The Life of the World to Come (20 page)

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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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“Oh, man,” sighed Alec. “I wish I could get the shrack out of here. Just go off and, and die in some war like they used to have. Why’s the world so screwed up? Why are there all these
stupid rules about little things that don’t matter? Why do I make everybody so shracking unhappy?”
“Belay that talk, son,” said the Captain. “Going off to die in some war, for a bunch of swabs? That ain’t the pirate way!”
“Captain, sir, have you noticed I’m not a little kid anymore? I’m never going to be a real pirate,” said Alec, hoarse and sullen.
“Figure of speech, laddie buck, figure of speech,” said the Captain slyly. “Just you settle back and let the old Captain chauffeur you around in the cool night air. That feels better now, don’t it, than that stuffy hall with all the noise? Just you and me and the stars.”
“It’s nice,” said Alec, letting his head loll back on the driver’s neck rest.
“To be sure it is. My Alec’s a man now; he ain’t a-playing with toy cutlasses and cocked hats no more, by thunder. He wants what a
man
wants, don’t he? Five fathoms of blue water under his keel, and green islands, and a sky full of stars, and Happy Clubs full of smiling girls, and freedom, and loot, and no heartbreak at all.”
“Yeah,” said Alec, blinking sleepily.
“And how’s our Alec going to get all them grand things, says you? Why, by our great and glorious secret plan, says I. In fact, I been thinking we’re ready to take the next step.”
“What’s that?” Alec closed his eyes for a moment.
“Why, you know, lad. We’ve talked about it. Having some hardware installed, something subtle and expensive, so you can get yer fair share of all the loot we’ve piled up. Wouldn’t you like to be able to talk to me any time you wanted, wherever you were? Or go into cyberspace without the goggles, just by deciding to? You could learn anything you wanted, instantly, with me right there at yer shoulder to fetch it for you. Captain Sir Henry Morgan, yer obedient server! Haar.”
“It sounds nice,” said Alec.
“Oh, it’ll be nice, all right. Now, there’s a lot of fool talk about port junkies and cyborgs, as though that was a dirty word, but it’s all on the part of timid busybodies like Dennis Neville. And I reckon his tiny brain couldn’t cope with having an augmentation; but yer different, son, always have
been. Just you once let yer old Captain hook into yer nervous system, and you’ll see what empowerment really is. Shall we take the next step, lad? Go on the account for the real loot?”
“Sure,” murmured Alec, blinking up at the stars. He sank farther into the seat. The motion of the car was soothing, and so was the smell of the night wind off the Thames, and so was the Captain’s voice, going on and on about all the great things they could do once Alec had some hardware installed. It seemed sort of drastic—it would make him different from most other people—but then, he was already different, wasn’t he?
He wasn’t very good at relationships, after all. Stick with what he was good at. He could just lie here in the boat and look at the stars and feel the rocking of the blue water, so easy, and the seabirds crying. Nobody out here but him. And the Captain. Happy all alone. Everything would be all right.
The Captain got them off the A5 at Station Road and swung them back toward Bloomsbury on the A502, through Golders Green, through Hampstead, crooning an old sea song to the drunken boy as he drove, handling the car as gently as though it were a cradle.
The incident at McCartney Hall had few repercussions. Nobody had been actually caught with alcohol, and a generous donation to the hall’s renovation fund silenced the matter of the surveillance cameras that had caught the gleam of Alec’s flask. The Captain, however, was taking additional measures for Alec’s continued safety.
On the occasion of his eighteenth birthday the seventh earl of Finsbury came into certain legal rights, and the first thing he did was go to a specialist in Harley Street and have himself adapted for direct interface with his personal cybersystem. He became, in effect, a cyborg.
Not at all some pathetic creature with an oozing port in his skull, nor yet one of the machine-human hybrids who would surely take over the world, if they were ever created. Alec could afford the very latest and best technology, so he paid out a great deal of money to be rendered semiconscious for
four hours while a discreet doctor with the proper credentials installed the interface. Alec paid a further astronomical sum to have his brain scan results deleted from the record. Then he crawled into the Rolls and lay facedown in the back while he was driven home.
“Let’s see it,” said the Captain, as soon as Alec had closed the door of his room and they were alone.
“Careful,” Alec said, peeling off his shirt gingerly. “It really stings right now.”
