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

  “Squash,” he said, by which he meant Let’s go wash. That one wasn’t an idiom; he was simply so hung over he wasn’t speaking clearly.

  They staggered into Alec’s bathroom together, giggling, and the girl leaned against a rack of fluffy towels as she watched Alec program the temperature controls of the shower.

  Her name, just for the record, was the Honourable Cynthia Bryce-Peckinghill, and she was young and pretty, and beyond that there was absolutely nothing distinctive about her.

  “I have to wee, Alec,” she announced in a playful kind of way.

  “Okay,” he said absently, as the water came on and hit him with a blast of needle-steam. He yelped and ducked back, putting up both his hands to wipe his face.

  She considered him fondly as she sat on the toilet. She’d never met anybody quite like Alec, nor had any of the other young ladies in their Circle of Thirty. He wasn’t handsome compared to Alistair Stede-Windsor or Hugh Rothschild. He didn’t have their chiseled patrician features. In fact, towering beside them he looked like a good-natured horse, especially if he was grinning. One assumed that he was clumsy because he was so lanky and big; but then he’d move, and one was struck by his grace and the deliberate control he had over his body. When he wasn’t stoned, that is.

  Naked like this, Alec’s strangeness was more pronounced, but it was difficult to put into precise words—impossible for Cynthia to put into words, because she was quite brainless, but even the sharper of the girls in the Circle of Thirty hadn’t quite managed to say what it was. There was a suggestion of unnatural strength, of power, that a well-bred idiot like Cynthia found scarily pleasurable.

  He was sensitive about his long teeth, though. He’d worked at developing several different sidelong or closed-lipped smiles to avoid drawing attention to them. It gave him a crafty sort of look sometimes.

  Of course, Alec’s looks were beside the point. What Cynthia had discovered, as all the other young ladies in the Circle of Thirty had discovered, was that Alec had a remarkable talent. Unlike Alistair Stede-Windsor or Hugh Rothschild or any of the other young gentlemen of the Circle, Alec was not only interested in sex any hour of the day or night but capable of doing something about it.

  And so polite! He had only to look into one’s eyes and suggest certain affectionate pleasures, in that curiously compelling voice of his, and ladies fought to jump into bed with him. Though it must be said that few girls repeated the experience more than once or twice. There was something about Alec just a bit more … animal, perhaps, than most of them felt comfortable with.

  He was sensitive about that trick of looking into a girl’s eyes and making her want what he wanted, too; so sensitive that he pretended to himself that he couldn’t do it.

  But as he stood shivering now, pushing his lank wet hair back from his face, he seemed pathetically ordinary. Cynthia thought he looked just super. She hopped up and jumped into the shower with him, and they spent a long time in there and used up a great deal of hot water.

  “This way,” Alec said in a stage whisper, leading her down the back stairs. She clutched her shoes as she skipped after him, giggling wildly. This was more adventurous than anything she’d ever done.

  They paused on the service porch as Alec spotted a mass of florist’s roses among the morning’s deliveries. He grabbed a red one and stuck it down the back of her jeans when she bent over to pull on her shoes. She shrieked with laughter, which he stifled with a kiss, leaning down. Then he heard the sound of a car pulling up in the street beyond.

  Alec stood on tiptoe and peered through the fanlight. When he saw the long car with the Bryce-Peckinghill crest and Cynthia’s older sister at the wheel he smiled and waved, then opened the door just wide enough to let Cynthia out. She bounced down the steps and got into the car, remembering fortunately to take the rose out of her pants first. Bye-bye, Alec mouthed silently, and she waved bye-bye and blew him a kiss. Her sister switched on the agmotor and the car rose and zoomed away, bearing the Honourable Mss. Cynthia and Phyllis Bryce-Peckinghill out of this story for the moment.

  Alec went to the trouble of returning up the back stairs and going down the front ones to disguise what he’d been doing, but when he strolled into the breakfast room Lewin looked up from his accounts plaquette with a disapproving stare.

