The Machine's Child (Company) Read online

  FEZ, ONE MORNING IN 2318

  In a gracious old city a man sat in his garden, sipping tea. He might have been somebody’s dignified young father, and looked as though he ought to be reading his morning mail or a newspaper; but this was the year 2318, when neither letters nor papers existed, as such. What he was actually reading, or rather trying to read, was a volume of poetry in a text plaquette.

  On the other side of the garden a man stood under an arch, arms folded, leaning on a white stucco wall that contrasted pleasantly with the color of his skin. He looked like somebody’s young uncle, or possibly a fashion model, and there was a slight scowl on his lean features as he stared across the blue pool at the older man.

  You’re very calm about it, he transmitted.

  And panic will accomplish exactly what, again? Suleyman set down the text plaquette and sighed.

  You know something about the message I don’t know, obviously.

  I know it’s really from Joseph.

  If it is, he’s gone nuts.

  If you found a place like that, if you learned a truth like that, do you think you wouldn’t go a little mad, too?

  I guess. Is it a truth, Suleyman?

  The older man raised a tiny cup to his lips, drank carefully. I suspect it is. Nan’s analysis of the numbered sites, and the operatives assigned to them, suggests it is. Agents who have disappeared under particularly unfortunate circumstances all seem to go to the same site, which is also the biggest of the individual sites, by the way.

  So Hell really exists.

  Have you forgotten the hold of the slave ship? Suleyman set down his tea and looked sternly at Latif. There are any number of Hells, son. Don’t tell me this comes as a surprise to you.

  My God, doesn’t it surprise you? Latif began to pace, restless. A mortal prison is one thing. A place like this!

  Well, I suppose we’ll just have to see if it’s as bad as Joseph says it is. Suleyman poured himself more tea. Latif whirled around, his eyes alight.

  A covert operation?

  Not covert, son. We’ll do it openly, and let the rumors fly in the right places, and regretfully confirm selected facts. Then the scandal will break like a rotten pumpkin. Suleyman’s face was stony. And when the debris is all swept up we’re going to find ourselves that much closer to 2355, because our mortal masters will be that much more frightened of us.

  They ought to be!

  But they’re not the only ones responsible, Latif. And if we openly accuse the mortals, we’ll only make it easier for the others to conceal their own guilt. So long as we can be certain there are no more places like Options Research, do we really want to risk bringing on the Silence prematurely by starting an intercorporate war?

  I’m not afraid of them, transmitted Latif.

  I’m not afraid of them either. Suleyman drank more of his tea. But there are the innocent mortals to be considered. The ones we were created to look after? It would be nice if someone within the Company remembered they were out there.

  ONE MORNING

  IN 500,000 BCE

  David Reed finished his herbal tea, had a last bite of wholemeal toast, and went from his Flat into the Office.

  He smiled and wished Good Morning to Sylvya and Leslie, his office assistants, who smiled and wished him Good Morning, too. He noted that Leslie, now in her fifth month of pregnancy, was beginning to show a little. He felt a little uncomfortable about being happy for her, though of course there was really no reason why he should feel that way; both Leslie and her husband were properly licensed and had obtained the necessary permits. It just seemed reckless, that was all.

  He followed the yellow track across the carpet to his desk, with its sweeping corner view of London. It was a fairly unattractive view, but David knew he was lucky to have it. Lots to see, in his idle moments: public transports trundling along down there, tiny Londoners on the streets now and then, cloud fronts advancing and receding.

  He was logging on when Sylvya called to him.

  “I got my holiday pics back.”

  “Oh!” David got up and followed the yellow track to her desk location. “Let’s see.”

  Sylvya held up the holoemitter, and clicked the little button so he could view the pictures of her trip to Munich.

  “That’s me and Jern in front of the hotel—and that’s the hall where my sister got married—there’s me with my sister—”

  “Oh, nice dress,” David said.

  “Uh-huh, and that’s the flower girl and that’s Bob’s brother—I don’t know who that boy is.”

  “Very nice.”

