The Machine's Child (Company) Read online

  Something flashed through the air and embedded itself in the wall behind where he had been a nanosecond earlier. He looked down from the beam to which he had jumped and beheld a hulking shape that glared up at him.

  “Hey, Marco, how’s it going?” he said in a bright hard voice, and vaulted to another beam just as an empty beer bottle shattered against his former perch. The only reply he got was a drooling growl and another bottle launched in his direction.

  He winked out and reappeared in the rafters directly above Marco, where he had a fine view of his assailant.

  “Gee, Marco, you don’t look so good,” he said, in genuine surprise. And understatement. Marco’s skin was flushed purple, risen with livid bursting weals. Yellow matter streamed from his eyes, rolled down his face like steady tears and fouled his beard.

  Marco drew difficult breath through his swollen throat and replied, “Rotten motherfucking little Company bastard.”

  “Uh-huh. Say, your body’s trying to eliminate a toxin, isn’t it?” Joseph peered down at him critically. “How’d you ingest a poison, Marco? Trying to commit suicide? Sorry, of course you wouldn’t be doing that, would you? Unless you didn’t ingest poison at all—” He squinted. “Unless it’s a virus. You’ve had a visitor, haven’t you? The Company sent somebody here to take you out. But he didn’t get a chance to finish you off, the way he did with Budu. I wonder why? Did you nail him? Have you got little pieces of Victor stuffed in a trash can somewhere around here?”

  The old monster just stared up at him, breathing hard. He shuffled sidelong from under Joseph’s rafter and backed into a corner. Groping, he found a sponge mop with one hand and held it up before him like a weapon.

  “Take it easy, guy,” Joseph said. “I’m not from the Company. Not anymore. I really don’t feel like tangling with you, either. All I want to know is, where do you keep your prisoners?”

  No reply from Marco, but a light flared in his weeping eyes. He gave a saw-edged smile, bitter and crafty, and looked across at the vivisection table under its hanging light. Joseph, who hadn’t had time to notice this particular feature of the room yet, glanced down and saw it. He looked away quickly.

  “Jesus,” he hissed. He stared down again at Marco, and any sympathy that had been in his face was gone. “So this is the job you loved so much, you wouldn’t go with Budu? Well, well. See how the Company rewarded you for all your faithful service?”

  “You got that right,” croaked Marco. “I’m sicker than shit.”

  “Oh yeah? I hope you rot away where you’re standing, you bastard. I’m only sorry Victor didn’t finish you. Is that him, on the table?”

  “No,” Marco said. “That’s Grigorii Efimovitch. Who the fuck’s Victor?”

  “The Facilitator Victor. He’s about my size, real pale, dresses natty, red beard and mustaches? And he’s more full of poison than a drugstore, pal, which you’ve probably figured out by now,” Joseph said, but Marco’s grin was widening. He chuckled wetly and spat into a corner.

  “No little Preserver did this to me, friend,” he said. “S’a new kid in town. Didn’t you know? New Company tricks. New Enforcer class.”

  “What?”

  “Hee hee, you don’t know,” gurgled Marco. “You’re surprised. But it’s true. Company’s redesigned the Enforcers. I just had a little chat with our replacement. You think my work is ugly? You should see the stuff this new guy does. I’m obsolete now. You are, too.”

  “What are you talking about?” Joseph said. “What new Enforcer class?”

  “I tell you, he was right here,” Marco said. “The Company’s new man. Some of the same DNA Enforcers had. Big like us old guys but a real pretty boy, looks almost human. And what a fighter! He did this to me and got away with it, does that give you the picture?”

  Joseph didn’t reply and Marco lurched forward to squint up at him. “Oh, you’re scared now,” he crowed. “Well, you’d better be. Tell me, are all you little pansies up there in Time Forward still worrying about what’s going to happen in 2355? You can stop wondering. It’s him! The dirty trick to end all dirty tricks. What do you suppose he can do to you Preservers? And, you know what the best part of it all is? The Company made him disposable. Talented as us, but not immortal like us. He disobeys, the Company’ll just shoot him and clone another one. Or however they make them.”

  “Okay,” said Joseph. “You’re right, I’m scared. Are you happy now?”

