The Machine's Child (Company) (15 page)

“The Ventana?” She looked up sharply as he threaded the belt through the loops for her. Something blazed in her eyes. “The cliffs and the big trees? I remember those. But—I can’t go there anymore.”

“Yes, you can. You’re going wherever you bloody well want, yeah?” Alec fastened the belt for her and stepped back, frowning thoughtfully at the pants, which still hung ridiculously low. He went to a drawer for a Swiss utility knife and set about punching an adjustment in the belt. “Nobody’s going to close any garden of Eden to
us.
”

“You’ll smash the lock,” she said in an absent little voice, and cinched up the belt as far as it would go and bent over to roll up the cuffs. Edward leered.

Dear, dear, what a pretty cabin boy she makes! Perhaps we won’t be in such a great hurry to find gowns for her, after all.

Sodomite,
snarled Nicholas.

Never once in all my years in the Royal Navy,
Edward retorted, grabbing control and pulling her close for a kiss. “Come along, my love, I’ve just thought of a variation on time travel.”

He led her into the saloon, where they were greeted by Billy Bones unobtrusively offering a tray with a small drink of something iodine-colored on it.

Here’s yer, uh, vitamin supplement, lad. Mind you gulp it down.

“Thank you.” Edward quaffed it with scarcely a grimace. “Have you laid in a course, Captain?”

Aye, sir! Latitude 355919N, Temporal Alignment 150,000
BCE!

“Splendid.” Edward flung aside the glass and pulled Mendoza close again, gazing down into her eyes. “My love, do you trust me?”

“Yes, señor,” she said, laughing as he bent her backward for a deep kiss.

“Weigh anchor, Captain,” Edward said as he came up for air.

Aye aye, sir!

Edward caught Mendoza by the hand and ran for the storm harness. Alec and Nicholas followed, staring in disbelief as Edward shed Alec’s shirt and trousers and assisted Mendoza in peeling off the clothing she had just put on with such effort. He fastened himself into the storm harness faster than an able-bodied seaman might heave short, loose sails, set topsails, and square the afteryards. It made him somehow more brazenly naked as he grinned and held out his arms to her.

Do it in the storm harness? Are you crazy?
Alec stared, aghast. Nicholas looked from one to the other, unsure of what was going on.

Whilst time-traveling, no less,
Edward replied, as Mendoza came to him. “Handsomely, now, my darling, lay out along the yard,” he said, lifting her onto his lap, and she was laughing, seemed delighted, so Alec and Nicholas looked at each other and shrugged. They moved in close as her arms went around Edward’s shoulders.

“Ready! Helm hard over! ABOUT!” Edward shouted, and kissed her as yellow clouds of stasis gas filled the saloon.

They traveled.

It was, put simply, the most astonishing experience any couple (or foursome; for as the three men experienced pain together, so they seemed to experience pleasure simultaneously) could hope to survive. Blue fire welded their straining bodies together. There was one hallucinatory second when they heard a roar of music through the flames, something neither Nicholas nor Alec knew but Edward recognized vaguely: something by Beethoven? But he hadn’t spent enough of his life in concert halls to be sure, and in any case he was too busy to give a damn.

ONE MORNING IN 150,000
BCE

When it stopped at last, Nicholas and Alec were lying in a state of collapse on either side of Edward. Mendoza clung to him, gasping. They were drenched with sweat. There was sunlight flooding in, and the sound of the sea, and a vast creaking as the storm bottle retracted and the masts deployed. The anchor rattled away and dropped with a splash.

Edward opened his eyes and looked down at her.

“There now,” he said, only a little unsteadily. “Wasn’t that amusing, my dear?”

“Yes,” she moaned. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “We never did
that
before. I’d remember that.”

“What’s immortal life without a little variety now and then?” he said. He glanced out the porthole and saw cliffs rising sheer from an emerald sea, up out of sight. “And I believe we’ve reached our destination! Are we lying off Cape San Martin, Captain?”

Aye, sir,
the Captain told him, with perhaps just a shade of uneasiness in his voice.