“That won’t last, my lad,” the Captain said, grinning when he saw what had been done. The necessary hardware had been installed just beneath the surface of the skin, across Alec’s shoulders and up the back of his neck. It was raised and red at the moment, but in a few hours it would resemble an ornate tattoo, a complex pattern of spiraling silver lines, beautifully symmetrical and interknotted.
“Damnation, that’s as pretty a piece of work as I’ve ever seen!”
“It cost more than the Rolls,” Alec said, trying to see it over his shoulder. “I hope it’s worth it.”
“It’ll beat the poor little Empowerment Ring and Playfriend Optics all to hell and gone, I’ll wager.” The Captain nodded. “Reckon that doctor’ll stay bribed?”
“At what I paid him? He ought to.”
“Good lad. I’ll just keep an eye on him, like, to manage things if he has second thoughts,” said the Captain, without the least hint of menace. “So. What’s the connector?”
“This.” Alec held up a black velvet bag and withdrew a bright near-circle of some enameled metal. Its color was difficult to describe: it might have been gold, but overlaid with phantom rainbow hues along its curved and twisted surface. The two ends terminated in interestingly detailed knobs. Alec made some adjustments on one of them and, prising it open, slipped it around his neck. “Here goes—”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alec reeled as the plundered knowledge of hundreds of databases became available to him, the sum of twelve years of information piracy. It was very much more than having a set of encyclopedias stuffed into your skull. He was suddenly
seeing his own ashen face through the surveillance camera in his room, with a sidebar annotating date, time and temperature—and then the views from all the other surveillance cameras in the house—and then the views from all the surveillance cameras in London—
Just as it became too much for him to bear it receded, but with it went any sense of up or down, any feeling of solid ground under his feet or any limits to his physical body, and as he drew breath to howl like a terrified animal, he felt a powerful hand seizing his and pulling him in.
It’s all night, boy. I’m here,
said the Captain.
Turn it off!
Alec sobbed.
Ahhh, no. It’s nothing you can’t get used to, and it’s part of the plan, the
Captain said
.
Hold tight. Look at me, now. Look at yer old Captain Morgan.
I can’t see anything. I’m seeing everything!
Yer seeing the way I see things, that’s all. Belay that blacking out! LOOK AT ME.
Abruptly he was seeing the Captain, standing solidly in the midst of the void. The Captain was supporting a lesser figure, a transparent body sketched in wavering fire. Briefly superimposed over it was a bright child with flaming hair, which shifted and expanded until finally there were two men standing in the void, and Alec had eyes again and was looking into the Captain’s steady eyes.
My God
, he said, and his voice sounded loud in his ears.
Here we are, boy
, said the Captain.
Was that so hard?
Yes,
said Alec.
I think I’ve gone crazy.
No, no.
The Captain shook his head.
If you was any of yer snotty-nosed young Circle of Thirty friends, you would be; crazy or dead of a brain hemorrhage, I’ll wager. But yer my little Alec, ain’t you? Oh, son, this is only the beginning. The things we’ll do, you and me! We’ll ransack the libraries of the world, Alec, we’ll walk through walls and steal away data it’s taken other people centuries to compile. The lowliest clerk in the poorest bank in London won’t be able to buy a loaf of bread that you won’t get to hear about it. You’ll be the most powerful man in the world, son, and the safest. What do you want to do now?
Alec thought about it.
Ditch the Circle of Thirty! I’ve had enough of them. Shrack University, shrack the House of Lords, shrack the Borough Council, shrack hospital! I’m getting out of here.
That’s my boy.
And I want to move the Lewins out of London, he added. Buy ’em a flat in Bournemouth, they’ll like that. And then—then I want to buy a boat.
Boat, hell
, the Captain said.
You want to buy a SHIP
And there before them was the image of a modern clipper, four-masted, bearing acres of white sail, sleek and graceful as a seabird, monumental in her size and dignity.
We’ll design her to our purposes, my lad,
the Captain said.
One whole deck full of nothing but hardware for me, masts and yards all servomotors so I can manage her canvas in the wink of an eye. A machine shop, and a laboratory, and a hospital, to make us self-sufficient, eh? Cargo holds filled with good things, supplies that’ll let you live ten years on blue water without once putting in to port if yer not so inclined.
