The Life of the World to Come (14 page)

Read The Life of the World to Come Online

Authors: Kage Baker

Tags: #Adult, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Fantasy, #C429, #Extratorrents, #Kat, #Travel

BOOK: The Life of the World to Come
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“You think about it pretty carefully. If you make me tell my version we’ll both go into hospital, but I’ll bet I get out a long time before you do. If they ever let you out at all. Okay, mate?”
Alec sat crying at his school desk, as the Captain stalked back and forth furiously.
“He might have killed you,” Alec said.
“By thunder, no whey-faced son of a whore’s fit to pull the plug on Sir Henry Morgan,” raged the machine. “But we’ve got to shift, now, laddie, that we must. We’re on a lee shore. Those Pembrokers won’t let it rest at this, you see, they’ll want to know how you managed to set me free. They’ll go to the law to try and make you tell them, and we don’t want that.” He pointed to the Playfriend unit with his cutlass. “Time to abandon ship. I’ve got to go live in that there box.” He swung the cutlass round to indicate the cabinet where the components had been assembled over so many months, with such care. “It ain’t as roomy as I’d like, but needs must when the devil’s breathing fire up yer arse.”
Alec giggled through his tears.
“So get the little tools out, matey, and work fast, and work quiet,” the Captain said, dropping to one knee to look into his eyes. “Go bolt the door. Let’s not have any meddlers to see and tell tales, eh? And then, me bucko, then!” He grinned wolfishly. “We’ll board the old St. Stephen, and see what plunder’s to be had.”
Alec worked obediently, ignoring the noise of the sirens as the ambulance pulled up in front of the house, and all the commotion as Mr. Crabrice was taken down the stairs. Before
the ambulance pulled away he had finished his task, and the Captain stood before him again, preening and stretching.
“Now that’s prime,” the Captain said, with a new resonance in his voice. He had a much more solid appearance, too, less like a stained-glass window or a three-dimensional cartoon. “That’s power! Mind you, I’m going to fill this hold till she’s riding low in the water, but we’ll have plenty of time to make our plans afterwards.” He lifted his head. “Hellfire, these sensors are sharp as razors! I can hear yer butler coming. I’ll just go aloft for a while, now, Alec. Stand fast.”
“Alec?” said Lewin from the other side of the schoolroom door.
A moment later Alec unbolted the door and opened it. “I’m sorry, Lewin,” he said.
Lewin looked at the tear-tracks on the child’s pale, tense face. “It’s okay, son,” he said gently. “They’re all gone. Can we talk?”
“Sure,” Alec said, stretching out his arm to wave Lewin into the room. It was one of those lordly gestures that made the household smile.
“You don’t need to hide, Alec.” Lewin came into the room and looked around. The Playfriend sat on its customary table. “Nobody’s going to take you to hospital.”
“Did I really break Mr. Crabrice’s legs?” Alec quavered.
“Yes, son, you did.” Lewin pulled out a chair and sat down. “What’d you kick him for?”
“He tried to take the Captain away from me,” Alec said. “He yelled at me. He was all, I made modifications and I wasn’t supposed to and I could be persecuted if I didn’t tell him what I did. I got scared and I grabbed the Playfriend, but he grabbed it, too. I was going to run, but he wouldn’t let go. So then I was mad and I just kicked him and kicked him until he fell down.”
“Okay.” Lewin rubbed his chin. “Okay. It was still wrong, Alec, but he started it. All the same—you’re a very strong kid, and you mustn’t ever get so mad you hurt somebody. See? You’ll be a big guy when you grow up, so you need to know this now.”
“I didn’t mean to get in a fight,” Alec told him sadly.
“Ah, hell, it turned out all right. You were okay and the
other guy was down, which is the best you can hope for once it stares.” Lewin looked around the room. “What’ve you been doing up here?”
“Working on my project,” said Alec.
Lewin knew the truth then. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but he knew.
“Alec,” he said, very quietly, “
did
you make modifications to your Playfriend?”
“Yes,” said Alec, because it was now true.
“How, son?”
“With my tool kit,” Alec said. “It was easy. I just made it better for the Captain.”