“I thought so. California, my love. Will you walk ashore?”

“Sleep first!” she pleaded, her head falling on his shoulder.

“Anything to oblige a lady,” he said smugly, and unfastened the harness. Getting his hands under her he lurched to his feet, and after a tottery moment strode in triumph to Alec’s stateroom, with Alec and Nicholas staggering after him, panting for breath.

They sank down on the coverlet and Mendoza was asleep almost at once. Edward found he wanted a cigar very much, and as the only place he could get one was in cyberspace he relinquished control to Nicholas, Alec having already passed out. Nicholas was too exhausted to do more than peer balefully at Edward as he took Mendoza in his arms, and then he too sank into unconsciousness.

Cigar, please, Captain,
Edward ordered. He sprawled back into the pillows, taking a virtual Hoyo Du Monterrey from midair already lit.
Thank you.
He drew and exhaled sensuously, smiling at the ceiling.

Right then, laddie, it’s time we talked.

Talk away,
Edward said, blowing a smoke ring.

What in thunder did you think you was bloody playing at?

I don’t believe I care for your tone, sir,
said Edward blandly.
You’re speaking to a commander in Her Majesty’s Navy, remember?

You damned idiot, didn’t you notice the Crome’s radiation she was generating whilst ye was having yer fun?

Yes, thank you, I did notice.
Edward writhed in happy recollection.
Who’d have thought there were new pleasures to be discovered, at my advanced age?

Would it interest you to know that we nearly wound up off course on our beam-ends, thanks to yer little game?

What the hell do you mean?
Edward rose on his elbows, scowling.

I mean that there was a second, there, when something pulled us a few points into the wind. Not that you’d have noticed, blazing away like a twelve-pound gun as you was, but we was yanked astern so’s we was moving
forward
in time for a beat or two, d’ye see? It were all I could do to get us on course again so we didn’t fetch up God only knows when.

Good Christ.
Edward sat up and took the cigar out of his mouth.
You think it was the Crome’s radiation?

I reckon so, lad, since it happened when she was throwing it brightest.

Edward narrowed his eyes, thinking.

Now I wonder,
he said at last,
if this wasn’t the same phenomenon that afflicted her in that canyon in Los Angeles? At the place with the quaint name.

Hollywood?

Hollywood, to be sure. She was taken forward then, as we were just now. Can it be possible the stuff exerts some kind of retrograde force? An energy of opposition, as it were? If that’s the case, we really can travel to the future after all—since it seems we were being pulled with her. The trick is to get her to generate the radiation whilst we’re in transit.

I don’t like the odds. All the test records I’ve accessed show Crome’s radiation ain’t dependable for anything but blue lights. It ain’t quantifiable, it ain’t qualifiable. It never produces the same effect twice. Not under test conditions. I’ll grant you it may manifest differently in yer lady than in mere mortals, but I’d want to run tests afore we tried anything.

But, look here. If she can go
forward
through time—what’s to stop us sending her ahead to see what will happen after 2355?
Edward puffed out clouds of virtual cigar smoke in his excitement.
Good God, what a tactical advantage that’d give us!

Aye, maybe. But what if the Silence is caused by a cataclysm like a meteor hitting the planet? You might send her straight into an inferno. How’d we know, eh? We’d never get her back.

Edward shuddered.
No. I won’t imperil her like that, not for any advantage.

Besides, just because she done it once don’t mean the lass can do it whenever we want her to, like a card trick. We don’t know enough about Crome’s.

One thing seems plain.
Edward looked down at Mendoza fondly.
It’s passion strikes the spark.
He ran a hand along the curve of her thigh.

It ain’t plain at all! Could be a dozen different factors. I’d have said stress, more likely, maybe coupled with some sexual arousal. Don’t you go planning on scudding along bare-poled through time with her again, until we know it ain’t dangerous. I’ll allow I can’t think of a pleasanter way for a man to die, but them’s my orders, laddie. See you follow ’em.

I beg your pardon?
said Edward, with a very unpleasant light in his eyes.

