The Children of the Company (17 page)
Read The Children of the Company Online
Authors: Kage Baker
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #C429, #Extratorrents, #Kat
Anyway if Latif was bothered by the idea of living next to mortals he hid it well, because he just shrugged his little shoulders and said: “How nice. And I understand your cover identity is as a widowed dealer in East Indian commodities?”
“Oh, yes, smell!” I exhorted him, pausing on the landing. I took a good deep sniff myself. “Ahh. Pepper, cloves, cardamom, and nutmeg just now. The whole top floor is warehouse space, you see, and actually I don’t just pose as a spice merchant, we really do business here. I think I’d have made a great businesswoman if I’d stayed mortal, I really enjoy all those guilders on the account sheet and the exotic bales coming from the ships. It defrays operating costs like you wouldn’t believe. There’s my first word of advice as a field commander, okay? Always find ways to augment your operating budget, if you want to rise high in the Company ranks.”
“Very good, madam, I’ll remember that,” Latif was saying, as Johan’s door banged open and he came running out in a panic.
“Van Drouten! Van Drouten, what do I do? Kackerlackje’s having a seizure!” And he held up the miserable little dog who was having a seizure all right, and I knew why, too, the damned thing had been eating paint again, and if I’ve told Johan once I’ve told him a dozen times: if he can’t watch a pet every minute of the day he shouldn’t have one, I think it should be a general rule that cyborgs shouldn’t keep pets anyway because they always die after all and it hurts nearly as badly as when a mortal you’re fond of dies.
Anyway I told him, “Take him out in the back and make him vomit! And I’ll see if I’ve got any bicarbonate, all right?You know, if you’d kept an eye on him like I told you—” but Johan had gone clattering down the stairs out of earshot. I sighed and turned to Latif.
“I think that mutt is trying to commit suicide. Here’s another piece of advice: Never let your subordinates keep pets, but if you must, make sure you’ve got a Zoologist stationed with you who knows how to physic a dog, or you’ll wind up doing it.”
“I’ll remember that, too,” said Latif, looking appalled.
The mortal with his trunk came after that, so I helped Latif get it up to his room. He insisted on squaring everything away before we went back downstairs, and I had to hide a smile at how finicky-neat he was, all his clothes pressed just so and severely grown-up in their cut. He even had a miniature grooming kit in a leather case! Silver-backed brushes and all; he only lacked a razor. Small wonder he looked askance at the toys I’d set out on his bed.
The mortal with his trunk came after that, so I helped Latif get it up to his room. He insisted on squaring everything away before we went back downstairs, and I had to hide a smile at how finicky-neat he was, all his clothes pressed just so and severely grown-up in their cut. He even had a miniature grooming kit in a leather case! Silver-backed brushes and all; he only lacked a razor. Small wonder he looked askance at the toys I’d set out on his bed.
“Sorry about those,” I told him. “I wasn’t expecting somebody quite so, um, mature.”
“It was a charming thought,” he said courteously, giving one of his hats a last brush before setting it on a shelf. “And, after all, it does go with the character I’m portraying. I suppose I’ll need to observe mortal children to see how they behave, won’t I? Certainly all the rest of you seem to be doing a splendid job blending in with the mortal populace.”
“Oh, it’s easy, really,” I assured him. “Easiest part of the job. What’s hard is coordinating the actual running of the station.”
“I can’t wait to observe,” he replied, laying out his monogrammed (!!) towel beside the washbasin. “What shall we start with? Duty rosters? Security protocols? Access code transfers? Logistics?”
Was there a little boy in there at all? The machine part was up and running, trust Labienus to see to that; but we work best as whole people, you know, same as the mortals.
“Logistics,” I replied. “Want to come watch me get dinner for nine people on the table when the cook’s sick?”
I made
erwtensoep
because we already had the peas soaking and it’s easy. Latif perched on the edge of the table and stared as I chopped leeks and onions, and after a while ventured to say: “I think I’m getting this, now. This really is total immersion simulation, isn’t it? You, uh, really and truly do have to live the mortal experience, don’t you?”
erwtensoep
because we already had the peas soaking and it’s easy. Latif perched on the edge of the table and stared as I chopped leeks and onions, and after a while ventured to say: “I think I’m getting this, now. This really is total immersion simulation, isn’t it? You, uh, really and truly do have to live the mortal experience, don’t you?”