Lewin sighed. He reached out and took Alec’s hands. They were large hands, strong and yet gracefully made. Alec never dropped anything he picked up. He looked steadily into the boy’s pale eyes and remembered the afternoon, seven years ago, when an urgent communication had come in for Roger Checkerfield from Jovian Integrated Systems.
Roger had gone to his conference room off the bridge to take the call privately. He’d come out looking white, and gone at once to the bar for a drink.
“Is anything the matter, sir?” Lewin asked.
“Hell no,” Roger said brightly, and drained a double rum and soda in three gulps. Then he went to talk to Cecelia. There was a violent quarrel. Cecelia locked herself in her stateroom, and in a way never came out again.
Roger gave orders for the
Lady
to change course, and that night she lay off a low flat cay, barely more than a sand shoal. There was an aircraft of some kind on it, Lewin saw the red lights blinking, and Roger took the launch and went out to the island himself.
When he returned he had a pretty young Jamaican girl with him. She was carrying a little blanket-wrapped bundle.
Roger called the crew and servants together and introduced the girl as Sarah, a former marine biology student of his, who was going to live on the
Foxy Lady
from now on to take care of the baby.
“Baby, sir?” Lewin was the only one to break the stunned silence.
“Yup.” Roger, grinning desperately, took the bundle and
threw back a fold of blanket. “You know how it is, guys. Little mistakes. Ta-da!”
And there was Alec, snuffling in his sleep, no more than a week old. They had expected the baby would be Sarah’s, but he clearly wasn’t. In fact, as near as one could tell he resembled Cecelia, which was inexplicable.
Stranger still, Cecelia consented to hold the baby and pose with Roger for the news release, and the servants and crew all signed contracts with Jovian Integrated Systems agreeing to swear, if anyone asked them, that little Alec was really and truly Roger and Cecelia’s son and rightful heir to the title of earl of Finsbury. In return for their compliance, generous sums would be paid to all of them.
It was after that that Roger started drinking in the morning, drinking every day, and though he was a sweet and gentle drunk as he’d been sweet and gentle sober, sometimes he’d sit alone in the saloon and cry, or collar Lewin and pour him a sloppy drink and mutter desperate incoherent confidences about Jovian Systems Integrated and what they’d do if anybody ever found out the truth about Alec …
And Sarah stalked about the
Foxy Lady
as though she owned it, half-naked like some Caribbean goddess, carrying tiny Alec around, arrogant even with Roger but tirelessly patient and loving with the child. And as the months went by and Alec sat up early, took his first staggering steps early, babbled early, it became terribly plain that Alec was a bit unusual. But he was also such a funny and affectionate baby that they all loved him by that time.
All except for Cecelia, who seemed to loathe the sight of him.
What the hell are you, Alec?
wondered Lewin.
Why, Alec was a good little boy, wasn’t he? What if he were some kind of technoprodigy, what if he had cleverly altered his favorite toy? Where was the harm?
Out loud Lewin said, “Do me a favor, Alec. Don’t ever tell anybody about making those modifications. Okay? Can you keep a secret?”
“Oh, yes,” the boy said, nodding earnestly. “I’m not a telltale.”
“Good lad.” Lewin squeezed his hands and let go of them. “Don’t you worry, now. This whole thing’ll blow over.”
When he had gone, the Captain popped into sight.
“Now that was good advice, I reckon,” he said, looking uneasily at the doorway. “We can trust old Lewin. It’s just as well I took them new quarters, all the same. Hark‘ee, now, what d’you say we have a look at St. Stephen’s database and see if we can’t hack in for a quick loot? Eh?”
“Aye aye, Captain!” Alec saluted and hurried to connect the necessary leads from the schoolroom console to the cabinet. He sat down at the console. “Where’s that bloody squishyball, ye lubbers?” he said in his best pirate voice, and caught up the buttonball and began to squeeze in commands, tentatively at first and then faster. The Captain leaned over his shoulder, watching closely.
“That’s the way, matey,” he crooned. “That’s it, you’ll decrypt that signal in no time. Nobody else could do it, but I’ll lay odds you can, Alec. And you know why? Because yer smart, Alec, smart as paint. I seen that straight off.”
