The Children of the Company Part 5

"What is that?" How groggy I sounded.

"I seem to be paralyzed."

I grimaced. "Your neck's broken, then. I'm sorry, man."

"No, it can't break, but-" He paused a moment and then spoke rapidly. "Eogan, I'd like to make a confession. Will you hear it? Will you be my anmchara?"

"But you're a pagan!"

"I'll convert. Will you? If I ask you in Christ's name?" His voice was desperate.

And of course I must say yes, and so I was bound to his secret. I leaned close in the darkness to hear Lewis, as he drew a deep breath and confessed.

"You see ... I'm afraid I'm rather more of a pagan than you thought. In fact, I'm not strictly what you'd call a human being."

"What are you, then?" I sat back to stare at him. He was certainly sweating like a mortal man, but we had entered a world where the sidhe existed after all, so what else might be true?

"The word cyborg won't mean anything to you. You'd call me a homunculus, I suppose, grown from a mortal infant but changed by, er, alchemy. The masters who created me live nearly two thousand years in the future, Eogan. I work for them here in the past, finding things they want and hiding them in places that won't be disturbed until they're needed. I've been functioning for four centuries now." He swallowed hard and seemed to get his panic under control. "They made me immortal and indestructible; at least they thought so. They know everything-well, not quite everything, or I wouldn't be lying here now, would I? I can't die! Can I?"

"I don't know what on Earth you're talking about," I told him, trying even now to hold tight to my orderly rational world. "But I've seen men fall and lose movement down one side of themselves, or lose the power of speech. I think that's happened to you, Lewis. I'm sorry."

"It is something like that, actually," Lewis babbled. "When we stepped on that grid, it damaged me. Only my head is working. I don't know how long my emergency backup systems will run before shutting down, too. I can't seem to reset myself. Will you swear to me to fulfill a duty? As my confessor, Eogan!"

"Of course," I a.s.sured him. As his anmchara I had that obligation, whatever nonsense he spouted as he lay dying.

"Go back now," Lewis begged me. "Go back and seal the Codex Druidae in lead, and bury it ten feet below the floor of your scriptorium. You'll find the lead casket with my things in the guest-house."

"Why is this so important?" I asked, trying to be rational.

"Because it'll be worth an awful lot of money to the Neo-Wiccans when it's dug up in 2350," he replied.

I had not the slightest idea what he meant by that at all, nor was I ever to get him to explain further, for his eyes went wide suddenly and he gasped. "G.o.d Apollo! Look at that."

This last was not a timely prayer but a reaction to the creatures that were suddenly there with us in that dark hall, things like horrible children. Small, with skins pale as ashes, and tiny weak faces set low on big heads. They were naked, save for goggles of black gla.s.s worn over eyes that were perhaps as weak as the rest of them. No genitals at all. I wanted to yell with revulsion at the sight of them; but a voice like the devil spoke within my ear, wheedling, coaxing, imploring.

Please, it begged me, pleease! Rise and bring the changeling with you. Pleeease go with us. We're going somewhere nice. You'll want to come. And, though I detested the little voice before and after I heard it, while it twittered away at me I could no more deny it than a call of nature. I prayed to my sunlit Christ to deny them power over me. Still I obeyed them, got to my feet and picked up Lewis. His head hung down like a broken doll's, and I was certain I'd killed him; but as I moved to follow the pale children, I heard him murmuring inexplicably: "Ma.s.s hysteria, was it? Faked photographs, was it?" in tones of indignation.

Down the long hall we went, and it was dark and warm, reeking with strange animal smells. We came to a door, neatly made. The pale children bid me put my shoulder against it and push my way in. I shoved through into a tiny stone chamber, lit by white gla.s.s beyond the door ("Watch out! Careful of my head," fretted Lewis as it nearly knocked on the jamb). Then we were in and the door had swung shut after us, and I saw that there was no handle on the inside, and the silky voices had stopped, and I felt like a fool in a trap, which I was.

Behind me I heard a hiss of indrawn breath.

"Guests," mused a voice in Latin. "How fortunate I am."

"Eogan, turn around," said Lewis in tones of distinct alarm.

I whirled about expecting a dragon, at least, but saw instead a pale child in chains, sitting against the wall.

No, not a child. A thin wispy beard trailed from his chin, and on his big head were wisps of hair. His gender was evident, if small as a baby's. He had a bitter thin mouth, and wide green eyes that were fixed on us with an expression of malevolent amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Slave," he told me, "bring the mechanism here. I'd like a look at him."

