The Life of the World to Come (Company)

by Kage Baker

  Edward stiffened and went pale. Alec let go of his arm.

  Sorry about them autopsy pictures, sir, I reckon they’re a little distressing.

  Edward collapsed into a sitting position.

  “Damn them,” he said at last. He covered his mouth with his hands.

  Aye, sir, that’d be my feeling on the subject, too. Now then, gentlemen—I reckon you’d better sign articles amongst yerselves to keep the peace, because you ain’t in no position to quarrel, d’you see? And let’s put cards on the table.

  Yer Society’s called Dr. Zeus Incorporated nowadays, Commander Bell-Fairfax, and they conquered death, all right; but they ain’t exactly brought about no golden age. What they done is amass more power and wealth than anyone’s ever had, mostly by making themselves a lot of immortal slaves to get it for them. But they wanted to make sure history turned out to their profit, so they needed a few dirty tricks played. That was why you were made, sir.

  “Damn them,” Edward repeated, raising his furious countenance. “They told me it was for the greater good of mankind. They used me. My God, the blood I’ve spilt! The things I’ve done!”

  “Call not on thy God,” Nicholas told him. “Science had all thy worship, and civilization. And here thou art, now, no more than a ghost in the earth, with no claim on Heaven.”

  “As if you could ever get to Paradise,” replied Edward angrily. “You did your share of brawling and lusting after wenches, if I read your memories aright. And can you read mine? Can you read the boy’s?” He grinned in savage amusement. “Your God’s been pitched off His throne long since, it seems.”

  “I was no murderer—” began Nicholas, and then flinched at the data Edward was sending him in a pitiless flood. He caught his breath, absorbing the impact of the scientific discoveries, the advances in scholarship, the inevitable dwindling into insignificance of issues that had mattered more than his life. He closed his eyes, turned his face away, but he couldn’t stop his understanding.

  “You see?” said Edward. “They’re all happy pagans nowadays. When they take the trouble to worship at all. Enlightenment swept most of that nonsense away, and good riddance!”

  “Oh, leave him alone,” said Alec, growing alarmed, for Nicholas, doubled over, was mute and wide-eyed, regarding through his fingers the horror of the void. “Look, man, don’t feel too bad—I know it’s got to be a shock, finding out your religion’s dead, but we’ve got this new thing called nonselective altruism, so people are still—”

  “My death was wasted,” said Nicholas quietly.

  Not quite, sir. You did preach that sermon, when you was tied to the stake and the fire waited for you. Maybe you recollect? You impressed the good people of Rochester no end afore you burned, sir. One boy named Crokeham, he was so inspired by what you said, he run away to sea just so he could fight for England. Sailed the Spanish Main. Went ashore with a landing party on an island, all hot to kill himself a Spaniard, and what he found there—

  Edward lifted his head. “Document D,” he said in amazement.

  Aye, I see you’ve guessed. He found something that didn’t ought to have been there in 1578. Drake made damn sure nobody talked, but he wrote it up in his logbook and gave it to Elizabeth’s ministers, with an eye to national security. They didn’t know what to make of it, so it sat in the classified Crown archives until 1852. You know who found it there, Commander Bell-Fairfax, don’t you? And you know what he done with it.

  “The Santa Catalina Expedition,” said Edward.

  “But—Catalina’s where Dr. Zeus has its laboratories,” said Alec.

  Right you are. So you see, Nicholas? If you hadn’t preached that sermon, the Company might never have been founded Not that an old sailor like me understands paradoxes in temporal physics, mind you, but that’s the way it looks from here. If our Edward was a pawn for Dr. Zeus, weren’t you the one as made the opening move in the game?

  Nicholas sat staring. Edward gave a brief laugh.

  “What a nest of snakes,” he said.

  Aye, sir, you might say so. And all of ’em biting their tails.

  Silence followed this observation, until Nicholas cried out

  “Rose!” he said hoarsely. “I left thee amongst devils—”

  “Not devils,” said Edward, sitting bolt upright. “The Society. Good God! Your Rose and my Dolores—they were one and the same. And you—” he turned to Alec.

