Sky Coyote (Company) Page 4

  “He reads?” Latif asked in an offhand way. “I wonder what he likes to read.”

  “Poetry,” I informed him. He looked shocked. “No, seriously. I mean, what would he want with adventure stories? With his life? And philosophy is mostly crap when you live forever. No, he likes great poetry.”

  “You see?” Houbert cried. “What is life without poetry?” Latif ignored him, but I could tell he was thinking about it. I looked at the Mayan waiters.

  “What do you think, guys?” I inquired. It was their turn to look shocked. After a moment’s hesitation, the one with the most green plumes in his headdress spoke.

  “Well—we think the Son of Heaven must, in every respect, agree with the Father of Heaven.”

  “Oh, I do. But what do you think? You think all this pleasure chasing and show business and incense is a good idea?”

  “Of course. You’re gods. These things are fitting for You.”

  Boy, if the front-office mortals in the twenty-fourth century could hear this.

  “You think maybe we ought to tone down our style a little? Live more like you do?”

  “Why would You want to, Son of Heaven?” The Mayan looked appalled. “Look how pleasant it is here. Can You imagine any of us wanting to go back and live in the world of men? We were made to live in blood and flames and shit. We have escaped these things because we were Your chosen ones, and we would very much prefer to stay here with You. But if You were to go down to that other world and suffer as men do … what kind of god would do a thing like that? It’s not appropriate behavior, You see.”

  “But a god might have work to do there,” pointed out Latif. “Important work, like running things. Anyway, you don’t really believe we’re your old gods, do you?”

  “Certainly.” The Mayan looked faintly offended. “You may not resemble the gods we were led to expect, but You neither age nor die, You reside in the ancient places of our fathers, and You work miracles on a daily basis. That is quite close enough for us. Miserable wretches that we are, we take pride in knowing that we serve such splendid masters. The Father of Heaven always takes great care to behave in a suitably godly way, and I could only wish some of His children would follow His example a little more.”

  “Thank you, best of slaves.” Houbert sighed happily and clasped his hands together on his stomach. “You see, child? Theyunderstand. We require pomp and circumstance. We require pageantry and ritual. There is a certain touching beauty in the way mortals instinctively grasp this about us when we ourselves deny it.”

  Latif’s response was brief, explicit, and to the point. I looked brightly from one to the other; I hadn’t enjoyed brunch like this in a long time. Houbert winced profoundly. He turned to me, pointedly ignoring his apprentice.

  “Well, here’s a perquisite of divinity you won’t turn down, I daresay.” He gestured hypnotically, and a drop-dead gorgeous Mayanette came gliding into the room, bearing a golden tray of jade vessels. I thought he was talking about the girl, but as soon as she was close enough, I caught a scent that grabbed hold of my nose and yanked me to my feet.

  “Jesus, what IS that?” I yelped. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing the tray from her. She dimpled and leaned low to place it before us, giving me a spectacular view of cleavage I had absolutely no interest in at that moment. A blue mystery of aroma was coiling from the spout of an urn, a smell of every sweet deal in life, every sure thing, and every winning ticket. Latif clenched his little fists and looked away. Houbert’s smile was like the sun in splendor.

  “Theobromos, my friend. A little more complex than the formula to which you are accustomed, however. This, you see, is the original recipe. This is the sacred beverage our dear Mayans reserved for the incarnation of God on Earth Himself alone. And for grownups.” He turned and blew Latif a Bronx cheer.

  “I hope your teeth rot,” said Latif gamely, and poured himself another shot of java. He couldn’t stop himself from adding four lumps of sugar, though, I noticed. But my attention was yanked back to the sacred vessels as Miss Mayan Universe poured me a cup of something smooth and rich and dark as any sin I’d heard confessed in three hundred years of faithful service to the Church. She held it out to me balanced on both her palms, and her smile of invitation was as tender and reverent as though I were her god, just her special god, the one she dreamed about.

