The Life of the World to Come (32 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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“Be careful,” she told him. “They were powerful then; Roger was frightened to death of them. They’re probably a lot more powerful now. Don’t think they don’t know exactly where you are. They must have kept people close to you your whole life, observing you.”
“Maybe.” Alec stood, looming over her. “But there’s something they don’t know.” He took one of her hands in both of his and shook it awkwardly. “I’d better go now. Good-bye, Cecelia. I’m glad I got a chance to talk to you, after all these years.”
“Good-bye, Alec,” Cecelia said. “Good hunting.”
It was not a gentle Goddess she served.
He just nodded and walked away.
When he had gone, she climbed the hill behind the garden and stood looking down on the temple and the grand processional way that led out to the sea. After a while she spotted him, taller than any other traveler, walking back to the harbor where his ship lay at anchor. She watched until he had disappeared with distance, praying to her Goddess, not certain what she was feeling.
I knew it! I knew all along you weren’t no freak. Yer a deliberate favorable mutation, Alec lad, you must be, specially bred. J.I.S. meant you to be the bloody wonder boy you are!
Alec could almost hear the Captain’s boots clattering on the ancient pavement as he danced for joy.
Oh, yeah? You reckon they had any idea what their wonder boy was going to do to them, when he found out how he was made?
Not a whit, I’d wager. They never counted on me, did they? Oh, laddie, the revenge we’re gonna take. Blood and hellfire! Loot for years. But the lady was right—we go into this slow, see? We ain’t doing a thing without a perfect plan, and a perfect backup plan, and a backup plan to that. We takes our time. No risks. You let me do the reconnoitering first.
Then start your planning. Find out everything you can about these bastards, do whatever you have to do. We’re gonna wreck ’em
.
That’s my boy
.
… Sarah couldn’t have known about it, could she? She wasn’t in the pay of J.I. S
.
Mm. Why, no, matey, certain she wasn’t. Don’t you worry none about her. We’ve work to do! And to think it was only
the other day you was moping about having no purpose to yer life.
Well, I’ve got one now, haven’t I?
Alec marched down to the harbor and went aboard his ship. Her anchor was weighed, her sails were set. Under his black ensign he sailed out into the Ionian Sea, and laid in a course for Jamaica.
Rutherford was in a daring mood. He had poured himself a glass of the apple-prune compound and swaggered over to the window with it, pretending it was sherry. It might be, for all any passing public health monitor knew. He was rather disappointed when the minutes stretched by without a soul coming into Albany Crescent, and wondered peevishly if the Westminster surveillance cameras were working properly.
At last he spotted Chatterji and Ellsworth-Howard rounding the corner, and waved at them. Ellsworth-Howard waved back. Chatterji, who was looking troubled, just nodded.
“Yo heave ho, fellows,” said Rutherford as he opened the door. “Have you seen the
Adonai
sequence update yet?”
“Only just got mine,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Haven’t had the shracking time to look at it.”
“Well, you are in for a treat.” Rutherford practically danced across the room to his chair. “I’ve been gloating over it all morning. Our man is a hero after all, chaps. A dashing, daring rogue in the classic mode! Wait till you see the holoes.”
“I’m concerned about a few things,” said Chatterji. “The committee’s not happy about them either, Rutherford.”
“They don’t understand him,” said Rutherford dismissively. “Our man’s a genius, isn’t it obvious? And you were so concerned that he’d modified your design, Foxy! Er—that
is—it’s clearly worked out for the best, hasn’t it? Because it’s made him even more brilliant than his previous two sequences. You should see what he’s done with his wonderful brain now that he’s got it cyborged.”
“Such as?” Ellsworth-Howard said sullenly, settling into his armchair.
“Well, he’s built up the modest fortune the late earl left him into a fabulous economic empire, and concealed it so the petty bureaucrats don’t tax him to death. Isn’t that so, Chatty?”
“Yes, it is,” said Chatterji, sinking into the chair opposite. “Although … did you notice that trust fund he set up to benefit the Ephesians last year? You don’t suppose he’s turned religious again, do you?”
“Shracking hell,” Ellsworth-Howard cried.
“Nothing of the sort,” said Rutherford. “I’ll tell you exactly why he did that. Our programming! He tracked down the former Lady Checkerfield, the one he thinks is his mother. She’s an Ephesian priestess now. He’s still trying to atone for having caused his parents’ divorce, you see?”
“So you think he’s attempting to buy her forgiveness?” Chatterji took out his nasal inhalator. Rutherford smirked.