  “Alec, did you have a girl in your room last night?”

  “Er … yes, actually.” Alec avoided eye contact with him, going to the sideboard to pour himself a glass of fruit juice.

  Lewin snorted. The Playfriend was somewhere in the attic with Alec’s other outgrown toys. Alec had long since stopped prattling about the Captain and their adventures together. And, apart from getting genius scores in maths and cyberscience, Alec had manifested no sinister superhuman traits, nothing to suggest why there’d been so much secrecy and heartbreak aboard the Foxy Lady all those years ago.

  “I see. Well, it would have been polite to have offered her some breakfast, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.” Alec sipped the juice and made a face. He set it aside and filled another glass with mineral water. “She had to get home, though.” He no longer spoke with the jewellike precision of small English children either, had now adopted the slangy Transatlantic accents common to well-educated young men of his social class.

  “Hm.” Lewin set the plaquette aside. “Was it the Preeves girl again?”

  “Nope.”

  “Here’s our Alec!” Mrs. Lewin came bustling into the room, bearing a fresh pot of herbal tea. “I was beginning to think you’d never get up. What can I get for you this morning, dear?”

  “Get him some dry toast,” said Lewin, as Alec bent down to kiss her. She accepted his kiss and looked up at him archly.

  “Oh, dear. Something for a headache, too, I suppose.”

  “Yes, please.” Alec slumped into his chair and watched her depart for the kitchen. He turned to Lewin and said, “How’s her breathing this morning?”

  “She didn’t sleep very well.”

  “You ought to take her down to the place at Bournemouth,” he said, having a cautious sip of his mineral water.

  “And leave you here to do who knows what in our absence?” Lewin said. “Fill the house up with your friends and have a party, that’s what you’d do, and when we came home your father’s bar would be cleaned out. It’s very nearly empty now.”

  “It’s not as though he’ll ever come home to notice,” Alec muttered, avoiding Lewin’s gaze. Alec focused his attention on the bubbles rising in his glass until Mrs. Lewin returned with his tray of toast, vitamins, and headache pills. She sat down opposite him and watched with a prim frown until he gulped down the pills and vitamins.

  “You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, a bit,” he said, wishing she’d leave him alone and wondering if he were going to be sick.

  “Dear, you know what that does to your system. Just look at yourself! Green as a duck egg. There’s a reason why that stuff was made illegal, you know. You may think you know it all at your age, I certainly did when I was a girl, but believe me, liquor is a wrecker and a betrayer! With all the advantages you’ve been given in your life I can’t think why you want to go ruining your health and wasting your time with such a stupid habit, I really can’t …”

  Alec ground his teeth. Lewin was smiling to himself as he made entries on his plaquette. Alec felt the pressure in his head building and groped for a piece of toast. He poured half a bottle of hot pepper sauce over the toast and crunched it down, praying it wouldn’t come right back up. He began to nod agreement to Mrs. Lewin’s stream of reproaches, and the next time she paused for breath he interjected:

  “You’re right. You’re right, and I’m really sorry. I won’t do this again, I promise. Okay?”

  She had been about to continue, but his abrupt capitulation took her by surprise.

  “You must feel ill,” she said. He nodded wretchedly. “Well, poor dear, I suppose it’s because you’re seventeen.
Boys seem to feel they have to do stupid things like that You’ll grow out of it, I’m certain, you’re such a clever lad—”

  “I was just saying we ought to go down to Bournemouth when the term ends,” he said. “Don’t you think? Have some nice fresh sea air for a change?”

  “Oh, that’d be lovely.” She looked at him encouragingly. “Malcolm, why don’t you mail the estate agent about getting the house ready? And perhaps you ought to let his Lordship know. He might want to come across and join us on holiday, wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Both Alec and Lewin made noncommittal noises. She’d said that every time they’d gone on holiday, and to date Roger had never managed to show up.

