Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers Read online

  Black Projects, White Knights

  The Company Dossiers

  Kage Baker

  Contents

  * * *

  Introduction: The Hounds of Zeus

  Noble Mold

  Smart Alec

  Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin

  Old Flat Top

  The Dust Enclosed Here

  The Literary Agent

  Lemuria Will Rise!

  The Wreck of the Gladstone

  Monster Story

  Hanuman

  Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu

  The Likely Lad

  The Queen in Yellow

  The Hotel at Harlan’s Landing

  This one is affectionately dedicated to Gardner Dozois, an Atlas holding up the Company cosmos.

  Introduction: The Hounds of Zeus

  * * *

  You are standing on a street corner in one of the great cities of the world, looking up at a certain building. You have been very clever, to have gotten this far. Thousands of people pass this way daily, and barely notice this same unremarkable facade at which you stare; but they don’t know what you know. You realize you shouldn’t be staring. Looking as nonchalant as you can, you walk on down the street, and start at your own reflection, which seems to be watching you fearfully, in the shop windows. Nervous? You’re not nervous at all, are you? You won’t be entering by the front door, of course. You saw the ragged man sitting on the front steps, smiling and nodding to himself. There would be nothing so obvious as a man wearing a black suit and black sunglasses. Not to guard what you’ve come for… Just around the next corner, you find the grubby little vindaloo place. You paid an awful lot of money to learn the name of this unpromising-looking shop, but it’s just as it was described to you. Drawing a deep breath, you go inside.

  You seat yourself, and when the waiter comes and inquires, you say what you were told to say:

  “I’d like something pink, with lentils in it.”

  He nods, smiles briefly, and walks away. You brace yourself, looking around to see if Public Health Monitors with gas guns are going to come boiling out of the kitchen. None do, but you are sweating by the time the waiter brings you a glass of ice water and… yes… a dish of something pink, with lentils in it. You take exactly three sips of the water, eat three spoonfuls of the pink stuff—you’ve no idea what it is—and then, as you were instructed to do, you rise and head for the lavatory, which is down a narrow hall at the side.

  Beyond the door the waiter stands. Without a word, he sets his palm in a certain place on the wall, and though you knew what was going to happen next you still jump when you see the doorway appear, gliding smoothly into existence out of what had seemed to be a solid surface. Beyond the doorway is a steel cubicle. You step inside, a panel slides shut behind you and you are suddenly dropping very far, very fast. You’re in.

  You have successfully penetrated the defenses of Dr. Zeus Incorporated.

  You hug yourself, partly in glee and partly to keep the contents of your stomach in one place. Dr. Zeus Incorporated, also known as Jovian Integrated Systems, also known as the Kronos Diversified Stock Company! And you know it has had other names, and far older names. And you have heard all the rumors: how this is a secret fraternity made up of scientists and businessmen, the secret fraternity for which all other so-called secret fraternities are merely decoys. Its members rule the world. They have unlimited power. They are somehow able to travel through time. They have found the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life.

  Especially the Elixir of Life.

  You aren’t here to steal it, however. You know that no amount of bribery could ever get you that far into the inner sanctum, not if you were the wealthiest person in the world. All you’ve come here for is proof.

  When the elevator door opens, you are poised and ready. You step quickly through utter and formless blackness, hands out before you, and you count your paces: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, turn! You walk three paces to the left. Your groping hands encounter a rack of something, small flat objects stacked on end. You grab one and stuff it quickly in your pocket. You turn, retrace your steps with meticulous effort and fall trembling into the steel cabinet, which rises with you at once. By the time the door opens, though you are momentarily blinded by the yellow light of the dingy corridor, you have regained enough poise to walk past the waiter with no more than a nod. You leave your credit disk on the table as you go. You won’t be needing that one anymore, not after today.

  The rest of the journey is a blur, until you lock the door of your hotel room behind you and take out your prize.