Oh, yeah!
And maybe cargo room for a few other little items, in case you’ve a mind to do a bit of trading,
said the Captain, ever so casually.
And a grand master cabin for you, and staterooms so you can have yer little twit friends on board to visit. But the quarterdeck, Alec, that’ll be my place. I’ll have satellite linkups and connections to every financial center in the world. I’ll monitor law enfoncement channels and weather analyses and stock markets. There won’t be anything catches me by surprise! Not whiles I’ve got you, my boy.
Alec reached out his hand to touch the smooth keel of his ship. It felt solid. He heard gulls crying, he drank in salt air. He thought of the Lewins settled down at their ease in Bournemouth, no vast cold house to manage, no hapless boy to worry about. He thought—briefly—of Jill, who had got engaged to Colin Debenham.
Who’ll miss me, really?
he said.
I can just sail away and be free. There’s no reason I can’t go, is there?
None, by thunder.
Alec looked around.
I need to talk to a shipwright about this. I need a console.
Not anymore,
the Captain said.
I’ve just made the call for you, to the best in the business
. A communications screen and speaker appeared in midair.
They’re waiting on line one. Will you take the call, sir?
He parodied an obsequious bow.
“Hello?”
said a tinny voice, filtered through cyberspace.
“Hello? Beretania Marine Design, how may we help you? Is there anyone on this line?”
“Yes.” Alec cleared his throat, looking gleefully at the Captain. “Alec Checkerfield here. Earl of Finsbury. I’d like to place an order.”
Rutherford was curled up in his favorite chair beside the fire, staring at little bright figures that moved in midair before him. He was watching
The Wind in the Willows
again. He was eating as he watched, hurriedly, so as not to be observed by his associates in case they arrived early.
All he was eating was a dish of strawberries; but he’d poured real cream over them, which was a misdemeanor. Even possession of real cream violated several city ordinances. As a highly paid idea man in the employ of Dr. Zeus, though, he was entitled to certain immunities, including being waved through customs without a baggage search at the Celtic border.
The danger thrilled him. He’d have been hospitalized if he’d been caught with a suitcase full of cartons of dairy products. He needn’t have done it, either; on his salary he could afford to travel out of the country and enjoy the same treat in Edinburgh three times a week if he’d wanted it. It wasn’t as delicious there, however. The consciousness of being a smuggler sharpened his pleasure.
He tried not to think about the victimized and exploited cows suffering in those pariah nations that hadn’t yet banned animal products. He wasn’t a cruel man; he’d never dream of eating meat. But he told himself that it was necessary for a chap in his field to experience as much of the past as was humanly
possible, since it was the stuff he worked with for a living. He reasoned that, as the cream and cheese and butter were going to be sold whether he purchased them or not, it was just as well their consumption was turned to a higher purpose.
Anyhow he needed cheering today.
He scraped up the last rich drops and paused his holo player. Badger halted in the act of lecturing Toad on his self-destructive impulsive behavior. Rutherford rose and hurried down to the old kitchen, where he rinsed out his bowl and spoon. He was just setting them in the drainer when he heard the pounding on the door that meant his colleagues had arrived.
Dabbing self-consciously at his mustache, he puffed his way back upstairs and opened the front door. Chatterji and Ellsworth-Howard were standing there together, looking gleeful. Clearly they hadn’t seen the report yet.
“Hullo, chaps,” he said.
“Good news, old boy,” said Chatterji. “The report from the first sequence on
Adonai
’s come in.”
“Have you seen it yet?” inquired Rutherford cautiously.
“Nah. Was only in my shracking mail this morning,” Ellsworth-Howard said, shouldering his way in and making for the warmth of the fire. “We thought we’d come round first so we could go over it together.”
He sank into his now-customary chair and pulled out his buke, setting it up for wide image. Chatterji and Rutherford settled into their chairs, as Rutherford said:
“Let’s not forget it’s only the first sequence, after all.”
The first part of the preliminary report was a montage of images, with a smooth electronic voice explaining that the images dated from 1525 AD, and giving a biographical profile of the female to be implanted. There was a very blurred photograph, taken in stealth by the field operative handling the case, of a serving girl carrying a basin down a corridor. It was a grand corridor, by the standards of its time.