  Our mortal masters designed us to be pretty much resistant to intoxicants, you see; at least, the ones they knew about. Alcohol is pleasant but provides no more than a mild buzz, and the big nasties like cocaine and opium do nothing for us at all. How surprised (and horrified) they’d been to discover that Theobroma cacao interacts with an immortal’s nervous system in a totally unique manner.

  I accepted the cup from the girl and breathed in deeply. “Holy smoke” was all I could say. But the first sip unlocked my tongue and all my senses, and I won’t even attempt to describe what it was like, because you’d just moan and toss on your pillow all night from unbearable envy. No kidding. You really would.

  Our masters were envious enough; the stuff will be illegal anyway in the twenty-fourth century, on the grounds that it’s fattening and contains refined sugar, but it never has that effect on them. There was talk about forbidding us its use, at the very beginning; wiser heads prevailed, though.

  “Houbert, you are one swell host,” I gasped. He quaffed from his exquisite jade cup and beamed upon me. How could I have thought he looked like Wimpy? Charles Laughton in Rembrandt, that’s it, he was a dead ringer for the guy.

  “You won’t find this little specialty at the commissary, I think.” He raised his cup to the Mayans. “My kitchen does have its own secrets. Notice the bouquet! How many complex alkaloids, how many extracts of certain rare orchids can one perceive? You’ll find the range of perception varies, but in this morning’s brew I believe there are—” He took another sip and inhaled judiciously. “Let me see, I detect five distinct perfumes. Would you say? But perhaps it takes a rather longer acquaintance with the God in the Jar to become proficient in judging such matters.”

  How was he managing to express himself so elegantly when he’d had a snootful of this stuff? I was lost in admiration for him. Latif sipped his coffee and watched us critically. I turned to look at him and felt like crying out of sympathy. Imagine not being able to drink this yet! I wanted to tell him something to console him. Any minute now I would, too. As soon as I remembered what the other thing was I’d been going to say.

  Only, how could I talk and interrupt such beautiful music? How the hell was Houbert doing that with his voice, perfectly counterpointing the Gounod in the background? What was he saying, anyway? Whatever it was, it was sheer poetry. It brought tears to my eyes. Had I thought he looked like Charles Laughton? Was I blind? Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon, with the voice to match. The enchantment just kept coming, too, because Latif’s voice rose like a little temple flute:

  “Well, I’m certainly learning important things this morning. Not one, but two millennial creatures of infinite experience and knowledge reduced to drooling idiots before my eyes. I simply can’t wait until I grow up.”

  “You’re just jealous,” retorted Houbert, but I thought it was so funny, I started giggling and couldn’t stop. I had become a flooded house, and about a hundred little Josephs were running around in my bloodstream frantically trying to bail me out. Damn. The buzz was wearing off. There it went. My internal chemistry revolted and dumped a few toxins to teach me a lesson. Suddenly I needed sugar.

  “Where are those petits fours?” I wanted to know, and a Mayan with a cake plate was at my elbow like a devil after a soul. I took a handful of tiny, poisonously bright cakes and wolfed them down. Houbert had receded in dignity again; he was about at Peter Ustinov in Spartacus now. Hadn’t there been a point to this feast of fools, anyway? Oh, yeah. “I was supposed to have a briefing of some kind, wasn’t I?”

  “Oh, that,” said Houbert dismissively. “I assume the ever-so-efficient Lewis provided you with most
of the mundane facts. As for the classified material …” He began to smile again. “I’ve set you another little test. Your access code strip is here, within reach. To find it, you have only to use the imagination and ingenuity that stood you in such good stead when the High Priest of Dagon tried to have you stoned!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT TOOK ME ABOUT TWO days to recover from Theobromine poisoning, but after that I had a swell vacation. I watched a lot of cinema. Played a lot of tennis. Watched serene Mayans putting up holiday decorations to which they had absolutely no cultural connection. Ate many tasty meals at the several excellent restaurants provided for my dining pleasure. Went to three holiday parties and won a door prize at one of them (bottle of aftershave). Looked up a number of old pals I hadn’t seen in centuries. They hadn’t changed at all (big surprise!).

