Kage Baker - Company 5 - The Life of the World to Come

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The Life of the World to Come

KAGE BAKER

ISBN 0-765-35432-2 EAN 978-0-765-35432-7

First edition: December 2004

First mass market edition: November 2005

EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF

THE BOTANIST MENDOZA

150,000 BCE (more or less)

Rain comes on the west wind, ice out of the blue north. The east wind brings

hazes, smokes, the exhalation of the desert on the distant mainland; and hot

winds come out of the south, across the wide ocean.

The corn and tomatoes like the west wind. The tall corn gleams wet like

cellophane, the tomato leaves pearl and bow down. The onions and garlic, on

the other hand, get sullen and shreddy and threaten mold in the rain. Poor old

cyborg with a few screws missing-me-sits watching them in fascination.

When I find myself giving my vegetables personalities, it's a sign I've been

sitting here watching the rain too long. Or the bright ice. Or the hazes or

the hot thin stripes of cloud. Accordingly then, I put on a coat or hat,

depending on which way me wind is blowing, and walk out to have a look at the

world.

What I have of the world. When I rise, I can walk down the canyon to my brief

stony beach to see if anything interesting has washed up there. Nothing ever

has. Out on the rocks live sea lions, and they groan and howl so like old men

that a mortal would be deceived. I ignore them.

Or I can walk up the canyon and climb high narrow hills, through the ferny

trees, until I stand on rimrock in the wind. I can look along the spine of my

island in every direction. Ocean all around, the horizon vanishing in cloud.

No ships ever, of course-hominids haven't yet progressed beyond

clinging to floating logs, when they venture to sea at all.

And I begin my day. Much to do: the planting or the harvest, all the

greenhouse work, the tasks of replacing irrigation pipes and cleaning out

trenches. A little work on projects of my own, maybe planing wood to replace

such of my furniture as has fallen apart with age. I take a meal, if I

remember to. I wander back down to the beach in the evening, to watch the

little waves run up on the shore, and sometimes I forget to go home.

One day a small resort town will be built on this stony beach, palm trees and

yellow sand brought in on barges, to make a place as artificial as I am. The

water will be full of excursion boats, painted bright. Out there where that

big rock is, me one that looks like a sugarloaf, a great ballroom will stand.

I would dearly love to go dancing there, if he were with me.

Sometimes I torment myself by walking along and imagining the crescent of

street lined with shops and cafes, gracious hotels. I can almost see the

mortal children with their ice cream. I can almost hear the music. I sit down

where there will be a terrace someday, complete with little tables and striped

umbrellas. Sometimes a waiter has materialized at my elbow, white napkin over

his arm, deferentially leaning from the waist to offer me a cocktail. He's

never really there, of course, nor will he ever be.

But the other man will be here, the one I see only in my dreams, or behind my

eyes as I watch the quiet water in the long hours. I have waited for him,

alone on this island, for three thousand years. I think.

I'm not certain, though, and this is the reason I have bound more paper into

my book, vandalized another label printer cartridge, cut myself another pen:

it may be that if I write things down I can keep track of the days. They have

begun to float loose in an alarming way, like calendar leaves fluttering off

the wall.

I walked out this morning in the full expectation of thinning my tomato

seedlings and-imagine my stupefaction! Row upon row of big well-grown plants

stretched away as far as the eye could see, heavy with scarlet fruit.

Well-watered, weeded, cared for by someone. Me? I swear I can't recall, nor

does my internal chronometer record any unusual forward

movement; but something, my world or me, is slipping out of time's proper

flow.

What does it mean, such strangeness? Some slow deterioration of consciousness?

Supposedly impossible in a perfectly designed immortal. But then, I'm not

quite mechanically sound, am I? I'm a Crome generator, one of those aberrant

creatures the mortals call psychic, or second-sighted. I'm the only one on

whom the Company ever conferred immortality, and I'll bet they're sorry now.

Not that they meant to do it, of course. Somebody made a mistake when I was

being evaluated for the honor of eternal service, didn't catch the latent

flaw, and here I am like a stain in permanent ink. No way to erase me. Though

marooning me at this station has undoubtedly solved a few problems for them.

Yet my prison is actually a very nice place, quite the sort of spot I'd choose

to live, if I'd ever had a choice: utterly isolated, beautifully green, silent

in all its valleys and looming mountains, even the sea hushed where it breaks

and jumps up white on the windward cliffs.

