The Life of the World to Come (50 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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“Good God, she must be made like the houris in Mahomet’s paradise! And she knew tricks I thought only the women in the souk could do. I suppose she had her education at your godly hands, brother Nicholas, in which case I’m obliged to concede there’s more to you than meets the eye as well!”
“Don’t speak of her this way,” said Nicholas, giving him a deadly look. “Thou, who never loved her.”
“I tell you I did, man,” Edward said, all the banter going
out of his voice. He put down his cigar. “I thought she was superb. Lustful as Aphrodite, and wise as Athena. She seemed to think we were made for each other. And we were, by God! She’s mine, not the damned Society’s chattel.”
“She was going to marry
me,
” said Alec. “I asked her, and I’m still the only one with a real body, so you can just—just—”
“Let me guess. Piss off?” Edward inquired in a bright voice.
“Oh, shut up,” said Alec miserably. “I guess she only loved me because of you two. Figures, doesn’t it? She …” He stopped, struck. “She must have known about us. That we were Recombinants and everything! Don’t you think? And she didn’t care.”
“How should she care, who was scarcely a creature of flesh and blood herself?” said Nicholas. “Though she at least began as a mortal child, not an unnatural scrap of flesh in an alembic’s womb.”
“How d’you know that?” Alec asked him.
Nicholas raised his pint and drank deep. “Her father admitted it to me,” he said, with an extraordinary expression of malevolence. “No true father of hers, understand my meaning, yet he that bound her into eternal labor for his masters. Doctor Ruy! A meddler and a poisoner, and were he not deathless I would kill him with my two hands, should he ever cross my path again.” He looked sullenly at Edward. “There’s necessary murder for you.”
Edward merely gave him an ironic smile and drank more of his brandy. Alec sat looking from one of them to the other.
“There might be a way to find out how much she knew about us, anyway,” he said. “I guess you both can read writing, can’t you?” The concerted look of scorn they gave him made him flush. “Hey! I can do lots of things you can’t, you know.”
“Undoubtedly,” Edward drawled, reaching for his cigar again. “Though I intend to become your equal in them pretty damned quickly. How does one control your Ancient Mariner, for example?”
That’s for my boy to know and you to find out, ain’t it, sir?
“Rest assured I will,” Edward said.
“Peace! Wherefore, boy?”
“She left writing,” Alec said. “I brought it with me from the station but I can’t read it, and—”
“Good God. There was a book, wasn’t there?” Edward sat bolt upright. “What did you do with it, Alec?”
Five minutes later they were settled down around the table again, with fresh cigars and brandy for Edward and more ale for Nicholas, examining the book under the light of the gimbal lamp.
It was a big book, very rough and hand-made in appearance, and it consisted of three sections sewn together. The first part was written on glossy sheets of something indestructible, brightly printed on their reverse sides with pictures of seductive-looking cuisine. They were in fact opened-out labels for a popular soy protein product. The ink varied here in color and thickness; the writer had evidently been experimenting with thinning agents. Toward the middle of the text a satisfactory uniformity had been achieved, and remained consistent thereafter.
The second part was of machine-cut white paper, crumbling with age, a printed text here and there annotated in the same hand as the first section, with a written postscript. It appeared to be the transcript of a hearing.
The third part was the shortest: more of the bound labels, covered in closely written text to about halfway through. The writing had broken off abruptly. There were some thirty pages following, blank, clean and new-looking.
“That is her hand,” said Nicholas in a guarded voice.
“Is it?” Edward clamped his cigar in his teeth and opened to the first page. He removed the cigar, blew a stream of smoke and read aloud:
“‘I am a botanist. I will write down the story of my life as an exercise, to provide the illusion of conversation in this place where I am now alone—’”
He broke off, frowning. “This is a diary. I wonder whether we really ought to …”
“Dost thou scruple, thou?” scoffed Nicholas.
“I have my standards where a lady’s heart’s concerned,” Edward said. “Besides, one never knows what one might find.”
“Please,” said Alec. “I only had her for a day. What if we
never find her again? I loved her, I’ve got to know what she said!”
Nicholas pointed in silence to a line near the bottom of the first page, where the words
Dr. Zeus Incorporated
appeared. Edward nodded grimly.
“We’ve no choice, then, really,” he said. “Have we, gentlemen? Sorry, my love. Let’s see what you can tell us.”
Edward began again to read aloud. His cigar, forgotten, burned itself out to gray ash. There were times when Alec had to explain puzzling text references to the other two men. There were times when Nicholas had to do the same. They read all night.
Gray morning was breaking over the sea when Edward fell silent at last and leaned back from the table. Nicholas’s eyes were red and swollen; he’d wept himself out hours earlier. Alec sat gazing at the other two men with contempt.
