Kage Baker, The Children Of The Company

The worst sort of fix-up novel, stringing together disparate stories under the flimsiest of pretenses. It offers starring roles to two characters who have been mainly background to this point: Facilitator General Labienus, supreme evil genocidal master of shadowy behind-the-scenes manipulation, and Victor, morally conflicted lackey and double (triple? quadruple?) agent. Neither of them do much beyond what readers of the series are already aware they're responsible for; mainly, the book looks at important events from different perspectives and fills in a number of blank spots that didn't necessarily need filling in. For a "novel" that is in no sense a standalone and would not hold the slightest interest to anyone who hasn't read the previous books in the series, there's an astounding amount of redundancy, with each story going through explanations for what the Company is, what the cyborgs are, what they do for their employer, how they operate, and so on. At this point, Baker's refusal to progress a single one of the plotlines she's juggling in this series goes beyond worrisome to straight-up frustrating; I can still believe that she knows where all this is going to end up, but if she plans on resolving anything at all, the last two Company novels may be so crammed with collisions and pyrotechnics that there won't be any breathing room for the characters, and for what? So Baker can tell me for the thirtieth time that -- get this -- chocolate has some crazy effects on immortals?

There are SPOILERS beyond this point. SPOILER -- BAKER CONTINUES TO SPIN HER WHEELS

The framing material is completely unsalvageable. Basically, Labienus sifts through transcripts, files, reports, and found diaries for no real reason while we learn of his god complex, his desire to completely exterminate humanity, and his connections to almost every immortal major character we know. This is meant to establish him as the big individual villain of the series (as opposed to the impersonal wickedness practiced by Dr. Zeus), which is not exactly something the books were begging for. But even if the novel succeeded in portraying Labienus as a powerful, intelligent, and dangerous foe whose machinations have given our heroes good reason to hate him (and I don't think it succeeds at this; he's not vividly evil enough to pose a threat worth caring about, and despite his purported charm, he doesn't make for an entertainingly slimy rogue you love to hate, either, save for one short scene where he poses as an obnoxious concern-trolling reporter), the framing device itself is handled clumsily and unconvincingly. The narration in the previous Company books has already been inconsistent and requires a little suspension of disbelief, with narrators reciting novel-length stories to third parties who afterwards display no sign of having actually listened, but this time we're expected to believe that Victor (et al) actually *wrote down* his experiences as finely-crafted short stories, with infodumps and all, apparently aimed at laymen with no knowledge of the Company. One line -- "Some immortals write compulsively, out of a need to put distressingly eternal lives in perspective." -- isn't enough to justify this, especially because it hasn't been true of any of the other immortals we've seen, save Lewis and his novel-writing, which was considered out of the ordinary.

So. How about a look at the component stories? There's the journal of an 6th Century Irish monk who witnessed the big traumatic incident in Lewis' past. There on a job, Lewis learned that people were thought to have been stolen by the sidhe. He decided to investigate these so-called fairies and found a nest of the homo umbratilis, those brilliant little idiot savants responsible for all the rumors of changelings and aliens over the course of human history. We learn more about them -- their insect-like society, their obsessive focus, their to-some-degree shared memory, their less obsessive half-breed leaders with the ability to apply their cleverness. Lewis saved the captives, taking grievous injury in the process and losing his memory, and of course we know that the umbratilis never gave up on trying to recapture him. To have read this before The Graveyard Game would have addressed my problems with the sketchiness of Lewis' backstory, building sympathy and giving context to what happens to him. I also see no particular reason it couldn't have been incorporated into TGG itself, with Joseph and Lewis discovering the journal in their investigation (and intensifying Lewis' horror at learning what happened to make him lose his memory). Placed in this novel, though? The new information about the homo umbratilis is of minor interest, and we already know where Lewis ends up and why, so it serves no great purpose.

