The Children of the Company Part 23

"You've heard about Kalugin, then?"

"Ash.o.r.eth's worked with him. What an emotional mess!" Kiu loaded a canister of flesh tone into her airbrush and, closing her eyes, applied the base coat of foundation.

"But the most obliging fool it was ever my privilege to manipulate," said Labienus, slipping on his MEDIA tag again. "I could make that fellow believe anything."

Kiu set the airbrush aside and turned her masklike face to Labienus. Just at this stage of her toilette she looked queenly, cold, wise as a serpent.

"Give me a broken man every time. Putty can be every bit as useful as tempered steel, you know," she said. "Whatever happened to Kalugin, anyway?"

Labienus smiles, remembering.

The transmission had been picked up on the Soter's receiver in 2083, as Kalugin had rambled, had shouted, had mumbled and at last fallen into the nearest thing to eternal silence an immortal could preserve ...

I suppose I can just keep talking until the oxygen runs out.

Yes, that would probably be a good idea, wouldn't it? Because then it'll be an anaerobic environment in here and no bacteria will grow. I'll be in better shape when they find me, and I'll have left an audio record. Less effort for the one who has to piece together what happened ... and less upsetting for Nan, I mustn't forget that.

For of course I'll be rescued. They'll find me. Even though the Alyosha's disappearance is masked by an event shadow, even though the portholes are beginning to be obscured by a film of what I am terribly afraid is mineral deposit that will set like concrete and entomb me in here, to say nothing of making the little sub impossible to spot way down here in the Aleutian Basin ...

I do wish those appalling ticking noises would stop. Anyone less cheerfully determined than I am would suspect they were hairline cracks forming in the hull. I could survive the hull collapsing, of course, but then I'd be ...

But the Company will find me. I'll be repaired, someday. I believe in that, yes, I do, with my whole heart and soul, don't I? Certainly I do. Keep talking, Vasilii Vasilievich. That way you won't start screaming, and after all why should you scream? Everything's going to be perfectly all right. The Company will find you. You've been broadcasting your distress signal loud enough to reach every cyborg operative in the eastern hemisphere and possibly one or two Kabalist rabbis in Poland.

Hm, hm, hm, life flashing before one's eyes. Very large red worm dragging itself across the gla.s.s and leaving a clear trail, oh, dear, there really is quite a lot of dark debris drifting down from the volcanic vent, isn't there? But that's why they call them black smokers, isn't it?

Is it? Would you like me to tell you my life story, large red worm? If I do, will you stay? Perhaps if you keep clearing the debris from that one porthole there'll be some clue for the rescue team, one tiny circle of light in the darkness with my frightened face pressed to it, mouth moving endlessly in pointless conversation. Yes, perhaps.

All right. What's my earliest memory? Being a mortal child. I was the big boy of the family. I was four. I think. Two sisters, Dunya and Sima. I remember them very well. Dunya was eight and Sima was three. Dunya had long braids and Sima had little short ones. We lived in a big house. I was frightened of Papa. He beat the servants, even the girls. But we had a lot of servants. We had fine clothes and toys, too, and our house had a wooden floor. So you can see we were somebody, my family.

Maybe the money and estates belonged to Mama? She never seemed bothered that Papa beat the servants and shouted at her, she just pretended he didn't exist. I don't know how trustworthy my memory is, of course, since I'd run and hide whenever Papa would rage. Dunya called me a coward. Hardly fair. She'd run and hide, too. But she never cried. I cried all the time. How squalid it all is, this memory, and how brief.

It ends, you see, the day it was warm enough to go outside and take bread to old Auntie Irinka. She can't have been my aunt really. I have the impression she lived in a little dark house in the fir woods, like Baba Yaga, and we were taking bread to her for charity. An old retainer put out to honorable pasture, perhaps? Sadly, she never got her bread.

Was it Dunya's fault? She was old enough to know better. I was the big boy of the family, though, I ought to have done something.

You see, the footpath ran along the bank of the river. Quickest route. Our nurse should have taken us some other way, I suppose, but Masha (that was our nurse, Masha) was impatient. We weren't going quickly enough for her, either, at least Dunya was but it took Sima ages to get anywhere on her little fat legs and I was slow, too, carrying the big bread loaf because I was the big boy, and so bundled up in my stiff coat I must have looked like a penguin walking. I should have fallen in, too ...