“Not like a nice Company HQ with everything just so, is it?” I smiled at him. “No military command post with precise rules. I know Labienus, he’s such a cyborg! Probably gave you that impression of absolute order, but the truth is that working for the Company is much more like this, like—like—”
“Chaos?” said Latif, and hastened to add: “Except that this is actually order artfully disguised as chaos, of course. Isn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” I told him, pulling out the potato basket. “See, you have to be so flexible. Like today, when Margarite isn’t feeling well. And suppose I drew up a strict duty roster and I was all settled down to transmit reports at my credenza according to rules and regulations, like I was just last week, and Magdalena, that’s the mortal girl from next door, dropped in to show off her new baby?”
“That’s the Anthropologist’s department, I would think,” said Latif hopefully.
“Eliphal? Not likely, sweetie. And then, see, while I was sitting there pouring Magdalena and me nice little glasses of gin, there was a pounding on the door and who was it but some poor Facilitator who’d been riding day and night from the Polish front with a dispatch case of classified material from the king of Sweden he absolutely had to have scanned and transmitted right then so he could get it back before anybody’d noticed it was gone? And he had to be fed and given a fresh horse, I might add.
“Fortunately at that point dear baby woke up, wanted to be fed, so Magdalena retired to the next room while I apologized and ran the Facilitator back to Diego’s room where the document scanner is, left him there to figure out where everything was, it was all so rush-rush I didn’t even catch his name, and ran back to bring Magdalena her gin and sit down with her.
“We’d each had time for a sip, and Magdalena was just beginning to tell me about what Susanna over in the Jodenbreestrat told her about the play she saw—and down the stairs came Lievens in a panic to hiss in my ear because he’d run out of stabilizer for the lost Purcell score he was getting ready to seal up in one of his cabinets so it could be rediscovered in 2217 AD, and he had to have more
right then
because the cabinet was scheduled to be shipped to Scotland in three days. So I had to apologize to Magdalena and ask her to hold that thought, run back to Diego’s room and ask the Facilitator to let me edge by him while I transmitted an emergency request to Eurobase One for a drum of stabilizer to be sent by express flight so it could arrive in time.
right then
because the cabinet was scheduled to be shipped to Scotland in three days. So I had to apologize to Magdalena and ask her to hold that thought, run back to Diego’s room and ask the Facilitator to let me edge by him while I transmitted an emergency request to Eurobase One for a drum of stabilizer to be sent by express flight so it could arrive in time.
“Then I had to edge back past the Facilitator and my hoops knocked off his papers where he had them stacked, poor man, and I had to apologize and help him pick them up before I could run back and sit down with Magdalena, and she’d just got to the juicy part of this play—will you hand me that paring knife, dear? Thanks—when there’s another knocking on the door.
“So, I apologized again, profusely, to Magdalena but fortunately baby needed a change at this point, so she busied herself with that while I went see
who was at the door, and it was Hayashi from Edobase, standing there on the doorstep in full Japanese costume feeling terribly conspicuous. Apparently there’d been an accident with his trunk! And he wanted to know if I could get him a change of clothes and a spare field kit before his ship put out again?
who was at the door, and it was Hayashi from Edobase, standing there on the doorstep in full Japanese costume feeling terribly conspicuous. Apparently there’d been an accident with his trunk! And he wanted to know if I could get him a change of clothes and a spare field kit before his ship put out again?
“So I hurried him back through the house and thank God Magdalena didn’t look up from baby’s mess or she’d have seen a samurai complete with sword tiptoeing past the doorway! And the only person in the house who had spare clothes Hayashi’s size was Eliphal, who was just coming down the stairs on his way out the door to one of those minyan things, but they ran like mad back upstairs and I ran back in to Magdalena, and I needed another gin by this time, I can tell you.
“We’d just leaned down for the first sip when there was Margarite in the doorway; it seemed she’d only just noticed we were out of cooking oil and she was three-quarters ready with the
vleeskroketten
she was making for dinner, and wanted to know what she should do?
vleeskroketten
she was making for dinner, and wanted to know what she should do?
“Well, of course, what she wanted was for me to go out and buy a jar of oil, but I wasn’t having any of that, I just tossed her a guilder and said, go down to Hobbema’s on the dam, and she sulked away looking martyred but—”
“Why do you allow insubordination in a mortal?” Latif inquired with a slight frown.
“Because she prepares fish beautifully, and she’s married to Joost, and Joost really is a treasure,” I explained. “He’s smart, he keeps his mouth shut, and he knows the best places to buy good horses in a hurry without paying a fortune. Sometimes you just have to put up with certain things in mortals, you know? So anyway, I turned back to Magdalena, who had just got to the part of the play where the pirate chief is about to ravish his sister all unknowing, when the front door opened and in came Lisette, all in high spirits because she’d just closed a deal for an unknown early Defoe manuscript.
