Mendoza in Hollywood (44 page)

He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “With the tide, lady. Six hours more.”

“Have you a secure place we can rest until then?” I asked.

Of course he had; it was a Company safe house, after all. He bowed us through his low door and showed us to the little closet of a room kept for Dr. Zeus agents who were passing through. Not spacious, but the low, wide bed was clean and dry. There was a chair, on which Edward deposited his saddlebag; there were a washstand and a table with a candlestick on it. Souza lit the candle for us and went to see to our horses. We undressed by candlelight—it flickered, from a little draft coming through the plank walls off the sea—and we sat up by its light long enough to make a late supper out of the last of Juan Bautista’s picnic lunch. We barely spoke for exhaustion.

Edward got up once, to make certain the door was secured to his standards, and I lay in bed and watched him. Not one mark, not one scar on his body, same as Nicholas. Really rather remarkable for a man in his profession. But, then, he seemed to be as perceptive of danger as an immortal. Anybody who ever contemplated sending a bullet or knife his way must have been fatally beaten to the draw.

And what was he? I was a woman of mystery to him, but his existence posed a far greater question. Setting aside for a moment that we were somehow in bed together again after three centuries had passed—how was he connected to the technocrats who would one day found my own Company?

I opened my mouth to ask him, but somehow the only question that popped out was “How did you break your nose?”

He turned, peering at me curiously. Naked there by candlelight, no Victorian trappings, and he was Nicholas in every line.

“I’ve never broken my nose,” he replied, coming back to get into bed beside me. He believed what he was saying, too. I lifted my hand to his face and ran my thumb along the irregularity in the bridge that had always so fascinated me.

“But it
has
been broken, just here,” I insisted. I could feel the scar in the cartilage, an old injury, healed long ago. “You must have noticed.”

“I’ve noticed the ugly fellow in my shaving mirror, yes, but he’s looked that way as long as I remember,” Edward said wryly. “It’s a family feature, I assume. I’m not sufficiently acquainted with my relations to know. But I assure you, my dear, I’ve never taken a blow to the face. One of the few advantages of being exceptionally tall; it’s difficult for one’s assailants to reach so far.”

“Ah,” I said. I’d never asked how Nicholas broke his nose. He’d had quite a reputation as a university brawler, and I assumed he did it in a fight. “Perhaps you broke it in infancy, then, and don’t remember?”

“Perhaps,” he said, yawning. He leaned up on his elbow and blew out the candle, and drew me into his arms. We snuggled into safety, there in that room where the wind sighed in the corners, bearing on it the smell and the sound of the sea. Sleep came at once.

We were almost there, señors.

M
ARCH
17, 1863.1 had no nightmares, I seemed to have had no sleep at all before there came the discreet knock and Souza’s apologetic murmur advising us that the tide had turned. There was a lingering impression that I’d been having an earnest conversation with someone about Catalina Island and its absurd history, going over and over the cryptic records. The person, who must have been Edward, was patiently explaining that everything was all right because we were really on the same side after all, that the office that employed him would hand on its discovery to the first cabal that would become Dr. Zeus, and that the contents of document D . . . the
what
?

I opened my eyes groggily, shivering, reaching for the shreds of memories, and of course they disintegrated into meaninglessness. I saw no blue light in the room, though. Edward’s arm came out of the darkness, bracing around my shoulders. How hot his skin was.

“Wake up, my love,” he said. “We’ve a crossing to make.”

We washed and dressed, and he didn’t take the trouble to shave, this time. Every concealed weapon had miraculously found its way into place again, though, and his gloves and hat were firmly on as we stepped out into the morning darkness.

Wide black sky, wide black horizon, and the glint of water between the waving reeds. Freshening wind and the promise of morning, much more of a smack of the sea and less of tidal mud. Souza was
crouched in his boat, clearing away nets for seating space. He rose up and offered me his hand into the boat.

“We need to leave now,” he said. I nodded and made room for Edward, who stepped in easily and silently and placed his saddlebag among the nets. Souza cast off and bent to his oars. We moved out, bearing well to the east of Dead Man’s Island. Slowly we worked our way out of the shallows, past that island of bad reputation, and at length we felt the pull of the tide taking us into deep water. The wind rose. Edward helped Souza run up our little sail, Point Fermin began to recede behind us, and the black threat of the mainland dwindled away.

We had done it, we had got clear. The sky began to pale with morning, and we could see the island now, fair across open water, twenty miles out. I was making for a destiny of which I’d never dreamed, with the missing half of my soul beside me, and it didn’t matter what we came to in the end. The morning shone with more promise than any I’d known in my long life.

Edward was leaning back on his saddlebag, watching the mainland shrink. He turned a speculative eye on Souza; then sat up and addressed me in his awkward Latin.

“The fisherman,” he asked. “Does he speak my tongue?”

“No, he does not,” I replied.

“Good.” He continued in English, but kept his voice low all the same. “I estimate we’ll make landfall shortly before noon, if this breeze continues steady. Friends will be waiting for us there.”

“Englishmen conducting their scientific studies, yes, you told me,” I said, smiling at him. And they must have made one hell of a scientific discovery, to judge from the tug-of-war that the British and Americans would be playing soon. Whatever it was, Edward and I would have flown to some further safety by then.

“Ye-es,” Edward said. “And some others. Assuming he managed to find a competent pilot on his own, Mr. Rubery and a party of friends should also be arriving, at very nearly the same moment we do. You may be rather surprised at the company he keeps.”

“Why, señor?” I asked, folding my hands in my lap and looking expectantly at him. Now would come his explanation of the piracy business.

