Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers by Kage Baker

Author:Kage Baker [Baker, Kage]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, General, Fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, High Tech, Space Opera, Adventure, Science fiction; American, Short Stories, General & Literary Fiction, Science Fiction - Short Stories, Time travel, Dr. Zeus Incorporated (Imaginary organization), Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Dr. Zeus Incorporated (Imagina, Immortalism
ISBN: 9781930846111
Publisher: Golden Gryphon Pr
Published: 2002-08-31T19:30:00+00:00

"I'm the answer to your prayers," he replied. "You want to come upstairs and see my etchings?"

"No," I said.

"It's because I'm a monkey, isn't it?" he snapped, thrusting his face forward in a challenging kind of way.

"Yeah," I said.

"Well, at least you're honest about being a bigot," he said, subsiding.

"Excuse me!" I slammed my magazine down in my lap. "Anyway, you aren't a monkey. Are you?

You're a member of the extinct hominid species Australopithecus Afarensis. "

"I love it when you people talk like computers," he mused. "Sexy, in a perverse kind of way. Yes, Afarensis, all right, one of Lucy's kindred. Possibly explaining my powerful attraction to ditzy redheads."

"That's an awful lot of big words to keep in such a teeny little skull," I said, rolling up my magazine menacingly. "So you think cyborgs are sexy, huh? Did you ever see Alien?"

"And you're a hot-blooded cyborg," he said, smiling. "Barely suppressed rage is sexy, too, at least I find it so. Yes, I know a lot of big words. I've been augmented. I'd have thought a superintelligent machine-human hybrid like yourself would have figured that out by now." I was almost startled out of my anger. "A mortal being augmented? I've never heard of that being done!"

"I was an experiment," he explained. "A prototype for an operative that could be used in deep Prehistory. No budget for the project, unfortunately, so I'm unique. Michael Robert Hanuman, by the way." He extended his hand. It had long curved fingers and a short thumb, like an ape's hand. I took it gingerly.

"Botanist Grade Six Mendoza," I said, shaking his hand.

"A cyborg name," he observed. "What was your human name, when you had one?"

"I don't remember," I told him. "Look, I haven't been calling you a monkey during this conversation. How about you stop throwing around the word cyborg, okay?"

"No c-word, got it," he agreed. "You're sensitive about what you are, then?"

"Aren't you?"

"No, oddly enough," said Hanuman. He sat down in the chair next to mine. "I've long since come to terms with my situation."

"Well, three cheers for you," I said. "What are you doing in rehab, anyway?"

"I live here, at Cabo Rehabo," he said. "I'm retired now and the Company gave me my choice of residences. It's warm and I like the sea air. Also—" He fished an asthma inhaler from an inner pocket and waved it at me. "No fluorocarbons in the air during this time period. One of the great advantages to living in the past. What are you doing here, if you don't mind my asking?"

"There was an accident," I said.

"Really! You malfunctioned?"

"No, there was an error in the Temporal Concordance," I explained. "Some idiot input a date wrong and I was somewhere I shouldn't have been when a hotel blew up. Just one of those things that happen in the field."

"So you're—say! Would you be the one they brought in from Big Sur? I heard about you." He regarded my legs with renewed interest.

"That was me," I said, wishing he'd go away.

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