  “And that’s some big old clock or something. It used to do something but nobody was able to tell us what.”

  “Ah.”

  “And that’s us waving from the agger before we left. My sister took the pic and then gave me back the cam through the window.”

  “My, they’re big over there, huh?” David shook his head in admiration.

  “Aren’t her pics nice?” Leslie said, brushing toast crumbs from her lap and adjusting her optics, which had slid down to the end of her nose.

  “Really nice,” David said.

  David’s console beeped. He shrugged apologetically at Sylvya and retraced his way along the yellow track to his desk, and peered at the screen.

  “What is it?” Leslie leaned around the corner of her desk to see.

  “Oh, the coils on Unit Fourteen are due for servicing,” David told her. “I’ll just go take care of it.”

  “Yes, you’d best,” said Sylvya.

  So David got up and followed the yellow track to the closet, where he pulled on his cold suit. Zipping it up, he adjusted the mask and hood and picked up his toolbox, after which he followed the yellow track to the Portal. He keyed in the combination, which took a moment because it was a long complicated number. When the seal finally gave and the icy mist jetted out all around the door, he waved at the girls and said the same thing he always said:

  “Well, off I go to the South Pole.”

  They just groaned, because after all it was the same thing he always said. Smirking, he stepped through the Portal.

  It took him until Lunch to finish the routine service job, and after that he and Sylvya and Leslie took their brown bags over to the Lunchroom, which was cramped and windowless and painted a depressing color, but David didn’t mind much. They spent the whole time talking about the new Totter Dan game, which Sylvya had had a chance to play but neither Leslie nor David had, so they were very keen to hear all the details. David’s view of London seemed twice as big and airy after he’d been in the Lunchroom, as it always did.

  For the rest of the day, David worked his slow way through confirmation of the status of the contents of Recess Seventeen, and Sylvya confirmed his confirmation, and Leslie filed and forwarded. They were a good team. It generally took them no more than a year to work their way through all the recesses beyond the Portal, though of course by then it was always time to start over again.

  At four o’clock, David wished Sylvya and Leslie a cheery Good Night and took the yellow track back to his Flat. Ancilla had his supper ready, which he ate whilst watching a holo. After that he bathed and went to bed, where he played Totter Dan’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Ocean until he felt sleepy.

  Then he followed his unfailing bedtime ritual: he opened the little drawer in the side of his bed-console and withdrew the sleep mask, which he fitted on. Only then did he reach around to the port at the top of his spine, and unplug himself.

  With a practiced hand he dropped the lead into the drawer and closed it, feeling for the button that would activate its sterilization field. By morning it would be all ready for him again, and the mask would take its place in the drawer. David liked to think of them as two little workers on different shifts at the same job, for both kept him from being unhappy. Mr. Plug supplied the images from the year 2354 AD: his coworkers, his view of London, even the view of the garden behind his Flat. Mr. Mask kept him from seeing what his surround
ings really looked like when Mr. Plug wasn’t on the job: four bare rooms, windowless, wherein he was utterly alone many thousands of centuries behind everyone else. Ancilla didn’t count, of course.

  David understood the security reasons for keeping him there in the past all alone, and he was proud that he’d been chosen for such an important job. Look at the trouble the Company went to, to keep him emotionally healthy. It meant he was worth something, didn’t it?

  He sighed and settled his head on the pillow, preparing himself for sleep by emptying his mind of thoughts. It didn’t take long.

  LATER ON, SOME OTHER TIME

  AND PLACE

  Waking up was a long process.

  Alec would find his consciousness returning. He’d lie staring up at the ceiling, watching the traveling patterns of light on water, and wonder what had happened. He’d turn his head and meet Edward’s or Nicholas’s stare, red-eyed, wretched. The memory would return and he’d begin crying again, and lie there sobbing inconsolably until Billy Bones would come creeping to the bed with the anesthesia mask, offering oblivion. Not even Edward resisted, now; and they’d all wash away to dreamless sleep again.

