Gods and Pawns (Company) Read online

  “I don’t care,” she said wildly. “Put your stupid dart gun away and use mine! Shoot out his tires!”

  “Honey, at this speed, he could flip over—”

  “Oh, NO, you SOB, don’t do it! Oh, he’s getting on the 101!”

  “God damn,” said Uncle Porfirio, sinking into his seat. “Follow him. How fast can you get this boat to go?”

  “We’re going to find out,” said Maria, turning up the on-ramp so sharply that the Virgin of Guadalupe flew off her perch on the dashboard. Uncle Porfirio’s hand shot out and he caught her in midair, stuck her in his coat pocket.

  The freeway was nearly empty at this hour, a dark river winding through the heart of Hollywood, and black ivy climbed its banks and waved down from its overpasses. The taillights might have been red eyes in the jungle night. The air even now was hot, dead, heavy, smelling like warm milk. When Uncle Porfirio cranked down his window it pushed into the car with a roar, like a big animal.

  The truck ahead of them slowed down, sped up, changed lanes recklessly. Maria followed, grim, steering with her left hand.

  “I think he broke my arm,” she said, almost as an aside. Uncle Porfirio turned his head and stared fixedly at her right arm a moment.

  “No. But the muscles are torn and you’ve got a hell of a subdural hematoma. You’d better go to a doctor about that, mi hija.”

  “What, you’ve got x-ray eyes, too?” Maria laughed without humor, showing her teeth. “Hey, what happens if the cops get in on this chase? Does Doctor Angel of Mercy get hauled off to cyborg jail again? Or is there a cyborg looney bin? Or does he just get handed over to the Cyborg Police Department?”

  Uncle Porfirio didn’t say anything, watching the truck.

  “You’re with the Cyborg Police Department,” Maria guessed.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” said Uncle Porfirio. “He’s exiting at Cahuenga. Change lanes!”

  Maria cursed, steered the car across three lanes to make the off-ramp, and Uncle Porfirio had to haul on the wheel with her. They came off the ramp in time to see the lights of the truck speeding away over the hill, in the direction of Franklin.

  “You miserable bastard,” said Maria, gunning the engine and shooting up the hill like a rocket. As they crested the top and followed the long curve down, she added: “You don’t save things, do you? Not like the other people who work for this Dr. Zeus Company.”

  “No,” said Uncle Porfirio, so quietly she could barely hear him over the rush of air from the window. “I solve problems.”

  “And that’s why he said he respected you? Christ Jesus, you’re some kind of corporate hit man. Damn! He’s going left on Franklin. Hope we make the turn!”

  They careened around the corner on two wheels and zoomed up Franklin, climbing another hill, never managing to close the distance between the pickup and the Buick.

  “It was the price I had to pay, mi hija,” said Uncle Porfirio. “My special arrangement. I’m the only operative I know of with a mortal family. So the Company made an exception for me. Because of what I do for them.”

  “What about that studio executive Mama was dating when she met Papi?” asked Maria. “Was that a Company job, too?”

  “That was different,” said Uncle Porfirio, after a pause. “He was a mobster. He was bad for Lupe, and then he threatened Hector.”

  “Don’t tell me any more,” said Maria.

  “Deal,” he replied.

  Down the hill and along the corridor of Franklin, and the night air was sweet again with jasmine and copa de oro from terrace gardens. Ahead of them the truck accelerated suddenly and was gone, vanishing left.

  “That’s Bronson,” shouted Uncle Porfirio. “He’s going up to Bronson Canyon. Make a left!”

  Maria obeyed. Within a block they were going uphill through old Hollywood, residential streets laid out in the 1920s, green gardens clinging to the canyon walls. There were Spanish haciendas, there were English Tudor cottages, and French châteaux, and here and there an ersatz Neutra apartment building like a raw scar; but they went by in a blur, every one of them, and the cool night air streamed down the canyon like water.

  “I know where he’s going now,” said Uncle Porfirio. There was a certain grim satisfaction in his voice.

  “Where?” Maria leaned forward as she drove, concentrating, for the street had narrowed.

  “Old Bronson Quarry.” Uncle Porfirio checked his pistol.