“In fact she was waving it as she came running in, and went leaping into Diego’s room to scan it and collided with the Facilitator, and both their sets of priceless documents went flying everywhere and you never heard such screams!
“So then, Magdalena quite understandably got the impression that my daughter was being assaulted by a Swedish cavalry officer, and—I’m not frightening you, am I, dear?”
“No! No, not at all!” said Latif, though his eyes were wide and staring.
“Well, the point is, you see how things can get?” I waved the paring knife. “It’s hard keeping up the appearance of an ordinary mortal family without alarming the neighbors.”
“I suppose so.”
“You’ll have days like that, too, when you’re a full-fledged Executive Facilitator, mark my words.” I dumped the last of the potatoes into the soup kettle. “We all do.”
“I bet Suleyman doesn’t,” said Latif.
“Who? Suleyman? North African Section Head Suleyman? Oh, he’s a lovely man! You know him?”
“He recruited me,” said Latif.
“He was here on business one time—Recruited you? Really? Where?” I dug around in a drawer, wondering what Margarite had done with all the long spoons.
“From a slave ship,” said Latif in an offhanded sort of way, and I looked up at him all ready to cry out
You poor baby,
because he was after all such a very small boy sitting there in my kitchen, and how much tinier had he been when Suleyman had rescued him from such a horrible place—but I could tell from the look in his eyes that the last thing he wanted me to do would be to exclaim over him.
You poor baby,
because he was after all such a very small boy sitting there in my kitchen, and how much tinier had he been when Suleyman had rescued him from such a horrible place—but I could tell from the look in his eyes that the last thing he wanted me to do would be to exclaim over him.
At least now I knew why he wanted to grow up so fast. So I just said, “Well, we all get off to a bad start in life, or the Company wouldn’t be able to snatch us away from the mortals, I guess. It was plague took my whole family but me; there I was, all alone with corpses when the nice immortal lady found me and recruited me for Dr. Zeus.” I located the spoon at last and turned to stir the soup. “So, you know Suleyman. He’s one of the best, I must say, but he has days when everything goes wrong, too. You just ask him, if you ever run into him again.”
“Oh, I will,” Latif informed me. “I’m going to be his second-in-command, when I’ve graduated.”
“Really?” I exclaimed. “How nice! You’ve already been informed of your assignment?”
“No,” he replied imperturbably, “But it’s going to happen. I’ll make it happen.”
Well, I didn’t know what to say at that, because, you know—we don’t make things happen. Oh, we can request assignments, and if we’ve got the
right programming and it suits the Company’s purpose, our requests might be granted once in a while—but it’s the Company tells us what to do and not the other way around. So I just stirred the soup, and the little boy sat and watched me.
right programming and it suits the Company’s purpose, our requests might be granted once in a while—but it’s the Company tells us what to do and not the other way around. So I just stirred the soup, and the little boy sat and watched me.
“But enough about me,” he said, in that outrageously grown-up voice he affected. “Tell me about yourself. Now that I’m getting some idea of what’s involved in running an HQ, I’m more than ever impressed by your command abilities! Tell me, how do you like to relax?”
“Well—you know—like anybody does, I guess,” I waved my free hand. “Going out, going to the theater, dining, conversation with the mortals.”
“You find mortal conversation relaxing?” Latif raised his eyebrows.
“Sometimes.” I looked darkly upward in the direction of Margarite’s room. “When they’re not sulking.”
At this point Johan appeared in the doorway again, tears in his eyes, holding out his damn little dog like an offering. Kackerlackje was stiff as a board, lying on his side and foaming at the mouth.
“Van Drouten—the seizures stopped but now he’s doing this—”
“And after all, immortal conversation can be just as irritating,” I explained to Latif, tossing down the spoon and wiping my hands on my apron.
The mutt didn’t die; he never did. Within a few days he was up and yapping as loudly as ever, and even seemed to remember a little of his paper-training, as opposed to his usual forgetfulness on the subject. What a joy to have in the house, huh?
But as it happened, we didn’t have to put up with his presence for much longer, because about a week later I got the notification that Johan was being transferred to Brussels. So I gave him a nice farewell dinner party and we saw him off with his suitcase and animal carrier, and Margarite was so happy the dog was going with him she was in a good mood for a week.
And Latif appeared to be fitting in pretty well, which was nice. He followed me everywhere, observing just as he was supposed to. He seemed to have figured out that commenting out loud on their shortcomings made people uncomfortable, and kept his thoughts to himself now. He asked the other operatives intelligent questions about their particular specialties and made a
point of sitting with each of them for at least one day, watching as they went about their various businesses, especially Eliphal.
point of sitting with each of them for at least one day, watching as they went about their various businesses, especially Eliphal.
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