  It’s a tiny golden disk in an envelope of film. It might be a creditdisk, currency of an unknown land… and in a sense it is, isn’t it? You’re chortling to yourself as you sit down with it, slip it into the Buke and watch the projector unfurl for you. A white beam shoots from its heart and then the air immediately before your face fills with a shifting blue-green opacity, and white letters appear. Unlike most of your contemporaries in the twenty-fourth century, you can read. People of high intelligence and low birth become data entry clerks. It’s lousy work, but you’re done with it forever, and all because of what you’ve stolen today. The word you are staring at is DOSSIERS, by the way. The word fades and you are offered a selection. There are at least a dozen headings, and you hold your breath as you fix on the first one and summon it with a motion of your eye. You’ve never looked on the face of a god before.

  The entry obediently enlarges, swims into focus, and you are rather disappointed. The man before you looks so ordinary, so generic, that he might pass for a member of nearly any ethnic group in any country in the world. Well, perhaps he’d be most successful in the Mediterranean area; but you have an uneasy feeling that if he wore lederhosen or a silk kimono, or got a really deep tan, he’d still mingle unnoticed anywhere. He has bright, friendly little black eyes. He has a neat little black beard and moustache, like a cartoon devil.

  The text beside his image tells you his designation is JOSEPH, that he is a Facilitator Grade One, that his acquisition date was 18,145 B.C.E., (Gregorian) 25 November, at Irun del Mar, Basque Republic. If you can believe what you’re reading, this man sprayed fixative on cave paintings, hid treasure in pyramids as they were being built, wore a toga, marched with legionaries, preached sermons most piously. And worked in the New World too; here’s a mention of the trickster Coyote. And here’s a long, long list of work in the entertainment industry.

  The text states further that he was processed at Eurobase One, that his ethics programming is flexible, and that he has a disinformation capacity of ninety-eight percent, but you don’t really absorb this last bit because your mind is still grappling with the implications of his career. Wouldn’t it mean that this man is over twenty thousand years old?

  Well? You were told Dr. Zeus Incorporated could create immortals, weren’t you?

  Hurriedly, you reduce his image and pull up another one.

  You see a woman, black, with small perfect features and a certain elegance of bearing. She is smiling charmingly for the imager, and there is nothing disconcerting about her at all. She carries a parasol over one shoulder; it adds to the somewhat old-fashioned quality of the image. But the text with the image states that her designation is NAN D’ARRAIGNEE, and that her acquisition date was 1541 A.D., (Gregorian) 14 June, Senegal, which means that she is an immortal creature who needs no parasol to protect her from the rays of the sun or from anything else. The parasol is a mannerism. She has decided to be a gracious lady. She might be anything she chose…

  You are beginning to feel a little giddy. It’s
really true. You believed it, you hoped desperately that you were right, but the truth is almost more than you can handle.

  Next image: A man in a blue coat with brass buttons. He is large, bearded, has rather harsh aristocratic features, and yet he somehow fails to be a commanding presence..His face is too pink, his eyes too gentle. He looks abashed, somehow. His designation is KALUGIN. His acquisition date was 1345 A.D., (Gregorian) 21 May, Russia, and one would think that in all the centuries since that time he might have faced down his fears; but he looks more human than you do. You blink, shake your head at the perfection of the work, and call up another file.

  Here is a woman who has certainly come to terms with her immortality. She is a beauty, in a smooth insolent bored kind of way. Her hair is black, her tan is perfect, and her expression invites you to get on with whatever you’ve got in mind because she has a thousand better places to be. Her designation is KIU, and you catch your breath at her acquisition date: 9000 B.C.E., (Gregorian) 3 July, Mongolia. Acquired, what does that mean? Were these creatures created, or purchased? You have heard so many stories. Were they human once? You are pinning all your hopes on that being the case, because it would mean that you have a chance… you too might—

  The next image stops you cold. What is this thing? Too pale to be a gorilla, and yet—no, it can’t be human either. What you can see of the face, that isn’t hidden beneath a vast tow-colored beard, is too broad, the forehead too flat, and the huge dentition in the grinning mouth is all wrong for a man. The nose projects forward out of the face like a boulder. If such things as mountain trolls existed, this might be one. His little pale eyes twinkle at you. You aren’t helped by the text. All it tells you is that his designation is JOSHUA, and his acquisition date was… well, that explains some of it: he was acquired on 30,428

  B.C.E., (Gregorian) 18 March.

