by Kage Baker
“Did we ever have wedding rings?” Mendoza wondered suddenly, looking up at Alec, who happened to have control at that moment.
Alec looked down at her, feeling at tug at his heart. “We never had a chance to get any,” he said at last. “Come on.” He pulled her into the goldsmith’s shop with him, and a while later they emerged, with a small box containing a pair of rings that had been cast from one Spanish doubloon.
A few streets farther on, in an area that history would record as never being fully excavated by marine archaeologists, they found an inn of the nicer sort: half-timbered brick, three stories, leaded glass windows without even a glimpse of prostitutes at them.
There were ladies of questionable profession, it is true, sitting inside the dark paneled common room, with heavily-wigged gentlemen in long waistcoats, and the air was blue with smoke from churchwarden pipes. There were one or two scarred and evil-looking men seated at a game of cards in the lamplight. It was a quiet place all the same, just what the Captain had told them to look for. Edward found the publican and ordered dinner for two, to be served in a private room upstairs.
They waited on a settle while their order was got ready. Alec sat staring around, drinking in every detail: the pewter tankards and leather drinking-jacks, the onion bottles, the herringbone-brick floor. It was just like his dreams, only dirtier.
Mendoza was thinking that it wasn’t so bad, really. Vaguely she could remember a worse place, and thought it might have been called Los Angeles, just as dangerous and less fun overall. She did not relax her guard, however, remaining prepared to break mortal necks if there was any danger to Alec.
Edward watched tensely, no less on edge than she, sizing up the ugliest of the card players. Nicholas waited beside him, and of all of them he felt perhaps most lost: for the room was like a room in Tudor London, and yet just enough was unfamiliar to bewilder him. He sighed and perched on an edge of the settle beside Mendoza, reflecting that he might have carried her away with him to some such place as this . . . if it hadn’t been raining, that last day. If the roads hadn’t been muddy. If it hadn’t been a bitter cold night. If . . . Nicholas sighed and attempted, with his usual lack of success, to provide himself with a virtual pot of ale.
The publican appeared out of the smoke to tell them their room was ready. He showed them up to it, bowing them in with a flourish (Edward had paid in gold) and departed discreetly. There they stood, staring. In addition to the candlelit supper for two they had ordered, there was a canopied bed in the room. Alec nearly pushed Edward over in his haste to grab control back.
“How very romantic, señor,” said Mendoza.
They looked at each other and then, uttering identical whoops of delight, leaped on the bed, with its fine tapestry counterpane and its bolsters. Mendoza had to lay aside two flintlock pistols and a cutlass and Alec had to plow through yards and yards of ruffling silk before they could obtain their objective, but obtain it at last they did. Passersby in the street below stared up at the open window in envy, at the wild laughter and wilder moans issuing from up there.
Therefore it was a little while before any attention was paid to supper: turtle soup and smoked pork loin, peas, rice, and yams, and a bottle each of sherry and rum. Mendoza looked at Alec’s face above the waving candle flames, and suddenly the laughter went out of her eyes.
“Wait. We did this before,” she said nervously, “Once. Didn’t we? Weren’t we in a room like this, and we ate supper at a little table, and you . . . you were angry about something?”
Nicholas seized control and reached out—across how many centuries of lost time?—to take her hand. “I was a fool,” he said. “And would to God we’d run away then, and not waited for morning!”
“But what happened?”
“I had a chance, and I wasted it,” he told her, blinking back tears. Groping in his pocket with his free hand, he found the box from the goldsmith’s shop.
“Here!” Nicholas pulled her to the window, to the vista of blue night with its million stars, over doomed Port Royal that echoed with drunken singing. “Here. Without are dogs and enchanters, whoremongers and murderers; but let them bear witness.” He took out the smaller of the two rings and raised her left hand, slipping it on her finger.
“So. I will cleave to thee and be thy husband, and never forsake thee again, but share thy fortunes through the world. And wilt thou have me, love?” he pleaded, taking her two hands in his own.
“But I’ve always been your wife,” Mendoza said. Taking up the other ring she put it on his finger, and folded his hand closed. “There.”
