The Life of the World to Come (Company)

by Kage Baker

  He found himself waiting for the Captain to tell him, and gulped in dismay when he remembered that the Captain was missing in action. There was a roaring in his ears, a crowding at the edges of his vision; suddenly she was there again, holding his head up with both her hands on his face, looking into his eyes.

  “ … You don’t want to go away again, you’re going to be fine. Stay with me, now. Listen to the sound of my voice. I’m going to give you something to make the bleeding stop, okay?”

  “’Kay,” he said thickly.

  “Good boy. This’ll sting, I’m afraid. What’s your name? Can you tell me your name?”

  “Alec,” he said. She put a coagulator wand to his nose and fired. It stung, all right. The reek of ozone was pungent, painful. The girl held a wad of wet cloth under his nostrils, tilting his head back.

  “Alec! Really? As in Alec Guinness?”

  “Alec Checkerfield,” he said indistinctly, looking at her over the cloth.

  “Alec Checkerfield! Well. And you’re an Englishman, obviously. Can you tell me what year it is, Alec?”

  “Er—well—it was 2351 when I left—” he said. She caught her breath. He gulped and blundered on. “Only I guess I’m somewhere else now.”

  She nodded slowly. “I guess you are. Did something go wrong with your shuttle?”

  Okay, she wasn’t a denizen of a past time. That meant—

  “You work for Dr. Zeus,” he said, noticing at last the corporate logo on the breast pocket of her coveralls. There was another emblem beside it, a clock face without hands.

  She considered him for a long moment, an unreadable expression in her eyes. “Actually,” she said, “I’m a prisoner here.”

  That sank in and he calmed down. “Oh,” he said, as she moved the cloth to see if the bleeding had stopped—it hadn’t quite—and zapped him again with the wand. “Ow. You mean you’re from the same time as me? And, and this is a prison colony or something? I thought I’d traveled back into the past.”

  “You did,” she said. “But this isn’t a colony. I’m alone here, as a matter of fact. You’re lucky you landed where you did, practically in my front yard. There’s no other living soul on this island. Won’t be for another hundred thousand years.”

  There was something weirdly familiar in the soothing tone of her voice, in the deftness of her hands, with never a wasted movement. He found himself thinking of Sarah, though this girl was white-pale and austerely caucasian of feature. He’d have taken her for a Celt, if not for her eyes and her voice.

  “So—so this is the past, like, prehistoric times or something?” he said, struggling to keep his grip on consciousness.

  “More or less,” she said, checking the bleeding again. She gave him one last jolt with the wand. “There now. Let’s see how that works. You’re not a Dr. Zeus shuttle pilot then, I take it.”

  “No,” he admitted. “Dr. Zeus has wrecked my life, just like it’s wrecked yours. I’m going to get the bastards.”

  “Are you now,” she said noncommittally. “Well, Alec Checkerfield, that’s a great idea, but you need to recover first. You came back through time without taking a very necessary drug beforehand, did you know that? What I’d like you to do, now, is stand up very slowly and come inside to lie down. Okay? Lean on me, now.”

  It was cool and dark inside her house, if rather spartan, and there seemed to be just the one room. He let her settle him on the log-frame bed. Great; he liked a girl who got down to business. She brought a basin and a towel and cleaned him up, before she washed her own face. He kept fading in and out of reality. Had he asked her to sleep with him yet? Was he in any condition to? She certainly needed it, she was like a wild kitten rubbing her head into his hand, purring like mad … always oblige a lady, Ape Man.

  “How long have you been stuck here?” Alec said, struggling to think coherently.

  “I’ve been at this station for years,” she said. “More years than I remember.”

  He reached up and clasped her hand, grasped at the idea to keep from drifting away. “You mean they marooned you here when you were just a kid? Bloody hell, what’d you do? It must have been something your parents did.”

  “Not exactly,” she said, studying his hand. “But I also knew too much about something I shouldn’t have. Dr. Zeus found a nicely humane oubliette and dropped me out of sight or sound.”