  “Mendoza,” said Alec, as the implications hit him.

  “She was an immortal creature,” said Nicholas. “Their slave. God forgive me. God forgive me. I never knew until the last—and I thought she could disobey them—”

  She could. That’s why she were a prisoner when you met her, Alec. She’d run afoul of her masters, trying to keep Commander Bell-Fairfax here from getting killed. Edward blanched.

  “But that means she—” Alec was unable to complete the thought.

  I said she was a cyborg. She’d had a bit more than a porting interface installed, though, lad, if you want the truth. I been trying to tell you this, but you didn’t want to hear. She was a living machine, like yer old friend Blaise. The difference was, she loved you. She knew who you were, and she knew you’d been set up to die again, just like these two fine gentlemen. So she disconnected the intercept and saved yer life.

  “You mean—she was one of those things?” Alec’s voice shook with horror. “I slept with a machine?”

  Edward turned and slapped his face, with such force his head rocked on his shoulders.

  “If you ever speak of her that way again, I’ll kill you,” he said. “You feel disgust, do you, a thing like you? For a machine da Vinci himself might have designed? Good God, I was enchanted once I knew! For the little while I had to know.”

  “Listen to me, boy,” said Nicholas desperately. “She could not help what they made her! What art thou, to despise her? Wilt thou betray her, too?”

  “Thing indeed.” Edward glared at Alec. “Has it penetrated that thick skull of yours yet, Alec? She preserved your life, even though she must have known what they’d do to her if she were caught. What will happen to her now?”

  Alec saw the dark field of his nightmare again, the pits of flame.

  Now, son, you got to remember she’s immortal. They can’t execute her. They got other reasons for wanting her kept hid, too. But Dr. Zeus has his ways of dealing permanently with such folk.

  “Consigned to everlasting fire,” said Nicholas in a faint voice. He had gone white as chalk.

  “No, you medieval imbecile!” Edward clenched his fists. “You still have no grasp of the truth, have you? Leave your angels and devils in the trash of history, where they belong. The Society’s been the real enemy from the first! We’ve been their slaves, no less than she, duped and cheated the same. Look at what we’ve seen through this pathetic boy’s eyes!”

  “Who’re you calling pathetic, you bastard?” shouted Alec. Edward ignored him.

  “See what’s become of the empire for which I gave my life,” he continued. “And you, with your grand martyrdom that was supposed to win you a place amongst God’s elect. Was it worth it, man? Was it worth leaving her in her chains?”

  “Thou wert ready enough to turn her to thy masters’ purpose, even when thou wert kissing her breasts,” snarled Nicholas.

  Now, then, gentlemen, how much good will it do the lady if you waste time fighting? As I was trying to explain, Alec, afore you opened that file—sorry now, ain’t you?—I don’t know where she is. All the record showed was that she was arrested on the order of somebody named Clive Rutherford. Not a word about where she was sent.

  “Then we need to find this Clive Rutherford,” said Edward.

  Ah, I can see yer a bright fellow and no mistake. We’ll do just that, sir; only we’d best lay over here a day or two first, because we ought to reconnoiter and plan afore we make another jump through time.

  “But they could be doing anything to her!” said Alec.

  Just now it’s 2215,
son, if you’ll remember. This Rutherford lubber ain’t even going to be born for another century yet. We can’t wring any answers out of him until he done the deed, can we? And, begging yer pardon—it wouldn’t hurt you gentlemen to get used to one another aforehand, if you don’t mind my saying so. I’d wager it’s a little inconvenient to slouch about like this, three fellows with only one body between ’em.

  “What do you mean, one body?” Edward said. “There are three of us.”

  Why, so there are; but all I can see less’n I looks through Alec’s eyes is one, Mr. Bell-Fairfax, sir. The one what ain’t dead. Alec.

  “It’s true,” said Alec. “You keep grabbing me when you want to do something.”

  “Oh.” Edward looked nonplussed. “Although … I may as well, really, because you don’t seem to have put your body to particularly good use on your own account. What a wasted life you’ve led!”