We meet Aegeus, Labienus' all-too-similar rival, another Facilitator General who has also built a private empire and plots to grab power when the Silence falls. They talk alike and operate in the same fashion, the only significant difference between the two being their goals: while Labienus wants to kill the mortals, Aegeus plans to enslave them. It's splitting hairs, really. One asset Aegeus has that Labienus doesn't (at least at first), though, is his very own homo umbratilis breeding program, with samples (hybrid children, a boy and a girl, Fallon and Maeve) recovered from the nest discovered by Lewis. Victor enters the novel as Aegeus' agent, assigned to keep watch over Lewis in the wake of the accident and charged with finding out how much he knows about what happened [1]. This section tries incredibly hard to portray Lewis as not stupid, and kind of pulls it off, as he asks the right questions, works through his gaps, and remembers -- only to be deactivated by Aegeus and memory-wiped again. This is nowhere near as chilling as the similar situation in Vinge's A Deepness In The Sky, and here the state of affairs doesn't even warrant the memory wipes; Aegeus' entire staff seems to be aware of the existence of the whole supergenius breeding program, and the homo umbratilis have abandoned the looted nest, so Lewis is hardly a security risk. So what if he knows that this race exists? He could do nothing to affect the plans of the Company or Aegeus himself.

Then there's the diary of Simeon, a young mortal working as a gardener in Aegeus' compound. He spends his time enchanted by the beauty of the now sexually mature Maeve (Fallon, meanwhile, has sickened and died) when one day, Aegeus comes to tell him that he has been selected to be Maeve's husband -- for breeding purposes, naturally. The marriage has it's highs and lows -- one minute she's berating him in the most bratty, spoiled way for not being able to do what Fallon could do ("Make the bones come alive again!" "Can you make that stick in the fire grow green leaves again?"), the next she's sexually voracious -- and you know what? Even if she consents. fucking a grown woman with a child's mentality is still creepy. When their son is born and the results are not what was desired, Maeve is passed on to another man, and Simeon watches as she is passed along after each new son. Meanwhile, in a very minor detour, Victor, sick at the thought of what Aegeus is doing, takes field assignments to witness human cruelty, hoping to convince himself that the sins of immortals pale in comparison to what people do to each other out in the world. Finally, a daughter is born, and all of Aegeus' attentions shift to his shiny new toy. Maeve is put out to pasture, bitter and aged before her time, and Simeon asks to have her back, caring for her lovingly in her dotage before she finally dies. Reading this, Labienus decides that Victor is a prime target for recruitment. As a story, it's not bad, but as a justification for why Labienus sets his sights on Victor, it's entirely insufficient.

Up to this point, the stories have flowed into each other, with important events leading to other important events. The main similarity between Victor and Lewis is that they're both easily manipulated low-level dupes motivated by a backgrounded unrequited love (Mendoza and Nan are vaguely twinned, so it makes sense to twin the men who want but cannot have them), which isn't really enough to create a strong parallel between them, but there's still time to develop that. Or rather, there *would* be, but say goodbye to any sense of flow in the novel at all.

Labienus has a passing thought about Facilitator Milhouse Van Drouten. This is all the excuse necessary to recount a comic caper that Labienus knows nothing about, one which has nothing whatsoever to do with Victor or Lewis and appears to have been included here solely for two sentences of outside assessment of Labienus' character (I reproduce Latif's assessment here: "Everybody under his command hates Labienus." "[He] never breaks the rules where anybody can see. And he always makes sure there's somebody else to take the blame." You'd think that a genuinely devious murderous overlord with a supposed mastery of all forms of leadership, diplomacy, and social interaction would be capable of masking these qualities, but Victor seems like the only one dumb enough not to pick up on these traits). It's 1702, and Van Drouten is running a Company station disguised as an inn in Amsterdam when Kalugin and a still young, humorless, and arrogant Latif show up. After learning from Facilitator General Houbert in Sky Coyote, Latif has spent some time serving under Labienus, and, after completing his studies with Van Drouten, he's finally going to fulfill his dream of working with his idol Suleyman; however, he finds he still has plenty to learn when he gets involved with the illegal chocolate trade and Wackiness (TM) ensues. As a chance to spend time with a fun character, the story is entertaining, but as development for Latif, it's not very useful, and the story doesn't belong here at all; the story on its own could be taken on its own merits, but its inclusion in the novel means that its placement must be justified, which puts unnecessary importance on the redundant, minor, forgettable lines about Labienus. That's the problem with a bad fixup job (beyond the fact that the novel doesn't work as a whole): reading these stories as sections of a novel actually makes them less effective than if they were presented separately.

