by Kage Baker
“But they gonna board us for aspection!” Alec sobbed.
“Hey! Hey, kiddo, don’t you worry. Daddy’s a gentleman, don’t forget, he’s got some pull. I’m the bloody earl ‘a Finsbury, okay? And a CEO at J.I.S. And I’ll tell you something else. Jovian Integrated Systems gonna have something to say, too. Nobody’s gonna touch li’l Alec, he’s such a special kid.” That was right; Alec was a special kid, all the servants said so. For one thing, all other little boys were brought into this world by the Stork, but not Alec. He had come in an agcopter. Reggie had told him so.
“Yeah, son!” Reggie had chuckled, looking around to be certain Sarah was nowhere within earshot.
“The Stork call your Daddy and say, ‘Come out to Cromwell Cay!’ And your Daddy take the launch out where the copter waiting on the Cay at midnight, with the red light blinking, and when he come back he bring Sarah with our little bundle of joy Alec! And we all get nice fat annuities, too!” Alec wiped his nose and was comforted. Daddy set him on the deck and yelled to Cat for another drink and told Alec to go play now somewhere. Alec would dearly have liked to stay and talk with Daddy; that had been the longest conversation they’d ever had together, and he had all kinds of questions. What was Jovian Integrated Systems? Why were some laws important, like wearing the life vest, and other laws were dumb? Why were gentlemen free? But Alec was a considerate and obedient little boy, so he didn’t ask but went off to play, determined never, ever to be a telltale or a scaredy-cat. Very shortly after that the happy life came to an end.
It happened quite suddenly, too. One day Mummy abruptly put down her novel, got up out of her deck chair and stalked over to Daddy where he sat watching a Caribbean sunset.
“It’s over, Rog,” she said.
He turned a wondering face to her. “Huh?” he said. After a moment of staring into her eyes he sighed.
“Okay,” he said.
And the Foxy Lady set a course that took her into gray waters, under cold skies, and Sarah packed up most of Alec’s toys so he only had a few to play with, and got out his heaviest clothes. One day they saw a very big island off the port bow. Sarah held him up and said, “Look! There’s England!” Alec saw pale cliffs and a meek little country beyond them, rolling fields stretching away into a cloudy distance, and way off the gray blocky mass of cities. The air didn’t smell familiar at all. He stood shivering as Sarah buttoned him into an anorak and watched the strange coastline unroll. The Thames pulled them into London, and it was the biggest place Alec had ever seen. As the sun set they steered into Tower Marina, and the long journey ended with a gentle bump against the rubber pilings. Alec went to bed that night feeling very strange; the Foxy Lady seemed to have become silent and heavy, motionless, stone like the stone city all around them, and for the first time that he could ever remember the blue sea was gone. There were new smells too, and they frightened him inexplicably. His cabin was full of the cold strange air when he woke up, and the sky was gray. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, and rather cross. Sarah bundled Alec into very thick heavy clothes indeed, leaving his life vest in the closet, and she herself put on more clothes than he had ever seen her wear. Daddy was wearing strange new clothes, too, stiff and uncomfortable-looking ones, and he had shaved. There was no breakfast cooking in the galley; Lewin had been ashore and come back with a box of Bentham’s Bran Treats (“At least they’re fresh baked!” he cried) and a dozen cups of herbal tea, steeping in white paper cups. Breakfast was served, or rather handed around, at the big table in the saloon. Alec was impressed; normally only Daddy and Mummy dined in here, but today he and Sarah were at the table too. Mummy, however, was nowhere to be seen, and when Alec inquired about this Daddy just stared at him bleakly.
“Your Mummy’s gone to visit some friends,” Sarah informed him.
He didn’t care for his breakfast at all—he thought it smelled like dead grass—but he was too well-mannered a child to say so and hurt Lewin’s feelings. Fortunately there wasn’t much time to eat, because the car arrived and there was a lot of bustle and rush to load suitcases and trunks into its luggage compartment. Finally he was led down the gangway and across the pier to where the car waited. It was nothing at all like the rusted hacks in which he’d ridden in the islands. This was a Rolls Royce Exquisite Levitation, black and gleaming, with Daddy’s crest on the door and a white man in a uniform like a policeman at the steering console. Alec had to fight panic as he was handed in and fastened into his seat. Sarah got in, Daddy got in, Lewin and Mrs. Lewin crowded into the front beside the driver, and the Rolls lifted into midair and sped silently away. That was the end of life on board the Foxy Lady. Alec had come home to England.