“You bastards,” he said hoarsely. “You tricked her, didn’t you?”
Edward was silent, but Nicholas raised his head.
“
Tricked
her?”
“You know what I mean.” Alec leaned forward across the table, stared at Nicholas with a ghastly parody of a seductive smile. “Bet you did it a million times, didn’t you? You just look into their eyes—and you sort of focus right here, don’t you, and you think about how nice it would be to get them in bed. And then they do just what you want. And they think they love you, until it wears off.”
“No!” Nicholas protested. “I only persuaded her—that gift was the grace of God,
charisma
, that I might save souls! And if love were the means—if she …” His stammers died away into silence. He closed his eyes, white as a ghost. “Oh, Jesu, what have I done?”
“Merely used a superior force of will,” said Edward sharply, though he did not look up. “A natural gift you were born with, owing nothing to superstition. If you never employed it toward noble ends, at least you did better than the boy. Alec, did it never occur to you that you might have become something more than a seducer?”
“Sooner that than what you became, man,” Alec said. “You shracking assassin.”
Edward stiffened, but did not respond.
“I should never have been born,” said Alec. “None of us should ever have existed at all. Why did she love us?”
Edward reached for his brandy and tossed it back in a gulp. “But she
did
love us. Here! You machine. Captain Morgan, d’you call yourself? Set a course for London in the twenty-fourth century, however you do it. We’re going after Clive Rutherford.”
Aye, sir! But you might want to let our Alec get some sleep first, eh? You’ll all need yer wits about you.
“We will, by God,” Edward said, rising to his feet behind the table. “Shall we retire, gentlemen?”
Alec nodded grimly. He stepped away from the table. Edward and Nicholas followed him without another word.
London was fogbound, all her postcard views grayed out and lost. Her streetlights had only just extinguished themselves, but there was nobody to see: her few citizens were still huddling in their warm beds, asleep or smugly congratulating themselves that there was a full half hour yet before the alarm shrilled.
The Thames was quiet at Waterloo Bridge, the fog drifting low and silent over its glassy surface. Suddenly the fog lifted in a puff, as if blown by a gust of wind, though there was no wind. Seconds later there was a disturbance in the water, a roiling, a steaming, and anyone standing on the bridge might have thought a submarine had unaccountably just surfaced in the river below. However, there was no one standing on the bridge at that hour.
Within seconds the long sleek shape had stabilized, and the glassy shell that formed her upper surface lifted a little—just enough for a man to emerge, squeezing through awkwardly because he was a rather long man, stripped to bathing trunks, clutching in one arm a waterproof duffel sack. He dropped into the Thames and swam hastily ashore. No sooner had he found his footing in the Thames mud than the unidentified floating object slid away up the Thames in the direction of Charing Cross New Pier, where it lurked among the pilings.
The man remained, however, shivering violently in the
cold. He retreated into the shadows under the bridge and, taking clothing from the duffel sack, dressed himself. The last thing he took from the bag was a pistol of some kind. He thrust it out of sight into his coat, wadded up the bag and stuffed it into a pocket, and climbed up to the Embankment through the ruins of the old police station.
Shortly thereafter, persons venturing out to the public transport stops along Charing Cross Road were dismayed to note the presence of a very tall demented person, lumbering along uncertainly and talking to himself. It wasn’t only that his eyes were red, his hair wild; he was dressed most inappropriately. His long winter coat flapped open to reveal that he wore nothing more underneath than a tropical-pattern shirt, shorts, and a pair of canvas boating shoes. He looked like a derelict who had been on a Hawaiian holiday.
Mrs. Beryl Wynford-Singh trembled as he approached, making herself as small as she could on the transport bench and praying that the transport would arrive before he came near enough to assault her. She gasped with relief when she spotted the transport rounding Pall Mall. The lunatic gasped too, and backed into the nearest doorway.
“
God’s wounds,
” she heard him cry. “Quiet, you idiot! It’s nothing more than, er, some kind of omnibus. Isn’t it, boy? It’s only an agtransport. Don’t be scared. Come on. People will look at us.”
But in fact nobody was looking at him. After the first glance, people were determinedly averting their eyes. Several of them felt rather guilty about it, because by law it was every citizen’s duty to report reality-challenged persons to the nearest public health monitor, that they might be taken off to hospital. However, this law failed to take into account the irresistible human urge to confer invisibility on those who dressed badly and babbled to themselves in public places. Mrs. Wynford-Singh was already quite incapable of seeing the lunatic as he paced on and halted, gaping up at a memorial statuary group dating from the early twenty-first century.
“That’s new since my day! Persephone, isn’t it? Ay. Ravished away down the tunnel to the underworld by Hades, with his hounds chasing after. So it is. Rather an omen for our
quest, wouldn’t you say?” The lunatic peered more closely. “Who was
Diana Spencer
? Come on, we’re wasting time.”
