The Machine's Child (Company) Read online

  The Captain waved his hand dismissively. “Why, sir, even a bird may be taught speech, mayn’t he, a raven or a parrot? Wherefore not then a clever mechanism? If a jack can be made to strike the hour in a clock, he may be made to speak, too; and such am I. Speak with me, then, and ease thy sick grief.”

  Nicholas stared at him, marveling at the detail of the illusion: the movement of the Captain’s beard when he spoke, the creak of the insubstantial chair when he shifted his weight.

  “But I am no more than thou art,” Nicholas said at last, bitterly. “A made thing, an alchemical homunculus. How shouldst thou comfort my soul, when neither thou nor I have souls, but only spirits? So might a clock comfort an astrolabe.”

  “Ah, well, sir, I’ve no soul, to be sure; but it might help to talk, all the same.”

  Nicholas lay back with a sigh, and gazed at the lamp.

  “I have been disputing with myself,” he said, “since I have awakened into this unnatural life of horrible marvels, on the nature of Almighty God.”

  “And how doth that make thee feel, lad?” inquired the Captain. Nicholas drew a deep breath and went on:

  “In regarding now the thing I am, that standeth outside mankind like a phantom, and observing how the world waggeth these late ages, and seeing the low truth of creation (which evolution my reason must accept, though my heart sickens)—I cannot reconcile myself with the several proofs, laid before mine eyes, that contradict my faith.”

  “Well, that’s a predicament, to be sure. You ain’t the first one to run aground on it, neither.”

  “What have other men done, Spirit?” Nicholas pleaded.

  “Why—I reckon they worked it out as best they could, sir. Some folk paid no heed to the contradictions. Some dumped the whole Bible and went over to the Goddess, though that ain’t turning out no better, it seems. Most folk don’t trouble with religion at all, like my Alec. He gets along fine.”

  “He feels no pain?” Nicholas cried. “He feels no horror at this void of pointless time?”

  The Captain stroked his beard, scowling. “Well, he didn’t use to, when he thought he’d just go out like a light once he died. You showing up like you done puts a new look on everything, don’t it? Wherefore I might prepare me for squalls . . .” He cocked an eye at Nicholas. “What dost reckon it’ll take thee to work out an answer to that crisis of faith of thine?”

  “I would a thousand pounds I might study Scripture again. Oh, that I had my books that were burnt!” Nicholas gripped the blanket with both hands.

  “Then turn and look there, sir. See that text plaquette on yer night table? The thing what looks like green glass in a little window frame. Go ahead, pick it up. The other lads is both asleep, they won’t hinder thee. That’s a book, sir, of the kind we use in this day and age. My boy hath it to look at figures, but it hath a million texts in it beside. I’ll just open it for thee.”

  Nicholas caught his breath. The dark glass lit up and bright letters appeared, informing him that he beheld THE OLD TESTAMENT, diligently corrected and compared with the Hebrew, by William Tyndale and finished in the year of Our Lord God A. 1536, in the month of September at Vilvorde.

  He was struck speechless.

  “D’you like that, eh? Look, when thine eye comes to the bottom of the page, the book knows and goes on to the next one for thee. Nor needst thou a candle, for the book maketh its own light. Be’n’t it a wonder, lad?”

  “Ay,” said Nicholas, immersed in the translator’s preface. He pulled himself away with some effort and looked at the Captain in awe. “I had Tyndale’s New Testament when I lived. Is he still read amongst the generations, after so long?”

  “Well . . . in certain circles. His work ain’t lost, anyhow; trust Dr. Zeus to see to that.”

  “Then one martyr at least did not waste his death,” said Nicholas, sighing as he turned the plaquette over in his hands.

  “Now, Nick, lad: see canst thou find there a God what don’t insult a man’s reason, eh? For I reckon my boy might need to grapple with the Eternal afore long, and I’d just as soon I had an answer for him what makes sense. Thou’lt have any books thou desirest, so it’s done. I got other folks’ holy scriptures, too. Buddha and that lot.”

  “. . . Ay,” said Nicholas, drawn in again by the bright letters.

  “But set it aside for tonight. Th’art best to get some sleep.”