  “And did I show you the holocard we got from Derek and Lulu? They’re running a hotel in Turkey now. Ever so happy there. They remember you so fondly, Alec, they said they both hoped you’re doing well—”

  Alec silently intoned shrack, shrack, shrack, repeating it like a mantra to drown her out until the headache pills began to work and the toast seemed as though it were going to stay with him. The next time Mrs. Lewin paused Alec got unsteadily to his feet. “I guess I’ll go,” he said. “I’ve got Circle this morning.”

  “Shall I ring for the car?” Lewin looked up at him.

  “No, thanks.” Alec waited to see if his head would explode. “I’ll take mine.”

  Lewin made a dubious sound and watched as Alec departed.

  On the grand front steps, Alec reached into his pocket and thumbed the remote that brought his car floating up from the subterranean garage. It had been a gift from his father on his last birthday and it was bright red, very fast and very small. He didn’t really enjoy driving it, as a matter of fact; his knees stuck up on either side of the steering column as though it were a toy car on a fairground ride. The young ladies in the Circle of Thirty seemed enchanted by it, however, and invariably went to bed with him after a fast spin.

  “For Christ’s sake, you’d better let me drive,” said the Captain, speaking out of the instrument panel.

  “Okay,” said Alec, in no mood for arguing.

  He settled awkwardly into his seat and started the agmotor. Much too quickly for his liking, the car rose up and sped away with him. Just past Piccadilly Circus he realized he was in trouble, and as they zoomed around the corner into St. James Street the evidence was undeniable.

  “Lean out to leeward, you damned fool,” the Captain said.

  He was profoundly grateful that the streets were deserted as his breakfast rushed into midair and hung there a moment; then, as the car whisked him onward at such a speed that the breakfast vanished behind him without landing on him or his car, he was rather sorry that nobody had been there to witness the amazing accomplishment. And he felt great now!

  He was whistling as they reached the designated youth zone and pulled into the car park. The car sank down and he hopped out, sauntering into the Dialogue Gardens.

  Most of his Circle were already assembled in their customary place under the big plane tree. “Sorry I’m late, everybody,” he said.

  “You’re not late, Checkerfield,” Blaise said. Blaise was the dialogue leader. “Balkister, on the other hand, will almost certainly be late. Not one to change his habits, our worthy friend.”

  “What have you been doing?” murmured Jill Courtenay, rising to pull him to a seat beside her. She was the one he was serious about, and she was even more serious about him. “You’re rather pale.”

  “The car went too fast,” he said.

  “Idiot,” she said. She had very dark blue eyes with black lashes. While they had a tendency to look steely, she was being affectionate at the moment. She took his hand in her own. He kissed her neck, breathing in her scent. She smelled comforting. Across the circle, Colin Debenham stared at her longingly.

  “Good God, history is about to be made,” drawled Blaise. “Attention, assembled autocrats-in-training: Balkister is about to grace us with his punctual presence. No applause, now. You know how adulation embarrasses him.” They all looked up to see the enormous and colorful ex-parcel delivery van that came roaring into the car park. Balkister had painted it himself, with murals depicting great victories for the oppressed masses throughout history. It settled to the pavement with a crash. Several Francophone Canadians were obscured as the driver’s side panel swung open across them, and Giles Balkister made his entrance.

  He was small of stature, and unfortunately not proportioned well; very little of what height he possessed was in his legs. He was rather spotty, too. What he lacked in personal attractiveness he made up for in talent, however. Everybody thought so, including Alec, who was his best friend. Alec was always a little in awe of people who could read and write, though it was considered a menial skill.

  “Thank you,” said Blaise, after watching him toil across the garden. “Please don’t rush on our account.”

  “Oh, bugger off,” Balkister snapped. “Why don’t you start a dialogue?”

  “What a good idea,” said Blaise. “Girls and boys, a brief announcement first: we’re hosting next month’s swing gaskell for the Wimbledon Thirty at McCartney Hall. Fifty pounds per member ought to cover expenses in style. Who’ll volunteer for the decorations committee?”

