The Machine's Child (Company) (10 page)

“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 matter 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?”

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.

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 surroundings 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.

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.