The Children of the Company Part 13

Budu shrugged. "I've walked in shadows. Continued the work, when I had the chance. One old man with a knife can't do much."

"But the other Enforcers?" asked Labienus. "Haven't any of them followed you into exile?"

"They were betrayed," said Budu. "They've been taken offline, one after another as the years pa.s.sed, and the Company has hidden them well. I'm the only one left walking free." Idly he took up a long stem of hay and turned it in his fingers, rotating it like the tiniest of quarterstaffs. He pointed it at Labienus. "You see how we were repaid, after we labored for our masters? How do you think they will repay you, when you've served your purpose?"

"Undoubtedly the same," said Labienus. "If they get the chance."

Budu chuckled. "But you won't let them have the chance, eh?"

"No indeed."

"What do you propose to do?"

Labienus looked at him. "What would you do? Wait until they're vulnerable and strike. Their precious Temporal Concordance runs out in 2355; after that they'll have no more foreknowledge of events than we do. Once that playing field's leveled, we'll see who wins the game."

"And who is we, son?"

"You and I, presumably. And any of the rest of the Executives who are as disgusted as we are, and I'll bet there are a lot of us."

"There are," said Budu. "Will you join us, son?"

"Oh, yes." Labienus felt a s.h.i.+ver of genuine delight. "Only tell me what you need me to do, father!"

"Work with me," said Budu, staring into his eyes. "We have a lot of preparation to make for 2355. You think this Earth is crowded now, you think it's dirty? You've no idea how much worse it's going to be, in a few more centuries. The mortals will go mad. Cities like termite mounds. Murderers in packs like wolves, roaming unpunished. Not simply one or two tyrants or dictators in a century, not one or two neat world wars, the way you were told. Wars every year, fuehrers at the end of every street. No justice. No order. No refuge for the innocent."

"You must have seen the Temporal Concordance." Labienus was awed.

"No," said Budu. "But there are those who have."

"And we can't do anything," said Labienus, "because history cannot be changed."

"We can't prevent it. That doesn't mean we can't do anything." Budu smiled, showing terrifying teeth. "And don't be so certain history is as fixed as they tell you, son."

"You used to say that, but n.o.body's managed to change it yet," said Labienus. "All the same, time is on our side! Here we are in the past, with centuries to prepare, and there they are in the future, with-what-thirty years?"

"But we face the longest march, to the most necessary victory. Do you have the strength?"

"Yes. Still, we'll have compet.i.tion, father," Labienus warned. "Some of the Executive line are already making their own plans. You remember Aegeus? He's built what amounts to a private kingdom up there in the Cevennes. It's disgusting. He actually keeps mortal slaves for his own pleasure."

"That is forbidden." Budu's eyes grew small and hard as stones.

"I've already got spies in his organization, gathering evidence."

"Good. He'll suffer the consequences, when that last day comes. The other Executives must be conscripted, or persuaded to stand aside. We need every advantage."

"We can co-opt the Company's resources for our own use." Labienus had an inspiration then. "You should see how I'm presently employed, father-"

"You're a lawyer at Gray's Inn," said Budu. "Twice a year you ride out to Hampstead, to look at a mortal child you placed with foster parents there."

"Yes," said Labienus, feeling a sliver of ice in his heart. "You've observed me closely, I see. Had it occurred to you to look at the boy?"

"Yes. Old blood there. Who is he?"

"Not who; what. The d.a.m.ned thing is a Recombinant! The Company themselves decided to make one. They're experimenting the way they always do, dropping their subject into the past and watching what happens."

"Then they have put the lives of innocents at risk," said Budu, scowling.

"Not in the way you'd think. He's no plague-bearer, father." Labienus looked at Budu slyly. "He's a great deal more dangerous. Old blood indeed! Someone had the bright idea of designing a replacement for you, you see. A New Enforcer. Genetically engineered to look more human, and to be less disobedient. The little creature's their prototype.Yes, twice a year I do drag my sorry old bones out to Hampstead to test him. He never fails to impress me."

"How?"

"Utterly different brain. Better reflexes than a human child. He'll never be a beauty, but he'll be bigger and faster than most mortals. Smarter, too." Labienus parodied the syrupy tones of a fond mortal parent. "Why, only today I told our Nicket that a very great man had died, the man I named him for in fact, and do you know what the clever wittle darling said?"

