The Life of the World to Come (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “What about the Don Juan psychology, eh?” suggested Chatterji. “Lots of healthy sex without emotional attachment? Make him a bit of a cad, I suppose, but some of the old heroes were.”

  “We want a man who understands the necessity of sacrifice,” pronounced Rutherford. “No mystical nonsense. No women. Love is such a selfish passion, after all.”

  “As you like.” Chatterji nodded. “As soon as we receive word that another host mother has been located, you can draw up a revised psych template for our man.”

  “I’ve already had word of one,” Ellsworth-Howard said. “Came in yesterday: some Facilitator in 1824 AD’s found a girl for us. Daughter of a peer. Three boyfriends—naughty bit, I must say. One’s a lord, one’s an M.P., and one’s her father’s gardener. All of ’em the right morphology.”

  “In 1824?” Chatterji had another drag on his inhalator. “What’s going on in that time period? Much action for our man to be heroic in, when he’s grown? Glory days of the old empire, wasn’t it?”

  “Very good,” said Rutherford. Rising from his chair he began to pace. “Send the message to abduct, Foxy, and we’ll try again.”

  “Check,” said Ellsworth-Howard, pulling out his throat mike. He set it in place and sent the message subvocally.

  “Now, then …” Rutherford turned and stood with his back to the fire. “It has seemed to me, chaps, that we need a bit more inspiration. If we’re going to be the creators of heroes, just as the original Inklings were, we need to duplicate their experiences as closely as possible.”

  “I thought we were.” Chatterji looked around at the antiques, the stage dressing. “How could one recreate the twentieth century any better than this?”

  “Ah! The house is only part of it, you see.” Rutherford paused with his back to the fire. “The Inklings drew inspiration from their meetings, but they also kept in contact with the ancient wilderness of Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye.”

  “What the shrack are you talking about?” Ellsworth-Howard knitted his brows.

  “England! Albion. This blessed earth. They used to go out on walking tours, you see. Just take their daypacks and stride out through the hedgerows, and meadows and animals and things. It’d give them lots of ideas. And Merlin traveled a great deal, didn’t he, and Gandalf? So maybe a lot of walking helps the brain create stuff.”

  “Interesting idea,” said Chatterji. “In the Hindu folktales, wise men and magicians lived like beggars, walking from town to town.”

  “There you go. Now, what I propose is that we do the same. This time next month, what do you say? We’ll meet here, and we’ll just walk until we find some open country somewhere. Perhaps we’ll feel creative influences as soon as we’re out of the shadows of the buildings, what?”

  “How do we find open country?” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Don’t know if I’ve ever seen any.”

  “Don’t be silly, there’s a borough greenbelt not five miles from here,” Chatterji said. “It’ll be on any map. I think this sounds marvelous! Assuming it isn’t raining, of course. On the twenty-seventh, then?”

  THE YEAR 2339: Alec on Blue Water

  Just as the phantom had gone past, and all hands sighed relief With rending crash and mortal force, our vessel struck a reef!

  Alec howled happily at the top of his lungs, timing his words with the bump-bump-bump of the agboat as it sped across the waves.

  His latest acquisition wasn’t much to look at: a spare volcanic rock standing out of the Pacific, thinly skinned on top with green, one wind-bent Norfolk Island pine at the base of the lighthouse. It was a long way from anywhere and completely deserted. The automated light wasn’t working, because the small South American nation to whom it had previously belonged had been unable to afford its maintenance.

  Alec had come to repair it. Among other things.

  He had long since accustomed himself to the roar and flow of information that ran through his brain every conscious hour. He was able to tune it all out, all but a narrow band of what he was immediately interested in; otherwise he’d have been like a man in a library trying to read every book at once. He let the Captain sort through all the data for him. Habitually, now, he saw the world twofold: the ordinary dimensional world through which his body moved and, superimposed over it, the world in which the Captain lived. They matched seamlessly, the one neither more nor less real than the other.

