The Graveyard Game (8 page)

Porfirio nodded almost imperceptibly.

“And then the Englishman came,” said Joseph in a tight voice.

“I don’t know anything about that part. That had all happened by the time I came back.”

“Did you see the guy?”

“No. He was already dead by then.”

“Do you have any idea who he was?”

“Nope.” Porfirio set his glass down.

“You said she killed six mortals. Did she kill him?”

“No. She killed the guys who shot him, and I sure as hell know who
they
were, because it cost the Company a lot to cover up their disappearances. Pinkerton agents employed by the Union government. This was during the Civil War. They were after him for some reason, and for some reason she was helping him. I’ve always thought she was susceptible to him because of that incident in her file, the thing that happened back in England on her first mission.” Porfirio looked sharply across at Joseph. “You were on that posting. You must know all about it.”

“Yeah,” said Joseph. “She never got over it, really.”

“Plus the fact that Crome generators have been known to go nuts,” said Porfirio, watching the effect of his words as Joseph flinched again.

“You think she did?”

“Who knows? Something weird happened, that’s for sure.” Porfirio leaned forward and spoke in a cold voice. “And she’s not the only one who suffered for it, my friend. All of us who were there got a black mark in some way or other as a result of that incident. The Company dragged my ass over the coals, let me tell you. They scared the hell out of the only other witness, nice little kid on his first mission. There was an anthropologist who wasn’t even there when it happened, and I know for a fact they pulled her in and did a data erasure on her.

“And there was an operative who went with Mendoza on that trip into Laurel Canyon and got pulled into the anomaly too. I sent him along to cover her. Nice guy, had a good attitude, never a moment of trouble for the Company. He wasn’t there when she went AWOL either, he was on a job. I was with him, for crying out loud. But you know what? Within twenty-four hours of Mendoza’s little mistake, a security team showed up at our camp at Tejon and took him away with them. He just grinned and went. Never seen him since. I can’t even find out where he was reassigned, and I’ve tried.”

“Jesus.” Joseph put his head in his hands.

“Some body count, huh?” Porfirio’s voice was harsh. “And maybe it’s all because an operative got careless one time, when he was scanning a potential recruit, and didn’t bother to check for Crome’s. You think that’s maybe the case?”

“Could be,” said Joseph in a muffled voice.

“I’ve carried the same guilt,” said Porfirio reflectively. “How did I miss what was coming? Was there any way I could have stopped it? Could I have helped her? And poor old Einar, I was the one who gave him the order to go with Mendoza into Laurel Canyon, and now he’s out of the picture. I thought I was responsible. Maybe I’m not, though.” He turned to Joseph. “Maybe I’ll just dump all this guilt on you now, pal.”

“Thanks,” said Joseph listlessly.

“You’re welcome. Listen: I told you all this because I respect the fact that you’re trying to help your daughter. And she was a good operative, before the incident. Mendoza did good work.” Porfirio sighed. “But I have family of my own I’m looking out for, so I don’t ever want to see you or hear about this again.”

“Family?” Joseph sat up, sudden comprehension in his face. “Is that what you’re doing here?”

Porfirio nodded. “They’re descendants of the brother I had when I was mortal. I’ve kept track of them all down the years.”

“The Company lets you do that?”

“They want to keep me happy. I’m a problem solver.”

“Oh,” said Joseph in a small voice. “One of those guys who gets rid of—”

“Yeah. Anyway, this is all your responsibility now, right?” Porfirio stretched. “Find out what happened to her, if you can. Help her if you can. If you can find out what happened to a Zoologist and Cinema Preservationist named Einar, that would be nice too. But I never met you, I never talked to you, and you’re going to stay the hell away from me and my family for the rest of your eternal life.”

“You got it,” Joseph agreed. He looked across at the window,
where the rain beat steadily but with less and less punctuation of lightning. “I guess I’ll be going now. Thanks for the help, all the same.”

“You need a ride anywhere?” Porfirio relaxed somewhat.