  “The place with the cave? Where they shot Teenagers from Outer Space?” Even in her terror and rage, Maria was incredulous. “And, like, I don’t know how many Star Trek episodes?”

  “Yeah. That’s it,” said Uncle Porfirio. “The great thing about it is that it’s invisible. You go there, and you recognize it immediately because of Outer Limits or Ed Wood or whatever. And because it’s familiar, your brain just turns off what’s actually there and shows what you remember from TV instead. The Company uses places like that all the time. Concealed storage, transport stations…and places to rendezvous.”

  They had the truck in front of them once more, as the road climbed, as the houses became fewer and farther between. Two cylinders were making a big difference; the little truck did not like hills, and they were closer now, close enough to see Emrys’s hunched shoulders as he drove. Far above them the Hollywood sign loomed, ghostly in the reflected light of the city.

  Abruptly they were out of the residential area, as canyon walls loomed close on either side of the road, which seemed as though it was about to end in a narrow parking lot. But the truck sped straight through it and turned right, smashing open a barred gate, making another sharp right, and losing speed abruptly as it climbed.

  “I hope this car has good suspension,” said Uncle Porfirio, and a moment later Maria understood why; for now they were bouncing up an unpaved track. Bushes clawed at them to either side, boulders scraped the oil pan underneath. Even with the racket, they were now so close to the truck that Maria could hear Philip’s screams coming from its cab.

  “Oh,” Maria wept, “mi hijo, please hold on. Please!”

  “As soon as you get the chance,” said Uncle Porfirio, “pull up on his right.” He unbuckled his seat belt.

  And then he was gone, having writhed out the passenger window like smoke, apparently onto the roof of the Buick, for Maria heard the sheet metal above her head flexing as he leaped. Then he was abruptly in the back of the pickup, and then he had punched in its rear window, and then he was gone. But the cab of the truck was full of a writhing darkness, and it veered suddenly to the right.

  Maria sped up, pulled around the truck on the right as she had been told, and now she saw why; for on the right the embankment dropped away, and what a long way down it went, with the paved road far below! She wondered briefly how many filmed car chases had ended in a gangster’s Packard or De Soto tumbling end over end down this drop, to finish in a nicely cinematic fireball: Crime Does Not Pay.

  Her car was straddling the verge, the oil pan was grinding on gravel, now, but she cranked the wheel ferociously to the left and fendered the pickup, forcing it to stay on the road. Horrible, horrible noises were coming from the truck’s cab. Suddenly an arm shot out the window, holding Philip by the scruff of his jammies like a little sack of mail.

  Maria lunged, grabbed him with her good arm, stamped on the Buick’s brakes, and prayed. She was able to drag Philip in over the window frame and clutch him to her chest, with an overpowering sense of relief. His arms went around her neck, his wet screams deafened her, and she cradled him and told him everything was all right, all right, all right. The Buick lurched to a stop on the edge of the trail.

  The truck went rumbling on, purely on momentum, for it was no longer being driven or steered, and the trail was no longer climbing but opened instead into an immense amphitheater, towering rock walls all around three sides. Right where a stage ought to be was the cave Maria had seen in so many cheesy movies. The truck rattled toward it crazily, lighting its black mouth as the high-
beams swept across. And…there was a figure standing in the cave, not thirty yards away.

  Maria blinked through her tears, as she patted and crooned to Philip. For a moment her brain fought with her, telling her it had seen the Robot Monster, complete with gorilla suit and fishbowl helmet. Or had that been Tor Johnson in a torn shirt, with a glimpse of boom mike above his head? Or even the Aztec Robot from Mars? She remembered what Uncle Porfirio had told her about such places, as the figure walked forward from the pitch-black into starlight. Another slow circle of the truck, moving quite aimlessly now, lit the figure up white.

  It was a starship captain in a federation uniform. No! It was a man in a business suit. Just a man.

  Yet it wasn’t just a man…was it?

  The truck juddered to a halt at last. Something went flying out of the driver’s side window. Had that been a gun? Maria looked around her on the seat and realized Uncle Porfirio had taken her gun. Which gun had just gone out the window?

  “Philip, sweetie,” she whispered huskily, “we have to get out of here.”

