by Kage Baker
“He hath a melancholic fit coming on,” said Nicholas.
“Idiom, please, Nicholas,” said Edward.
Nicholas stiffened. He got his mule-face look. “Okay, Dead,” he said testily. Edward just chuckled and finished his tea. Nicholas left the room. A moment later we heard the music room door slam, and then the Stradivarius shrieking through Nicholas’s arrangement of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. Thank God the boy hasn’t got an electric guitar. I sighed.
“Señor—was that necessary? Let him have his own identity. And, let him wear black if he wants to, eh?”
“But that would hardly be fair to Alec,” Edward pointed out. “He’d then demand the right to wear those ghastly Hawaiian shirts, and he’d be justified. If they can’t endure having their wills balked in petty matters like these, now, how much harder will they find it later on? They will benefit from having to earn the privileges of manhood.”
“But they were men,” I said.
“But they will be much more,” said Edward. “And I want them ready for it. This is a deadly dangerous business, after all.”
“It won’t be nearly as dangerous once the immortality process is finished,” I said.
“I didn’t mean dangerous for them,” said Edward slowly. He gave me a thoughtful look and then held out his hand. “Let’s go for a walk, my love.”
We went out of our grand house and down through the splendid garden we built together, past the roses of which Edward is so proud, across the emerald lawns where Bully Hayes paused in mowing to nod to us. Down the stone steps we laid in place ourselves, through my little orchards and the pergola of grapevines; down to the beach at last.
I thought we’d go out on the pier, but Edward turned in the other direction and led me along the shore. Along the glass-smooth sand, between the white combers and the margin of scattered and broken shells, we walked. After a mile or so, Edward pointed up a green gorge that cut through the cliffs above us. It was the place we’d fallen, on that long-ago day when Alec struck his little head.
No gigantic slide now, thanks to years of careful work; only the sedate little stream dropping from rock to mossy rock, vanishing at last into the grotto overgrown by the big tiare bush. We left the beach and climbed up over the boulders, and at the grotto Edward parted the branches so I could step through.
“It makes a charming bridal bower, don’t you think?” he said, ducking his head to follow me in. White flowers floated on the pool, perfumed the air.
“It’s certainly private,” I said. Privacy has become something of an issue lately.
We undressed each other. I felt oddly shy, drawing out my hairpins, letting my hair down. Edward stepped into the dark pool, and held out his arms to me. I went to him and in a breathless, scrambling moment we slid together, one flesh, and he opened my mouth with his own as we plunged down, through the white flowers and the black water.
Insane ecstasy, the splash of ice and the heat of his body. He sent his mind into mine and I thought, Oh, we’ll never come up again; we’ve found the perfect center of creation.
Descending, descending in the still water, how far down? I heard the high notes of a violin being played, and light flared behind my eyes. I saw another life, the one I might have lived in some other Spain, where a little girl never fell into the hands of dubious strangers or the Inquisition. Bright and detailed as film, the brief lifetime unspooled itself for my consideration: the girl grew up and made her way to England somehow, and became the wife of a somewhat less outspoken young vicar named Nicholas Harpole. Forty years of wedded bliss in a thatched cottage, Sabbath sermons, living perhaps long enough to see a Shakespeare play. Then sunlight in the green churchyard, and quiet dust…
We broke the surface and gasped for air, with shuddering pleasure. I heard the sea roaring. Edward tightened his grip and dove again, bearing me with him, and the roar grew louder. I saw white sails above a blue sea, brilliant sunlight. I saw an England where Commander Bell-Fairfax forbore to strike a senior officer, and came home a hero instead, and married a Spanish girl he met, perhaps in Gibraltar, where they settled down. Fifty years, perhaps, of respectability, thrifty life on an officer’s half-pay, a little stone house kept neat as a pin; then one monument carved with names and dates, loving husband, beloved wife.
