The Life of the World to Come (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “Righto,” said Rutherford, enormously relieved to remember he’d brought his identification disc.

  They stepped out cautiously into the sunlight again, and continued their journey.

  The novelty of the great outdoors was no longer quite as enthralling. Even Ellsworth-Howard was limping by the time they came to the first busy intersection they’d seen since leaving Rutherford’s neighborhood. The friends stood, uncertain, on a street corner, drawing back involuntarily as the transports thundered past them.

  “So where the bloody hell are we?” said Ellsworth-Howard. “I’m fed up with this walking thing, you know.”

  “The map!” Chatterji pulled it out and attempted to read it. It fell open all the way to his feet. Rutherford picked up the other end and they stood poring over the map, turning it this way and that in puzzlement. Ellsworth-Howard sighed and slipped off his daypack. He pulled out his buke, squeezed in a code, and waited for the results.

  “I can’t even tell where we’ve been, let alone where we are,” said Chatterji.

  “It’s a splendid find all the same, you know,” Rutherford assured him. “Tremendous historical value. Its just … unfortunately not very accurate anymore. Apparently. Here, does this look like my street?”

  “Where?” Chatterji bent his head, frowning.

  “There’s a big green bit two streets up from this spot,” said Ellsworth-Howard, showing them the screen of his buke where a simple map in brilliant primary colors had appeared. “I’m for slogging over there. Looks like all the countryside we’re likely to find before our feet fall off.”

  “Foxy! You weren’t supposed to bring your electronics,” Rutherford said peevishly. “This is a spiritual journey. We’re going to get in touch with nature.”

  “You want to see this shracking green bit or not, then?” yelled Ellsworth-Howard.

  “Now, chaps! No point losing our tempers. Yes, look, Rutherford, it’s a borough green area. What’s its name?” Folding up his map, Chatterji peered at the red words on the screen. Rutherford looked too. Their lips moved as they sounded them out.

  “Reg—”

  “Regent’s Park,” said Rutherford.

  “I’m off,” Ellsworth-Howard said, and turned and walked away in the direction of the park. They went gimping after him, calling for him to slow down.

  They came around a corner and there was Regent’s Park: acres of green and sunlight and birdsong, visible in glimpses between the tour transports that came and went. Staggering like cripples they approached it, uttering little cries of eagerness.

  “It’s Olde England at last,” gasped Rutherford, holding out his arms as though to embrace it all. Before him an industrial mower whirred busily along, shearing the grass to one precise height the full length of a long stripe exactly one meter wide. “Primeval Albion. The green and pleasant land.”

  His oration drew the attention of tourists dismounting from the nearest transport. One intrepid Asian gentleman stepped forward with his holocamera and recorded the three strangers in their picturesque costume, but most of the tourists edged away uneasily and spent their exposures on the tidy beds of primroses or the Monument to Victims of Religious Intolerance.

  “My God, it’s beautiful,” sighed Chatterji, pulling out his sinus inhalator and taking a sensuously deep drag. “Look at all the trees!”

  “It’s a forest,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Look over there, can’t you just see some bloody big knight in armor riding out from the shade? Or Merlin or somebody? Shracking hell, do you realize this is what it all used to look like?”

  The thought struck them speechless. Haltingly they moved along the sandy path, straight as a die between its landscaping bricks, that took them to a real bridge over a real lake and beyond. They stood spellbound on the bridge a while, watching the waterfowl that paddled and fought. Rutherford quoted reverently from The Wind in the Willows.

  Drawn by the spell of wilderness they went on, and presently found a snack bar on the greensward. It wasn’t exactly a cozy country tavern; it featured various treats manufactured from algae, and four varieties of distilled water. When the fellowship had loaded their trays with this hearty fare, there was only a chilly outdoor seating area enclosed behind Plexiglas panels in which to sit, no snug nook beside a sea-coal fire. Imagination plastered over disappointment, however, and they enjoyed their meal.