Only one time was there ever noise, terrible sounds that echoed off the

mountains. I hid indoors all that day, paced with my hands over my ears,

hummed to myself to shut out the tumult. At least it was over in a few hours.

I have never yet ventured back over into Silver Canyon to see if the little

people there are all dead. I knew what would happen to them when I sent that

signal, alerting Dr. Zeus to their presence. Were they refugees from Company

persecution? Did I betray them? Well-more blood on my soul. I was only

following orders, of course.

(Which is another reason I don't mind being an old field slave here, you see.

Where else should I be? I've been responsible for the deaths of seven mortal

men and unknown numbers of whatever those little pale things were.)

What the eyes can't see, the heart doesn't grieve over, isn't that what they

say? And no eyes can see me here, that's for sure, if I generate the blue

radiation that accompanies a fit of visions, or do some other scary and

supposedly impossible thing like move through time spontaneously. I am far too

dangerous to be allowed to run around loose, I know. Am I

actually a defective! Will my fabulous cyborg super-intelligence begin to

wane? It might be rather nice, creeping oblivion. Perhaps even death will

become possible. But the Company has opted to hide me rather than study me, so

there's no way to tell.

I have done well, for a cast-off broken tool. Arriving, I crawled from my

transport box with just about nothing but the prison uniform I wore. Now I

have a comfortable if somewhat amateurish house I built myself, over long

years, with a kitchen of which I am particularly proud. The fireplace draws

nicely, and the little sink is supplied by a hand pump drawing on the well I

drilled. I have a tin tub in my back garden, in which I bathe. Filled before

midday heat rises, the water is reasonably warm by nightfall, and serves to

water the lawn afterward. So very tidy, this life I've built.

Do I lack for food and drink? No indeed. I grow nearly everything I consume.

About all I receive from the Company anymore are its shipments of Proteus

brand synthetic protein.

(Lately the Proteus only seems to come in the assortment packs, four flavors:

Breakfast Bounty, Delicate and Savory, Hearty Fare, and Marina. The first two

resemble pork and/or chicken or veal, and are comparatively inoffensive. I

quite like Hearty Fare. It makes the best damned tamale filling I've ever

found. Marina, on the other hand, is an unfortunate attempt to simulate

seafood. It goes straight into my compost heap, where it most alarmingly fails

to decompose. There has been no response to my requests for a change, but this

is a prison, after all.)

Have I written that before, about the Proteus? I have a profound sense of deja

vu reading it over, and paused just now to thumb back through the book to see

if I was duplicating a previous entry. No. Nothing in the first part, about

England, and nothing in the afterword I wrote on my trial transcript. More of

this slipping time business. Nothing has again been so bad as that day I

paused in weeding to wipe my sweating face and looked up to see the row just

cleared full of weeds again, and the corn a full foot taller than it had been

a moment before. But nothing else out of whack! No sign of dust or cobwebs in

my house, no conflicting chronometers.

Yes, I really must try to anchor myself here and now. It may be a bit late for

mental health, but at least I might keep from sinking into the rock of this

island, buried under centuries, preserved like a fossil in a strata of

unopened Proteus Marina packets. I suppose it wouldn't have come to this pass

if I'd seen another living soul in three thousand years who wasn't a dream or

a hallucination.

If only he'd come for me.

I don't know if I should write about him. The last time I did that I was

depressed for years, roamed this island in restless misery end to end. Not a

good thing to summon up a ghost when you're all alone, especially when you'd

sell your soul-if you had one-to join him in his long grave. But men, perhaps

misery is what's needed to fasten me securely to the world. Perhaps this

curiously painless existence is the problem.

If I look across the table I can see him standing there, as I saw him first in

England in 1554: a tall mortal in the black robe of a scholar, staring at me

in cold and arrogant dislike. We weren't enemies long. I was very young and so

fascinated by the mortal's voice, and his fine big hands... I wake at night

sometimes, convinced I can feel his mortal flesh at my side, hot as the fire

in which he was martyred.

So I look away: but there he is in the doorway, just as he stood in the

doorway of the stagecoach inn in the Cahuenga Pass, when he walked back into

my life in 1863. He was smiling then, a Victorian gentleman in a tail hat,

smooth and subtle to conceal his deadly business. If he'd succeeded in what

he'd been sent from England to do, the history of nations would have been

drastically different. I was only an incidental encounter that time, entering

late at the last act in his life; but I held him as he lay dying, and I

avenged his death.

