The Best of Kage Baker

by Kage Baker

  “Urrgh,” said Mr. Buddy-Wires.

  “You being all tied up and all. Haar! All tied up, get it?” The holotransmitter’s arm canted to the left, and Captain Morgan appeared to walk three paces closer to Mr. Buddy-Wires. He tilted his head, as though looking him up and down. “Not afraid, neither, of catching cold in just that little rag? Don’t it make you feel the least bit at risk? Why, yer taking yer life in yer hands, Mister Buddy-Wires.”

  Most unexpectedly, the machine reeled its noose upward, and Mr. Buddy-Wires strained on tiptoe.

  “Hurhururrrg!”

  “Aye, that’s just what I said to myself, when I saw somebody’d been laying an ambuscade for my boy,” the Captain replied. “My Alec. Seventh earl of Finsbury, one of these days. Though I reckon he ain’t never going to get no eighth earl if he’s locked away in Hospital with his stones a-shriveling like raisins from hormone therapy, you dirty rotten lousy son of a whore!”

  “HHHHHhhhh,” said Mr. Buddy-Wires.

  “But it’s a well-known fact that dead men tell no tales, so it is,” the Captain said. “Which is why I ain’t given in to my inclinations and swung you up. What I want to know is, how’d you fathom my Alec’s medical records wasn’t all they might be? Eh? You tell old Captain Morgan, now, and things won’t get no nastier than they has to.”

  The machine lowered Mr. Buddy-Wires, and he gulped in air.

  “I don’t know how you’re doing this, but you’re still beaten, my lord,” he said. “I’ve files on you, you know. If anything happens to me, my successor will know where to look for them. It’ll be far more unpleasant than blackmail. The scandal will finish you! And young Alec as well—”

  “You think I’m poor old Jolly Roger?” hooted the Captain. “All them secret files you got on him, and you ain’t realized Roger’s generally too drunk to tie his own shoelaces? Well, says I, you ain’t much of a threat then. I am, though, you see? Maybe I can’t kick the chair out from under you, me being a hologram and all, but I’m controlling that there Bondmaster 3000 of yers. Like this.”

  The noose retracted once more, hauling Mr. Buddy-Wires with it until he balanced on his big toes alone.

  “Tell me, you stinking bastard!” snarled the Captain. “How’d you know them certificates was faked? It wouldn’t a’been my little joke with the doctors’ names; you ain’t a reading man. Tell me, now, and no lies. I’m in the walls. I’m in the wires. I can read yer blood pressure. I can read yer body chemistry. I can monitor every drop you sweat, see? I can scan you like a polygraph. And there ain’t no limit to the things I can do what’ll make you sorry you ever crossed old Captain Morgan!

  “Let’s just see what systems you got automated,” said the Captain. “Climate control, eh? Reckon I could raise hell with that. Did you ever hear tell of Hal 9000? Colossus, eh? Proteus? Ah, now, that’s got you all hot and bothered, you dirty little—bloody hell!” The Captain looked up at Mr. Buddy-Wires in righteous indignation. “Yer enjoying this!”

  “Nnnngk,” said Mr. Buddy-Wires, just managing to sneer.

  “Right,” said the Captain. “Let’s keep it simple, then. You talk, or I ain’t letting you down. We got all night, and all tomorrow too, come to think of it, since that’s the Sabbath. I’m a machine and you ain’t. Who d’you reckon’ll get tired first, eh?”

  Mr. Buddy-Wires considered the question a moment.

  Then he jumped off the chair, neatly snapping his neck.

  “Oh, bugger,” said Captain Morgan.

  He sought through the files in Mr. Buddy-Wires’s console, and found a lot of carefully hoarded data that would ruin half the members of Parliament and nearly all the Royals, were it released to the press. The last entry was labeled CHECKERFIELD. The Captain dove into it, examining briefly all the transmissions from Mr. Frist and Mr. Peekskyll before deleting them. At last he came upon all Alec’s copies of Medical Certificate 475B-A, and looked closely.

  Now, what tipped my hand? The font’s right. The seals is perfect. Roger’s signature is better than he does it his self…

  He ordered up a blank of 475B-A and compared it with his own creation. After a moment he gave vent to a long string of mechanical profanity.