  Eventually dreams began, soothing therapeutic ones that made it plain how none of this was his fault, how it had only been an error of a decimal point, how nothing could have altered what had happened because history cannot be changed, how it was wonderful that he had rescued Mendoza after all, how lucky he was to be alive . . .

  In time he was able to be awake if he was drugged profoundly enough, and he and the others would lie there giggling feebly at the tingling stimulus Billy Bones applied to their feet, to their hands, to their ribs, to help the shattered bones knit. Once they were able to stagger upright, they wandered around the ship in matching bathrobes (Nicholas’s and Edward’s being virtual), leaning on canes. Edward said they looked like the three blind mice, and this struck Alec as hysterically funny. The two of them chortled like oafs while Nicholas tried to collect his wits enough to ask to have the reference explained. When he managed, after wiping the drool from his chin, they sang the nursery rhyme for him; and then all three tottered along, singing it over and over, making a round of it until at last they forgot the words.

  It was good that they were able to entertain each other, for though the Captain monitored them constantly, he was very busy.

  He tried to explain a little to them, when they were able to pay attention. Something about tissue regrowth being easy, proceeding rapidly all by itself, and the only real challenge being rebuilding the biomechanical prostheses. Fortunately, there were nanobots still functioning. Nicholas and Edward thought nanobots was very nearly the funniest word in the world, and they all lay rolling on the floor in helpless laughter until Coxinga brought them pudding and juice in squeeze-bottles, because they were far too uncoordinated to feed themselves anything that required much manual dexterity.

  One evening, as they sat staring in glazed-eyed incomprehension at a holo of Treasure Island (the 1933 version with Wallace Beery) the Captain interrupted to ask them if they’d like to hear the baby’s heart beating.

  “Baby?” Nicholas stared, slack-jawed.

  Figure of speech, laddie. The Captain sounded terribly pleased with himself. Listen, it’s just started! And over the ship’s intercom they heard a thump-thump, thump-thump, quite a regular double beat, and Edward began to nod in time with it.

  “Boom boom,” he said. “The machine’s child.”

  “S’great!” said Alec. “C’we see the baby?”

  No, boys, not yet. We don’t want them bad dreams to start again, do we?

  “Nooo,” the three of them chorused, but only on principle, because they couldn’t remember any bad dreams.

  Just let yer old Captain steer yer course, mateys, aye, and we’ll sail upon blue water. Listen to that beat! Ain’t it fine? I reckon this tops Zeus growing Athena in his head. Now, here comes jolly Coxinga with yer cocoa and sleepy meds. You can watch the holo until you’ve drunk the posset; then it’s time to turn in.

  “Aye aye sir,” said Alec, attempting to salute and missing. Edward and Nicholas laughed at that until they cried, rolling off their virtual cushions and sprawling on the carpet. Alec was far too drugged to stay on chairs, and the servounits had discreetly removed the room’s breakable furniture.

  As timeless time went by, the truth of what had happened at Options Research became like an iceberg seen through a telescope, sharp and clear but safely distant, unreal, unconnected to them. They learned, again, to dress and shave and feed themselves. One day the Captain advised them it was necessary for their safety to jump through time again, and Alec was willing to drink the vile drink Coxinga brought him and buckle himself into the safety harness. He began to shake uncontrollably when the yellow gas flowed, but Edward and Nicholas hugged him tight, and somehow they made it through the time transcendence without panicking. Then they were safe in some other when, and the next day Alec sighted oared galleys off the port bow.

  The Captain monitored all this closely. He would allow them, now, to come into the infirmary from time to time. There still wasn’t much to see. Blue liquid filled the decompression chamber, and dimly a figure could be glimpsed floating inside it. No features were visible, scarcely anything at all other than its general shape and size. They knew it was Mendoza, they knew that the Captain was working very hard to repair her for them; other than that she too was like the iceberg, far-off and unreal, too painful to think about.

  Wherever they were in this time, the weather was very warm. They floated in a dead calm under a sky of pearly cloud, far from any land, and the heat haze made the sea one wide expanse of opal. There was no breath of wind.