The transport stopped in front of a grateful Mrs. Wynford-Singh and opened its doors. As she fled through them, she did think she heard a voice saying plaintively: “Now, where the deuce has Shaftesbury Avenue got to in five hundred years?”
One alert junior clerk, watching from the transport window, did notice that the tall person bore a marked resemblance to the mysterious Hangar Twelve Man in the Mars One surveillance footage, still being shown nightly in the hope that viewers might provide authorities with an identification. The junior clerk’s eyes brightened, and he leaned closer to the glass for a better look. He realized that the tall man was gesticulating and speaking to the air next to him, as though an unseen person stood there. The clerk promptly lost interest and sighed, reflecting on the hopeless monotony of his young life as Mrs. Wynford-Singh dropped heavily down on the seat beside him.
The tall man did find his way to Shaftesbury Avenue without being arrested, and there seemed to orient himself. He loped away at once with a determined stride, his long coat blowing out behind him. In a few more minutes he stood peering into Albany Crescent, an extraordinary expression on his face.
“Look at it,” he muttered. “Of all the places to have survived half a millennium! I might have known. I’ll bet the drains are still blocked. So that was your house, there? Number ten? Yes, unfortunately. I know how you feel. My place in John Street gets me the same way.
“Thou liest! This is some palace, surely. Yes, I suppose it would seem that way to you; but then, you were born in a thatched hut, weren’t you? Besides, this isn’t one house, it’s lots of houses all stuck together. Well, and canst thou effect an entry? I think so. I was pretty drunk, though. Never mind, boy. It’s coming back to me now.”
He proceeded into Albany Crescent and stood, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, surveying the long curve that fronted on a park. It was entirely deserted.
“How did you break in, Alec? Well, it wasn’t number ten.
It was this one here on the end. See down those stairs? There’s a kitchen—I know. Down there, now. Before someone sees. But—Do as you’re told!”
He scrambled down the kitchen-stairs at No. 1, which were heavily overgrown with rose bramble, and crouched in the shadows by the door.
“Ow! I tried to tell you, man. Never mind. Is this the door? No. It’s been replaced. That’s a new lock, an electronic one. Canst command it, then? I ought to be able to. Let’s see.” He drew a plug from the torque about his neck and inserted it in the lock’s port. “We’re in! Come on, then. Close it behind you.”
He stood in shadows and dust, looking around warily. There was nothing in the room but a nineteenth-century cooking hearth, a mass of brick-red rust. There were casterstains on the linoleum to show where later appliances had sat for long periods of time, and a few irregular holes in the walls and floor. The man shivered.
“This is what it is, to be a ghost! Through there. There ought to be stairs. But this isn’t number ten! What’s the point—you’ll see.”
The room beyond was in worse shape, darker and dirtier. There were stairs against the far wall, leading upward. The man crept up them and easily forced the old-fashioned lock at the top.
He stepped out into what had been the entry hall of the house and paused, getting his bearings. Then he paced slowly forward, over the marble parquet floor, to the swirling mosaic roundel at the base of the curving stair. Light filtered in through the fan above the door, revealing a parlor opening out to his right. Dust and cobwebs there, a black yawning fireplace, boarded-over windows.
“Wherefore hath this been left to time and the worm?” wondered the man. “Damned if I know. Look at it all! Draperies gone, potted palms gone, servants all gone. So much for Britain and her glory. Er—it’s like I said, you know? There’s more houses than people now, and nobody wants to live in the crumbly ones.” He lifted his face, scowling. “It smells dead. Enough of this. Upstairs, quick march.”
He went up into the house, ascending through more shadows,
more cobwebs, and brought them at last to a little door in the wall of what had been the servants’ dormitory.
“Here we are, gentlemen,” he said, crouching down. “Rather smaller than I remembered, but what can one expect?” He took a firm grip on the handle of the door and pulled. The door tore away from the wall, trailing its rusted hinges, to reveal a darkness beyond, partially blocked by an ancient water tank.
“Hm.” The man put his head into the darkness. “This may be difficult. Difficult? You’re nuts, it’s impossible. We can’t fit through here.” He regarded the long passage that stretched away under the slates of the roof, the whole length of the crescent. It was floored only with wooden beams widely spaced over plaster, and obscured at regular intervals by more of the water tanks. “No? We must and will, unless you’d prefer knocking on Mr. Rutherford’s door and asking to be invited in. Don’t be a coward. I’ll show you who’s a goddam coward!”
He thrust his shoulders in past the tank, and after a considerable amount of straining and writhing got in one leg and then the other. Balancing on a rafter, bracing himself against the wall, he stood slowly and found his head in a mass of cobwebs.
