Mendoza in Hollywood (Company) Page 11

  I had a productive day, without the distraction of conversation. I got a good sample of genetic material from a specimen of Quercus morehus and, wandering into a neighboring canyon, I found a lone Symphoricarpus mollis, which was on my priority (pharmaceuticals) list, as was Ribes speciosum, which I also bagged—several good specimens of that one. You never know when they’re going to discover some miracle cure for something, up there in the twenty-fourth century. Three times now in my field career I’ve managed to win Favorable Mutation credits, earning me time out for private research. It occurred to me, that afternoon, that this might be a way to shake the dust of Los Diablos off my boots: find something so incredibly rare and useful that I’d win another holiday. I was in a great mood when I finally marched back to the inn that evening. Work always makes me happy. And I’d seen not one dour Protestant shade, not one reproachful phantom.

  Porfirio, though, was glowering by the cookfire as I approached.

  “No escort all day,” he said sternly.

  “Well, who was here to go with me?” I said. “The others have their jobs too. I need to be out every day, Porfirio, I have work to do. I’ll take a Navy revolver, I promise.”

  “You didn’t today,” he said. “I’ll issue you a holster. If you’re going out alone, I want you to wear it at all times, understand?”

  “When in Rome, et cetera,” I grumbled. “Is this really necessary, though? Any trouble I ran into would be relayed simultaneously to the Company through the datafeed transmission. If I needed rescue—which I wouldn’t anyway—Dr. Zeus would know immediately.”

  “Just because everything we see gets transmitted doesn’t mean somebody’s watching,” Porfirio replied. “You think the Company’s got enough personnel to watch every one of us around the clock? It may be months before somebody starts interpreting your signal, if ever.”

  “Why aren’t you this restrictive on Imarte?” I complained, having no better argument.

  “You think she doesn’t carry a gun?” he said. “Beautiful little pearl-handled .22 in her reticule. Anyway her job is different, she’s out in town most of the time, where she has some kind of law enforcement on her side if anything happens. If somebody tries to rape her or she goes to jail, no problem. She has a great time interviewing all the parties involved. You, you’re out in the sagebrush, miles from where anybody can see. If you have a problem, you need to be able to solve it fast.”

  “Like Einar does.” I shivered, remembering.

  “Like Einar,” Porfirio agreed. He looked as though he was about to say something else; but after an awkward moment he shrugged. “So, go put your stuff away. Dinner’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes.”

  I went slowly, marveling at the gap between official policy and actual field procedure. We were always told that mortal life is incredibly precious and must never, ever be taken: they do enough of that themselves. We were warned that we would have to stand by and watch as mortals executed one another, or destroyed thousands of themselves in wars and riots. But we never take part in their primitive justice, never help them along their Malthusian path. Of course, there have always been rumors that the Company allows the occasional removal of a vile and evil mortal for the greater good. Sometimes, it’s whispered, even an innocent mortal may die, if it’s necessary for the success of a mission. I’ve even heard that tacitly admitted. Security techs like Porfirio would be the ones to take care of any unofficial assassinations; they’re programmed for strong-arm work, the way facilitators are programmed to be devious and amoral.

  But I didn’t know what to make of how things were done in Los Angeles. Granted, most of the people sniping at travelers from the chaparral were murderers, either crazy or cold-blooded, whom any jury would hang in a second, so it made sense to kill them quickly and efficiently. But it was the speed and efficiency that had me unsettled. Got a problem? Bang, it’s solved. No argument, no strategy, no getting to know your enemy.

  I was still pondering this at dinner, over grilled beef and frijoles, and even Imarte’s peculiar story didn’t take my mind off it much.

  “That man had the most fascinating account of rebel organizers in San Francisco,” she said when she emerged for supper after a lengthy afternoon siesta.

  “No kidding,” said Porfirio, stirring the frijoles.

