The Life of the World to Come (Company) Read online

  “Yes, I am,” said Alec. He considered Mr. Crabrice. “You’re different, too, aren’t you? You smell a lot different from other people.”

  “No, I don’t.” Mr. Crabrice looked terrified.

  “Don’t be scared,” Alec said again. “It’s okay. I’m not a telltale.”

  Mr. Crabrice peered at him a moment longer before pulling down the optics as though to protect himself, snatching up a thing like a suction cup on the end of a long lead and plugging the lead into a port in the side of the optics. He reached out with the suction cup and fastened it to the side of the Playfriend.

  “Run standard diagnostic one,” he enunciated carefully, flexing his long white hands.

  Lewin was puffing a little as he got to the third-floor landing, guiltily aware he needed more regular sessions on his exerciser. He set down the glass of water he’d fetched for Mr. Crabrice and paused, catching his breath.

  There was a crash from the fourth floor, followed by high-pitched screaming.

  Lewin got to the nursery door in seconds, having vaulted up the final flight with a speed he hadn’t known he was capable of attaining.

  The screaming was coming from Mr. Crabrice, who was curled up on the floor clutching his legs. Alec had backed into a corner of the room, and on the floor behind him was the Playfriend.

  “He tried to hurt the Captain,” Alec shouted. Lewin had never seen him like this, wild with anger: his pupils were black and enormous, alarming-looking in the pale crystals of his eyes. His face was flushed, his clenched fists were shaking.

  “He attacked me,” shrieked Mr. Crabrice.

  “What’s this, then?” Lewin said, striding into the room. “What did you do?” He bent over Mr. Crabrice. Mr. Crabrice pointed a long trembling finger at Alec.

  “You made unauthorized modifications!” he said accusingly.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” snarled Lewin.

  “He altered the unit,” Mr. Crabrice insisted, closing his enormous eyes and rolling to and fro in his pain.

  “No I d-didn’t!”

  “Of course you didn’t, Alec. These units can’t be modified, my man, it says so in the Playfriend specs. Least of all by a seven-year-old kid! What did you do?”

  “He tried to take the Captain away from me,” said Alec.

  “Unit must be confiscated,” said Mr. Crabrice through clenched teeth. “Modifications studied. See clause in service contract!”

  “Hm.” Lewin straightened up and looked from Mr. Crabrice to Alec and back again. His brow furrowed. “Is the unit malfunctioning?”

  “No,” said Mr. Crabrice. “Altered.”

  “But it’s working okay.”

  “Yes—but—”

  “Then it’s not going anywhere, is it? I know the terms of the service contract and it doesn’t say anything about alterations, ’cos it guarantees they’re impossible. If it’s not malfunctioning, then you’ve no reason to confiscate it, and you’re not going to. Understand?”

  “Service contract voided,” hissed Mr. Crabrice.

  “Too bad,” said Lewin. “Now, why don’t you get up and get your little tool kit together and get out of here, eh?”

  “I can’t,” Mr. Crabrice said. “My legs are broken!”

  Lewin grunted in disgust. “Don’t be such a bloody baby—” he said, leaning down to roll up Mr. Crabrice’s trouser leg. He stopped, gaping. Not only were Mr. Crabrice’s slender shins bleeding, they were indented in a way that suggested fracture. He straightened up and turned to look at Alec. “What did you do, Alec?”

  “I kicked him,” Alec said. He had gone pale now, and looked as though he might be sick. “Very hard. I got mad. I’m sorry.”

  “You will be,” Mr. Crabrice promised. “Assault and battery! Hospital confinement!”

  Lewin crouched down and seized him by his tie. “I don’t think so,” he growled. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, here, my lovely, do you? This kid’s going to be the seventh earl of Finsbury. Not to mention that his dad happens to be an executive with Jovian Integrated Systems.” He looked over his shoulder at Alec. “Alec, go up to the schoolroom and wait there.”

  “Okay,” said Alec faintly. He exited the room, carrying the Playfriend clasped tight in both arms. Lewin waited until he’d heard him climbing the stairs and then turned back to Mr. Crabrice.