  “Yeah, actually,” Marco said.

  “But why would the Company make a new Enforcer?” Joseph said, moving a little farther out on his rafter. “Really? There are plenty of nasty-ass Preservers up there in the future, if you want the truth, Marco. Problem solvers and security techs. Even people like Victor the Virus. So . . . what’s this pretty boy of yours got, that the rest of us haven’t got?”

  “Moral imperative, you jerk,” Marco said, staggering forward and picking up another beer bottle. He weighed it in his hand a moment before sending it hurtling up toward Joseph, who dodged it by leaping onto another rafter. It fell and broke, somewhere out of sight in the dusty rows of shelves. “You Preservers never had the guts to do the kind of things we Enforcers had to do. But he will! He believes in what he’s doing, the way only a mortal can because they don’t live long enough to figure things out. He’ll probably even die when he’s told to. And that’s why I bet the Company will round you all up and shut you down, and why his kind will run their errands after 2355. They’ve already started using him.”

  “How do you know?” Joseph said, halting in his progress across the rafters toward the shelves. There was an unnerving noise coming from all the rows of steel boxes.

  “Tell you how I know,” Marco said. “Mars Two disaster. Did you know it’s a Company setup? It is. Dr. Zeus will make a fortune when Mons Olympus blows. All that crap in the air will speed up terraforming on Mars, which is all going to belong to Dr. Zeus after the geothermal plant blows up, because Areco will sell out to them. The Company will get Mars on a silver platter, and all it’ll cost is three thousand mortal lives. But here’s the sweet part: Guess who delivers the bomb to the terrorists?”

  “The Hangar Twelve Man,” said Joseph without a second’s hesitation. “I learned that in school, for Christ’s sake. Everybody knows that.” The noise coming from the boxes was clearer now, making him sweat as he tried to ignore it. It was screaming, but so faint, and it had a curiously un-formed quality, raw sound unshaped by lips—

  “Yes. Now think hard, little Preserver. Who, oh who could the Hangar Twelve Man be?” giggled Marco, hurling another bottle at him.

  “Nobody’ll ever know, because he’ll never be caught—” said Joseph, dodging the bottle, and then froze in place as a long-stored history lesson replayed itself for him. Within his skull, behind his eyes, he watched the famous video footage from Hangar Twelve. It had been shown to him in his childhood as the ultimate image of mortal stupidity and evil: the mysterious, remarkably tall man offloading crate after crate of contraband weapons into the arms of the foolish MAC colonists—

  Freezeframe Enlarge ENHANCE!

  And then he had to wrap his arms and legs around the rafter to keep from falling off in his shock, though his strangled cry wasn’t very loud, and there was no sound at all as his lips formed the words Nicholas Harpole.

  “He’s got the picture now,” said Marco happily. “Remember the funny-looking man in the footage? I’m right, aren’t I? The Company’s screwed us again. Oh, yes, that stings, doesn’t it? I love pain. I really do, I love the impact, you know? When one of these little surprises sinks in. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not as bad as the mortals I used to punish.” He sighed and wiped blood and pus from his face. “So anyway,” he went on, “you never explained why you’re paying me this little visit. What is it you want, Preserver?” He began to laugh afresh. “Besides a new pension plan?”

  It was a moment before Joseph could answer him.

  “I came to ask you a favor,” he said in a tight voice
.

  “Ask away,” Marco said, shambling over to the door. He reached outside and came back with a beer.

  “I came to get somebody who was sent here. I want to take her away with me.”

  “Why?” Marco twisted the neck off the bottle and drank, leaning against the wall as he tilted his head back.

  “She’s a recruit of mine,” Joseph said. “So in a way it’s my fault she wound up in this place. She doesn’t deserve to be here.”

  “None of them do, really,” said Marco. “Compared to the mortals.” He belched in a meditative kind of way.

  “Yeah, so I’d like to just take her out of, uh, wherever you’re keeping her and slip off through the night. The Company will never know, and why should you care anyway, the way the Company’s treated you?” said Joseph.

