Free The Machine's Child (Company) by Kage Baker Page A

kidding?
I’ve
always been the tempter. It’s a little late to change sides now.”
    From his coat he withdrew the tool he’d brought with him and considered it. It was an ordinary gardening trowel and looked ridiculously inadequate for the task he faced. He sighed and shrugged.
    It took more nightmarish groping around on the rock’s vast dome before Joseph located what he sought: a flat stone the size of a grand piano, partially buried. He had to move lesser rocks (though not much lesser) and scrape away a great deal of gravel before he could even begin to dig with his trowel, which did turn out to be ridiculously inadequate for the task. There was a faint line of dawn visible in the east by the time he had freed enough of the stone to attempt to move it. His first effort did not meet with success, exactly.
    “Holy smoke!” he gasped, eyes popping in his head with the strain. He let go the stone and staggered backward. Joseph was a Rogue Cyborg,after all, not a Man of Steel. He stood there panting a moment, clutching himself.
    “I bet you just picked up the damn thing like it was a sofa cushion, didn’t you, Father?” he said sourly. Receiving no answer from the weary night, he drew a deep breath and tried again. After a long moment the stone lifted free, breaking its seal of earth, and Joseph was able to push it up and away from what lay beneath it.
    But it was another moment before he could bring himself to gaze down at what he had come so far to find.
    It looked like a big shipping crate of polished aluminum, smooth-edged and smooth-sided as an ice cube. He could only just make out the line of its lid. No hinges were visible at all. There was no dust, no evidence that it had lain there five centuries rather than five minutes.
    Joseph stared, and trembled.
    “Gee, that’s a big one,” he said, a little too loudly. “I don’t think I’ve ever traveled in one that big. Sure is in great shape, though.”
    Nobody replied. The east grew lighter.
    “Well,” said Joseph, “no point putting it off, I guess.”
    He reached down into the hole and tried the lid of the crate, which flipped up smoothly at his touch, revealing an interior as smooth and cold-looking as its exterior. Four men Joseph’s size could have rested in there comfortably. He seemed anything but comfortable, however, as he climbed in and lay down. In fact, his face was a mask of barely controlled panic. He reached up and worked subtle instruments. The lid fell and sealed without a sound.
    The next moment the crate was gone as though it had never existed. Was there a spark of something in the fathomless air for a second, so far out as to catch the light of a sun that had not yet come around the curve of the Earth? There might have been.
    STILL LATER THAT SAME EVENING IN 300,000 BCE
    When the spinning stopped, when the lid popped, Joseph lay still and let the stasis gas dissipate in the night. No breeze. When was this night?No stars he recognized, and the gas rose slowly, heavily in the damp warm air.
    But he knew where he was. Budu had told him what it would be like.
    Joseph forced himself up out of the crate, peering around. Fading night, but not toward the same dawn he’d left a few seconds ago. He stepped away from the crate and walked forward. How far back had he gone? Far enough for the air to smell different, far enough for the sea to smell different, too. Subtle differences but there. And an acrid, nasty smell. Chemicals. And—?
    He was focusing on the smells to avoid the sights, which were . . . what he had expected. At one corner of the warehouse wall was something he hadn’t expected to see, though: a generator device, wheels and belts and pulleys and other things. When he got close enough to it to see what the other things were, Joseph backed up a step as though someone had physically pushed him. His lips drew back from his teeth.
    He stood there motionless a long moment, watching the arms and legs going round and round, pumping and