  Nicholas set aside the plaquette reluctantly, and lay back to compose himself for rest. The Captain unobtrusively generated a certain tone. Nicholas slept then, sound.

  The Captain sat a moment longer, regarding the wide bed and its occupants. He shook his head, muttering to himself; then vanished, along with his chair, to turn his attention to plotting the ship’s course for tomorrow’s journey. The skull-headed servant crept out and opened one of the portholes in the room, to let in the fresh night air. Then it went to a hamper at the foot of the bed. There it pulled out a bundle of grubby socks and shirts, and crawled away with them in the direction of the ship’s laundry.

  ONE EVENING IN

  300,000 BCE

  It was an undiscovered island in a shallow unnamed ocean, uncrossed yet by longitude or latitude. It was not large, no more than a few miles square. It had no topographical features of note, neither mountains nor cliffs. Its beach simply rose gradually from the water and, after a space of level rock and sand, sloped gradually down to the opposite shore.

  There was a building on the island, long, low, and windowless, like a warehouse. It had one door, and beside the door was an old couch, and on the couch sat an immortal, watching the sunset thoughtfully.

  If this has given the impression that the place was silent and still, nothing could be further from the truth.

  He sat motionless in the midst of a flurry of wildly moving things, the immortal did, and have I mentioned yet that he was very, very large? Massively mighty, with great thick hands and feet, a nose so big it was nearly comical-looking, big pale eyes under a vast cliff of a brow. Not much else of his features could be discerned, hidden as they were by an enormous tow-colored beard. You wouldn’t be looking at him anyway, if you were there, to wonder what his face might be like. You’d be looking at the things he’d made, the things that were moving without cease.

  The things all seemed to be part of a perpetual motion machine, belts, wheels, and pulleys driving and charging a generator that was hooked up to a refrigeration unit. There were other, smaller systems going, too, that seemed to be powering other machines somewhere inside the building. The motive power for all of them was supplied by human limbs.

  Legs mounted on a wheel ran frantically round, feet pounding endlessly on a treadmill. Arms thrashed and beat like hammers, their galvanic pumping harnessed to drive a complex geared mechanism. Flexible tubes supplied the parts with fluids to keep them from deteriorating. Creak, creak, thump, thump, round and round, and in the slanting light of evening, shadows circled like the shadows of birds across the old giant’s face.

  Presently he moved, too, reaching from the couch to open the door of the refrigeration unit. He brought out a beer, twisted its neck off, and settled into near-immobility again, now and then lifting the beer for a sip. The sun got lower and redder. It lit the emblem on the front of his coveralls: a clock face without hands. The immortal sat and thought.

  Then, abruptly, his eyes brightened. He’d had an idea. He lifted and drained the beer; then flung the empty bottle away. It struck a nearby mountain of other such bottles, clattering and rolling down. He ignored it. Lithe as a big cat he was on his feet, stalking through the door into the building that resembled a warehouse. He pulled a chain and dim illumination began to fill the place, increasing steadily as the desperate limbs quickened their pace outside.

  By the light of their effort was revealed an open work area, a steel table surrounded by unpleasant-looking machines, and by racks of gleaming tools and instruments. Against one wall, furniture had been arranged in a square to define living space: chair, table, bed
, dresser, personal items, a place to prepare meals. Against another was a steel filing cabinet.

  The work and living spaces occupied only the front quarter of the warehouse. All the rest was rows and tiers of shelves, stretching away into impenetrable shadows. As far as the eye could see, there were metal boxes stacked. They varied in size and shape, but none were larger than a coffin; none smaller, than, say, a hatbox.

  The immortal (his name, by the way, was Marco) went straight across to the nearest row of shelves. Here he paused, cocking his head to listen.

  You couldn’t have heard the sound, if you’d been there. Perhaps you ought to get down on your knees now and give thanks that you couldn’t, and weren’t. Marco could hear it, however. He looked keenly along the shelf and went at last to a certain box. He pulled it down, as easily as though it weighed nothing, and carried it out to the steel table.