Well, Masha decided she couldn't wait, and told us to stop there on the path and not to move until she came back, and then she ducked away into the trees to attend to a private matter. We stood and waited. There was such sunlight! Such a raw powerful smell of new life beginning! The wild smell of the trackless forest. Dark wet earth where the snow was melting, buds swelling on the branches, little green shoots sprouting everywhere. And the yellow-white surface of the river, still frozen solid. And Dunya said, "Let's go skating," and I said, "We haven't got skates with us."

Dunya tossed her braids at this and told me we could make skates out of sticks, and I said we couldn't, and she said she'd show me, and she scrambled down the embankment and broke a couple of forked sticks from a dead branch and stepped into them, and she actually did manage to sort of limp around on the ice. Sima wanted to skate, too, and staggered down the embankment. There weren't any other good sticks, but Dunya hobbled over and took her hands and towed her out after her, slipping and complaining, and they went way out across the river, and had just started back. None of us paid attention to the noises like thunder, far off, or noticed that they were coming nearer. We didn't even know what they meant.

But Masha knew, and her anger was almost greater than her fear, I think, when she came running back through the forest. She called us all sorts of names as she jumped down to the edge of the ice and demanded that the girls return immediately. Both the little faces turned up to her in surprise, and then, boom ...

I think I closed my eyes. I'm sure I did. I always used to close my eyes when I was frightened. There was some shouting, I think, but I can't recall much about that; and when I finally opened my eyes, I recall how astonished I was. Everything had changed! The glaring bright surface of the river had broken up, all that stillness was now a surging living current of brown water, and great islands and bobbing floes of ice, and the boom-boom-boom like thunder was still going on all around.

But of Masha or my sisters there was no sign. They had vanished. I stood there staring, hugging the big loaf of bread. I had no idea what had happened. Minutes pa.s.sed and nothing changed. I was still alone there on the footpath with the bread.

No, no, big worm, come back! The sad part is over. Now the story takes a most unexpected turn. You'll like this.

I heard a big deep voice saying, "What are you going to do, Vasilii Vasilievich?" I thought it might be the devil or Saint Mikhail, and I almost closed my eyes again, but something made me turn and look. And there, standing on the edge of the forest, was a man I recognized: one of our serfs, Grigori. He was leaning on his axe, just looking at me with his big pale eyes.

I said, if I recall correctly, "What?" and he said: "You've lost your sisters! What are you going to do now? Your father will beat you, no mistake about it. Didn't he tell you to be the big boy of the family?"

I started to cry. "Oh," I sobbed. "What am I going to do? I'm scared to go home!"

He came at once and crouched in front of me, looking me in the eye. He said, "Hey, Master, don't worry! I'll tell you what. You and I have always been friends, right?"

Now, I don't think that was quite true, I think he'd been brought from another village not long before, but he'd done a lot of work around the house lately and gone out of his way to be friendly to me, even binding up my knee once when I'd fallen and sc.r.a.ped it. I just sniffled now and said "Yes."

And he said: "Well! I'd hate to see your mother and father kill you, Master, so I'll take you to a safe place I know of. The people are nice there. It's warm. There's plenty of food. They'll let you live with them, and n.o.body will ever know what you've done. How about that, eh?"

I think I might have argued, but in the end I went with him. He took my hand and we walked away into the fairy-tale forest, and I never saw the mortal world, as a mortal child, again. I have never been able to remember what happened to the bread.

Where did you go, worm? The porthole's silting up again. No matter. I'll just go on talking as though you were still there. Wouldn't you like to know what happened to me? It's really an extraordinary story. After all, I started out in medieval Russia and here I am in a submarine in the year 2083, still alive. How did I become immortal? Did Grigori bite me in the neck? Certainly not. He wasn't that kind of a monster.

No, it seems my serf was in reality a cyborg posing as human, just as I am now, and once he had been a mortal child, just as I was then. What were all these cyborgs doing, running around Mother Russia? You might well ask!

