In the Company of Thieves

by Kage Baker

  And I’d been Imhotep.

  The formulae had turned up unexpectedly in Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Justinian, and been used to paint some really mind-altering ikons. A few mortal Byzantine artists died of strokes and heart attacks, brains burnt out by an ikon painter who didn’t know what he was doing but could read a mathematical equation. One culture’s Rapture is another’s brain seizure. They’d given me several hard days, tracking the ikons down and getting them out of the way. They went into storage.

  Aw, crumbs, Hermann. Is it time to deliver those things already?

  Not exactly, he said. We’re kind of sending them out on a lend-lease deal. Someone in the current time is willing to pay literal tons of gold for them, but won’t be able to hang on to them. Well, he doesn’t know that, but—we do. We’ll get them back in a few years and still have them for the twenty-fourth century deal.

  Like a gypsy horse, I said sourly.

  Pretty much, Hermann agreed.

  The Constantinople ikons, the Egyptian formulae for perfect portraits and flawless PR—I guess WWII was practically begging for something like that to resurface. Mickey Mouse couldn’t handle all the propaganda.

  Are we giving these bozos the scroll, too? I asked. That’s where the formulae are. It’s the really dangerous bit. The ikons themselves will just kill mortals. The scroll can tell them how to make more.

  No, no, just the ikons! Hermann sounded shocked. But the scroll may need preservation, and I thought Lewis could help with that.

  I consulted the assignment information further. Okay, I see a list of possible sites where they might be. I’ll start checking. Why aren’t we sure where they are?

  Oh, it’s been a while, I guess. So—everything good on this, Joseph?

  Yeah, I think so. I’ll check back with you when I’ve got them.

  Great, said Hermann, in palpable relief. Beachwood Base out.

  I could draw this out, but the memory still makes me fume.

  Next morning, I left Lewis happily working away at his St. Exupéry and I sallied forth in his Ford to find the ikons. I quartered Los Angeles from the Valley to the Santa Monica Pier, and went through every stash and hideout address Hermann had left me. It took me two days. But the ikons weren’t anywhere.

  Finally I gave up and headed back to my apartment. I don’t think Lewis noticed I’d been in, or out, or that I came back. But he noticed when I started yelling at Hermann over the credenza, and he came drifting into the living room to stare and eavesdrop.

  They aren’t anywhere you said they might be, Hermann. What’s the trick here?

  I’m sorry, Joseph. I really hoped you’d find them out there. But I have a note here for you, if you didn’t, that this is a little complicated. They’ve been...misplaced. You’re going to need to find them before you can deliver them. Hermann was apologetic as all hell about this. Nobody knows exactly where they are. Somewhere in Hollywood, though.

  Not again! I howled.

  Afraid so, Joseph. Well, Hermann sounded embarrassed now. We’ve got a bit of a problem with the chain of custody. Somewhere along about 1750, we know the ikons came to the New World—but somehow the records never got converted to hard copy. We don’t know where they ended up.

  Suddenly it was all clear to me. There’d been trouble like this before, with old operatives who got sloppy. And I knew which one it had to be....

  This is part of that mess from New World One again, isn’t it? I demanded. When that fat poseur Houbert closed down the base and packed out, and all those crates went missing! Isn’t it?

  Well, yes, though they weren’t exactly missing, said Hermann placatingly. We’ve got all the crates, and the numbers matched....

  But they were full of Mardi Gras costumes, Hermann! I yelled. Don’t you remember? Paper hats! Party horns! Confetti and, and—fake gorilla tits!

  Yes, yes, those were. But we know he had the ikons, and we’re sure when they shipped out—even if not where, precisely. But we located the paperwork.

  Great. I cracked my knuckles, imagining they were Houbert’s.

  It’s not exactly organized, admitted Hermann. But now we know where they aren’t, because you went through all those. I’ll have the rest of the paperwork in its boxes for you ready tomorrow. Actually, this is what I thought Lewis would be good at; this is a Literature Preservation problem if there ever was one. Good God, Joseph, we found a 200-year-old avocado in one carton.