The Bloomsbury house only dated from 2042, but it had been deliberately built in an old-fashioned style because it was an earl’s townhouse, after all, so it was a good deal taller and fancier than the other houses in the street. Alec still hadn’t explored all its rooms by the time he noticedone morning that Daddy wasn’t at the breakfast table, and when he asked about it Sarah informed him: “Your Daddy’s away on a business trip.”
It was only later, and by chance, that he found out Daddy hadn’t lasted a week in London before he’d gone straight back to Tower Marina and put out to sea again on the Foxy Lady. Then Alec had cried, but Sarah had a talk with him about how important it was that he live in London now that he was getting to be a big boy.
“Besides,” she said, taking the new heavy clothes they’d just bought out of their shopping bags and hanging them up in his closet, “your poor Daddy was so unhappy here, after your Mummy had gone.”
“Where did Mummy go?” asked Alec, not because he missed her at all but because he was beginning to be a little apprehensive about the way pieces of his world had begun vanishing. He picked up a shoebox and handed it to Sarah. She took it without looking at him, but he could see her face in the closet mirror. She closed her eyes tight and said:
“She divorced your Daddy, baby.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That means she doesn’t want to live with him any more. She’s going to go away and live with some other people.” Sarah swallowed hard. “After all, she was never happy on the Foxy Lady after you came along.”
Alec stared at her, dumfounded. After a moment he asked, “Why didn’t Mummy like me? Everybody else does.”
Sarah looked as though she wanted to cry; but in a light normal tone of voice, she told him: “Well, I think she just never wanted to have children. Some women are like that, you know. All the noise and mess a baby makes, and then a little boy running around and getting into everything. She and your Daddy used to be very happy, but after you came it was spoiled for them.”
Alec felt as though the ceiling had fallen in on him. What a terrible thing he’d done!
“I’m sorry!” he said, and burst into tears.
Then Sarah’s arms were around him and she was rocking him, crooning to him, hiding him in her breasts.
“I’m sorry too,” she wept. “Oh, Alec, you mustn’t mind. You’re a good little boy, you hear me? You’re my sweet, sweet, good little winji boy, and Sarah will always love you no matter what. Don’t you ever forget that. When you grow up maybe you’ll understand, sometimes people have to obey orders and say things they don’t want to say at all? And—” her voice caught “—I’m sure you’ll always be a good little boy, won’t you, to make your poor Daddy happy again?”
“Uh huh,” Alec gasped. It was the very least he could do, after he’d made Daddy so unhappy. His tears felt very hot on his cheeks, in that cold room, and Sarah’s tears were like the hot rain that used to fall off Jamaica when there’d be lightning in the sky and Daddy would be yelling for him to get below because there was a storm coming.
But a terrible storm did come, and swept away another part of the world.
“What the hell did you go and tell him that for?” Lewin was shouting. Alec cowered on the stairs, covering his mouth with his hands.
“It was the truth,” Sa
rah said in a funny unnatural voice. “He’d have found out sometime.”
“My God, that’s all the poor baby needs, to think he’s responsible for the way that cold bitch acted!” raged Mrs. Lewin. “Even if it was true, how could you tell him such a thing? Sarah, how could you?” So then Sarah was gone too, and that was his fault for being a telltale. He woke up early next morning because the front door slammed, booming through the house like a cannon shot. Something made him get out of his bed and run across the icy floor to the window.
He looked down into the street and there was Sarah, swinging away down the pavement with her lithe stride, bag over her shoulder. He called to her, but she never looked back. Everybody was very kind to him to make up for it. When he’d be sad and cry, Mrs. Lewin would gather him into her lap and let him cry, and tell him everything was all right. Lewin told him what a brave little guy he was and helped him fix up his room with glowing star-patterns on the ceiling and a big electronic painting of a sailing ship on his wall, with waves that moved and little people going to and fro on her deck. The other servants were nice, too, especially the young footman, Derek, and Lulu the parlormaid.