  What’s oubliette mean? Alec asked the Captain automatically, and felt cold when no answer came. He gulped and tried to fix his attention on the girl as she said: “You’re the first mortal soul I’ve spoken with in all this time.”

  “My God,” he said. “Well, listen—er—what’s your name, babe?”

  After a moment’s pause she said, “Mendoza.”

  So she was Spanish? “Okay, Mendoza. I’ll get you out of here. That time shuttle out there is mine now, babe, and when I’ve finished this other thing I’ll come back for you.” He squeezed her hand for emphasis.

  Yes, he had impressed her, he could tell. Her face had gone pale again, the color had just fled, and her eyes were worried. He didn’t want to worry her, though. Just impress her. Make her happy. Could he do that? Yes, if she’d lie down beside him. Nice little girl, she meant no harm. He argued earnestly. Suddenly there was an island of clarity and he realized he’d just offered to marry her.

  The moment it was out of his mouth he was horrified at what he’d just said, and he didn’t know what to make of the expression on her face. He blurted:

  “And then afterward we could just get a divorce.”

  She was staring. He tried to reconstruct what he’d been saying. Had he insulted her? She didn’t smell angry. Just as though she needed someone terribly.

  He must have asked her to sleep with him, because she leaned down and kissed him, very gently but full on the mouth, parting his lips. He liked that a great deal. He liked the scent and the taste of her, he liked the weight of her breasts, and he wanted very much to untwine that long braid and get his fingers in her hair. About all he was actually able to do in his present condition was open his mouth and grope a bit, and for one wonderful moment he thought his skull was going to explode.

  There was a distant rumble of thunder. She had gone to the window to see what had caused the rumbling noise.

  “There’s a cloud front advancing,” she announced in surprise. “Have you brought rain, like the west wind? I think we’re going to have a summer storm.”

  As if in agreement with her words, a gust of turbulent air danced in through the window. Alex knitted his brows. Had they had sex yet? He couldn’t remember.

  Gradually his higher brain function came back. He lay quietly on Mendoza’s bed, sipping tea and watching her move in her kitchen corner.

  She was a botanist, she explained, and the Company kept her busy on this island, which was one of their agricultural stations. She told him about the Day Six resorts, and how she had to grow lettuce for their restaurants.

  “But that’s awful,” Alec said, leaning up on his elbow. “That means you’re their slave!”

  “I suppose I am.” Mendoza looked up from the table where she was dicing tomatoes. “But I may as well be of some use to somebody, don’t you think? They don’t call for produce very often. I have a lot of time to work on my own private research.”

  “What’s your research?” he said, watching her small deft hands.

  “Do you know anything about maize?” she said, without much hope.

  “No. What is it?”

  She sighed. “Well, you landed in a field of it—not my special cultivars, fortunately, just the yellow stuff. This.” She held up one of the things he had taken for an immense joint of ganja, and stripped back the husk. He recognized the bright kernels.

  “Oh! American corn, like on the cob? That’s what it looks like before it goes into a pouch? Wow. That’s what you’re researching?”

  “Yes. You see, maize isn’t really very good for you,” she explained, oddly apologetic. “It’s generally lysin
e deficient, which prevents the human system from utilizing certain amino acids. Also deficient in tryptophan and useable niacin.” Methodically she swept the tomatoes from her cutting board into a bowl and began mincing up a bunch of cilantro. “As a rule, the bigger and paler it’s bred, the less it’s worth as a food source.”

  He couldn’t imagine why Mendoza was telling him this, but he nodded politely as she went on:

  “The paradox has always fascinated me. Why has nobody ever produced a cultivar with the nutritional value of, for example, soy or buckwheat? Or better?” She added the cilantro to the tomatoes and began peeling cloves of garlic.

  “Anyway, that’s become my life’s goal: to create from maize the perfect grain, something so rich in lysine and other nutrients that it could sustain humanity nearly on its own. Something to guarantee that no mortal child would ever suffer from malnourishment again.”

  “Good for you, then,” said Alec. “At least you’re trying to make your life count for something.”