“Aaagh! Keep calm. Don’t step between the rafters, or you’ll fall into the room below. Now, this can be done. Quickly, beam to beam, watch your feet. Count the doors. We’ll want the ninth one after this. Go!” Shuddering, he began to sidle along the passage, as the rafters creaked ominously under his weight.
“Here we are,” he said presently. “Number ten. See?” Grinning, he ran his fingers over a pattern of scratches on the wood of the low sill. Just visible, in the chink of light streaming between two slates, were the straggling letters E-D-W-A-R-D.
“My old hideaway. Rather comforting, don’t you think?” he said, testing the door with his fingertips. “Nothing left of Her Britannic Majesty’s Empire, but by God I left my mark on
something
. Just get us out of here, man. I think this rafter’s cracking.” He struck the door a careful blow and it flew open, admitting him into blinding light. Crawling forth on his hands and knees, he found himself in what was plainly an attic.
Rather too plainly an attic. There were three or four old
trunks, picturesquely decorated with antique steamer labels, and a dressmaker’s dummy. There was a battered farthing-halfpenny bicycle leaning against the wall, with a broken cricket bat and a helmet from some long-lost war. There wasn’t a speck of dust on anything.
“This is a museum exhibit,” said the man. “Thank you, I had drawn that conclusion. Is he here, then? Downstairs, very likely. Yeah.” He got carefully to his feet and dusted himself off, picking cobwebs from his wild hair. Reaching inside his coat, he drew out the pistol and checked it. Then, with a coldness and composure in his face that would have astonished the cringing citizens who’d seen him talking to himself in the Charing Cross Road, he opened the attic door and descended the steps beyond in perfect silence.
“More tea?” Rutherford offered the pot. Chatterji swirled bits of chamomile in the bottom of his cup and made a face.
“No, thanks. I’ll have another muffin, though.”
“There you are.” Rutherford extended the plate and Chatterji helped himself. “What about you, Foxy?” He waited patiently as the import of his words sank in on Ellsworth-Howard, who was working his slow way through a bowl of bran flakes in soy emulsion. Ellsworth-Howard’s new medication made him very calm, you could say that much for it.
“Yes please,” he said at last, and Rutherford leaned over and refilled his teacup.
“There you are.” Rutherford took another muffin himself, and daubed it with fruit paste. There were no clandestine dairy products at his table today; smuggling butter and cream had become too dangerous since the Mars Two incident, with all the increased border surveillance. Still, nobody would ever catch the Hangar Twelve Man. Miserable closure had come when Chatterji was informed that the Company had recovered the stolen shuttle, wrecked, and found bits and pieces of Alec Checkerfield inside.
“Now then.” Rutherford dabbed at his mustache with a napkin. “What do you say we have a look at our dream journals? Chatty?”
“Well—er.” Chatterji drew a small plaquette from his coat pocket. “There’s not much, I’m afraid, and I don’t appear to have been given any unconscious insights on how to create a better security tech. Mostly I’ve just had nightmares.”
“Ah, but you never know. The creative genius may have given you an insight expressed symbolically, don’t you see? Like that chemist fellow,” said Rutherford. “Dreamed of snakes biting their tails, and woke up to realize that benzene molecules must be circular.”
“Yes, but—I dream about Shiva and Kali. On Mars,” Chatterji said, and Rutherford grimaced. They had all agreed never to bring the subject up again.
“Ugh. You want to schedule another session with Dr. Cannon, Chatty. Very well then, I’ll share my dreams.” Rutherford took up his plaquette and thumbed the PLAYBACK function. After a moment the room filled with the sound of his voice, thick and blurred with sleep:
“HEM! UH, VERY INTERESTING. TWENTIETH JANUARY 2352, HALF PAST FIVE IN THE MORNING AND I WAS, ER, IN SOME KIND OF POLICE MUSEUM. ROWS AND ROWS OF WAX DUMMIES IN OLD POLICE UNIFORMS. SOME OF THEM HAD CLUBS AND SOME EVEN HAD GUNS, AT LEAST I THINK THEY WERE GUNS—”
“Did they look anything like this?” said the very tall man who appeared in the doorway, leveling a disrupter pistol at them. Rutherford dropped his plaquette in his surprise. It fell to the floor and the sound of his recorded voice stopped abruptly.
“Alec shracking Checkerfield,” said Ellsworth-Howard through a mouthful of bran flakes.
“Amongst others,” said the tall man. “Get his buke! Get it before he can send an alert. What’s a buke? That thing there, sticking out of his bag, see? Ah.” He crossed the room swiftly and confiscated Ellsworth-Howard’s buke, shoving it into his coat pocket and placing the bell-muzzle of his disrupter to the back of Ellsworth-Howard’s naked head. Rutherford shrieked. Chatterji’s hands flew to his mouth.

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