Sometimes Lewin would hand them Alec’s identification disk and tell them to take him out for the day, so he could learn about London. They took him to the London Zoo to see the animal holoes and to the British Museum and Buckingham Palace to see where Mary III lived, or over to the Globe Theatre Museum to meet and talk to the hob of Mr. Shakespeare. They took him shopping and bought him exercise equipment and toys and a complete holo set for his room, with a full library of holoes to watch. There were thirteen different versions of Treasure Island to choose from; once Alec knew what it was about, he wanted them all. The older versions were the most exciting, like the bloodcurdling tales Sarah had used to tell him about the Spanish Main. Even so, they all had a prologue edited in that told him how evil and cruel pirates had really been, and how Long John Silver was not really a hero. And gradually the broken circle began to fill in again, because everybody in the house in Bloomsbury loved Alec and wanted him to be happy. He loved them, too, and was so grateful that they were able to love him back, considering how unhappy he’d made his Daddy. Oh, there was a lot to be grateful for, even if London was a strange place tolive.
He was learning a lot about living there, and now he understood why Daddy had preferred to live at sea. Everybody was always on at him, in the friendliest possible way, about what a lot there was to do in London compared to on a cramped old boat; but it seemed to him that there was a lot more not to do in London.
There was grass, but you mustn’t walk on it; there were flowers, but you mustn’t pick them; there were trees, but you mustn’t climb them. You must wear shoes all the time, because it was dirty and dangerous not to, and you mustn’t leave the house without a tube of personal san-itizer to rub on your hands after you’d touched anything other people might have touched. You couldn’t eat or drink a lot of the things you used to, like fish or milk, because they were illegal. You mustn’t ever get fat or “out of shape,” because that was immoral. You mustn’t ever tell ladies they had nice bubbies, or you’d go to the Hospital and never ever come out.
Mustn’t play with other children, because they carried germs; anyway other children didn’t want to play with you, either, because you carried germs they didn’t want to catch. You were encouraged to visit historical sites, as long as you didn’t play with anybody but the holograms. It had been interesting talking to Mr. Shakespeare, but Alec couldn’t quite grasp why nobody was allowed to perform any of his plays any more, or why Shakespeare had felt obliged to explain why it had been unfair to build his theatre, since doing so had robbed people of low-income housing. He had seemed so forlorn as he’d waved goodbye to Alec, a transparent man in funny old clothes.
There was something to apologize for everywhere you turned. The whole world seemed to be as guilty as Alec was, even though nobody he met seemed to have made their own mummies and daddies divorce. No, that was Alec’s own particular awful crime, that and telling on Sarah so she had to go away. He really was doing his very best to be good and happy, but he felt as though he were a beach float with a tiny pinprick hole in it somewhere: you couldn’t see where it was, but little by little all the air was going out of him, and he was sinking down, and soon he’d be a very flat little boy. One morning at the breakfast table Lewin asked, in his jolliest old-granddad voice, “And where would you like to go today, Alec?”
Alec replied, “Can we go down to the river and look at the ships?”
“Of course you can! Want Derek and Lulu to take you?”
“No,” replied Alec. “Just you, please.”
Lewin was very pleased at that, and as soon as Alec had helped him clear away the breakfast plates they put on their coats and called for the car. In minutes they had been whisked down to the Thames where all the pleasure craft were moored. Their driver switched off the agmotor, the car settled gently to the ground, and Alec and Lewin got out and walked along.
“Oh, now look at that one!” Lewin exclaimed. “She’s a beauty, huh? Three masts! Do you know, back in the old days a ship like that would have had to carry a great big crew just to manage her sails. They’d have slept packed into her hold like dominoes in a box, there had to be that many. And when a storm was coming and the captain wanted to strike sails, do you know what he’d have to do? He’d have to order his sailors to climb up into the rigging and cling there, like monkeys in trees, and reef every one of those sails themselves with their own hands, clinging on as tight as they could whilst they did it! Sometimes men would fall off, but the ships just sailed on.”