  “You have a point there,” Marco replied. He drank some more beer. “Okay, Preserver, you go right ahead. Help yourself to your kid and get the hell out of here. I’m taking off myself, before Dr. Zeus can send little brother back to finish me. You won’t tell anybody about me, and I’m sure not telling anybody about you, not where I’m going.” He let fly with the empty bottle, but only in a halfhearted sort of way. It broke on a rafter and showered glass down on the floor. He ignored it and turned to shoulder his way out into the fading night.

  “Hey!” Joseph said. “Wait! You have to tell me where she is. Where are you going?”

  Marco turned back. “Going for a little swim,” he said. “Or maybe a real long swim. Nothing out there to swim to, but I’ll just keep going. Fight with a leviathan, break his back. Swim off the edge of the world and fall down into the stars. Come ashore and scare the daylights out of any little mortal monkeys I find. Make them worship me, maybe. I don’t know! The world’s so full of possibilities, now that I’m retired.”

  “But my recruit,” Joseph said. “Where is she? I’m looking for the Botanist Mendoza.”

  Marco halted in real astonishment.

  “She’s your recruit?” he said. And then his face lit up with indescribable mirth. “Boy oh boy, you poor miserable son of a bitch! You are so out of luck, Preserver, and I’ll tell you why. You missed her by about three hours. Her lover came and carried her off. And guess, take a wild guess now and tell me who her lover is!”

  “No,” said Joseph in a faint voice. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh yes!” Marco did a wild dance there in the doorway, and his howling laughter set the thing on the vivisection table twitching and jerking again. “Oh my God yes! Not only has Dr. Zeus double-crossed you, not only has your Company created the New Enforcer otherwise known as the Hangar Twelve Man—but he’s screwing your daughter!”

  He doubled over, whooping for breath at the expression on Joseph’s face.

  “At least—” he added, “at least, he will if he can find all her screws. Oh, Preserver, I really owe you one. You’re sending me on my way with a smile, you know that? In all the black ages to come, no matter how bad things may be, every time I think of you there’ll be a little laughter in my old heart.”

  Marco turned and went out into the dark morning, singing as he went.

  It was a moment before Joseph could unclench his limbs and drop down, but by the time he ran outside Marco had already waded to his chest in the gray surf and was striking out, bellowing an old song as he crested the breakers:

  “ ‘No more dams I’ll make for fish,

  Nor fetch in firing at requiring,

  Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish!

  Ban! Ban! CaCaliban! Has a new master—

  GET A NEW MAN!’ ”

  Joseph stood there alone, watching him swim out of sight.

  LATER THAT MORNING

  IN 300,000 BCE

  Joseph was still standing in the doorway of Options Research by the time the hot hazy morning dawned over that island, still staring out at the dull sea.

  At last, abruptly as an automaton that has finished striking the hour, he turned and went back inside.

  Kicking broken glass out of his way, he went to the dark aisles of shelves with their rows of steel boxes. He walked along the edge staring in at them. There were dozens. There might have been a couple of hundred. The barely audible screams were definitely coming from them. He made himself go up and down the aisles, looking at the engraved names on each box.

  He was white and shaking by the time he emerged, but his face was expressionless. He spotted the file cabinet on the far wall and made for it at once. The top drawer was standing open.

  Joseph looked into the drawer. It contained steel file cases, each one about a half-inch thick. They were labeled with names. There was only one gap in the silver row, and it occurred between the names MANICHEAL and MURAD.

  He blinked, registering this, and then his gaze swept down the names through L and K, but he saw none he recognized. Closing the drawer, he walked back to the doorway.

  The suffering thing on the steel table made a sound. Joseph couldn’t imagine with what it was making the sound, but he turned back and stared at it.

  “What crime did you commit?” he said. “And what crime could Mendoza have committed, to be sent to a place like this? But they can’t have done to her the things they’ve done to you. That just—well, it couldn’t happen, that’s all. She was never in one of those boxes. She’s all right, somewhere, even if that bastard’s found her again. Marco was lying. He was just trying to get to me.”

  The thing managed to make another sound.

  “You don’t care, I know. You just want to get out of here. I’ll send somebody,” Joseph said. “You—you stay like you are, for now. You have to bear witness. Understand? You have to tell them.”