  Going on again after their brief respite proved harder for imagination to handle.

  “I’ve gone lame with all this walking,” said Ellsworth-Howard, and he was in better shape than Rutherford and Chatterji. They were in such agonies they didn’t trust themselves to speak, until at last Rutherford collapsed on the nearest bench.

  “I can’t bear this anymore,” he moaned. He unlaced his boots and drew them off with trembling hands. He was in the worst physical pain he’d ever experienced.

  Chatterji leaned on the bench beside him, watching with tears in his eyes.

  “I say, ought you to do that?” he protested feebly. “What if you pick up some pathogens?”

  “I don’t care,” said Rutherford. “It can’t hurt worse than this.”

  Chatterji thought about that a moment and sagged down beside Rutherford. As one moving in a dream, he gave in to the irresistible impulse and pulled off his shoes. With an animal groan of relief he stretched out his blistered feet.

  Ellsworth-Howard was no stranger to physical pain—his parents had beaten him regularly, in accordance with their social creed asserting that comfort made one weak and immoral—but after a moment of witnessing his friends’ utter abandonment to their senses, he sat down as well and took off his slippers, and flexed his long white toes in the sun.

  “Shrack, that don’t half feel better,” he said. “I ain’t walking back, though, I’ll tell you.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Rutherford gulped back a sob. “The pain is part of it all, don’t you see? No great insight or mystical experience is gained without a price. This is the ordeal we’re supposed to go through, to prove ourselves worthy.” He stiffened his upper lip. “Don’t you think C. S. Lewis and Tolkien went through this, when they’d walk through England? We’re feeling the same pain they felt, chaps, imagine it”

  “By Jove, Rutherford, do you suppose so?” Chatterji tilted his head back to watch the blue sky, where between puffy white clouds two blackbirds were mobbing a raven. “I think you’ve got something here! Maybe it’s biochemical. I’ve heard of ancient magicians and shamans who’d drive themselves into their visionary trances using pain as their, um, means of departure.”

  “It’s endorphins,” Ellsworth-Howard informed them. His jaw dropped as he had a blinding revelation. “So this was what my mum and dad were on about! No bleeding illusions, they told me. Life is pain and hypocrisy and death, they told me. We’re just learning you for your own good, you miserable little sod, they told me.”

  “‘That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,’” Rutherford quoted.

  “Conan the Barbarian, right,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Well, shrack all.”

  “See?” Chatterji said. “You’ve had a revelation already.”

  “He’s let his naked feet come into contact with the sacred earth,” said Rutherford. “Perhaps that’s it. I wonder what’ll happen if we walk on the grass barefoot?”

  “You think we ought?” Chatterji looked around involuntarily, fearful that a public health monitor might pounce. One had in fact been following them, and now watched from a discreet distance behind the snack bar.

  “Oh, I think we must,” said Rutherford, and gingerly peeled off his socks.

  “Oi, that looks nasty,” said Ellsworth-Howard in alarm. “You’ll want to put some Lubodyne on those.”

  “I don’t care,” said Rutherford, though he had gone rather pale. “I’m ready for the great truths to enter my soul.”

  He got unsteadily to his feet and marched away across the grass, carrying his shoes and socks. Ellsworth-Howard ran after him. Chatterji hesitat
ed for only a moment before taking off his black silk socks and wadding them up carefully inside his shoes, then leaping up and hurrying after his friends.

  “This feels wonderful,” said Rutherford. “Oh, it’s softer than the softest carpet, and so much more alive!”

  “Carpets ain’t alive at all, are they?” Ellsworth-Howard said.

  “You know what I mean. I say, what’s that?” Rutherford pointed.

