Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (594 page)

He could guess what Kelric required. “I’ll never reveal you were on Coba.”

“Good.”

“But how do I explain my escape?”

“It’s remarkable,” Kelric commented, with a slight smile. “You managed to fly a windrider to the port on your own.” He paused. “I’ve entered the necessary records and had the port send a message about it from you to Manager Viasa.”

“So she will tell the same story?”

“Yes.”

Jeremiah knew Khal would welcome the chance to explain his escape without implicating Coba in Kelric’s captivity. Softly he said, “I’ll miss her.”

“Coban women do have that effect,” Kelric admitted. The hint of a smile showed on his face. “Gods only know why. They are surely exasperating.”

Jeremiah smiled. “Yes,” he said, also agreeing with the unstated love beneath the words.

“There is a favor I would ask of you,” Kelric said.

Jeremiah wondered what he could possibly give such a powerful man. “A favor?”

Kelric unfolded a tray from his seat arm, extending it to Jeremiah’s seat. Then he reached into his pocket—and took out a dice pouch. “I should like to play Calanya Quis again.”

“I would like that.”

So they rolled out their dice.

Author’s Note

The character Kelric first appeared in the
Analog
novelette, “Light and Shadow,” April 1994. The story of Kelric’s time on Coba is told in the Nebula-nominated novel
The Last Hawk,
and his return home in the space adventure novel
Ascendant Sun.

* * * *

Copyright © 2000 by Dell Magazines

(1952–2010)

Kage didn’t sell her first story until she was forty-five and died far too young of uterine cancer, so her body of writing is comparatively slender. She was involved in fandom for many ears before that, as an actor, artist, and director with As You Like It Productions (formerly the Living History Center, which started the first Renaissance Faire); she taught Elizabethan English to actors for two decades and when Kage did turn to writing, she used that theater training to make the past feel utterly real. She played a huge role in the 1990s revival of the time travel story, which had been largely abandoned for the previous thirty years.

Most of her work is in the Company series, of which this was the first story to appear.

* * * *

Author’s Note: This was the first Company story ever to appear in print, while
In the Garden of Iden
was still in search of a publisher. It is also the only story of mine my mother ever heard.

She was a person of epic personality and style, rather like the late great Jennifer Patterson of
Two Fat Ladies
fame, outrageous, artistic and endlessly nurturing. Naturally enough, I spent most of my life refusing to be anything she wanted me to be. I never let her read anything I wrote, although she loved science fiction.

Then she was, abruptly, diagnosed with something awful and lasted only a month. Every day after work I would come visit her in her hospital room, where of course the truth hit me like a grand piano dropped out a window: I desperately wanted her to read my stuff. And now she couldn’t hold a book or even focus her eyes. And the train was pulling out of the station so fast, and I was standing there like an idiot on the platform, with almost no time to say I was sorry.

But, pacing by her bed, I explained the whole Company idea, and made up a short story to illustrate the way it worked, about Mendoza and Joseph trying to steal a rare plant. I acted it out, did all the voices, everything I could think of to hold her attention and get the ideas across. She liked it, thank God. I wrote it down after she died.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

First published in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, March 1997

For a while I lived in this little town by the sea. Boy, it was a soft job. Santa Barbara had become civilized by then: no more Indian rebellions, no more pirates storming up the beach, nearly all the grizzly bears gone. Once in a while some bureaucrat from Mexico City would raise hell with us, but by and large the days of the old Missions were declining into forlorn shades, waiting for the Yankees to come.

The Company was operating a Receiving-Storage-and Shipping terminal out of what looked like an oaken chest in my cell. I had a mortal identity as an alert little padre with an administrative career ahead of him, so the Church kept me pretty busy pushing a quill. My Company duties, though, were minor: I logged in consignments from agents in the field and forwarded communiqués.

It was sort of a forty year vacation. There were fiestas and fandangos down in the pueblo. There were horse races along the shore of the lagoon. My social standing with the De La Guerra family was high, so I got invited out to supper a lot. And at night, when the Bishop had gone to bed and our few pathetic Indians were tucked up for the night, it was relaxing to sneak a little glass of Communion wine out on the front steps of the church. There I’d sit, listening to the night sounds, looking down the long slope to the night sea. Sometimes I’d sit there until the sky pinked up in the east and the bells rang for matins. We Old Ones don’t need much sleep.

One August night I was sitting like that, watching the moon drop down toward the Pacific, when I picked up the signal of another immortal somewhere out there in the night. I tracked it coming along the shoreline, past the point at Goleta; then it crossed the Camino Real and came straight uphill at me. Company business. I sighed and broadcast, Quo Vadis?

Hola, came the reply. I scanned, but I knew who it was anyway. Hi, Mendoza, I signaled back, and leaned up on my elbows to await her arrival. Pretty soon I picked her up on visual, too, climbing up out of the mists that flowed along the little stream; first the wide-brimmed hat, then the shoulders bent forward under the weight of the pack, the long walking skirt, the determined lope of the field operative without transportation.