We get Labienus recalling his involvement with Project Adonai over the centuries, guiding Nicholas Harpole towards his martyrdom (with consequences beneficial to the Company, of course) and, with his lackey Nennius, manipulating young Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax into becoming a ruthless secret agent. Despite Labienus' role as Mendoza's judge, she's pretty much beneath his attention, surfacing only when he evaluates how he could make use of her (such beauty, intelligence, and spirit! she would have made quite a valuable ally if only she didn't feel those pesky emotions! and so on), and he doesn't really do anything with Alec in his early life. This lack of meaningful connection to quite possibly the series' two most important characters feels like a misstep in establishing his credentials as a strong antagonist; they mean little to him and he means little to them. Then there's Labienus reflecting on his time as a disciple of his "father," Budu. When Budu sees the effects of the Black Plague, he's disappointed because it kills innocents with the guilty, and wants to find new, more precise ways to thin the mortal population; he's all about doling out justice ("There is only the moral question. [...] Whether the mortals live or die means nothing. What they are, while they live, is the only thing with which we are concerned."). Labienus, on the other hand, realizes that Budu must be eliminated before he can put his plans of mass murder into action, and muses on whether any mortals are innocent. Ooh, scary. Our brilliant immortal big bad has all the insight into human nature of a goth teenager. The cabal of likeminded individuals he gather receives a great assistance when Labienus and Nennius come into contact with Amaunet, AKA Mother Aegypt, one of Aegeus' people. She has secreted away her own little homo umbratilis genius, Emil, who has a special talent for chemistry, and she has tasked him on her pet project: she wants to find a way to kill herself. Making a deal with her (something along the lines of "if I find a way to kill immortals -- and believe me, I'm searching -- you'll be the first to know"), Labienus takes Emil and sets him to work. And so the Plague Club was born. Is it really necessary for those little guys to have been responsible for every invention and research development in the history of the world?

A stronger section is "Son Observe The Time," narrated by Victor and set in San Francisco on the eve of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, where a vast number of cyborg operatives (among them Nan, Lewis, and, naturally, Labienus) are mobilized to salvage all sorts of artifacts and loot. More than any Company story to this point, it gets dramatic mileage of the idea that, yeah, these immortals would be haunted by their knowledge of the coming death and destruction and their inability to change things. I mean, it hits most of the same notes as "The Fires Of Pompeii," but it hits them effectively, without the rescue of individuals mitigating the tragedy in any way; though Victor has affection for the working class family he befriends in his cover identity (he tries and fails to keep from feeling for them), he must let them die, and the one child he "saves" -- through a betrayal that will doubtlessly have extensive psychological consequences -- is placed in the hands of the Company, a mixed blessing even in the best cases. There's a flashback to Victor's origins (where he was saved, named, and recruited by Budu -- I think there may be one too many major characters for whom Budu is a father figure) just in time for Budu to appear in the present day and for Victor (after a brief check-in with Labienus for plot reasons, of course) to trail him to an underground opium den, where Budu tries to enlist Victor in his crusade, going through the same stuff we've heard multiple times before -- the Enforcers were killers responsible for allowing humanity to develop the first place, and the Company betrayed them and swept them under the rug -- and outlining his plans to create a just world, which are way more brutal than Joseph's interpretation of events led me to believe: "I'll make an end to recorded history. I can so decimate the races of men that their golden age will come again, and never again will there be enough of them to ravage one another or the garden they inhabit. And we immortals will be their keepers." Victor's response is to spit in his face. Surprising both of them, Victor's saliva contains a supervirus capable of immobilizing Budu. In his last moments, Budu realizes that he has been betrayed by Labienus; he quickly loses consciousness, and Victor leaves him to be dismembered by an angry mob. Later, when Victor comes with questions about being poisoned and used as a carrier, Labienus has explanations for everything, admitting that he infected Victor with a virus created by the homo umbratilis but claiming that Aegeus is responsible; Victor is willing to believe that, since he knows Aegeus is fully capable of such treachery. Mission accomplished.