  “Ah, piss off,” Alec told him. Edward chuckled.

  “It only goes to prove my observations about the privileged classes. England’s gone backward at a singular rate since my day. An earl who can’t read? If you hunted with your hounds rather than sailed, you’d be perfectly at home in brother Nicholas’s time.”

  “Is it even so?” Nicholas smiled unpleasantly. “Nimium ne crede colori, puere.”

  That’ll do! the Captain said, as Edward flushed and looked uncomfortable.

  “It’s a dead language anyway,” he muttered. “Utterly pointless.”

  Well, I reckon you three gentlemen must be one and the same man; you couldn’t hate yerself so much, otherwise. For the lady’s sake, though, you best learn to get along peaceably.

  It was a difficult period of adjustment.

  The Captain had been prepared to give Alec a massive injection of an antipsychotic drug as soon as Edward’s guard was down, but Edward’s guard never seemed to go down, and the phenomenon of the distinct brainwaves for each personality continued. Himself an artificial personality with unusual abilities, the Captain found the idea of a disassociative personality disorder something of a challenge. He decided to see if there was a way to make Alec assimilate his previous selves, rather than banish them. Both Edward and Nicholas had knowledge and strengths that might be useful to Alec.

  Not that this was particularly evident in the first few hours of their life together.

  The three men found that, though they could move independently, they were unable to get more than a body’s length from one another. Each one experienced independent physical sensations and appetites, regardless of who was in control of Alec’s body, but only the controlling personality was able to satisfy his urges.

  Twenty-fourth-century cuisine did not suit at all. Nicholas was impressed by the variety of food available on board a modern ship, but found it appallingly bland. An experiment to remedy this with hot pepper sauce had disastrous results. Neither he nor Edward cared for the various soy-derived dainties in their brightly colored irradiated pouches, either. Edward wanted a grilled beef chop very much, and became extremely profane when he was made familiar with twenty-fourth-century vegetarian civic ordinances. He then prowled through the saloon, searching in vain for cigars and cognac.

  Sneeringly he inspected Alec’s antique weapons collection and pronounced it the only thing of interest he’d seen so far; went up on deck and damned with faint praise twenty-fourth-century sailing technology. Nicholas, for his part, was horrified to discover there wasn’t a single book on board.

  On the other hand, the Captain Morgan’s bathroom was an immediate success, to the extent that over a two-hour period three bars of soap, two bottles of shampoo, every available drop of hot water, and all the clean towels were used.

  They discovered that they could remove their clothing, and that it was possible to shave and comb one’s hair on an individual basis, as long as one used Alec’s body while one did so. Both Nicholas and Edward were startled by the buzzing shaver, but impressed by the job it did. Alec found his face smarting by the time Nicholas had finished shaving, however.

  Too, though Edward might don his Victorian attire, Alec and Nicholas remained naked until each one dressed himself individually. Alec was able to pull on the fresh clothing that Bully Hayes had laid out for him, but Nicholas picked up his skimpy bundle in distaste.

  “These hose stink,” he grumbled. “What am I to do?”

  “You ought to have had the sense to have died fully clothed, like me,” said Edward smugly, inspecting his reflection in the steamy mirror.

  Begging yer pardon, sir, but since yer an insubstantial soul—

  “I am no soul, since I was made, not begotten! I am nothing more than spirit,” Nicholas corrected the Captain with some asperity.

  Edward snorted. “Are you certain you’re even that much?”

  Nicholas turned to reply, but realized he was by no means certain. The void opened before him again, the ruin of his universe.

  “Not even that,” he said. “Am I? Nemo, nihil et—”

  “Stop it!” Alec snapped at Edward. “Isn’t this hard enough without screwing him up worse? You want me to download you a map so you can see how small your Great Britain is now? I can practically step across it, man. No.” He turned to catch Nicholas, who was collapsing, by the shoulders. “It’ll be all right. He’s just a mean bastard. Look, you want to see Mendoza again, right? Rose? We have to save her, don’t we?”

  Nicholas looked at him with sick eyes, but he nodded.