Up into the air again! I couldn’t get my breath; it didn’t matter. We were sinking together in the dark water but it was warm now, and I heard laughter. I saw a fantastic Eurospain as carefree as a travel poster, where Alec Checker-field went to party instead of going to Mars, and there during Purim carnival met a girl, and dared to try his luck at marriage a third time, and the third time was the charm. Dance clubs, endless serene cruises, a fashionable address in London. Would they have had sixty years, this life? Seventy? The end might have come quickly, or it might have lingered out in hospital corridors, but the end result the same: white ashes scattered on the seafoam, sinking into blue …
But we were rising. We shot up through the surface and I pulled my mouth free from Edward’s, staring to see him for a moment with a receding hairline, with a trace of pot belly and collar size expanded regally. And I? Why, I’d squared out and thickened like a block of stone, a sack of wheat. My mortal parents were peasants, for all that hijo del godo nonsense; genetics would have caught up with me in middle age, clearly, undeniable as the white streaks in my hair.
The illusion faded, with the last shivering after burn of rapture, and then Edward was lifting me from the water. I clung to him, leaning on his chest in exhaustion. We lay gasping together a long moment, before he pulled himself up into a sitting position, taking me with him. He tilted my chin up to look into my eyes.
“There now,” he said. “You’ve had the mortal lives, and the deaths, you longed for. An end to missed chances, my love.”
“You showed me this because things are going to change soon, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” he said. “Things are going to change a great deal, I think.”
We rose, a little unsteadily, and got dressed again. Walking back along the beach, with the sunlight warming us, he showed me a series of somber images: men, better or lesser known, on whom the flow of human history had broken and been diverted into new courses. There was some indefinable similarity to all their faces. A certain alignment of features …
But what were they all? I wondered. And I saw, briefly, something inexplicable: an old greened bronze statue, with empty-socketed eyes.
Something the Company has kept concealed even from itself, or its mortal masters would have been horrified, was the somber answer. Big changelings left in human cradles, scythe-bearing scarecrows in the fields of human life. We walked before and cut down the corn you Preservers gathered.
“Many of them were good and honorable men,” Edward explained aloud. “But they were, all, used to precipitate disasters for the Company’s benefit. The boys and I are unique, in our design. We were created with potential none of the previous attempts had, since they weren’t Recombinants. The designation I would use is Tempters.”
I said nothing, appalled.
“And you do see,” he said gently, “that I have learned something at last. Don’t you, my dear? I must never rule the mortals.”
“But—who’ll defeat the Company, on the last day?” I said, taking his hand. “You know the truth about yourself now. And you’ve redeemed yourself!”
“No,” said Edward. “I’ve healed myself. We must find a greater purpose than that for which we were made.” He turned to look up at our high house, shining there in the sunlight. “Redemption will have to wait until the end. The outcome will, I think, depend on what sort of men we’ve formed from our clay.”
So there it is.
How much of this did Joseph know? Is that why he’s always hated my own true love?
Alec is moaning, his poor nose hurts—who would have thought their noses would break, at that crucial spot, again?—and Edward is leaning close, applying a cold compress and saying something to him
in a low and soothing voice.
And look at my Nicholas lying there, composed as a statue of a knight on a tomb and so pale, especially when he first wakes up. You’re in a little pain now, sweetheart, but it’ll pass soon. Once, in his agony as the fire took him, the man cried out to me: Thou art a spirit, and wilt thou not come back to the love of God?
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come back to loving your dreadful God, Nicholas. But I have at least come back to the love of humanity, which has been quite a journey for me. Perhaps He’ll give me points for effort, do you think?
CHAPTER 24
8 July 2355
The hammer was descending, the bell already vibrating with the anticipated strike … as, in a marvel of logistical organization, fleets of special delivery agcraft went out all over the globe to deliver boxes of chocolates to every Central HQ all over the world very nearly simultaneously.
Suleyman in the Fez office got his, and Shen in the Xi’an office got his, and Van Drouten in the Amsterdam office got hers, and Stendec in the Rio office got hers, and Houbert in the Monaco office got his too, as did Flamel in the Paris office, and so did Arminius in the Petrograd office, and Quintilius at San Simeon got a special delivery. Even Marmon, up in the Luna office, got his in a timely fashion, and that alone should have tipped them all off that the world was about to end.