Stealing icons out of lovely old cathedrals that are going to be blown up by Bolsheviks, amongst other things, or making off with a czar's ransom in amber wall panels before the n.a.z.is can take them. s.n.a.t.c.hing orphans out of s...o...b..nks, or from under the very hooves of Tatars' horses, and whisking them away to hidden Company bases to be converted to cyborgs. It's a little painful, the immortality process, but I can't deny there are advantages. Super intelligence, phenomenal abilities, and of course immortality.

Personally I've always thought Grigori was a bit sloppy. I don't think I was quite fit to become an immortal; but I was made into one anyway, so there you are.

Nan loves me as I am, at least. I've never understood why ...

I was programmed to be a Marine Operations Specialist, and, as soon as I was out of school, began my long and ill.u.s.trious career of going down with ships. Yes! That's what I do, worm, I sink for a living. Ha ha. When history records that a ship will go down with a particularly valuable item on board, it's my job to be aboard somehow, as captain or able-bodied seaman, and arrange to get the desired loot well sealed in a protective casing before the fatal storm or reef or whatever Fate has in store.

And then down we go, the poor mortals and I, to the bottom. I never like that part. I'm so sorry, you know, so sorry for them and there's nothing I can do at all, I can't save them ... And then, to blunder around in the dark like a bloated corpse in the hold, waiting with the loot until the recovery ships are dispatched from the Company, that's not the pleasantest job in the world either, but somehow that's what my career apt.i.tude tests recommended.

But I can't complain, and do you know why? Why I'm a lucky man, worm? I'll tell you: I found love.

Is that rare for a cyborg? Very rare, I a.s.sure you. You understand of course we're not emotionless creatures at all, not machines, heavens no! But the danger in loving mortals is that one faces inevitable tragedy: they must age and die, however much one cares for them. Yet somehow we immortals never seem to form more than the warmest of platonic friendships amongst ourselves ... I thought, until I learned otherwise.

I met and fell in love with an Art Preservation Specialist. Met her quite by accident, too, it wasn't the work brought us together at all. And oh, worm, she's beautiful, she's kind, she's strong, much stronger character than mine. Fearless. And, do you know, we actually got married, my little darling and I? Sleek black lioness and clumsy polar bear, what a match.

We weren't supposed to wed, of course. The Company doesn't generally approve of marriages amongst its operatives. And of course it can't be marriage as mortals have it; we're parted for long periods of time. That's never mattered, though. We always meet again. And what exquisite bliss, that reunion, always ...

I wonder how long it will be this time? ...

But you want to hear an action story, don't you, big red worm? Yes, here you come, pushing your sucker-mouth across my tiny window, wiping clear an inch-wide view of h.e.l.l itself, the dark-glowing fumarole. Thanks so awfully much. I'm afraid I don't see much in the way of heroic action because I'm not much of a hero, am I? But I tried to be. Failed miserably, too. Here's what happened: They call it the Sattes virus, after the prison where it first broke out. Some form of hemorrhagic fever, symptoms vomiting and voiding of blood, attacking the intestines and spleen, killing the host within hours. It killed every single inmate and guard at Sattes Men's Colony in Montana, United States of America. Then it spread to the families of the guards. Then it stopped.

Before anyone could draw breath in relief, it had broken out in two other prisons, one in Utah and one in California. It followed the same pattern there, exactly. Within twenty-four hours it had broken out in prisons in Arizona, New Mexico, British Columbia. Within a week it was in prisons all over the world. How is it transmitted? Plenty of theories, but no real evidence. This was just a month ago, worm.

And do you know what the mortals did? They smirked. Just imagine, the criminal element wiped out in a week! Why, it was like a judgment of G.o.d. Never mind that men and women serving a week's time for traffic violations died, too, and there were a great many more of those than serial killers sitting in cells. It must be a judgment of G.o.d.

But even as it ran its course in the prisons, it started in the armed forces of the world. Broke out at military bases, on battleships, in civil defense training camps. That wiped the smiles off their faces. Millions of young men and women dying the world over. Perhaps it isn't a judgment of G.o.d after all? The death toll is amazing, surpa.s.sed the Black Death in its first week. It kills so quickly, you see! And n.o.body knows what to do.

