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

  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 resort 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, that 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 that moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy, in black and white, moves so warily toward the door and looks across the 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 Finsbury.”

  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?

  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, señor,” 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 h
e 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.