The Life of the World to Come (Company) Page 4

  “I like ’em,” he said.

  “You are a gentleman,” I said, pouring him out a mug of coffee. I poured a cup for myself and sat down across the table from him. “Well, then. Here we are.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Checkerfield’s Brunch Club,” he said. God, it sounded strange in my ears. Mrs. Checkerfield? Or Lady Finsbury! Pretty good for somebody who began life in a one-room hut, eh? Child of Spanish peasants who owned maybe two goats and three fig trees? Too surreal to contemplate. I took a careful sip of coffee and said quietly:

  “If you knew how often I’ve wished you were sitting right there—”

  “I can’t be what you wanted,” he said. “You must have wished for somebody a lot better looking, in shining armor.”

  “No. You yourself are the man of my dreams, senor. I think we’ve met before, in some previous lifetime.”

  “You believe in that stuff?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Do you?”

  He shook his head, wolfing down the last of the taco.

  “Were you raised in any religion?”

  “Nope,” he said. “I was always taught that’s for bigots and crazies. Not something you do if you’re going to be a respectable member of the House of Lords, which I’ve never been anyway so who cares, right? But, you know. My stepmother got into the Ephesians, and they’re kind of scary.”

  “That’s what I’d always read.”

  “You read, too? They do a lot of good, though, for poor girls, so I guess they’re okay. And my nurse was into something, I guess it must have been Orthodox Vodou. I think she took me to some of their services when I was small. That was nice, I remember, all the dancing, and those bright people coming out of nowhere like that.”

  Yes indeed, Nicholas, I thought, you’ve come a long way.

  “Can I have another of those?” he inquired. Imagine someone actually liking Breakfast Bounty. But then I don’t suppose he’s ever eaten meat.

  “Please,” I said, pushing the plate across to him. “I made them for you. So, religion’s not your thing, is it? What about politics?”

  “I don’t vote.”

  “No? Not very English of you, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

  “I can’t stand England,” he said wearily. “It’s gray and it’s cold and it’s … it’s just so sad. I couldn’t wait to leave, and I hate it when I have to go back. You should see the absentee fines I pay every year to the House of Lords! You don’t want to live there, I hope?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Good. You want to go see Spain again, though? You must not have seen it since you were little.”

  What a strange idea. “I wonder if I’d recognize it at all?” I said at last.

  “It’s fun there. Everything’s really expensive, but you can get real fish in the restaurants and there’s a festival day, like, every other week. I was there one time at—what’s that big party the Jews throw, where they dress up and there’s, er, a street carnival? Noisemakers and stuff? It’s in the spring, anyway, and there’s this big whatchacallem, temple thing—”

  “A synagogue?”

  “Yeah! A synagogue in, er, Santiago—”

  “Santiago de Compostela?” I was stunned.

  “Yeah! That’s the place. Anyway it’s great. Families build these booths all along the street and watch the dances and parades, and you can just go from booth to booth, drinking and eating and talking to people. The ones who understand English, anyway. And there’s bullfights with topless girls! Amazing acrobats. They flip over the bulls like they were on springs or something. And then they have this thing at the end where they burn the parade floats.”

  “Not the people?” I just couldn’t get my mind around this, somehow. Poor old Spain, freed at last from ancient sorrow and cruelty?

  “Nah, they never have accidents. We should go sometime. You’d like it.” He looked at me a little anxiously. “Though we can go anywhere you want, babe. Anywhere that’ll make you happy.”

  “I’ll be happy,” I said, reaching across the table and clasping his hand. “You’re not religious, you don’t care about England, and there’s a synagogue in Santiago de Compostela! We can go places or we can live on your ship. I don’t care.”

  Assuming, of course, I can skip forward through time into the future—impossible, but apparently not for me. Could I really just sail away with Alec, on an eternal holiday in the twenty-fourth century?

  Though of course it wouldn’t be eternal, because he’s a mortal. But I think if we could just once live out a peaceful life together, I could accept anything that came after that. Why have I felt this way, from the first moment I laid eyes on this big homely man? God only knows.