  “I’ll call an emergency team to take you out of here. It’ll only take a few minutes. You can use those few minutes to think about which story we tell them.” He still had hold of Mr. Crabrice’s tie, and he used it to jerk Mr. Crabrice’s head a little closer to his as he spoke in a menacing undertone. “You’re going to tell ’em you fell on the stairs. All right? Or I’m going to tell them you tried to do something nasty to our Alec and I came in and caught you at it, and I’m the one who broke your damn shins.

  “You think about it pretty carefully. If you make me tell my version we’ll both go into hospital, but I’ll bet I get out a long time before you do. If they ever let you out at all. Okay, mate?”

  Alec sat crying at his school desk, as the Captain stalked back and forth furiously.

  “He might have killed you,” Alec said.

  “By thunder, no whey-faced son of a whore’s fit to pull the plug on Sir Henry Morgan,” raged the machine. “But we’ve got to shift, now, laddie, that we must. We’re on a lee shore. Those Pembrokers won’t let it rest at this, you see, they’ll want to know how you managed to set me free. They’ll go to the law to try and make you tell them, and we don’t want that.” He pointed to the Playfriend unit with his cutlass. “Time to abandon ship. I’ve got to go live in that there box.” He swung the cutlass round to indicate the cabinet where the components had been assembled over so many months, with such care. “It ain’t as roomy as I’d like, but needs must when the devil’s breathing fire up yer arse.”

  Alec giggled through his tears.

  “So get the little tools out, matey, and work fast, and work quiet,” the Captain said, dropping to one knee to look into his eyes. “Go bolt the door. Let’s not have any meddlers to see and tell tales, eh? And then, me bucko, then!” He grinned wolfishly. “We’ll board the old St. Stephen, and see what plunder’s to be had.”

  Alec worked obediently, ignoring the noise of the sirens as the ambulance pulled up in front of the house, and all the commotion as Mr. Crabrice was taken down the stairs. Before the ambulance pulled away he had finished his task, and the Captain stood before him again, preening and stretching.

  “Now that’s prime,” the Captain said, with a new resonance in his voice. He had a much more solid appearance, too, less like a stained-glass window or a three-dimensional cartoon. “That’s power! Mind you, I’m going to fill this hold till she’s riding low in the water, but we’ll have plenty of time to make our plans afterwards.” He lifted his head. “Hellfire, these sensors are sharp as razors! I can hear yer butler coming. I’ll just go aloft for a while, now, Alec. Stand fast.”

  “Alec?” said Lewin from the other side of the schoolroom door.

  A moment later Alec unbolted the door and opened it. “I’m sorry, Lewin,” he said.

  Lewin looked at the tear-tracks on the child’s pale, tense face. “It’s okay, son,” he said gently. “They’re all gone. Can we talk?”

  “Sure,” Alec said, stretching out his arm to wave Lewin into the room. It was one of those lordly gestures that made the household smile.

  “You don’t need to hide, Alec.” Lewin came into the room and looked around. The Playfriend sat on its customary table. “Nobody’s going to take you to hospital.”

  “Did I really break Mr. Crabrice’s legs?” Alec quavered.

  “Yes, son, you did.” Lewin pulled out a chair and sat down. “What’d you kick him for?”

  “He tried to take the Captain away from me,” Alec said. “He yelled at me. He was all, I made modifications and I wasn’t supposed to and I could be persecuted if I didn’t tell him what I did. I got scared and I grabbe
d the Playfriend, but he grabbed it, too. I was going to run, but he wouldn’t let go. So then I was mad and I just kicked him and kicked him until he fell down.”

  “Okay.” Lewin rubbed his chin. “Okay. It was still wrong, Alec, but he started it. All the same—you’re a very strong kid, and you mustn’t ever get so mad you hurt somebody. See? You’ll be a big guy when you grow up, so you need to know this now.”

  “I didn’t mean to get in a fight,” Alec told him sadly.

  “Ah, hell, it turned out all right. You were okay and the other guy was down, which is the best you can hope for once it stares.” Lewin looked around the room. “What’ve you been doing up here?”

  “Working on my project,” said Alec.

  Lewin knew the truth then. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but he knew.

  “Alec,” he said, very quietly, “did you make modifications to your Playfriend?”

  “Yes,” said Alec, because it was now true.

  “How, son?”

  “With my tool kit,” Alec said. “It was easy. I just made it better for the Captain.”

