Mendoza

Mendoza is a female cyborg, a botanist recruited from the dungeons of the Inquisition in 16th century Spain. In appearance, she is a barely adult woman with flame-red hair and startling black eyes. While still chronologically young, she suffers a huge psychological trauma after falling in love with a doomed mortal in Tudor England. She is also a "Crome Generator", with a powerful psychic potential that she cannot control. Through a series of awful events over the following 300 years, she comes to despise mortals, her fellow cyborgs, and eventually herself. She attempts to isolate herself from all harm, but cannot escape the Company, for whom everything she has done and will do is in the temporal concordance.

Lewis

Lewis is a male cyborg, a Literature specialist taken as a baby in Roman times. He is short but handsome, with a resemblance to the 1940s actor Leslie Howard, for whom he acts as a movie stand-in in the 20th century, along with stints as a double for Rudolph Valentino and others. Meeting Mendoza at a Company base in South America in the 17th century, he falls hopelessly in love with her. She is barely aware of this, of course, being already traumatized by the loss of her first love. She disappears from his view in the 19th century, and he tries to find her through the next 300 years, stumbling across Company secrets in the process. He is also the object of pursuit by strange pale little men, who were responsible for almost destroying him in medieval Ireland and would eventually manage to capture him. His memories of this have been suppressed by his superiors, to keep the existence of these strange beings a secret.

Kalugin and Nan d'Aragnée

Unusually, these two have been allowed to marry, and even occasionally work on the same projects together. Kalugin was recruited in medieval Russia, while Nan is from Africa, recruited in the same batch as Mendoza in the 16th century. She takes her name from Anansi, the Spider God of her people in Africa. She was orphaned when the Smoke Men, probably Arab slave traders, attacked her village.

Both Kalugin and Nan specialize in rescuing artworks. Kalugin gets the assignments where the art was lost at sea, in which case he is designated to be on board when the ship goes down, and stay with the artifacts till a Company sub picks them up. However it is soon apparent that Kalugin is lost somewhere on one of his operations. Which one it is, and why, becomes apparent in The Children of the Company.

Imarte

Recruited in ancient Babylon, Imarte is an anthropologist who collects cultural knowledge and customs. Like all Preservers, she cares more about her work than anything else. Since contact with outsiders inevitably contaminates her work, she resents the activities of any other Preservers, as is evident in Sky Coyote. She also practices a form of "total immersion" learning which involves having sex with her male subjects, either as a freelance prostitute, as in Mendoza in Hollywood, or else a "religious concubine", as in past assignments. Joseph describes her as "Mesopotamian dusky, with green eyes and an hourglass figure" in Sky Coyote.

Nefer

Nefer is Mendoza's team-mate on the expedition to Tudor England in In The Garden of Iden. She is a Zoologist specializing in livestock but was apparently recruited in Ancient Egypt. As Mendoza is obsessed by plants, she is obsessed by breeds of sheep, cattle etc. Being much older, she plays the "old hand" to Mendoza's rookie. Since there is nothing for her to do at the house of Iden, she spends her time listening to agricultural broadcasts on Dr. Zeus' radio network, at one point disturbing the household by clambering about the roof trying to set up an antenna. In the 24th century she is wandering in the Serengeti when she hears of the increasing internal conflicts inside the Company. She seeks sanctuary with Suleyman.

Joseph

Facilitator Joseph is 20,000 years old as a cyborg. He was recruited by Budu when his tribe was wiped out by members of the Great Goat Cult, a fanatic religion in prehistory. Being from the Basque area of Spain, he is short, dark and also somewhat sinister looking. Joseph recruited many other cyborgs, including Mendoza. Having outlived everyone else he ever knew, including various mortal wives, Joseph regards Budu as his father, and eventually sees Mendoza as his daughter. After both disappear, Budu in the 11th century and Mendoza in the 19th, he too wants to know what happened to them. While not as committed as Lewis, he follows the clues Lewis finds, with disastrous results.

Porfirio

Although much younger than Joseph, Security Tech Porfirio has something Joseph lacks - a family. He has been allowed to maintain contact with blood relatives descended from his brother. Like his brother, he is a first-generation mestizo, his mother having been an Aztec, and his father a Conquistador. Often he presents himself to his relatives as a long-lost uncle, or simply is allowed to work close by to keep an eye on them. In the 1860s, he runs an Inn in Cahuenga Pass, California, so his Preservers can glean information from passing travelers and the local population. Mendoza is one of the Preservers who has been foisted upon him; ostensibly she is to gather plant species soon to become extinct in a years-long drought, but the Company fails to move her on once the drought hits. Porfirio has to deal with her moods, her night-time psychic fireworks, and eventually her disastrous encounter with someone who is involved in an unknown Company-related plot. Mendoza and a few other cyborgs disappear as a consequence, but Porfirio is allowed to stay free and monitor his family. Over a century later he is able to tell Joseph something of what happened to Mendoza. He also reveals that staying in contact with his family is his reward for being a "problem solver" who does the Company's dirty work.

