"Baker, Kage - Company 4 The Graveyard Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)
Kage Baker
(the Fourth Novel of the Company)
Copyright й 2001 by Kage Baker
ISBN 0-15-100449-8
This one's for absent friends.
Miss you, Dave.
What Has Gone Before
This is the fourth book in the unofficial history of Dr. Zeus Incorporated.
In the twenty-fourth century, a research and development firm invented a means of time travel. It also discovered the secret of immortality. There were, however, certain limitations that prevented the Company from bestowing these gifts left and right. But since the past could now be looted to increase corporate earnings, the stockholders were happy.
On her first mission as an adult, Mendoza was sent with Joseph to England, where she fell in love with a mortal, with bitter consequences.
Sky Coyote opened over a century later, as Joseph arrived at the research base at New World One to look up his protщgщe and inform her they had both been drafted for a Company mission in Alta California. Mendoza said good-bye to the one friend she had made at New World OneЧLewisЧand went with Joseph.
Near a Chumash Indian village she met a number of the mortal masters from the future, and was appalled to find them bigoted and fearful of their cyborg servants. Joseph learned unsettling facts about the Company that brought to mind a warning he'd been given long ago by Budu, the Enforcer who recruited him.
Why was it that, though the immortal operatives were provided with information and other entertainment from the future, nothing they received was ever dated later than the year 2355?
At the conclusion of the mission, Mendoza remained in the wilderness of the coastal forests, working then alone as a botanist.
Mendoza in Hollywood opened in 1862, as Mendoza journeyed reluctantly to her new posting: a stagecoach inn at a remote spot that one day would be known as Hollywood. There, near the violent little pueblo of Los Angeles (one murder a night, not counting Indians), she was to collect rare plants scheduled to go extinct in the coming drought.
Mendoza found herself now haunted by visions of her mortal lover, and she was giving off Crome's radiation again, the spectral blue fire of paranormal abilities that no cyborg was supposed to possess.
In a local spot known for strangeness, she encountered an anomaly that threw her temporarily into the future. There she glimpsed her friend Lewis, who tried frantically to tell her of an impending disaster.
Into her life came another mortalЧEdward Alton Bell-Fairfax, an English spy involved in a plot to grab California for the British Empire. Edward looked enough like Mendoza's first love to have been cloned from him. Mendoza abandoned her post and ran away with Edward.
As they raced for sanctuary on Catalina Island, pursued by American agents and bounty hunters, Edward began to suspect that Mendoza was far more than a coaching-inn servant. Mendoza discovered that Edward too was more than he seemed, in fact was connected to the Company in some way.
But before the lovers could solve their mutual riddle, their luck ran out. Edward was shot to death, and Mendoza went berserk with grief. The Company sent her to a penal station hundreds of millennia in the pastЧthe preferred method of disposing of troublesome immortals . . .
Joseph in the Darkness
You know something, father? Sin exists. It really does.
I'm not talking about guilt, I'm talking about cause and effect. Every single thing we do wrong comes back to get us, sooner or later. You knew that, didn't you? And you told me, and I . . . well, I was so much more flexible than you, wasn't I? I could see all sides of every question. You saw black and white, and I saw all those gray tones.
For the longest time, I thought I was the one who had it right. I mean, you wound up here at last, didn't you? And I'm still free, as free goes. But whatever you're feeling, in there, I'll bet your conscience isn't bothering you.
You'd have let the little girl die, I know. Sized Mendoza up with that calm ruthless look, seen what she was and given your judgment: unsuitable for augmentation. Sent her back to die of starvation in the dungeon. She'd only have lasted another couple of days, she was so weak. Maybe I'd have let her die too, if I hadn't thought there was a chance they might interrogate her again before she died, and use the hot coals on her this time.
That was why I lied, father. It seemed doable at the time. Rescue the kid, make her one of us, give her a wonderful new life working for the Company. Nobody would ever find out about that freaky little something extra she had. Hell, every living thing generates the Crome's stuff from time to time. Only one person in a million ever manages to produce enough to do things like walk through walls or be in two places at once. How was I to know . . . ?
You're right, it was still wrong. And did anybody ever thank me for my random act of kindness? Not little Mendoza, that's for damned sure. Not on that day in England in 1555 when I stood beside her watching her mortal lover burn. How could she thank me? Her heart was in shreds and she could never die, no matter how much she wanted to, and it was my fault.
And I wouldn't be here now, either, would I, father? Going from vault to vault, looking up at the blind silent faces, to see if one of them is hers. Hoping to find her here in one of these houses of the near dead, even if I can't set her free this time, praying she's here: because there are worse places she might be.
I guess I was a lousy father to her. I hope I've been a better son to you. Yes, father, there's sin, and there's eternal punishment for sin. It's like a rat gnawing at your guts.
Sorry about the metaphor. Don't take it personally.
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