Barbaric phrase, avenged his death. I was educated to be above such mortal

nonsense, yet what I did was more than barbaric. I don't remember tearing six

American Pinkerton agents limb from limb, but it appears I did just that,

after they'd emptied their guns into my lover.

But when he lay there with blood all over his once-immaculate clothes, my poor

secret agent man, he agreed to come back for me. He knew something I didn't,

and if he'd lived for even thirty more seconds he might have let me in on the

secret.

I really should ponder the mystery, but now that I've summoned my ghost again

all I can think of is the lost grace of his body. I should have let well

enough alone. The dreams will probably begin again now. I am impaled on his

memory like an insect on a pin. Or some other metaphor ...

I've spent the last few days damning myself for an idiot, when I haven't been

crying uncontrollably. I am so tired of being a tragic teenager in love,

especially after having been one for over thirty centuries. I think I'll damn

someone else for a change.

How about Dr. Zeus Incorporated, who made me the thing I am? Here's the

history: the Company began as a cabal of adventurers and investors who found

somebody else's highly advanced technology. They stole it, used it to develop

yet more advanced technology (keeping all this a secret from the public, of

course), and became very very wealthy.

Of course, once they had all the money they needed, they must have more; so

they developed a way to travel into the past and loot lost riches, and came up

with dodgy ways to convey them into the future, to be sold at fabulous

profits.

Along the way, they developed a process for human immortality.

The only problem with it was, once they'd taken a human child and put it

through the painful years of transformation, what emerged at the end wasn't a

human adult but a cyborg, an inconveniently deathless thing most mortals

wouldn't want to dine at one table with. But that's all right: cyborgs make a

useful workforce to loot the past. And how can we rebel against our service,

or even complain? After all, Dr. Zeus saved us from death.

I myself was dying in the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition when I was

rescued by a fast-talking operative named Joseph, damn his immortal soul.

Well, little girl, what'll it

be? Stay here and be burned to death, or come work for a kindly doctor who'll

give you eternal life? Of course, if you'd rather die...

I was four years old.

The joke is, of course, that at this precise moment in time none of it's even

happened yet. This station exists in 150,000 BCE, millennia before Joseph's

even born, to say nothing of everyone else I ever knew, including me.

Paradox? If you view time as a linear flow, certainly. Not, however, if you

finally pay attention to the ancients and regard time (not eternity) as a

serpent biting its own tail, or perhaps a spiral. Wherever you are, the

surface on which you stand appears to be flat, to stretch away straight behind

you and before you. As I understand temporal physics, in reality it curves

around on itself, like the coiled mainspring in a clock's heart. You can cross

from one point of the coil to another rather than plod endlessly forward, if

you know how. I was sent straight here from 1863. If I were ever reprieved I

could resume life in 1863 just where I left it, three thousand years older

than the day I departed.

Could I go forward beyond that, skip ahead to 1963 or 2063? We were always

told that was impossible; but here again the Company has been caught out in a

lie. I did go forward, on one memorable occasion. I got a lungful of foul air

and a brief look at the future I'd been promised all my immortal life. It

wasn't a pleasant place at all.

Either Dr. Zeus doesn't know how to go forward in time, or knows how and has

kept the information from its immortal slaves, lest we learn the truth about

the wonderful world of the twenty-fourth century. Even if I were to tell the

others what I know, though, I doubt there'd be any grand rebellion. What point

is there to our immortal lives but the work?

Undeniably the best work in the world to be doing, too, rescuing things from

destruction. Lost works by lost masters, paintings and films and statues that

no longer exist (except that they secretly do, secured away in some Company

warehouse). Hours before the fires start, the bombs fall, doomed libraries

swarm with immortal operatives, emptying them like ants looting a sugar bowl.

Living things saved from extinction by Dr. Zeus's immortals, on hand to

collect them for

its ark. I myself have saved rare plants, the only known source of cures for

mortal diseases.

More impressive still: somewhere there are massive freezer banks, row upon row

of silver tubes containing DNA from races of men that no longer walk the

earth, sperm and ova and frozen embryos, posterity on ice to save a dwindling

gene pool.