Sarai

Facilitator Sarai, under the name Sarah, participates in the Adonai project as the young Alec Checkerfield's nurse-companion. She is outwardly a young dark-skinned Jamaican but is actually centuries old, having been transported to the Caribbean on a slave ship, presumably in the 17th century. After the adult Alec's disappearance she is convinced the Company will take her into custody and she will disappear as so many others have. She is contacted in London by Latif who gives her safe passage to Suleyman in Fez, Morocco. Apparently she, Nan and a Preserver, Nefer, were once Suleyman's wives, and as the year 2355 approaches they are re-united with him. The name Sarai may be intended as a reference to saray, the Turkish word equivalent to harem, from which the Italian word seraglio is apparently derived.

Labienus

One of the oldest of the Executives, he came originally from the location of Jericho in what is now Palestine, having been orphaned by the Great Goat Cult in prehistory. Although he was given charge of a region of Mesopotamia, his arrogance caused him to treat it as a personal playground until told to start organizing villages into cities. Still, he retained a contempt for humans throughout the ages and is the leading member of the Plague Club.

Houbert

Described as resembling J. Wellington Wimpy, Houbert is both an executive and an architect, but expends much energy on sybaritic living and ostentatious display. Having run New World One, when that installation was dismantled he moved to a chateau on the Loire in France, and subsequently drove the development of Monte Carlo.

Aegeus

Another old Executive, he runs Eurobase One for millennia, transforming it from a stockade into an underground palace full of antiquities and art. Like Labienus, he sees humans as inferior, but he believes that eventually they will simply be slaves to the cyborgs. Aegeus used Victor as an agent until Victor came under the influence of Labienus, whereupon Aegeus tried to have Victor spy on Labienus for him.

Suleyman

With a base of operations in Fez, Morocco, Suleyman runs the North African operation of the company. For a long time he worked undercover as a Corsair. It was in this role that he found and recruited Latif on a slave ship in the 1690s.

Latif

We first encounter Latif at the age of three, already apprenticed to Houbert at New World One, and set to serve with Labienus at Mackenzie Base. At the age of five he works for Van Drouten in Amsterdam, causing her some problems with some creative freelance marketing. By the 24th century he is grown and working for Suleyman in Fez, monitoring and attempting to frustrate the activities of Labienus, Aegeus, and other parts of the Company working against mortals.

Van Drouten

Orphaned by the Black Death, Van Drouten grew into an unremarkable, plain woman, perfect cover for running Eurobase Five out of a large house in Amsterdam. This duty she performs right into the 24th century, as we learn in Gods and Pawns.

Budu

Budu is the Enforcer who recruited Joseph while killing the Great Goat Cult fanatics who killed Joseph's parents. Just before he disappears, he meets Joseph for the last time and forces information on him that eventually leads Joseph to discover the secret places where surplus, damaged and renegade cyborgs are held in tanks of fluid in suspended animation. Joseph hopes to find Budu and Mendoza in these places, but eventually he finds Budu's still viable remains elsewhere and transports them to one of the facilities in the hope that they can be re-animated.

Budu also recruited Labienus and Victor, the one in prehistory, the other in Anglo-Saxon Britain.

Marco

Marco, after the destruction of the Great Goat Cult, believes that the fight must continue until all humans who kill are removed from history. He rebels, is captured, and is sent back in time to 300,000 BCE to operate Options Research. Here he experiments on suicidal cyborgs, seeking a means of killing them. This is harder than he or anyone else could imagine, but he enjoys trying.

Rutherford

Rutherford is the first Inkling we meet. He is about 30 years old in 2350, portly and asthmatic. He is an incurable romantic and has created for himself the persona of an English academic, even though he was born on the Moon to American parents, who helped him avoid being declared "eccentric". Rutherford is not the name he was born with. He is the "ideas" man of the group.

Ellsworth-Howard

Foxen "Foxy" Ellsworth-Howard is a genetic designer responsible for the creation of the Company's operatives. He too would like to be seen as an academic of sorts, but thanks to an upbringing in a family of "neo-punks" he cannot look or sound the part. His speech consists of obscene gutter-slang, and his head has been rendered hairless and studded with steel rivets. He also suffers from bipolar disorder. The medications he takes for this leave him in a bad mood most of the time.

Like most inhabitants of the time, and unlike his fellow Inklings, Ellsworth-Howard cannot read. However he can create creatures from raw DNA using his "buke", or personal computer.

Chatterji

Born Francis Mohandas Chatterton he changed his name back to Chatterji, it having been anglicized by his Indian great-grandparents. He was sent to an institution after his "Pre-Societal Vocational Appraisal", popularly known as the "Sorting", taken by all children at age 10. Recruited by the Company, he acts as the liaison between the Inklings and the Company board. He has no need for affectation, having been born into the upper classes of London society. His one eccentricity is a menthol inhaler which looks like a cigarette holder. Since smoking is illegal, this occasionally gets him into trouble until he is able to show that it cannot be used for smoking.