“You may have noticed that he named
her
the administrator of the trust fund. But you certainly don’t see him having the operation and donning any purple robes himself, not our boy.”
“No, that’s true. He’s something of a libertine,” said Chatterji.
“But one with a social conscience,” said Rutherford, jumping to his feet and strutting up and down before the fire. “In a proper secular way. Look at this renegade club he’s joined, all those young gentlemen dedicating their lives to fighting perceived injustice everywhere. There’s a lot more to the seventh earl of Finsbury than we originally thought!”
“The committee had some rather sharp words about all his illegal activities, Rutherford, I must tell you,” said Chatterji, bracing himself with a deep drag.
“Pooh. He’s simply fulfilling his program in the only way possible, in this wretched day and age,” said Rutherford. “What scope is there nowadays for a hero? So he belongs to that particular group of lawbreakers. They’re only educated
fellows who object to this absurd restricted life we’re all obliged to lead. Not all that different from us, really.”
“He shracking well ain’t like
me
,” said Ellsworth-Howard gloomily.
“Oh, chaps, you’re missing the point,” Rutherford said, going to the sideboard and pouring out a couple of glasses of pretend sherry. He brought them back and handed one each to his friends. “He’s obedient to a higher law. He rebels because he needs to play a more active role in history. We put that need in him, didn’t we, we sub-creators?”
“You’re right,” said Chatterji, brightening. “After all, in the last sequence he committed any number of—er—outright crimes. But he did obey his handlers without question. Yes, that puts a much more positive spin on it.”
“You see?” said Rutherford. “The only thing wanting now is to get him in for a visit with a Company recruiter. After all, we know he’s a kindred spirit.”
“How d’you reckon?” Ellsworth-Howard said.
“Just access those holoes and you’ll see,” Rutherford told him, and sipped his drink as Ellsworth-Howard took out the buke and squeezed in a request. The little projector arm shot up, unfolded its disc and sent out its beam of golden light. A moment later the
Captain Morgan
appeared in the midst of the room, under full sail, caught in the sunlight of a Caribbean morning.
“Ooh” said Ellsworth-Howard, and even Chatterji, who had already seen the report, smiled. Rutherford just nodded.
“There now! Can you wonder he prefers to live aboard that, and not in some dismal urban hive with public health monitors dogging his every step?”
“That is so cool,” moaned Ellsworth-Howard. “Look at the pirate flag!”
“Though I should mention that the committee found the flag in poor taste,” said Chatterji reluctantly.
“Oh, shrack them.”
“Offended their sensibilities, did he?” Rutherford said, casually leaning over the back of his chair. “Personally, I’m delighted with him. This is a true Briton, by God, this is the sort of fellow we used to have in this country. Like Drake! Like—
well—all those other seafaring heroes and, er, daring explorers. Imagine what misfits they’d have been nowadays.”
“You have a point there,” admitted Chatterji. Rutherford tossed back a slug of pretend sherry with reckless abandon.
“We’re of the same breed, you know. Look at us, dreaming of tea and sherry and pipe tobacco. Haven’t you ever wanted to smuggle chocolates in your suitcase when you’re coming back from a trip to the Celtic Federation?”
Chatterji started and looked around involuntarily. “I say, now, Rutherford—”
“Well, of course we’d never do it,” lied Rutherford, blushing, “but we’d like to! And
he
does. The life we sit around dreaming about, he goes out and actually
lives
. Look at the other images. Go on.”
Ellsworth-Howard found the ship so beautiful he could have stared at her for hours, but he squeezed in his request reluctantly. The
Captain Morgan
vanished, to be replaced with a holo of Alec pacing along a quay on some Caribbean waterfront. The background was dreamy as a travelog: green palm jungle and stately pink mansions, flowering mandevillea vines, a shell merchant holding up a queen conch with his smile very white in his black face, a blue and gold macaw perched on his shoulder. Alec wore his customary brilliant tropical shirt, ragged dungaree trunks, and sandals. The only thing out of place in the picture was the box he was carrying, which bore the logo of an electronics shop.
“Blimey,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Imagine being able to get away to places like that! I could never make the trip, though. I get motion sick.”
“The humidity would get to me, I’m afraid.” Chatterji shook his head longingly. “And the microbes in the drinking water. And the pollen count.”
“Me, too,” said Rutherford. “To say nothing of the UV levels. Look at him, though, all ruddy from the weather.
He’s
not afraid of the sun.”
