This is just 130 years before the event horizon known as the Silence, when the knowledge of the past communicated by the Company to its immortal time-traveling cyborg servants runs dry and control of the future presumably goes up for grabs. What will happen then is anybody's guess, but the Company is clearly worried about the prospect of facing its powerful creations on anything like an even footing and is already taking steps to defuse the threat.
Labienus is far from being the only cyborg with no intention of going gently into whatever good night looms post-2355, but he is perhaps the most ruthless and cold-blooded conniver for power, with little love for his own kind and even less for the human beings he ostensibly serves but in reality only serves up. Because such a character is apt to generate little sympathy in readers, Baker wisely presents the Machiavellian influence of Labienus through its effect on other characters, most of whom are familiar from earlier installments of the series: Facilitator Victor, Preserver Lewis, Specialist Kalugin. Notably missing is the exiled Mendoza, though hints are dropped that she will be brought back into play in the next volume.
The discrete sections of the novel are linked by the expedient of having Labienus review his private files, the contents of which stoke his recollections. There is no overarching plot thread per se but rather a multitude of strands that tie in with characters and events from previous Company novels and short stories, as well as, presumably, those to come. Chief among these are further revelations concerning the mysterious ADONAI project, and the discovery of a hitherto unsuspected branch of humanity, Homo sapiens umbratilis, that shuns the light of day and possesses instinctive powers of invention so remarkable as to make them formidable enemies—or allies—in the coming struggle.
Because the backstory is so dense, readers unfamiliar with the Company would do well to begin with the first book in the series, The Garden of Iden.
A flawed but essential addition
Baker is a first-rate talent, but the artificiality of her contrived narrative frame keeps The Children of the Company from being a first-rate novel, even though the individual stories are almost uniformly superior, and some of them, such as the aforementioned "Son Observe the Time" (set immediately before the San Francisco earthquake) and the chapter entitled "Messis Vero Consummatio Saeculi Est" (originally published as "The Applesauce Monster"), about a genetically engineered human boy, are as good as anything she has ever written.
Her satirical eye is as sharp as ever, and each episode contains moments of inspired comedy, but because characters like Victor and Lewis, though no longer strictly human, have retained a conscience and thus, unlike Labienus, empathize with human suffering and acknowledge their guilt in either causing or failing to prevent it, there is a tragic aspect to these stories that lingers in the heart and mind long after they are over. Baker's gifts for characterization and comedy are supremely seductive, but it's the moral dimension of her vision, the complex view of history as both farce and tragedy, that makes her work so memorable and distinctive.
Despite the high quality of the parts making up the whole, the overall impression here is of a careful author diligently setting the stage for a climax yet to come. But that said, there is much to savor, and it's fascinating to watch Baker bringing her vast design to fruition on both the macro and micro levels. It is impossible to read The Children of the Company without being ever more deeply impressed by the thoroughness and artistry with which Baker has conceived and elaborated her central conceits.
If you like Baker's science fiction, try her marvelously witty fantasy, The Anvil of the World. —Paul