  Crap. I thought furiously. Well, it is pretty much Lewis’s kind of thing, isn’t it? But he’s gonna just hate this. He’s working on an original St. Exupéry manuscript right now!

  I know, and I really am sorry, Joseph. Poor Hermann sounded terrible—I mean, there was no way I was gonna say NO to this, but he was a good guy. He really did care. It’s Priority ASAP, but not Urgent. I think half of it is just that they want someone to do the scut work and get the ikons secured again. So Lewis can work on the files and the St. Exupéry, and you can do the footwork.

  Yeah. Okay. I can see how to handle this. Sorry, Hermann, I said. This won’t be too bad. We’ll find the things and get ’em off to where ever they go next.

  I’ll send the crates over tomorrow, then?

  No, I said, remembering the Ford. Save some money, I’ll pick them up from you.

  Thank you, Joseph. I knew you’d figure this out. Beachwood Base out.

  Lewis had been listening to all this with growing horror. And he was livid by the time Hermann and I signed off. Lewis had hated Houbert, the Administrator of New World One, with a deep and abiding loathing. Having to clean up more of the guy’s snafus at this late date didn’t exactly ease any of the old animosity. Especially not when all Lewis wanted to do was lock himself in a clean room with the St. Exupéry and gloat over the watercolors.

  “Look, I promise you can split your time 50/50 between the manuscript and the files,” I coaxed. “Even when you go back to your place, you can leave the ikon files here to work on, completely apart from the St. Exupéry, okay?”

  He had to agree, of course. But I wanted at least some pale enthusiasm, to speed the job along. And I could see he was beginning to be taken with the chance to mete out some justice to Houbert....

  Man, the State Department didn’t have to work as hard as I did to get the Allies to cooperate! I should have gone into Government work.

  When I got up next day, Lewis was already hard at work on the St. Exupéry. Which was good, because I was probably going to need his full skills and attention when I got the box of crap—pardon me, the famed Administrator Houbert’s carefully preserved files—home from Hermann.

  “Here.” He handed me his house key and a slip of paper, along with a cup of something coffee-like. “That’s my landlord’s name. He lives in the back, on the bottom floor. He’ll be expecting you later this morning to go over the extermination problem.”

  I looked down. “Linseed oil? China White? Ashes of Roses? Gold leaf? What, do you have to mix your own rat killer?”

  “No, those are tints and a medium—as you know very well,” said Lewis severely. “I need them for this job. Probably for the ikons, too. Oh, and there’s an African violet on the kitchen windowsill; bring it along, please.”

  “You’ll be back in a few days, for God’s sake,” I said. “And believe it or not, Lewis, I’m not running a hotel here.”

  “Well, there’s no room for me at Beachwood Base, and that’s not supposed to be used for general living quarters anyway,” he said stubbornly. “And who knows how long it’ll take for the exterminators to get rid of the rats? I’m not taking even Houbert’s old cocktail napkins into a rat-infested apartment; more paper will just draw more rats!

  “Besides,” he added as I groused around finding my fedora, “you’re almost out of coffee, and tea, and milk. And I left my ration book in the breadbox—if the rats haven’t eaten it as well. So you’d better bring it, too.”

  “Arrgh,” I said, or something along those lines, and went off into the gray
morning.

  Pulling out onto the sweep of Highland in the Ford, though, made up for a lot of exasperation with Lewis’s nitpicking. I headed right down Highland and turned left on Franklin to find Beachwood, which was originally one of the canyon mouths below the Hollywood Reservoir. There were several housing developments up there, all following the example of the original Hollywoodland, it of the famous sign.

  The sign read OLLYWOODLAND at the moment, since a drunken caretaker, Albert Kothe, had plowed his truck into it a couple of years before. It would be a few years before the LAND was removed (or fell off; the stories would be conflicting) and the sign became the symbol of the whole sprawling imaginary world of the movies.

  It wasn’t lit up anymore, either, for fear of Japanese submarines seeing it across the flats of L.A. Also, because people stole the light bulbs and no one could afford to refurbish the sign just then. But the housing development was thriving, and long, skinny villages were growing up along the edges of all the hills.

