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

  “Yeah. Women are really impressed,” Alec drawled. “‘We hope you’ve enjoyed the thrilling Alec ride! Please remember your coat and daypack as you exit to the left.’”

  “Look, I heard about Jill. You mustn’t mind, you know?”

  “Mustn’t I?” Alec had another drink. “Okay, I won’t.”

  “I’m sure it was just hormones or something. My spies tell me she’s in the loo crying her eyes out right now. Even if it’s really over, well, she’s the one crying, and doesn’t that count for something? And she was awfully temperamental. Bossed you around no end, really. Didn’t she?”

  “Did she?” Alec unscrewed the cap of the flask and added more gin to the mix. “I guess everything’s just bishareedo then, huh?”

  “Well, whether or not we’re happy is largely up to us,” said Balkister. “Positive thinking and all that crap, but it’s true, you know.”

  “Good,” said Alec. He passed the cup to Balkister, who sipped carefully.

  “I’m speaking out of my limitless experience with the fair sex, of course,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “Look at it like this, Checkerfield. You could be an ugly little squirt like me.”

  “I’m ugly enough,” said Alec, taking the cup back.

  “True true. But women seem to love you all the same.”

  “No, they don’t,” said Alec firmly.

  “I just heard,” said Blaise, advancing cautiously along the catwalk. He crouched beside them, poised on the balls of his feet. “Checkerfield, can I have a drink?”

  “Help yourself.” Alec handed him the flask.

  “Thanks.” Blaise poured gin into his own cup, but did not return the flask. “You know, Checkerfield, maybe this was for the best.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Well, are you really cut out for domesticity? Ball and chain, squalling kids, reduced to being somebody’s dependable hubby? Not you, Checkerfield. You’ve got adventure in your blood. How can you have fun if you’re tied down?”

  Below on the floor, the band began to play “Pickin’ the Cabbage,” a tune with a rather menacing minor key melody.

  “Yup. You’ve got a point, all right,” Alec said. Blaise glanced down uneasily and licked his lips. He tucked the flask inside his coat and went on:

  “Remember, we talked about the great things you might do someday? Like maybe going to Mars? I know for a fact Jill wasn’t about to let you roam around. She’d plans for you, old man. But you’ve got plans of your own, haven’t you? You want to stay free! After all, look at your father.”

  Alec flinched and had another drink. Balkister looked up at Blaise sharply. Blaise went on: “Now, there was a man. How many people in this day and age have the guts to thumb their noses at inherited responsibility and sail off into the blue, living as they please? Everything was just great until he married. I mean, other than producing you, wouldn’t you agree that his marriage was a fatal mistake in every respect? Was he ever happy again? Did he ever make any great discoveries after that, with a wife and household in tow? You know he didn’t. Wives!” He shuddered elaborately. “Don’t you owe it to him to avoid making the same mistake?”

  Before Alec could reply, there was a clatter of heels on the catwalk and the Honourable Cynthia Bryce-Peckinghill edged out toward them, followed closely by Beatrice Louise Jagger.

  “Alec, sweetie,” said Cynthia. “We love you! Please, please, don’t forget that we all love you!”

  “I love you, too,” said Beatrice. “I’d marry you in a New York second, honey, I’m serious!”

  “Jill is out of her tiny mind, really!” Cynthia crowded past Blaise to reach a consoling hand toward Alec. “Lots of people have Episodes!”

  “There are plenty of fish in the sea, you know!” Beatrice pushed after Cynthia, glancing over her shoulder to snarl at an unidentified girl from the Wimbledon Thirty who was hastening up there, too.

  It was at this point that someone on the dance floor alerted Lord Howard to the fact that a flask had been spotted in the possession of one of the persons on the catwalk. Lord Howard turned a dangerous shade of purple under his face powder, and mounted the creaking stair with the wrath of an offended god.

  “Right,” he roared, hitching up his dress as he climbed swiftly. “Which of you young fools brought alcohol in here?”

  As one, the parties on the catwalk spotted him and froze. He reached the top and stalked toward them. One of his spike heels caught in the iron gratework. He halted, grimacing as he attempted to pull it free. There was a terribly ominous squeak, and the catwalk shuddered all along its length. Blaise vaulted into space, turning in the air like an acrobat, and landed safely on the floor below.

