The Machine's Child (Company) (2 page)

Captain Morgan (as Alec had named his companion) persuaded adolescent Alec to have himself modified with implants, so that he could exist simultaneously in three-dimensional space and in cyberspace with the Captain.

Being a sensible artificial intelligence, the Captain set about solving the mystery of Alec’s existence. Upon discovering that his fairly unhappy childhood could be laid directly at the door of Dr. Zeus Incorporated, Alec and the Captain embarked upon a campaign of revenge and exposure. Unaware they were being cleverly manipulated by the Company to accomplish its goals (I said it was all-powerful) they stole one of the Company’s time shuttles and had a number of adventures that ended more or less disastrously for Alec and a lot of other people, though not for the Company.

With its purpose for Alec fulfilled, the Company relaxed, confident in the expectation of his disposal when the time shuttle exploded, as it was scheduled to do. This failed to happen, however, because:

In the course of his adventures with the time shuttle, Alec blundered into a Company penal institution located deep in prehistory. There he encountered one of the Company’s cyborg slaves, the hapless Botanist Mendoza, an immortal marooned in the past for reasons which included her knowledge of the Company’s Recombinant project. She had discovered
Project
Adonai
by sheerest chance, when she had the misfortune to encounter, fall in love with, and fail to prevent the untimely deaths of first Nicholas and then, three hundred years later, Edward.

She was, moreover, a Crome generator, the only immortal with a bizarre condition cursing its possessors with apparent psychic ability. Consequently her emotional health was not quite what was desired in an immortal, which was another reason she’d been confined to the agricultural station.

Upon meeting Alec, Mendoza slept with him, accepted his proposal of marriage, and passed on to him certain classified information to assist him in his goal of bringing down Dr. Zeus Incorporated. She also disconnected the explosive device on the shuttle that was intended to destroy Alec once his usefulness to the Company ended.

When, after several tragic accidents, Alec managed to equip his very large yacht with a time transcendence drive so he could go back to rescue Mendoza, he discovered that Dr. Zeus Incorporated had got there first. The unfortunate lady had been arrested again, and consigned to some even more obscure prison. Plundering Company files in his furious attempts to discover where she had been taken, Alec inadvertently came across the Recombinant project data. Most unwisely, he downloaded the whole thing, learning thereby the extremely unsavory truth about his own existence and, moreover, receiving the entire contents of both Nicholas’s and Edward’s black boxes.

Alec promptly had a nervous breakdown. Goodness, wouldn’t you, at this point? And, unable to assimilate Nicholas’s or Edward’s memories, Alec developed a disassociative personality disorder and gave them independent individual existences, complete with virtual physical bodies in cyberspace.

At least, that was the only rational explanation for what happened.

After attempting (and failing) to administer drugs to banish Alec’s unwelcome guests, the Captain decided to let them stay, since both Nicholas and Edward had strengths and skills that might prove useful to Alec.

Got it? All clear so far?

The Captain’s experiment was not proving an unqualified success, since the three Recombinant gentlemen discovered they couldn’t stand their own company, and struggled constantly for control of the one real
body they shared. One thing upon which they did agree, however, was the urgent necessity of finding and rescuing Mendoza.

To this end, they hunted down their guilty creators and extracted at gunpoint the name of the prison where Mendoza was now confined: a site known only as Options Research.

Then they fled, away through time to an empty night ocean, where they were presently attempting to rest while the Captain devised a plan for Mendoza’s rescue.

A soothing tone emanated from the speaker, double-pitched to Alec’s and Edward’s differing brainwave patterns. Alpha rhythms were induced. Both men relaxed instantly, unconscious in seconds. A human observer would have seen the bed’s single occupant watching the light once again, weariness and infinite regret in his eyes. This had become Nicholas Harpole’s habitual expression, and he was now solely in control of Alec’s body.

From where it had watched in a corner a creature emerged, a nightmarish thing like a steel scorpion with a skeletal face. The human observer might be excused for starting, for this was no virtual creature; it was a quite solid servounit enabling the Captain to manipulate objects in real space. It extended a mechanical member and grasped the pistol, scuttling away with it to the weapons locker. Even Nicholas, who had begun to get used to its appearance, edged back when it passed him.