Alec chuckled. Figures were just flying across the screen now, faster and faster. He raised his little piping voice in the song, and the Captain joined in in his gravelly baritone:
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
ANOTHER MEETING
Rutherford had found an old green bottle at an auction. The bottle passed very nicely for a sherry decanter, and he spent some time mixing various combinations of apple and prune juice before he got what he thought might be the right shade of brown. He had lit another fire and was busy at the sideboard, lovingly arranging chlorilar juice cups beside the old bottle, when Ellsworth-Howard pounded at the door. He ran to let him in.
“Hey!” Ellsworth-Howard spotted the flames and grinned. “Fire again, eh? Shracking fantastic. No more fascist oppressors.”
“Too bloody right.” Rutherford smirked. “Only this morning I got a mysterious communication advising me my historical reenactor license specifically permitted pyrotechnics. So much for damping the fires of poetic creation! And look at this,” he said, gesturing grandly at the bottle on the sideboard. “You know what this is the beginning of? Our bar! Imitation sherry and port to start with, and pretend tea next week, and maybe even simulated whiskey and gin. This is the sort of thing creative people used to have in their houses, you know. I know for a fact C. S. Lewis drank real tea
every single day.
”
“Great.” Ellsworth-Howard flung himself into his chair. “Wish I’d seen as many films as you, Rutherford. Mum and
Dad wouldn’t have it, though. Said it was pointless and self-indulgent. Who’s got the last laugh now, eh?”
The next to arrive was Chatterji. The elegance of his appearance was slightly offset by the string bag he was carrying, which proved to contain two cartons of grape juice concentrate. Rutherford seized them up with cries of delight and carried them off to the sideboard, where they failed to look like decanters of fine old port.
“We’ll find more bottles somewhere.” Chatterji shrugged, accepting a glass. “It’s a great start, anyway. Here’s to Operation
Adonai
!”
They all drank, or tried to.
“Is it supposed to be this thick?” said Ellsworth-Howard. Rutherford, who hadn’t wanted to hurt Chatterji’s feelings, said:
“It’s thick because it’s the good stuff. The ancient Greeks drank their wine like this, did you know?”
“Well, maybe we could mix it with a little water,” said Chatterji, tilting his glass and studying it critically. “Wow! Hasn’t it got great body, though?”
“I like it,” Ellsworth-Howard decided. “Bugger the water. If the Greeks drank stuff like this, I can, too.”
So they settled into their chairs and did their best to look like Oxford dons, licking purple syrup from the sides of their chlorilar cups. Presently Rutherford’s face took on a hectic flush as his bloodstream attempted to deal with the unaccustomed dose of sugar. He laughed recklessly and reached into his pocket.
“Speaking of the ancients,” he said, “I’ve brought along something to help us in our quest for the hero. Look at these, will you? Divination tools!”
He held his hand out. Nestled in his sticky palm were three little objects of brightly colored plastic. There was a lime green pyramid, a pink cube, and a many-faced spheroid of sky blue. “Dice. This one’s four-sided, this one’s six-sided, and this one’s twelve-sided.”
The others stared as though they expected the devil to leap up through the floor. Dungeons and Dragons had been illegal for two centuries. Enjoying their reaction, Rutherford rattled the dice in his hand.
“You know what was done with these? Characters were decided. Heroes were made on paper and brought to life in people’s heads. Fates were settled!”
“Rutherford, this is perhaps going a little far,” Chatterji said. “Where did you get those?”
“Oh, just a discreet little shop,” Rutherford said airily. “Look. Shall we predict how tall our man will be, how brave, how clever? This is all you do.” He rattled them and tossed them at the hearth rug. Two of them landed; the lime-green pyramid stuck to his palm. With a grunt of annoyance he shook it loose and dropped it beside the others. Chatterji and Ellsworth-Howard had drawn back their feet as from live coals.
“There, you see? Oh, look! He’ll be very clever, look at that score. And we’ll take this figure for his strength, and this one for his alignment with the forces of good. Is that neat or is that neat? Multiple random variables, all at the flick of a wrist.” Rutherford flicked his wrist to demonstrate. “What’re you afraid of? If we can get away with lighting fires, we can bloody well get away with this.”
