by Kage Baker
And the Recombinant was born. And died.
In the Netherlands, as it happened. Some laboratory had been working away, unfettered by any laws against genetic engineering, and one day announced proudly to the world that they’d produced the first designer human being. Not only that: they’d done it six years ago, and the perfectly normal, healthy boy was now of an age to make statements to the press.
Though he didn’t, much. I remember seeing the footage of a terrified little kid at a press conference, holding tight to the hands of the two scientists who’d raised him. He was slender and dark, and all he said for the cameras was that he was very happy to meet people and really looked forward to going to school. That didn’t disarm the people who screamed that his very existence was blasphemy. Maybe in time they would have been disarmed; but then the new plague began, all around the boy. Children he played with got it. People he shook hands with got it.
A mob broke into the house where the kid lived and shot him and the scientists who’d raised him.
They burned the house, with the bodies and the laboratory and all the records of the experiment. I personally doubt that the work was lost. Dr. Zeus must have had somebody on the scene to retrieve all that data. But every nation in the world signed an agreement: Never again would anyone attempt to create another Recombinant.
And if there were any of us immortals who still believed that the day would come when Dr. Zeus proudly introduced us to an astonished world—Look, these are the wonderful cyborgs we created to save the planet for you, and now that they’re retiring, they’d like to move into your neighborhood—if there were any of us who still believed that, well, we must have been a little shaken.
The twenty-second century arrived, and the year 2355 was another century closer.
London, 2142
LEWIS WALKED QUICKLY along Euston Road, past the bomb crater where the antiquarian bookshop once stood. He’d cleared out its treasures in one exhausting night just before the bomb went off, and managed to invite all his mortal coworkers out to breakfast an hour before the explosion, so that when the blast came, they were all sitting in a cafe arguing the merits of Thai iced coffee over Thai iced tea.
That was the last time he was able to afford inviting anyone out to breakfast.
England was poor now, like Lewis. Cutting loose Northern Ireland had seemed a good idea, but nobody had foreseen Belfast, and now there were roving Ulster Revenge League bombers carrying out reprisals for the Great Betrayal, as they termed England’s disengagement. A number of historic buildings were no more, including Lewis’s former place of employment. So far King Richard IV (dubbed Lucky Dicky because of his uncanny ability to dodge snipers’ bullets) and Parliament (who were less skilled in that regard than their sovereign, and died frequently) had been unable to come to terms with any of the several faction leaders demanding restitution.
It hadn’t helped when Scotland broke away. Terrorism was too tame for the Scots: they used lawyers. Richard’s predecessor, George VII (even less lucky than Parliament), signed away the Union of Crowns and was promptly assassinated by an enraged imperialist.
Now Wales was threatening to exit what was left of the United Kingdom, though its separationists were presently quarreling too violently among themselves to be able to draft a resolution to that effect.
London was once again a chilly place where people stood in queues for food, where children played in bombed-out ruins, where amputees hauled themselves along begging for change, where shop-windows were boarded up. Things would improve, eventually. They generally did.
Lewis pulled his coat tight about himself and sprinted up the dark narrow stair to his garret bed-sitter. Safely locked in, he took off his coat long enough to unpack the groceries he’d been carrying strapped to his body, chlorilar pouches worn like a diver’s weight belt: beans, consommé, mixed pickle, tomatoes, pilchards, raspberry jam, green peas. Not his favorites, but what he’d been able to get, and a nicely balanced haul. He lined them up on his shelf, rejoicing in a sense of abundance.
No evidence of mice this afternoon. Perhaps his latest strategy had worked. He made himself a jam sandwich, whistling, and wandered over to his communication terminal.
He had no fear the power wouldn’t come on. In these days of cold fusion, even England had dependable electricity. Not only that, the streets were kept tidy as people scavenged for trash to sell to the reactor stations. Taking a bite from his bread and jam, Lewis sat down and logged on.