  She tried to set him on the seat beside her, but he clung and whimpered. She reached across the wheel with her left hand, found the gear shift, put the Buick in reverse. Turning to look over her shoulder as best she could with Philip there, she began to edge the car back down the trail.

  She might have made it, if her front left tire hadn’t been shot out.

  The car jolted, sagged leftward; Philip screamed again, struggling. She turned and saw Emrys, who had emerged from the truck and was standing, braced with legs apart, clenching the gun with both hands. His Cat in the Hat smile was back, even creepier now because his face was scored with red lines. He looked as though he’d been in a fight with a much bigger cat; possibly a jaguar.

  He raised the gun, pointing it high, at the stars; then brought it down, slowly, aiming at her face.

  Then he lurched sideways, as Uncle Porfirio came from nowhere and leaped on him. The second shot went wide, spurted dust harmlessly ten feet from the car. The two men were a blur of motion and hideous noise on the ground, in the white light and black shadow from the Buick’s headlights, and dust rose in the beams like smoke.

  The man in the space suit—No!—the man in the Armani suit was walking toward them. He was tall, dark-visaged, with autocratic good looks. He might have been an Egyptian high priest, or a Roman senator, or an English headmaster. He wore the frown of a judge about to reprove an unwise counsel. When he spoke, clear across that amphitheater in the silence of the night, Maria heard the measured tones of Patrick Stewart—No! But something very like them.

  “If you please, gentlemen,” he said. “Stop that at once. Get to your feet.”

  The blur rolled apart. The two men struggled upright. Their clothes were torn, they were gashed and bleeding. As Maria stared, the wounds began to close. The bleeding stopped and their edges flowed together like melting wax.

  Uncle Porfirio folded his arms, looking as much like a scornful Satan as she could ever remember, even in his ruined suit. Emrys, by contrast, smiled and bowed, rubbing his hands as though in gleeful anticipation.

  “I brought him, Labienus,” he said. “See? I knew you wanted him, and I found a way to get him for you! Isn’t this a coup? Isn’t this a feather in my cap? You can excuse a few little quirks of independence, can’t you, for such a prize?”

  But the dignified man was shaking his head.

  “Emrys,” he said, “you really are a loose cannon.”

  Emrys lost his smile at once.

  “Don’t call me that,” he said.

  “Are you raising your voice to me?” inquired the dignified man. “I think you’d better not do that.”

  “You ungrateful cretin!” Emry’s voice became shrill. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  “I know who you were, Emrys,” said the dignified man. “Nowadays you’re simply a nuisance. On your knees!”

  Maria jumped at the change in his voice on the last command. Emrys folded at the knees as though pushed from behind. He looked up at the man in astonishment, rage fading into fear. The man stepped closer, and spoke quietly once more.

  “You were warned repeatedly, Emrys, weren’t you? We did give you every chance, in view of your not inconsiderable talents. But you’ve become a liability to our organization, I’m afraid. This really has been the last straw.”

  “But—you wanted him.” Emrys, beginning to sob, waved a hand at Uncle Porfirio. “And he was perfect. He has a weakness you can exploit!”

  “I wanted a Security Technical,” said the dignified man. “Not this one. He has entirely the wrong psychological profile for our organization, however talented he may be. However vulnerable his personal arrangements make him. And you were told that, weren’t you? Yet you disregarded orders, Emrys.

  “You took it on yourself to stage a bizarre and highly theatrical recruitment campaign. Were you aware that the police have tracked you down? They’re waiting at your office. They’re waiting at your apartment. I myself had the honor of a conversation with a plainclothes detective, not six hours ago. I had to spin them quite a story.”

  “As though we care what the mortals think!” said Emrys.

  “That is not the point,” said the other. “You have drawn unnecessary attention to our organization, to say nothing of contravening some of the most elementary laws concerning Company security in general. I am extremely disappointed.”

  How grave, how sorrowful was his voice.

  “But I’m useful,” Emrys wept. “I’m a genius. You need me.”

  The dignified man just shook his head.

  “Genius? I’ve never seen such an amateurish job in my life. A Section Seventeen violation, for heaven’s sake!”

