. He exhaled smoke. Both men looked up as Dr. Nennys entered the saloon.

  “We’re at the coordinates, Bell-Fairfax.”

  Bell-Fairfax stood and stubbed out his cigar. “Ready, sir.” He turned and extended a hand to Pengrove. “Enjoy the flight, Pengrove. Wish me luck?”

  Pengrove shook his hand. “Best of luck, old chap.”

  “God and Saint George!” Bell-Fairfax turned and strode from the saloon, followed out by Dr. Nennys. Dr. Nennys was wearing a cloak, and the freezing blast of wind from the flight platform swirled it in theatrical flourishes.

  Pengrove shivered, turning up his collar. He didn’t care for Dr. Nennys. Pengrove knew a bully when he saw one. The perpetual smug smile, the patronizing attitude masking the cad underneath . . .

  And he had heard a few rumors about the man lately, ugly, absurd stories that couldn’t possibly be true but were chilling nonetheless. Dr. Nennys had been a member at Redking’s for well over a century. Dr. Nennys never lost a duel, and always killed his opponent. Dr. Nennys had made a pact with Satan . . .

  Pengrove shook his head. Fairy stories! We live in the modern age, after all, he thought.

  The drone of the airship’s engine was loud in the flight platform’s cabin; both men had to raise their voices when they spoke.

  “You have no qualms, my boy?” Dr. Nennys inquired, watching as Bell-Fairfax strapped on the latest version of the Ice Rifle.

  “None, sir.” Bell-Fairfax pulled on his goggles. “I need hardly tell you what a proud man you have made your old headmaster,” said Dr. Nennys. Bell-Fairfax smiled.

  “Thank you, sir!” He saluted and, turning, stepped through the door onto the flight platform. He raised his arms as the two waiting technicians stepped forward with the harness. They fastened him in securely. Far below them, Dr. Nennys saw the grid of lights that was St. Petersburg, the bright diagonal of Nevsky Avenue, the dark winding serpent of the Neva.

  “We will retrieve you at the rendezvous point in forty-eight hours,” he called to Bell-Fairfax.

  “Until then, sir!” Bell-Fairfax grinned at him and turned back, signaling to the technicians. They pulled the levers; Bell-Fairfax leaned forward as the wings of the flying machine unfurled. He dropped from the platform into the night. A moment later the gusts picked him up and sent him on his calculated trajectory.

  Dr. Nennys stepped out on the platform, bracing himself against a strut to watch, and smiled as the thing he had made descended on black wings, over the habitations of men.