On the little table at his elbow, Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax stared out at the world. Lewis had himself purchased the daguerreotype, and now it was one of several framed images Lewis owned and represented to his occasional mortal guests as long-departed family members. Usually, after identifying various nonexistent grandfathers and great-aunts, he’d tap Edward’s daguerreotype fondly and tell some story about a great-great-great-uncle who’d been a disgrace to the British Navy. His guests were invariably amused, and this kind of faked incidental detail never hurt when one was passing oneself off as a mortal.
Lewis had been working sporadically on what he had come to think of, ever since that long-ago weekend in Yorkshire, as the Edward Mystery. He hadn’t heard from Joseph in decades. For all he knew, Joseph had been arrested, and in any case Lewis didn’t want to think about underground bunkers and what was inside them. He had refused to admit that he was powerless to help Mendoza. He had stubbornly clung to the notion that following the long-cold trail of this mortal man might turn up some helpful detail, some useful clue.
Besides, Lewis found he had become unaccountably fascinated by Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax himself, who in some way was also the reincarnation of Nicholas Harpole. Lewis was beginning to understand how Mendoza could have loved these mortals to such a degree that she never stopped mourning one and threw away her career for the other.
Taking another bite from his bread and jam, Lewis clicked in. A particular combination of keystrokes encrypted all he saw and everything he was to upload that afternoon. Anyone monitoring his automatic transmission to the Company would read it as a long series of entries on the literature of the Socialist movement in Britain, guaranteed to send them channel-surfing on to monitor some other operative’s more interesting datafeed.
He opened the file headed EASILY AND BEST FORGOTTEN. There before him were the three letters in facsimile. The originals had long since passed into the possession of a museum in Southhampton, where they no doubt lay forgotten in some cabinet. It didn’t matter. Lewis knew them by heart now.
16th May 1843
My dear Richardson,
Here he is in all the full glory of his dress uniform—you’d scarcely know him, would you? Pray accept this remembrance from The Damned Boy as a token of his sincerest regard.
I fear all your assertions in respect to Navy life and morals prove more true than I can conveniently relate, and I would not grieve you in any case with a recitation of my adventures. Suffice it to say that I cannot thank you enough for that advice on the removal of certain stains from one’s dress tunic, to say nothing of where to find the best purveyors of French letters.
You may hear something of the Osiris and her crew soon. I fervently hope so. Ten weeks of whist parties with the best small gentry of Southhampton—elderly daughters and solicitous mammas—I leave it to your imagination! I would welcome a howling Buonapartist, pistol in either paw. Especially at one of these whist parties.
I remain
Edward
10th February 1847
My dear Richardson,
You will undoubtedly have been informed by now. I maintain, and will maintain, that I did no wrong. I was derelict in no duty, disobeyed no order, indulged in no cowardice, conspired in no mutiny. I did strike a superior, if a vicious and stupid monkey in a uniform may be dignified with that title.
I am fully aware that my case is lost before it has even begun. Neither my conduct in the late engagements with the blackbirders nor the testimony of the common sailors whose capri
cious murder I prevented will weigh in my defence, given the birth and breeding of Captain Southbey.
Indeed, my only regret is that I did not kill the man outright, since his continued career ensures a drain on Her Majesty’s purse and certain danger to any men so unfortunate as to come under his command. There are certain offences to which I intend to testify, knowing full well they will not serve to acquit me but which must be shouted aloud. ‘Tell truth and shame the devil,’ says the poet, and so I must. He, at least, will suffer the indignity of hearing his particular monstrousness named before his peers. I WILL NOT BE SILENCED.
You cannot receive this news with any light heart, I know. Moreover, it has been forcibly given to me to understand that He of Whom We Must Not Speak has been seriously displeased by the news of my impending trial. How little I esteem his opinion you may well imagine, but the prospect of grieving your good heart is intolerable to me. You MUST understand that I have done nothing of which you would be ashamed, nor ever shall.
