Characters in the Novels of the Company

Facilitators are fixers, smooth talkers, masters of disguise. Their job is to lay the groundwork for Preservers to do their work, and cover up their mistakes. They are consummate role-players. From time to time it is hinted that known historical figures were really Facilitators acting out a part. Security Techs operate as a kind of police, secret and otherwise, with the cyborg community. Their duties range from day to day monitoring of other cyborgs to Facilitator-like jobs overseeing groups of Preservers. A special sub-group are known as "problem solvers" who are equipped with the means to disable and dismantle rogue cyborgs.

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.

The collection Black Projects, White Knights begins with a preamble story imagining someone stealing a dossier from Dr. Zeus and reading it. In this dossier are dates and places where various cyborgs were "acquired". As a sly comment on the foibles of large bureaucracies, the entries give exact Gregorian dates for events in prehistory.

Joseph, 25 November, 18,415 BCE, Irûn del Mar, Spain.

Nan, 14 June 1541 CE, Senegal.

Kalugin, 21 May 1345 CE, Russia.