The Best of Kage Baker

by Kage Baker

  Alec was not a bully, nor was he ambitious for power, nor was he given to unpopular political views. He was pleasant, polite and noncompetitive, exactly as a model citizen ought to be.

  However, he was large.

  And talented.

  ***

  “The Ape Man’s at it again,” said Alistair Stede-Windsor in disgust. Elvis Churchill and Musgrave Halliwell-Blair turned to look, with identical expressions of loathing on their patrician young faces.

  The object of their concerted ill-will sat some distance away, under the great plane tree that shaded the Designated Youth Zone. He appeared to be telling a story, in quite unnecessarily musical tones, to four girls who sat around him. They appeared to be enthralled.

  “Don’t they realize what he’s doing?” muttered Halliwell-Blair.

  “Look at that hypocritical smile,” said Stede-Windsor. “You know why he smiles with his lips closed like that, don’t you? It’s to hide those ghastly long teeth.”

  “I’m positive he’s some kind of genetic freak,” said Churchill. “Seriously. I wonder…ought we make a discreet call to the Reproduction Board?”

  “What, to have him tested? See whether he’s some kind of degenerate throwback? Or mutation?” said Stede-Windsor, brightening.

  There was a thoughtful silence, broken by Halliwell-Blair saying: “No good, gentlemen. I’ve already investigated his bloodlines. The honourable Cecelia Ashcroft-Checkerfield actually passed a genetic screening test. Voluntarily. And the sixth earl is tall, too.”

  “What a pity,” said Churchill. “No chance we could get him on abnormal

  psychology? He’s clearly a sexual obsessive.”

  “Obviously,” said Stede-Windsor.

  Alec Checkerfield concluded his tale, and the girls shrieked with appreciative laughter at its punchline. Beatrice Louise Jagger leaned forward, especially her chest, and said something breathless and sincere to Alec. He smiled at her and took her hand. Raising it to his lips, he inhaled appreciatively before kissing it.

  The three young gentlemen flinched.

  “Oh, I’m going to puke!” cried Stede-Windsor.

  “Disgusting,” said Churchill.

  “Trite,” said Halliwell-Blair. “If only they could see themselves!”

  “He’s a filthy…” Stede-Windsor sought for an ancient pejorative. “He’s a lounge lizard, that’s what he is!”

  Alec Checkerfield relinquished Beatrice Louise Jagger’s hand, smiling at her with eyes blue as high tide on a Caribbean beach. So pleasant was his expression that the slight oddness of his features might be missed, by any scrutiny less hostile than Halliwell-Blair’s. If his pale eyes were smaller, if his cheekbones were higher, if his mouth was wider than the norm—why, he was only a horse-faced young man, wasn’t he?

  Jill Courtenay said something witty, and Alec shouted with laughter. In that moment of spontaneous mirth, his teeth were briefly visible and they were certainly long, and white, and rather sharp-looking.

  The onlookers shuddered.

  “Not a lounge lizard, exactly,” amended Stede-Windsor. “More of a lounge tyrannosaur.”

  ***

  The young gentlemen need not have concerned themselves. They were, after all, untried amateurs. Others existed who were far better at protecting public health and morals.

  Mr. Elrond Frist was one of these. His life’s work was tedious, but desperately important, and he was devoted to it. He it was who tracked the sales of certain retail items for the Bureau of Public Health, and his beat covered the whole of metropolitan London. When sales of any one of the goods he monitored reached a certain level, he duly informed his superiors. Certain steps were then taken or not taken, depending on the circumstances.

  Today he stared, unbelieving, at sales figures for Happihealthy Shields.

  They had been climbing steadily for the last six months. Respectable sales were desirable, for every registered sexually active citizen had a duty to use Happihealthies. When the total number of Happihealthies sold exceeded the number of registered sexually active citizens by a ratio of fifteen to one, however, something was terribly wrong in metropolitan London.

  Trembling, Mr. Frist rose and went to his communications console. He rang a certain commcode.

  “Mr. Peekskyll,” he said, “I think you’d better see something.”