Beside such work, does it really matter if there is mounting evidence, as we

plod on toward the twenty-fourth century, that our masters have some plan to

deny us our share of what we've gathered for them up there?

I wear, above the Company logo on all my clothing, an emblem: a clock face

without hands. I've heard about this symbol, in dark whispers, all my life.

When I was sent to this station I was informed it's the badge of my penal

servitude, but the rumor among immortals has always been that it's the sign

we'll all be forced to wear when we do finally reach the future, so our mortal

masters can tell us from actual persons. Or worse ...

I was exiled to this hole in the past for a crime, but there are others of us

who have disappeared without a trace, innocent of anything worse than

complaining too loudly. Have they been shuffled out of the deck of time as I

have been, like a card thrown under the table? It seems likely. Sentenced to

eternal hard labor, denied any future to release them.

What little contact we've had with the mortals who actually live in the future

doesn't inspire confidence, either un-appreciative of the treasures we bring

them, afraid to venture from their rooms, unable to comprehend the art or

literature of their ancestors. Rapaciously collecting Shakespeare's first

folios but never opening them, because his plays are full of objectionable

material and nobody can read anymore anyway. Locking Mozart sonatas in

cabinets and never playing them, because Mozart had disgusting habits: he ate

meat and drank alcohol. These same puritans are able, mind you, to order the

massacre of those little pale people to loot their inventions.

But what's condemnation from the likes of me, killer cyborg drudging along

here in the Company's fields, growing occasional lettuce for rich fools who

want to stay at a fine re-

sort when they time-travel? The Silence is coming for us all, one day, the

unknown nemesis, and perhaps that will be justice enough. If only he comes for

me before it does.

He'll come again! He will. He'll break my chains. Once he stood bound to a

stake and shouted for me to join him there, mat the gate to paradise was

standing open for us, that he wouldn't rest until I followed him. I didn't go;

and he didn't rest, but found his way back to me against all reason three

centuries later.

He very nearly succeeded that time, for by then I'd have followed him into any

fire God ever lit. History intervened, though, and swatted us like a couple of

insects. He went somewhere and I descended into this gentle hell, this other

Eden that will one day bear the name of Avalon. He won't let me rest here,

though. His will is too strong.

Speak of the fall of Rome and it occurs!

Or the fall of Dr. Zeus, for that matter.

He has come again.

And gone again, but alive this time! No more than a day and a night were given

us, but he did not die!

I still can't quite believe this.

He's shown me a future that isn't nearly as dark as the one I glimpsed. There

is a point to all this, there is a reason to keep going, there is

even-unbelievably-the remote possibility that... no, I'm not even going to

think about that. I won't look at that tiny bright window, so far up and far

off, especially from the grave I've dug myself.

But what if we have broken the pattern at last?

Must put this into some kind of perspective. Oh, I could live with seeing him

once every three thousand years, if all our trysts went as sweetly as this one

did. And it started so violently, too.

Not that there was any forewarning that it would, mind you. Dull morning spent

in peaceful labor in the greenhouse, tending my latest attempt at Mays

mendozaii. Sweaty two hours oiling the rollers on the shipping platform. Had

set out for the high lake to dig some clay for firing when there came the roar

of a time shuttle emerging from its transcendence field.

It's something I hear fairly frequently, but only as a distant boom, a sound

wave weak with traveling miles across the channel from Santa Cruz Island,

where the Company's Day Six resort is located. However, this time the blast

erupted practically over my head.

I threw myself flat and rolled, looking up. There was a point of silver

screaming away from me, coming down fast, leveling out above the channel,

heading off toward the mainland. I got to my feet and stared, frowning, at its

spiraled flight. This thing was out of control, surely! There was a faint

golden puff as its gas vented and abruptly the shuttle had turned on its path,

was coming back toward the station.

I tensed, watching its trajectory, ready to run. Oh, dear, I thought, there

were perhaps going to be dead twenty-fourth-century millionaires cluttering up

my fields soon. I'd have a lot of nasty work to do with body bags before the

Company sent in a disaster team. Did I even have any body bags? Why would I

have body bags? But there, the pilot seemed to have regained a certain amount

of control. His shuttle wasn't spinning anymore and its speed was decreasing

measurably, though he was still coming in on a course that would take him

straight up Avalon Canyon. Oh, no; he was trying to land, swooping in low and

cutting a swath through my fields. I cursed and ran down into the canyon,

watching helplessly the ruination of my summer corn.