  It was a low dome of concrete behind what appeared to be a large statuary group. They approached curiously. The statuary was of animals done in bronze, dozens of them, with an elephant in the center and all the others around it in descending ranks by height. There was a lion, and a tiger, and a bear. There were all creatures with hooves. Every imaginable bird, perched on the backs of some of the larger beasts. There was an ordinary dog and cat, a camel, a kangaroo, a wolf, and tiny things like weasels and mice in exquisite detail. Only one of each animal, all facing in the same direction with expressions of regal and sorrowful accusation. Just in front of the mouse was a granite pillar carved with the inscription:

  THE MONUMENT TO THE VICTIMS OF

  HUMAN CRUELTY

  And in smaller letters underneath,

  WELCOME TO THE LONDON ZOO

  Chatterji and Rutherford spelled it out with difficulty, and repeated it to Ellsworth-Howard. They stood considering it a moment. “Ought we to go in?” wondered Rutherford.

  “It’s only a bunch of holo cabinets.” Chatterji shrugged. “You can see better on BBC Epsilon.”

  “Bugger that, then,” Ellsworth-Howard decided, and was about to turn away when there came a soft beeping from his daypack.

  “You’ve got mail,” Chatterji said.

  “I do, don’t I?” Ellsworth-Howard slid off the pack and opened his buke. “Oi! It’s Adonai. Preliminary report’s coming in on the second sequence.”

  “It’s a sign!” Rutherford threw up his arms and cut an unsteady caper on the grass. “We will receive the vision now, here, in this holy place.”

  “What about over there?” Chatterji pointed to a grassy knoll, where a big tree offered shade and shelter.

  “Even holier. Come on, chaps!”

  It was in fact an oak tree, which would have made the fellowship happier still had they been aware of that fact, as they settled their backs against its vast trunk and Ellsworth-Howard set up the buke on his lap. They gazed expectantly at it, focusing their attention on the report to the exclusion of all else, with the result that they failed to notice a public health monitor advancing on them. When he loomed before them, though, they looked up with open mouths.

  “I regret to inform you that you are in violation of Public Health Ordinance 3000z, subset 15,” he told them, in a kindly uncle sort of voice. “Why don’t you all put on your shoes, so the festering lesions on your feet won’t continue to spread human infection in a public area? Then you can all come away with me. I’ll take you somewhere nice.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Chatterji scowled.

  “Oh, dear.” The public health monitor dropped his hand casually to the butt of his gas gun. “Are you going to be bad? You don’t want to be bad. You’ll have to go to a place that’s not nice at all, and they’ll take away your nice old clothes. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

  “Shracking hell, he thinks we’re nutcases,” Ellsworth-Howard said.

  Rutherford whipped out his identification disk at exactly the same moment the public health monitor whipped out his gas gun, and only the fact that the monitor’s nerves were a little shaken by facing three dangerous lunatics delayed his shot long enough for him to take in the meaning of the disk. Rutherford enjoyed watching his expression change.

  “Terribly sorry, gentlemen,” the monitor said, holstering his weapon. “Can I offer you assistance? I presume you want medical attention for your injuries.”

  “Yes, we’d like that,” Chatterji said, having a leisurely drag on his sinus inhalator. “Send a medic to look at our feet, and then have a private transport sent round for us. We’re just doing a bit of field research, and we had difficulties.”

  The monitor saluted, hastening to obey. Rutherford giggled and elbowed his friend.

  “What cheek. Private transport, Chatty? This is the life! Well, well. Shall we continue with seeing how our man did?”

  “Looks like another bloody short life,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “How’d he die so soon?”

  “Let’s start over,” said Chatterji. Ellsworth-Howard nodded and squeezed in the command to begin again.

  The pleasant electronic voice gave them a date in 1824 CE and showed them four photographs captured by a field operative, of a vaguely pretty girl and three men in early nineteenth-century clothing. The voice gave a brief biography of each of the persons shown, and then went on to note the implant date for the host mother. Her social status was such that she had been able to retire to a private home in the country for the duration of her pregnancy.

  This delivery had gone successfully. Following birth the host mother had gladly relinquished the subject to the field operative in charge of the project and returned to London.

  “No guilt, this time,” said Chatterji in relief.

  “I’m sure the Facilitator found something else to motivate our man,” Rutherford assured him absently, staring at the images.