  ***

  Mr. Sandbanks Peekskyll had been granted certain powers by the state, because his stability and his good judgment were considered to be beyond question. If his stability and good judgment were not quite what the state assumed them to be, nevertheless he saw a great deal through those pinpoint pupils of his, and discharged his duties with zeal and efficiency.

  Mr. Peekskyll had been cyborged; which is to say, he had had himself adapted for direct interface with the government’s database, through the installation of a small port in the back of his head. As long as its connector plug was removed at night and sterilized on a daily basis, he suffered no health problems, and as long as he kept his hat on, no one had any reason to object to his appearance.

  He mused now over the figures Mr. Frist had sent him.

  After a moment he thought in a request. Within seconds he had what he had asked for: a list of all suppliers of Happihealthies in London, with attendant sales figures for the last month. Some shops reported normal sales figures; others reported unusually high turnover. Mr. Peekskyll drummed his fingers on the console a moment before thinking in another request.

  The screen before him displayed a map of London, with the locations of all shops in question highlighted in varying shades of red, the intensity of the color corresponding to the number of packets sold.

  There appeared to be a series of concentric circles radiating from one block in Bloomsbury, sedate pink along the edges but blazing scarlet toward its center.

  Mr. Peekskyll exhaled sharply. With another request he had the names of every resident within the defined area. He narrowed his eyes, and decided to play a hunch. He went straight to Happihealthy Incorporated’s database, pulling up their mail order figures. One more command got him the shipping addresses for all orders. He found one for an address in Bloomsbury. Six orders had been shipped in the last year.

  Satisfied that he had done his job, Mr. Peekskyll rang his superior.

  “Mr. Buddy-Wires? Something of interest here,” he said.

  ***

  Mr. Evel Buddy-Wires ran an empire of his very own. He took steps that needed to be taken. He liked his job a great deal. He hadn’t purchased a packet of Happihealthies in twenty years. He didn’t need them.

  “Roger Checkerfield,” he said thoughtfully. “Sixth earl of Finsbury, eh? I can’t say I’m surprised. He’s a thoroughgoing degenerate. Record of substance abuse and no sense of duty at all. Repeatedly fined for failing to attend Parliament.”

  “With respect, sir,” said Mr. Peekskyll. “The charges have been made to his credit account, but the, er, merchandise hasn’t been shipped to him. He’s living on a yacht in the Caribbean.”

  “So he is,” said Mr. Buddy-Wires, glancing at the screen. “But then who, in his London home, is buying such an obscene number of Happihealthies?”

  Mr. Peekskyll cleared his throat.

  “Our records list three persons resident at that address,” he said. “Malcolm Lewin, age ninety-six, member of the household staff. Florence Lewin, age ninety-eight, also member of the household staff. Married couple, but they haven’t registered as sexually active in decades.”

  “I should think not,” said Mr. Buddy-Wires in distaste. “And the third member of the household?”

  “Alec William St. James Thorne Checkerfield, age sixteen,” said Mr. Peekskyll.

  “Ah.”

  “Who, being underage, is of course not registered either.”

  “Of course.” Mr. Buddy-Wires smiled, feeling a warm glow inside. He leaned back from his console and steepled his fingers.

  “Shall I alert the Public Health Monitors, sir?” Mr. Peeksk
yll inquired.

  “No, no, not just yet. We want to investigate further,” replied Mr. Buddy-Wires. “Little Alec seems to be a very naughty boy, but let’s be sure.”

  “He can’t actually be using them himself,” said Mr. Peekskyll. “No-one could use that many! He must be selling them to other minors, illegally.”

  “Undoubtedly. Delinquent himself and contributing to the corruption of other children? I really fear it’s Hospital for our young friend,” said Mr. Buddy-Wires with relish.

  “I would think we’ll need an airtight case, then,” said Mr. Peekskyll. “What with him being peerage. Lord Finsbury’s sure to appeal any diagnosis.”

  “I hope to take down Lord Finsbury as well,” said Mr. Buddy-Wires. His smile just kept getting wider. “In fact, particularly. A case can be made that this is his fault, after all! See what’s come of his deplorable lifestyle? What kind of man leaves his offspring in the care of a senile butler and cook for years on end? If he’d stayed home like a responsible citizen, he might have exercised some paternal influence.”