By the powers, what’s got you bridling so at a sensible command? My little Alec’s always been one to do as he’s told.

And so was I, once,
muttered Edward, having another drag on his cigar.
Until it got me eight bullets in my back.

Then all the more reason not to be a fool. If you’d had yer old Captain with you back then, you’d have lived to waltz away with yer lady here, and saved everybody a deal of sorrow and care.

And I maintain, Captain, that I
did
live. Look at me! My life force continues as strong as ever. We really ought to make plans to search for my own proper body, once Mendoza’s herself again. I’m quite sure the Company’s storing it somewhere, pending my revival.

There ain’t nothing about it in the Project Adonai file, son.

Undoubtedly because it’s been kept a secret. I know how these people think, you see, I was one of them! The right hand never tells the left what it’s about.

And them autopsy pictures in the file?

Edward grimaced.
Those might have been of surgery, not an autopsy.

Maybe. Whether or not you shuffled off yer own coil, I ain’t letting Alec die. I’m for going after the silver tube you all come out of in the first place.

Edward tipped virtual ash into a dish that materialized on the bedside table. He looked mulish a long moment before shrugging.

As you like.
He patted Mendoza’s derriere.
I dare say she’ll be twice as happy with two husbands.

LATER THAT SAME DAY

“Trees,” Mendoza said like a prayer, clinging to the rail and pointing. They were making their way, without much sail on, along the primeval California coastline.

“Yeah,” Alec said sleepily, “they’re trees, all right.” He put his arms around her and leaned, looking out at the forbidding country. It was all plunging gorges and soaring peaks of rock like black emerald, the land dropping steeply away into the sea. Here and there the cliff faces gleamed wet where falls descended, vaporing out to mist and rainbows before ever
reaching the surf below. Trees marched in serrated ranks upward, making a dense green gloom in the canyons and striding like gods along the ridges, except where lightning or slides had cleared a few acres of mountain meadow, tiny patches of sunlight quiet and distant on the heights. His eyes widened as he took it all in. “Awesome.”

“But the trees are bigger,” Mendoza said. “And it’s all
greener.
” She turned to look up at him. “When were we here before?”

Alec raced mentally through her journals. “Seventeen hundreds,” he said. “The red Indians were here but the Europeans weren’t much.”

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “Climate change. Look at all the streams! No walking miles and miles to find water now.”

“Nope,” Alec said. Nicholas, leaning on the rail beside them, wondered when she’d had to do that. He looked up at the somber wilderness and thought of her alone there in the long years, when he’d been . . . what? A sediment of ash in the bank of the Medway River? He reached out a hand to touch her face, but Alec was pulling her backward for a kiss.

“When can we make landfall, Captain?” he said.

You see a likely spot, boy? Nothing here but avalanches and flumes. My charts say the coastline ain’t so grim a few leagues southerly, so we’ll try our luck there. I reckon you’ll find plenty of room for a picnic then.

“Okay.” Alec kissed the top of Mendoza’s head. A picnic, he reflected. I’ve got my ship, I’ve got
her,
I’ve got an undiscovered place, and we’re going to go explore and have adventures together. Exactly what I always wanted. And I don’t deserve any of it.

But Mendoza turned to smile at him, and he smiled back. He caught her hands and whirled her in a little impromptu swing dance along the deck. She followed awkwardly at first; but within a moment or two her body acquired the rhythms somehow, and she was matching him, step for step, effortless, anticipating his moves as no partner he’d ever been with had done. Nicholas and Edward paced them, looking on hungrily.

“Oh, this is marvelous,” she said. “This is, this is—dancing! Isn’t it?”

“That’s my baby,” Alec said. “I’ll take you dancing—ballrooms, and clubs and—” He remembered a passage from her journal. “I know where we can go! The Avalon Ballroom on Catalina Island, you always wanted to go there.”

“Did I? Okay,” she said, twirling under his arm.

Santa Catalina Island?
Edward frowned.
Are you mad? Dr. Zeus will infest that place, and I should know. I helped put them there.