Introduced here is what may be most important concept to the future of the series contained in the novel, Budu's assertion that history is not quite so unchangeable as the Company claims it to be: "Victor, such a simple trick, but it's never occurred to you. History is only writing, and one can write lies!" Unfortunately, it's not as chilling a moment as it might have been simply because it comes so late in the game. When Mendoza outlined the premises of the series at the beginning of In The Garden Of Iden, I already assumed that there must have exceptions to the "recorded history cannot be changed" rule because it's so clearly nonsense. People should be coming up with this "revelation" within the first day of being told about the rules of time travel, and over the course of six novels (FSVO "novel") and plenty of short stories, you'd think there would have been opportunities to define the boundaries of historical alteration more clearly. It's one thing if Baker wants to handwave the issue away to avoid writing yet another story where someone with knowledge of the future tries to prevent a murder or something and winds up causing it to happen. It's another if these rules and how they work are actually important to the development of the overarching plot.

Next, in "The Angel Of The Bottomless Deep," Labienus listens to a recording of Kalugin in 2083, the poor sap's last transmission before disappearing off the face of the earth. Finally, an actual answer to a mystery introduced in an earlier novel! Kalugin goes through his origins, his job description (going down with sunken ships to preserve stuff), his marriage to Nan, and an overview of the effects of the deadly Sattes virus, which first breaks out in prisons all over the planet, quickly killing all of the inmates, guards, and immediate family members of the guards, then burns out. On the world-building front, I cannot believe for a second that the majority of people (or even a large and vocal minority) would think of this as a "judgment of God." Only the most hateful "AIDS CURES FAGS" types would say that everyone in the world with AIDS deserves to die, and I think even they would balk at the death penalty for every prison-worthy crime in the world; the simplistic, ugly logic of the equation of gay sex with sin with AIDS with death does not seem duplicable in this situation. Then the virus breaks out in all the world's militaries, and I have no problem believing that government response to a deadly plague would be completely inadequate and irrational. In the aftermath of this mass death and panic, Kalugin is given a mission to go down with a submarine containing a unique experimental fusion drive. On his way, by chance, he meets another defective immortal (he remembers dealing with the damaged Courier in Black Projects), and deduces that she is spreading the virus (at first thinking that she might be spreading it accidentally). He messages Labienus with his suspicions (SPOILERS -- BAD IDEA). Then he goes underwater and waits to be rescued. The techs come for the fusion reactor. They leave him. Too late, he realizes that he stumbled on information that he shouldn't have, making him a liability. Goodnight for now! Evaluating the effects of the Sattes virus, Labienus decides that selective population culls aren't useful as a long-term strategy (which he should have known already if he was looking to spread mass death indiscriminately), and wonders why Victor hasn't moved in on Nan after he went to all the trouble of getting Kalugin out of the way. How does he perform his duties as a Facilitator if he's this poor at understanding human behavior? After hearing about Lewis' snooping into Edward's history and learning of the homo umbratilis efforts to recapture their quarry, Labienus and Nennius plot to hand Lewis over for experimentation in the hopes that the umbratilis will discover an effective way to kill immortals. From this we learn that, yes, the bad guys did exactly what Joseph and Lewis determined they did?