Though certain things are obvious. Groups of people living crowded together catch it, men catch it more easily than women. Age is no barrier, neither is race or location. There are theories: testosterone somehow linked? Schools have been closed, public a.s.semblies forbidden, all the usual stuff governments do during a plague, depressingly familiar to us immortals but quite shocking to the poor little mortals who had somehow a.s.sumed that living in the twenty-first century exempted them from disasters of this kind. There has even been a resurgence of millennial paranoia: perhaps the count was off by eighty-three years, somehow?

And of course everyone working for the Company knows that's not the case at all. We all know Sattes won't bring on the end of the world, that it will disappear as quickly as it began, that no cure nor any cause will ever be found. Business as usual will continue for the human race. Well, not quite as usual ... the human gene pool will be gravely diminished.

Now, when all this started, where was I? In the navy, of course. Posted to the Gorbachev Science Base on Avacha Bay. Heroic Lieutenant Kalugin waiting like an actor to play his part, with a worse than usual case of performance nerves.

You see, worm, here's what history says happened: that even with its armies and navies devastated, even as the whole world waited terrified and scarcely able to hope the dread epidemic had run its course, Russia bravely went ahead with its test voyage of a revolutionary new miniature submersible, the prototype Alyosha, powered by an experimental fusion drive. Future histories-when they mention it at all, tiny footnote to history as it is-will characterize this as a supremely gallant gesture of hope for the future in a very uncertain time.

A doomed gesture, too; for the Alyosha has been lost and will never be recovered, taking that experimental fusion drive with her (we could only afford to build one, you see; in fact we could only afford to build a little one, which is why it went in a submersible) and by the way her one-man-crew was lost as well, fearless Lieutenant Kalugin. Perhaps I'll get a statue, worm, every bit as grand as Peter the Great's, me in bronze towering among the kiosks that sell vodka and shoe polish in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Ah, but I won't be lost, really. I won't, worm, and you know why? Listen closely.

Almost the first thing the Company discovered, when it went into this time travel business so many ages ago, was that history cannot be changed. Recorded history anyway. But if you work within the parameters of recorded history, you actually have quite a bit of leeway, because recorded history is frequently wrong, and there are always event shadows-places and times for which there is no recorded history. See how it works?

So the Company decided that what would appear to be a tragedy could in fact be subtly erased. We could conform to the historical facts: I would volunteer for the mission, take out the Alyosha on its test run into the Aleutian Basin, transmit a distress signal and maintain silence thereafter, presumably lost in the abyssal darkness beyond recovery, for the navy will never find even a trace of the Alyosha ... because I'll have taken the Alyosha straight to a Company recovery ship waiting off Karaginskiy Island.

No death after all for valiant Lieutenant Kalugin, and the fusion technology won't be lost, but co-opted by Dr. Zeus Incorporated, which will be regrettably unable to give it back to its inventors because history cannot be changed. Still, humanity will benefit in the long run. We- Mother of G.o.d and all the holy angels, what was that?

It can't have been a probe camera from the Soter. They can't have noticed yet I'm in trouble, and even if they had they couldn't get here so quickly! Could they? I don't think so, but then I'm in an event shadow, aren't I, worm?

It can't be pressure on the hull. It can't. This hull is made out of a new super-composite. We tested it. It ought to withstand much worse than this. I'm only a thousand meters down. Or, or, well, maybe it will give just a little and then no more? Flexing, not breaking? It won't collapse. Not with me in it. That won't happen, worm. Really.

I know what it was! The black smoker must have thrown out a chunk of rock or something. Yes, of course, just a bit of larger-than-ordinary debris raining down on the hull. The rest of it is falling so softly, so silently, it might have been only a little pebble, and perhaps only sounded loud by contrast. Yes. We're all right, worm. No cause for concern.

Let's get back to our story, shall we?

The reason I'm sitting here, talking so desperately to you, worm, is, as you must have guessed, that something went wrong. All began according to plan, I bubbled away through the deep, reached the Alyosha's last known position, transmitted my last tragic message and then took off for Karaginskiy Island.

