by Kage Baker
In his arms, Helen whuffed feebly and turned her blind face. Hearst glanced over to see Joseph peering through a high window, gesturing urgently. Hearst rose, set the dog in her basket, and got the hooked pole that opened the transom. A second later Joseph was standing beside him, panting. “Hi, Mr. Hearst,” he said. He glanced at the holo footage and grimaced.
“This is the most horrible tragedy,” said Hearst unnecessarily. “Wasn’t there anything the Company could have done?”
Joseph gave a bitter laugh. “To prevent it? No. They knew, we’ve all known from the beginning of time, what would happen to Mars Two. Look, I was feeling like getting bombed myself and wondered if you might like to join me.” He opened his coat to reveal a box of chocolates, slightly battered from his climb up the wall but with its sta-seal unbroken. “Quintilius has quite a stash hidden away, did you know?”
Hearst stared at the box. “‘Ratlin’s Finest Assortment,’” he read aloud in a lifeless voice. “I don’t usually partake of Theobromos, but—oh, heck, let’s sit down.”
They collapsed into armchairs and Joseph tore the box open. Hearst looked up at the holo footage again. “That damned arms smuggler,” he said. “Tell me something, if you know: will he ever be brought to justice? Is there anything we can do to hunt him down, using the Company’s knowledge?”
Joseph shuddered and grabbed up a handful of chocolates. He crammed them into his mouth, not even bothering to pick them out of their little frilly paper cups. “Uh-uh,” he said, chewing. “Know why? You’re really going to feel like some Theobromos now: the Company set up the whole disaster. It was going to happen anyway, so why not arrange it so Dr. Zeus came out ahead, right? That shuttle in the background is a Company time shuttle, though there’s not enough of it visible in the footage to tip anybody off.
“And the bastard who delivered the bomb? Not even a human being. Company black project. They were experimenting with creating a New Enforcer. They made another goddam Recombinant, can you believe that? Only this one doesn’t spread diseases. Just disasters.”
Hearst stared at him, horrified. After a moment he reached out a shaky hand and helped himself to three or four chocolate creams. “Oh, dear God,” he said. “That’s what’s so familiar about him. A New Enforcer? He doesn’t look quite human at that. He’s not… not related to us? Is he?”
Joseph looked at him sourly, still chewing as he popped two more truffles into his mouth. “That’d bother you, huh, being related to him? How’d you like it if he abducted your daughter?”
“I never had a daughter,” said Hearst in a distracted kind of way, and bit into a chocolate. “Though there was that granddaughter who got kidnapped. She wrote the nastiest book about me, too,” he added plaintively, groping through the chocolate box to secure his favorites, for Joseph had just taken another fistful.
“How’d you like it,” Joseph continued through a mouthful of rum nougat, “if your daughter got married to the Hangar Twelve Man? Huh?”
“I wouldn’t,” said Hearst, biting into another chocolate and slurping the liquid center. His eyes widened. “You don’t mean your daughter—!”
“Oh, yeah. Some swell son-in-law! The only consolation is, the big jackass was set up by the Company, too. He had no idea what’d happen when he smuggled arms to the MAC, apparently.” Joseph popped three nut clusters into his mouth in quick succession and crunched with violence. “Now he’s a fugitive from every kind of justice there is, and he’s taken her with him. Hey, do I care? They’re in love, so everything’s just peachy!”
“I’m so sorry for you,” murmured Hearst, thinking that this was far worse than a forgotten twentieth-century scandal. He wasn’t sure this didn’t beat Citizen Kane. He ate another chocolate and felt better. “But he’s not a real Enforcer, then, I take it.”
“Yes and no.” Joseph poked savagely through the box. “Where’d all these damn Brazil nuts come from? Nobody likes Brazil nuts. He’s a Recombinant, like I said, a design to replace the Enforcers. He was supposed to be easier to manipulate. He was, too. Did just what they wanted him to do at Mars Two.”