“Wow,” said Alec. He’d never seen Reggie or Bob or Cat do much more than load cargo or mix drinks. Suddenly his face brightened with comprehension. “So that’s why the squire has to have all those guys on the Hispaniola, even if they’re really pirates!”
Lewin stared a moment before he realized what Alec meant. “Treasure Island, right. Yeah!” he agreed. “That was why. No robot guidance to do it all. No computer tracking the wind and the weather and deciding when to shorten sail or clap it on. You had to have people doing it. Nobody would let you build ships like this anymore, if that was how they worked.”
“Cool,” said Alec. They walked on, past the rows of pleasure craft that sat at moorings, and Lewin pointed out this or that kind of rigging or this or that latest luxury feature available to people who could afford such things. He pointed out the sort of ship he’d own himself if he had the money, and pointed out the sort of ship Alec ought to own when he grew up and became the seventh earl of Finsbury. They went on a while but Alec began to lag behind; not because he was tired, for he was an extraordinarily strong child with a lot of stamina, but because he was fighting the need to cry. He had been playing a game inside himself, imagining that the very next ship they’d see would be the Foxy Lady, and his Daddy would beon board, having just dropped anchor for a surprise visit. Of course, he knew his Daddy was somewhere in the Caribbean, he knew the Lady wouldn’t really be there; but what if she were? And of course she never was, but maybe the next ship would be. Or the next. Or the next.
But Alec wasn’t very good at lying to himself.
“Alec?” Lewin turned around to see where Alec had got to. “What’s wrong?” He walked swiftly toward the boy, saw the tears standing in Alec’s pale blue eyes, and understood at once. “You poor little sod,” he muttered in compassion, and reached for a tissue and held it out to the child. Alec misunderstood his gesture and buried his face in Lewin’s coat, wrapping his arms around him.
“Jesus!” Lewin gasped, and looking around wildly he attempted to pry Alec loose. “Alec, let go! For God’s sake, let go! Do you want me to get arrested?”
Alec fell back from him, bewildered.
“Is it against the law to hug in London?” he asked.
“It is against the law for any unlicensed adult to embrace a child,” Lewin told him soberly. “If there’d been a Public Hea
lth Officer looking our way I’d be in trouble right now.”
“But Sarah used to hug me all the time. And Mrs. Lewin does!”
“Sarah was a professional child-care specialist, Alec. She’d passed all sorts of scans and screening to get her license. Same as mummies and daddies have to do, before they’re allowed to have children. And the Missus—well, she only hugs you at home, where nobody can see.”
Alec gulped, wiping away tears. He understood now; it must be a law like No Booze or Bare Tits that you mustn’t be a telltale about. “I’m sorry,” he said shakily. “I didn’t think it would get anybody in trouble.”
“I know, old man.” Lewin crouched down to Alec’s eye level, though he kept a good meter between them. “It’s a good law, though, see. You have to understand that it was passed because people used to do terrible, horrible things to little kids, back in the old days.”
“Like the two little boys in the Tower of London,” said Alec, rubbing his coat sleeve across his eyes.
“Yeah. Sort of.” Lewin glanced downriver in the direction of Tower Marina. He decided that Alec had had quite enough sad memories for the day. Pulling out his communicator, he called for the car to come and take them home.
That night, Lewin sat down at the household console. Thin-lipped with anger, he typed in a message to Roger Checkerfield, advising him that it might be a good idea to communicate with Alec once in a while. The bright letters shimmered on the screen a moment before vanishing,speeding through the ether to the bridge of the Foxy Lady. Lewin sat up all night waiting for a reply, but none ever came.
“Alec?”
Alec turned his face from contemplation of the painting on his wall. It had seemed to him that if he could just pay close enough attention to it, for long enough, he would be able to go into the picture, to hear the steady crash of the sea under the ship’s prow, to hear the wind singing in her shrouds and ratlines, smell the salt breeze, and he could open the little cabin door and slip inside or better yet, take the wheel and sail away forever from sad London. Blue water!