The Life of the World to Come (3 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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How close could I stick to the truth without frightening him?
“Not exactly. But I also knew too much about something I shouldn’t have. Dr. Zeus found a nicely humane oubliette and
dropped me out of sight or sound. You’re the first mortal”—oops again—“
soul
I’ve spoken with in all this time.”
“My God.” He looked aghast. Then his eyes narrowed, I knew that look, that was his righteous wrath look. “Well, listen—er—what’s your name, babe?”
Rosa? Dolores? No. No aliases anymore. “Mendoza,” I said.
“Okay, Mendoza. I’ll get you out of here,” he said, all stern heroism. “That time shuttle out there is
mine
now, babe, and when I’ve finished this other thing I’ll come back for you.” He gripped my hand firmly.
Oh, no, I thought, what has he gotten himself into now? At what windmill has he decided to level his lance?
Summoning every ounce of composure, I frowned delicately and enunciated: “Do I understand you to say that you stole a time shuttle from Dr. Zeus Incorporated?”
“Yup,” he said, with that sly sideways grin I knew so terribly well.
“How, in God’s name? They’re all powerful and all knowing, too. Nobody steals anything from the Company!” I said.
“I did,” he said, looking so smug I wanted to shake him. “I’ve got sort of an advantage. At least, I had,” he amended in a more subdued voice. “They may have killed my best friend. If he’d been with me, I wouldn’t have crashed. I don’t know what’s happened to him, but if he’s really gone … they
will
pay.”
Something had persuaded this man that he could play the blood and revenge game with Dr. Zeus and win. He couldn’t win, of course, for a number of reasons; not least of which was that every time shuttle has a theft intercept program built into it, which will at a predetermined moment detonate a hidden bomb to blow both shuttle and thief to atoms.
This was the fate Alec had been rushing to meet when he’d detoured into my field. I could see it now so clearly, it was sitting on his chest like a scorpion, and he was totally unaware it was there. I didn’t even need to sit through the play this time; I’d been handed the synopsis in terrible brevity.
“But what do you think you can do?” I said.
“Wreck them. Bankrupt them. Expose what they’ve been doing. Tell the whole world the truth,” Alec growled, in just
the same voice in which Nicholas had used to rant about the Pope. He squeezed my hand more tightly.
I couldn’t talk him out of it. I never can. I had to try, though.
“But—Alec. Do you have any idea what you’re going up against? These people know everything that’s ever happened, or at least they know about every event in recorded history. That’s why I can’t think for a second you were really able to steal that shuttle from them. They must have known about it in advance, don’t you see? And if they knew, it means they allowed you to steal it, and then—”
“No,” he said, with grim and unshakable certainty. “See, I can’t explain—just take it on trust, babe, they may know everything but they don’t know everything about me. I found the chink in their armor. You could say I
am
the chink in their armor.”
It was going to be the same old story, gallant Englishman going to his gallant death. Nothing I could do to change it at all.
Was there?
Was there?
I shook my head. “Don’t say any more. I don’t want to know.”
“You don’t need to,” he said, giving me that brief cocksure grin again. “Just wait here, and I’ll be back to rescue you. On my word of honor as a gentleman, Mendoza.” He widened his eyes for emphasis.
“It’s a kind offer, señor,” I said. “But if I were to leave this station, the Company would know instantly. Besides, where would I go? I have no family. I have no legal identity.”
Alec blinked. “But you’ve got to have a birth record at Global ID, at least.”
Damned twenty-fourth-century databases. “Undoubtedly,” I lied, “but the Company had it erased when I was sent here. They’re that powerful, you know.”
“That’s true.” He scowled. “We can fake you up an identification disc. I know people who do that kind of thing. It wouldn’t get you through customs anywhere, but … I know what’d do it! I could just marry you. Peers get everything waived, see?”
I couldn’t think what to say. He got a slightly panicked look in his eyes.