Mendoza is a botanist, and has been out in the field too long. At this point she’d been tramping around Alta California for the better part of twelve decades. God only knew what the Company had found for her to do out in the back of beyond; I’d have known, if I’d been nosy enough to read the Company directives I relayed to her from time to time. I wasn’t her case officer any more, though, so I didn’t.

She raised burning eyes to me and my heart sank. She was on a Mission, and I don’t mean the kind with stuccoed arches and tile roofs. Mendoza takes her work way too seriously. “How’s it going, kid?” I greeted her in a loud whisper when she was close enough.

“Okay.” She slung down her pack on the step beside me, picked up my wine and drank it, handed me back the empty glass and sat down.

“I thought you were back up in Monterey these days,” I ventured.

“No. The Ventana,” she replied. There was a silence while the sky got a little brighter. Far off, a rooster started to crow and then thought better of it.

“Well, well. To what do I owe the pleasure, et cetera?” I prompted. She gave me a sharp look.

“Company Directive 080444-C,” she said, as though it were really obvious.

I’d developed this terrible habit of storing incoming Green Directives in my tertiary consciousness without scanning them first. The soft life, I guess. I accessed hastily. “They’re sending you after grapes?” I cried a second later.

“Not just grapes.” She leaned forward and stared into my eyes. “Mission grapes. All the cultivars around here that will be replaced by the varieties the Yankees introduce. I’m to collect genetic material from every remaining vine within a twenty-five mile radius of this building.” She looked around disdainfully. “Not that I expect to find all that many. This place is a wreck. The Church has really let its agricultural program go to hell, hasn’t it?”

“Hard to get slave labor nowadays.” I shrugged. “Can’t keep ‘em down on the farm without leg irons. We get a little help from the ones who really bought into the religion, but that’s about it.”

“And the Holy Office can’t touch them.” Mendoza shook her head. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Hey, things change.” I stretched out and crossed my sandaled feet one over the other. “Anyway. The Mexicans hate my poor little Bishop and are doing their level best to drive him crazy. In all the confusion with the Missions being closed down, a lot of stuff has been looted. Plants get dug up and moved to people’s gardens in the dark of night. There are still a few Indian families back in some of the canyons, too, and a lot of them have tiny little farms. Probably a lot of specimens out there, but you’ll really have to hunt around for them.”

She nodded, all brisk. “I’ll need a processing credenza. Bed and board, too, and a cover identity. That’s your job. Can you arrange them by Oh-Six-Hundred Hours?”

“Gosh, this is just like old times,” I said without enthusiasm. She gave me that look again.

“I have work to do,” she explained with exaggerated patience. “It is very important work. I’m a good little machine and I love my work. Nothing is more important than My Work. You taught me that, remember?”

Which I had, so I just smiled my most sincere smile as I clapped her on the shoulder. “And a damned good machine you are, too. I know you’ll do a great job, Mendoza. And I feel that your efficiency will be increased if you don’t rush this job. Take the time to do it right, you know? Mix a little rest and rec into your schedule. After all, you really deserve a holiday, a hard-working operative like you. This is a great place for fun. You could come to one of our local cascaron balls. Dance the night away. You used to like to dance.”

Boy, was that the wrong thing to say. She stood up slowly, like a cobra rearing back.

“I haven’t owned a ballgown since 1703. I haven’t attended a mortal party since 1555. If you’ve chosen to forget that miserable Christmas, I can assure you I haven’t. You play with the damned monkeys, if you’re so fond of them.” She drew a deep breath. “I, myself, have better things to do.” She stalked away up the steps, but I called after her:

“You’re still sore about the Englishman, huh?”

She didn’t deign to respond but shoved her way between the church doors, presumably to get some sleep behind the altar screen where she wouldn’t be disturbed.

She was still sore about the Englishman.

* * * *

I may have a more relaxed attitude toward my job than some people I could mention, but I’m still the best at it. By the time Mendoza wandered squinting into morning light I had her station set up, complete with hardware, in one of the Mission’s guest cells. For the benefit of my fellow friars she was my cousin from Guadalajara, visiting me while she awaited the arrival of her husband from Mexico City. As befitted the daughter of an old Christian family the Senora was of a sober and studious nature, and derived much innocent pleasure from painting flowers and other subjects of natural history from life.

She didn’t waste any time. Mendoza went straight out to what remained of the Mission vineyard and set to work, clipping specimens, taking soil samples, doing all those things you’d have to be an obsessed specialist to enjoy. By the first evening she was hard at work at her credenza, processing it all.

When it came time to loot the private gardens of the Gentes de Razon her social introductions went okay, too, once I got her into some decent visiting clothes. I did most of the talking to the Ortegas and Carrillos and the rest, and the fact that she was a little stiff and silent while taking grape brandy with them could easily be explained away by her white skin and blue veins. If you had any Spanish blood you were sort of expected to sneer about it in that place, in those days.