  “He must be the Missing Link,” you murmur to yourself, and you giggle nervously. You were only expecting gods; are there monsters here too?

  Now, there is nothing monstrous in the next face you see. Here iswisdom, shrewdness, perhaps compassion, certainly a sense of humor. Abundant humanity here; but it’s the face of an elderly ape. He seems to be some kind of chimpanzee. Nevertheless he is dressed in a suit of formal cut, and is gesturing with a pair of spectacles at the imager, as though caught in mid-lecture. His designation is MICHAEL

  HANUMAN. He was acquired on 2320 A.D., (Gregorian) 14 August, New Jersey, and you realize that this one isn’t ancient at all. What is he doing here? Is this a joke? You feel vaguely unclean, because the idea of dressing up an animal in clothing for human amusement is morally repugnant to you, and to any right-thinking inhabitant of the twenty-fourth century. It is also a criminal act, ever since the Beast Liberation laws were passed.

  Quickly, you summon the next image.

  At last, another unmistakably human face. A white man, with green eyes and red hair. He wears a sharply pointed goatee and moustaches that stab upward at the ends. He looks imperturbable. He looks arrogant. He looks like the sort of person who carries a sword in his cane. There is something about him, hard as a faceted diamond, cool as a cat. You think to yourself that you would not like to have to ask this man for mercy, and then you wonder why the thought has occurred to you. His designation is VICTOR. He was acquired on 502 A.D., (Gregorian) 1 September, England.

  You decide you don’t like looking into his eyes, and pull up another image. Oh, this one is much easier to look at. Another male, but smiling, and certainly human. Or as human as these creatures (you notice that you are thinking of them all as creatures now) can be. Fair-haired and boyishly handsome, like a matinee idol of a bygone era, perhaps when films had no sound but melodramatic piano scores and no color but laboriously hand-tinted frames. This fellow would fit right in, racing in an ancient automobile to save the heroine tied to the railroad tracks. He has HERO written all over him, but his designation is LEWIS, and he was acquired 103 A.D., (Gregorian) 21 June, England. And what romantic places he’s lived in! The text tells you he was a druid in Ireland, a troubadour in France, and—yes, he did work in silent films, in old Hollywood. Yet here are notations of suspected espionage and some mysterious difficulty. What happened to necessitate so many repairs on this unit/person/creature?

  You move on to the next selection. Your brow creases in puzzlement. You sit back, realize you are sweating profusely, and mop your face with a tissue before leaning forward again to try to make sense of what you are seeing.

  Not one image, but some kind of montage, and no explanatory text at all but one word: ADONAI. After a moment of study, you notice that there is one central figure common to all the little images before you. He is taller than anyone else in the frame with him. Here he is in a black robe, stalking along a muddy lane in a place of oak trees. In the distance is a village of thatched and half-timbered buildings. Here he is in the uniform of a naval officer of the mid-nineteenth century, a hulking figure staring gloomily at a horizon of piled cloud. Here he is again, boarding a ship with drawn cutlass, and there is a white-hot righteous wrath in his small pale eyes that makes you draw back involuntarily. And there is something… subtly… wrong about his face. Not evil, but incongruous, in some indefinable way. He is too big. His cheekbones are high and broad, his long nose is broken. No beauty, to be sure, but what is it about the man that sets him apart?