Here, Nicholas, lad,
said the Captain soothingly.
What aileth thee? What can I fetch thee?

“Hast thou no mortal form?” asked Nicholas, shivering.

To be sure I have, lad.
A tiny holoprojection cone emerged from the camera and seconds later a man appeared to stand beside the bed, big, black-bearded and villainous-looking, though his expression was kindly. Nicholas stared, fascinated even as he was repelled. He jumped when a hologram of a chair materialized behind the Captain, who sat down into it. “There now. Nothing to frighten thee.”

“I charge thee, Spirit, tell me! Dost thou serve the devil?” Nicholas demanded.

“No, sir, not I.”

“Dost thou serve God, then?”

“Well, no, sir, being what I am, which is to say no more than a device. I was made to serve Alec, sir, d’you see? Like a clock or a lute, to tell him the hour or cheer his heart. Or a dog, to guard him as he sleeps. Too low a creature to be damned or saved. Therefore, fear me not.”

“How canst thou speak with a man’s voice?” asked Nicholas.

The Captain waved his hand dismissively. “Why, sir, even a bird may be taught speech, mayn’t he, a raven or a parrot? Wherefore not then a clever mechanism? If a jack can be made to strike the hour in a clock, he may be made to speak, too; and such am I. Speak with me, then, and ease thy sick grief.”

Nicholas stared at him, marveling at the detail of the illusion: the movement of the Captain’s beard when he spoke, the creak of the insubstantial chair when he shifted his weight.

“But I am no more than thou art,” Nicholas said at last, bitterly. “A
made thing,
an alchemical homunculus. How shouldst thou comfort my soul, when neither thou nor I have souls, but only spirits? So might a clock comfort an astrolabe.”

“Ah, well, sir, I’ve no soul, to be sure; but it might help to talk, all the same.”

Nicholas lay back with a sigh, and gazed at the lamp.

“I have been disputing with myself,” he said, “since I have awakened into this unnatural life of horrible marvels, on the nature of Almighty God.”

“And how doth that make thee feel, lad?” inquired the Captain. Nicholas drew a deep breath and went on:

“In regarding now the thing I am, that standeth outside mankind like a phantom, and observing how the world waggeth these late ages, and seeing the low truth of creation (which evolution my reason must accept, though my heart sickens)—I cannot reconcile myself with the several proofs, laid before mine eyes, that contradict my faith.”

“Well, that’s a predicament, to be sure. You ain’t the first one to run aground on it, neither.”

“What have other men done, Spirit?” Nicholas pleaded.

“Why—I reckon they worked it out as best they could, sir. Some folk paid no heed to the contradictions. Some dumped the whole Bible and
went over to the Goddess, though that ain’t turning out no better, it seems. Most folk don’t trouble with religion at all, like my Alec. He gets along fine.”

“He feels no pain?” Nicholas cried. “He feels no horror at this void of pointless time?”

The Captain stroked his beard, scowling. “Well, he didn’t use to, when he thought he’d just go out like a light once he died. You showing up like you done puts a new look on everything, don’t it? Wherefore I might prepare me for squalls . . .” He cocked an eye at Nicholas. “What dost reckon it’ll take thee to work out an answer to that crisis of faith of thine?”

“I would a thousand pounds I might study Scripture again. Oh, that I had my books that were burnt!” Nicholas gripped the blanket with both hands.

“Then turn and look there, sir. See that text plaquette on yer night table? The thing what looks like green glass in a little window frame. Go ahead, pick it up. The other lads is both asleep, they won’t hinder thee. That’s a book, sir, of the kind we use in this day and age. My boy hath it to look at figures, but it hath a million texts in it beside. I’ll just open it for thee.”

Nicholas caught his breath. The dark glass lit up and bright letters appeared, informing him that he beheld
THE OLD TESTAMENT
, diligently corrected and compared with the Hebrew, by William Tyndale and finished in the year of Our Lord God A. 1536, in the month of September at Vilvorde.

He was struck speechless.

“D’you like that, eh? Look, when thine eye comes to the bottom of the page, the book knows and goes on to the next one for thee. Nor needst thou a candle, for the book maketh its own light. Be’n’t it a wonder, lad?”

