The Machine's Child (Company) Read online

  It had once been a very expensive bed-and-breakfast hotel, bar, and five-star restaurant. Various wars, political secessions, and natural disasters had altered its fortunes. Over three centuries it had been successively a triage hospital, a barricaded freeholding, a farmhouse, a partial ruin, and other things. But, situated as it was at a crossroads in a picturesque cove, as soon as civilization had reasserted itself enough to provide some traffic, the Pelican had evolved back into an inn.

  Even a reasonably prosperous one, in this year of 2317. Plenty of trade from the local farmers and fishermen. Plenty of real money from the rich people who moored their pleasure boats in Muir Harbor, eager to get away from the General Prohibition in San Francisco.

  Not that there was anything all that immoral to be had at the Pelican, of course, beyond homemade ciders and ales and fish dinners. Mavis paid a fortune in bribes to local law enforcement to be able to serve even those; but the people from the big boats wanted the thrill of the forbidden, and spent hugely for it.

  Sometimes Mavis paid the local law enforcement to dress as picturesque smugglers, too, and they would lounge in her bar and leer pleasantly at the guests, or tell stories about desperate chases over the hills with kegs of mead. The guests would buy them drinks and would usually stay over an extra night. The local economy thrived to no end.

  Joseph saw the amber windows as he pushed forward through the dusk, heard the chattering mortal voices, breathed in the sea air and wood smoke. He felt again the surge of relief that they were still there, not yet dead, not yet receded into his interminable past. He was singing as he sprinted across the lawn and up the flagged steps, under the wooden sign with its carved enigmatic seabird.

  As he sang he nearly ran into Keely, one of the waitresses, who was making her way through the passage between the bar and the main parlor with a tray of drinks. She was a nice girl, bosomy, looked like a timid swan. He grinned at her.

  “Hi there, sweetheart.”

  “What kind of song was that?” she said, not quite trusting him not to grab her and turning so as to put the tray between them.

  “What?”

  “That song you were singing when you came in.”

  “That? That was a marching song, honey. Real old. ‘If I had one denarius, I’d buy us all a round of drinks; if I had two denarii, I’d buy myself a pig; if I had three denarii, I’d hire somebody to kill the Decurion,’ and so on and so on,” Joseph said, grinning again, so happy to be there in the warmth and the smell of food and musty old booze. She knit her brows.

  “What’s a D-Decurion?”

  “Oh, just some jerk,” he said. She rolled her eyes at him and turned to resume her progress toward the main parlor.

  “The holoscreen needs tuning again,” she told him over her shoulder.

  “I’m on it,” he said, and slipped into the bar, ducking nimbly under the gate. The big bartender turned scowling to confront the intruder, but put the wrench down when he recognized Joseph. He indicated the holoscreen with raised eyes.

  “You fix that piece of crap, you get a cider, how’s about that?” he said. Joseph squinted up in dismay at the multiple images.

  “Jeepers. What is this, the Migraine Channel? Gimme a leg up.”

  The bartender hoisted him obligingly, and he sat on the counter and groped in his coat pocket for the case of tools he carried. It’s useful being a cyborg, even a rogue one, when you have to realign a holoemitter. Mortals think you’re an itinerant electronics genius, and so it’s all right that you’re a faintly shabby little man who never seems to have much money.

  Joseph didn’t really need the tools, but he made a great show of using them anyway, and presently the holo images resolved and sharpened into one image, brilliantly clear in the dark midair: Mars, with the glassy dome and radiating green lines of the Martian Agricultural Collective near its equator, as a solemn voice lauded the courage of the first settlers sponsored by Areco. There was a half-hearted cheer from the patrons in the dart alley.

  Joseph shivered, thinking that today’s courageous settlers were tomorrow’s vicious terrorists. He didn’t feel like thinking about the Mars Two disaster right now, though; this was a happy occasion, and Mars Two had another thirty-five years of blissful ignorance of its fate. He leaped down and took a little bow, then turned to the bar expectantly.

  “So, am I good or am I good?”

