The Graveyard Game

Graveyards, both figurative and literal, recur as a motif in the narrative. Porfirio is introduced during a traditional visit to a cemetery on the Day of the Dead festival. The repositories where cyborgs, mostly Enforcers, are held in suspended animation, are a kind of graveyard. One such has its entrance inside a tomb. Joseph has to disinter Budu from an urban park, as neat as any cemetery, and take him to a repository for revival.

Segments titled "Joseph in the darkness" appear before and after each of the episodes described below. Joseph, apparently talking to his father-figure, Budu, fills in historical detail in the storyline and discusses his own motivations.

In Mendoza in Hollywood, the botanist Mendoza and her companion Einar were thrown forward in time from 1863 to 1996 in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. This is supposed to be impossible, but Mendoza is a Crome generator, a psychic who cannot control her potential, and Laurel Canyon is a focus of Crome radiation (explaining its attraction for certain kinds of people over the years!).

As the action of this novel opens, Lewis is arriving at Company HQ in Laurel Canyon in 1996. Entering the building he is just in time to see Mendoza being sent back to her own time, and tries to warn her "Don't go with him!", meaning the English agent she encounters later. From his point of view, that encounter was the cause of her disappearance. She vanishes as the transfer takes place.

Lewis takes advantage of work in San Francisco to contact Joseph who is working in the hi-tech industry there. Joseph persuades him to try out a new virtual reality helmet, which turns out to have a fault that disables cyborgs' implanted monitors for 24 hours. Joseph and Lewis can now talk freely, without Company eavesdropping. Initially reluctant, Joseph drives Lewis to Bodega Bay to talk to Juan Bautista who was the last cyborg to see Mendoza. They give him a dose of VR and then pump him for information.

Juan Bautista is able to draw a picture of the man Mendoza met in 1863 and subsequently ran away with. To Joseph's shock, the man is a double for Nicholas Harpole, the religious fanatic with whom Mendoza fell in love in Tudor England, and who was subsequently burned at the stake. Joseph sees Nicholas as the main cause of Mendoza's troubles. He also hates religious fanatics of all stripes. Leaving Juan Bautista, Joseph and Lewis agree to meet from time to time as circumstances allow, and as they learn more.

A family is celebrating the "Day of the Dead" at a graveyard in Texas. The paterfamilias, actually an uncle, is Porfirio, Mendoza's Facilitator in 1863. Under cover of an electrical storm, Joseph contacts Porfirio and asks what he knows about Mendoza. Porfirio tells him Mendoza was sent back in time, Back Way Back, over 100,000 years. The Company operated resorts for rich clients back before the arrival of humans in the New World. She must have been sent there, but why? Porfirio sends Joseph on his way with one request: don't come back.

Lewis poses as an antiquarian, buying old papers and books, and comes into possession of a box which contains a picture of a man named Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, who he recognizes as the man in the picture drawn by Juan Bautista. Further research turns up a well-born man, apparently a natural son of someone in high places, with powerful friends who guide his life. He served as an agent of various shadowy entities. Lewis contacts Joseph and they meet in London. They make a junket to the north of England.

They spend time in the country of "The Innocents", an imagined novel combining elements of Animal Farm and Watership Down. This novel and its loony fans are among the catalysts for the growing animal-rights movement which will eventually ban meat consumption in many countries. They stay at a house run by two of the more extreme fans, but Joseph has other motives. He has finally decoded some information Budu forced on him, and he means to act on it.

Under cover of another storm, Joseph sneaks out of the house, with Lewis tailing him. They uncover a secret installation in a hillside, containing many cyborgs suspended in tanks of fluid. Are Mendoza and Budu in places like this? Lewis' Company conditioning, intended to keep cyborgs out of forbidden places, causes him to re-experience his suppressed memories of being disabled and kidnapped in medieval Ireland. He begins to understand why the Company left him in South America for 700 years, until the events recorded in Sky Coyote.

Lewis is still researching Edward when he can. He learns that Nennius, another cyborg, was monitoring or guiding Edward, even being the headmaster of his school. Joseph seeks out Suleyman, a former Barbary Coast pirate who has built up an independent power base in Fez, Morocco. Suleyman has also found means of frustrating the Company monitoring. Suleyman reveals that he himself is working secretly against other factions, some of whom seem to be creating new diseases to wipe out humans. He implicates Budu in this, to Joseph's consternation.

Joseph and Lewis meet again in London. Joseph now has one of Suleyman's masking devices. Lewis tells him all he knows about Edward. Edward was working for people who wanted to gain possession of Santa Catalina island, off the California coast. Joseph has a meeting with Victor, who reveals that he did bring Budu down, a few hours before the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and tells Joseph where to find him.

Lewis is working in a library. Finding his cover blown by a strange little man, Lewis drops out of sight and heads to Spain for another meeting with Joseph. On the way he encounters more of the strange men, and is injured with some kind of disrupter that partially disables his hand. This is not supposed to be possible, as the cyborgs have self-repair mechanisms. Told to take a vacation, he accompanies Joseph on a tour of the local archeological sites— the places where Joseph was raised, 20,000 years previously, before checking into a Company base for repairs.

Lewis has an "accidental" encounter with Nennius aboard a cruise ship, and Nennius feeds him a story about Edward. Lewis contacts Joseph, and they proceed to Santa Catalina where Lewis believes the key to the mystery is hidden. It is a trap. Lewis is taken, and Joseph severely injured. Rolling off a cliff and into the sea, he eventually washes up onshore and is able to reach one of Suleyman's mosques, from where he is taken to Suleyman himself. When he recovers, his implant has been removed. He is a free agent, but also a fugitive. If the Company ever discovers he is still alive, there will be Hell to pay. Suleyman gives him the same message as Porfirio did: go, and don't come back.

Joseph follows Victor's instructions and locates Budu, buried by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He takes the remains to one of the Company's storage facilities under Mount Tamalpais and starts the process of revivification, with help from the cyborg Abdiel, whose entire life consists of journeying between these facilities, maintaining them.

Joseph settles down to wait for Budu to re-activate, and tells his recovering corpse his story. He likens himself to Hamlet, for delaying too long in taking action, resulting in the deaths of all around him. But he still has 74 years until 2355...