  He lifted my hand and kissed it. “We’ll go as soon as I’ve finished up this stuff I’m doing,” he said.

  “Ah, yes. This stuff you’re doing,” I said, looking down into my coffee, focusing on cold practical matters to keep from launching myself over the table at him. “There are some things you should know before you attempt to pilot that shuttle back to the twenty-fourth century. Somewhere on board, there ought to be little containers of the drug you have to take before time traveling. It looks like iodine, and I’ve heard it’s sometimes packaged to look like Campari. Do they still make Campari?”

  “Yes. I saw those.”

  “It’s not Campari, but if you pour fifty milliliters into an equal amount of gin or vodka, you won’t know the difference. You must drink it down, or risk death a second time when you activate the time transcendence field. I must tell you, I can’t imagine how you were able to sit up and talk coherently only a couple of hours after your arrival, let alone get that magnificent erection.”

  He snickered in embarrassment.

  “And you need to enter the proper algorithm into the time drive. I can do that for you now, but you’ll have to know more about piloting the damned thing before you try to take it anywhere else.”

  “If my friend’s still alive, he may have that data.” Alec reached for another taco.

  “He was going after Dr. Zeus’s database?” I felt ice around my heart. “Oh, Alec. There aren’t even words for how dangerous that is.”

  “We did it once already and got out okay,” Alec said. But I buried my face in my hands.

  “Don’t tell me, darling. The less I know, the safer you’ll be.”

  We lingered over breakfast. He helped me wash up again. I helped him into his armored suit that had been airing out on a hook by the door all night, like a sealskin temporarily abandoned by its owner. I wanted to see if we might contrive a way to make love while he was encased in it, but he’s a man on a mission, after all, with places to go and things to do.

  The rain had stopped and the clouds blown away by the time we walked back to the shuttle. It was going to be a hot day. Steam was already rising up from the sparkling fields. When we got to the shuttle and Alec stood there staring up at it, I could tell from the look on his face he was uncertain what he was supposed to do next.

  So I drove the third nail into my coffin.

  I leaned close to him and put my arms around his neck. “You’ll remember,” I said, finding the torque with my fingers. “It’s just the effect of the crash. Calm down. Think.” I tapped into his database and nearly passed out at its immensity. If he were to download even half of what he has access to, my brain would burst. But I did experience the world through his senses for a moment, and that was nearly as disturbing.

  He has … SENSES. His hearing, his eyesight, touch, are all hyperacute and informative. He draws in a breath of air and its component scents tell him more about where he is than even a hunting dog could discern, at least as much as an immortal like me. He sees farther into certain light ranges than a mortal is supposed to be able to, and the sensitivity of his skin … no wonder he likes his physical pleasures.

  Is my mortal darling even human? I wondered.

  I always thought he’d make a better immortal than any of the people the Company ever chose, and now
I know it for a fact. If only his skull fit the optimum parameters!

  I mustered my thoughts and probed for the information he needed. There it was; he simply hadn’t learned how to access it yet. I pulled it up and said: “I have the impression that the cyborgs who normally pilot these ships access them through a file with a designation of TTMIX333.” I fed it to him surreptitiously. “Does that sound right?”

  His brain took it with remarkable ease. I felt him gasp in pleasure as it all made sense, suddenly. He began to download from me, lifting a subroutine for fast access by content with such speed I felt like a wrung-out sponge.

  “I think—Hey!” he said in delight, as the hatch popped open. I teetered back from him, dizzy and frightened.

  “There you are,” I said, determined to sound cheery. “You see? You had it in your memory all the time. Dear me, though, this fancy carpet’s gotten soggy.” I climbed inside and stopped, staring as he climbed in after me.

  Fancy carpet indeed. What luxury! I hadn’t bothered to look around much when I’d been in here removing the bomb.