There, at last the damned thing was skidding to a halt. Nobody was going to

die, but there were doubtless several very frightened Future Kids puking their

guts up inside that shuttle just now. I paused, grinning to myself. Did I

really have to deal with this problem? Should I, in fact? Wasn't my very

existence here a Company secret? Oughtn't I simply to stroll off in a discreet

kind of way and let the luckless cyborg pilot deal with his terrified mortal

passengers?

But I began to run again anyway, sprinting toward the shuttle that was still

sizzling with the charge of its journey.

I circled it cautiously, scanning, and was astounded to note

that there were no passengers on board. Stranger still, the

lone pilot seemed to be a mortal man; and that, of course,

was impossible. Only cyborgs can fly these things.

But then, he hadn't been doing all that expert a job, had he?

So I came slowly around the nose of the shuttle, and it was exactly like mat

moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy, in black and white, moves so warily

toward the door and looks across me threshold: then grainy reality shifts into

Technicolor and she steps through, into that hushed and shocked moment full of

cellophane flowers and the absolute unexpected.

I looked through the window of the shuttle and saw a mortal man slumped

forward in his seat restraints, staring vacantly out at me.

Him, of course. Who else would it be?

Tall as few mortals are, and such an interesting face: high, wide cheekbones

flushed with good color, long broken nose, deep-set eyes with colorless

lashes. Fair hair lank, pushed back from his forehead. Big rangy body clad in

some sort of one-piece suit of black stuff, armored or sewn all over with

overlapping scales of a gunmetal color. Around his neck he wore a collar of

twisted golden metal, like a Celtic torque. The heroic effect was spoiled

somewhat by the nosebleed he was presently having. He didn't seem to be

noticing it, though. His color was draining away.

Oh, dear. He was suffering from transcendence shock. Must do something about

that immediately.

The strangest calm had seized me, sure sign, I fear, that I really have gone a

bit mad in this isolation. No cries from me of "My love! You have returned to

me at last!" or anything like that. I scanned him in a businesslike manner,

realized that he was unconscious, and leaned forward to tap on the window to

wake him up. Useless my trying to break out the window to pull him through.

Shuttle windows don't break, ever.

After a moment or two of this he turned his head to look blankly at me. No

sign of recognition, of course. Goodness, I had no idea whence or from when

he'd come, had I? He might not even be English in this incarnation. I pulled a

crate marker from my pocket and wrote on my hand do you speak cinema standard?

and held it up in his line of sight.

His eyes flickered over the words. His brow wrinkled in confusion. I leaned

close to the glass and shouted:

"You appear to require medical assistance! Do you need help getting out of

there?"

That seemed to get through to him. He moved his head in an uncertain nod and

fumbled with his seat restraints. The shuttle hatch popped open. He stood up,

struck his head on the cabin ceiling and fell forward through the hatchway.

I was there to catch him. He collapsed on me, I took the full weight of his

body, felt the heat of his blood on my face. His sweat had a scent like fields

in summer.

He found his legs and pulled himself upright, looking down at me groggily. His

eyes widened as he realized he'd bled all over me.

"Oh. Oh, I'm so sorry-" he mumbled, aghast. English! Yes, of course. Here he

was again and I didn't mind the blood at all, since at least this time he

wasn't dying. Though of course I'd better do something about that nosebleed

pretty fast.

So I led him back to my house. He leaned on me the whole way, only

semiconscious most of the time. Unbelievable as it seemed, he'd apparently

come through time without first taking any of the protective drugs that a

mortal must have to make the journey safely. It was a miracle his brain wasn't

leaking out his ears.

Three times I had to apply the coagulator wand to stop his bleeding. He

drifted in and out of consciousness, and my floaty calm began to evaporate

fast. I talked to him, trying to keep his attention. He was able to tell me

that his name was Alec Checkerfield, but he wasn't sure about time or place.

Possibly 2351? He did recognize the Company logo on my coveralls, and it

seemed to alarm him. That was when I knew he'd stolen the shuttle, though I

didn't acknowledge this to myself because such a thing was impossible. Just as

it was impossible that a mortal being should be able to operate a time shuttle

at all, or survive a temporal journey without drugs buffering him.