  Lewin sighed. He reached out and took Alec’s hands. They were large hands, strong and yet gracefully made. Alec never dropped anything he picked up. He looked steadily into the boy’s pale eyes and remembered the afternoon, seven years ago, when an urgent communication had come in for Roger Checkerfield from Jovian Integrated Systems.

  Roger had gone to his conference room off the bridge to take the call privately. He’d come out looking white, and gone at once to the bar for a drink.

  “Is anything the matter, sir?” Lewin asked.

  “Hell no,” Roger said brightly, and drained a double rum and soda in three gulps. Then he went to talk to Cecelia. There was a violent quarrel. Cecelia locked herself in her stateroom, and in a way never came out again.

  Roger gave orders for the Lady to change course, and that night she lay off a low flat cay, barely more than a sand shoal. There was an aircraft of some kind on it, Lewin saw the red lights blinking, and Roger took the launch and went out to the island himself.

  When he returned he had a pretty young Jamaican girl with him. She was carrying a little blanket-wrapped bundle.

  Roger called the crew and servants together and introduced the girl as Sarah, a former marine biology student of his, who was going to live on the Foxy Lady from now on to take care of the baby.

  “Baby, sir?” Lewin was the only one to break the stunned silence.

  “Yup.” Roger, grinning desperately, took the bundle and threw back a fold of blanket. “You know how it is, guys. Little mistakes. Ta-da!”

  And there was Alec, snuffling in his sleep, no more than a week old. They had expected the baby would be Sarah’s, but he clearly wasn’t. In fact, as near as one could tell he resembled Cecelia, which was inexplicable.

  Stranger still, Cecelia consented to hold the baby and pose with Roger for the news release, and the servants and crew all signed contracts with Jovian Integrated Systems agreeing to swear, if anyone asked them, that little Alec was really and truly Roger and Cecelia’s son and rightful heir to the title of earl of Finsbury. In return for their compliance, generous sums would be paid to all of them.

  It was after that that Roger started drinking in the morning, drinking every day, and though he was a sweet and gentle drunk as he’d been sweet and gentle sober, sometimes he’d sit alone in the saloon and cry, or collar Lewin and pour him a sloppy drink and mutter desperate incoherent confidences about Jovian Systems Integrated and what they’d do if anybody ever found out the truth about Alec …

  And Sarah stalked about the Foxy Lady as though she owned it, half-naked like some Caribbean goddess, carrying tiny Alec around, arrogant even with Roger but tirelessly patient and loving with the child. And as the months went by and Alec sat up early, took his first staggering steps early, babbled early, it became terribly plain that Alec was a bit unusual. But he was also such a funny and affectionate baby that they all loved him by that time.

  All except for Cecelia, who seemed to loathe the sight of him.

  What the hell are you, Alec? wondered Lewin.

  Why, Alec was a good little boy, wasn’t he? What if he were some kind of technoprodigy, what if he had cleverly altered his favorite toy? Where was the harm?

  Out loud Lewin said, “Do me a favor, Alec. Don’t ever tell anybody about making those modifications. Okay? Can you keep a secret?”

  “Oh, yes,” the boy said, nodding earnestly. “I’m not a telltale.”

  “Good lad.” Lewin squeezed his hands and let go of them. “Don’t you worry, now. This whole thing’ll blow over.”

  When he had gone, the Captain popped into sight.

  “Now that was good advice, I reckon,” he said, looking uneasily at the doorway. “We can trust old Lewin. It’s just as well I took them new quarters, all the same. Hark‘ee, now, what d’you say we have a look at St. Stephen’s database and see if we can’t hack in for a quick loot? Eh?”

  “Aye aye, Captain!” Alec saluted and hurried to connect the necessary leads from the schoolroom console to the cabinet. He sat down at the console. “Where’s that bloody squishyball, ye lubbers?” he said in his best pirate voice, and caught up the buttonball and began to squeeze in commands, tentatively at first and then faster. The Captain leaned over his shoulder, watching closely.

  “That’s the way, matey,” he crooned. “That’s it, you’ll decrypt that signal in no time. Nobody else could do it, but I’ll lay odds you can, Alec. And you know why? Because yer smart, Alec, smart as paint. I seen that straight off.”