But three hours out, I lost forward propulsion. I began to drop. Tried to jettison ballast: no use. And down I went, down through water that grew ever darker but not colder, into this previously undiscovered field of volcanic chimneys smoking out mineral-rich filth. b.u.mp, down I came.

I've tried everything. It's not the fusion drive. That's still working beautifully, if pointlessly, not actually driving me anywhere. No, it seems to be a series of little malfunctions that have all compounded to make one very big malfunction, and as near as I can tell it's because a two-ruble bolt cracked and gave a valve more play than it should have had, so that it stuck in an open position ... so much loving care was lavished on the wonderful new fusion drive that the rest of the Alyosha's construction was just a bit shoddy, or so it seems.

Ironic, isn't it? Especially as I might have detected the problem if I'd done a routine scan before climbing in. I didn't, though. I was tired this morning. Sleepy. Hung over. See why mortals really needn't fear being conquered by a super-race of cyborgs? We can be just as stupid as they are.

Though you'd have been hung over, too, red worm, if you'd been drinking what I'd been drinking for three days. A c.o.c.ktail of my own devising: I call it a Moscow Bobsled. Chocolate milk and vodka. Goes down fast and then you crash! Yes, I know, it sounds horrible, but the Theobromine in the chocolate interacts wonderfully with the vodka. What was my excuse for getting into such a state? Well, you'd have been drinking, too.

You see, my friends had died. You wouldn't know about that, of course. Red worms don't have friends, I suppose. Cyborgs really shouldn't, either.

When the plague spread to Russia, it came from the west. Hit St. Petersburg first. All those training ships, all those mortal boys and girls ... Well, panicking, and drawing the obvious conclusion that it wasn't safe to crowd its armed forces together, the government hit on a desperate plan to salvage its remaining navy.

The orders went out to Okhotsk, to Magadan, to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, to the island bases: empty the ships! Empty the barracks! Disperse and quarter the enlisted forces amongst the civilian population, or in remote areas spread out, and perhaps by the time the Sattes virus had worked its way across Siberia it wouldn't be able to find new victims.

You can imagine the alacrity with which this order was obeyed, worm. The old ships emptied and sat silent at anchor, and truckloads of sailors were taken up into the mountains. Some of them went to old mining camps, old logging camps, hunting lodges; all kinds of places were pressed into service as emergency quarters. Some just took off into the woods with camping gear, happy to get a vacation and save their lives into the bargain, promising to stay in contact electronically. The officers were quartered at hot spring resorts all through Paratunka. Holidays for everybody! If only the Grim Reaper hadn't been expected to show up as well. Moving into his little dacha amongst the stone birches, checking his black robe and scythe at the changing-room door and slipping into the hot pool ...

The mortals didn't know what else to do. I didn't either, really; here we were two weeks from the date of my historic mission and everything was falling to pieces. I knew that most of the people at Gorbachev would survive the plague, because history recorded their names, and of course there was no danger to me. But what do you do socially when the Dies Irae is playing everywhere? How do you pa.s.s the time? Watch news on the Wire? Far too depressing. Go out for a drink at a cozy club? Not in a naval uniform, which in this dark hour marks you for one of the d.a.m.ned. Sit in your flat and play solitaire?

I did that, actually, until I got a call from the mortal Litvinov. He and I'd served together on the Timoshenko, before I'd been transferred; and guess where he was now! Ten kilometers out of Paratunka, sprawling at his ease in the private tub that came with his dacha. True, the dacha was a little ruinous, because the resort had been closed for years; but the hot water just kept bubbling, that was the great thing about these places, and Larisa was there, and Antyuhin was there, and there was plenty to drink, and wouldn't I like to come up for a visit?

I probably shouldn't have gone, worm. But my coworkers at Gorbachev were glad enough to see the back of me for a few days-they were all civilians, after all, and seemed to think that would protect them-so I spruced up and caught the tram out to Paratunka, and walked from there. I'd had some idea of renting a bicycle, but the road was impossible, steep switchbacks rutted and boulder-strewn, straight back into the mountains.

But at last, as the first cold stars were peeping through the trees, I heard the whine of a generator and saw yellow lights; and a minute or so later I was walking in under a leaning arch that had once proclaimed the name of this little resort. I couldn't tell what it had been, because a new sign had been made from a piece of cardboard and tacked up across the arch. It read:

SATTES SPA-YOUR HOST, BOCCACCIO.