So I told him, to calm him down, that I was a prisoner here. That seemed to

be the right thing to say, because he became confidential with me at once. It

seems he knows all about the Company, has in fact some sort of grudge against

them, something very mysterious he can't tell me about; but Dr. Zeus has, to

use his phrase, wrecked his life, and he's out to bring them to their knees.

This was so demonstrably nuts that I concluded the crash had addled his brain

a bit, but I said soothing and humoring things as I helped him inside and got

him to stretch out on my bed, pushing a bench to the end so his feet wouldn't

hang over. Just like old times, eh? And there he lay.

My crazed urge was to fall down weeping beside him and cover him with kisses,

blood or no; but of course what I did was bring water and a towel to clean him

up, calm and sensible. Mendoza the cyborg, in charge of her emotions, if not

her mind.

It was still delight to stroke his face with the cool cloth, watch his pupils

dilate or his eyes close in involuntary pleasure at the touch of the water.

When I had set aside the basin I stayed with him, tracing the angle of his jaw

with my hand, feeling the blood pulsing under his skin.

"You'll be all right now," I told him. "Your blood pressure and heart rate are

normalizing. You're an extraordinary man, Alec Checkerfield."

"I'm an earl, too," he said proudly. "Seventh earl of Fins-bury."

Oh, my, he'd come up in the world. Nicholas had been no more than secretary to

a knight, and Edward-firmly shut out of the Victorian ruling classes by the

scandal of his birth- had despised inherited privilege. "No, really, a British

peer?" I said. "I don't think I've ever met a real aristocrat before."

"How long have you been stuck here?" he said. What was that accent of his? Not

the well-bred Victorian inflection of last time; this was slangy,

transatlantic, and decidedly limited in vocabulary. Did earls speak like this

in the twenty-fourth century? Oh, how strange.

"I've been at this station for years," I answered him unguardedly. Oops. "More

years than I remember." He looked understandably confused, since my immortal

body stopped changing when I was twenty.

"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."

How close could I stick to the truth without frightening him?

"Not exactly. 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. You're the first mortal"-oops again-"soul

I've spoken with in all this time."

"My God." He looked aghast. Then his eyes narrowed, I knew that look, that was

his righteous wrath look. "Well, listen-er-what's your name, babe?"

Rosa? Dolores? No. No aliases anymore. "Mendoza," I said.

"Okay, Mendoza. I'll get you out of here," he said, all stern heroism. "That

time shuttle out there is mine now, babe, and when I've finished this other

thing I'll come back for you." He gripped my hand firmly.

Oh, no, I thought, what has he gotten himself into now? At what windmill has

he decided to level his lance?

Summoning every ounce of composure, I frowned delicately and enunciated: "Do I

understand you to say that you stole a time shuttle from Dr. Zeus

Incorporated?"

"Yup," he said, with that sly sideways grin I knew so terribly well.

"How, in God's name? They're all powerful and all knowing, too. Nobody steals

anything from the Company!" I said.

"I did," he said, looking so smug I wanted to shake him. "I've got sort of an

advantage. At least, I had," he amended in a more subdued voice. "They may

have killed my best friend. If he'd been with me, I wouldn't have crashed. I

don't know what's happened to him, but if he's really gone... they will pay."

Something had persuaded this man that he could play the blood and revenge game

with Dr. Zeus and win. He couldn't win, of course, for a number of reasons;

not least of which was that every time shuttle has a theft intercept program

built into it, which will at a predetermined moment detonate a hidden bomb to

blow both shuttle and thief to atoms.

This was the fate Alec had been rushing to meet when he'd detoured into my

field. I could see it now so clearly, it was sitting on his chest like a

scorpion, and he was totally unaware it was there. I didn't even need to sit

through the play this time; I'd been handed the synopsis in terrible brevity.

"But what do you think you can do?" I said.

"Wreck them. Bankrupt them. Expose what they've been doing. Tell the whole

world the truth," Alec growled, in just

the same voice in which Nicholas had used to rant about the Pope. He squeezed

my hand more tightly.

I couldn't talk him out of it. I never can. I had to try, though.

"But-Alec. Do you have any idea what you're going up against? These people

know everything that's ever happened, or at least they know about every event

in recorded history. That's why I can't think for a second you were really

able to steal that shuttle from them. They must have known about it in

advance, don't you see? And if they knew, it means they allowed you to steal

it, and then-"

"No," he said, with grim and unshakable certainty. "See, I can't explain-just

take it on trust, babe, they may know everything but they don't know

everything about me. I found the chink in their armor. You could say I am the

chink in their armor."

