Kage Baker - Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin

Oh, dear, that old tale. I’d prefer not to discuss that, if you don’t mind. No, really, you’d have nightmares. No? Well, you’re an exceptional Immortal, I must say, if you don’t. I’m sure the rest of us do. Very well then; the night and the storm will provide atmosphere, and we can’t go anywhere until dawn anyway. Shall I tell you what really happened, that night in 1831? Have another glass of tea and poke up the fire. No sneering now, please. This is a true story. Unfortunately.

I was working for two Companies at once, you see. It so happened that my job with Dr. Zeus Inc. required me to assume a mortal identity and join the Russian-American Company, posing as a medico sent out to take care of the settlers in the Californian colony. The real job involved some clandestine salvage operations not far offshore, but they don’t enter into this story.

I’d worked hard to prepare a mortal identity, too, I mean besides graying my hair. I had all manner of anecdotes about having been a surgeon in the Imperial Navy and patched up battle wounds. I thought that’s what they’d need in California: someone to stitch up grizzly bear bites and slashes from knife brawls. But no sooner had I arrived in Sitka than I was summoned to Baron Von Wrangel’s office and informed that I was to be a botanist, if you please! Oh, and a surgeon, too, but when I wasn’t amputating limbs I was to spend my every spare moment collecting any local plants with curative powers, interviewing the natives if necessary.

Difficult man, Baron Von Wrangel. A man of science, to be sure, and limitless enthusiasm for exploration and study; but you wouldn’t want to work for him. And I wasn’t programmed for botany, you see! I’m scarcely able to tell a beet from a cabbage. I’ve been a Marine Operations Specialist for six centuries now.

Well, before I left Sitka I transmitted a requisition to the Company— our Company—for an access code on the healing plants of the Nova Albion region. I’d just received a confirmation on my request when the Buldakov weighed anchor and left Alaska, so off I went to California in fond hopes the access code would catch up with me there.

You’ve heard of the Ross colony, the Russian outpost north of San Francisco? It was supposed to grow produce to support Russia’s Alaskan colonies and turn a tidy profit for the Russian-American Company into the bargain. It lost money, as a matter of fact; but what a charming failure it was! On a headland above the blue Pacific, with beautiful golden mountains sloping up behind it and great dark groves of red pine trees along the skyline, and such a blue sky! Compared to Okhotsk it was a fairytale of eternal summer.

The stockade there was faced with the biggest planks I’d ever seen, enormous those red trees were, but the gates stood open most of the time. Why? Because there was no danger from the local savages. Despite my use of the term they were no fools, politically or otherwise, and they knew that our presence there protected them from the depredations of the Spanish. Therefore, the local chieftains signed a treaty with us; and you may say what you like about my countrymen, but as far as I know the Russians are the only nation ever to keep a treaty with Native Americans.

So it was a calm place, Ross, and I could sit calmly in the orchard outside the stockade. There I liked to work on my field credenza (resembling a calfskin volume of Schiller’s poems), and if a naked Indian ambled past with his fishing spear over his shoulder we’d merely wave at each other. On the day the Courier came I had been idling there all morning, typing up my daily report in a desultory way and watching the russet leaves drift down.

“Vasilii Vasilievich!” someone roared, and looking up I beheld Iakov Babin striding through the trees. He was one of the settlers, a peasant who’d worked as a trapper for a time, settled down now with an Indian wife. A tough fellow with a nasty reputation, too, and he looked the part: stocky and muscular, with a wild flowing beard and ferocious tufted eyebrows, and a fixed glare that would have given Ivan the Terrible pause.

“Hey, Vasilii Vasilievich!” he repeated, spurning windfall apples out of his way like so many severed heads as he advanced. I closed my credenza.

“Good afternoon, Babin. How is your wife? Did the salve help?”

“I wouldn’t know, Doc, I ain’t been home yet. I just come back from the Presidio.” He meant the handful of mud huts that would one day be San Francisco. “Jumped off the boat and been five hours on the trail.” He loomed over me and fixed both thumbs in his belt. “You know an Englishman by the name of Currier ?”

“Currier?” I scanned my memory. “I don’t believe so, no. Why?”

“Maybe he’s a Yankee. I couldn’t tell what the polecat was, nohow, but he comes on board the Polifem at Yerba Buena and says he’s looking for Dr. Vasilii Kalugin, which is you. Says he’s from some Greek doctor. You ain’t sick, are you, Doc?”

“No, certainly not!”

“No, me and the boys reckoned it was pretty unlikely you’d caught something from a whore!” His hard eyes glinted with momentary good humor, and I was uncomfortably aware of the contempt in which he held me. It wasn’t personal: but I could read and write and wore clothes made in St. Petersburg, which made me a trifle limp in the wrist as far as he was concerned. “So anyway, he’s on his way here now. I got to warn you, Doc, watch out for him.”

“Currier,” I mused aloud. Then I remembered my requisition. Of course! He must be the courier Dr. Zeus was sending with my access code. I improvised: “You know, I do have a maiden aunt in Minsk who put me in her will. Perhaps she’s died. Perhaps that’s what he’s here about. Not to worry, Babin.”

Iakov Dmitrivich shook his bushy head. “He ain’t from Minsk, Doc. More likely from Hell! Me and the boys about figured he’s a dybbuk .”

“Why on earth would you say that?” I frowned. Mortals who can detect the presence of cyborgs are rare, and in any case we’re all trained in a thousand little deceptions to avoid notice.

“He ain’t right somehow.” Babin actually shivered. “The Indians noticed first, and they wouldn’t go near him, though he was real friendly when he come on board. But when we had to sit at anchor a couple days, ’cause the captain took his time about leaving, well, he took on about it like a woman! Sat in his cabin and cried! Brighted up some when we finally lifted anchor, but the longer we were on board the crazier he acted. By the time we finally dropped anchor in Port Rumiantsev we was damn glad to be rid of him, I tell you.”

“Dear me.” I was at a loss. “Well, thank you, Babin. I’ll watch out for the fellow. Though if he’s bringing me a legacy I don’t suppose I’ll care whether he’s a dybbuk or not, eh?”