  “Oh, shit said Lord Howard, frantically yanking at his heel. The catwalk shuddered again. Ancient iron parted with ancient plaster, and the whole thing dropped a few centimeters down the wall.

  “LOOK OUT,” said Blaise from the floor, and then he vanished into the crowd. There was shrieking and general excitement as people scattered and the Mss. Bryce-Peckinghill, Jagger, and Unknown swarmed frantically past Lord Howard. Balkister had covered his face with his hands, petrified. Alec remained where he was, looking very surprised. The only ones to miss all the excitement were Jill, who was in the lavatory, and Colin Debenham, who had followed her in there.

  Screaming like a live thing, the catwalk swung outward from the wall, gently descending as it came. Lord Howard was tilted out into space, giving the assembled company a fine view of his garter belt and panties before he dropped into the helpful arms of Elvis Churchill and Alistair Stede-Windsor. The bottle of orange juice rolled out and burst, splashing everyone who hadn’t stepped far enough away. The young ladies tumbled the last few feet to the floor, and Balkister summoned enough courage to jump, landing perilously close to the bandstand and causing a bass player to leap back in alarm and collide with the drummer’s kit, precipitating a chain reaction better seen than described.

  Only Alec rode the catwalk all the way down, until it spilled him out at floor level and he staggered upright, wide-eyed, still clutching his drink.

  “I guess I’d better leave now,” he said to nobody in particular, and made his exit in some haste.

  “Bloody hell,” said the Captain from the instrument panel. “What’ve you been doing, laddie? Where’s the girl?”

  “She’s not coming,” Alec said. “And I’m drunk, and you’d better drive, and could you get us away from here pretty fast, please?”

  The Captain swore and gunned the motor. Within seconds they were speeding away through the night, leaving the commotion of McCartney Hall far behind. Alec began to cry silently, and the wind pushed his tears out along his broad cheekbones.

  “Drunk again, after all we talked about,” growled the Captain. “Damn it, son, what’s it going to take to control you? Did anybody see the booze? Have you got it on you now?”

  “I did have—” Alec fumbled in his pockets. “Hell. It’s gone someplace. Is that all you care about? Jill just ripped my heart into little shreds, man.”

  “All right, matey, all right. I don’t think we’ll go home to John Street just yet, eh? You want to talk this out before you sleep, son, that’s what you want. So you broke up with Jill, did you?”

  “All I did was ask her to marry me,” mourned Alec. “She was the only one who didn’t act like I was a zoo exhibit, after the Episode. She’s smarter than the rest of ’em. I thought she understood.”

  “Aah. But the lassie was scared of commitment and not letting on? Now, I’d been wondering what was the matter with her.” The Captain steered into Oxford Street and sped on in the direction of Edgeware Road.

  “You mean even you knew something was wrong?” Alec was appalled. “Don’t tell me everybody but me knew.”

  “Why, lad, I’m programmed to notice all sorts of little subtle subliminal things you can’t, so don’t take it amiss. She’d a bit of baggage with her, hadn’t she?”

  “What’re you talking about?” Alec stead
ied himself as they turned into the Edgeware Road and the Captain let the car pick up some real speed along the straightaway.

  “Well, now, son—you know I do a bit of checking up on them as gets close to you. It’s in my programming, after all. And I reckon you know that the lass didn’t come from a particularly happy home,” said the Captain in his most sympathetic voice.

  “Yeah. Her people were divorced, same as mine,” said Alec, wiping his face with both hands.

  “Well, I’ll tell you straight out, bucko: I think the young lady has a pathological fear of relationships. Scared they’ll turn out like her parents’ marriage, see? Nothing really to do with you,” lied the Captain smoothly.

  “Oh, man,” sighed Alec. “I wish I could get the shrack out of here. Just go off and, and die in some war like they used to have. Why’s the world so screwed up? Why are there all these stupid rules about little things that don’t matter? Why do I make everybody so shracking unhappy?”