  Also, I accessed the code strips relating to my upcoming assignment. They gave me a lot of research material to integrate and store in my tertiary consciousness. They also gave me a duty I was not looking forward to.

  I was returning my racquet to the Mayan attendant one afternoon when I was dumb enough to ask, “How do I get to the Botany Department from here?”

  He looked over my shoulder and whistled. I turned to see four big Indians swerve in my direction and set down the sedan chair they had been carrying. “The Son of Heaven wishes to go to the Botany Department,” he told them.

  “Okay,” they replied in unison, and before I could say a word in protest, they had done a neatly synchronized dip and the attendant had picked me up bodily and shot-putted me into the passenger compartment, so smoothly the other passenger wasn’t even jostled. “Well, hi there.” Mendoza smiled at my discomposure. “Happy Solstice Season.”

  “Hi.” I braced myself as the chair was lifted, but it rose smooth as anything and just flew off. You couldn’t have known there were straining mortal muscles or a drop of mortal sweat connected with the motion in any way.

  “Don’t you find this just a little embarrassing?” I asked her, struggling to get comfortable.

  “I used to.” Mendoza yawned elaborately. “Nowadays I just say what the hell and ride. It’s easier than arguing with them, and they find it so fulfilling.”

  “Fulfilling?” I looked down on the nodding plumes.

  “I think they enjoy debasing themselves. What else is there for them to do around here, after all? They’re decadent. We’re decadent. Everybody’s decadent at New World One. Here, have some Theobromos.” She proffered a bar with an ironical gesture.

  Irony or not, I accepted. Enough time had passed since that fatal brunch for me to be able to look at the stuff again, and besides, even with the ordinary formula, New World One has the best you can get anywhere and you never, never turn it down when it’s offered. Nectar and ambrosia, baby. I leaned back in the chair and felt my spirits rise.

  “Yes, this is an amazing place. Kind of confining, though, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” Mendoza raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “All this manicured luxury, I mean. I’ll be glad to get out in the field again, personally.”

  “That’s right, your California trip.” She looked out idly at the passing scenery. “Fun with Stone Age people. Have you found out more about it?”

  “I’ve had some briefing, yes.”

  “How nice for you. Why were you going over to Botany?” Such a cold black stare she had.

  “Oh, just to look over one or two things connected with the job,” I lied.

  “Hey!” Her eyes suddenly came to life. “You can see my work.”

  My heart sank. “Gee, that would be interesting,” I lied further. “So you’ve got a garden or something? I didn’t think you worked with any actual green plants anymore.”

  “I do compilation and analysis of other operatives’ field specimens, but everybody’s allowed some private projects. And look, here we are at Botany! Come on.” She fairly leaped from the sedan chair before the bearers had set it all the way down.

  “Happy Holidays. We must remind the Daughter of Heaven to remain within the conveyance until it has stopped moving,” one of the bearers informed her in aggrieved tones.

  “Yeah, yeah.” She waved a hand, not looking back. I followed her, thanking God she wasn’t something like an entomologist.

  Botany was less a pyramid and more a toppled megalith, long and low. We went through it past the labs and offices and out into the back, where a vast field was surrounded on three sides by pink stucco walls. I had figured on a greenhouse or something, which was kind of a silly expectation in the tropics. Under the open sky grew fruits and vegetables of obscene size, enough to fill the salad bars at the many excellent restaurants available for my dining pleasure and then some.

  “Now, get a load of this.” Mendoza hitched up her skirts and led me across the rows to a double line of green stalks. “Look at these big guys.”

  “You’re still fooling around with maize?” She’d been doing that back in 1554.

  “I could never quite give up on it. It’s so beautiful, see, but the stuff is worthless as a food staple. Well, nearly. Compared to soybeans or oats or wheat. Far less nourishing. And the bigger and more golden you make it, the less food value it generally has, even when you develop high-lysine varieties. But look at this Zea mays and look at these primitive varieties over here, these are cultivars that were abandoned because their yield was low or they were difficult to hull, and look at the oldest one here, teosinte,” she said it like a saint’s name. “If you analyze its genetic structure, you know what you find?”