  Jill squeezed Alec’s hand and looked at him in meaningful delight. A gaskell was a retro dance party, usually in appropriate period costume, and swing had been the rage in the better circles for some months now. Alec grinned back at her. He was in great demand as a dance partner—for one thing, he was one of the few men in London physically large enough to pick up and flip a partner in the complicated maneuvers swing required—and Jill was a brilliant historical costumer. They’d won prizes at the last two gaskells they’d attended.

  “I’ll volunteer,” said Balkister. Heads turned and disapproving stares pierced him through.

  “I don’t think so,” said Marilyn Deighton-True. “I can just see McCartney Hall now, festooned with socialiste nouveau slogans.”

  “And if?” said Balkister. “Can you think of a better place to hang them than in the faces of the frivolous rulers of tomorrow, participating in effete historical reenactments as Rome burns?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Balkister, it’s only a dance,” said Colin Debenham.

  “It’s a dead and meaningless dance, pulled from the dustbin of history, performed in the decadent drag of a properly vanished empire!” Balkister said.

  “Oh, whoever heard of a meaningful dance anyway?” Jill said. “Besides, you know you’ve never missed one.”

  “I’m bearing witness,” Balkister said, but he was booed down by the others. Various people with a lot of early twentieth-century furniture in their ancestral homes volunteered to bring pieces down for set decoration, somebody else agreed to handle the refreshments, and an appropriate art deco invitation design was agreed upon.

  Nearly every social event anybody threw in the twenty-fourth century was historically themed. Most people, if asked why historical reenactment was so popular, would have replied that the present age was boring. The truth, however, was more complicated and consequently even more boring, a societal phenomenon that had been set in motion centuries earlier:

  With the invention of printing, mass standardized culture had become possible.

  With the inventions of photography and then cinema, the standardization of popular culture began to progress geometrically and its rate of change slowed down.

  In addition, the complete documentation of daily life made possible by these technological advances presented the mass of humanity, for the first time in history, with a mirror in which to regard itself. Less and less had it been able to look away, as its own image became more detailed and perfect, especially with the burden of information that became available at the end of the twentieth century.

  What this meant, in practical terms, was that retro was the only fashion. Smart young things everywhere would much prefer to be dancing on a reconstruction of the Titanic, or wearing First Regency frock
coats and gowns as they sipped tea, or wearing trench coats and fedoras as they pretended to solve mysteries, or reclining on Roman couches as they dined or anything rather than living in the mundane old twenty-fourth century. And, all things considered, they might be forgiven. It was a much more dangerous time than they were aware.

  “All right then,” said Blaise at last, when the last of the party details had been hammered out. “Moving right along, let’s tackle our debate of the day. Topic for discussion: ought the administrative classes be required to obtain licenses for reproduction, as the consumer classes are presently required to do?”

  “Absolutely,” said Balkister.

  “Has anyone else an opinion?” Blaise looked around at the other members of the circle.

  “I have, and I say absolutely not,” countered Dennis Neville. “We’re the only ones with any brains in this miserable little country, we do all the work, and why should we be forced to pay for the privilege of producing the next generation without whom everything would fall apart?”

  “Oh, dear, has that been claimed before or what?” hooted Balkister. “You vile dinosaur. Privilege! Privilege! Can you really sit there and tell me you’re better than the lowly consumer, whose sweating and oppressed ancestors built the throne on which you sit? Look at this insect on the leaf, peering down on his brethren in the dust and saying he’s more worthy of passing on his genes than they are!”

  “Since when have the consumers built anything?” jeered Edgar Shotts-Morecambe. “In the last century, anyway?”

  “Irrelevant,” said Balkister. “The issue at hand is the monstrous inequity of privilege. How, in this day and age, can any one of you claim to be better than your fellow human beings?”

  “Because we are,” said Marilyn Deighton-True with a shrug. “Face reality, Giles, or it will face you. You can spout all the socialiste nouveau crap you like, but it simply doesn’t apply to a meritocracy.”