I remain
Edward
23rd September 1852
My dear old Richardson,
It grieves me more than I can express that I am unable to visit you at this time. None but you taught me the meaning of Duty, and mine requires my continued efforts here for the present, as I am certain you will understand, old soldier that you are. There will not pass one hour of the day when you are not continually in my thoughts.
You must get well, old man, you must obey Dr. Malcolm in every particular and avoid all care! I cannot imagine how No. 10 could continue without your ‘mailed and terrible fist’ to keep them all in line, and moreover, to whom shall I write if you leave me quite alone in this world?
For though One had the natural title and refused it, and Another assumed the title but bore it in absentia, God knows only you have ever done the office of a true Father to your Damned Boy
Edward
Lewis sighed, as he usually did on reading the last paragraph. There wasn’t a lot of material to run with, but over the years, through patient hours of cross-referencing and through the meticulous search of ancient archives, he had been able to piece together the following story.
On approximately August 1, 1825, a boy—almost certainly illegitimate—was born in a small country house near Shipbourne, owned by one Mrs. Moreston, who kept the establishment to accommodate well-born young ladies who needed a nine-month country retreat. One week later he was baptized Edward Alton Fairfax in St. Nicholas’s Church in Sevenoaks.
At this point in time, the property at No. 10 Albany Crescent in London was owned by one Septimus Bell, who resided there, childless, with his wife, Dorothea, and servants, chief of whom was the butler, Robert Richardson, a former sergeant in the 32nd Regiment of Foot. Mr. Bell’s occupation was listed as Gentleman.
Lewis had never been able to determine just how the infant wound up in the Bell household, but in 1836 young Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax was enrolled in Overton School, and his guardian’s address was given as No. 10, et cetera. On discovering this, Lewis searched out Mr. Septimus Bell’s bank records, and found evidence of quarterly deposits of large sums of money beginning in 1825, though so far he had been unable to trace the source. The deposits continued even after Mr. and Mrs. Bell were lost in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy during a grand tour, late in young Edward’s first term at Overton.
Edward’s progress in school was exceptional, particularly in maths, at which he excelled, though there were disciplinary actions on two occasions for fighting. Scholastic brilliance notwithstanding, at the age of fourteen he was pulled from school and entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman. Admiralty records revealed that young Edward progressed with remarkable speed to the rank of lieutenant, and within five years was given command of a schooner and sent to the coast of Africa to patrol against the slave trade.
This was not the reward it might appear. It was dirty work and dangerous, given to young officers in no position to protest being sent in humble little boats to chase after slave ships. It appeared, however, that Edward turned the slight to his advantage. Mangrove swamps, poisoned spears, fever, alcohol, shipwreck: none of them managed to take him out. He distinguished himself by conducting a ferocious campaign against the slave traders, proving so effective a fighter that he was promptly pulled from the job, made a commander, and reassigned to a man-of-war doing nothing in particular off the coast of France.
And this appeared to be his downfall; he “violently quarreled” with a Captain Southbey over the matter of a flogging ordered for an ordinary seaman “in excess of a hundred strokes.” However violent the quarrel may have been, Edward must have received some help from the unknown benefactor he so disdained; for the threatened court-martial never materialized. He was instead allowed to retire, retaining his rank of commander and on half pay. Captain Southbey, on the other hand, was murdered by his own crew the following year.
That was all the Admiralty records had to say on the subject of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, and for many years Lewis was unable to trace him any further.
But Lewis was patient as only an immortal can be, and had decades of gray London evenings to spend combing through every records cache that had survived the intervening centuries.
No record of marriage for Edward, no record of children, no record of what duties kept him from going to see Robert Richardson in his last illness—the old soldier died on October 10, 1852, and was buried in a churchyard in London, one of the tiny crowded places Dickens described. Lewis went to the grave site, found the ancient stone with its nearly effaced inscription; but there was no corresponding stone for Edward in any cemetery that kept records.
Lewis checked the ones without records, too, spent interminable sunless weekends pacing between leaning headstones, broken angels, toppled urns, wildernesses of moss and ivy. Passersby sometimes glanced through rusted railings and were startled by the slight man in the long coat, like a ghost himself.
