by Mark New
There was a continuing silence. I was just beginning to register alarm when Merlin addressed Sir Bors.
‘”Enough clues to sink a battleship”, is what he told me.’
Sir Bors nodded slowly. ‘I told you he’s the one, didn’t I?’ he said to Arthur.
‘You did,’ Arthur replied.
A woman’s voice behind me made me jump in my seat.
‘Then we’d better tell him about The Ambrosia Promise, hadn’t we?’ she purred.
◆◆◆
Brunch with Taylor was delightful. That is to say it was as delightful as brunch with a gorgeous woman could be whose job is to spy on you and when you’d much rather be away keeping an appointment with Queen Guinevere. After a brief moment with Guinevere at the Round Table, I’d agreed that it was better to let Argonaut think that I was working on the case and keeping them in the loop rather than possibly raise suspicion by staying in a hotel bed all day. To that end I left Camelot and returned my awareness fully to the hotel. It had been the intention of Avalon Red to disperse his constituent parts immediately upon my departure. He gave me the codes to his portal and said he’d keep the home program running. However, he suggested that it would be better if I contacted his Merlin aspect via encrypted message to the portal rather than visit in the future. I agreed readily enough. I was used to operational security, after all. He told me that other aspects might contact me on their own initiative. That was an odd concept for me to grasp. The individual parts seemed sometimes to be semi-autonomous and sometimes fully integrated. It was as if your own subconscious mind occasionally had conversations with people without you knowing but caught you up on events later. I decided that whatever Avalon Red truly was, there was no human analogue with which to compare him. Even my using the word ‘him’ to think of him was probably wrong. ‘He’ could be ‘them’ or even ‘her’ and I wasn’t ruling out ‘it’. I hoped very much that Guinevere could make sense of it for me later. She had been introduced by Merlin as the aspect he used to help him deal with humans and, more mysteriously, himself. Apparently, she was versed in human psychology, psychiatry, philosophy and pretty much any sociological science in existence. She’d suggested that I review the download I’d been given prior to meeting her tonight, my time, Online. Another clandestine meeting in the anonymity of Online but at least she’d selected a meeting place I’d be pleased to revisit. Maybe it was a combination of her research into my habits and her knowledge of my psyche but she had won points with me for avoiding sodding vir-games. If I was a little edgy waiting to get to the download and the meeting, I couldn’t envisage how it must be for Guinevere with her different chronological awareness. I made a note to ask how time passed for someone who could process at quantum speeds. I was especially eager to hear what the reference to The Ambrosia Promise meant. As soon as she had mentioned it, the assembled gang had all agreed immediately as though she had just said the most obvious thing in the world and they were berating themselves for not having thought of it for themselves.
It was in this context that brunch was delightful.
Taylor had suggested getting out of the hotel and walking a few blocks to a bistro that she knew and I had agreed as exercise seemed a good idea. I worked the kinks out of my neck and back as we sauntered down the street. The weather was demonstrating what I assumed was typical Californian sunshine and I felt a brief pang of homesickness as the sun on my back reminded me of the warmth of Rarotonga. At this moment the Cook Islands seemed much more home to me than the UK and I wondered how Frisque and Joe were doing. It seemed unnecessarily maudlin considering that it had only been a couple of days since I’d seen them, but it was more the thought that if this all went horribly wrong I may not ever see them again.
Taylor chattered about nothing consequential as we walked and it wasn’t long before we entered the bistro. Unlike the hotel, this was almost fully automated. We found a table and the inlaid electronic menu displayed the fare as we sat down. I found it easy to choose the meal - scrambled eggs on toast - and much less easy to pick a beverage. I preferred black tea but I’d visited the USA enough to avoid choosing it from an automated menu. I have no idea what gets mixed with water and brought to the table but I do know that it isn’t what I would define as ‘tea’. It doesn’t help that I don’t really like coffee. It’s an almost anti-social stance to take in America so I hovered over the choice which drew Taylor’s amusement.
‘You can’t tell me that they don’t serve coffee the way you like it!’ she observed as I scrolled through page after page of Italian-sounding ways to pronounce things I don’t drink.
‘I don’t like coffee,’ I confessed. ‘And Americans haven’t had a good relationship with tea since the day there was an unfortunate misunderstanding in a harbour a long way from here.’
‘I see,’ she said, amused. ‘I think there’s a basic hot chocolate somewhere on page ninety-three.’ I scrolled on and found that she was correct about the choice and had exaggerated horribly about the number. I pretended outrage:
‘What? No frothy chocolate?’
‘Froth is only for sophisticated coffee drinkers, you heretic.’
I clicked the selection button. I know when I’m beaten.
We waited for the harassed waitress to bring our order. Most tables were full, even at eleven fifteen or so, and there was just one middle-aged waitress trying to bring everyone their fare at once. It was something of a contrast between the superfast ordering system and the slow delivery. I once knew a management consultant who could have sorted out the establishment’s problems in no time. He would have started with pointing out the effect on customer service of not following a fast, efficient tech-based ordering system with an equally quick delivery.