He caught her up and kissed her, and they swayed together in the candlelight before the window. Down in the street, weaving between the shadows cast by the flickering torches, a staggering wanderer applauded them.
Nicholas half-thought he might die then, dissolve into a memory in Alec’s blood, finally granted absolution; but nothing happened except that Alec, who had sworn he’d never marry again, kissed Mendoza. Edward, who had sworn he’d never marry at all, kissed her, too.
So they sat down to their wedding supper at last, a hundred and twenty-seven years late, and drank to their future.
Long afterward they descended to the common room. Mendoza waited in a corridor while Edward found his way to the jakes, which were quite the most noisome he’d ever encountered, and under pretext of pissing used the opportunity to drop the mine down a hole in the floor. He emerged gratefully, and they went out again into the fevered night.
The mine stayed where it had been dropped, through earthquake and flood and terrifying numbers of years, until the afternoon in 2355 when it woke to its programmed destiny. But Mendoza and her husbands walked back to Queen Street without incident and rowed out to the Captain Morgan, where they came aboard quietly and went to bed in peace.
Joseph had had an eventful, and terribly slow, ride to Port Royal.
Galloping through the dark and the fireflies, he had three times been halted by thieves demanding his purse. He had stopped only long enough to kill them like cockroaches and ride on; but the third one had shot his horse, after which he was compelled to run. Hyperfunction, it should be noted here, is easy enough for an immortal but cannot be sustained indefinitely, particularly when the immortal in question is attempting to carry a heavy sea chest. In any event, it was four o’clock in the morning before Joseph, limping and panting, staggered into Port Royal and made his way to the waterfront adjacent to Lime Street, carrying the sea chest swathed in his coat to muffle its squealing.
Spotting a likely boat tied at the dock, he jumped down into it and cast off, rowing swiftly out into the harbor. When he was far enough from shore to be unobserved he shipped the oars and sat still a moment, catching his breath. At last he reached forward and depressed an unseen catch. He opened the lid of the sea chest.
The squealing was immediately louder, and the colored lights inside blinked frantically until he reached in and turned a knob. At once the shrill noise stopped, the red lights went out; but the green and yellow ones continued to blink at him.
He considered them, tilting his head as though listening to the night, as his boat rocked on the tide.
It was blessedly quiet, with the alarm shut off at last. Across the black water he could hear the sounds of Port Royal in its fitful sleep: a single dog barking at two drunks reeling home, glass breaking in an alley somewhere. A rooster called attention to the fading stars, for it was by now nearly five o’clock. Joseph listened, still turning his head this way and that, but seemed unsatisfied. At last he turned away from the harbor, out toward the Caribbean.
Almost at once he stiffened and leaned forward. There! His attention focused on an immense and indistinct something moored well off Lime Cay. His eyes narrowed, his lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace of concentration.
Then he began to chuckle, most unpleasantly.
“You son of a bitch,” he told the big ship. And how swiftly and neatly he dipped the oars in the water again, a
nd how quickly he rowed out across the night ocean, making for his prey; and how surprised would have been anyone who knew the obliging little doctor from the Goat and Compasses, if they’d seen the expression of animal ferocity on his face in that dark morning.
The closer he got to the big ship, the blurrier and more confusing its outline became. The only constants were its two running lights and a faint amber glow toward its stern. When he had crossed three-quarters of the distance he paused, shipping the oars again, and reached into the seachest. He cast an involuntary glance upward in the direction of the satellite.
Thirty meters away, something surfaced and regarded him with unforgiving red eyes. It cut smoothly through the dark water toward him. From three other directions, dorsal fins rose into sight and sped forward, converging on Joseph’s boat.
Joseph was too preoccupied with what he was doing to notice them. He turned two knobs at once, in opposite directions.
All the lights on the big ship went out. Suddenly it stood exposed, outlined black against the pale gleam of morning with no blurring, no confusion whatever: unmistakably one of the vast pleasure yachts of the twenty-fourth century. Joseph had broadcast a signal to jam the Captain’s interface, cutting him off from the satellite and from Alec as effectively as though he didn’t exist. It was only a matter of time, of course, before an AI that powerful and resourceful remodulated its signal around the jamming; but it doesn’t take long to kill a mortal man.