  Floral pattern in the carpet and the beautifully cushioned passengers’ seats. Drink rests, crystal vases set in the wall, for God’s sake, full of pink roses! Spacious, lots of head room for anyone but Alec. Tasteful color scheme. Minibar. Entertainment console. All this to keep the Future Children happy on their weekend escapes from their own world. Not how we immortals travel. I was sent to this station in a raw-edged metal box barely big enough to accommodate my body. It couldn’t be bigger, we were always told. The extra time-field drag would take more energy, cost more money, which couldn’t be spared for inessentials like comfort.

  What did it cost to send this shuttle through time even once?

  Is this why we’ve worked so hard all these years? To pay for things like this?

  Alec bent down and flung wide the etched glass doors of the minibar. “Check this out. Six different fruit juices and three kinds of real booze. Illegal as hell, and I should know.” He chuckled. “Bombay Sapphire, Stolichnaya and—hey, here’s the magic potion.” He held up a dummy bottle of Campari. All nicely disguised as a cocktail, so Future Children would never know how dangerous their pleasure excursions really were.

  I was so angry I could barely trust myself to speak, but while he gulped down his bitter cocktail I managed to explain about taking the earth’s rotation and orbit into account, for one travels through space as well as time and you must run as fast as you can to remain in one place, whenever you get there. Alec knit his brows in comprehension—he may not be able to read very well, but he seems to be brilliant at math—and ordered the shuttle to set its course. It promptly obeyed him.

  The warning lights began to implore us to close the hatch, and the gas canisters gave their initial hiss as the valves engaged. I wasn’t ready to lose him yet! But I’d be a danger to him in more ways than he could imagine if I went along. I backed toward the hatch, and he held out his hand.

  “Remember,” he said. “I’m coming back for you.”

  “Meminerunt omnia amantes,” I said, falling into an old habit.

  “What?” He stared. “Was that Spanish? What did you say?”

  Still no World Language in his century, I note. Must be the nationalist backlash.

  “Lovers remember everything,” I translated. “I was speaking Latin.” He got that worried-dog look again.

  “What’s Latin?”

  My God, the progress of human knowledge.

  “Like, Latin American?” he asked.

  “Close enough, dear,” I said ruefully, but then the Klaxons really began to protest about the hatch and I couldn’t stay. I dove back, kissed him one last time, and fled through the hatch before I doomed us both.

  I ran around to the window where I’d seen him first. He was fastening himself into his seat restraints. He saw me and mouthed I love you in silence. I shouted it back to him, over the scream of the engines and the turbulence, until I was hoarse. He leaned forward, staring out over the console as the shuttle began to rise and I reached up my hands toward him, watching until the yellow gas roiled and hid him from my sight.

  Up and up went the shuttle, a perfect ascent, and then it rotated and became a streak of silver, leaving my time with just the barest thud on the insulted air. No master pilot could have done it better, no immortal cyborg with a thousand years’ training, but I’d only had to show Alec once.

  What have I done?

  I told myself, as I walked back to the house, that it could have been worse. Nicholas would have roared off with that shuttle to carpet-bomb the Vatican, and I shudder to think what Edward would have done with it. Alec, however, is an arrested child who won’t even vote. Digging for pirate treasure is his idea of a good time.

  And even if he succeeds in his quest—would the world be such a terrible place without the Company’s obsessive control? Dr. Zeus has been in power since Time began. What if nobody was running the world? Maybe all those lost art treasures could go into museums, instead of the collections of rich men. Maybe those rare beasts could be turned loose into that strangely depopulated future world, to survive or not on their own merits.

  Speaking of rare beasts … are you ready for the punchline, now?

  The first thing I did on returning to my little abode was to collect DNA samples from the abundant evidence Alec, ahem, left of his presence. Hair on the pillow and all that. Ran a few tests. What a surprise.

  He’s a tetraploid. Like my maize cultivars. Double DNA. Ninety-two chromosomes. The only tetraploid hominid who ever existed was the (understandably) extinct Homo crewkernensis , known only from a few odd-looking bones and, of course, Company operatives who went back through time to see what could possibly have left such long femurs in the fossil record … hmmm.