  “Oh, I expect everybody tries.” Mendoza shrugged. He watched the way it made her breasts rise. Pulling his attention back, he said:

  “Not everybody. Most people just drift through their lives. And even the people who want to help just tell other people what to do. None of it does any good! People talk to hear themselves talk, that’s all.”

  “I feel that way myself. I’m glad we agree,” Mendoza said carefully, looking down at the garlic she was chopping. “Though you appear to be something of a man of action. Personally, I have my reservations even about action. I seem to have broken everything I ever touched, no matter how well-meaning I was. Perhaps it’s best I wound up here, where I can do no harm.”

  “I know what you mean,” Alec said. “It’s like there’s this curse. And it doesn’t matter what you do, you don’t even have to do anything, you can be just—born, and you make people miserable by even existing. You can try to right wrongs or you can be a criminal, and it all comes to the same thing! All you ever do turns out badly.”

  She looked at him keenly. “So you keep trying to atone for your sins.”

  “Well, sins is kind of a heavy word, but—yeah, basically.”

  “And somehow nothing you do is ever enough, you can never set things right, so at last you pin all your hopes on giving your life in a good cause.”

  “Maybe.” Alec blinked, realizing it came down to just that. “And, you know what? You can’t lose that way, dying for something. Not only do you finally do some good for a change, you can’t ever do any more harm.”

  “Except to the people who love you,” Mendoza said. “They’ll suffer every day for the rest of their lives, and God help them if their lives are long. Don’t do such a cruel thing, Alec. Have mercy on yourself, and on them.”

  “There’s nobody to miss me, though,” he told her. “I’m a free agent.”

  “Nobody? There’s always somebody, senor. Parents, at least.”

  “Parents!” He gave a brief angry laugh. “My father’s dead, and I’m pretty certain now he wasn’t really my father at all.”

  “Oh. You were illegitimate?”

  “You could say that. And my real mother’s delusional, she’s been locked up for thirty years, and it’s my fault. And Dr. Zeus’s fault. I was raised by a nice old couple who worked for my father, but they’re both dead now. I’ve got two ex-wives. One of ’em probably can’t remember my name, and the other hated being married to me so bad she freaked out and called the Ephesians to come save her.

  “I did have a best friend, who’s stuck with me all my life, but I might have just got him killed. Don’t you think it’d have been better if I’d never been born?” Alec lay back, exhausted at his outpouring of bitterness. He was sorry he’d said it all now; Mendoza’s face was so white and stricken. She shook her head slowly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am. I didn’t mean I was going to snuff myself. Don’t you ever go crazy with the feeling, though? Like being a fish in a net?”

  “Believe me, I do,” she said. “It’s why I don’t mind being here so much.”

  “But, see, in a way this is the same. You’re tinkering around with this corn that might feed millions of poor people someday, but you’re stuck here, so what good can it do? Dr. Zeus has taken away your whole life. Don’t you mind? Didn’t you ever want anything more for yourself?”

  “I did,” she said. “It led to a disaster, I’m afraid. That was my point about being at this station. I can’t hurt anybody here.”

  “But you can’t help anybody either, can you?” he pointed out. “And nobody should be a slave, no matter what they’ve done! Have mercy on yourself too, babe. Let me give you a ride out of here.”

  There was a long moment of silence and then she lifted her head to look at him, a black intense stare he could almost feel like a touch.

  “You’re offering to break my chains? All right,” she said. “Let’s make a bargain. You won’t die, and I’ll let you bring me back from death in life. And we’ll see what happens, shall we?”

  “Sure,” said Alec. “It’s a deal, Mendoza.”

  He knew he’d made her sad, and he hadn’t meant to. All the rest of the day he told Mendoza about better memories: the aimless days of floating from island to island, the pirate stories Sarah told him and the pirate fortresses he’d built in sand. She listened, rapt, as she prepared their evening meal. When she’d finished and washed her hands she came and sat by him again. Neither of them noticed when the rain began, big hot drops pattering in the dust of the garden.