  He brought the agboat up on the narrow black crescent of beach and frowned at the access stairs. They were tide-worn concrete, slimy with seaweed and bird droppings, and the handrail had been eaten away with rust.

  Hell no, lad. Take the boat up instead, the Captain said.

  Aye sir! Alec shifted propulsion systems and the agboat rose smoothly through the air, surprising the royal terns nesting in the cliff face. Seabirds rose and floated around him in a protesting cloud, as he gained the top of the cliff and brought the agboat down at the base of the lighthouse.

  Scan complete, Alec, said the Captain. All clear. Step ashore!

  Alec hopped over the side, gleeful as always to set foot on terra incognita. He paced along the gravel walk around the lighthouse, examining its masonry visually as the Captain scanned for structural defects.

  Looks sound to me.

  So she is, laddie. Let’s do a bit of breaking and entering, eh?

  Whistling through his teeth, Alec strode up to the door and entered the code he had been given. As he expected, it didn’t work. The security system would have to be replaced, too. No matter; there were crates and crates of useful components in the agboat. He fetched out a case, removed a small limpet charge and affixed it carefully to the lock. Walking away a few paces, he withdrew a detonating device and, unlocking the trigger, fired.

  The lock blew off with a pleasing bang and puff of smoke. Alec grinned and ran close to pull the door open. It screamed as though it were being murdered. Nothing inside but the base of a spiral stair vanishing upward into gloom. The air was dry, and smelled clean.

  And she’s weathertight, too, the Captain said. Alec sprinted back to the boat and hauled out the aglev unit. He began the lengthy process of loading crates, up the long dark chimney of the lighthouse to the control room at its top.

  When the Second Golden Age of Sail had arrived, the nations of the world had found that lighthouses were once again necessary. Not to provide light, though they did that too, but as land-based backups, sensors and relays for the global satellite tracking system. New lighthouses sprang up everywhere. There had been scarcely a stretch of water in the seven seas where you couldn’t glimpse some spark of light or other in the black night distance.

  Then, of course, the first excitement of the sailing craze had faded. The same people who had raved about what a marvelously eco-friendly system sail transport was now complained bitterly about public funds being used for something that would only benefit shipping magnates and yachtsmen. The more necessary ones were grudgingly maintained at national expense, and the rest fell into disrepair.

  This had been the state of maritime data reconnaissance until Balfour Continuance Limited had offered to purchase lighthouses from various needy countries. The given explanation—that Balfour Continuance was funded by wealthy yachtsmen interested in repairing and maintaining the lighthouses—was accepted without the least curiosity.

  In fact Alec and the Captain were Balfour Continuance, its sole board of directors, stockholders, and repair personnel. All around the world, the lights in the towers had winked back on, one by one, and they had begun to talk amongst themselves and search the darkness as they had used to; but they now shared the towers with backup caches for the Captain, linking him to the satellite relays, powered by solar collectors. The Captain circled the globe, was indestructible, and was able to feed a constant false location for the Captain Morgan to the global surveillance satellites.

  He was now several hundred times more powerful than any artificial intelligence had ever been. Alec was doubly happy about this, for not only was the Cap
tain better able to fulfill his programming, but the sea was quite a bit safer than she had been, for all who sailed her. Alec was always fond of doing good while doing well.

  And the lighthouses had another use. There was plenty of room in their towers for anything one might need to store there.

  The truth was that Alec was fairly actively engaged in smuggling, and had become rather successful at it. He was already nearly the richest man in the world, thanks to the Captain’s byzantine investment arrangements. Alec found he very much liked flouting stupid laws and cruising through the night with a hold full of Toblerone, or ganja, or semisoft brie. It was exciting to lie offshore, waiting for signal lights. Also, it seemed like the sort of thing Roger would have enjoyed.

  It was not without its dangers, of course. Alec and the Captain had by this time repeatedly broken the laws of most firstworld nations.