“No, that’s okay.” Joseph gave a slightly embarrassed grin. “My canoe’s tied up at your neighbor’s dock. I’ll just row back up the lake to the public campground. I’m supposed to be on a fishing vacation, it’s part of my gradual retirement. Smooth, huh?”

Porfirio almost smiled. He stood, and Joseph stood, and they went out through the kitchen, where Joseph cast a longing eye at the Halloween candy.

“One for the road?” he suggested.

“What the hell.” Porfirio tossed him an Almond Joy. He caught it neatly and slipped out through the back door into the steadily falling rain, silent as a coyote. Porfirio went to the window and watched. A moment later he saw the dark shape of a canoe moving out on the lake, and a dark oarsman rowing. It backed around and headed north, and a moment later was lost in the rain and the night.

Porfirio locked the door and slid its deadbolt home. He keyed in the security combination that protected the house. Returning to the living room, he turned the lever to extinguish the gas fire, went to the front window, and drew the drapes against the night. He leaned over the pumpkin and blew out its little candle. Darkness, and a plume of white smoke.

W
ELL, THAT WAS THAT
. Now I knew where Mendoza was, if only in a general way. I knew I couldn’t rescue her myself; and Lewis had no chance at all. There were only two immortals I could turn to.

One of them was Suleyman, the North African Section Head. He’s built up a private power base in Morocco, a huge machine, employs mortals and immortals alike as his agents. They do a good job for him, too, because he’s a good man. Believes in all that Honor, Integrity, and Service stuff that was so important to you, Father. I’d trust Suleyman with my life . . . but I didn’t think he would trust me. We go back a ways, he and I, so it would be sort of hard for him to believe I was really only trying to find my daughter. See what happens when you get a reputation for being a slimy little guy?

The other one was you, Father, and I hadn’t seen you in a thousand years. You’d turned rogue, gone underground, and I hadn’t lifted a finger to help you. Never even looked for you, though you gave me a clue. It sat undecrypted in my tertiary consciousness for ten centuries, because I was scared to look at it. It might even be useless by now. I guess you’d tell me it serves me right. But Mendoza, and the operatives she took down in her fall, is paying for my cowardice.

The whole sin thing works just like the Almighty said it does: innocent people get punished for things they didn’t do. Unto the fourth and fifth generation. You make your mistake, and not only do you
get screwed forever, the screwing spreads out in circles like ripples from a body dropped into quiet water. A body with a millstone about its neck.

That’s why slash and burn was your way of dealing with the bad guys, wasn’t it? Make examples of them, terrify the others so they’ll never dare to break the laws. Free will? Forget it. Obedience was what you demanded and got. Very Pentateuch.

I wonder . . . did you ever work around Ur of the Chaldees? Ever lay some law on a shepherd named Abram? With Company special effects, maybe?

But theater was never your way. You’d have marched up to the shepherd, grabbed him by the front of his robe, and told him you would be running his life from then on, for his own good. You didn’t beat around the bush.

Times changed, though. The Company had to stop being that direct. I think you understood this, maybe you alone of all the old Enforcers; though it didn’t help you in the end. You realized what was going on when your kind began disappearing, didn’t you? You knew how the Company was solving the problem of operatives it no longer needed.

Did you do what I’m doing now, investigating, searching? But it’s a little harder for me, Father, the Company’s more devious these days, as 2355 draws closer. The Preservers are being given a nice package deal. It’s called gradual retirement.

The argument is that as the future world comes nearer, there’s less work for us, who were created to rescue endangered things from humanity’s folly. Mortals, finally becoming wise and good, don’t need our services as much to preserve their priceless works of art from the ravages of war, to prevent extinctions of rare plants and animals due to overcrowding, overdevelopment. There is very little and soon will be
no
more war, overcrowding, or development.

Personally I have my doubts about this. Maybe they’ve just run out of stuff for us to save.

But anyway. We’ve all been told the Company will start rewarding
us now for our millennia of faithful service. Giving us little treats, vacations, personal lives. This is the way it’ll be all the time after 2355, they say: we can go anywhere we want, do anything we want. Just as though we weren’t slaves.

It’s taken me so many years to be able to say that word.