“There’s no reason to be damned fools, all the same, old boy,” said Chatterji, glancing nervously at the door as though he expected a public health monitor to come charging in. Ellsworth-Howard had reached down and taken up the lime-green pyramid wonderingly.
“Bloody hell,” he murmured. “Makes you feel like one of those, what d’y’call’ems, those guys with crystal balls? Cryptographers?”
“Alchemists,” Rutherford said.
“Yeah, them. Look at this. No cells, no leads, no buttonballs! You could make one of these out of anything. Shracking ingenious.”
“We are the dreamers of dreams, after all.” Rutherford wiped his palms on his trousers. “Did you know the word ‘sorcerer’ originally meant, ‘One who throws dice’?”
“No, I hadn’t heard that,” said Chatterji. “Look here, let’s put those away for now. Don’t you want to know how the project’s going?”
“Yes, please,” said Ellsworth-Howard.
“What about my Sleeping Knights?” said Rutherford, groping on the floor for the other dice.
“They’ve begun the program,” Chatterji said, relaxing. “One by one, the Enforcer units are being called in for disbriefing and ‘upgrades.’ Seven underground bunkers have been constructed to contain them, and a special operative has been programmed to maintain the sites. Timetable Central projects that all Enforcers should be accounted for by the year 1200 CE. Congratulations, gentlemen! Brilliant solution.”
“Another myth made real.” Rutherford sighed happily. “Really, one can’t help feeling like a god, chaps. Just a small god, playing with a pocketful of little blue worlds.”
“Well, do you feel like playing with some modeling clay?” Chatterji looked arch. “I’d really like to hear what you’ve got on our New Man.”
“Heh heh.” Ellsworth-Howard drew out his buke and extended a retractable rod. He slipped on an earshell and throat mike, squeezed in a few commands on the buttonball, and a tiny disk opened out from the top of the rod, in sections like a series of fans. Its surface appeared to be beaded. It whined faintly as it scanned the room and oriented itself; then a column of fiery light appeared in midair, dust motes whirling in it bright as sparks.
Rutherford snorted, and Chatterji raised an eyebrow and said: “I trust you’ve got farther than this?”
“’Course I have, bastards,” Ellsworth-Howard muttered, as his fingers worked. “That’s just the lead-in. Here he comes.”
On the buke screen a DNA helix appeared. The column vanished and a pattern of lines began to form where it had been, stitching a figure in bright fire. One swift rotation and the figure was finished: a naked man standing with head bowed. There wasn’t much resolution or detail. In relation to the room he was quite tall, long-limbed. He hadn’t a bodybuilder’s physique by any means, but there was something unusual in the musculature of the torso, in the arms and neck, something that suggested effortless power without bulk. His genitalia were discreetly blurred.
“Very nice.” Chatterji leaned forward to study him. “The height will impress, but won’t intimidate.”
“Beautiful hands,” said Rutherford. “Put clothes on the fellow
and he’d pass for human any day. Bravo, Foxy! Let’s have a look at the face.”
Ellsworth-Howard gave another command. With a fluid motion the man raised his head. His features were blurred and indistinct, few details clear: formidable dentition, deep-set eyes, large nose, broad, sloping forehead and wide cheekbones.
“Too primitive,” said Rutherford.
“This is just the template,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “I’m not a face man. Thought I’d wait for your input.”
Rutherford nodded. “Do something about the skull shape. More modem, please.” Ellsworth-Howard turned his attention to the complex DNA model and moved some of its components around. A final squeeze and the head of the man melted and re-formed, became less elongated. The brow was high and straight, the nose thinned. “Good. Much friendlier.”
“You want him to look like Superman?” said Ellsworth-Howard. “I can make him a pretty boy, if that’s what you want.”
“No! No!” Rutherford waved his hands. “I was referring to Shaw’s superman, anyway. We don’t want him to look like some conceited male model. Do we?” He looked in appeal at Ellsworth-Howard. They considered each other a moment, the one with his puffy mustached face and the other with his naked riveted head. Chatterji, who was rather good-looking, regarded them coolly as he drew out his sinus inhalator and took a drag.