"Slave yourself," I replied, though I'd felt the strongest compulsion to do as he'd bid me. I retreated to the opposite side of the room and set Lewis down. He was staring, as if fascinated, at the prisoner.

"What on Earth are you?" he inquired.

"And what are you?" mocked the other. "But, you see, I know the answer to that question. We know all about you and you know nothing about us. You pa.s.sed through the disruption field, clearly."

"Was that what it was?" Lewis's head lolled sideways. "Eogan, hold me up so I can see him." I obliged, while the prisoner giggled at us.

"Yes, and it works well, apparently! Mother will be so happy. My uncles will learn a lot from you, when they open up that ticking head of yours. Enough to improve our defenses, next time." The creature smiled nastily.

"What are you?" I demanded, sifting through my memory for tales I'd heard from other children. "Are you a luporchan?"

That sent him into gales of shrill laughter. "Of course I am! Of course I am, slave, and what's more I'm a Prince among luporchans. Son of the Queen. Though I'm a bad Prince and in royal disfavor, as you can see." He rattled his chains at us.

"Oh, shut up," Lewis snapped at him. "You're some kind of half-human hybrid, aren't you? And that poor boy from the monastery was being brought here to make more like you, wasn't he?"

"Was Mother feeling l.u.s.tful again?" The Prince shook his head. "Another hairy baby, I suppose, and perhaps he'll be as disobedient as me. That's the price we pay, though, isn't it?"

"Is it?" Lewis licked his lips. "Listen, if they're going to dismantle me, will you at least tell me what you people are?"

"What we are?" The Prince frowned. Then he leaned forward in his chains, looking sly. "I'll tell you a story, fili. No harp to accompany me? Too bad. You'll just have to make up the music in your head as we go along.

"This is 'The Tale of the Three Branches.'

"In the Beginning, the great World-Tree bore three branches, and from each branch came a son. The eldest son was wide and strong, practical and brave, but not very imaginative. The second son was tall and graceful, creative and gifted, but p.r.o.ne to silliness and instability."

"I wonder if you're describing Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons?" speculated Lewis.

"Is that what they call themselves? The third son was small and weak and unfortunately something of an idiot, but he had one talent: he could invent clever things. He wasn't clever himself, you understand, in fact he could barely speak or think, but he had an affinity for patterns and systems. And from these three sons of these three branches came the three races of man.

"And the children of the two older sons were able to reason and speak with each other, and they interbred: and these powerful and clever ones made war on the kin of the youngest son, to take by force the ingenious things they made.

"It was difficult for ideas to penetrate the heads of the kin, but this much got through to them: they must at all costs defend themselves against the big people, and hide from them somehow. And so this was what the stupid things focused on, with the dedication of ants, to the exclusion of all else, for all eternity, while their big cousins invented civilization and trade and art.

"But the more they stayed in their hiding places the stupider and weaker they became, as generations pa.s.sed, and it became pitifully easy for the big people to find them, and raid them, and rape their queens. Then a remarkable thing happened! Half-breed children were born in the dark warrens of the kin who were bigger, and cleverer, and braver than the others. And they became the leaders because it occurred to them they could lead. So the kin prospered, and found better places to hide, and made more ingenious devices for protecting themselves. And this way, for a while, they had the advantage in the long, long game of hide and seek.

"Sadly, this advantage was lost." The Prince glared at Lewis. "It seems that at the other end of time the big people found a way to create a new race, unnatural and immortal, clockwork and flesh mingled, a disgusting alteration of humanity. Of course they made them a slave race-"

"Oh, we are not either," Lewis said testily.

"-And they reached back through time to plant these vile mechanisms in every civilization, to act as their agents, their spies, their thieves. Need I mention that one of their objectives was to find us, and help themselves to our useful inventions?"

"No, that's certainly not true," Lewis objected. "They don't even believe you exist! If they had, they'd have warned me about you. But I was always told you people were a late-twentieth-century hoax."

What that meant I couldn't fathom, but this much was becoming clear to me: Lewis's crazy story must be true, somehow. His enemies knew what he was, and how to harm him. These people were the incubi, the demons the holy saints warned us about. But where in Scripture would I find Lewis, amongst what peoples of the earth?

"Not a slave race, eh?" retorted the Prince. "You know what they think you need to know, nothing more! And I'm sure my marvelous moron uncles will learn things from your disa.s.sembled carca.s.s that will give us the mechanical advantage once again."

Lewis gave a disdainful laugh. "So your own people can forge stronger chains for you? Why are you a prisoner, by the bye?"