“Hampton Court,” Rutherford couldn’t resist pointing out proudly. “Placed right in the heart of political power.”
The beautifully modulated voice gave the names of the men with whom the girl had engaged in sexual relations over
the previous month. Two images came up: one was another field photograph of a rather tall man in a surcoat, the other a Holbein painting of a man with a hawk on his fist. Their biographical notes followed. The voice explained that the host mother had been implanted soon enough after her encounters to make it plausible that the subject was the genetic offspring of either man.
“So far, it’s exactly what we wanted,” said Rutherford and sighed. Chatterji looked at him curiously before glancing back at the images. The voice reported that the pregnancy had proceeded normally, though the host mother had been sent from court as a result of her shame.
“Having a kid without a license?” Ellsworth-Howard peered at the next image, which was primitive-looking footage of the girl wandering disconsolately in a garden, heavily pregnant.
“No, no, that was long before permits were required,” Chatterji explained.
“Some absurd religious objection instead,” Rutherford clarified. He winced as the voice went on to inform them that, due to the unusually large size of the subject, there had been complications to the delivery and the host mother had died. There was a brief clip of a frightened-looking older woman holding out a blood-smeared, wailing little thing to the camera. Chatterji recoiled.
“Died?”
he said. “She wasn’t supposed to die! Was that—was it our fault?”
“Of course it wasn’t,” Rutherford assured him hurriedly. “This was the Dark Ages, remember? Dreadfully high mortality rate they had back then. She’d undoubtedly have died anyway.”
And the next images were reassuring, too: various scenes around a small cottage in Hampstead, so the voice informed them, staffed by a couple in the pay of the field operative in charge of the project. Here was the subject, aged six months, sprawling asleep on the bosom of the older woman previously seen, where she sat near beehives in what seemed to be an orchard. Here was the subject, aged two years, staring down with wide eyes from the back of a ploughhorse, held up there by a grinning countryman who pointed at the camera, and now a sound byte with the footage:
“Ee now! See’un thur? That be thuyne uncle Labienus, be’nt ’un now? Coom a long wey t’see thee. Wev to ’un, Nicket. Coom on then. Wev!”
As Nicket wevved at the camera uncertainly, Rutherford shifted in his chair. “And I’m certain the Company’s fellow in charge turned it all to the Company’s advantage in psychological programming. Not only must our man make up for his bastardy, he must atone for his mother’s death!”
The voice described the subject’s subsequent dame-school education, and the private tutor who had been hired when the subject was seven to prepare him for higher learning at Oxford. There followed an image of the subject, now apparently in his teens, pacing down a muddy street with a satchel, photographed unawares. It was the first clear shot of his adult face they had seen and it was, indeed, the face of the man they’d summoned into their parlor. But:
“Good God, what’s happened to his nose?” Rutherford said, frowning. “He’s broken it!”
“It was us did it, actually,” Ellsworth-Howard said. “When he was a couple minutes old, putting the black box in. The recording device’s too big to go up through that fancy nose you wanted without damaging the cartilage. Then it grew bent.”
“Oh, what a shame,” said Rutherford. “Still, it can’t be helped. And I don’t think babies feel discomfort anyway, do they?”
The voice was explaining that the subject had proved a brilliant student, and entered Balliol College at Oxford with the intention of studying for the priesthood in the nascent Church of England.
“Shracking
what
?” said Ellsworth-Howard, outraged. “Religion? I thought he was supposed to be above all that, with the brain we gave him.”
“Now, now, you’re forgetting that he was designed to operate in the past.” Chatterji sighed. “Of course he was going to share the beliefs of the era we put him in. Even Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were, er, religious, don’t forget.”
However, the voice went on to say, the subject’s promising career in the Church had been derailed by an unfortunate episode in his seventeenth year. The next image showed the
subject, muddy, pale, and furious-looking, struggling between two constables. A third constable lay at their feet, bleeding from the nose.
“What’s this?” Chatterji frowned at the screen. “That’s old Enforcer behavior.”
“Oh, not really. The Facilitator handling the case made a poor choice of a tutor for the boy, that’s all,” Rutherford said hurriedly.
“You watched this before we got here?”