  However, Alec was a British peer, and legally the Captain didn’t actually exist There were no contingencies in law for Pembroke Playfriends who went rogue, nor any for aristocrats who could decrypt codes no mortal genius nor immortal machine had been able to break in four centuries of dedicated trying. Where loopholes couldn’t be found, bribing local law enforcement created them. In case that ever failed, as it had yet to do, Alec had a firm of solicitors whose services were retained at princely rates to handle his fines for failing to attend Parliament.

  He had left the Circle of Thirty far behind now. The first step had been failing his university examinations, which had taken a bit of careful work. Low marks in maths or cyberscience would have drawn unwanted attention, but spectacularly dismal marks in everything else drew the average down nicely and reinforced the legend of Ape Man Checkerfield, which suited Alec fine. He had long since ceased to care what Alistair Stede-Windsor thought of him. The Lewins had been appalled—that was painful—but he had bought them a beautiful home, and arranged pensions for them roughly equal to the annual national income of Monaco.

  The admin classes, for their part, had looked at his substance abuse records, looked at his low test average, concluded the son was as worthless as his father had been, and washed their collective hands of the seventh earl.

  And really, it had worked out very nicely for all parties involved. Alec now had a reputation as a playboy moron. To be a criminal in the twenty-fourth century, under so much surveillance, required genius, so nobody suspected he’d become one.

  Alec worked at the lighthouse until dusk. Then he was off across the water to where the Captain Morgan rode at anchor, beautiful as a dream from which one wakes weeping.

  She was immense, a four-masted windjammer, everything the Captain had promised she’d be, with that extra dash of class that comes from slightly retro styling. Alec had clamored for lots of pirate-ship ornamentation. The masters at Beretania pursed their lips and compromised, without spoiling their ideal of sleek white functionality. Alec insisted on having belaying pins along her rails, for appearance’s sake, and a working ship’s wheel.

  Beretania let him have his way in the cabin interiors, too, and they were glorious or hideous, depending on your sense of taste. Plenty of teak paneling and carving in a generally eighteenth-century style, the color scheme all crimson, jewel blue, and mahogany.

  There was even a figurehead on the prow, a mermaid whose bare breasts were discreetly obscured by the snaking coils of her fire-colored hair. Alec had seen her in an old drawing and demanded a reproduction. She stared out at the sea with contemptuous black eyes, and well she might; the Captain Morgan was deadly swift, swifter than the Flying Cloud, swifter than any other ship Beretania had built, and they were the best in the business. She flew a black ensign bearing a grinning skull and crossed bones.

  She carried laser cannon, too, hidden away behind sliding panels, quite dull functional pre-ban stuff of immense power, obtained from shady men who kept no records. So far the Captain had been unable to talk Alec into outright piracy, but if anyone ever attempted to board the Captain Morgan they’d wind up at the bottom of the sea in very small pieces.

  With a last whoosh of spray the agboat rose from the water and settled like a bird into its berth. Alec locked the davits and vaulted down to the deck, where he nearly collided with Billy Bones, who came rattling up with a glass of iced fruit tea for him.

  Billy Bones was not a robot. It was one of the Captain’s servounits, a skeletal thing on six jointed legs with three manipulative members. Alec had put it together to satisfy the Captain’s desire to function in four-dimensional space. It had no brain or personality, the Captain controlled everything it did; but for whimsy’s sake Alec had given it a steel skull-face. The effect was not whimsical. The servounit looked like a cross between the Terminator and a scorpion. The Captain had three others on board and Alec had named them Coxinga, Bully Hayes, and Flint.

  Thanks, Captain, sir! Alec took the tea and had gulped it all down before he reached his cabin. I’m going to wash; I feel like a guano magnet.

  The servounit followed after him and accepted the empty glass. Aye, son. Supper’ll be ready in the saloon when you get out

  Billy Bones waited patiently while he shrugged out of his coveralls and climbed into the shower. It extended a grasping hook, picked up the coveralls and scuttled away with them to the ship’s laundry. In the galley, Coxinga began preparations for Alec’s supper. On the quarterdeck, the Captain checked the stock market totals for that day and roved through his weather data, satisfying himself that no storms, financial or meteorological, were headed their way within the next fortyeight hours. He ordered Flint off to be waiting with a fresh towel for Alec, and busied himself with plotting their next course. He was a very contented machine.