"Politics!" snarled the Prince. "I had my own plan for furthering our kin. Why not creep out to the big women as they sleep? Why shouldn't they bear and raise our half-breeds? Why shouldn't we live in the sunlight like you? But Mother wouldn't hear of it, and I wouldn't stop, and so here I am."

"How sad for you. Well, this has all been very interesting, but I think I'll leave now," Lewis told him airily. I looked at him, astonished at his nerve. "I have no intention of letting anyone take me apart, thank you very much. Shall we go, Eogan?"

"How?"The Prince gave an incredulous grin. "Have you noticed there's no handle on the inside of this door?"

Lewis ignored him. "Eogan, unpin my cloak. Take out the brooch." I did as he asked and held it in my hand, a well-wrought thing of silver and enamel with a fine long pin.

"Now, bend me a hook from that."

"What can you hope to accomplish?" the Prince demanded. "There's no lock you can pick, either!"

"Slide the hook under the door and pull it inward," Lewis said, and I obeyed him. The Prince started up in his chains, staring in horror as the simplicity of the solution occurred to him.

"Those idiots-! But you, my fine machine, you're broken now. You think this big oaf can repair you?You're helpless and they'll come after you, my uncles will, no matter where you hide. They'll hunt you down! If it takes them years, they'll still get you back, and then-"

"Not at all. You see, when my primary system failed my emergency backup system began broadcasting a distress signal," Lewis taunted him. "My masters are already on their way to rescue me. Pull open the door, Eogan."

"Ha! What you have failed to realize is that this whole mound is s.h.i.+elded with lead," shrieked the Prince triumphantly. "Your signal hasn't reached anyone!"

Lewis's grin faltered for just a second, but he turned it into a sneer of defiance. "Well-as soon as I'm clear of this mound, my signal will be heard. And then my masters will come after you. See how you like-"

"If you've finished threatening each other," I said, being the only man in the room who could actually move, "the hallway's clear." I looked out into the stinking half-lit way.

"Then I'm off, short circuit or no short circuit," Lewis crowed. Bracing the open door with my body, I got hold of him by one arm and dragged him out with me.

"I'll raise the alarm," cried the Prince, but as the door swung slowly shut on its counterweight I heard him subside and mutter: "On the other hand, would anyone thank me in the least? Why bother?"

I took Lewis's other arm to hoist him up; but he got a distracted look in his eyes.

"Listen," he said. "Do you hear it? Someone's weeping."

I listened. "I can't hear anything."

"There's another mortal," Lewis told me. "Brother Crimthann! We've still got to rescue him." Which shamed me, because my earnest desire was to run from there without looking back, Christian as I was and him no more than a pagan, or perhaps less.

But I pulled him with me deeper into the hill and we found another door ten paces on. Even I could hear the weeping then. When we pushed the door open Brother Crimthann screamed, and cowered back in his chains.

"Hus.h.!.+ It's you we've come for, man," I told him. He mastered his terror enough to be silent, pressing his lips together as tears ran down his face. He smelled of shameful things. I left Lewis in the doorway and knelt beside Crimthann, turning his manacles this way and that to look for a keyhole, a seam, anything that I might force to open them. Nothing there! The rings were smooth and featureless, neither iron nor bronze. I pulled so that Crimthann flinched and whimpered, but they held fast.

"I can't break his bonds," I told Lewis. He groaned.

"Let me see them," he said, so I pulled him in and wedged the door with my foot painfully. He studied the manacles a moment as I strained to hold him up, and Crimthann blinked back his tears in confusion.

"I was afraid of this," said Lewis. "I can disable them, but it'll drain my backup system. Can't be helped. Listen, Eogan. This may well finish me. Don't leave my body here! If you can carry it out, my Company will be able to locate me, and they'll come. Now, take my hand and set it on that panel, there, above his head."

I looked up at the little square of blinking lights, bright unnatural colors. "Do you mean this will kill you?" I asked, appalled.

"Oh, no, we don't die. I'm sure they can repair me. But the surge will probably erase-I wonder if it'll erase my mind?" I saw his pupils go wide as the possibilities sank in. "My-what if all my memories are gone?"

"Then Christ have mercy on you," I replied, for even then I still believed. I lifted his hand, as he bid me, and laid it against the panel. He sighed once. I felt a stinging shock go through Lewis's body, then, and he made a terrible sound. The panel hissed and spat like a demon unmasked, but the manacles fell away from Crimthann's wrists.