Hearst unwrapped a foil-covered bonbon, shaking his head. “Golly, that’s awful,” he said. He looked up at Joseph, very stern. “That just proves that our rebellion is long overdue. The Company is without a doubt the most evil and insidious conspiracy ever to wind its tentacles … uh … through the lives of decent, hard working Americans! And other people.”
“You said it, kiddo,” Joseph agreed, wadding some empty frilled cups into a little ball. He put it in his mouth and chewed slowly.
“It must be rooted out.” Hearst slammed his fist down on the table. “The more I learn about what they’ve done … those poor people on Mars … or the way they betrayed Budu, for example, one of the noblest creatures who ever lived … well, I just get so mad I could … could … you’re eating the paper.”
“It tastes nice,” said Joseph.
“We’re getting intoxicated,” Hearst realized.
“That was the point.”
“Oh. Well… I guess that’s what fellows do at a tragic time like this,” Hearst sighed. “I wish he’d come down too. We could have a council of war, brainstorm or something …”
“Budu doesn’t do Theobromos,” said Joseph, a little uncomfortably.
“He doesn’t?”
“Not a lot, no.”
“Oh.” Hearst drew back his hand from a chocolate-covered Brazil nut. “Superior self-control, of course. Well. Has he got any more orders for me? Anything I can do?”
“Uh … well, you know those air cargo freighters you’ve got?” Joseph shifted in his chair. “The big jobs you have your groceries and all those antiques flown in with? You’ve got, what, three of ‘em?”
“Three,” Hearst affirmed, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it.
“Can you buy four more? Without it looking funny to Quintilius?”
“Leave it to me,” Hearst said, making a sweeping motion with his hand. “Old ones need refitting and overhaul. Buy new ones to use while old ones are in the shop. There! And then I’ll have a fleet—”
SPECIAL REPORT! SPECIAL REPORT! SPESPESPECIAL REREREPORT!
The urgent voices chattered in midair, the holobeams lit again and thirty channels began broadcasting once more. Joseph groaned and put his head in his hands. Hearst glanced up, alert, as grave reporters introduced staring-numb survivors, or asked gentle stupid questions of weeping relatives. Then an interview from Earth, with a middle-aged woman: grim-faced Mary deWit, chairwoman of the Griffith Family Aarean Trust. It was followed by the scarlet light of the hellish Commerce Square footage.
“Oh, look at that editing,” Hearst exclaimed. “Didn’t that turn out well?”
“That’s probably just what the Company brass are saying right now,” Joseph snarled. Hearst looked horrified, and then his face hardened, became the rigid face of a judgmental god.
“They won’t get away with it,” he vowed. “Mars Two will be avenged!”
“ ‘Remember the Maine,’ huh?” said Joseph. He looked up to see Hearst nodding solemnly. In his cold blue eyes was the light of absolute certainty, unshakable determination. Joseph felt his skin crawl.
In midair replay the superheated air billowed out, consumed again the hapless victims of Mars Two.
PART IV
Fez, 9 July 2355
Suleyman reaches into the box and lifts out an ebony Pawn.
Shatrang is a cousin to the game of chess, but there are no Queens; the nearest equivalent piece is the Vizier. Still, the designer of this set has compensated by making all the ebony Pawns women, styling them after the Mazangu of Dahomey. The little warrior in Suleyman’s hand leans forward, brandishing a spear like a quarter-staff, and bears her teeth in a grin of dreadful welcome.
Suleyman lines up three black Pawns on the table.
CHAPTER 18
Fez, 3 March 2352
“So you’ve got mortals making your tea for you now,” Sarai
remarked, sitting back in the cushions and regarding Suleyman. She was lean and fierce, might have posed for one of the Mazangu pawns. She had been one of his wives, once; she had been many things since, including a priestess of the slave rebellion in Sainte-Domingue, a health-care worker in New Orleans, and a nanny for a British peer living on a yacht in the Caribbean. It had taken Suleyman years to track her down again.
He poured tea in a long stream to make it foam in the glasses. He offered one to Sarai. “I pay them handsomely to do it, too,” he said. “Which has backfired, I’m afraid; I’ve got their cousins and nephews and sons lining up for jobs in my house. They think I’m a money tree. On the other hand, I now have a first-class intelligence network.”