And the clock struck.
Fez
Suleyman was waiting.
He was good at waiting; had long ago learned to disengage his primary consciousness to watch as the big wheels turned, as the grains of sand fell. Just at the moment he was reviewing the possible events of the next twenty-four hours, calculating event vectors as he idly moved the game pieces around on the board.
It was easiest to visualize it as a shatrang problem in the style of the older game, when there were four sides to a playing field. The west’s Sultan was on the point of flight into his corner, walling himself in with pawns. The Rukh and Elephant had come from the east and north, respectively, and were poised for their final moves. Across the board in the south, the Vizier waited. There were infinite variables—especially since Suleyman had the unpleasant feeling there were at least two more sides of the board than rational geometry permitted him to see, and far too many pawns—but checkmate was inevitable. The only question left was, in how many moves?
The local parcel delivery van was trundling its way down the street. Suleyman recognized the plaintive roar of its particular agmotor, picked up clearly the annoyance of the mortal driver at being sent out in the heat of the day. The van pulled up before Suleyman’s house, backed and filled, settled heavily to the pavement when the driver cut power and parked.
A second after the driver had rung the bell, Suleyman stood at the inner door, startling the mortal servant who was hurrying to reply. He scanned the mortal driver—nothing out of the ordinary about him, except his temper—and opened the door himself.
Annoyed or not, the driver inclined forward in a half-bow. “Sir? Delivery from Jupiter Cyberceuticals. Will you accept?” He offered the device, shaped like a lorgnette, into which Suleyman peered briefly to register his retinal print. It beeped to let them know this was indeed the intended receiver of the shipment. The driver stuck the lorgnette back in his pocket and gestured at the van. “Fifty-one crates of merchandise, sir! If any of the household staff should be available—”
“Yusuf, call Hippolyte,” Suleyman told the servant, rolling up his sleeves.
“He is draining the pool for maintenance, lord,” said Yusuf apologetically. Suleyman shrugged and lifted a crate to his shoulder.
Half an hour later he was sitting in the midst of a sea of boxes in his study. Only one had been opened, but the concentrated perfume from the massed contents was permeating the house. He frowned slightly as he read the Company directive that had come with the shipment.
“What on earth—?” Nefer stood in the doorway, breathing deeply, staring wide-eyed at the boxes. “Are all these crates full of Theobromos?” She moved like a sleepwalker toward the opened box, but Suleyman held up his hand.
“Remember Lewis’s warning?” he said. She kept coming, though, and stared down into the box.
“But these are Ratlin’s,” she protested. “I’ve eaten this brand lots of times. It’s about all you can get anymore. And the boxes all look factory sealed.”
“It’s a special order the Company had made up,” Suleyman told her, holding out the directive. “Specifically for its faithful servants, to reward them for their eternity of service. Just like the clock badges, remember? I’m to distribute it immediately, throughout my sector. The directive’s very clear about the timetable to be followed. The Company wants a box in the hands of every operative under my command by sunrise.”
Nefer looked aghast. “I can’t detect any hazard.”
“Wouldn’t you think they’d make it undetectable?” Suleyman said, taking a dagger from his desk and opening the topmost box in the crate. The sta-seal peeled back, the fragrance intensified, and Nefer took an involuntary step closer. Suleyman lifted off the lid with its embossed picture and they beheld the chocolates, glossy and tempting, nestled each in its frilly cup.
“Oh,” Nefer groaned. Suleyman leaned close, focusing all his concentration on scanning the contents of the box.
“No,” he cried suddenly. “No. There is something.” With the point of his dagger he speared a Black Coffee Truffle. Turning to his console he fished out a content analysis slide with his free hand, holding the dagger well out and away from him. He cut the chocolate open and smeared its center on the slide, using the dagger blade like a palette knife; fixed and sealed it, and put it into the console.