  Alec was the only soul on board, and he hadn’t seen a human being in six months.

  But he was singing lustily as he lathered his hair, though Flint wasn’t able to appreciate his fine tenor in the least as it crept in on its steel spider-legs.

  Pity the Flying Dutchman! Forever is his doom.

  The stormy waters round Cape Horn must be his living tomb!

  He’s bound to sail the ocean forever and a day

  As he tries in vain his oath to keep by entering Table Bay!

  He was still whistling the song as he pulled on shorts and a vivid Hawaiian shirt. It had a pattern of flaming sunsets, scowling tikis, and surfboards. There was no one now to tell him his taste in clothes was ghastly. Pushing his hair out of his eyes (he hadn’t bothered to have it cut in a year), he wandered barefoot into the saloon. The rolling walk of a sailor had come back to him easily, never really forgotten over fifteen years ashore.

  The saloon was a fearsome place, and not only because of Alec’s chosen color scheme of red, blue, and gold. The walls bristled with antique hand weapons of every description. Alec had begun collecting swords, and branched out to pistols and war-axes, when he discovered what an atavistic thrill he got from handling them. Once, with a cutlass in hand, he had taken an experimental swing at a sack of flour suspended from a yardarm. The result, besides creating an unholy mess, had been so emotionally disturbing he now kept all his collection safely locked behind glass.

  He fixed himself a drink now at the bar, settling into the booth as Coxinga brought him his supper.

  It was sweet and sour halibut (Alec no longer had any qualms about eating real fish) with rice and peas, and he paused a moment to inhale the fragrances before setting to appreciatively. As he ate, he accessed a private file and reviewed its contents.

  The file was headed Charities. Alec did contribute, anonymously, to several real causes he felt were laudable. The World Centre for Disease Control got millions from him annually, as did Tri-Worlds Divorce Counseling Services. He practically supported Mr. Shakespeare at Southwark, and gave generously to the Greenwich Museum.

  But there was another way Alec spent his money. He called it the God Game.

  He scanned through his list now and singled out a small Caribbean country. Its economy was just beginning to recover from a c
atastrophic hurricane five years earlier, and a general election was about to be held. Alec surveyed all the data from weather forecasts, estimated its probable national revenue for the next five years, factored in the personal histories of all candidates running for office, and decided which man was best for the country. He transferred three million pounds into that candidate’s election fund. Then he did a projection based on all known factors and prevailing trends, and nodded in satisfaction. If all went as planned, there would be prosperity within two years and, just possibly, a cure for that nasty new strain of jungle rot.

  Another name on the list behind his eyes flashed red, and he scowled at it. This was a Balkan nation, long ravaged by plague. He had funded the rise of a leader whose political record indicated deep concern with medical reform issues. However, since the man had been in office the state of national health had not improved, and the man’s mistress had begun to spend lavishly on shoes, always a bad sign. Alec reached into the man’s private bank account and was astounded at the amount he found there. He withdrew half of it and deposited it into the campaign account of the opposition party. Another projection, and Alec wasn’t quite satisfied with the results; he tinkered with various factors, funding a research group here, a political activist there, until he got something he liked better.

  He paused to take another mouthful of rice and fish, washed it down with rum, and returned to his calculations. The Secular Opposition on Luna was having a bad fiscal year. Best to shore them up with a donation and maintain the balance of power between the Opposition and the Ephesian Church. New sanctions were being placed on the Celtic Federation by the American Community and Britain; Alec quietly slipped a few million into various Celtic political funds. The Greenest of the Greens had just won a major victory at the Egyptian polls, and stood poised to cut subsidies to barley farmers; Alec depleted the Green war chest, and made an unrecorded donation of substantial size to the Greater Nile Agricultural Relief Fund.