Slaves? Us? Not when the Company is starting to let us choose our own postings. Not when the Company is permitting us lasting relationships with the mortals with whom we have to work. Not when the Company is relaxing the old rules about personal property, schedules, and Theobromos consumption. We have choices now, at least some of the time. We can live our own lives, except when the Company needs us to do something.

The reason gradual retirement is so gradual, of course, is that all our programming directly opposes the idea of retirement. We have to be eased into a life of leisure. Our work is all we want, all we need, all that has kept us going through centuries of immortal heartbreak. Time on our hands makes us seriously uncomfortable. Look what it did to a Conservationist like poor Mendoza. Drove her crazy . . .

I assume she went crazy when she killed those mortals. A Conservationist killing, that’s unheard of. Guys like you made pyramids of trophy heads, I know, and problem solvers like Porfirio work their silent way through the sewers of the world taking out two-legged vermin. Even Facilitators have been known to do a little quiet unofficial termination now and then.

But Mendoza? I’d never have thought her anger could push her that far. It was a rotten trick the Company played on her, taking her work away, letting her sit there in the middle of desolation with nothing to keep the old memories at bay. No wonder she went with the damned Englishman . . .

But which Englishman?

Who the hell was he?

What was he?

T
REVOR AND ANITA
sat waiting in the front parlor of the shop in Euston Road. They were uncomfortable. It was a very well known antiquarian bookshop, the kind that did almost no business out of the shopfront but relied principally on private clientele and Web orders. Nevertheless there was not a speck of dust anywhere, and the furniture in the parlor was expensive.

Trevor and Anita were not well off. They were hoping to be; artistic, creative, and talented, they were busily working at several concurrent schemes to make a bundle. One of these schemes was buying and restoring old houses, doing the work themselves to cut overhead, and reselling at handsome profits. Although to date there had been no profits, due to the union fines they had to pay. Then they found the old box.

It was so old, its leather panels were peeling away, and now it was wrapped in a green polyethylene garbage sack. Trevor held it on his lap. A white cardboard carton would have been more elegant, or brown paper. Looking uneasily around at the fifteenth-century Italian manuscripts under glass, Trevor and Anita regretted that they had found nothing better to put the old box in.

After a half hour of raised eyebrows from immaculately groomed persons who came and went through the office, Trevor and Anita were ready to sink through the floor. They had just decided to sneak
out with their nasty little bag when a young man descended the stairs from the private offices on the first floor. He looked inquiringly at them.

He too was immaculately groomed, and wore a very expensive suit, though it seemed a little too big for him. He was handsome in a well-bred sort of way, with chiseled features and a resolute chin, rather like a romantic lead from the cinema of a century before. His eyes were the color of twilight.

“Excuse me,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to be my three o’clock provenance case, would you?”

They stared at him, nonplussed.

“Um—you described it on the phone? Old wood-and-leather box found in an attic?” He gestured helpfully. “About this big? Full of possibly Victorian papers?”

“Yes!” The couple rose as one.

“So sorry I kept you waiting,” he said, advancing on them and shaking hands. “Owen Lewis. You must be Trevor and Anita? Is this the box?”

“It is—”

“There was an iron bed frame in the attic room, and I don’t think anybody had moved it in just, well, ages—”

“And this was wedged in underneath, we would never have known it was there if we hadn’t moved the bed, and it took both of us—”

“The lid just fell apart when we prized it off—”

“Gosh, how exciting,” Lewis exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s take it up to my office and have a look, shall we?”

He led them up the stairs, and they followed happily, completely set at ease. This was a nice, unintimidating man.

“My, this really has come to pieces, hasn’t it?” said Lewis, when they were all gathered around his desk and he’d gingerly cut away the green bag. “Good idea to have brought it in in plastic. This is what we in the trade call a basket case.”

Trevor and Anita smiled at each other, validated.

“A pity the box fell apart,” Trevor said.

“Don’t feel too badly,” Lewis told him, taking a pair of latex gloves from a drawer and pulling them on with fastidious care. “From the pieces I’d say it’s early Victorian, but rather cheap for its time. Mass-produced. You say it was in the attic? Where’s the house?”