“There will be certain American gentlemen with Alfred,” Edward said, sitting up to face me, “who are under the impression that Her Majesty’s government will assist them in a privateering venture in aid of the Confederacy, and that my colleagues on the island have been preparing a base for them from which they may prey on the Pacific Mail steamers. This is, of course, not precisely the case; but we aren’t anxious that they should learn the truth immediately.”

Asbury Harpending, that was the fool’s name.

“It will be useful, in the event that they are caught,” Edward continued, “to have the venture assumed to be a purely Confederate conspiracy. We will endeavor to supply them with all they need to make a fearful reputation for themselves, and with any luck their depredations will help push the War of Secession to a speedy conclusion. With funds from the San Francisco Mint cut off, Lincoln will surely sue for peace.”

And California would be up for grabs, isolated on a distant coast.

“At this point,” Edward said, smiling a cold smile, “there will be certain changes of plan suggested for the privateers. It is to be hoped, by that time, that Southern gentlemen will form only a minority of the crew—having been replaced gradually by gentlemen adventurers of Californian birth, whom I shall have recruited with your able assistance, my dear. We can also expect fresh numbers of my countrymen, once the American hostilities have ended and they can move with greater openness.”

He leaned forward and spoke more quietly, and so smoothly. “But there will be an interval during which great tact and persuasion are called for, to convince the enthusiasts of the erstwhile Confederacy that a change of loyalties is in their best interests. It will fall to me to attempt this conversion, on a case-by-case basis. Those Southern gentlemen who cannot be induced to exchange the Stars and Bars for the Union Jack will meet with unfortunate accidents, and I regret to
say that the arrangements for those accidents will also fall to me.” He looked into my eyes, reading my reaction.

Yes, I know, it was murder he was talking about, but of tobacco-chewing bastards who trafficked in black slaves and had the temerity to dress up their shame in plumes and epaulets. I’d seen those belligerent Southern boys in the bar of the Bella Union. Someone might urge mercy for their kind, but it wouldn’t be me. I nodded for him to continue.

“Shortly thereafter, my dear, you and I will have a number of journeys to make,” he said. “If we can persuade certain persons of certain things—for example, that a league of amity between Great Britain and Mexico would benefit both parties—then various and assorted efforts by several persons in several countries should bear fruit. That being the case, happy days will ensue. And I will at last be more than Alfred Rubery’s long shadow, and you will be whatever you choose to be, in whatever country you choose to reside.”

“I may choose to travel, señor,” I said, giving him my most meaningful look. He smiled and settled his tall hat more securely on his head, for the wind was blowing strongly now. Souza politely ignored us, leaning on the tiller.

I had no doubt Edward could talk Confederate privateers into supporting the cause of Britain, or persuade Benito Juarez that Her Majesty desired to assist him. The mystery, to me, was why a man with his abilities hadn’t gone further. But being illegitimate put the wrong sort of stripe on his old school tie, and that carried so much negative weight with the English. It meant that superb men like Edward lived and died in obscurity, while their nation was run by second-rate boobs who’d lose that empire he was working so hard for. Eventually. Years from now.

Or would they?

This particular plan was already defeated—there would be no British-backed privateers stalking the Pacific Mail—but what about the other part of the plot, involving some discovery the British had made on the island? How would Dr. Zeus become involved? There
was every indication that England—in that far-off future when it was no longer even the United Kingdom—would somehow slip into the director’s chair at Dr. Zeus. And Dr. Zeus
did
rule the world. Secretly, of course. Would they be able to do this because of what they’d found on Catalina Island in 1862? And what could they possibly have found?

“I’ve never been to this island,” I said. “Though of course I have heard the stories.” This was a prompt, but it didn’t work.

“What stories would those be, my dear?” Edward asked, extending his hand and clasping mine.

Damn. I sped through reference files. Any old farrago of nonsense would do to get the conversational ball rolling.

“The Indians used to believe that there was once a great continent here in the West, which drowned in much the same way as we believe Plato’s Atlantis did,” I said. “The Indians claimed there were white men who lived there, extraordinarily tall. They called the place Lemuria.”

Edward looked puzzled. “Unusual name. Were there lemurs there as well?”

“I’ve no idea. In any case, these islands in the channel are thought to be the highest mountaintops of the submerged continent, the only part to survive the deluge. The white men who lived there were unable to prevent the sinking of their world, but they were mechanically brilliant—so the stories say—and produced engines of genius that far surpassed the modern railway or ironclad warship.”

Ha, Edward reacted to that, if only in the pulse of his blood. His face showed nothing, however. “What an extraordinary story,” he said. “I suppose it’s all nonsense, though.”

They
had
found something, and he knew about it. Was it some kind of technology? But whose? There had never been any real Lemurians.

I shrugged. “The Indians used to tell fantastic tales. The priests discouraged it, of course, as a lot of superstitious nonsense.”

“As well they might,” Edward said. “Though there is a growing
opinion that the mythologies of primitive peoples ought to be collected and studied. Conquering races tend to destroy such things, to their own loss. Science now indicates that what were once thought to be fantastical myths may well have some basis in historical fact.”

“For example?” I asked, sitting forward in anticipation.

He removed his tall hat and pushed his hair back from his forehead before setting the hat on his head again. “In Dover, I was recently shown the complete skeleton of an antediluvian monster, fossilized in solid rock. Educated persons had dismissed accounts of dragons as no more than fairy stories. And yet here was the leviathan himself, and any reasonably observant peasant must conclude it was a real creature that had lived once. And so it had: not galloping after knights and virgins, but sporting in vanished seas.”