"I don't care what he said," Budu replied. "Are they going to work the immortality process on him?"

"On a prototype? G.o.ds, no! They'll never do that again," said Labienus, with a significant look. "Though I've been sorely tempted, father. Don't you think we could make good use of such a weapon? Especially as it's the blackest of black projects, and I'm the sole handler for the prototype? He'll operate within event shadows, free of recorded history! A man like that could do terrific damage where we aimed him."

"It's been done," said Budu. "More times than you know, these prodigies have walked the Earth. They're never worth the trouble. I'm not interested."

"This one is different," Labienus insisted. "And wouldn't you like another son? An able second-in-command?"

"No; but you would," Budu told him. "Someone to laugh at your jokes. Someone to impress with your cleverness. That's vanity. It won't serve my purpose."

"As you wish." Labienus concealed his irritation. "What else did you have in mind?"

"I want a new means of culling the mortal herds, controlled, precise. Something better than war. More selective than plague. You think about it. Use the Company's technology, if you can."

"But I'll need to find the right specialists! Possibly even mortal ones. It will require subtlety, father-"

"And you're a subtle man, yes? Win new recruits to our cause. Take your poor dead Machiavelli as your model." Budu reached out and plucked at the black armband, chuckling again. "You'll find a way."

And then he was gone, and Labienus stared around him in amazement. Nothing to be seen in any direction but the flat floor of mown hay, giving up its sweet scent to the night damps. No sound but night birds crying as they flew toward the river. He climbed to his feet and brushed off his clothes. Mounting his horse once again, he rode on to dark London.

And so nothing useful had been done with Nicholas Harpole.

Labienus sighs. So much potential in a bright child, if trained properly. All that splendid ability, wasted on one martyrdom to prop up some distant causal link to Dr. Zeus Incorporated ...

Here is a statistic to make his heart bleed over might-have-beens: out of the four hundred seventeen mortals who heard Nicholas preach as he was being burned at the stake, fully twenty-two had heeded his plea to become martyrs to the Protestant cause themselves. Two hundred twelve had gone on to lose their lives in less immediate ways, in the defense of English liberty. Eighty-six more had gone into various levels of what pa.s.sed for the secret service at that time, working for the downfall of Spain with patient fanaticism under Sir Francis Walsingham. Fifty-one had simply committed suicide, in varying ways, over the three-year period following April 1, 1555.

The point was, of course, that Nicholas Harpole had asked them to die, and they had. Or at least given up their lives. A miserable three hundred seventy-one mortals, when he might have laid waste to nations.

Much better success on the second try. Labienus smiles, coming to the pages added later, the reports from other operatives. He hadn't minded when the Adonai project had been taken from him. He'd been just settling in here at Mackenzie Base, and had too many irons in the fire to waste time shepherding another hapless youth from one self-destructive crisis to the next. It had helped his ego that the new project head was a close friend, of course.

By 1837, the field wherein Budu had prophesied dystopic madness had long since been enclosed by Regent's Park, as London expanded northward. Noisome as Labienus had found the place in Tudor times, it had been a pastoral idyll compared with the urban sprawl that welcomed the new queen, young Victoria.

So Labienus went nowhere near London when he visited Executive Facilitator Nennius, and was gratified to find that Overton Hall was a dozen miles from the nearest town of any size.

They sat in Nennius's study on an autumn evening, with their feet propped before the cozy fire and a decanter of port on a stand between them. Behind them, the windows had been firmly locked and curtains had been drawn against the night.

"It could have been worse," said Nennius, who was striving to be philosophical about his dismal posting. "It might have been a national school."

"Not for this boy," Labienus replied, helping himself to the port.

"True. All the same, I wish they'd left the matter in your hands.You'd have enjoyed the role of headmaster a great deal more than I, I suspect. All this piety and in loco parentis nonsense one is called upon to display, when one would much rather drown the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

They laughed together companionably.

"You've a river here, haven't you?" said Labienus. "Arrange rowing matches and drill holes in the boats beforehand."