Crimthann needed no urging; he fell forward and crawled at once for the door. Lewis's eyes were blank and blind now, I thought he must surely be dead; but I kept faith and bore him with me out of that cell. We ran for our lives through the tunnel, Crimthann and I, and when I saw the black grate set in the floor I sprang across it with the Salmon-Leap of the old heroes I so admired. No lightning struck me as I hurtled free of the dangerous place. Falling fair, I kept running with Lewis, and did not stop until we came out into clean air.

I fell and rolled on the cold hillside and it was gray dawn, the sun not yet risen on Beltane morning, with the clouds in the east all underlit red. Behind me, Brother Crimthann staggered out and fell on his face, to lie s.h.i.+vering and sobbing.

I rose on my knees at once and turned Lewis over.

"?enogeraseiromemymllafitahW," he babbled, blinking rapidly, and his spine arched back until I thought it would surely snap. Then he went limp again. He opened his eyes and looked around."

"Well," he whispered, "lucky me. Even my backup system has a backup." He paused for a moment, as if listening to himself. "Oh. Not for long, though. It's just transmitting my location. My organics seem to be shutting down-" Panicked, he raised his eyes to my face. "Remember, Eogan! The Codex Druidae, you must bury it under the floor. And you won't tell what I confessed to you, about what I am-Oh, no, is this it? Is this what happens to you?"

There was only one thing I could do for him. "What kind of child were you created from?" I asked him. "Had it ever received Christ's grace?"

"What?" He stared at me, bewildered. "No! I was abandoned in the temple at Aquae Sulis." He gave a hysterical giggle. "Some Roman matron's holiday indiscretion, I've no doubt, left behind at the spa, a little unwanted souvenir ..."

"You won't die," I told him confidently. I swept my hands through the gra.s.s that was pearled with the dew of Beltane morning, and I washed that high fine brow of his with it. "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

I think I expected a vision of Christ then, or a blare of heavenly trumpets at least. Nothing of the kind happened. Lewis endured the sacrament patiently, and smiled a small polite smile.

"Why, how nice. You've given me a soul." His smile widened in ironical amus.e.m.e.nt. "Now I'll live forever, won't I?"

But the color was going out of his face, and then it left his eyes, and they closed and he was no more than a waxen doll on the hillside. I rose to my feet and looked full into the rising sun. All the birds were singing.

And even then I had not lost my faith. I carried Lewis down from Dun Govaun, with Brother Crimthann silent beside me. We returned to the community and the Abbess was moved to tears, that the brave pagan had given his life to rescue our brother. Yet everyone agreed the story had a happy ending: for hadn't Lewis accepted Christ's grace and gained an immortal soul? And his body was laid on a bier in our little church, and we celebrated a grand funeral Ma.s.s for him. That night I kept the dead watch for my friend, alone with the tall candles around his body and my sorrow and exhaustion.

At some hour in the night I opened my eyes and they were there, the two strangers. One was a knave in oil-stained clothes. The other wore the fine garments of a gentleman. They were standing at the bier and the knave had his hand on Lewis's face, prizing open one eye with his dirty thumb. I leaped to my feet.

The gentleman turned coolly to face me. "I suppose you're the one we have to thank." He gave a brief bow. "My name is Aegeus. We've come to collect our friend here."

"Can you make him live again?" I asked."

"That's what we're determining now." He nodded at the knave, who had pulled open Lewis's mouth and was examining his teeth. I didn't like to see him handled so disrespectfully. "What do you think, Barry?"

"Maybe." The knave gave Lewis's hair a casual tousle. "Most of the organs have died. He'll be in a regeneration vat for a few years, but he might be all right."

"What about his memories?" I demanded.

"Probably wiped out." The knave yawned. "Maybe retrievable. We won't be able to tell for a while."

This so broke the heart in me that I knelt down, with tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g in my eyes. The one who called himself Aegeus paced close and stood over me.

"But let's talk about you, my friend. You've seen a lot more than you ought to have seen. What are we going to do about you, eh?" I looked up at him sharply. He was smiling a hard smile.

"I took a vow," I told him in indignation. "To bury that d.a.m.ned silly book and keep silent about what he had to tell me. I don't break vows." It was true, then.

"The silence of the confessional, eh?" His face became much friendlier. "Perhaps we can do business, after all. A mortal who knows enough to keep his mouth shut can benefit from being our friend, you see. What do you want in life, anyway? Land? Cattle? Or, wait, you're a monk. Something pretty for your church, here?" He waved a hand and looked around.