  “Belay that talk, son,” said the Captain. “Going off to die in some war, for a bunch of swabs? That ain’t the pirate way!”

  “Captain, sir, have you noticed I’m not a little kid anymore? I’m never going to be a real pirate,” said Alec, hoarse and sullen.

  “Figure of speech, laddie buck, figure of speech,” said the Captain slyly. “Just you settle back and let the old Captain chauffeur you around in the cool night air. That feels better now, don’t it, than that stuffy hall with all the noise? Just you and me and the stars.”

  “It’s nice,” said Alec, letting his head loll back on the driver’s neck rest.

  “To be sure it is. My Alec’s a man now; he ain’t a-playing with toy cutlasses and cocked hats no more, by thunder. He wants what a man wants, don’t he? Five fathoms of blue water under his keel, and green islands, and a sky full of stars, and Happy Clubs full of smiling girls, and freedom, and loot, and no heartbreak at all.”

  “Yeah,” said Alec, blinking sleepily.

  “And how’s our Alec going to get all them grand things, says you? Why, by our great and glorious secret plan, says I. In fact, I been thinking we’re ready to take the next step.”

  “What’s that?” Alec closed his eyes for a moment.

  “Why, you know, lad. We’ve talked about it. Having some hardware installed, something subtle and expensive, so you can get yer fair share of all the loot we’ve piled up. Wouldn’t you like to be able to talk to me any time you wanted, wherever you were? Or go into cyberspace without the goggles, just by deciding to? You could learn anything you wanted, instantly, with me right there at yer shoulder to fetch it for you. Captain Sir Henry Morgan, yer obedient server! Haar.”

  “It sounds nice,” said Alec.

  “Oh, it’ll be nice, all right. Now, there’s a lot of fool talk about port junkies and cyborgs, as though that was a dirty word, but it’s all on the part of timid busybodies like Dennis Neville. And I reckon his tiny brain couldn’t cope with having an augmentation; but yer different, son, always have been. Just you once let yer old Captain hook into yer nervous system, and you’ll see what empowerment really is. Shall we take the next step, lad? Go on the account for the real loot?”

  “Sure,” murmured Alec, blinking up at the stars. He sank farther into the seat. The motion of the car was soothing, and so was the smell of the night wind off the Thames, and so was the Captain’s voice, going on and on about all the great things they could do once Alec had some hardware installed. It seemed sort of drastic—it would make him different from most other people—but then, he was already different, wasn’t he?

  He wasn’t very good at relationships, after all. Stick with what he was good at. He could just lie here in the boat and look at the stars and feel the rocking of the blue water, so easy, and the seabirds crying. Nobody out here but him. And the Captain. Happy all alone. Everything would be all right.

  The Captain got them off the A5 at Station Road and swung them back toward Bloomsbury on the A502, through Golders Green, through Hampstead, crooning an old sea song to the drunken boy as he drove, handling the car as gently as though it were a cradle.

  The incident at McCartney Hall had few repercussions. Nobody had been actually caught with alcohol, and a generous donation to the hall’s renovation fund silenced the matter of the surveillance cameras that had caught the gleam of Alec’s flask. The Captain, however, was taking additional measures for Alec’s continued safety.

  On the occasion of his eighteenth birthday the seventh earl of Finsbury came into certain legal rights, and the first thing he did was go to a specialist in Harley Street and have himself adapted for direct interface with his personal cybersystem. He became, in effect, a cyborg.

  Not at all some pathetic creature with an oozing port in his skull, nor yet one of the machine-human hybrids who would surely take over the world, if they were ever created. Alec could afford the very latest and best technology, so he paid out a great deal of money to be rendered semiconscious for four hours while a discreet doctor with the proper credentials installed the interface. Alec paid a further astronomical sum to have his brain scan results deleted from the record. Then he crawled into the Rolls and lay facedown in the back while he was driven home.

  “Let’s see it,” said the Captain, as soon as Alec had closed the door of his room and they were alone.

  “Careful,” Alec said, peeling off his shirt gingerly. “It really stings right now.”