  Here Marco punched in a combination of figures on a lockpad on the box’s lid. With a hiss and a sigh the lid rose slowly, folded back slightly on itself. Marco looked into the box at its occupant, grinning. In his light pleasant voice he said:

  “Hey, Grigorii Efimovitch, I’ve had an idea.”

  What had been an immortal named Grigorii Efimovitch could no longer see, but knew Marco was looking at him. The mouth was already open in a silent scream, the eyes wide and staring as eggs.

  It might help you at this point to know that Grigorii Efimovitch was there because he deserved to be, or at least had felt he deserved it when he had gone voluntarily to this time, this island, this warehouse. He had willingly submitted to entering the metal box. Of course, he might have changed his mind since. Far too much time had passed for his fate to be altered now, however, even if he had been able to tell Marco.

  Marco busied himself with arranging the table just as he wanted for what he had planned. He set out instruments, jars of chemicals; lifted Grigorii Efimovitch out to sprawl, trailing, on the steel surface. He pulled on a black rubberized raincoat, or something that looked a lot like one, and carefully worked transparent gloves on over his massive hands. He stepped out into the fast-fallen darkness and got himself another beer.

  He drank, belched gently, and selected an instrument from the table. Grigorii Efimovitch had begun to twitch uncontrollably. Marco waved the beer at him in a consoling gesture.

  “Well, you never know. We just might do it, Grigorii Efimovitch. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  Grigorii Efimovitch’s eyelids fluttered. If this was an attempt to communicate it was lost on Marco, who breathed deeply and stood straight, setting down the beer. A gleam came into his eyes, a sparkling and terrifying joy.

  “Father of battles, Judge of the dead,” he said, “grant that your servant may find at last the means to send your suffering children to perfect and irrevocable oblivion. Be merciful, Death.”

  He leaned down then over the table, raising the instrument he had chosen.

  “It’s showtime,” he said.

  ONE MORNING IN 2317 AD,

  MOUNT TAMALPAIS

  The Rogue Cyborg begins his day.

  Does he step out of a gleaming steel cubicle, flex his huge muscles, and pull on his skin-tight leotard? Nope. He yawns, unzips his sleeping bag, and crawls out, to sit on the edge of his camping cot, staring blearily into the dark morning and rubbing his unshaven chin. He hasn’t shaved in a few days. Time kind of gets away from you when you’re a Rogue Cyborg.

  Thinking he should maybe grow his beard back, he pokes around for shoes, sticks his feet into them, and shuffles down a long dark corridor, leaning into an alcove as he goes to grab a teakettle. Farther down the corridor is an access portal, which opens to his groping hand. Sunlight floods in, and though it is filtered through fathoms of green leaves the Rogue Cyborg grimaces and blinks. He hasn’t been topside on a sunny day in weeks. Spring must have arrived, he reflects.

  After scanning carefully and finding no possible hazards, he emerges into a wilderness of fearful beauty. The precipitous slope is thickly forested, dark redwoods towering above oak and laurel. If he cared to glance out over the treetops below him he’d catch glimpses of green mountain meadows, steel-blue sea, even the distant spires of a magnificent city; but the Rogue Cyborg isn’t a scenery man. All his attention is fixed on the stream, the little cataract of white water dropping from ledge to ledge.

  Stepping carefully through the ferns, so cleverly he leaves no print, he leans over and fills his kettle. It’s a big kettle and takes a while to fill. He looks about him the while, an edgy expression in his black eyes, and rubs his stubbly face with one nervous hand. There might be bears. There might be park rangers. There might even be Company security techs lying in wait. Life isn’t easy when you’re a Rogue Cyborg.

  His name, actually, is Joseph, and on this particular day in the year 2317 he’s just over twenty thousand four hundred years old, and he never, ever started out to be a Rogue Cyborg, but, well—shit happens.

  Having washed, shaved, and made himself a mug of something that might pass for coffee if one needed it really badly, Joseph took the mug and wandered farther into the depths of the mountain that was presently his home.