  There followed a field holograph, taken by a Company operative with hidden equipment, of a blurry baby in a perambulator, attended by a black-clad nurse. The voice gave the names of the foster parents that had been selected for the subject and went on to explain what pressures had been exerted to extort financial assistance from the three men known to have slept with the host mother.

  Next there was a candid shot of a small child standing in a park, holding a nurse’s hand as he stared at a toy boat on the glassy surface of a pond. His early education and attendant indoctrination were described. The foster parents, it was mentioned, were both lost at sea when the subject was in his first term at public school.

  “There’s your emotional detachment, Rutherford,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Bang goes his adoptive family.”

  The next image was of a class of boys assembled for prayers, standing together in rows by height. A red circle formed about the head of the tallest boy, in the back row, and the image zoomed forward and enlarged.

  “There’s our man,” said Chatterji. The likeness was unmistakable, even allowing for the grainy quality of the enlargement and the smoothness of youth. This too was the face of the hologram that had appeared like a ghost in Rutherford’s parlor, except that—

  “Oh, dear, they damaged his nose again,” fretted Rutherford.

  At this point there was a portrait daguerreotype of what appeared to be an older gentleman in a headmaster’s gown and mortarboard. On close examination it was evident he wasn’t an old man at all, but such was his appearance of dignity and wisdom that it added reverend years to his sharpfeatured face.

  “Oi! That’s one of my Preservers,” said Ellsworth-Howard. The voice identified the headmaster as Facilitator Grade One Nennius, chief cyborg field operative for the London sector, responsible for programming the subject with the appropriate advanced indoctrination.

  “Nothing left to chance, this time.” Rutherford nodded approvingly. “We picked his mentor.”

  There followed a daguerreotype of the boy from the earlier pictures, now a young man in the uniform of a naval officer, posing beside a Roman column in a portrait studio. He carried his flat cockaded hat in the crook of one arm and looked sternly at the camera. Rutherford exclaimed in delight.

  “I must say, he wore a uniform well,” remarked Chatterji.

  The voice explained that the subject had been accepted as a midshipman in the Royal Navy at age fourteen, due to the fact that the principal “father” being blackmailed for support had balked at extended tuition and therefore arranged the subject’s commission.

  “Excellent,” said Rutherford. “None of this nonsense about an eccle
siastic career. A good early start on a life of action. Real scope to become the hero he was meant to be!”

  The voice described the subject’s naval service, which had been promising at first He had made lieutenant, been given command of a topsail schooner and sent to the African coast to chase slave ships. Having distinguished himself there for bravery and effective work, he was promoted to the rank of commander. Reassigned to a man-of-war, his career had been sidelined by an incident wherein he had argued violently with a superior officer against a disciplinary action.

  “There now,” said Rutherford. “There’s our noble soul. Wouldn’t permit keelhauling, I daresay.”

  Then he caught his breath at the image that appeared, apparently taken by a field operative with a concealed camera and somewhat blurred and badly composed in consequence. Nevertheless it riveted one’s attention. It showed the deck of a warship, crowded with assembled men, and in the background below the quarterdeck a grating set up lengthwise, to which a half-naked man had been pinioned. He had taken so many lashes his back looked as though it had been grilled. Blood spread in a bright stain down the back of his white trousers. To one side stood the man with the cat o’ nine tails. It hung slack in his hand, however, for he had stopped, was staring, as all the men were staring and even the prisoner himself was staring, head turned painfully to gape at the scene frozen in the foreground.

  The subject was being restrained by four other officers. Their faces were terrified. His was terrifying. His long teeth were bared. His eyes were very bright and focused on the man who lay before him on the deck, the man in the much more ornate uniform, the man who was bleeding from nose and mouth and eyes.

  “Shrack,” grunted Ellsworth-Howard. Rutherford and Chatterji just stared, mute. This was stronger stuff than anyone was accustomed to in the twenty-fourth century.