  “You wouldn’t believe the absurd and quixotic plans Southern sympathizers are forming up in the city. Even in places like Visalia. There is far more anti-Union sentiment in this region than I ever supposed.” She sat, drawing a shawl about her. “This man was actually contacted by a cell trying to raise men for an army. Can you imagine what they could accomplish if they were able to recruit enough fighters? One of their plans was to intercept the gold shipments that provide Union funds for continuing the war, which I need hardly explain would cripple Lincoln’s efforts.”

  I was surprised. I hadn’t paid enough attention to the war to be concerned with such goings-on, but it seemed like a respectable plan. “Why didn’t they go through with it?”

  “I think it’s because the majority of the organizers are young and hotheaded. My informant intimated that there was some sort of dissension among the members of the organizing cabal.” Imarte accepted a plate of supper and frowned judiciously at it. “But the main reason, probably, was that the Comstock lode was discovered. Given the choice between resisting the tyrant’s yoke and making a bundle, most of the nascent California Confederacy departed for Nevada.”

  “That figures,” Porfirio said, and laughed. “I remember when all the Anglos deserted Los Angeles back in 1849, when the Gold Rush happened. Suddenly you couldn’t get china, you couldn’t get shoes—all the little stores were closed.”

  “Same thing in Monterey,” I said, remembering the ghost town it had become. “Everybody went for the gold. That’s so stupid, though, for the rebels! Just like the Japanese never getting around to bombing San Diego or Mare Island next century, which would win the Pacific war for them, but they never do it. Because, think about it. What would happen if the Confederates decided to play Sir Francis Drake and go privateering along the coast?”

  “El Draque,” said Porfirio, reminiscing as he rolled frijoles in a tortilla. “I saw him, once, for about ten minutes. Short little bastard.”

  “As it happens, that was part of the plan,” Imarte told me. “The gold for the Union troops is shipped from San Francisco to Panama on the Pacific mail steamers. Seize those gold shipments, and you deal a serious blow to the Union. But apparently the logistical problems in obtaining a ship and ordnance for the enterprise were only just beginning to be dealt with when most of the conspirators left for Virginia City.”

  “This guy told all this top-secret stuff to a whore?” Porfirio shook his head. “No wonder the plot fell apart. Look at the blabbermouths they recruited.”

  “That must have been part of the problem,” Imarte agreed. “Though I gather Mr. Jackson felt it safe to discuss the matter with me because the rebellion is pretty much a dead issue. Apparently the young man who was in charge of his cell departed for Veracruz.”

  “What’s he gonna do down there? Fight with the ladrones to keep Maximilian out?” said Porfirio with disgust. “Shit, that’s all they need, another Nicaragua.”

  Imarte shrugged. I washed down a tortilla with some lukewarm coffee. Who cared what the mortal monkeys did, anyway? We knew how it would turn out in the end. The Union would be saved, and poor old Abraham Lincoln would pick a bad night to go to the theater. France would get Mexico but wouldn’t be able to keep it. I had work to do at my credenza.

  “When did you see Sir Francis Drake?” Imarte asked Porfirio.

  “Ha, gonna pick my brains, now? You anthropologist. It was in 1579. I was out with my brother’s son. The kid was supposed to be delivering some silver on pack llamas from Tarapaca to Morro Morena, and I went with him to be sure he made it. Well, he didn’t. About halfway there, who do we run into but this little stubby Englishman with a red beard, and—”

 
“Wait a minute!” I sat forward, staring. “Your brother’s son? What are you talking about?”

  “My brother’s son,” said Porfirio, looking down into his coffee as he stirred it. “I have family.”

  “But none of us have family,” said Imarte. Even she was astonished. “It’s Company policy to recruit orphaned children.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “And I was orphaned. So was my brother . . . My mortal father was a soldier under Bernal Diaz. From Hispaniola. All those gentlemen adventurers decided they could make a fortune by going over to Mexico with Cortés to get gold and estates for themselves. They did it, too, though most of them didn’t live long enough to enjoy them. My father was awarded some relative of Moctezuma’s as a bride. People gave the Spanish lots of girls, every one of them princesses, supposedly, hoping the tie of blood would make the new conquerors part of the family. I guess they kept some self-respect that way. You know: He’s not a white god, he’s just my son-in-law. Well, some minor king gave his daughter to Cortez, and Cortez already had all the wives he wanted, so he passed her on to one of his officers, who wasn’t interested in women so he passed her on to one of his subordinates, and to make a long story short, she wound up with my father, who kept her.