  You shake your head, trying to clear it, and reach for another tissue. Here he is again and he’s… a child. A little boy, holding the hand of a slim young black girl. They are walking along a street and she is carrying a string bag of parcels. He is holding a toy sailboat. He has noticed the person capturing his image and is looking up with a bright interested stare. And in the background-In the background is the vindaloo shop where you dined today. This image was taken recently, here, in this city. How can the child in front of the shop also be the man on the deck of the ship, or in the black robe? You feel a queasy sense of illogic, and have to remind yourself that Dr. Zeus Incorporated is rumored to be able to do anything. But you don’t think you’re up to puzzling over this now. You call up the next image, hoping it will be something simple.

  It’s another image, just one, with text. The woman regards you with black eyes that do not smolder; they burn. Her mouth is sullen. There is a certain hauteur in her bearing. The text tells you that her designation is MENDOZA and she was acquired on 1541 A.D., (Gregorian) 28 June, in Spain. It states further that she worked in England in 1555 to obtain something called Ilex tormentosum, and in California she obtained, among other things in a very long list, Vitis vinifera elysia and Oenothera hookeri ssp. sdatera. It mentions a lengthy tenure in South America at the New World One Botany Department. You are disappointed. This woman, with her sullen mouth, with her burning eyes, is something as mundane as a botanist?

  But there are other notations, records of disciplinary hearings and security breaches and reprogramming. You read a warning about something called Crome’s radiation and there’s the word ADONAI again—is she connected to the tall man somehow? She was in England once… But the text is blurring—the image is blurring too—

  You want a drink of water. You try to get to your feet, but the next thing you see is the ceiling fan above you, spinning slowly around. How did you come to be flat on your back on the floor?

  Someone is leaning over you. You look up into the eyes of the ragged man you last saw smiling and nodding to himself on the front steps of Dr. Zeus Incorporated. He looks sympathetic to your plight.

  “You shouldn’t have had the pink stuff with lentils, you know,” he says. You watch, with a vague sense of outrage, as he shuts down the program and closes up your Buke. He drops it into his coat pocket and winks at you before he slips out of the room.

  You lie there, immobile.

  After a while, you can’t see.

  After a while, you’re not there.

  This was the first Company story ever to appear in print, while In the Garden of Iden was still in search of a publish
er. It is also the only story of mine my mother ever heard. She was a person of epic personality and style, rather like the late great Jennifer Patterson of Two Fat Ladies fame, outrageous, artistic, and endlessly nurturing. Naturally enough, I spent most of my life refusing to be anything she wanted me to be. I never let her read anything I wrote, although she loved science fiction.

  Then she was, abruptly, diagnosed with something awful and lasted only a month. Every day after work I would visit her in her hospital room, where of course the truth hit me like a grand piano dropped out a window: I desperately wanted her to read my stuff. And now she couldn’t hold a book or even focus her eyes. And the train was pulling out of the station so Just, and I was standing there like an idiot on the platform, with almost no time to say I was sorry. But, pacing by her bed 1 explained the whole Company idea, and made up a short story to illustrate the way it worked, about Mendoza and Joseph trying to steal a rare plant. I acted it out, did all the voices, everything I could think of to hold her attention and get the idea across. She liked it, thank God. I wrote it down after she died.

  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

  Noble Mold

  * * *

  For a while i lived in this little town by the sea. Boy, it was a soft job. Santa Barbara had become civilized by then: no more Indian rebellions, no more pirates storming up the beach, nearly all the grizzly bears gone. Once in a while some bureaucrat from Mexico City would raise hell with us, but by and large the days of the old Missions were declining into forlorn shades, waiting for the Yankees to come. The Company operated a receiving, storage, and shipping terminal out of what looked like an oaken chest in my cell. I had a mortal identity as an alert little padre with an administrative career ahead of him, so the Church kept me pretty busy pushing a quill. My Company duties, though, were minor: I logged in consignments from agents in the field and forwarded communiques.