  It seemed to make her so happy, to hear how he’d sailed under strange stars and explored tropical islands. He told her nothing about the Captain, beyond saying that he’d developed his own powerful system to help him run things; but he told her about the storms he’d ridden out, the one terrible hurricane where he’d watched from his safety harness as the Captain Morgan was rolled over and over in the water, but was okay because her masts and spars were all retracted and the protective dome had been extended over her deck, so she was like an unbreakable bottle.

  He told her about the speck of an island he’d bought in the Caribbean, and how he went exploring there and found Spanish fortifications, and digging in them (he omitted to state that he was burying one of the Captain’s backup caches) he’d found a handful of gold doubloons.

  He told her about lying alone at night on deck, watching the slow stars and the quick-traveling satellites move across the sky, and the meteor showers he saw, and how he sang to himself as loudly as he wanted and heard his voice go out over the wide quiet water, with no one for countless miles to hear him or complain about his sea songs.

  “Neither of my ex-wives could stand my singing,” he added, laughing. He was sitting propped up by this time, and the headache from his flight was gone. “I like the old chanteys and yo-heave-ho stuff.”

  “Oh, but please,” said Mendoza, “sing something now. I won’t complain, I swear. Sing whatever you like.”

  So he sang “High Barbary” for her, he sang her “The Captain’s Apprentice,” he even sang her his favorite one about the Flying Dutchman; and the damnedest thing happened: she liked them. The little girl sat there beside him and, for God’s sake, began to cry. He found himself reaching to pull her down beside him before he’d finished the last verse. Mendoza buried her face against his neck, and he felt hot tears.

  “Babe, it’s okay. It didn’t really happen, you know,” he said. “The Flying Dutchman and all that.”

  “Man, your ex-wives must have been a couple of stupid bitches,” Mendoza said in a muffled voice. He grinned.

  “I always kind of thought I’d like being the Flying Dutchman,” he said. “Just me and my ship, and the sea. Staying out on blue water and never coming in. I’m not really very good with people.”

  “Neither am I,” Mendoza said.

  “Well, how would you know? You haven’t had a chance to meet any yet.” He put his arm around her. “You’re going to have a great tim
e, you’ll see. As soon as I finish that other stuff I have to take care of, you can come along and watch me kick ass on Dr. Zeus. Okay? Would you like that?”

  “You know, I really think you could,” Mendoza said wonderingly. She leaned up to kiss him, and now he was feeling well enough to kiss back with his customary expertise. It became a very long kiss, quite steamy. He ran his hands along her body, wondering how her coveralls fastened.

  But she was so young. Must be careful, must be so gentle. She’d been there all alone for years. He started at the realization that she could have had no other lover.

  “Er—” he said, coming up for air with a gulp.

  “What is it?” She looked at him dazedly.

  “You’re—you’re a virgin, I guess, yeah?”

  Mendoza’s expression changed, for a second was blank and unreadable. After a pause she said: “Yes. It’s all right, though. Please.”

  Alec looked down at his body, still encased in the subsuit he’d donned how many hours ago now? And how much of his cold sweat and panic terror had the thermals underneath absorbed?

  “Can I use your shower?” He looked around, realizing he hadn’t noticed a bathroom. It was her turn to look flustered.

  “I haven’t got a shower. Just a tin tub in the back garden, for baths. The only time it’s possible to actually shower is when it’s raining fairly hard.” Mendoza’s eyes widened as she took in the sound of the rain, that had been drumming away pretty steadily for some time now. “ … Which it is, isn’t it? I’ll get you a towel.”

  “Cool.” Alec sat up carefully and then stood, and was pleased to discover he felt great. He pushed open what looked to be a back door and stepped out into the garden and the warm rain.

  It was pretty back there, tile paths and green lawn, big bushes of fragrant stuff becoming more fragrant in the rain. Mint, that was what it must be. And here was her tin tub, already full and overflowing. He stripped out of his clothing in the steady downpour, sucking in the wet sweet air. It smelled like wet summer grass, wet stone and earth, green fields in the summer storm. He stepped carefully into the tub and sat down, tilting his face back, letting the rain wash away his sweat and desperation.