  The oldest and prettiest was Beachwood Village, a blend of cottages and mansionettes in the eponymous canyon. About halfway to the sign there was a pair of gatehouses, with no gate. They’d never had one, and no one had ever manned the little sentry boxes on the sides, either; people walked their dogs and sweethearts through them and marveled at the kitschy charm. The eastern arch had a tower rising above it, and the western one looked like a dollhouse.

  Under the tower was Beachwood Base, installed on the sly by Dr. Zeus when the Hollywoodland development was built. It was a small and temporary base, scheduled to be replaced as soon as WWII ended and the Company could dig itself in at Catalina Island again. But right now, Catalina was overrun with the OSS training school, and Dr. Zeus was keeping a very low profile over there. So Hermann and a small crew coordinated everything from underneath Beachwood Village, and the rest of us operatives lived in rented rooms all over the L.A. Basin. Housing was tight in Los Angeles.

  The Via portal was concealed in the hillside above and behind it. Hermann was waiting for me in the tiny foyer, with three big ferroplastic packing crates. Someone had stenciled a bad wood-pattern on them, and stuck citrus fruit advertisements all over.

  “Ave, Herman,” I said, offering my forearm. The Old Ones prefer that manly style to modern limp hand shakes. We clasped arms—his hand ran pretty much from my wrist to my elbow.

  “Joseph. Ave, ave, man, and thanks for taking this mess on for us,” he said earnestly. He grinned—and that always made me grin too, because Hermann had the bath-towel incisors of the Neandertals, but with a Terry Thomas gap between them.

  “That’s Houbert’s stash? Just three?” I asked in surprise.

  “Those are all that matter, they’ve got the likeliest paperwork. I should have asked you how you were traveling, though. Did you take a cab?”

  “Nope, borrowed Lewis’s car,” and I sent an image of the green Ford parked up above us. Hermann whistled appreciatively.

  “Well, come in, Joseph, and let me get you some coffee or something.”

  That sounded unusually great. One of the advantages of holding down the fort in Beachwood Base was that Hermann and his gang got their supplies directly via Company channels. And everyone felt so bad about the plutonian posting, they sent along goodies whenever they could. No waiting in line at See’s or Helm’s for them; no Meatless Mondays or the gourmet joys of Roof Rabbit Ragout. While we field operatives drank Postum and used our tea bags three times each, Hermann ground Colombian beans fresh daily.

  We spent some life-saving time with Hermann’s excellent coffee and even-more-excellent coffee cake (all Neandertals are incredible bakers; I think it’s the nose). Hermann printed out some lists for me. He’d found some indication of where some of the Mayan artifacts from New World One had ended up, too; which just might be a clue as to where the Byzantine goodies had gone.

  Hermann always came through. That Neandertal thoroughness, and cheerful attention to duty—it was why there were so many of them, now hidden away in Company bases, where they kept the home fires burning for us less stable Homo sapiens types.

  We got the crates down to the car, loaded them in and stood about for a little while, trading our admiration of Lewis’s taste and luck in cars. I was figuring New York would take the Series this year, since they’d lost to St. Louis the year before and would have their dander up. Hermann was a man of the “anyone but those bastard Yankees” school of thought. We were just a couple of regular guys leaning on a car on a warm, gray afternoon...it’s little scenarios like this that keep us keen and interested in life, you know?

  I went back over the Cahuenga Pass and took a moving fix on Tracy, who was still at home being the good family man. I managed to score a tank of gas from a skeazy little station in Sherman Oaks—gas stations were rapidly turning into the new speakeasies—and took Sepulveda over and back down onto the West Side.

  Lewis had an elegant little flat in a Spanish-style multi-unit on Packard near Hayworth. It was an elegant little neighborhood, too, full of tailored lawns and big sycamore trees. So it was quite a surprise to park in front of the place and see a rat sitting calmly in the driveway, cleaning its whiskers.

  There was another one under the hedge lining the front walk. And there was audible skittering in the shrubs as I walked round to the back of the building. This wasn’t a trap in the pantry problem; they were working up to Hamlin Town here.