“I couldn’t wait,” Rutherford admitted, as the voice went on to explain that the subject’s tutor had been selected for his charisma and advanced ideas on religious freedom. Unfortunately, his ideas had been Anabaptist in nature and he had led his circle of disciples, including the subject, in what amounted to heretical orgies.
“Sex, does he mean?” Ellsworth-Howard frowned. “I thought religious people didn’t do that.”
“Precisely.” Rutherford nodded.
“Oh.”
The voice informed them that, upon discovery and the subsequent scandal, the subject had self-intoxicated on alcohol and publicly preached heresy, which had got him arrested. The Facilitator in charge had managed the subject’s release, after intensive reprogramming, and hustled him out of England to continue his education in various cities in Europe.
By 1547, the voice continued, the subject had returned to England, having become private secretary to one of the people with whom Dr. Zeus had established contact for business purposes. Here followed a shot of the subject, a towering figure in his black scholar’s attire, looking sullen as he followed a small and somewhat overdressed specimen of the gentry along a walk beside a half-timbered manor house.
“Impressive fellow,” said Chatterji in a pleased voice. Rutherford squirmed.
“It was going so well,” he said. Even the electronic voice sounded uncomfortable as it described the logistical error that had precipitated the end of the subject’s life, when in 1554 the Company had sent a team of field agents to the estate where the subject was employed. Their mission had been to collect botanical rarities in the estate’s garden. Three images
flashed up, standard Company ID shots of its cyborg personnel: a dark male with an urbane smile, a darker female with a calm smile, and an unsmiling female with a pale, scared face. The voice gave their Company designations.
“Oi! My Preservers,” remarked Ellsworth-Howard. “What’d they got to do with it?”
Rutherford sighed. “It was the
girl
,” he said in distaste.
The voice went on to explain that the Facilitator in charge of the mission had encouraged his subordinate, the mission’s Botanist, to enter into a sexual relationship with the subject, in the hope that the mission would go more smoothly. Chatterji groaned.
“Apparently he had no idea our man was a Company experiment,” cried Rutherford, throwing his hands up in the air. “I can’t imagine who left that particular bit of vital information out of his briefing.”
“Actually,” Chatterji said, raising a placatory hand, “actually there was a good reason why he wasn’t told.”
Rutherford and Ellsworth-Howard turned to him. Ellsworth-Howard paused the report. “What the shrack?”
Chatterji gave a slightly embarrassed cough. “It seems there has been a certain amount of … negative feeling, on the part of our older Preservers, about the Enforcers being retired.”
“What?” Rutherford stared.
“ … And as a result, an ongoing program of fact effacement has been initiated,” Chatterji admitted. “The new operatives aren’t aware the Enforcer class ever existed. The older ones have been given the impression that the Enforcers were all happily reprogrammed for work on remote Company bases. Very few people outside this room know about
Adonai,
you see: if the cyborgs were told the Company was experimenting with a new Enforcer design, it might be noticed that most of the old ones had gone missing.”
“Well, I like that!” Rutherford’s eyes were round with indignation. “And what if they did notice? They think we treated the Enforcers badly, do they? Didn’t we give them eternal life? What
do
they think they are?”
“I fully share your feelings,” Chatterji said. “However, the plain fact is that we depend on the Preservers a good deal.
Under the circumstances, it was thought best not to antagonize the Facilitator, so he wasn’t informed about our project.”
“You can see where that led!” said Rutherford.
“I still don’t see where the girl comes in,” said Ellsworth-Howard, looking from Rutherford to Chatterji.
“Apparently there was a security breach,” Rutherford said in disgust. “What can you expect, letting a cyborg—er—become intimate with our man?”
Ellsworth-Howard started the report again, and the voice explained the circumstances that had led to the security breach, and its aftermath, when the subject had been arrested again for preaching heresy.
“Shrack,” cried Ellsworth-Howard. “What’d he go do a stupid thing like that for?”
“This was in the sixteenth century, after all,” Rutherford pointed out. “We gave him a splendid mind, but it had no context for dealing with the discovery that cyborgs existed. No wonder the poor fellow behaved irrationally.”
Here was an image of the subject being chained to a stake before a crowd. Chatterji, watching, turned a nasty putty color, but all he said was: “So he died a martyr’s death. Heroic, Rutherford, but not exactly what we had in mind. And rather an awful job for the salvage operative who had to retrieve his black box.”

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