‘Brian told me there’d be robots,’ I muttered.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘A friend of mine when I was younger. He was a management consultant and he said by 2050 most menial tasks would be undertaken by robots, thus freeing humans for other more meaningful things. It would mean workplace requirements would be evolving as the century progressed.’
‘When I was at school they told us that would happen by 2075.’
‘Everyone lies,’ I commented, sadly.
‘Don’t tell Kathy she’s doing menial tasks,’ Taylor advised.
‘Who is Kathy?’
‘My friend the waitress.’
‘Oh, right, OK.’ I was a little sarcastic about the warning. Of course it had been my avowed intention to insult the woman who was entrusted with bringing my food. I like to live dangerously.
‘She owns the place.’
That was unexpected. ‘Is it hard to find waiting staff around here? I thought there were thousands of unemployed vir-actors looking for a day job.’
‘Dinosaur,’ Taylor scoffed. ‘All the wannabe actors are in temporary jobs in Online social joints as greeters.’
‘Oh.’ Evidently seismic economic changes hadn’t penetrated my depression barrier for a while. ‘Does that pay better?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but you can do it from home so there’s no commute expenses.’
That made sense. I was saved from having to make any intelligent reply by the arrival of Kathy with our drinks order.
‘Oh, hi Taylor,’ she said wearily as she set down the mugs. ‘You must be the...’ and she rattled off the name of the coffee and the manner in which it was prepared so fast that I didn’t catch it. Taylor smiled.
‘Thanks Kathy,’ she said. How’s business?’
Kathy pulled a face. ‘It’s really good except that I have two waitresses off sick today and I’m having to do this myself.’ Well, that explained the inefficient set-up. Taylor looked sympathetic.
‘I’d love to help out but I’m working today.’ She pointed to me. ‘This is John, from England. I’m acting as his PA while he’s here.’ Neat cover story, I thought; almost accurate, too.
‘Glad to meet you, John,’ Kathy smiled.
‘How do you do?’ I replied
in horribly over-the-top upper-class English. Taylor giggled.
‘He’s an executive with a sense of humour,’ she confided.
‘A rare thing,’ Kathy told her wisely. ‘I’d better get on. Your food order will be here shortly - I hope!’ She dashed back to the kitchen, ignoring a call from the other side of the bistro.
‘You didn’t know she employs two waitresses?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Taylor said, frowning.
‘When was the last time you came in here?’
‘About three weeks ago. I’m sure Kathy was serving then, too.’
‘Perhaps the phantom waitresses have long-term injuries,’ I suggested.
She looked up from her coffee-of-some-kind. ‘Like what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Repetitive ectoplasm strains from Halloween weekend?’
She laughed. ‘Maybe we can enquire when she comes back with the food.’
‘If she comes back.’ I said it with as much conspiratorial emphasis as I could manage.
It turned out that the waitresses were two sisters from Slovenia who had been hired a couple of weeks before and had both been struggling with a virus these last couple of days. That rather put an end to my fanciful afterlife conspiracy theories but it did have a sobering effect on me to think that the Eastern European afflictions weren’t yet a thing of the past. But what did I know? Influenza was mostly eradicated with the new vaccines but it could just have been a heavy cold that one had contracted and passed to the other. Still, I don’t think I was as good company after I found out about them. Taylor said as much as we were walking back to the hotel.
‘Still thinking about the case? George asked me to let him know what you’d been up to and if there was any progress to report.’ That was the closest she came to admitting she was spying for him. A spy who wasn’t the subject of sufficient confidence from her spymaster to be told exactly what the ‘case’ involved. I entertained myself for a minute thinking about how she’d react if I actually told her. Instead, I just said that I was using my Online contacts to investigate the breach of systems but that she could tell George there was no breakthrough as yet.
We parted at the door to the hotel. I said that I was going to be Online all afternoon so there was no point Taylor hanging around and wasting her time. I asked if she would like to come back for dinner with me later and she accepted immediately. I said that it would be at the hotel as I expected to be Online again until late afterwards.
‘One day you can give me the city tour,’ I added, ‘but I’m afraid it’s not going to be in the next few days.’ She said that was fine as the city wasn’t going anywhere and went off happily down the street.
I went back upstairs to my suite and took a seat in the large comfortable chair that came with the desk in the living room area. I ignored the provided goggles and gloves on the desk and used my implants to access the room AI as I simultaneously called aloud for its attention. There were no messages waiting for me and the implants confirmed as the AI was speaking that there had been no tampering with the room AI or its parent seneschal. The inbuilt security the hotel possessed would make it difficult but not impossible for someone to tamper with either but I wasn’t in the mood to leave it to chance.