Anyway it was a relief for everybody when she’d finished in the pueblo and went roving up and down the canyons, pouncing on unclaimed vines. There were a few Indians settled back in the hills, ex-neophytes scratching out a living between two worlds, on land nobody else had wanted. What they made of this woman, white as their worst nightmares, who spoke to them in imperious and perfectly accented Barbareno Chumash, I can only imagine. However she persuaded them, though, she got samples of their vines too. I figured she’d soon be on her way back to the hinterlands, and had an extra glass of Communion wine to celebrate. Was that ever premature!

I was hearing confessions when her scream of excitement cut through the subvocal ether, followed by delighted profanity in sixteenth-century Galician. My parishioner went on:

“…which you should also know, Father, was that I have coveted Juana’s new pans. These are not common iron pans but enamelware, white with a blue stripe, very pretty, and they came from the Yankee trading ship. It disturbs me that such things should imperil my soul.”

Joseph! Joseph! Joseph!

“It is good to be concerned on that account, my child.” I shut out Mendoza’s transmission so I could concentrate on the elderly mortal woman on the other side of the screen. “To covet worldly things is very sinful indeed, especially for the poor. The Devil himself sent the Yankees with those pans, you may be certain.” But Mendoza had left her credenza and was coming down the arcade in search of me, ten meters, twenty meters, twenty-five… “For this, and for your sinful dreams, you must say thirty Paternosters and sixty Ave Marias…” Mendoza was coming up the church steps two at a time… “Now, recite with me the Act of Contrition—”

“Hey!” Mendoza pulled back the door of the confessional. Her eyes were glowing with happiness. I gave her a stern look and continued the Act of Contrition with my somewhat disconcerted penitent, so Mendoza went out to stride up and down in front of the church in her impatience.

“Don’t you know better than to interrupt me when I’m administering a sacrament?” I snapped when I was finally able to come out to her. “Some Spaniard you are!”

“So report me to the Holy Office. Joseph, this is important. One of my specimens read out with an F-M Class One rating.”

“And?” I put my hands in my sleeves and frowned at her, refusing to come out of the role of offended friar.

“Favorable Mutation, Joseph, don’t you know what that means? It’s a Mission grape with a difference. It’s got Saccharomyces with style and Botrytis in rare bloom. Do you know what happens when a field operative discovers an F-M Class One, Joseph?”

“You get a prize,” I guessed.

“Si senor!” She did a little dance down the steps and stared up at me in blazing jubilation. I hadn’t seen her this happy since 1554. “I get a Discovery Bonus! Six months of access to a lab for my own personal research projects, with the very finest equipment available! Oh joy, oh rapture. So I need you to help me.”

“What do you need?”

“The Company wants the parent plant I took the specimen from, the whole thing, root and branch. It’s a big vine, must have been planted years ago, so I need you to get me some Indians to dig it up and bring it back here in a carreta. Six months at a Sciences Base, can you imagine?”

“Where did you get the specimen?” I inquired.

She barely thought about it. “Two kilometers south-southeast. Just some Indian family back in the hills, Joseph, with a hut in a clearing and a garden. Kasmali, that was what they called themselves. You know the family? I suppose we’ll have to pay them something for it. You’ll have to arrange that for me, okay?”

I sighed. Once again the kindly padre was going to explain to the Indian why it was necessary to give up yet another of his belongings. Not my favorite role, all things considered.

* * * *

But there we were that afternoon, the jolly friar and his haughty cousin, paying a call on the Kasmali family.

They were good parishioners of mine, the old abuela at Mass every day of the week, rain or shine, the rest of the family lined up there every Sunday. That was a lot to expect of our Indians in this day and age. They were prosperous, too, as Indians went: they had three walls of a real adobe house and had patched in the rest with woven brush. They had terraced their tiny hillside garden and were growing all kinds of vegetables on land not fit for grazing. There were a few chickens, there were a few little brown children chasing them, there were a few cotton garments drying on the bushes. And, on the crest of the hill, a little way from the house, there was the vineyard: four old vines, big as trees, with branches spreading out to shade most of an acre of land.

The children saw us coming and vanished into the house without a sound. By the time we reached the top of the winding stony path, they had all come out and were staring at us: the toothless old woman from daily Mass, a toothless old man I did not know, the old son, the two grown grandsons, their wives and children of assorted ages. The elder of the grandsons came forward to greet us.

“Good evening, little Father.” He looked uneasily at Mendoza. “Good evening, lady.”

“Good evening, Emidio.” I paused and pretended to be catching my breath after the climb, scanning him. He was small, solidly built, with broad and very dark features; he had a stiff black moustache. His wide eyes flickered once more to Mendoza, then back to me. “You have already been introduced to my cousin, I see.”

“Yes, little Father.” He made a slight bow in her direction. “The lady came yesterday and cut some branches off our grapevines. We did not mind, of course.”

“It is very kind of you to permit her to collect these things.” I eyed Mendoza, hoping she’d been tactful with them.

“Not at all. The lady speaks our language very well.”

“That is only courtesy, my son. Now, I must tell you that one of your vines has taken her fancy, for its extraordinary fruit and certain virtues in the leaves. We have come back here today, therefore, to ask you what you will accept for that near vine at the bottom of the terrace.”