"Could do that, yes." Nennius composed his dark features into an expression of suitably shocked regret. "Terribly sorry, Mrs. Peckham-Winsbury, but we've had to drag the marshes for young Cecil and I'm afraid all that's been brought up is his right boot!"

Labienus snickered. "Or lay in some magnesium flares, and arrange the odd case of spontaneous combustion in the dormitories."

"Yes!" Nennius slapped his thigh. "Boys, we are gathered here to pray for the soul of Phipps Minor, who ascended into heaven in quite the brightest blaze of glory on record! Ashes to be forwarded to his careful guardian in a very small paper sack."

"Arrange for an escaped leopard to prowl the grounds."

"I regret to inform you all that the First Form will no longer be permitted on the cricket ground, due to the fact that an unidentified feline has been dragging smaller students into the bushes and eating them!" Nennius rocked in his chair with laughter.

"Secrete a few gelignite charges in their tuckboxes."

"I am quite at a loss to explain this, Mr. Carstairs, but it would appear that just as your son was sinking his teeth into an Eccles cake, he unaccountably exploded!"

Labienus wiped tears from his eyes. "And then there's good old inst.i.tutional cooking. In England! A double whammy if ever there was one."

"Have another helping of blancmange, my dears," growled Nennius. "Oh, just once to be able to add a dash of rat poison to the custard."

"Mm. Or a little live typhus culture."

They fell silent at that, and Nennius couldn't resist scanning the room nervously.

Have you spoken to him about it?

He won't listen. Budu absolutely refuses to sanction the use of biologicals until we come up with something self-limiting. Anything with an incubation period long enough to allow it to be transmitted to what he calls "innocents"is out of the question.

But it could take years before we get a suitable mutation.

I'm aware of that. I had great hopes for this influenza virus. It may well be the one! And he wouldn't even hear me out.

His scruples make no sense. Nennius sighed and s.h.i.+fted in his chair. Here in their dormitories the wretched monkeys are "innocent." Once they're in army barracks they'll be fair game, by his rules. Yet I'd wager they're twice as savage and b.l.o.o.d.y-minded at the moment as they will be once they're out in the world.

That's what I told him, but it's like arguing with a stone wall.

It's just as well you haven't told him about this boy.

Not a word. When the little Corsican was running around, I managed to restrain myself from pointing out that we might have had just as much success with young Harpole. Think of the millions he might have led to the slaughter, with that voice of his.

Can't run an operation like that now, of course.

No, no. All covert, these days.

Shame.

Yes.

He's going to have to see reason some time.

You don't know him as I do.

At that moment there was a timid double knock on the door. Both men jumped.

"What d'you want, blast you?" snapped Nennius, rising to his feet.

"There's been a difficulty, sir," said someone with a slightly panicked voice from the other side of the door. "We've had to call for Dr. Cheke."

"d.a.m.n," murmured Nennius, rising. He went to the door and opened it. MacMurdo, the history master, stood there wringing his hands. "What in G.o.d's name have the little devils done now?"

"It's Bell-Fairfax, Dr. Nennys. He's nearly killed young Scargill."

"Hmph. Much blood?"

"A great deal, Dr. Nennys, sir. It took Dr. Horsfall and Mr. Petch both to separate them."

"Is Bell-Fairfax hurt?"

"No, sir."

"I'll deal with him. Have him brought."

"Very good, sir. Shall I have his trunk fetched, sir?"

"What for?"

"Well-he'll be sent down for this, sir, I should think."

"Nonsense! Nothing more than a fistfight between a pair of young imbeciles. A sound beating'll teach him."

"You haven't seen Scargill, sir-"

"Have him brought," said Nennius quietly, but in such a voice that the history master fled. Muttering imprecations, Nennius stalked across the room and drained his port at a gulp.

"That's my boy," said Labienus, grinning. "Shall I tactfully withdraw?"

"I'd be obliged if you would," said Nennius. He selected a cane from a basket in the corner. "You can listen from in there, though, if you like. See what you think of the direction I'm taking with him."

"Don't mind if I do," said Labienus, and carrying off the port decanter he retreated to the shadows of the next room. Sitting behind the door he had a fair view of the study, and everything that occurred there within the next half hour.

Nennius positioned himself in front of the fire, cane held before him in both hands. Labienus laughed quietly. You look like a schoolboy's worst nightmare.