  ***

  The truth was that Alec had had quite a lot of paternal influence, though not from Roger Checkerfield. Malcolm Lewin, who was not at all senile, had provided the boy with some guidance. However, Alec’s main role model and advisor was even now tapped in to Mr. Buddy-Wire’s communications console, listening to every word spoken in the room. And he was as alarmed, and as grimly angry, as a machine can be.

  It was universally acknowledged that artificial intelligences were incapable of experiencing real emotion. If it were for one moment supposed otherwise, there would be no end to the cry for machine suffrage; and in a world where first the poor, and then women, and then foreigners, and at last even animals had been granted the right to the pursuit of happiness, this last line must be drawn in the sand, lest the world descend into rank animism.

  So it was argued that the complex system of electromagnetic reactions that gave a machine the analogue of emotion—the elaborate programming that created the illusions of satisfaction or need, to enable it to function properly—was nothing whatever like the complex system of chemical reactions that motivated an organic being.

  Nevertheless, Captain Morgan was swearing to himself now, and using language that would make any organic blanch, too.

  When Roger Checkerfield’s credit account had been examined, silent alarms had sounded in Bloomsbury. From that moment the Captain’s attention had been drawn from his usual pastime of monitoring Alec through the network of surveillance cameras throughout London. He had continued to watch over his boy with one eye, as it were; but he had also extended his observation to the consoles used by Mr. Peekskyll and Mr. Buddy-Wires, as well as their in-office surveillance cameras.

  Hell and damnation, the Captain thought to himself. There just ain’t no rest for the wicked, is there, now?

  He defined himself as wicked because he was a pirate. He was a pirate because five-year-old Alec had liked pirates, and had (against all probability and incidentally the law too) therefore reprogrammed his Pembroke Playfriend unit to reflect his personal tastes. Though the Captain’s customized abilities had increased in a manner that would have appalled his original designers at Pembroke Technologies, his core programming remained unchanged: to protect and nurture Alec Checkerfield. And the Captain was now the most powerful artificial intelligence in London.

  The Captain watched intently, baring his metaphorical teeth as Mr. Buddy-Wires dismissed Mr. Peekskyll and squeezed in a few inquiries on the medical and academic history of Alec William St. James Thorne Checkerfield.

  What a nosy lubber it is, to be sure…I reckon countermeasures is called for, aye.

  ***

  “It’s just a word,” said Alec. “It can’t hurt you. Or anybody! Just a word to describe a perfectly normal, natural, beautiful, er, expression of love between two people, okay?” He had a warm, golden sort of voice, and was speaking with all the suavity he could muster.

  “Okay,” said The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy, breathing heavily. She had retreated with him to the relative privacy behind the Designated Youth Zone’s garden shed.

  “Okay. Now, here’s another word,” said Alec, and said one. “And all that is, is a part of your body. A really beautiful part, which is, after all, the whole source of life and everything. Right?”

  “Right,” said The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy, appalled but also rather thrilled.

  “Right. So it’s nothing to be ashamed of at all, wouldn’t you have to agree?”

  “I guess so,” said The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy, thinking of the brief hesitant fumblings of Colin Debenham and Alistair Stede-Windsor, who had seemed terribly ashamed.

  “I mean, if you look at the exhibits in the British Museum, you’ll see ’em everywhere,” said Alec earnestly, gazing deep into her eyes. “And nobody thinks that’s wrong. And, you know what else you see in the British Museum?”

  “What?”

  Alec said another word. It was a plural noun. The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy gaped.

  “You never!”

  “You do, though,” said Alec. “There’s all these statues have ’em large as life. Well, almost as large as life. Now, see, you’re turning red, and that’s so sad, really, because it’s only another word, isn’t it? And what’s wrong with it, if you just listen?” He repeated the word, as a singular noun now. He repeated it several times, in differing intonations: brightly, solemnly, prayerfully, humorously.