  What did the operatives report? That they found a small population with a barely viable gene pool, living at the southwestern edge of the ice sheet that covered England. Decided they were some kind of Homo heidelbergensis community that had been isolated long enough for distinct speciation to occur. Dutifully recorded their extinction, once the ice sheet melted and Homo crewkernensis were able to move east, where they encountered tribes with whom they could not interbreed successfully (lethal recessive affected the females) and who objected to their territorial aggression.

  I wonder if the Company saved any of their genetic material?

  Oh, we’ve gone way, way beyond any romantic metaphysics to do with reincarnation, haven’t we? Alec is no member of any human race I’ve ever encountered. Fancy my never suspecting that in all these centuries, eh? I don’t know what he is, but what I do know about him is far too much for the Company’s liking. And I already knew more than was safe … I am so doomed.

  … You know, when I was a mortal child, my mother sold me to a band of wicked strangers. They told me I’d be married to a great lord. When I finally peered into the room where they were hiding my betrothed, what was there?

  Only a straw man, a thing braided out of wheat of the field, the bright-ribboned Lord of the Corn, destined for the festival bonfire. Maybe the strangers meant to sacrifice me with him. Maybe my inescapable fate has always been, one day, to burn in that fire.

  But it’s been almost a week now, and nobody’s come for me yet.

  I suppose it all hinges on how closely I’m being monitored, whether my auditory and visual intake is being recorded and analyzed somewhere or just recorded and stored. It might be years before some bored clerk decides to have a look at what I’ve been doing. Who knows whether Alec will have succeeded in his quest by that time? I might never be found out.

  If, on the other hand, analysis is instantaneous—then I’m certainly going to learn whether or not Dr. Zeus has devised a way to grant its weary immortals the gift of death. Is this crawling sensation fear for myself? How novel.

  And if what I’ve done has really set in motion the events that will lead to the end of the world, I’ll deserve whatever the Company does to me. It would be a p
ity, really. I’d have liked to have made that sad mortal happy, sailed away with him on his absurd pirate ship and been Mrs. Alec Checkerfield. Don’t want to think about that too much.

  On the other hand, if Alec fails, dies as Nicholas and Edward died—perhaps his hungry soul won’t need to come back for me, if I too am hit by the bolt of Dr. Zeus’s wrath. Can I go through that doorway of fire, where Nicholas waited for me?

  It’s so strange, waiting to see.

  Rain again today, but I think it’ll blow out later, and another astonishing thing has happened.

  Got up this morning and took my usual perambulation down to Avalon Bay, and something had washed up on the beach. I could smell it long before I got there, though it really isn’t so badly decomposed as all that, but, you know—fish stink.

  Except this isn’t a fish, exactly. It’s an ichthyosaur! And to think I told Alec there were no dinosaurs in this time period.

  You can keep your stupid coelacanths. There it is, large as life, which seems to have been 7.5 meters long. I’ve taken a full hour of holo footage, from every possible angle. I managed to turn it over with a shovel, which was unfortunate because I promptly lost my breakfast (much more decomposed on that side) but this gave me a good view of its skeletal structure for the camera. So much for its being extinct! I really should get some DNA samples before the seabirds get it all. Actually I should signal for a Company ichthyologist, I suppose, but under the circum—

  Ship has arrived out front. Not Alec’s stolen shuttle. Maybe Dr. Z fish specialist come to see discovery?

  Oh dear. There are uniformed security techs searching through my compost heap.

  My own beloved, it would have been fun. Good-bye Alec Edward Nicholas. Quia fortis est ut mors dilectio dura s

  Extract from the Text of Document D

  6 Maye 1579

  33 deg 20 min The two ilands here shewn as La Victoria & San Salvador, Moone hath sighted at nine o’clock today. We determined to try whether da Silva spake truth or no, or rather spake the lye concerning this Ile of Divells, that this was a devise to conceal rich store of plate hid in the caves hereabouts.