  I was afraid she was going to tell me. She did, too, for the next forty-five minutes.

  “… so one day, one fine day when I’ve perfected it, this specimen’s descendant will leap from the stalk, rip open his husk, and yell, ‘Here I am! Supergrain! More nourishing than a speeding ear of triticale!’ And it’ll all be my work.” She fondled the golden tassels with such intimacy, I had to look away.

  “But you haven’t limited yourself to maize, have you? If I remember right, you used to be a real whiz on all the New World grains and other related stuff.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Like for example, you’d know about the kind of grain the Native Americans in California eat.”

  “Well, they don’t eat grain up there exactly, their main analogous staples are acorns and chia—” She broke off and swung around to look at me, terrible suspicion in her eyes. “Why, Joseph?”

  “No, no, I’ve got good news. Trust me. You remember back when you were just out of school, when you filled out a certain form PF215?”

  “Personal Goals and Preferences,” she responded, and then her mouth fell open and stayed that way. “Ohhhh…”

  “And you said, I mean, you know, it was you who filled this thing out, you did your best to convince the graduation board that you ought to be sent to the New World to work on its flora in remote areas, because you were this super expert on New World grains, and—”

  “No! No, no, no! That was in 1554!”

  “And you’ve been drafted for the California project, and that’s how it is, babe.”

  If any of those giant zucchini had connected, I’d have been seriously bruised.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AS YOU MAY HAVE GATHERED, Mendoza is not the kind of woman to waste time on petty things like forgiveness. But somehow she rose above her inclinations enough to let me download the briefing material she’d need for her assignment. Maybe it was the fact that it was that festive time of year when old grudges are put aside, mistletoe is hung, the smell of gingerbread and Yule logs perfumes the air, and slaves get to whack their masters on the head with inflated pig bladders. Maybe it was the fact that she really did love her work more than anything else (or anything at all). Anyhow we saw more of each other as the century rolled through its final days, assembling our field kits and swapping bits of information that might prove useful on the job.

  It was Mendoza who pointed out to me that observing ou
r Mayans would teach me absolutely nothing about the Indians we were going to work with, just as studying Swedish farmers would teach me nothing about Turkish soldiers. Different continent, different nation, different culture, different experiences. It’s a point non-Americans tend to miss, and what did I know? I’d been based in the Old World all my life. Well, most of my life. I had all those access codes to clue me in, though, and I was an expert in no time.

  So, though you couldn’t call our relationship cordial, we wound up going to the Grand Fin de Siècle Cotillion on New Year’s Eve together.

  “Wait here, guys, okay?” I hopped nimbly from the sedan chair as soon as the Mayans set it down. The lead bearer inclined graciously. I tossed him a couple of drink tokens by way of a tip and went into Botany Residential, adjusting my wig.

  “Hokay, Natasha, honeybunch, your ride is here,” I called cheerfully, ringing the buzzer.

  “You’re early,” Mendoza told me, opening the door long enough for me to step inside. She turned and went back to packing a garment bag with what looked like fifty pounds of white silk petticoat. She herself was all dolled up in ballroom best, absolutely the latest Paris fashion rendered in tropical-weight cream shantung, though she hadn’t yet put on the elaborately heeled shoes (higher than mine) of Italian calfskin. They were lined up neatly by the side of the bed, next to her field kit and duffel.

  “I’m always early. Catches people off guard,” I replied, looking around. The place was emptier than a hotel room, though she’d been living in it for over a century. She’d packed up, but the staff hadn’t yet been in to vacuum, so there were dust rectangles on the console where her field notebooks had been and two dust outlines on the wall where pictures had hung. From a hook dangled a single strand of spangly holiday decoration. It had broken when she pulled it down and was too high up the wall to bother with. “Boy, I hate moving during the holidays,” I said sympathetically. She shrugged and zipped the bag shut, subduing all those waves of silk.