  Nicholas was miserable in his virtual linen and black wool, but he was unable to accept the idea of wearing garments from any period other than 1555 without losing himself. He compromised by simply wearing his shirt and breeches, in which he looked like Hamlet. Edward, though, insisted that the Captain provide him with a suit of proper clothes, which seemed to be virtual tropical whites, circa 1862. The Captain sighed and indulged him.

  ________

  Months passed. Less drugs, and now they were under orders to go down to the gym daily and work out, to throw off the effects of long half-sleep. As it sweated out of them they came more sharply into focus, each one, and the nightmares began again: steel coffins in a dark place, poison and torture, every possible variation on what had happened. Nicholas and Alec clawed their way out of dreams, sobbing, on more than one night. Edward woke shouting with the horrors himself. They would rise, then, and stagger away to the infirmary, to stare in desperation at the drifting thing in the hyperbaric chamber. The pale floating figure was becoming more substantial, its upper part veiled in a swirling cloud like seaweed. The air seemed perfumed, calming, comforting.

  Now, lads, it’s time we had a bit of a chat.

  They looked up from their respective activities: Alec from tinkering with a new manipulatory member for Flint (it was Alec’s turn to use his body), Nicholas from watching him, Edward from his virtual cheroot and game of solitaire.

  “In regard to?” Edward tipped ash into the small virtual dish provided for that purpose.

  Yer lady will wake soon, and we need to make some preparations.

  There was a silence at the table.

  “What’s she going to remember?” said Alec at last.

  No way to tell, is there?

  “I should think there’s a certain likelihood she went mad,” said Edward stiffly.

  Could be. Of course, there’d be drugs I could give her.

  “If she be bedlam-mad, I’ll love her still,” said Nicholas.

  “How noble of you,” Edward said. “But have you considered that her feelings toward us might have changed, in the ages she lay there in torment? Waiting perhaps for a rescue that never came, thanks to my damned bungling?”

  “She’ll hate us now. She knows about Mars Two,” said Alec.

  “You self-c
entered little bastard!” Edward laughed, without mirth.

  Nicholas folded his hands. “If she wisheth me to suffer the fire a second time, I’ll burn. I have deserved her hate.”

  Lad, her heart was broke afore because thou wert so willing to die. Hast thou forgot the lesson?

  “No, Spirit, in God’s name,” Nicholas said. “Though God hath done with me.”

  “What’s the point of all your gospel study, then?” said Edward, stubbing out his cigar. “Ah! But you don’t seem to be reading much Scripture nowadays, do you? Have you lost your faith? Or has it simply dawned on you that there’s not a line in the Bible that can possibly have any relevance to the kind of creatures we are?”

  “Wilt thou mock my shame, murderer?” said Nicholas sadly. “Thou hast never loved God.”

  “I beg your pardon! I was His own little white lamb once,” Edward retorted. “Quite a devout child, I’ll have you know.”

  “Wow. What happened?” inquired Alec in a listless voice.

  “I was called to the headmaster’s study in my first term and informed my parents were lost at sea,” Edward told him. “When I’d stopped blub-bing, I went straight to chapel to pray. Begged God to let there be some mistake. Promised Him I’d be ever so good if my papa and mamma weren’t really drowned.”

  “And there was no miracle for thy sake, and so in peevish spite thou turnedst from the Lord,” said Nicholas contemptuously.

  “By no means,” said Edward. “On my next birthday I was informed that the gentleman and lady whose son I’d thought I was—who were pleasant enough people, even if they never seemed to care about me much—had merely been foster parents. My real father, apparently a great man, was still alive. A prayer answered!

  “Of course, my existence was a disgrace and a scandal for him, and he was very much vexed at having to bother with me again; so shortly thereafter he arranged that I should leave school and go into the navy. Less expense for him, and I’m sure he had the earnest hope I’d be sunk as well. I generally avoided praying for anything after that.” Edward picked up the virtual jack of spades and examined it thoughtfully.