Something hit the hull of Joseph’s boat, throwing him backward where he sat. Heart pounding, he scrambled up again, on the defensive. No further blows came; but there in the water beside him was the smooth finned menace, motionless, its momentum lost. Shark? He grabbed an oar and jabbed at the thing.
The oar hit with an unexpected clunk and the object bobbed gently. Joseph eyed it, suspicious. Some kind of torpedo? He pulled the oar back in haste, but whatever it was just continued to float there, harmless. Harmless now. Scanning, Joseph noted the circuitry, the electronic confusion and paralysis.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Robot Flipper.”
His unsettling grin returning, Joseph dipped the oars again. He pulled smoothly forward to close the last of the distance to the big ship. Drawing alongside, he tied up to its anchor-hawse and then, hand over hand, moved silently up the wet cable and so came aboard her.
Alec opened his eyes and looked around. Edward and Nicholas, just opening their eyes on either side of him, scowled. Underneath him Mendoza slept on, sprawled in yards of white silk trimmed with lace.
There she was, truly his wife now, and here he was still half dressed in his pirate clothes, and he had just had the most wonderful night of his life, with everything he had ever wanted at last. Whether he deserved it or not.
So why did he have the overpowering sense that something was horribly wrong?
Captain?
There was no answer.
Look at the machine, cried Edward, sitting bolt upright. Alec turned and saw Flint, immobile, frozen in the act of picking up his brocaded coat from where he’d thrown it the night before.
That was when he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of footsteps on the deck.
He slid out of bed and sat on the edge, hastily pulling on his boots. Mendoza curled on her side, murmuring something nonsensical, still fast asleep. Alec bound on his cutlass and stuck one of the flintlock pistols into his belt.
He closed the stateroom door behind him and cautiously made his way through the saloon to the deck, with Edward and Nicholas stalking alongside. As he stepped out to the pale morning, he reached into the ship’s security system with his mind and ordered an emergency lockdown. All over the ship, then, he heard bolts shooting into place, locks ringing shut.
Someone else heard it, too. Someone who had been standing half hidden by the foremast turned, stared along the length of the deck and met Alec’s stare.
Joseph smiled, an ironic and mirthless smile that twisted into his beard.
“Hello there, pendejo, ” he said, and without haste he began to walk toward Alec.
Neither of them was prepared for what happened next, however.
“Doctor Ruy!” howled Nicholas, seizing control. He drew the cutlass and charged Joseph, who stopped smiling and halted in his advance.
“Wait a minute,” he said, and winked out. Nicholas skidded to a stop and swung about, snarling.
“Where art thou,” he shouted, hoarse with rage, “devil from Hell?”
“Who did you call me?” inquired a voice from the foretop. They looked up, Nicholas and Edward and Alec, and beheld Joseph staring down in consternation.
“Devil,” Nicholas said through his teeth. “Come down, thou coward, and be cut to pieces an I cannot kill thee.”
“No,” said Joseph. “The other thing you called me! What did you say my name was?”
“Doctor Ruy Anzolabejar,” said Nicholas, sheathing the cutlass and starting up the fore shrouds after him. “Or it may be Lucifer, or it may be Legion. Wilt thou live still with thy head off?”
Nicholas, wait, said Alec. He’s an immortal! Do you want to get us killed? We have to explain—
“How the hell do you know that name?” Joseph said. “And why are you speaking Tudor English?”
Nicholas laughed, pausing in his climb up the shrouds to stare at him. His pupils were black and enormous.
“Oh, Doctor Ruy,” he said, shaking his head. “Hast thou forgotten my name?”
“Well, it can’t be Nicholas Harpole,” said Joseph, backing rapidly into the upper shrouds. “Because he’s dead!”
“Ay, and haunting thee,” Nicholas said, pulling himself nimbly over the futtock shrouds and seating himself on the foretop. Withdrawing the flintlock pistol from his belt, he took careful aim and fired at Joseph, who winked out and promptly reappeared across from him on the main top.