  “I guess they loved each other. I remember her crying and crying over him when he died But before that happened they had children. Two, me and my little brother, Agustin. I was four. Agustin was only a baby. I don’t know what happened and don’t want to know. All I remember is fire and blood and my father dying and my mother weeping over him. She told me to wait, to take care of Agustin, and she dragged my father’s body outside. She never came back.

  “Then the lady came. She told me she was going to take me away somewhere safe, where I’d never die, that a kind doctor was going to take care of me from now on. You know, the story we all hear, when they find us. She tried to make me go with her and leave Agustin, but I wouldn’t. I yelled and picked him up and wouldn’t let go of him. In the end she had to take us both.

  “Well, when we got to the nearest Company base, they had a problem on their hands, because here they were with two little mortal kids saved from certain death, but only one of them—me—fit the physical profile for the immortality process. What to do with baby Agustin?

  “They were kind enough about it. They inoculated him against diseases, and they found foster parents for him, a good, loving couple who wanted a child, and one day, while I was undergoing the first cranial surgery for augmentation, they gave him away. I was so mad when I woke up and found out. What was Agustin going to do without me? I was supposed to look after him.

  “But the nurse explained how they’d given him to these really nice people, and how he’d live a wonderful long life and never die of smallpox, and my poor mother and father would have wanted that, and didn’t I want them to be happy up there in heaven? Anyway, what could I do about it?

  “Well, I did something.” He gazed into the fire. “When I was grown, after I graduated, I accessed Company records and got the name of the couple who adopted Agustin, and I went and looked him up. He didn’t remember me, of course, and I couldn’t tell him who I was; but I struck up an acquaintance with him all the same. His adoptive father had land and money, and spoiled the kid. Agustin had everything, but he was beginning to get into trouble when I found him. You know the kind of trouble rich kids get into. They’re bored. Life has no point. They don’t love anybody, and they don’t think anybody loves them. So it’s cards, whores, drink, and raising hell. I beat some sense into him, and we became sworn friends after that.

  “His foster father approved of me as a good influence. My brother and I went places, did things together, just as though I were a mortal. He fell in love with a girl and married her; I was best man. They had kids, and I was godfather to half of them. He worked hard, he made good investments. I had to leave now and then when the Company sent me places, but I always came back to check on Agustin.

  “The business with Drake happened when Agustin had to pay some rents to the bishop at Morro Morena. He sent Dieguito—his oldest boy—with the rent in silver on a pack train of llamas. Thank God I went along. We were halfway there when out of nowhere we were surrounded by these lousy Englishmen, and I’m not using the term metaphorically. They were also armed to the teeth. They looked like they were starving. The leader was Francis Drake, a little short fat guy with a red beard. I wish I could tell you something memorable about him that would give you an invaluable insight into his character, but all he did was call us dogs and demand the llamas. He thought they were some kind of sheep. He was pretty happy when he found the silver.

  “When his attention was distracted, I grabbed Dieguito, and we ran and got away. The English shot at us and called us filthy cowards—why they were sore about us running, I can’t guess. Dieguito was humiliated and angry. He wanted to go back there and throw rocks at them or something. I grabbed him and asked him what he thought his father would rather have, a living son or a son killed by a bunch of pirates? Any father would like to know his son died bravely; but he’d much rather hear that there were going to be lots of grandchildren.

  “When we got back, Dieguito saw that I was right, because Agustin wept and embraced his son, and embraced me, and said he would have given the boy’s weight in silver to get him safe home again. Agustin said it was a lucky day for him when I insulted him in that tavern. Drake sailed on up the coast and out of our lives, and the Company sent me away on a mission, and I was plenty busy for a while.