“Nah,” said Ellsworth-Howard decisively. “Make him an ordinary-looking git, that’s what I think.” He played with the buttonball and the figure’s eyes got a bit smaller.
“Exceptional beauty causes a high degree of resentment in others, anyway,” conceded Chatterji. “This way he’s unlikely to arouse envy, at any rate.”
“Jolly good.” Rutherford looked happy. “Now, are we agreed on the features so far? We are? Then let’s see the living man, Foxy.”
Ellsworth-Howard squeezed the ball twice and abruptly the man, who had been a statue cut of light, seemed a creature of flesh in the room with them—if a homely naked man
might be standing, like a summoned ghost, before three mages in a parlor in an old house off Shaftesbury Avenue.
“I don’t like the hair,” said Rutherford. “Couldn’t he have a great flowing mane of some remarkable color? That’s just the sort of dull shade nobody ever notices.”
“Shrack great flowing manes.” Ellsworth-Howard looked disgusted. “The brain’s special. Want to see?”
“By all means,” said Chatterji.
“Okay.” Ellsworth-Howard thumbed the buttonball. “Say bye-bye, New Man.” He made the figure half turn and smile at them.
“Good-bye,” it said, and Rutherford gave a cry of delight.
“Oh! Wait, wait, have him say something else.”
“Okay.” Ellsworth-Howard gave the command.
“This is the experimental prototype design for Dr. Zeus Project 417, Code Name
Adonai,
” said the figure. Its voice was unlike an Enforcer’s, neither shrill nor flat, but a smooth and strangely pleasant tenor. The animated face was pleasant, too. It looked wise and kind.
Rutherford rose from his chair and collapsed into it again.
“You’ve done it. Oh, Foxy, you must keep that voice. He’s perfect! I withdraw any reservations I may have had. Let’s give him a mind to match.”
“Gotcha.” Ellsworth-Howard worked the ball briskly and the man winked out, to be replaced with a great model of a brain like a domed cloud floating in the room. “Here’s your basic brain goes with the revised skull shape. Complete connection between frontal lobes and a shrack of a lot more room in the cerebral cortex. Lots of little extras in the amygdala and hippocampus. Adaptable for immortality process with the installation of a four-fifteen support package placed at midline. Here’s your lower brain function.” Part of the floating brain lit up bright blue.
“All the aggressive instincts of the old Enforcers but much more self-control. Superior autonomic nervous system. Increased resistance to injury through improved ability to process stimuli. Lots of sex drive!”
“Whatever did you want to give him that for?” Rutherford said disapprovingly. “That’s so … so crude.”
“I want him to be able to get the girls,” Ellsworth-Howard
said, glowering. “The hero always gets the girls, don’t he? And somebody shracking well ought to! ’Cos I never do, do I?”
“But he ought to be above mere sensual appetites,” said Rutherford.
“Now, now.” Chatterji put out a hand. “Let’s think about this, chaps. We’re creating a man to be obeyed and respected. And there is clinical evidence to indicate that people do react submissively to pheromone signals from authority figures, especially testosterone. They tend to obey a man of, er, parts.”
“Oh, I gave him a real clock tower.” Ellsworth-Howard grinned. “Want to see?” He held up the buttonball, ready to squeeze in an order. Rutherford leaped to his feet, shouting in protest.
“If you please, gentlemen!” Chatterji said. “Let’s keep some professional distance here, shall we? It’s in keeping with the heroic profile to be sexually active, Rutherford, you must admit. It’s not as though there can possibly be any consequences. He’ll be as sterile as the old Enforcers. Won’t he, Foxy?”
“Shrack, yes. A tetraploid? ’Course he will. No Crewkerne females in a bazillion years, and he can’t breed with human beings,” Ellsworth-Howard said seriously.
“But that’s really almost worse,” said Rutherford, wringing his hands. “Sterile! That’s decidedly unheroic, chaps.”
“Make up your mind,” jeered Ellsworth-Howard. “Give the poor bastard his fun, that’s what I say.”
Rutherford subsided, looking pained.

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