“Say, you don’t seem to have brought your powder horn with you, Nicholas,” remarked Joseph, grinning. “And you can only fire those old babies once without reloading, you know.”
Nicholas shrugged and thrust it back into his belt. He turned and began to work his way out along the yard, footing it carefully across the stirrups.
Stop him! cried Alec, pulled stumbling along.
You damned lunatic! Edward fought for control, without success.
“So anyway,” Joseph continued, “I need to get this cleared up before I kill you. Who are you really? If you actually are Nicholas Harpole, you’re looking pretty good for a pile of cinders.”
Nicholas didn’t deign to answer, edging out to the end of the yard. At this moment they heard a crash from below, and a desperate pounding, but neither man dared take his eyes off the other.
“Of course, it wasn’t really the fire did you in,” Joseph said. “It was the kegs of gunpowder. Remember that? Tied around your chest, a little friendly push to send you off to Hell? And I thought it did. I mean, it really blew, I watched your liver and probably half your spinal column go flying—SHIT!”
This remark was occasioned by the fact that Nicholas, clinging to the yard, had managed at last to exert his physical will on the ship’s rigging system. With a low metallic scream the whole spar was turning ponderously, a half-rotation as though to catch the wind, enabling him to ride it around to the point of the main yard, to which he leaped and clung, glaring in triumph at Joseph.
“Nice jumping, Quasimodo,” Joseph said, scrambling to his feet and edging out along the opposite arm. “So you’ve been cyborged, or you wouldn’t have been able to control the rigging like that. And that would mean you’re really Alec Checkerfield, AKA his lordship the seventh earl of Finsbury, right? So, why are you claiming to be the guy who wrecked my daughter’s life, back in 1555?”
“Thou liest,” Nicholas said, coming rapidly after him. “Thou art Father of Lies, but never her father.”
“No, only the guy who gave her eternal life, okay?” Joseph shouted. “And with immortals, that counts for something. Not that I was a very goo
d father, I have to admit. I didn’t see what was coming when she fell for you!”
“Thou whoreson pander, thou madest the match,” Nicholas said, coming faster now. “Bid a little virgin girl beguile thine enemy, so thou mightst work thy treasons unobserved!”
You fool, what does that matter now? Edward fought again for control and was cast off with a force that made him see stars.
Joseph came to the end of the yard and paused there, looking around, squinting in the growing light from the east. Winking out was beginning to be difficult, tired as he was. Cursing, he hung by his hands a moment and then launched himself at the main shrouds, where he caught hold and began to scramble his way down.
“You got any more of those pistols, Nicholas or Alec or whoever you are?” he called out, as Nicholas came after him hand-over-hand. “I’ll bet if I can get to one before you do, I can blow you right back to wherever you’ve been all this time. Only problem is, could I be sure you’d stay there?”
Nick, let’s be reasonable about this, man! It’s not his fault you died, after all— said Alec, but he might have been pleading with a stone wall.
The pounding from within the ship was louder now, frenzied as they both neared the deck. Abruptly it fell silent.
“Was that her?” Joseph turned an outraged face up to Nicholas. “Have you got her locked up in there? Has she finally had enough of you? You never loved her. You’re using her to find out about the Silence, aren’t you? That’s really why you took her from Options Research, isn’t it? It’s your fault she wound up in that place! Did you like seeing what you’d done to her?”
Nicholas halted at that, looked down into Joseph’s eyes with an expression so like Budu’s that all Joseph’s fury evaporated in panic terror. Just as Nicholas thrust out an arm, grabbing for his throat, Joseph let go the ratlines and jumped the rest of the way, landing on the deck with a hollow boom.
Then he had to run, for Nicholas leaped down after him, and he sprinted for the quarterdeck with Nicholas in hot pursuit. He had just time to rattle futilely at the door of the saloon before he had to dart away again, around the mizzenmast and back along the deck toward the bow, barely ahead of Nicholas. Nicholas had drawn the cutlass as he chased him and raised it for a head-cut, slashing it through the air so that on two occasions it actually did come uncomfortably close to Joseph’s neck gimbal, and this plus the very real horror he felt at the idea of a New Enforcer on the loose now decided Joseph that the game had gone on long enough.