I walked in and stood in the central clearing, looking around uncertainly. There were perhaps a dozen little tumbledown dachas visible, all at the edges of the forest. Half a dozen had lights behind the windows, and in some cases light streamed up into the trees through holes in the sagging roofs. There was a strong smell of dry rot and mildew, and all the damage that a mountain winter can inflict on a place like that, to say nothing of a vague sulphurous aroma. Still, the wind from the stars was cold and fresh. I could hear mortal voices in conversation, and music, and laughter. A fire had been lit in half an oil drum before one of the dachas: someone was grilling slabs of some sort of meat product.

As I watched, the door opened and a mortal man appeared, silhouetted black against the yellow light. Warm air steamed out around him. He wore only fatigue trousers, slippers, and a bathrobe, and he carried a drink. As he stepped out he was directing a remark over his shoulder to someone within the dacha: "But that's exactly my point. How do we know museums aren't full of evidence that's been mislabeled-"

He noticed me and started.

"h.e.l.l! Christ Almighty, Kalugin, I thought you were a bear after our Spam."

"Is that what it is?" I came close to the fire and peered in at the coals. Grilled Spam, all right. "h.e.l.lo, Rostya Anfimovich."

"Good to see you!" Litvinov jumped down the steps and embraced me. "Did you walk all the way from the tram stop? Everyone, Vasilii Vasilievich got here!"

There was a chorus of happy shouts from the interior of the dacha, and in a matter of minutes I was soaking in the bath, mug of vodka in one hand and sandwich-grilled Spam between two Finnish crackers-in the other.

"Pretty nice, huh?" said Antyuhin gleefully. "And it's all ours! All we had to do was clean the dead leaves out. And, well, a couple of other things. We won't tell you about them."

"Thank you," I said, looking around. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn they'd had to clean a mastodon skeleton out of there. The little house was a wreck, and can't have been made of more than plywood and screens anyway. You could see stars through the roof, and birds had nested in the corners. The floor was spongy and gave alarmingly under Litvinov as he stripped down prior to rejoining us in the tub.

"And it's the junior officer's mess of the Timoshenko together again!" said Larisa Katerinovna, raising her tin cup. "For however long we have."

"No," Antyuhin pointed a finger at her admonishingly. "No references to you-know. Back to our symposium. We've got a Frivolity Symposium going, Kalugin, see? We're diverting ourselves with discussion on matters of no social or philosophical significance whatsoever."

"Current topic under discussion is whether or not Almas really exist," said Litvinov, splashing in beside me.

"The Mongolian bigfoot?" I stared.

"I don't see how you can deny it, with the Podgorni footage," challenged Verochka Sofianovna.

"The point, you see, Kalugin, is: if any supernatural creature who shall remain nameless comes to judge whether or not we're ready to be taken to the next world, he'll think we're a pack of hopeless twits and leave in disgust," said Antyuhin.

"And for that matter I don't think the possible existence of an uncla.s.sified hominid is a frivolous subject," Verochka said.

"What if they've been sighted in UFOs?" said Larisa.

"Good ..." Antyuhin nodded, frowning thoughtfully.

"Pilots or abductees, though?" said Litvinov. "That would make a difference, don't you think?"

"Only in degrees of absurdity," said Verochka.

I had another bite of my sandwich and listened, so happy. I love mortals. I love their bravery and their craziness, their ability to tell jokes under fire. I suppose it's something they have to develop, since they know their deaths are inevitable; but it's magnificent all the same, don't you think, worm?

We sat there talking for hours, every now and then getting up to run out, all steaming and pink, to the cold pool, where we'd plunge into black water to keep ourselves from heart failure, or at least that was the idea. It was full of floating leaves but Litvinov a.s.sured me it was clean water, in fact he promised to show me just how pure it was later. When we were sufficiently revived we'd race back to the dacha for more vodka and more tales of the paranormal. We covered ghosts, UFOs, persons with the ability to teleport, talking animals, visions of the Mother of G.o.d, and anything else we could think of in our attempt to repel the angel of death.