“A-and then afterward we could just get a divorce. They’re easy. I could find you a place to live and a job or something.”
“Perhaps we could give it a try,” I said carefully. He cleared his throat.
“I’m not just making the offer out of kindness, either. We could have some fun together.”
I leaned down, unable to keep myself from his mouth any longer, and I kissed him. Actually I was going to do a lot more than kiss him—if I was going to throw my immortal life away for Alec, I’d have such an epic game of lust with him first as would make the fires of Hell seem lukewarm when I got there.
He still kissed like an angel of God, making little surprised and pleased noises and groping feebly at my behind, but I felt his blood pressure going up, his heartbeat speeding dangerously, and the red numbers in my peripheral vision warned me to stop or I’d kill him. I pulled away, sitting up and stroking back his hair. “Don’t you go dying on me,” I gasped.
“I won’t,” he promised. He had got hold of the end of my braid and was tugging at it in a plaintive way. “But I’d really, really like to have sex with you. If you’ve no objections or anything.”
Caramba!
Did he use that line on other women? But I’d bet it worked for him every time. Who could resist that earnest look in his eyes when he said it? How was I going to stop myself from ripping open that suit of fish-mail he was wearing and murdering him with carnal bliss?
Meteorological data coming in. Had that been thunder, or God snarling at me? I babbled out some kind of promise to Alec and went to the window to confirm visually.
Disturbed air. Domed clouds racing down the sky, all my surviving corn plants staggering and fluttering as a gust of hot wind came rushing across them, carrying a smell of wetness and electricity. Crickets began to sing.
“There’s a cloud front advancing,” I told Alec. “Have you brought rain, like the west wind? I think we’re going to have a summer storm.”
“Cool,” said Alec. Christ, I wanted to jump him then and there.
But he was ill and he needed protein, needed fluids, needed rest I do have some basic programming that insists I serve the mortal race, even if I bypass it now and then to kill one of the poor little things; so I poured Alec a glass of iced tea and set about preparations for feeding him.
“What do you do here, all the time?” Alec said, as I returned from the garden with some produce.
“I grow vegetables,” I said.
“Who eats ’em all? Not you all alone.” He sipped his tea and looked at it in surprise. “This is real tea!”
“Thank you. You obviously know about Dr. Zeus; do you know anything about the Day Six resorts?” I unloaded what I was carrying onto my kitchen table: tomatoes, corn, peppers, cilantro, garlic, onions. He knitted his brows.
“They’re like one of those urban myths, only they’re really real,” he said. “Like Dr. Zeus. Everybody knows there’s supposed to be some company that has time travel and can get you absolutely anything you want, but it’s just a rumor. Which is what they probably want us to think! And the Day Six places are the same way. Somebody did a
Weird Stories
thing on holo about one. This guy goes back in time to party and screws up history by stepping on a bug or something.” He had another sip of his tea.
“Ah. Well, that’s a fable, because history can’t be changed.” I worked the hand pump to rinse off the tomatoes and peppers. “But the resorts do exist, just as Dr. Zeus exists. In fact, Dr. Zeus owns them. Nice little string of hotels, rather unexceptional except that they’re all located in 150,000 BCE. Or thereabouts. All of them in virgin wildernesses where long-extinct mammals can be observed gamboling, from behind the safety of an electronic perimeter field.
“You’re from the future, Alec, you must have lived in steel canyons all your life. How much would you pay to be able to swim in waters that had never been polluted, or watch a herd of mammoths grazing?”
“In all the stories, time travelers wind up as lunch for velociraptors,” he said.
“All the dinosaurs are extinct in this time. Anyway: Dr. Zeus has quietly built up a select secret clientele in the twenty-fourth century. They pay fortunes, annual incomes of small countries, I’m told, to be rocketed backward through time to carefully landscaped virgin paradises where they can relax by the pool and breathe clean, clean air.” I selected a knife and began slicing up the tomatoes.