  How in Davy Jones’s name did I confuse Blue-Green 0006 with Blue-Green 0090? he wondered. Ah! That were afore I had that graphics upgrade in ’27.

  Swiftly he went into the public record and corrected the error, and Alec’s certificates were at once indistinguishable from those of any normal boy in London.

  Purged files tell no tales either, and Captain Morgan did Parliament and the Royals a tremendous favor before exiting through the wires and reemerging in Bloomsbury.

  Mr. Buddy-Wires was still swinging gently, a fearsome rictus of triumph on his dead face.

  ***

  The Captain’s return to Alec’s room coincided with Alec’s own return.

  “Home again, eh, matey?”

  “Yeah,” said Alec shortly.

  The Captain scanned Alec, noted his emotional state, and spoke in the most soothing tone available.

  “Aw, now, didn’t yer little rendezvous go well? Was this one another giggler?”

  “No, she wasn’t.” Alec set down his daypack and shrugged out of his coat. “She’s a nice girl. They’re nearly all of ’em nice girls.”

  “What’s the matter, then, son?”

  “Not a damn thing,” said Alec. He went into his bathroom and fetched the glass in which he kept his toothbrush. “Except that maybe I’m living in the wrong damn century.”

  He opened his daypack and withdrew a bottle. The Captain scanned it.

  “Alec, where’d you get rum?” he demanded.

  “I told the lock on Roger’s liquor cabinet to open, and it did,” said Alec. He poured a drink, filling the glass. “I’m the amazing Alec, right? I can do all kinds of things other kids can’t.”

  “Son, whatever went wrong, rum ain’t going to make it better again,” said the Captain.

  “Won’t it? It always seemed to make Roger’s problems go away,” said Alec. “And we’re pirates, right? Yo-ho-ho?” He took a mouthful of rum and choked, spraying half of it across the room. “Ack! This is horrible!”

  “Aye, matey, that it be, so whyn’t you just pour it down the sink, eh? And let’s have us a good old game of gunnery practice,” said the Captain desperately.

  “I don’t think I want to shoot at stuff, Captain sir,” said Alec, eyeing the glass. He lay down on his bed. “I think I feel like hitting something instead, really hard. Preferably me.”

  “Why do you think you feel that way, son?” asked the Captain.

  Alec did not answer, staring at the ceiling. At last he tried the rum again, a small sip.

  “I’m not that different from other guys,” he said. “Am I?”

  The Captain did the electronic equivalent of swallowing hard. Now, of all times, was not the time for telling Alec the truth about himself. “Well, yer smarter than the rest of ’em, in yer way,” he said lightly. “And of course there’s the matter of romantic inclinations, which them poor little stunted bastards in the Circle don’t seem to have any of yet. They just ain’t as precocious as you, lad, that’s all.”

  “I mean, they’re all of ’em better-looking than me,” said Alec. “Except for Giles Balkister. And just as rich. You’d think they’d be able to talk the ladies into fun and games any time they wanted. So, you’re saying they don’t because they’re, like, lagging behind me in development a year or so?”

  “Maybe so, son,” said the Captain.

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s all it is,” said Alec. He had another sip of rum.

  “And sheer endowment don’t hurt, neither,” the Captain added helpfully.

  Alec smiled briefly, but not with his eyes.

  “The thing is,” he said. After a long pause he drank more of the rum.

  “What, son?”

  “The thing is,” Alec said, “If you were really different, if you could do something nobody else coul
d do and…and you used it to make people love you…then it wouldn’t be real, would it? The love, I mean. It’d be just using people.”

  “Well, there’s love and sex, see,” said the Captain. “And they ain’t necessarily the same.”

  “Even if you didn’t know, or at least if you didn’t understand that’s what you’d been doing, it’d still mean nobody’d really loved you at all,” said Alec.

  “Aw, son, nobody really loves anybody when they’re only sixteen,” said the Captain. “It’s just playing. Learning the ropes, see? The real thing comes later on.”

  “Will it?” Alec looked up at the hologram, a pleading expression in his eyes.