  “What? No!” Emrys looked up, startled. The dignified man arched his nostrils in disgust.

  “Security Technical, kindly explain a Section Seventeen violation to the prisoner.”

  “I know what—”

  “It’s 1991, asshole,” said Uncle Porfirio. “You sent a mortal a digital image inkjet-printed on paper.”

  “But—within another few years—even months—”

  “But not now,” said the dignified man. “You are guilty of an anachronism,” and he spat the word out as though he hated the taste of it, “that any neophyte would have been able to avoid. To say nothing of deliberately revealing the Company’s existence to a mortal. This business is finished. Bow to me, Defective.”

  Emrys began to cry, really bawl like a child, but he leaned forward. The dignified man reached into the inner breast pocket of his coat. What he brought forth was small, silvery, only glimpsed in his hand as he thumbed a button. He swung his hand over Emrys’s neck.

  There was a flash of blue and Emrys’s head fell off, not with the expected sputter of wires and broken circuits but with a fountain of blood, and the headless trunk flopped forward. The dignified man stepped back to avoid being splashed. He tucked the unseen instrument back in his pocket.

  Uncle Porfirio did not move.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  “Ah,” said the dignified man, smoothing his lapels. “Why, it’s a stalemate, isn’t it? Surely you see that. You know of the existence of our organization. We, on the other hand, know your little secret.” He nodded toward Maria and Philip. Maria just stared back at him, mechanically rocking Philip, who had subsided into sniffles.

  “I want my family left alone,” said Uncle Porfirio. The man looked pained.

  “Please,” he said, with a dismissive gesture. “So long as they exist, we have a certain leverage with you. Isn’t that so? And while I’d never be so foolish as to pressure you to help us, I do expect you to look the other way from now on. You may, in fact, be called upon to be absolutely blind on one or two occasions.”

  Uncle Porfirio said nothing for a long moment. Far off across the city, the first faint sirens of the morning started up. Somewhere, robbery or rape or murder was in progress. Somewhere, some bright new policeman with
a bright new badge believed he could do something about it. Uncle Porfirio sighed.

  “What about him?” He nodded at Emrys’s body.

  “Do as you please,” said the dignified man. “Take his head, perhaps? Consider it an earnest of good faith on our part. And leave his body here a few hours, to let the coyotes eat their fill of him. That’s what I’d do.

  “I suspect you’ll do the honorable thing and deliver his parts to the Company. Another defective rounded up and deactivated! Bravo, Security Technical Porfirio. One more success in your distinguished record of service to Dr. Zeus.”

  Smiling, he turned and walked away a few paces; then stopped and turned back.

  “A word of advice,” he said. “As part of our mutual avoidance policy. Get your family out of Los Angeles. We’re going to be rather busy here, over the next few years.”

  He vanished into the shadows.

  Uncle Porfirio walked back to the Buick.

  “You have a spare in the trunk, right?” was all he said.

  “Yeah,” said Maria. “Who was that? The Lord of Evil?”

  “Something pretty close,” said Uncle Porfirio, reaching past her for the keys. “We’re not going to talk about it anymore, okay?”

  She got out of the car and stood under the pale stars with Philip, who had fallen asleep, while Uncle Porfirio changed the tire. As he was putting the flat tire and jack in the Buick’s trunk, Uncle Porfirio asked: “What’s in this plastic bag?”

  “My box of laundry soap.”

  “I need to use the bag, mi hija.”

  “But I hate getting detergent spilled all over the inside of the trunk.”

  “Better that than something else.”

  “Oh. Okay,” she said, and watched numbly as Uncle Porfirio walked back toward the cave. A moment later he returned, carrying something in the green bag, and set it in the trunk beside the jack.

  “So…I thought he was an immortal,” said Maria.

  “He is,” said Porfirio, slamming the trunk. “Too bad for him. Get in the other side, mi hija. I’ll drive back.”

  Maria sat beside him, watching as he backed the car down the trail, as he expertly pulled out on the paved road, drove away from the realm of flying saucers, giant mutant tarantulas, and creatures out of legend. And yet…here, at the wheel of her car, was an undying creature who had seen twelve generations pass into dust. She looked furtively at his Aztec profile.