  “But then, one time I came back after being away a couple of years . . .”

  “And Agustin had died?” I guessed.

  “No, though it felt like it. He’d aged. Begun to age, anyway. The first gray in his beard, his face sagging a little. And his kids were growing up. While I still looked twenty.” Porfirio reached around for a branch and thrust it into the fire, opening up a red cavern of coals that breathed heat at us.

  “So what did you do?” Imarte said.

  “Learned appliance makeup real fast. Pretended to get sick and hang by a thread for months. Agustin came to see me every day . . . and when I made my recovery, everyone said the illness had aged me, which was what they were supposed to say, so things were okay for a while. It was a pain getting made up every morning, but it was worth it to be able to keep an eye on Agustin.

  “But time kept passing. You know what happened, eventually. Little Agustin the fat baby, with his dimple and his shock of hair, became Agustin the tremulous old skeleton, toothless, blind, unable to remember things. He’d had his years and years of long life, just as the nurse promised me; and this was what it had done to him. I sat by his bed, every day; I held his hand and listened to him mutter and twitch, or breathe with a sound like clothes being dragged over a washboard. I myself was so weighed down with the crap I wore to make me look old, I could barely move.

  “I went weeping to his funeral—so many great-grandchildren there!—and Dieguito, old Diego now, comforted me by telling me his father would see me in paradise. I couldn’t tell him there was just one little problem with that: you have to die to go to heaven, and I couldn’t.

  “I pretended to, of course. I made up a wax dummy with my horrible old features, then had a hot shower and stripped away all the appliances, all the latex and paint and white hair, and paid a servant to see to my funeral. I walked out of my own house young and free, and I got on a horse and rode north.”

  Out in the night a coyote howled, mocking.

  “But I wasn’t free,” Porfirio said with a sigh. “Who was going to look after the great-grandchildren? I stayed away ten years. The Company sent me to Nicaragua, to Chile, to Mexico, to Texas. I did a lot of good work and had some free time, so I went back to visit Agustin’s grave. They’d buried my wax dummy beside him, wasn’t that nice of them? And Dieguito, who would have remembered me best, was blind now. Cataracts. His kids had no sense, they’d led soft lives and were letting the estates go to hell. Their kids were wild and liv
ing like Indians. Somebody had to take a hand. So I followed the oldest of the young boys around, watching him, and one night he left a cantina drunk and was set upon by thieves. I killed them and brought him home.”

  Just like that, he killed them. Well, he was a security tech.

  “The family—none of them knew who I was, I looked twenty-five at most—welcomed me, thanked me, gave me a job as majordomo. I held it for a while, long enough to set things to rights again. Dieguito died, and the baby I’d held in a baptismal robe I saw as an ancient creature lying gaunt in his coffin. It didn’t matter. The son had a son, and I was such a member of the family by that time that I was the godfather, and I held the little fat brown boy while the old priest anointed him and named him Agustin.

  “It’s gone on like that, you see? For centuries now, and the Company has been very understanding. I have a big family, and they need me. Their fortunes have changed—our estates were lost after the Grito—but the family has survived. There was nothing I could do about Agustin’s dying, but his blood still runs in his descendants. I stay with them awhile, I watch them get old and pretend to get old for a while myself; then I ride away and stay away until they need me again. One night a stranger will come; and if any of the old people think he looks like Uncle Porfirio, who used to teach them how to ride, well, it can’t be more than coincidence, can it? Because Uncle Porfirio would of course be a very, very old man now, if anybody knew where he was.”

  After a long silence he shrugged. “I’ll have to be more careful, now that photography has been invented,” he concluded.

  Imarte was sitting with stars in her eyes. “That is so beautiful! What a unique chance you’ve been given! Think what a cultural thesis you could make of it, three centuries of history as experienced by one family!”

  “You think so?” He looked sidelong at her. “How’d you like to have that responsibility? I’m never free. Three hundred years, and I’m still obeying my mortal mother’s last request.”