“The only problem is—time travel is hard on the human body. Even the drugs that protect people make them ill. So when they arrive from the dismal future, these millionaires and heiresses can do no more than nibble at a lettuce leaf or two. Therefore Dr. Zeus makes damned sure the resort keeps all manner of trendy greens for salad on hand, and therefore I labor in the sun on this agricultural station.” I whacked a beefsteak tomato in half, imagining it was some Company CEO’s head.
“But that’s awful.” Alec tried to sit up, looking outraged. “That means you’re not only their prisoner, you’re their slave!”
He was an idealist, then. Disapproved of slavery, did he? And him a titled gentleman. Just the sort of wealthy young man who comes to loathe his birthright and goes off to die for somebody else’s freedom.
“I suppose I am,” I said carefully. “But I may as well be of some use to somebody, don’t you think? And it’s not so bad. They don’t call for produce very often. I have a lot of time to work on my own private research.”
“What’s your research?” Alec said.
I told him all about my quest to perfect maize plants. I don’t think he understood one word in three of botany talk, and when he wrinkled his forehead and attempted to follow my lecture he looked like a puzzled dog. But he was awfully polite about it, unlike the other Future Children I’ve known, and said gallant things about how worthwhile my project was.
We talked for a little while on the subject of making one’s life count for something, and I expected a manifesto from him on the need to actively oppose the evils of Dr. Zeus. I was surprised; he just talked about his life. Despite his grand title, it appears there were some unfortunate circumstances attending his birth again. Some poor girl seduced by the sixth earl
and then abandoned? I’d hardly have thought the wretched Future Children had enough blood in them to carry on like that, but apparently mortal nature hasn’t changed so much.
As near as I could make out, the girl went mad and was locked up. Alec seems to have grown to manhood with a devastating sense of his own worthlessness, not surprisingly. I wonder if Nicholas and Edward carried similar burdens of unearned guilt on their backs? Was that what fueled Nicholas’s drive to martyrdom, Edward’s selfless work for an empire that abandoned him? I was too young and foolish to see this in Nicholas, too rushed to see it in Edward; but I see it now. And Alec’s failed at two marriages, apparently, and has steered through his life in increasing emotional isolation. Is that why he’s always alone when I meet the man?
When he saw he’d affected me, blurting out his wretched story, he made amends by changing the subject entirely and told me about the adventures he’s had, as I kneaded the masa for our commonplace supper of tamales.
And what adventures he’s had! I begin to see that I have been somewhat mistaken about Future World. It seems he hasn’t grown up in steel canyons at all. It seems that there are still wild places in the twenty-fourth century, still gardens and forests that don’t stink of machine exhaust. Best of all, it seems that the mortal race has not entirely followed the crabbed and fearful lead of its Company scientists, people like Mr. Bugleg of loathsome memory.
Though they are, all of them, undeniably childish. Future Children indeed. My own dearest love has bought himself a
pirate ship
, if you please, and spends most of his time sailing around in the Caribbean and other ports of call on what we used to call the Spanish Main! And there he indulges his urge to be virile and bad, like pirates in every film he’s ever seen, and he’s become a smuggler! Mostly of things like wine and cheese, though they’re illegal enough in the twenty-fourth century.
And yet I think in this he must come nearer to living a real life than the other mortals of his time, who (as far as I was ever able to tell) spend their lives hiding in their rooms, playing electronic games.
Still, he has found a far less harmless and silly way to
rebel, hasn’t he, by going on a crusade against Dr. Zeus? Dangerous to think about.
Anyway. Such lovely stories he told me, about Jamaica under the tropical stars, parrots and gold doubloons. How happy I was to think of him playing Errol Flynn among the shrouds and ratlines. This ship of his must really be something to see, a full-rigged sailing vessel utilizing twenty-fourth-century technology, sort of an enormous retro yacht. He has some kind of complex computer system running all the rigging apparatus, for there’s no crew at all apparently.

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