  By way of answer the bartender thrust the big embossed glass mug into Joseph’s hand. He took it smugly, strutted away to the parlor, and found himself a dark corner with a view of the fire. There he settled in with his back to the wall, and tasted his cider. Dark and dry, strong stuff. From the bouquet, he judged it to be first crush of Gravensteins from Sebastopol, thirty miles or more over the hills.

  Yes, even eternal life could be good sometimes. He closed his eyes and listened: twenty-six mortal hearts beating. There was Keely complaining to the cook, and there was the pompous documentary voice droning on about Mars, and there was a breathless couple in Room Three talking about shopping in San Francisco, and there were Nelson and Silvio, the cops, bragging about their smuggling exploits to a pair of guests who exclaimed in awe, despite the fact that the boys were laying on the pirate accents a little thickly. Darts plunking into the board. Somebody unused to real alcohol getting sick in Room Seven. Rush of cold air, smell of the sea and the green alder trees, somebody coming in—

  Instantly Joseph was on his feet, peering around the corner into the hall. But it was okay: two more well-groomed people in yachting clothes, murmuring in delight at how quaint everything looked, on their way to the bar. He settled back into his seat and relaxed, drank more of his cider, watched the fire.

  He recognized Mavis’s firm tread long before she came around the corner. He got to his feet, doing his best to look dignified and respectable for her, as he ought to look if he were the former executive consultant he always claimed to be. He knew she didn’t believe him, though in fact he’d been a consultant to a lot of people, including pharaohs, in his time; but that was okay. Their relationship wasn’t built on belief.

  She hove into sight like a Spanish galleon, and looked him up and down.

  “So it’s you again?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Joseph said, giving her his most ingratiating smile. “Just stopped by on my way up the coast. Going to a business conference in Seattle, you know. Oh, and I had a look at your holoscreen. Works fine now. Just needed a little realignment.”

  “Really? How nice. As long as you’re here, you might look at a couple of other things that need realigning,” she told him quietly, slipping a key into his hand. “And take a shower first. I’ll have some supper sent up.”

  Sometimes it’s just great to be a Rogue Cyborg. Not only can Rogue Cyborgs fix holoscreens, there are a whole bunch of other useful things they can do better than mortals.

  He left before daylight, because she preferred that, and made his way back to the mountain as the sky paled. The sun was rising red, blazing on a wall of sea-fog when he slipped furtively up his little canyon and disappeared into the darkness under the trees.

  The Rogue Cyborg began another day.

  He shrugged out of his good coat and hung it up, poked around in his kitchen alcove and found some not-coffee left over from the previous morning, reheated it (it couldn’t taste any worse, after all), and poured himself another mugful. Then he walked back into the mountain, through the blue light of the regeneration tanks, and stopped finally in front of the vault where the hideous giant floated.

  “You’re looking good, Father,” said Joseph thoughtfully, taking a sip from his mug. “I think your eyes are starting to grow back. The only thing that’s still got me worried—”

  The giant in the vault moved abruptly, thrust out one hand in a clawing gesture and struck the transparent wall. Joseph leaped backward and dropped his not-coffee, although (being a cyborg) he was able to catch it before it hit the floor.

  “Holy smoke!” he said. He watched spellbound as th
e giant flattened his palm against the transparency and felt his way along it, like a one-armed mime defining a wall.

  “Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh—” Joseph said, scrambling up the ladder. “Father!” he yelled, “Father, are you—”

  A hand came plunging up out of the blue, sweet-scented fluid and seized him by his shirt collar. Swift as thought it pulled him down, into the tank.

  Joseph’s oof of surprise emerged as an air bubble and floated before his astonished face, so viscous was the bioregenerant medium. And so warm, and so perfumed, and so comfortably oxygenated it was, that he could have drawn in a double lungful and lost himself in the primal pleasures of the womb, had he not been in more peril at that moment than he had faced in most of his immortal life.

  After transmitting frantic inquiries and receiving no response, he gave up and hung there in the enfolding warmth, unresisting as the terrible giant pulled him close. The blind face grimaced wildly, but the head lay slack on one shoulder; the left hand gripped him beyond hope of escape. Slowly and painfully the other hand rose, the one on the arm that had been severed and reattached.