  The landlord, Mr. Hobson, was a withered but alert old guy in snappily pressed khakis. He looked like a New England shopkeeper as he opened his screen door to let me in. His apartment was clean and neat, and smelled like a New England general store, too. Cheese and crackers, oilcloth and pickles.

  “So,” I said, deciding to dispel any notion that I could be put off, “I’m representing Lewis Howard. I’m here to pick up some of his goods, and to inquire about an estimate of when the extermination will be done in his apartment.”

  “Dunno,” said Hobson cautiously. “Rats can take some time, y’know. I’ll probably have to do it myself—there’s not enough chemicals OR exterminators to be had nowadays, it all goes to the Army.”

  “Well, let’s face it, Mr. Hobson,” I said. I waved a hand out toward the back lawn; there was a rat running along the edge of the driveway. “This isn’t a minor problem. You have Rat City thriving here.”

  He winced. “Yeah, they’ve gotten a little out of hand, all sudden-like. But I’m already laying out poison and traps, and it’ll be all clear soon. Maybe a week? Maybe.”

  We argued a while—I wanted a guaranteed ETA and he wanted to stick Lewis with a rat-killing surcharge. I fixed him with my best ex-Inquisitor glare and intimated the Health Department might be called in to consult. I was pretty sure, from the scent in the air, that he was hoarding cheese; and I hinted that there were worse people I could consult than the Health Department.... He ended up rebating the rent, instead, though he couldn’t promise a week’s resolution. No problem, I needed Lewis longer than that for the job. We managed to compromise, and I gave him my card and number to call.

  I showed him my note from Lewis, allowing me inside his place, and left him grumbling to himself and dragging out an enormous old compressor and a red can with a skull and crossbones painted on it. It didn’t look good for the rats, or for the camellias along the drive, either.

  I could hear rats, and smell them, too, as soon as I opened Lewis’s door. That sweet-salt smell is unmistakable, and one of the nicer things about the twentieth century is the relative lack of it...and Lewis was right, they were everywhere. I found his ration book in the breadbox, but the bread was gone, of course. I gathered the other things he wanted and got out as soon as I could. The smell, the feeling of little beady eyes tracking me, the scritch of claws behind the furniture; I’ve lived and let live with our ratty friends over long centuries, but I’d really rather not.

  As I left, I made a note to see if Lewis really did want a cat. Something elegant. Something blue-eyed, and long-haired, and bloodth
irsty.

  Lewis worked in a fine frenzy all week on the St. Exupéry. Saturday he set it aside, complaining bitterly, I might add, and got started on the three crates I had brought home. When I told him about Hobson and the rats, he just waved one hand at me and told me he trusted me implicitly.

  Great. Now I was facilitating rats.

  Sunday was Easter. To my surprise, Lewis was up before dawn, nattily dressed and walking up Highland with all the other dawn-risers.

  “I like the lilies,” he said. “And the quiet.” Most of the attendees brought lilies to the Sunrise Service—Easter and canna and occasional sprays of candy-colored day lilies. Lewis denuded the front garden of my apartment court, and went up to the Bowl with an armful of cannas.

  At least he came back in a good mood. It was a clear, bright Easter that year, the very best of spring weather in Los Angeles, and he set to on the crates from New World One with determination. I was relieved as hell, since I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to threaten him with rats.

  When I checked in his room late that afternoon, he was surrounded by piles and piles of paper: but there was a weird order to them. They ranged against the walls like crumbling battlements, and then formed long curves centered on Lewis at his desk under the window.

  “How’s it coming, Lewis?” I asked.

  Lewis looked around and waved a hand vaguely.

  “It’s all triage, so far,” he said. “Based on how relevant the file is to your ikons; or if not, then to any art shipped from New World One; or if not, then any shipment with multiple headings that include art—and so on, and on. The farther away they are, the less relevant they are; the closer to me, the more.”

  “You look like the jewel in the lotus. Or Alice’s caterpillar,” I said.

  “It’s a fractal technique. I’m almost done with this part.” He pointed at his cot. “Sit there and wait a few minutes, and then I should have something for you.”