It was going to be the same old story, gallant Englishman going to his gallant

death. Nothing I could do to change it at all.

Was there?

I shook my head. "Don't say any more. I don't want to know."

"You don't need to," he said, giving me that brief cocksure grin again. "Just

wait here, and I'll be back to rescue you. On my word of honor as a gentleman,

Mendoza." He widened his eyes for emphasis.

"It's a kind offer, senor," I said. "But if I were to leave this station, the

Company would know instantly. Besides, where would I go? I have no family. I

have no legal identity."

Alec blinked. "But you've got to have a birth record at Global ID, at least."

Damned twenty-fourth-century databases. "Undoubtedly," I lied, "but the

Company had it erased when I was sent here. They're that powerful, you know."

"That's true." He scowled. "We can fake you up an identification disc. I know

people who do that kind of thing. It wouldn't get you through customs

anywhere, but... I know what'd do it! I could just marry you. Peers get

everything waived, see?"

I couldn't think what to say. He got a slightly panicked look in his eyes.

"A-and then afterward we could just get a divorce. They're easy. I could find

you a place to live and a job or something."

"Perhaps we could give it a try," I said carefully. He cleared his throat.

"I'm not just making the offer out of kindness, either. We could have some fun

together."

I leaned down, unable to keep myself from his mouth any longer, and I kissed

him. Actually I was going to do a lot more than kiss him-if I was going to

throw my immortal life away for Alec, I'd have such an epic game of lust with

him first as would make the fires of Hell seem lukewarm when I got there.

He still kissed like an angel of God, making little surprised and pleased

noises and groping feebly at my behind, but I felt his blood pressure going

up, his heartbeat speeding dangerously, and the red numbers in my peripheral

vision warned me to stop or I'd kill him. I pulled away, sitting up and

stroking back his hair. "Don't you go dying on me," I gasped.

"I won't," he promised. He had got hold of the end of my braid and was tugging

at it in a plaintive way. "But I'd really, really like to have sex with you.

If you've no objections or anything."

Caramba! Did he use that line on other women? But I'd bet it worked for him

every time. Who could resist that earnest look in his eyes when he said it?

How was I going to stop myself from ripping open that suit of fish-mail he was

wearing and murdering him with carnal bliss?

Meteorological data coming in. Had that been thunder, or God snarling at me? I

babbled out some kind of promise to Alec and went to the window to confirm

visually.

Disturbed air. Domed clouds racing down the sky, all my surviving corn plants

staggering and fluttering as a gust of hot wind came rushing across them,

carrying a smell of wetness and electricity. Crickets began to sing.

"There's a cloud front advancing," I told Alec. "Have you brought rain, like

the west wind? I think we're going to have a summer storm."

"Cool," said Alec. Christ, I wanted to jump him then and there.

But he was ill and he needed protein, needed fluids, needed rest. I do have

some basic programming that insists I serve the mortal race, even if I bypass

it now and then to kill one of the poor little things; so I poured Alec a

glass of iced tea and set about preparations for feeding him.

"What do you do here, all the time?" Alec said, as I returned from the garden

with some produce.

"I grow vegetables," I said.

"Who eats 'em all? Not you all alone." He sipped his tea and looked at it in

surprise. "This is real tea!"

"Thank you. You obviously know about Dr. Zeus; do you know anything about the

Day Six resorts?" I unloaded what I was carrying onto my kitchen table:

tomatoes, corn, peppers, cilantro, garlic, onions. He knitted his brows.

"They're like one of those urban myths, only they're really real," he said.

"Like Dr. Zeus. Everybody knows there's supposed to be some company that has

time travel and can get you absolutely anything you want, but it's just a

rumor. Which is what they probably want us to think! And the Day Six places

are the same way. Somebody did a Weird Stories thing on holo about one. This

guy goes back in time to party and screws up history by stepping on a bug or

something." He had another sip of his tea.

"Ah. Well, that's a fable, because history can't be changed." I worked the

hand pump to rinse off the tomatoes and peppers. "But the resorts do exist,

just as Dr. Zeus exists. In fact, Dr. Zeus owns them. Nice little string of

hotels, rather unexceptional except that they're all located in 150,000 BCE.

