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Gods And Pawns (Stories Of The Company) by Kage Baker
01/07/2007 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
Pub: TOR/Forge. 335 page hardback. Price: $24.95 (US), $31.00 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-765-31552-6. Buy Gods And Pawns in the USA - or Buy Gods And Pawns in the UK  check out website: www.tor-forge.com
A good publisher will invest in a new author, working with them and gradually building up a following for their books. The hope is that demand will increase for each successive volume, especially if the output concerned is a series. For this to work well, there must be a regular slot on the schedules to accommodate the progression, for example a book a year. If there is too long between books, the fear is that the readers will be so fickle as to transfer their attentions to other writers. To fill the gap, sometimes a collection of short stories is published. For some writers, this is an opportunity to gather their short fiction from magazines and anthologies. For the writer, this strategy can offer a breathing space when the pressure of producing the annual manuscript gets a bit heavy.
Kage Baker has previously published seven novels in her series about The Company, an organisation that has in our far future developed both time travel and a means conferring immortality. 'Gods And Pawns' brings together seven examples of her shorter fiction. Five of them have had previous outings, being published between 2001 and 2004. In them, she revisits characters that appeared in the novels.
Baker has given herself strict rules. The most important being that history cannot be changed. However, since future history is yet unwritten, she can do what she wants with it. The stories are a mixture of historical, contemporary and semi-futuristic. Her cyborg characters are recruited in the past, altered, taught about the far future and then made to live all the years towards it. What they know about the future is what they have been told by time travellers from there. Another important rule is that travel to the future is not possible, you can only go back and then return to your point of departure.
One of Baker's favourite characters is Mendoza. Everyone seems to have come across her at some time. Fortunately, she only appears in two of these stories. 'To The Land Beyond Sunset' fills in a small part of the time after the novel, 'In The Garden of Iden', when she is posted to the yet undiscovered New World. Lewis is a Literature Conservator and has little to do at this South American base. Mendoza is a botanist. She is here, partly, to keep him out of trouble. Lewis is in love with Mendoza but she still dreams about her mortal lover who was burnt at the stake. When Lewis wins a week's vacation for two to anywhere of his choosing, he decides to take Mendoza to her chosen place of botanical paradise. All goes well until a storm floods the countryside and washes away most of their possessions and they are rescued by natives. This is perhaps the weakest story in the collection as I find most the stories involving Mendoza bland and flat. She is a passive character and things happen around her.
'The Angel In The Darkness' is far superior. The main characters are human with human problems and emotions. Baker writes well about this kind of character and makes them interesting. In the novel, 'Mendoza In Hollywood', we were introduced to the cyborg, Porfirio. He is unusual in that he has a family. When he was taken and converted, his younger brother was deemed unsuitable and given to a human family for adoption. When Porfirio eventually finds out, he takes on the duty of a guardian angel to his brothers' descendants. Maria Aguilar is one of these. Set in the 1990s, she has just lost her job but has responsibility for her father, presently in a care home and her niece, Tina, who as a young mother finds it difficult to cope. Porfirio has to intervene when another rogue cyborg threatens her in order to use the family as a lever to persuade him to ignore the occasional irregularity. The story has just the right amount of mystery, tension and a ring of reality.
In the early days of The Company's experiments to create their immortal cyborgs, they made mistakes. Since these mistakes are ultimately unkillable, they have to have ways of dealing with them (one of them is described in 'The Machine's Child'). 'The Catch' provides an example of what can go wrong and how the resulting danger is neutralised. Porfirio is the senior, experienced agent involved in the capture of Bobby Ross. Clete is his rookie partner. The action is quite neatly handled, but there is a lot of background that perhaps should have been used to expand the idea into something longer.
'Standing In His Light' demonstrates another of the traits of the Company and its agents. One reason for wanting to set up the time travel/immortal agent system is to make money. The preservation of genetic material, rare species and art works is not altruistic. Here, an agent in Amsterdam interferes by introducing the painter Vermeer to techniques that allow him to produce his accurately observed pictures. We only know of a handful of extant canvases but in the twenty-fourth century a stash of them is found, to be sold at high prices. The disturbing part of the story concerns the future where they are found. Baker portrays it as a bleak, colourless place with no edge to it. Nothing even slightly risqué is allowed. No-one has pets or eats animal products, not even milk. Not a place most of us would want to live.
'A Night Of The Barbary Coast' is another Mendoza story and the most forgettable. Joseph was her mentor, the one who originally snatched her from the Spanish Inquisition. Their task is to find the source of a particular gold quartz vein which has a rare lichen growing in it. I think it is supposed to be humorous.
Far better is 'Welcome To Olympus, Mr Hearst'. Joseph and Lewis have been sent to persuade William Randolph Hearst to allow them to secrete a signed Valentino script in one of his pieces of furniture to be rediscovered centuries later. Hearst drives a hard bargain. This story is enjoyable because Baker has managed to capture the atmosphere of the period when film stars such as Garbo and Gable were house guests at the Hearst Mansion. It also contains unexpected twists and adds to the lore about the Company's operations.
The final story, 'Hellfire At Twilight' is another historical piece. This time the setting is England in 1774 when the famous Hellfire Club is in decline as the participants age or settle down to family life. Lewis is sent to retrieve a document from its leader, Sir Francis Dashwood. Events are complicated as Lewis discovers that he has an allergy to gooseberries which suddenly seem to be in season.
There are some good stories in this collection but the main reason for buying this volume is to see some of the work of the Company's agents without the complication of Mendoza. It also provides an insight into some of the strictures Baker has placed on her perceived future.
Pauline Morgan
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