At the Sorting, Chatterji was seated next to Alec Checkerfield. Alec told him which answers to choose during the Sorting test. Chatterji was subsequently led away to "Hospital" for treatment, leading eventually to his recruitment by the Company, and his working on the Adonai project which led to the birth of Alec Checkerfield.

Bobby Ross

Bobby Ross's case is unusual. Recruited from an automobile accident in 1958 at the age of 10, he proved to be a medical disaster as his DNA was too degraded to function in a self-repairing organism. He suffers from disfiguring growths and other ailments. Proving to be a mathematical genius, he was allowed to study time travel, but somehow turned himself into a living time machine. Not only that, he was able to travel to his future, an ability he used to get himself 21st century medical treatment. Until caught, he lived in 1951, experiencing the same year over and over. He is able to send objects back in time, and during experiments with sending the same object to the same place and time over and over, he claims to have caused the explosions resulting in the Tunguska event and the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

"Captain Sir Henry Morgan"

Alec Checkerfield, given an ordinary "Playfriend" educational system at age six, is able to bypass its safety programming. His ability to instantly comprehend and manipulate technology is part of his genetic makeup as an incarnation of Adonai. The system had already adopted a personality as a kindly "sea captain". Thanks to Alec's love of pirate stories, it transforms into a recreation of the famous pirate Sir Henry Morgan. This embryonic AI, with Alec's help and money, is able to upgrade itself until, by the time Alec is an adult, it is the most powerful AI in the world. It exists in a network which spans the globe and, eventually, is able to tap into the network run by the Company. During a raid in which Alec hijacks a time shuttle, the Captain steals most of the Company's data relating to time travel, immortality, and all the schemes and historical manipulations the Company has been involved in. This then enables Alec to disappear into the past, his first step in rescuing Mendoza from the Company and defeating it in 2355. Eventually the Captain is given a body to inhabit.

Zeus

Realizing that Alec's AI is a major threat after an encounter in 2351, the Company encourages its tame geniuses, including Bugleg, to transform the Company network into a similar AI. Having done this they discover they have created Zeus, an entity which, thanks to time travel, always existed even though it was not created until 2351. As proof of this, as soon as they are finished creating the AI they receive a package ordered two years previously. In this is a talking computer interface in the likeness of an ancient statue, the Artemision Bronze, thought by some to represent Zeus.

William Shakespeare

The short story The Dust Enclosed Here, published in the collection Black Projects, White Knights, introduces what appears to be a recreation, in holographic form, of William Shakespeare in 24th century London. Actually it is a recording of Shakespeare's mind, made on his deathbed by a Company agent. It inhabits a museum where it speaks to visitors, despite the fact that the actual plays are considered unhealthy for people to watch or read (and few people can read anyway). The recorded personality gradually becomes aware of its surroundings until, thanks to a malfunction, it can switch itself on and wander the museum at night. A young Alec Checkerfield encounters Shakespeare and hacks the supporting hardware to make Shakespeare fully self-aware and able to manifest himself and anything else from his memory as a hologram at any time. He is then able to write new plays and produce them on stage when nobody is watching. Like Captain Morgan, Shakespeare is eventually given a body to inhabit.

Ancilla

Ancilla is part of the Alpha-Omega project preserving genetic material. Ancilla is a female personality charged with protecting David Reed, a 24th-century mortal who services the equipment, which is located half a million years in the past. Thanks to cybernetic implants, he can experience a virtual reality world which is partly made up of a real office in 24th century London, and partly of "The Portal", which is where he works on the genetic storage unit. The virtual world also contains his living quarters, which seem to him like a normal London flat. Here Ancilla ministers to his every need. He perceives her as an older lady sitting in a chair, while she carefully monitors his psychological state. If necessary she can even satisfy him sexually.

When Alec Checkerfield and Mendoza raid Alpha-Omega, they bring their AI Captain Morgan, who overpowers Ancilla in an almost romantic way before they leave with their booty, namely the template for Alec's genome, to be used to make him immortal. As the Company saga concludes, Alec and his allies resolve to free "spirits trapped in silicon" such as William Shakespeare. It is possible they also provide for Ancilla.

The Plague Club

Since he went rogue in 1099 Budu has apparently been gathering disciples. He was disgusted by the religious wars of medieval times and wished to return humanity to a state where it could be ruled by the Enforcers, who simply kill anyone who makes war on others. This would mean drastically reducing the population. His recruits included Labienus, who with Nennius began researching plagues as a means of carrying out Budu's vision. Budu objected to this, but Labienus may have engineered his downfall and gone ahead anyway, beginning with the Spanish flu epidemic.

The Imperial faction

Cyborgs such as Aegeus enjoy a rich lifestyle, propped up by many mortal servants. They aim to be at the top of the pile with humanity as their slaves. They see themselves as being the real masters of the Company, with mortals such as Bugleg as mere puppets.

Humanitarians

Suleyman and his allies aim to frustrate the Plague Club, but also protect the interests of cyborgs against any attempt by the Company to get rid of them, or to place them all in storage.