“What do you need an intelligence network for, Suleyman?”
“Because I’ve been fighting a war for three centuries,” said Suleyman. “I’ve just been doing it very quietly. It takes as many resources as the conventional kind, however.”
“You’re a lot wealthier than you were in the old days,” Sarai replied. “Quite a slice of the regional operating budget per annum you must get, eh?”
“A few sound investments. Trust me, I haven’t had much Company assistance in my struggle,” he told her, and set down his glass and folded his hands. “What do you know about Alpha-Omega?” he asked.
She arched her eyebrows at him. She had been resting for three days now, had bathed and slept and eaten and caught up on old times with Nefer and Nan, so she was cushioned against shocks a little better. Still, she was surprised by his question.
“Greek letters? That’s all I know about them, man.”
“You were inside the building in Gray’s Inn Road. Did you, in the lobby or anywhere else, notice the words or characters Alpha-Omega?”
“No, Suleyman. What is this? I thought we were going to talk about Nennius.”
“Eventually,” he said. “I know a lot about his operation. The black project he was in charge of, for example, the Checkerfield baby? I expect I know as much as you do about that one.”
“Really?” she snapped. “You know why it was all necessary? Then you know more than I. What was Nennius doing?”
“He was following orders,” Suleyman answered. “Just as you were. The Company wanted something, and took the necessary steps to produce it.”
“They wanted Mars Two blown all to hell and gone?” Sarai demanded. “What kind of Preservers are we, let me ask you that? I never signed up to kill mortals. Who gave Nennius orders to make a monster, eh?”
“Was he a monster, Sarai?”
“I never knew what he was,” she said quietly, looking away. “They just told me, you go to the maternity hospital at this address and take a certain baby out of his cot. Quick and quiet, so the cameras can’t see, and then report to London HQ with him.”
“Didn’t they tell you anything else at HQ?” inquired Suleyman.
“That he was something special, and I was to take him to the Checkerfields, who were going to pretend he was theirs. I was supposed to stay on as his nanny and protect him. Watch everything he did. Make full reports to Nennius.”
“Was he different?” Suleyman asked. “In unusual ways?”
“Real good at maths,” Sarai said. “Bloody little genius at anything to do with numbers. How many boats in the harbor, baby? How many leaves on the mango tree? And he’d just look once and tell you.”
“But he wasn’t autistic?”
“Hell no. Sociable as you please. Loved people.” She turned away. After a long moment she went on, her face unseen to him as she said: “I can guess how he turned out to be the Hangar Twelve Man. My orders changed. I was supposed to start telling the baby mean things. Tell him it was his fault the Checkerfields got their divorce. Tell him he wasn’t as good as other little boys, so he’d best mind his manners! I couldn’t do it. Nennius told me, ‘Fine then, you’re off the job,’ and sent me back to Haiti. That was that. Never saw Alec’s funny face again, until the Hangar Twelve footage.
“So was it all Nennius’s idea? You tell me, old husband.”
Suleyman held up his hands. “Who runs the Company, Sarai? The mortals themselves. They directed Nennius. They profited when Mars Two was bombed. Only mortals would be foolish enough to do something like that without understanding the consequences.”
“This is new talk from you,” she said uneasily. “You used to love the little mortals.”
“You can love a child, and still weep for what he does,” said Suleyman. “Can’t you, Sarai?”
She bowed her head over her glass in silence. He sighed and went on: “Nennius, however, knew exactly what he was doing. He had his own agenda, Sarai.”
He had all her attention now. “What was it?”
“Do you have any idea what condition the human gene pool is in?” he asked. “Have you been observing the mortals, these last few centuries? All so alike, and each generation smaller in numbers than the previous one?”
“Because of all the plagues sweeping through,” Sarai said.
“And the eugenics programs. They did their share of wrecking the gene pool, too,” Suleyman explained. “So did the drop in the birth rate.”
“And?”