  “Certain sure it will, laddie,” the Captain told him. “Here now, son, whyn’t you set down that copper-bottomed paint thinner and we’ll, er, watch a holo of Treasure Island, eh? Or maybe one of them old Undersea Archaeology programs from the BBC? The one on the Lost City of Port Royal? That was always yer favorite. What’ll cheer up my boy?”

  Alec had another drink. He closed his eyes.

  “What I’d really like,” he said, “is to run away to sea. If people still did that sort of thing. Just, just go off and…fight against some bad guys somewhere and die like a hero. But nobody does that anymore. So…the next best thing would be to live on a desert island. Or in a lighthouse. Where you didn’t have to worry about hurting anybody else. You know?”

  “Of course I know, son,” said the Captain, and because he was only a machine, it was easy for him to speak without revealing his despair. “A green island, that’s where we’ll go, one of these days. You’ll see! All blue water and white sand, and green mangrove jungle at the tideline.

  “But up the hills, where the air’s cool, we’ll build us a blockhouse, and there we’ll fly our black ensign, and keep lookout. There’ll be sweet running water, and there won’t be no fever, but plenty of fruit in the trees and fish in the lagoon; and maybe there’ll be parrots.

  “You’ll be happy there, son. We’ll dig for Spanish gold, eh? And watch the stars at night. And when my boy needs to be wooing, why, the girl will come. A lass with hair bright as a burning galleon, and a kiss what’ll make him forget rum, and love what’ll make him forget death.

  “They say love’s stronger than death, don’t they?” implored the Captain.

  But Alec was already far away from him, dreaming a confusion of fire and blood.

  And because he was only a machine, the Captain had no god to whom he could pray.

  The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park

  I had been watching her for years.

  Her mother used to bring her, when she was a child. Thin irritable woman dragging her offspring by the hand. “Kristy Ann! For God’s sake, come on!” The mother would stop to light a cigarette or chat with a neighbor encountered on the paths, and the little girl would sidle away to stare at the old well house, or pet the stone lions.

  Later she came alone, a tall adolescent with a sketch pad under her arm. She’d spend hours wandering under the big cypress trees, or leaning on the battlements where the statues used to be, staring out to sea. Her sweater was thin. She’d shiver in the fog.

  I remember when the statues used to be there. Spring and Winter and Prometheus and all the rest of them, and Sutro’s house that rose behind them on the parapet. I sat here then and I could see his observatory tower lifting above the trees. Turning my head I could see the spire of the Flower Conservatory. All gone now. Doesn’t matter. I recorded them. As I record everything. My memory goes back a long way…

  I remember my parents fighting. He wanted to go off to the gold fields. She screamed at him to go, then. He left, swearing. I think she must have died not long after. I remember being a little older and playing among the deserted ships, where they sat abandoned on the waterfront by crews who had gone hunting for gold. Sometimes people fed me. A lady noticed that I was alone and invited me to come live with her.

  She took me into her house and there were strange things in it, things that shouldn’t have been there in 1851: boxes that spoke and flameless lamps. She told me she was from the future. Her job was saving things from Time. She said she was immortal, and asked me if I’d like to be immortal too. I said I guessed I would.

  I was taken to a hospital and they did a lot of surgery on me to make me like them. Had it worked, I’d have been an immortal genius.

  The immortal part worked but the Cognitive Enhancement Procedure was a disaster. I woke up and couldn’t talk to anyone, was frightened to death of people talking to me, because I could see all possible outcomes to any conversation and couldn’t process any of them and it was too much, too much. I had to avoid looking into their eyes. I focused on anything else to calm myself: books, music, pictures.

  My new guardians were very disappointed. They put me through years of therapy, without results. They spoke over my head.

  What the fuck do we do with him now? He can’t function as an operative.

  Should we put him in storage?

  No; the Company spent too much money on him.

  Gentlemen, please; Ezra’s intelligent, he can hear you, you know, he understands—

  You could always send him out as a camera. Let him wander around recording the city. There’ll be a lot of demand for historic images after 2125.

  He could do that! My therapist sounded eager. Give him a structured schedule, exact routes to take, a case officer willing to work with his limitations—

  So I was put to work. I crossed and recrossed the city with open eyes, watching everything. I was a bee collecting the pollen of my time, bringing it back to be stored away as future honey. The sounds and images went straight from my sensory receptors to a receiver at Company HQ. I had a room in the basement at the Company HQ, to which I came back every night. I had Gleason, my case officer. I had my routes. I had my rules.