“Ay,” said Nicholas, immersed in the translator’s preface. He pulled himself away with some effort and looked at the Captain in awe. “I had Tyndale’s New Testament when I lived. Is he still read amongst the generations, after so long?”

“Well . . . in certain circles. His work ain’t lost, anyhow; trust Dr. Zeus to see to that.”

“Then one martyr at least did not waste his death,” said Nicholas, sighing as he turned the plaquette over in his hands.

“Now, Nick, lad: see canst thou find there a God what don’t insult a man’s reason, eh? For I reckon my boy might need to grapple with the Eternal afore long, and I’d just as soon I had an answer for him what makes sense. Thou’lt have any books thou desirest, so it’s done. I got other folks’ holy scriptures, too. Buddha and that lot.”

“. . . Ay,” said Nicholas, drawn in again by the bright letters.

“But set it aside for tonight. Th’art best to get some sleep.”

Nicholas set aside the plaquette reluctantly, and lay back to compose himself for rest. The Captain unobtrusively generated a certain tone. Nicholas slept then, sound.

The Captain sat a moment longer, regarding the wide bed and its occupants. He shook his head, muttering to himself; then vanished, along with his chair, to turn his attention to plotting the ship’s course for tomorrow’s journey. The skull-headed servant crept out and opened one of the portholes in the room, to let in the fresh night air. Then it went to a hamper at the foot of the bed. There it pulled out a bundle of grubby socks and shirts, and crawled away with them in the direction of the ship’s laundry.

It was an undiscovered island in a shallow unnamed ocean, uncrossed yet by longitude or latitude. It was not large, no more than a few miles square. It had no topographical features of note, neither mountains nor cliffs. Its beach simply rose gradually from the water and, after a space of level rock and sand, sloped gradually down to the opposite shore.

There was a building on the island, long, low, and windowless, like a warehouse. It had one door, and beside the door was an old couch, and on the couch sat an immortal, watching the sunset thoughtfully.

If this has given the impression that the place was silent and still, nothing could be further from the truth.

He sat motionless in the midst of a flurry of wildly moving things, the immortal did, and have I mentioned yet that he was very, very large? Massively mighty, with great thick hands and feet, a nose so big it was nearly comical-looking, big pale eyes under a vast cliff of a brow. Not much else of his features could be discerned, hidden as they were by an enormous tow-colored beard. You wouldn’t be looking at him anyway, if you were there, to wonder what his face might be like. You’d be looking at the things he’d made, the things that were moving without cease.

The things all seemed to be part of a perpetual motion machine, belts, wheels, and pulleys driving and charging a generator that was hooked up to a refrigeration unit. There were other, smaller systems going, too, that seemed to be powering other machines somewhere inside the building. The motive power for all of them was supplied by human limbs.

Legs mounted on a wheel ran frantically round, feet pounding endlessly on a treadmill. Arms thrashed and beat like hammers, their galvanic pumping harnessed to drive a complex geared mechanism. Flexible tubes supplied the parts with fluids to keep them from deteriorating. Creak, creak, thump, thump, round and round, and in the slanting light of evening, shadows circled like the shadows of birds across the old giant’s face.

Presently he moved, too, reaching from the couch to open the door of the refrigeration unit. He brought out a beer, twisted its neck off, and settled into near-immobility again, now and then lifting the beer for a sip. The sun got lower and redder. It lit the emblem on the front of his coveralls: a clock face without hands. The immortal sat and thought.

Then, abruptly, his eyes brightened. He’d had an idea. He lifted and drained the beer; then flung the empty bottle away. It struck a nearby mountain of other such bottles, clattering and rolling down. He ignored it. Lithe as a big cat he was on his feet, stalking through the door into the building that resembled a warehouse. He pulled a chain and dim illumination began to fill the place, increasing steadily as the desperate limbs quickened their pace outside.

By the light of their effort was revealed an open work area, a steel table surrounded by unpleasant-looking machines, and by racks of gleaming tools and instruments. Against one wall, furniture had been arranged in a square to define living space: chair, table, bed, dresser, personal items, a place to prepare meals. Against another was a steel filing cabinet.