“There were still plenty of mortals with the drive to reproduce at the beginning of this decade. Unfortunately, a lot of them went to live on Mars, where there were no permits required for having children.” Suleyman regarded her somberly. She just shook her head.
“Nennius,” Suleyman went on, “is one of a certain group of immortals. They’re headed by the American Northwestern Sector Executive, Labienus. They’ve been at work a long time. They’re the reason I require an intelligence network. The great plagues were their doing.”
“But what for?”
“They’re fed up with the mortals.” Suleyman shrugged. “Maybe they’ve watched too many movies. Remember Cyborg Conquest? ‘We are the ultimate goal of evolution! Imperfect beings must die!’”
“Oh, that’s crap. We’ve all felt like squashing the damn mortals now and then—”
“And some of us have given in to the urge,” Suleyman told her. “Nennius didn’t go along with the plan to destroy Mars Two because it would make the Company money—though it did. He did it because of the percentage of the mortals’ breeding population living up there.
“And now, boom. They’re gone. There are lots of places here and there on Earth where mortals still have children, but they’re being methodically targeted for plague outbreaks.
“So within the space of a few more generations—depleted as the mortal gene pool is—humanity could be facing extinction.”
“Man! And you sit here so calm and tell me so?” Sarai shook her head emphatically. “No. It can’t be this bad. The mortals can’t have missed this! Not the masters at Dr. Zeus, anyway. They’re ungrateful little twits, making us wear those bloody clock badges, but they’re not this stupid about their own survival.”
“Of course they’re not,” Suleyman agreed. “They’ve had us preserving genetic material for millennia. Somewhere, they keep stored vials of genetic material from every race that’s ever walked the earth.”
“Ah! Okay, there you are; they’ve left themselves an escape. Gene pool shrinks too far, the masters will just fill it up again from their emergency cache. One generation in vitro and they’ll be out of danger.”
“They would be,” Suleyman said, “if nothing happened to that emergency cache beforehand.”
“Labienus isn’t going for that, too?” Sarai looked horrified. Suleyman shrugged.
“Not yet, as far as I can tell. The masters have taken great trouble to hide it away. They don’t know about Labienus’s group, but they’re terrified of us all anyway. Have been, ever since we liberated Options Research.” Suleyman rested his chin in his palm.
“The Frankenstein story,” Sarai muttered bitterly.
“That’s right. And there are plenty of angry monsters like Labienus among us, so I can’t say I blame them for being
scared. The problem is—can they keep their secret safely?”
“They’ll never manage,” said Sarai, eyes wide. “It’s this Alpha-Omega, isn’t it, Suleyman? Where they’ve cached the DNA? That’s what’s on the hidden floor of that damn place in London. That’s why you had Latif doing surveillance there!”
He just nodded.
“And if you’ve found it, others might find it too, and if it’s destroyed—”
“Extinction for humanity.”
“I’m frightened now,” said Sarai.
“So am I, my heart,” he replied. She reached out and took his hand.
“What are you going to do?” she said at last.
“I don’t have a lot of choice,” he said wearily. “The masters can’t possibly keep Alpha-Omega safe. I’ll have to seize it from them, which will be an act of open rebellion, but what can I do? If I don’t secure it, Labienus’s group will, and there go the mortals; and many of us, too, I might add. His people have no compunction about disabling fellow immortals. You heard what happened to Kalugin?”
Sarai shuddered. “And that other one, the one nobody’s ever found. Lewis.”
“Lewis,” Suleyman echoed.
Fez, 23 March 2352
In the very beginning, before he had understood what a cyborg was, Glele Kouandete had thought they must be orishas. He’d been very small then, sick and frightened, and it was easy to get that impression. The big man had worn a white coat as he’d paced between the beds of the children’s ward, administering the injections with a deft hand, calm and patient though the children and nurses were all screaming. The younger man, in his red shirt, had been fierce as he’d overseen the evacuation into the agcraft, yelling Move, move, move! in a voice like a hammer on an anvil. Were they Obatala and Ogun?