  I must never allow myself to look like a street vagrant. I must wash myself and wear clean clothing daily. I must never draw attention to myself in any way.

  If approached by a mortal, I was to Avoid.

  If I could not avoid, Evaluate: was the mortal a policeman?

  If so I was to Present him with my card. In the early days the card said I was a deaf mute, and any questions should be directed to my keeper, Dr. Gleason, residing on Kearney Street. In later years the card said I was a mentally disabled person under the care of the Gleason Sanatorium on Chestnut Street.

  The one I carry now says I have an autiform disorder and directs the concerned reader to the Gleason Outpatient Clinic on Geary.

  For the first sixty years I used to get sent out with an Augmented Equine Companion. I liked that. Norton was a big bay gelding, Edwin was a dapple gray and Andy was a palomino. They weren’t immortal—the Company never made animals immortal—but they had human intelligence, and nobody ever bothered me when I was perched up on an impressive-looking steed. I liked animals; they were aware of details and pattern changes in the same way I was. They took care of remembering my routes. They could transmit cues to me.

  We’re approaching three females. Tip your hat.

  Don’t dismount here. We’re going up to get footage of Nob Hill.

  Hold on. I’m going to kick this dog.

  Ezra, the fog’s coming in. We won’t be able to see Fort Point from here today. I’ll take you back to HQ.

  I was riding Edwin the first time I saw Sutro Park. That was in 1885, when it had just been opened to the public. He took me up over the hills through the sand dunes, far out of the city, toward Cliff House. The park had been built on the bluff high above.

  I recorded it all, brand new: the many statues and flower urns gleaming white, the green lawns carefully tended, the neat paths and gracious Palm Avenue straight and well-kept. There was a beautiful decorative gate then, arching above the main entrance where the stone lions sit. The Conservatory, with its inlaid tile floor, housed exotic plants. The fountains jetted. The little millionaire Sutro ambled through, looking like the Monopoly man in his h
igh silk hat, nodding to visitors and pointing out especially nice sights with his walking stick.

  He was proudest of the carpet beds, the elaborate living tapestries of flowers along Palm Avenue. It took a boarding-house full of gardeners to manicure them, keeping the patterns perfect. Parterres like brocade, swag and wreath designs, a lyre, floral Grecian urns. Clipped boxwood edging, blue-green aloes and silver sempervivum; red and pink petunias, marigolds, pansies, alyssum in violet and white, blue lobelia. The colors sang out so bright they almost hurt my eyes.

  They were an unnatural miracle, as lovely as the far more unnatural and miraculous phenomenon responsible for them: that a rich man should open his private garden to the public.

  The mortals didn’t appreciate it. They never do.

  ***

  The years passed. The little millionaire built other gifts for San Francisco, his immense public baths and towering Cliff House. The little millionaire died and faded from memory, though not mine.

  The Great Earthquake barely affected Sutro Park, isolated as it was beyond the sand dunes; a few statues toppled from their plinths, but the flowers still sang at the sky for a while. Sutro’s Cliff House went up in smoke. After automobiles came, horses vanished from the streets. I had to walk everywhere now by myself.

  ***

  So I watched Kristy Ann and I don’t think she ever saw me once, over the years, though I was always on that same bench. But I watched the little girl discovering the remnant of the Conservatory’s tiled floor, watched her get down on her hands and knees and dig furtively, hoping to uncover more of the lost city before her mother could call her away.

  I watched the older Kristy Ann bringing her boyfriends there, the tall one with red hair and then the black one with dreadlocks. There were furtive kisses in amongst the trees and, at least once, furtive sex. There were long afternoons while they grew bored watching her paint the cypress trees. At last she came alone, and there were no more boys after that.

  She walked there every afternoon, after work I suppose. She must have lived nearby. Weekends she came with her paints and did endless impressions of the view from the empty battlements, or the statue of Diana that had survived, back among the trees. Once or twice I wandered past her to look at her canvases. I wouldn’t have said she had talent, but she had passion.