  He went out and around the corner of the building, where he paused again to stare up at the revolving device. Its whirling shadow fell across his pale face.

  “You bear witness, too,” he told the arms and legs.

  Joseph walked over to the aluminum crate and climbed in. He closed the lid. A moment later it was gone from that island.

  LATER THAT SAME DAY

  IN 2317 AD

  The crate rematerialized, not on Morro Rock but at its new destination: the strip of weathered asphalt winding along the upper slopes of Mount Tamalpais. It appeared as a blurred globe, so swiftly was it rotating in the first few seconds of its arrival, and a shower of sparks flooded out around its base, struck off the little pebbles in the asphalt.

  When it had stopped, Joseph opened the lid. The mountain wind whipped away the yellow gas at once. He climbed out, closed the lid, and backed awkwardly up his dark canyon, dragging the crate after him. He didn’t bother to pause, as he usually did on coming home, to look out fondly over the green valleys that dropped away to the sea, over the little farms and houses with their plumes of smoke from mortal hearths. He had lost that luxury now.

  All the safeguards he had installed to warn him against intruders were still in place: not even a visit from Abdiel registered. He went to his kitchen alcove and found a bottle of water, drank thirstily; found a bar of granola, ate ravenously. When he’d finished he walked deeper into the mountain, as he always did, between the rows of vaults to Budu’s vault. All the sleepers still quiet in their dreams except for Budu, whose face was nearly recognizable now. Half-formed eyes swelled in their sockets like apples growing. But the blind face turned to him.

  “You Did Not Find Her,” the voice stated.

  “No,” Joseph said. “I found your time transport; it was just where you left it. Worked all right, too. Took me straight to Options Research. And, boy, Father, Options Research was really—it was really—”

  “I Told You What It Was.”

  “And you weren’t kidding, either,” Joseph said. “Not about one godawful little detail. Except that Mendoza wasn’t there anymore, but you had no way of knowing that.”

  “Explain,” ordered Budu.

  So Joseph explained, stretching out on the floor as he talked because he was tired. Life had become very simple. It didn’t matte
r where he slept, what he ate, what he wore. He had an objective now and he had absolutely lost all fear or any doubts.

  “The one good thing,” he concluded, “was that Lewis wasn’t in there, at least. Him or that other guy, Kalugin. So what will we do now, Father? Tip off Suleyman’s people about that place? They’re on the side of the angels. If there are any angels.

  “I’m telling you, Father, I think the only serious competition we might face in 2355 is from Suleyman’s machine. I used to think there was a chance he might decide to defend the mortal masters. Once he’s seen Options Research, though, he might even go after them before we do—”

  “You’re Babbling. I Have Searched Company Records In Your Absence. Why Didn’t You Tell Me Your Daughter Was The Operative Who Had Gone Forward Through Time.”

  “Gee, didn’t I mention that? I can’t think why. Yeah, she did. It’s because she’s a Crome generator, apparently. I guess that was why they sent her to that place, huh?”

  “Stop Talking. I Need Time To Think. Plan. You Need Sleep.”

  “Sleep and dreams,” Joseph said. “Of Nicholas Harpole Edward Whatever-He-Is’s head on a pike. I knew, I knew there was a reason I hated his mortal guts from the moment I ever laid eyes on him. I know an Abomination when I see one, all right. You know what it is, Father? He’s everything I ever loved about you, but all turned inside out and changed. He’s a destroyer!

  “That’s all he does, all he ever does, and he always takes innocent people, not like you, he wrecked Lewis and he did it to my little girl over and over again, he’s doing it now, he’s dragged her poor screaming body off somewhere and he can’t help her, he never helps her, he’s got some plan for her but he’ll only wind up hurting her worse because he always has, new Inquisitions, new coals, new dungeons—”

  “Stop Talking, Son.”

  “Yes sir!” Joseph said, and saluted. He curled up on his side and was silent a little while. At last:

  “. . . She was lying on straw in the dark, the tiniest thing you ever saw, and she weighed absolutely nothing when I picked her up,” he murmured. “Like an armful of flame. Only a baby. Why couldn’t I save her?”