Year after year Lewis searched, not knowing what he wanted to find or what he sought to prove. He cautiously admitted to himself that the hunt for Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax had become more than a hobby for him. The mystery possessed all the elements of a novel: the highborn foundling infant, the brilliant boy cut off from human affection except for an old servant, the heroic career at sea and in the coastal swamps of Africa, the furious protest against injustice and evil—and then nothing but the hint of some secret duty that prevented him from coming home. How did the story end?
Or, rather, how did it end with Edward’s dying in Mendoza’s arms in far-off California? How had this man, who’d risked his life repeatedly to prevent slaves from being taken, wind up shot to death by agents of a nation fighting to end slavery?
Lewis invented half a hundred scenarios, none of them satisfactory. To be a Literature Specialist is not necessarily to be able to write, though Lewis longed to. The fantasy was like a fire that kept the chill out of his immortal bones: he’d gaze off between the crumbling tombs and the willows and see the couple embracing there for a moment, the bright wraiths of the stern young man and the black-eyed girl. Edward smart in the uniform he’d worn for his portrait and Mendoza happy as Lewis had never seen her, wearing a summer dress of peach silk . . .
The image sustained him somehow. And it kept away the quiet horrors of his own life.
The nightmares came on Lewis gradually, after the return from the Yorkshire trip, and had nothing to do with the downscaled standard of living or the bombs in the streets, or even with living alone in a garret. They had everything to do with what he had forgotten about Ireland.
Sometimes he would be fine for years on end, and then something would set the nightmares off. Once he was in the Tube when the lights failed, and that did it. Once he tuned into a BBC program on the pathetic survivors of the human cloning experiment (it had worked, but the resulting children all suffered from progeria). Once it was no more than a customer bringing in a book to sell, a late-twentieth-century facsimile of the Book of Kells.
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The symptoms were always the same, just what mortals suffered: shortness of breath, pounding heart, cold sweats. He’d sit up reading until he was exhausted, fearful of turning out the light. The nightmares would come eventually anyway, sometimes when he thought he was still awake.
They tended to begin with sleep paralysis. He knew he was awake, sitting up in a well-lighted room, safe and in full possession of his immortal faculties. He was completely paralyzed, however, and as soon as he acknowledged this to himself, the real horror began, a sensation of slipping downward into shadows.
After that followed chaos, darkness, and a sense of imminent and personal danger. There was a voice that spoke in Latin. A cell with a trick door. Children crowding into a tunnel. A suffocating smell. Red lightning. Sometimes the specific sequence of these events was confused, but they built, always, to the same conclusion: he would begin to go gradually blind. He’d be lying somewhere, helpless, unable to see, and he could hear his own voice saying, My God, is this what it’s like?
Lewis never woke screaming. He’d get his sensation and his sight back a little at a time, finding himself at last perched on a chair or sprawled on the daybed in his clothes. He would be cold as ice, shivering, nauseated. Running a self-diagnostic never revealed anything wrong with him.
And then six months ago, something different happened.
The nightmare began again—this time simply an oddly familiar face glimpsed in the street had done it. He fell into dreams and was shuddering in the dark, fighting back the panic, knowing he was too damaged to stop them, knowing he might die, really die, the way mortals died—
Someone took hold of his hand.
Complete sensory confusion, sight flowing up his arm from his hand, caught hard in the grip of the other hand. It was pulling him out of the darkness. The sight reached his eyes, and he found himself staring into Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax’s stern young face.
Edward kept pulling, and the darkness snarled and flowed away from Lewis like a fast tide receding. He found himself standing on a London street in his modern clothes, as the shuttle traffic roared past, as cripples pulled themselves along and shopkeepers unlocked their iron gates for the morning’s commerce. But Edward was still standing there before him, in his nineteenth-century naval officer’s uniform, frowning down at Lewis from his great height.