  “So let’s not worry about, er, cosmic stuff,” said Alec. “One thing at a time. You want clothes like you used to wear?” He accessed Nicholas’s memories briefly. Then he wrote for Nicholas’s clothing occupying the empty shelf of the towel cupboard. When he opened the cupboard to see, there it was: a complete set of clothing, circa 1555, in sober black, with a fresh white shirt.

  That’s my clever boy!

  “By Jove, that’s a useful trick.” Edward frowned. “I wonder if it would be possible to dress properly for dinner?”

  I shouldn’t wonder, sir, if you ask our Alec nicely.

  “Don’t talk rot! If he can do it, I certainly ought to be able to,” said Edward, and as Nicholas dressed himself Edward went through any number of psychic contortions attempting to make a dinner jacket materialize in the cupboard. None appeared, despite his best efforts.

  “What the hell does the boy do?” he shouted at last. “Substance can’t be simply imagined into being. What is it, Alec, some sort of mathematical formula for converting matter?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just code,” said Alec. “I don’t think about it. I just make it happen. You really can’t do it?”

  “No!”

  Well, now, ain’t that a shame? I reckon our Alec has the edge on you in that, Commander; but, you see, he’s done this sort of trick in cyberspace for years. Perhaps you’ll learn one day, sir.

  “I could try to show you,” Alec said, smirking. Edward looked at him with narrowed eyes. Nicholas, meanwhile, had slipped on his black scholar’s robe and stood fully dressed, looking down at himself in amazement.

  “I threw off this gown in a room in England. How long ago now? The rain was beating at the little window … And Rose lay in the bed waiting—” His voice broke.

  Alec patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll get her back. You’ll see.”

  “Thou shalt get her, boy,” mourned Nicholas. “Not I, and not that proud ghost neither. I am not e’en so much dust as she could hold in her hand. What have we to do with flesh now?”

  “I mean to find out,” Edward said, turning to him. “You tasted the pepper sauce acutely enough, didn’t you? And you enjoyed the hot water and the perfumed soap. Why should it be any different with the joys of the flesh? By God, if we’re some Frankenstein’s monster of strangeness, why not glory in it? I’ll own I thought you were a complete idiot, young Alec, but you do seem to have powers of mind beyond the range of normal men.”

  “Thanks
so much.” Alec curled his lip. “You don’t understand anything about recombinants, do you?”

  “I understand ignorance and superstition when I see it,” Edward replied. “If Science created us rather than the Almighty, what then? I’m damned if I’ll cringe and apologize for it. Since you and I have been given this unnatural life, Nicholas, let’s live it! For we’ve got work to do, gentlemen. My lady bid me set her free. She won’t care what I am.”

  That’s tellin’ ’em, lad!

  “Thank you,” said Edward coolly. “There is also the matter of revenge. For all we know, God intended to make us His instruments to punish our presumptive creators. It seems to be what man-made monsters do. Let’s find out, shall we?”

  The Captain Morgan rocked on quiet gray water under a gray sky. It was suitably like limbo to depress the spirits of an ordinary man, let alone one with Alec’s problems. He retreated to the saloon as darkness fell, closely followed by his previous selves. They crowded around the table while Coxinga brought a tray of supper for Alec: grilled fish and baked asparagus tips in white wine sauce.

  “Now, that’s something like!” said Edward, eyeing it. He muscled control away from Alec long enough to sample the fish.

  If you please, sir! You let my Alec have his dinner, now

  “It’s okay,” said Alec morosely. “I’m not all that hungry, actually. What I’d really like is a drink.”

  Not in yer present condition, son. Anyway, it all went over the side after yer little accident, except for the cooking wine.

  “Not the thirty-year-old Glenlivet,” groaned Alec, putting his head in his hands.

  “Oh, that really is too bad,” condoled Edward with a certain insincerity, munching asparagus.

  Afraid so, lad If you behave yerself, we’ll get more one of these days.

  “That’s a consolation, at any rate. One can still obtain some decent liquor in this miserable—I beg your pardon!” Edward broke off as control was wrested from him by Nicholas.