I relaxed in the chair and ran my security program over Avalon Red’s download one more time. It still registered as safe so I opened it while keeping the eject program on standby. The download first utilised my ocular implant and came up as a title sequence in visual only. The title page unfurled and I saw that it bore the red Maltese Cross I’d seen in Red’s own vir-scape and the title, also in red, ‘Avalon Red’. After about three seconds the title dissolved into the next page which was again simple red lettering and carried the subtitle, ‘The Untold Story’. This, too, dissolved into a third page which repeated the red symbol and intriguingly displayed the message, ‘You’re going to love this, John...’
◆◆◆
Just over two hours later I found myself on the quarterdeck of a large warship from the age of sail, standing beside Doc who was now dressed as an eighteenth century Royal Navy Captain while holding a brass telescope casually in his left hand as he addressed his First Lieutenant. Unfortunately, his First Lieutenant had no idea what to do with the order he’d just been given.
‘When do I do that?’ I asked, bemused.
‘Immediately after the Marine drummer beats to quarters,’ he told me, failing in his attempt to not look exasperated. I cut him some slack. It must be after eleven at night in London and I had called on him while he was indulging in one of his hobbies Online. Apart from when I had accessed the information about his coasters I had only a very superficial knowledge about this age and knew even less about naval tactics or routines of the period. I didn’t even feel confident enough to challenge him about whether the pince-nez he still wore (even Online) were an anachronism here.
Generally, people playing vir-games weren’t particular about getting all of the period details exactly right. The most popular games gave you thrills, spills and excitement and were less inclined to offer exact historical verisimilitude. However, there did exist gamer societies where the historical accuracy was more important than the wham-bam action and Doc was a keen supporter of the sub-genre. Like I said; Doc was old-school. He had been happy to have me aboard and it suited me well. He had only just taken command of this three-decker second-rate warship so he was using the tutorial vir-space for practice before he took her on the high seas in the game proper. That meant that none of the crew were human and we wouldn’t be overheard. Just to be sure, I’d checked the lower menu labels of each of the bots that made up the crew. Just to be extra sure, I’d also checked them for monitoring devices and a history in-game. All of them checked out as bots and all of the bots checked out as being indigenous to this game. It had taken a little longer than planned as I hadn’t realised that a ship of this size had a crew of five hundred. Still, I considered it twenty-five minutes or so well spent. I wasn’t entirely sure that the Captain shared the sentiment. On the other hand, if your own psychiatrist can’t handle your paranoia, who can? He knew what I was doing when I embarked on ‘First Lieutenant’s rounds’ and so far he’d shown only amusement, and a touch of exasperation.
‘And when he’s beaten the quarters, and it all goes quiet, how will I know when to give the order?’ I didn’t want to screw up his first gun drill.
‘Because every bugger down there,’ he nodded towards the upper gun deck just below us, ‘will be looking up here for the order.’
‘Right.’ I hoped I could handle that. The least I could do was to let him finish his drill before I bent his ear about my troubles. Or, more accurately, my lack of troubles.
The marine on whatever deck it was called started to beat his drum. It was a single beat or two then a drum roll and he then repeated the sequence much more than I thought was strictly necessary. Everyone, except Doc, me, and the lads hanging on to the ship’s wheel sprang into action. Things I hadn’t noticed were there were cleared off the deck; things were put on the deck, like water and sand; things clunked underneath us; sails were taken down and furled; guns were inspected, loosened, levelled and there ensued general chaos for a few minutes. As I saw men staring into the business end of cannons I reflected that the health and safety industry wasn’t overworked in the age of sail. I was also surprised to see that not all of the ‘powder monkeys’ were young boys as I’d supposed. I said as much to the Captain.
‘The pressed men who had no experience of the sea got the crappy jobs, Skipper. That included powder monkey duties when in combat.’ Live and learn. I bet the pressed men rued the day they went drinking in dockside pubs. Perhaps it was because I know what combat is like that I didn’t really find the scenario here of any appeal but it was far enough removed from my own time-frame that I could just about tolerate it. If you include the dire living conditions as well, I had no idea why anyone would want to recreate this period, let alone in such great detail.
I refraine
d from asking if the ship’s biscuits contained authentic weevils.
At length the drummer stopped drumming, the scurrying men stopped scurrying and everything went quiet as the men looked up expectantly at the officers on the quarterdeck. I looked at Doc who nodded encouragingly.
‘Gunnery Officer,’ I said loudly, looking at the officer in question (who fortunately was labelled ‘gunnery officer’ so I couldn’t miss him), ‘proceed with the drill. Both sides, if you please.’
He touched his hand to his hat and turned to the crew.
‘Load with cartridge!’ he ordered in a very loud voice and in an accent I didn’t recognise, most probably an authentic eighteenth century one that had since died out. Groups of people scuttled about doing whatever was involved in loading the guns with cartridge. This wasn’t the moment to find an Online resource to confirm it but it seemed reasonable to assume that it had something to do with the cartridge which the gun required in order to go bang. Stop me if I’m getting too technical.
‘Shot and wad!’ the Gunnery Officer called pacing around the deck. The call was repeated in the decks below. It was at that point that it occurred to me that a double-broadside was going to get noisy.