  It splayed its fingers over Joseph’s face, reading his features. It traced the shape of his eyes and did not gouge them out; murmuring a prayer of thanks, Joseph reached up and took the big hand in both his own. He began to spell out a message in universal code.

  The giant, Budu, became motionless and focused all his attention on the message, which said something to the effect of: Hello, it’s Joseph, remember me? Please don’t disable me. I rescued you from Chinatown but you’d been there a long time and you were in really bad shape. You’re in a regeneration vault. It’s now the year 2317. I finally accessed the code you gave me and found the other Enforcers, but a lot of bad stuff happened that I can’t explain fast and I had to run, just like you did. The Company doesn’t know we’re in here.

  Joseph paused, at a loss for what to say next and terribly afraid the giant was too damaged to understand him anyway. Budu let go his collar, however, and groped for Joseph’s hand instead. With his able hand he spelled out: How bad is it?

  Joseph floated there in shock a moment, and Budu patiently repeated his message before Joseph signed back: You were poisoned with something and Victor says he’s sorry, he didn’t know, and then somebody hacked you in pieces—

  The giant interrupted him. Know that, he signed. Remember and have run self-diagnostic. Meant how bad political situation?

  Joseph signed back: Bad bad bad bad bad.

  Budu grimaced again. He spelled out: We wear clock faces yet?

  He was referring to the rumor, believed by immortals who feared the worst about the future, that by the twenty-fourth century all cyborg Company personnel would be obliged to wear a certain emblem. It would represent a clock face without hands, supposedly denoting their triumph over time, but in reality enabling the mortal masters to distinguish them from everyone else, and, perhaps, round them all up.

  Not yet, Joseph signed.

  Budu signed: Who rules?

  I don’t know, Joseph replied.

  Labienus rules? inquired Budu.

  Not that bad, Joseph signed back.

  Labienus caught?

  Not yet.

  More grimacing from Budu. Joseph went on to sign:

  All alone, Father, so lonely, I watch them and I think nobody knows about us but I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to repair you. You can tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Do you want revenge? We can do that—2355 is coming. We can get them if we set the Enforcers free. I found the Enforcers but so many others lost now. Good operatives. I lost my daughter. I lost my friend. I can’t find them. Please tell me what to do. Please . . .

  As he signed the last word over, faster and more clumsily, Budu lifted his hand away and used it to pull Joseph in close. He held Joseph’s head a moment in the vast angle of his scarred neck, then released him. Taking Joseph’s hand again he signed: We will find them.

  ONE AFTERNOON IN 2302 AD

  The three men sat around the table, doing their best to ignore one another.

  Nicholas was peering into the bright screen of the plaquette, so caught up in the Bible it was doubtful he’d have noticed if a gun had been fired next to his ear, though the Captain Morgan was riding out heavy weather. Rain beat against her portholes, when it wasn’t shouldered aside by glass-green sea sweeping high.

  Alec sat next to him, trying not to watch over Nicholas’s shoulder as the words flitted by. He’d never been able to read or write much more than his name, though as a well-educated aristocrat of the twenty-fourth century he had at least a passing familiarity with the letters of the alphabet. In the past few days, though, ever since the unwelcome arrival of his previous selves, the meaning of written words had begun to glimmer through to him.

  He didn’t want to think why this might be happening. He certainly had no interest in reading an ancient religious text that was synonymous with oppression and bigotry. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop himself from following the cryptic letters, trying to piece meaning out of the old-fashioned speech. The storm he scarcely noticed, habituated to gales as he was. He merely felt with his toes for a floor-batten to brace himself against the roll of the ship. He did it purely out of habit, since Nicholas, in control of his body, was the only one actually experiencing any pitching just now.

  Edward sat across from them, drumming his fingers on the table.

  He didn’t particularly care for Alec, and he thoroughly despised Nicholas, but he found himself wishing that one of them would leave off reading so he’d have someone with whom he might talk. He would very much have preferred to have been talking to Mendoza, and only the thought that he might do so in the near future enabled him to tolerate the other two men.