“What’s that box?” Ellsworth-Howard peered at it. “Is that from Abramovitch’s? Do they have Abramovitch’s out there?”
“I expect those are components for his marvelous cyber-system,” said Rutherford. “He appears to have hookups to
weather surveillance satellites and coordinates them with whole libraries of three-dimensional charts, all in his head. He runs that entire ship completely by himself. All those sails and the, uh, ropes and things. That’s what he can do with that brain of his, Foxy. You ought to be proud.”
“Maybe I am, at that,” said Ellsworth-Howard, ordering up the next image. It had been taken at night, in some club. Alec, resplendent in evening dress, sat at a table. He was in languid conversation with a girl. Her eyes had widened at something he’d just said to her. He was smiling, making some point with a gesture, and the girl looked enthralled. On the table before them were two tall drinks, wildly overdecorated with paper parasols and orchids.
The three friends regarded the image in silence for a long, long moment.
“See? That sex drive wasn’t such a bad idea. I’ll bet he don’t half get the girls,” said Ellsworth-Howard at last. “Lucky sod.”
“I should imagine he’s wildly successful in that line,” said Rutherford airily. “Girl in every port and all that sort of thing. Learned better than to marry them. Keeps it all sensibly impersonal.”
“I think we’ve edited out any disastrous urges for intimacy,” Chatterji agreed. “Doesn’t he look splendid in that suit! What a pity he dresses so badly the rest of the time.”
“He needs a few endearing flaws, don’t you think?” said Rutherford. “It just shows he’s not vain about himself. Real heroes don’t care about things like that.”
Ellsworth-Howard summoned the next image.
“This was almost my favorite one, really,” said Rutherford. Alec was walking along a street, against a background of fields and distant orchards. “This was taken by the Facilitator resident in Ephesus, as our man was leaving. Look at his expression. Bold, determined, dangerous!”
“He don’t look happy, anyhow,” said Ellsworth-Howard.
“By Jove, I’d hate to cross the fellow,” said Chatterji. “The committee had certain concerns about this visit, Rutherford. Nasty bit of coincidence. It seems that not only is the former Lady Checkerfield living at that mother house, but the place has a hospital ward, and one of its inmates is Elly Swain.”
Rutherford started.
“I say! I really think we do have some sort of Mandelbrot operating here. No harm done, at least. He can’t have found out about her. And, you know, this is one of the hazards of operating in real time. Less direct control.”
“That’s just the point the committee made,” said Chatterji.
“Yes, but I think we’ve more than compensated for the setback when—well, you know.” Rutherford was referring to the fact that all of the initial data on the third sequence had been lost when Ellsworth-Howard’s buke had been spiked. It had resulted in a gap in Company surveillance on the project between the years 2326–2336, when Alec had been well into his higher education.
Rutherford hopped up and began to pace nervously. “The fact that our man’s done this well with minimal guidance just shows how sound our methods were. He’s an unqualified success, if you want my opinion. Yes, we should draft some sort of statement to that effect for the committee, don’t you think? Mission accomplished?”
“It’s early days yet,” said Chatterji. “If he can be brought into the Company fold, perhaps then we can talk about unqualified successes.”
“Oh, bother.” Rutherford pouted.
“I was wondering about something,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “This has been a lot more complicated than making up the old Enforcers. All this special fostering and guilt complexes and handlers and all?”
“For a much more complex product,” said Rutherford.
“Yeah, but with the Enforcers, you could just raise ‘em in the base schools and put ’em straight into the army, and they worked. These heroes, or whatever the shrack you’re gonna call ‘em, are they gonna have to be spoon-fed everything like the prototype has been? ’Cos you’re getting into a logistical nightmare if they are,” Ellsworth-Howard pointed out. “Think of all those foster homes.”
“No, no, of course we’ll streamline the process when we start mass-producing them,” Rutherford said. “Don’t forget we’ll be able to program the new fellows directly because they’ll be biomechanicals. If Tolkien had been given this project, what would he have done? Think of a marvelous
School of Heroes, much more Socratic, less militaristic than the old Enforcer training camps.”
“Yes, I like the sound of that,” said Chatterji thoughtfully. “What to do with our prototype, though? Won’t we have to tell him the nasty truth about himself?”
“Of course. And I daresay he’ll be surprised, but how on earth could he be anything but grateful to us?” Rutherford waved dismissively. “With that magnificent health and intelligence, to say nothing of that ship, that wealth, all those adventures in exotic places? Why, it’s a wonderful life!”

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