Kage Baker - Company 2 - Sky Coyote

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Chapter 1
You'll understand this story better if I tell you a lie.
Well, a myth, anyway. There was this god once, the Greek god of Time. He was a cruel
old bastard and he ate all his children as soon as they were born. Zeus, the youngest son,
managed to escape; when he grew up, he came back and ended the rule of Time by killing
his father. Then he cut him open and set the older children free. King Time is dead; long
live King Zeus.
In the twenty-fourth century, a research and development firm proudly appropriated Zeus
as its corporate logo when it developed a method of time travel.
The method didn't quite pan out, though. Traveling through time is prohibitively
expensive, and there are certain crucial limitations. For example, you can't go into the
future, only backward into the past, and forward again to your point of departure in the
present. Another problem is that history cannot be changed. Period. It's the law.
However, this law can only be observed to apply to recorded history ...
So the discovery wasn't a total loss. The company altered its logo slightly and became Dr.
Zeus. They were able to make a nice profit looting the past by collecting "lost" works of
art and arranging long-term investments. They loaded a database with every event in
recorded history and found they still had plenty of uncharted past to move around in.
They realized that if the past couldn't be changed, it could at least be manipulated to
Company advantage.
But who were they going to get to do the actual manipulating? Traveling back in time is
rough, if you do it the cost-effective way without extra buffers. Twenty-fourth-century
agents bitch about it constantly, and demand extra pay. Fabulously rich corporations
never seem to have enough cash, paradoxically enough; though you may really need to
send that man back to deposit a certain sum in a certain bank on a certain day in 1806,
you're reluctant to do it unless you've got a guarantee it will pay off in six figures. And
how many times do you want to lay out money to send people through? Isn't there a way
to cut costs on this?
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Dr. Zeus got its answer reviewing another failed project: immortality.
Technically it's possible to make an immortal person. It is not commercially practical. It
only works on infants or little children, not middle-aged millionaires; and since middle-
aged millionaires are the only ones who could afford to pay for the process, it's sort of a
loss as a market item. In addition, the chosen babies must meet certain stringent physical
requirements, and endure years of surgical alteration and training. Not even the most
determined millionaire parents, once they knew what it entailed, would put their little
Gloria or Donald Jr. through such an ordeal.
So, you can't sell immortality. On the other hand, if you're looking for Company agents
who will work loyally without health insurance and never, ever retire ...
They sent a team back to Lower Paleolithic times. A permanent base was established;
equipment was shipped back, too. The original team went about collecting little
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. These kids were then implanted, augmented, amplified,
fortified, hopped up, switched on, tuned in, and thoroughly indoctrinated. They were
given the whole harvest of human knowledge and culture from the other end of time; the
books, the music, the cinema. They grew up, these superuberkinder, and when the last
nasty mortal tissues had been well and truly excised, the base technicians handed them
the keys to the lab and said: You take over. We're going home.
So, see what was accomplished with just one round trip? You don't send your agents back
and forth through time; you recruit them at the beginning and let them walk forward
through time in the ordinary way. Outlay for the project was kept to a minimum, and now
Dr. Zeus had immortal operatives working for it, strategically placed at every important
event in history. Of course, they were promised a golden future when they finally got to
the future. Though that hasn't happened yet...
And the immortals made more immortals, though not in the usual way, because they had
all been very carefully sterilized; suitable infants were selected from the mortal
population and processed at remote bases inaccessible to marauding primitives. More
bases were built, more secret Company projects were inaugurated, and the fix, as they
say, was in.
Dr. Zeus ruled the world. Covertly, of course.
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By now you've probably got a mental image of these immortals. You're only mortal
yourself, and the idea of a deathless, perfect race makes you uncomfortable—and maybe
just a little hostile—so you imagine them intellectual and emotionless. Stuck up, too.
You're probably thinking they all look like vampires or superheroes, tall and steely-eyed,
the men with bulging biceps and the women gorgeous in a chilly sort of way.
Well, you're wrong. The truth is, they look just like you, and why shouldn't they? They
used to be human beings.
Chapter 2
The year is 1699 A.D., the place is South America: deepest jungle, green shadows,
slanting bars of sunlight, a dark rich overripe smell. Jaguars on the prowl. Orchids in
bloom. Little birds and monkeys making continuous little bird and monkey noises in the
background.
And here's the Lost City in the middle of the jungle: sudden acres of sunlight and silence
in the middle of all that malarial gloom. Red and white stucco pyramids. Steps and
courtyards and avenues, straight as a die. Straighter. Really impressive architecture out in
the middle of nowhere. Gods and kings carved all over the place.
And here's the intrepid Spanish Jesuit, our hero. You couldn't mistake him for anything
else. He's got those little black raisin eyes Spanish priests are supposed to have, but with a