Finally, in "Father Of Pestilence," Victor's latest Company posting leads him to a job as a live-in bodyguard for the Karremans (husband and wife, both doctors) and their son, Hendrick, the first recombinant, who has been genetically engineered with enhanced natural abilities. The Karremans unveil to the world that their child is now 6 years old, a completely average, healthy, normal child fully capable of integrating with society and going to public school. Labienus helps with the ensuing media and legal shitstorm the Karremans face from a public fearful of the "unnatural" even when it's entirely harmless. Before leaving, he leaves Victor with some chocolate bars. Victor thinks, wow, everyone thinks he's kind of evil, and he's a total asshole who can't stop talking about how disgusting human beings are, and he did infect me with a virus to take out Budu that one time, but maybe he's not such a cold manipulator after all! DUMB. Victor bonds with the kid, who survives an assassination attempt and goes to school. When the child's classmates and teachers sicken and die of an unknown virus, the media and the medical establishment decide that, of course, let's fear the unknown, the recombinant must have been responsible for this deadly virus [2], and an angry mob murders the Karremans. Now you know the reason for the widespread hatred of recombinants and prejudice against genetic enhancement in Alec Checkerfield's time. Victor, following an evidence trail proving that the child could not have spread the virus, pinpoints its real source, then traces it back to himself and thinks back to the chocolate bars. Oh, Labienus, you've done it again!

Only not in a way that makes any sense; when confronted, Labienus reveals what I'm afraid may be the truth of the matter. The virus didn't come from the chocolate; that was just a completely pointless red herring. In fact, it seems that Victor has a special power: he can create toxins in response to "certain stimuli" known to the Company. That's also how he disabled Budu -- Budu attacked Victor, so his body responded by immediately manufacturing a toxin tailored specifically shut down to Budu's nervous and immune systems. I'm not sure if an explanation for why Victor can do this is forthcoming -- which would probably be along the lines of, wow, another crome generator made into a cyborg, what are the odds? -- or if I'm just meant to sit back and accept the fact that, yeah, some people's bodies just create viruses.

In addition to making no sense, this development would also seem to invalidate half the point of cobbling this book into something resembling a continuous narrative [3]. I mean, we get the homo umbratilis. We get Budu. We get Labienus deciding to eliminate Budu. We get Labienus getting ahold of one virus-producing homo umbratilis. We get Labienus manipulating Victor into infecting Budu. And now we learn that none of those earlier steps actually had anything to do with the final result because Victor made it all happen himself. Because he's special. This is a totally unnecessary complication, which means that the only reason it's here is that it's slated to figure into whatever happens later on. This is a really bad sign.

Later, Aegeus, having bugged the place, tells Victor that Labienus is a liar and a maniac. He orders Victor to infiltrate the inner circle of the Plague Club, passing key information on to him. Well, obviously, our poor boy's only options are loyalty to Aegeus or to Labienus. Whatever will he do? And so it ends, with Victor conflicted, Aegeus plotting, and Labienus continuing to muse (while plotting). The only character development arc in the book is Victor's, and there's nothing interesting about it; it's just the prelude to whatever important role he's going to play in the future. The epilogue arbitrarily introduces an immortal William Randolph Heart as a powerful figure in the Company leadership. It's an idea that could theoretically be used to tie together all of the series' themes of power and capital and classic film and stuff in a really cool way. Or it could just be another way for Baker to put off doing anything with the truckload of characters whose potential she's wasting; on the strength of this volume, I can't rule that out.

[1] I can't remember -- did Victor and Lewis even interact in The Graveyard Game? I seem to remember that the main reasons Victor helped Joseph and Lewis were his guilt over taking out Budu and his feelings for Nan. Now that I think of it, this volume is clearly a companion piece to TGG -- but there's no dramatic irony in the material here that requires knowledge of where these characters will end up in the 21st Century, since I think most of the component stories were written first. You could actually read this first, probably.

[2] I know the whole point of this is to say that even as our society changes, our future will be shaped by fear, ignorance, prejudice, and irrationality, since human nature remains the same. It does contain the hard-to-swallow implication, though, that medical science has evidently not progressed very far in a hundred and fifty years.

[3] You know, like Metal Gear Solid 4's entirely unnecessary retcon of Liquid Snake's possession of Ocelot, which is stupid and invalidates the clever, subtle background explanation offered by Metal Gear Solid 3. Though at least in that case, you might argue that Kojima is deliberately providing too much information in an attempt to kill the franchise once and for all, hoping to choke his audience on pointless data and resolution piled on resolution.