  He entered a vast cavern, smooth-sided and dry, stretching out over subterranean acres and lit by the blue radiance of five hundred regeneration tanks arrayed in tidy rows of vaults. A few of the vaults were unoccupied. Perhaps a dozen contained what appeared to be ordinary men and women, floating in sleep. All the rest were occupied by giants, hulking males seven or eight feet in height, massive of limb. Their skulls were broad-domed, helmet-shaped. Their brows were clifflike, their noses enormous. They drifted and dreamed in eerie silence. All of them, with one exception, wore circlets of copper on their brows, like drowned kings.

  Joseph strolled along the aisles, sipping from his mug. He was making for one vault in particular, whose occupant differed slightly from the rest of the sleepers.

  This was one of the giants. He alone wore no copper circlet, and he seemed to be recovering from terrible injuries. His great body was scarlet with new tissue, blood-charged where cruel wounds were in the process of closing over. There were cicatrices to indicate where parts had been reattached after avulsion: an arm, a leg, an ankle, and—unthinkably—his head. The face was nearly all healing scars.

  Fearful as he was to look upon, his was the vault before which Joseph paused.

  “You know, Father, if I didn’t know better I might almost mistake you for one of the others now,” Joseph told the giant. “I mean that. Seriously. You look great. Well, not great, but a hundred percent improved, okay?”

  The giant, apparently lifeless, did not respond. Joseph had another sip of his not-coffee and nodded.

  “Definitely on the mend. So! What’s happening? Not much. Nobody’s caught me yet. Abdiel left again last month, but I told you that already, huh? He didn’t remember us this time, either. I wonder how many poor morons like him are wandering around, doing classified work for the Company? That’s another dirty little secret we’ll have to dig up one of these days, huh?

  “Let’s see, what else is going on? Looks like spring has finally arrived. Maybe I’ll go down to the Pelican soon, catch up on the local news. Not that there ever is much up here, but that’s okay with me, you know what I mean? Go down and maybe repair something for Mavis and get myself some cider . . . or some of that special persimmon cider . . . or some of Mavis maybe . . .” Joseph sighed with longing. “I’ve told you about Mavis, right? Boy, you’d like Mavis, Father. She’s got these—” He sculpted the air with his free hand in a vain effort to describe what Mavis had.

  “And, uh, maybe it’s a good idea to go down there anyway,” Joseph continued, after a poignant silence. “For a reality check, huh? Make sure they’re all still alive. Because, Father, sometimes when I wake up . . . Sometimes I get scared I’ve been asleep up here too long. Like, I’ll go down there some night and the place will be in ruins, all the mortals dead long ago. You know?”

  He shivered extravagantly,
his whole body shook.

  “Oh, yeah, absolutely,” he said. “Time for some cider.”

  He turned and bustled off to begin his day at one of the data terminals, probing randomly through the files of Dr. Zeus Incorporated for dirty little secrets.

  Hours later Joseph emerged from his access portal and picked his way down the slope, until he found an ancient strip of cracked asphalt that wound along the face of the mountain. In the red light of the waning day he thrust his hands into his coat pockets and marched along cheerily.

  He felt swell. All dressed up for a night on the town! Most of his clothing was a little out of date, but clean and presentable. All the same, he made a mental note to hike into San Francisco soon and hit another clothing store. How long since the last nocturnal raid now? Five years? Ten? Of course, it wasn’t smart to steal things too often. Sooner or later he was going to make a tiny mistake, miss some surveillance device and blow his cover. Then he’d have to run again, and running would be pretty damned awkward right at the moment.

  Still, he hated looking like a bum.

  Winding and switching back, the road took him steadily down, in and out of ravines dark with evergreens and across broad slopes purple with heather. Bone-chilling wind blew in off the gray sea, but as he descended Joseph saw the yellow lights of the little farms and shacks where the mortals lived, and that warmed his heart. So did the yellow lights of the boats moored in Muir Harbor. In the twilight gloom he found at last the nearest fragment of what had been California State Highway 1, and strode along it through the alder forest to that intersection with the harbor road where stood the Pelican Inn.

  The Pelican had been there a long time. It was rumored to have been transplanted, brick by brick, from some English village, back in the twentieth century when wealthy men still did things like that. It was named for the ship in which Sir Francis Drake had set out when he’d sailed off to loot the Spanish Main.