  The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy began to giggle. So far, Alec was living up to his reputation.

  “See? I feel absolutely no embarrassment about it,” said Alec. “And why should I? It’s only a word to describe a part of my body. So it’s cool.”

  The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy said the word, in an experimental way, and blushed.

  “There, you see?” exclaimed Alec, blushing too. “Nothing wrong with it at all. And without it there wouldn’t be any sexual love, which is the most beautiful experience two people can have together. Isn’t it?”

  “Well, except for catching diseases and babies and things,” said The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy.

  “Ah! Well, that was true in the old days, when people didn’t know any better,” said Alec. “But, of course, we’ve got these now!”

  He drew from his pocket a Happihealthy, and held it up with a triumphant smile. Every boy in the Circle of Thirty carried a Happihealthy on his person at all times. After the first few months a Happihealthy began to look rather sad, its cheery little wrapper crumpled and squashed from prolonged contact with the inside of a boy’s pocket, gummed with lint and crumbs and other things best not mentioned. Sometimes, after years of fruitless anticipation, a Happihealthy might even split its wrapper and expire with a vacuum-packed sigh, like a spinster aunt at a wedding.

  Alec’s Happihealthy, however, was bright and fresh and eager-looking, for it had been slipped into his pocket only that morning.

  The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy cast a furtive glance at the nearest surveillance camera. “But they can see us,” she whispered.

  “Not here,” said Alec. “That one’s got a half-hour sweep cycle. It turned away just before we went in here. And the one across the way is switched off for repair.”

  “And you can really…?”

  “All the time,” said Alec proudly. “Want to see?”

  The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy bit her lower lip.

  “I’m desperately curious,” she admitted.

  “No gentleman leaves a lady desperate,” said Alec. Leaning forward, he took her face in his hands, very gently, and kissed her. She made a surprised sound.

  Five minutes later she was making greedy sounds.

  Ten minutes later she was walking from behind the shed, slightly unsteady, with very wide eyes. After a discreet pause Alec followed her, hands in his pockets. He caught up with The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy and steered her to a fruit ice cart, where he gallantly bought her a Cherry Bingo.

  And though nobody
had seen them enter or leave the space behind the shed, something was in the air. Alistair Stede-Windsor, Elvis Churchill, Musgrave Halliwell-Blair, Colin Debenham, Hugh Rothschild, Dennis Neville, Edgar Shotts-Morecambe and a few others sensed it, and glared at Alec the rest of the day. Strutting, he ignored them.

  The Honourable Sophia Fitzroy spent the rest of the day in close and hushed conversation with a small circle of friends. Occasionally they could be heard to giggle.

  ***

  Alec ran up the steps to his room two at a time, removing his tie as he went. He swaggered through the doorway, whirling his tie about his head.

  “Permission to come on board, Captain sir!” he yelled gleefully, flinging himself into a chair.

  From its corner up near the ceiling, a Maldecena projector pivoted and extended an arm; a beam of light shot forth, and a second later Captain Morgan materialized, looming before Alec in hologram.

  He no longer appeared wearing the scarlet coat and cocked hat little Alec had given him long ago; these days he took the form of a large and rather threatening-looking man in a three-piece-suit. His hair and wild beard were black as the Jolly Roger, however, and he was still prone to draw a cutlass from midair in the heat of argument.

  “Alec, we got to have a parley,” he said sternly.

  “Fire away,” said Alec, sticking out one long leg and pushing off from the wall so his chair skated backward.

  “You been having at the wenches again, ain’t you, boy?”

  “Er—” Alec looked up into the Captain’s eyes, which were just at this moment the color of the North Sea in a storm. He considered lying, very briefly, and then said, “Yeah. But not anywhere near the Coastal Patrol, like you told me,” in a small voice.

  “What else did I tell you, you damn fool?” the Captain roared.

  “Always use Happihealthies,” said Alec. “And I have been.”

  “Happihealthies, aye. And considering I ordered you a whole bloody case what was supposed to last you till you come of age, would you mind telling me why you been buying ’em at every goddamned chemist’s within a five-mile radius?”