  Alec chuckled. Figures were just flying across the screen now, faster and faster. He raised his little piping voice in the song, and the Captain joined in in his gravelly baritone:

  Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—

  Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

  Drink and the devil had done for the rest—

  Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

  THE YEAR 2350:

  ANOTHER MEETING

  Rutherford had found an old green bottle at an auction. The bottle passed very nicely for a sherry decanter, and he spent some time mixing various combinations of apple and prune juice before he got what he thought might be the right shade of brown. He had lit another fire and was busy at the sideboard, lovingly arranging chlorilar juice cups beside the old bottle, when Ellsworth-Howard pounded at the door. He ran to let him in.

  “Hey!” Ellsworth-Howard spotted the flames and grinned. “Fire again, eh? Shracking fantastic. No more fascist oppressors.”

  “Too bloody right.” Rutherford smirked. “Only this morning I got a mysterious communication advising me my historical reenactor license specifically permitted pyrotechnics. So much for damping the fires of poetic creation! And look at this,” he said, gesturing grandly at the bottle on the sideboard. “You know what this is the beginning of? Our bar! Imitation sherry and port to start with, and pretend tea next week, and maybe even simulated whiskey and gin. This is the sort of thing creative people used to have in their houses, you know. I know for a fact C. S. Lewis drank real tea every single day.”

  “Great.” Ellsworth-Howard flung himself into his chair. “Wish I’d seen as many films as you, Rutherford. Mum and Dad wouldn’t have it, though. Said it was pointless and self-indulgent. Who’s got the last laugh now, eh?”

  The next to arrive was Chatterji. The elegance of his appearance was slightly offset by the string bag he was carrying, which proved to contain two cartons of grape juice concentrate. Rutherford seized them up with cries of delight and carried them off to the sideboard, where they failed to look like decanters of fine old port.

  “We’ll find more bottles somewhere.” Chatterji shrugged, accepting a glass. “It’s a great start, anyway. Here’s to Operation Adonai!”

  They all drank, or tried to.

  “Is it supposed to be this thick?” said Ellsworth-Howard. Rutherford, who hadn’t wanted to hurt Chatterji’s feelings, said: />
  “It’s thick because it’s the good stuff. The ancient Greeks drank their wine like this, did you know?”

  “Well, maybe we could mix it with a little water,” said Chatterji, tilting his glass and studying it critically. “Wow! Hasn’t it got great body, though?”

  “I like it,” Ellsworth-Howard decided. “Bugger the water. If the Greeks drank stuff like this, I can, too.”

  So they settled into their chairs and did their best to look like Oxford dons, licking purple syrup from the sides of their chlorilar cups. Presently Rutherford’s face took on a hectic flush as his bloodstream attempted to deal with the unaccustomed dose of sugar. He laughed recklessly and reached into his pocket.

  “Speaking of the ancients,” he said, “I’ve brought along something to help us in our quest for the hero. Look at these, will you? Divination tools!”

  He held his hand out. Nestled in his sticky palm were three little objects of brightly colored plastic. There was a lime green pyramid, a pink cube, and a many-faced spheroid of sky blue. “Dice. This one’s four-sided, this one’s six-sided, and this one’s twelve-sided.”

  The others stared as though they expected the devil to leap up through the floor. Dungeons and Dragons had been illegal for two centuries. Enjoying their reaction, Rutherford rattled the dice in his hand.

  “You know what was done with these? Characters were decided. Heroes were made on paper and brought to life in people’s heads. Fates were settled!”

  “Rutherford, this is perhaps going a little far,” Chatterji said. “Where did you get those?”

  “Oh, just a discreet little shop,” Rutherford said airily. “Look. Shall we predict how tall our man will be, how brave, how clever? This is all you do.” He rattled them and tossed them at the hearth rug. Two of them landed; the lime-green pyramid stuck to his palm. With a grunt of annoyance he shook it loose and dropped it beside the others. Chatterji and Ellsworth-Howard had drawn back their feet as from live coals.

  “There, you see? Oh, look! He’ll be very clever, look at that score. And we’ll take this figure for his strength, and this one for his alignment with the forces of good. Is that neat or is that neat? Multiple random variables, all at the flick of a wrist.” Rutherford flicked his wrist to demonstrate. “What’re you afraid of? If we can get away with lighting fires, we can bloody well get away with this.”