A moment later the image swam into view. “There,” said Suleyman in a terribly calm voice. “Just like what we found in Lewis’s blood.”
“Oh, my God, what are those things?” Nefer screamed. “Those were inside the Theobromos? Look at them, they’re moving.”
“They’re attempting to deploy.”
Up in the corner of the console, lights were flashing, advising Suleyman that his private transport fleet was even now maneuvering into the docking bay on the south side of the compound. “The young master has returned,” Suleyman observed absently, unable to take his eyes from the screen. Nefer leaned closer, staring in horrified fascination.
“I can’t believe the Company’d do this,” she said. “Poisoned Theobromos? How trusting do they think we are?”
“You were ready enough to eat it,” Suleyman replied.
“I wouldn’t have been once I was told it was my reward for meritorious service,” Nefer pointed out. “I’d have scanned it more closely. And so would any of the rest of us! Free Theobromos, this close to the Silence? As paranoid as everybody is, nobody’s going to touch that stuff. How could the mortals have been so stupid? All it’s going to do is make us all angry.”
“Maybe that was the point all along,” said Suleyman. “A mass-murder attempt so blatant it would spark the rebellion.”
“But why would the mortals want us to rebel?”
“Maybe this wasn’t their idea.” Suleyman pulled his gaze away from the fluttering horror on the screen long enough to glance out into the courtyard, where uniformed figures were thronging in from the transport hangars. “This is Labienus’s style, poison and plots within plots. If we overthrow the Company, he’ll be perfectly happy, won’t he? Especially if mortals die in the process.”
He spoke so quietly, watching the figures in the courtyard. Nefer knelt beside him, staring up into his set face. “My God, aren’t you angry? Don’t you ever get angry?”
He looked down at her and his voice was still quiet as he replied: “What good would it do? We’ve been caught in an escalating pattern since the beginning, Nefer. The Company created immortals, but we frightened them, so they created Options Research. We angrily liberated Options Research, and our anger frightened them even more.
“What happened next? Were they desperate eno
ugh to come up with this stupid gambit themselves or was it put into their hands by someone much more clever? It won’t matter in the end.”
They could hear footsteps vaulting up through the house, now, booted strides covering the distance to the study.
“Fear and anger,” Suleyman mused. “Every swing from one to the other ratcheting the big clock closer and closer to this hour.”
The door burst open and Latif walked in, closely followed by Sarai. One look at his face was enough to tell them.
“Oh, no,” said Nef. “You didn’t find him.”
“Lewis? Hey, I found him,” said Latif, in a hard bright voice. “Even got a glimpse of his face, for about two seconds before I lost him again.” He threw himself into a chair.
“They got away, most of them,” Sarai explained. “And they took Lewis with them. They had a flying disk, like in the old pictures. It just lifted out of this hilltop and took off. We tracked it a few kilometers and then it disappeared.”
“Casualties?” asked Suleyman.
“No mortals lost. A couple of the techs had seizures; some kind of disrupter field in the main entrance. They reset. They’re okay now,” Latif said.
“Good.”
“Except that the mission was a total failure. We brought back stuff from their little elves’ workshop, though,” Latif continued, drumming his fists on the arms of his chair. “Or laboratory or whatever it was. We’d have brought back a couple of bodies to study but they were all turning to slime and ashes while we watched. Nasty, huh?” He was striking the chair harder now, it was beginning to creak under his blows. Suddenly he cocked his head and stared around at the Theobromos. “What’s all this muck?”
Sighing, Suleyman told him. The rage faded from Latif’s eyes; they became ice cold in expression. “Then it’s already started,” he said.
At that moment a tone chimed, advising Suleyman that a call was coming in on his private channel. He turned in his chair as the image on his console vanished, to be replaced by the incoming message. He signaled acceptance and decode; a second later there was a woman’s face on the screen, an immortal with ash-blonde hair escaping from a braid, and her blue eyes were tired. “Suleyman, are you still there?”
