The Children of the Company by Kage Baker

hallmarks of a true Facilitator is the ability to absorb unpleasant realities while remaining focused on the job at hand. I believe I was rather better at this when I was nineteen; I was not, as yet, aware that there were any unpleasant realities for us immortals.
    And so I was able to watch with a certain detachment, three days later, as the dead man was dredged out of his vat in a creel of copper mesh and deposited on a steel table, where technicians intubated him and drew the oxygenated fluid from his lungs. I watched him coughing, jerking to life, shivering
and vulnerable, not really conscious yet. He groped blindly as they hosed the last of the fluid off him—I had enough of a sense of empathy to hope that they were using warmed water, at least—and then lay quiet under the rush of air, as the technicians moved in to perform the necessary diagnostic procedures.
    I extended a scan myself: he seemed fully functional, as immortal as any of us once again. The technicians finished with him, lifted him onto a stretcher and threw a blanket over him.
    He was taken to the infirmary dormitory, to a private room, and there I waited next day for his return to consciousness. I amused myself by studying his features and speculating on his mortal origins.
    My biological inheritance is Saxon and Danish, as my skin and hair bear witness; he had more of the look of a fair Celt about him, and something of a Roman as well, in his even and precise features. We were both men of slight stature, but whereas I am fairly solidly made, he had a swimmer’s build. His body bore no mark of whatever accident had precipitated ten years in a regeneration vat.
    I confess that I yielded to the temptation to lift one of his eyelids, ostensibly to determine what color his eyes were but in truth to see if I could prod him awake. He slept on. I threw myself back into my chair with a sigh of ennui.
    Callous young brute, wasn’t I? And so easily bored. Most of my classmates had already departed Eurobase One, flown off to exciting missions in the field in places like Byzantium or Spain or Cathay. Of course, they were mere Preservers: a Facilitator requires more subtle and detailed education. No grubbing after rare plants or animals for him ! His job is to sway ministers and kings, and thereby arrange mortal political affairs to the Company’s advantage. He must, therefore, learn from masters. That was why I was still cooling my heels here, watching the neophyte class toddle through its immortality process and listening to Aegeus pontificate.
    Not that it seemed like pontification then. At the time I hung on his every word, and, to an even greater degree, on his meaningful silences. The true significance of silence is another thing one fails to appreciate at the age of nineteen.
    I was examining my thin little beard and wondering if I ought to comb my mustaches or curl them when I glanced over the top of the mirror and saw that the man had opened his eyes. Hastily I slid the mirror into my belt
pouch, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at the ceiling in a vacant kind of way. Gradually he began to look around him, to take in the frame of his bed and the wall fresco.
    “God Apollo,” he whispered to himself.
    “H’em!” I enunciated.
    He sat bolt upright—nothing wrong with the fellow’s reflexes—and saw me at last. “Good—is it good morning? I’m afraid my chronometer seems to be offline,” he said.
    “I shouldn’t be surprised if it were,” I said, hugely amused at the joke. “How do you feel?”
    “Fresh as a daisy, thanks,” he replied. His eyes tracked around the room. “I’m in a repair facility. Aren’t I?”
    “Eurobase One, in point of fact,” I informed him.
    “Ah! Of course,” he said with some satisfaction, but as he followed the thought further his face grew blank. He was trying to run a self-diagnostic. The results must have been inconclusive, for he turned to me in panic.
    “What happened?