  “That won’t last, my lad,” the Captain said, grinning when he saw what had been done. The necessary hardware had been installed just beneath the surface of the skin, across Alec’s shoulders and up the back of his neck. It was raised and red at the moment, but in a few hours it would resemble an ornate tattoo, a complex pattern of spiraling silver lines, beautifully symmetrical and interknotted.

  “Damnation, that’s as pretty a piece of work as I’ve ever seen!”

  “It cost more than the Rolls,” Alec said, trying to see it over his shoulder. “I hope it’s worth it.”

  “It’ll beat the poor little Empowerment Ring and Playfriend Optics all to hell and gone, I’ll wager.” The Captain nodded. “Reckon that doctor’ll stay bribed?”

  “At what I paid him? He ought to.”

  “Good lad. I’ll just keep an eye on him, like, to manage things if he has second thoughts,” said the Captain, without the least hint of menace. “So. What’s the connector?”

  “This.” Alec held up a black velvet bag and withdrew a bright near-circle of some enameled metal. Its color was difficult to describe: it might have been gold, but overlaid with phantom rainbow hues along its curved and twisted surface. The two ends terminated in interestingly detailed knobs. Alec made some adjustments on one of them and, prising it open, slipped it around his neck. “Here goes—”

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Alec reeled as the plundered knowledge of hundreds of databases became available to him, the sum of twelve years of information piracy. It was very much more than having a set of encyclopedias stuffed into your skull. He was suddenly seeing his own ashen face through the surveillance camera in his room, with a sidebar annotating date, time and temperature—and then the views from all the other surveillance cameras in the house—and then the views from all the surveillance cameras in London—

  Just as it became too much for him to bear it receded, but with it went any sense of up or down, any feeling of solid ground under his feet or any limits to his physical body, and as he drew breath to howl like a terrified animal, he felt a powerful hand seizing his and pulling him in.

  It’s all night, boy. I’m here, said the Captain.

  Turn it off! Alec sobbed.

  Ahhh, no. It’s nothing you can’t get used to, and it’s part of the plan, the Captain said. Hold tight. Look at me, now. Look at yer old Captain Morgan.

  I can’t see anything. I’m seeing everything!

  Yer seeing the way I see things, that’s all. Belay that blacking out! LOOK AT ME.

  Abru
ptly he was seeing the Captain, standing solidly in the midst of the void. The Captain was supporting a lesser figure, a transparent body sketched in wavering fire. Briefly superimposed over it was a bright child with flaming hair, which shifted and expanded until finally there were two men standing in the void, and Alec had eyes again and was looking into the Captain’s steady eyes.

  My God, he said, and his voice sounded loud in his ears.

  Here we are, boy, said the Captain. Was that so hard?

  Yes, said Alec. I think I’ve gone crazy.

  No, no. The Captain shook his head. If you was any of yer snotty-nosed young Circle of Thirty friends, you would be; crazy or dead of a brain hemorrhage, I’ll wager. But yer my little Alec, ain’t you? Oh, son, this is only the beginning. The things we’ll do, you and me! We’ll ransack the libraries of the world, Alec, we’ll walk through walls and steal away data it’s taken other people centuries to compile. The lowliest clerk in the poorest bank in London won’t be able to buy a loaf of bread that you won’t get to hear about it. You’ll be the most powerful man in the world, son, and the safest. What do you want to do now?

  Alec thought about it.

  Ditch the Circle of Thirty! I’ve had enough of them. Shrack University, shrack the House of Lords, shrack the Borough Council, shrack hospital! I’m getting out of here.

  That’s my boy.

  And I want to move the Lewins out of London, he added. Buy ’em a flat in Bournemouth, they’ll like that. And then—then I want to buy a boat.

  Boat, hell, the Captain said. You want to buy a SHIP

  And there before them was the image of a modern clipper, four-masted, bearing acres of white sail, sleek and graceful as a seabird, monumental in her size and dignity.

  We’ll design her to our purposes, my lad, the Captain said. One whole deck full of nothing but hardware for me, masts and yards all servomotors so I can manage her canvas in the wink of an eye. A machine shop, and a laboratory, and a hospital, to make us self-sufficient, eh? Cargo holds filled with good things, supplies that’ll let you live ten years on blue water without once putting in to port if yer not so inclined.