Or thereabouts. All of them in virgin wildernesses where long-extinct mammals

can be observed gamboling, from behind the safety of an electronic perimeter

field.

"You're from the future, Alec, you must have lived in steel canyons all your

life. How much would you pay to be able to swim in waters that had never been

polluted, or watch a herd of mammoths grazing?"

"In all the stories, time travelers wind up as lunch for velociraptors," he

said.

"All the dinosaurs are extinct in this time. Anyway: Dr. Zeus has quietly

built up a select secret clientele in the twenty-fourth century. They pay

fortunes, annual incomes of small countries, I'm told, to be rocketed backward

through time to carefully landscaped virgin paradises where they can relax by

the pool and breathe clean, clean air." I selected a knife and began slicing

up the tomatoes.

"The only problem is-time travel is hard on the human body. Even the drugs

that protect people make them ill. So when they arrive from the dismal future,

these millionaires and heiresses can do no more than nibble at a lettuce leaf

or two. Therefore Dr. Zeus makes damned sure the resort keeps all manner of

trendy greens for salad on hand, and therefore I labor in the sun on this

agricultural station." I whacked a beefsteak tomato in half, imagining it was

some Company CEO's head.

"But that's awful." Alec tried to sit up, looking outraged. "That means you're

not only their prisoner, you're their

slave!"

He was an idealist, then. Disapproved of slavery, did he? And him a titled

gentleman. Just the sort of wealthy young man who comes to loathe his

birthright and goes off to die for somebody else's freedom.

"I suppose I am," I said carefully. "But I may as well be of some use to

somebody, don't you think? And it's not so bad. 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?" Alec said.

I told him all about my quest to perfect maize plants. I don't think he

understood one word in three of botany talk, and when he wrinkled his forehead

and attempted to follow my lecture he looked like a puzzled dog. But he was

awfully polite about it, unlike the other Future Children I've known, and said

gallant things about how worthwhile my project was.

We talked for a little while on the subject of making one's life count for

something, and I expected a manifesto from him on the need to actively oppose

the evils of Dr. Zeus. I was surprised; he just talked about his life. Despite

his grand title, it appears there were some unfortunate circumstances

attending his birth again. Some poor girl seduced by the sixth earl

and then abandoned? I'd hardly have thought the wretched Future Children had

enough blood in them to carry on like that, but apparently mortal nature

hasn't changed so much.

As near as I could make out, the girl went mad and was locked up. Alec seems

to have grown to manhood with a devastating sense of his own worthlessness,

not surprisingly. I wonder if Nicholas and Edward carried similar burdens of

unearned guilt on their backs? Was that what fueled Nicholas's drive to

martyrdom, Edward's selfless work for an empire that abandoned him? I was too

young and foolish to see this in Nicholas, too rushed to see it in Edward; but

I see it now. And Alec's failed at two marriages, apparently, and has steered

through his life in increasing emotional isolation. Is that why he's always

alone when I meet the man?

When he saw he'd affected me, blurting out his wretched story, he made amends

by changing the subject entirely and told me about the adventures he's had, as

I kneaded the masa for our commonplace supper of tamales.

And what adventures he's had! I begin to see that I have been somewhat

mistaken about Future World. It seems he hasn't grown up in steel canyons at

all. It seems that there are still wild places in the twenty-fourth century,

still gardens and forests that don't stink of machine exhaust. Best of all, it

seems that the mortal race has not entirely followed the crabbed and fearful

lead of its Company scientists, people like Mr. Bugleg of loathsome memory.

Though they are, all of them, undeniably childish. Future Children indeed. My

own dearest love has bought himself a pirate ship, if you please, and spends

most of his time sailing around in the Caribbean and other ports of call on

what we used to call the Spanish Main! And there he indulges his urge to be

virile and bad, like pirates in every film he's ever seen, and he's become a

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TheLifeoftheWorldtoComeKAGEBAKERCopyright(c)2004KageBakerTeasercopyright(c)1997byKageBakerISBN0-765-35432-2EAN978-0-765-35432-7Firstedition:December2004Firstmassmarketedition:November2005EXTRACTFROMTHEJOURNALOFTHEBOTANISTMENDOZA150,000BCE(moreorless)Raincomesonthewestwind,iceoutofthebluenorth.Theeas...

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Kage Baker - Company 5 - The Life of the World to Come

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