  The storm made him uneasy, too; long-dormant instincts were insisting that there ought to be someone somewhere howling orders to take in sail, or bare feet pounding on the deck above his head, or an occasional freezing slop of white water flying down the companionway. And he ought to be anywhere but sitting still in this warm, dry, curiously scentless place doing nothing.

  But after all, by the terms of the mutual agreement the three of them had worked out, it was Nicholas’s turn to use Alec’s body. Nicholas wanted to read the bloody Bible, and until his turn was up, there was nothing to do but sit here and watch Alec’s lips move as he tried to read it, too. It was at least amusing to imagine what Alec was making of it.

  Edward reached out experimentally and attempted to stop the swinging of the lamp on its gimbal. No use; it moved right through his virtual hand, a sensation—or lack thereof—he found unsettling. He tried harder. Nicholas moved his left arm involuntarily, and looked over at him with a frown.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Commander Bell-Fairfax, sir? I wonder if I might have a word with you now.

  Edward started. The other two failed to notice. The voice had come from inside his head, instead of out of the ship’s intercom system.

  Well, yes, sir, seeing as how our Alec’s able to hear me this way—no reason why you can’t, too.

  Edward’s eyes narrowed. He watched the hanging lamp swing from its gimbal.

  And did I mention you can talk to me the same way, sir? No reason to disturb the other gentlemen with our little chat, is there, lad?

  I’m not your lad, Machine.

  Why, to be sure, sir, I’d forgot. Sorry about that, sir, it won’t happen again. But I thought you might be interested to know, sir, that I’ve got a location on Options Research at last.

  Well, bravo! How soon can we get there?

  Oh, more or less instantaneously. The generators is all charged up now. It’s what we’ll find, once we gets there, that’s got me looking out for squalls.

  Spare me the picturesque seaman’s lingo, if you please. I had my fill of that in the Royal Navy.

  So you had, sir, and how careless of me to forget. Must be a lot of painful memories there, what with you being court-martialed, I reckon
. It’s just my natural admiration for anybody what was able to run afoul of Article Twenty-Two without getting hisself hanged at the yardarm. I do humbly beg yer pardon. But you see, Commander Bell-Fairfax, sir, if my information’s correct it’s going to be easier to get into Options Research than to get out of it again, if you take my meaning.

  Guarded, is it?

  I reckon you’d say so, sir, aye.

  I’d have expected that of a prison.

  It . . . ain’t exactly a prison, sir. It’s designated as a medical facility.

  A hospital, you mean?

  No, sir, I don’t, unless there be hospitals where folk go to get sick, instead of well. It’s a laboratory for experiments, d’ye see?

  Good God.

  Not a pretty thought to contemplate, sir, no, and it’s my good fortune yer a tough-minded bastard like me, because I don’t know how I’d ever break this to my little Alec. This place’ll make Cawnpore Well look like a church picnic.

  The Captain watched admiringly as Edward controlled his panic and replied:

  Don’t talk rot. Mendoza is an immortal; they can’t hurt her, whatever they do to their other prisoners.

  They can’t kill her, but . . . all the prisoners is immortals, sir, that’s just the trouble. And so’s the guard.

  Edward ignored the implications of the first sentence. Guard? Just one? It ought to be easy to get past him, then.

  Begging yer pardon, sir, I don’t think so. He be one of them Enforcer Class operatives.

  What, the old monsters I was designed to replace? Edward studied his fingernails with a show of unconcern. Only one?

  Aye, sir. Most of ’em was tricked into surrendering and got put into some kind of semi-eternal sleep, on account of they was suspected of mutiny. That’s what the Company’s most afeared of, you see, sir. Think about that Frankenstein book, sir, and imagine that there doctor’s trouble multiplied by three thousand.

  Hmm. We needn’t concern ourselves with them, then. Need we?

  Well sir, we still got that one to worry about. The first and the worst of ’em all to rebel, name of Marco. The Company gave him a special job. Seems he’s the guard at Options Research. He’s also the only staff member. Doctor, lab, and disassembly technician.