sort of twinkly expression the masters of the Inquisition usually lack. He's got the black
robe, the boots, the crucifix; he's short—well, let's say "compact of build"— and is of
olive complexion. Needs a shave.
He approaches cautiously through the jungle, and his cute little eyes widen as he beholds
the Lost City. From somewhere within his robe he produces a square of folded sheepskin,
and opens it to study a complicated design penned in red and blue inks. He seems to
orient himself, and proceeds quickly to a wall embellished with scowling plaster monsters
whose terrifying rage seems to keep even the lianas and orchids from encroaching on
them. He makes his way along the perimeter, then: ten meters, twenty meters, thirty, and
comes at last to the Jaguar Gate.
This is a magnificent towering megalith kind of a thing of red plaster, surmounted by a
green stone lintel on which two jaguars are carved in bas-relief, upright and rampant in
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fighting poses, with eyes and claws inlaid in gold. Nay, but there's more: no actual gate
occupies this gateway, no rusting bars of iron, oh no. Instead a solid wave of faint blue
light shimmers there, obscuring slightly the view of the fabulous city beyond. If you have
really good hearing (and the Spanish Jesuit has), you can just perceive that the blue light
is humming slightly, crackling, buzzing.
And what's this in nasty little heaps around the base of the gateway? Lots of fried bugs
and a fried bird or two, and—gosh, the Spanish Jesuit doesn't even want to think about
what that blackened and twisted thing is over there, the one reaching out with a skeletal
claw to the blue light. Probably just a dead monkey, though.
Peering at the detail of the pictographic inscription that runs up one side of the gateway,
the Jesuit finds what he has been searching for: a tiny black slot in the face of a parrot-
deity who's either beheading a prisoner or fertilizing a banana plant, depending on how
good your knowledge of pictographs is. After observing it closely, the Jesuit reaches into
a small leather pouch at his belt. He brings out an artifact, a golden key of strange and
unkeylike design. How did this Spanish Jesuit come by such a key? Did he read about its
fabled existence in some long-forgotten volume moldering in the libraries of the Escorial?
Did he track its whereabouts across the New World, following a long-obscured trail
through unspeakable dangers? Your guess is as good as mine. Holding his breath, he
inserts it into the slot in the parrot-god's beak.
At once there is a high-pitched shrilling noise, and the Spanish Jesuit knows, without
being told, that someone has been alerted to his presence there. Maybe several someones.
The blue light falters and blinks out for a second. Seizing his opportunity, the Spanish
Jesuit leaps through the gateway, moving remarkably quickly for a man in a long cassock.
No sooner has he landed on the pavement beyond than the blue light snaps back on, and a
mosquito who was attempting to follow the Spanish Jesuit meets a terrible, though not
untimely, death in a burst of sparks. The Spanish Jesuit breathes a sigh of relief. He has
gained entrance to the Lost City.
Making his way through this awesome pile of arcane geometry, he finds a shaded
courtyard where a fountain splashes. Here are tables and seats carved from stone. He sits
down. There's a stiff sheet of calligraphied parchment lying on the table. He leans
forward to peer at it with interest. A shadow appears across an archway, and he looks up
to see the Ancient Mayan.
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Again, this is a guy you identify immediately. Feathered headdress, jaguarskin kilt, silky
black pageboy bob. Hooked nose and high cheekbones. A sad and sneering countenance,
appropriate in a member of a long-vanished empire. Is this the end for the Spanish Jesuit?
No, because the Ancient Mayan bows so his green plumes curl and bounce forward, and
he inquires:
"How may I serve the Son of Heaven?"
The Jesuit looks down at the parchment.
"Well, the Margarita Grande looks pretty good. On the rocks, with salt, okay? And make
that two. I'm expecting a friend."
"Okay," replies the Ancient Mayan, and glides away silently.
Boy, I love moments like this. I really enjoy watching the illusion coming into sharp
contrast with the reality. I imagine the shock of the imaginary viewer, who must think
he's walked into a British comedy sketch. You know why I've survived in this job, year
after year, lousy assignment after lousy assignment, with no counseling whatsoever?
Because I have a keen appreciation of the ludicrous. Also because I have no choice.
Chapter 3
I'm sitting here waiting for the Mayan guy to come back with our cocktails, and I'm
understandably a little jumpy, because I'm meeting someone I haven't seen in, oh, a while,
and we didn't part on the best of terms. When mortals are nervous, their senses are
heightened, they notice all kind of little details they're ordinarily unaware of. Imagine
how it is with us.
Like I notice: the sound of tennis balls, far off, rebounding. Leisure. The sound of toilets
flushing, wow, think of all that expensive plumbing. The smell of the jungle isn't any
worse than, say, a terrarium in bad need of a cleaning, and it's pretty much blocked out
anyway by the dominating aromas of this place: colognes. Antiperspirants. Cultivated
flowers. Refrigerated food all nice and fresh. I can even smell fabric: starched napkins
and tablecloths and bed linens, and not one spot of mildew on anything, and this is in the
tropics, yet.
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摘要：

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Company%202%20-%20Sky%20Coyote\.htmChapter1You'llunderstandthisstorybetterifItellyoualie.Well,amyth,anyway.Therewasthisgodonce,theGreekgodofTime.He\wasacrueloldbastardandheateallhischildrenassoonastheywereborn.Zeus,\theyoungestson,managedtoescape;whenhegrewu...

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