by Kage Baker
In addition to being extremely tall, Alec Checkerfield had a rather unusual face, at least in that day and age: small deep-set eyes, remarkably broad and high cheekbones, a long nose and immense teeth. He looked like a terribly noble horse.
“What you been doing up here?” Lewin inquired.
“Nothing,” said Alec. “I mean, er—you know. Studying.”
“Mmm.” Lewin glanced over at the communications console. “Well. You remember when we had that talk about you hitting puberty?”
Alec flushed and looked away, but his voice was light and careless as he said, “Sure.”
“You remember how we talked about using shields?”
“Er… yeah.”
“You need me to get you any? Happihealthies, or that lot?”
Alec looked at his shoes. “No, thanks. Sir.”
“Right. And you do know, don’t you, that even if a girl says yes, if she says it before she’s eighteen it doesn’t count?”
Alec nodded, not raising his eyes.
“And you can get in no end of trouble? Worse than just being carted off by the Public Health Monitors?”
“Yup,” said Alec.
“Right,” said Lewin, getting to his feet. “Just so you know.” He paused by the door and cleared his throat. “And… it uses up a lot of water, doing laundry every day. People will talk. Can’t you try and, and—not do that?”
“Yes,” said Alec.
“Right,” said Lewin. “I’m off downstairs, then.”
“Okay.”
Lewin edged out and pulled the door shut after him. He shook his head and once again, as he descended the long stairs, cursed Roger Checkerfield for never coming home. The moment Lewin had turned the corner on the landing, a voice in Alec’s room said:
“There now, didn’t I tell you they’d notice?”
As the hoarse baritone spoke, a column of light flashed in midair and the speaker appeared. He was an immense man in early eighteenth-century clothing, his beard was wild and black, and his face was wicked. There were two pistols and a cutlass thrust through his wide belt.
“Oh, piss off,” muttered Alec. “1 can’t help it.”
“What about I order you a few dozen of them recyclable cloth tissues, eh, matey?” the apparition offered. “On the quiet, like?”
“Can’t I have any privacy anymore?” Alec cried.
“Aw, son, don’t take on so. It ain’t like I was a person, is it now? Who’re you to care if a old machine like me knows yer little secrets?” said the apparition.
“You’re a lot more than a machine,” said Alec ruefully.
“Well, thank’ee, lad, but I knows my place,” replied the apparition. Yet Alec was correct, for Captain Morgan (as the apparition was named) was a great deal more than a mere machine; in fact he was a great deal more than the fairly powerful Pembroke Playfriend Artificial Intelligence he had been when Lewin had purchased him for Alec nine years earlier. Had Lewin known that little Alec had managed to reprogram the Playfriend, and moreover remove its Ethical Governor so that its drive to fulfill its primary objective—to protect and nurture Alec—was completely unhindered by scruples of any kind, he’d have been horrified. All in all it was a good thing Lewin didn’t know. He was worried enough by all the other unusual things young Alec could do. The Captain now considered the disconsolate boy before him. “Bloody hell, this’d be a lot easier if I was an organic. You and me’d just take the bus over to Egypt at weekend and I’d find my boy a nice couple of whores. Haar! That’d take a reef in yer mainsail, by thunder.” Alec groaned and put his head in his hands. Having an imaginary childhood friend who persisted into his adolescence was embarrassing enough. The idea that the Captain was taking an interest in his (even more imaginary) sex life was intolerable.
“Look, I really don’t feel like talking about this right now, okay?” he snapped.
“Not with that force-ten testosterone storm a-raging, I reckon you don’t,” the Captain agreed. He put his hands behind his back and paced, and the Maldecena projector in the ceiling turned in its pivot mounting to allow him to move across the room. He gave the appearance of drawing a deep breath.
“Look, son, I got programming says I got to keep you clear of wrecks, see? You mind old Lewin! I don’t care how bouncy that there Beatrice Louise Jagger was yesterday after Social Interaction 101, thelass is only fourteen! Like you. And neither one of you’s got any idea what’s going on. You takes her up on any invitations short of a tea party and you’ll both wind up in Hospital on hormone treatments, likely for the rest of yer little lives.”
“It’s not fair,” said Alec. “And how’d you know about me and Beatrice?”
“I got me ways, lad,” said the Captain smoothly. Thanks to some of the modifications Alec had made for him, he had long since been able to tap into the surveillance cameras mounted everywhere in London and so monitor his charge’s progress in the world outside. “Now, it’s almost the end of term. Yer going to have a lovely holiday in Bournemouth. We don’t want to spoil it, do we?
“No.”
“So let me see if I can’t turn yer attention to something a bit less dangerous than the Right Honourable Ms. Jagger’s knickers, eh? It’s time we was taking a prize, matey. We need more loot.”
“But we’ve already got tons of loot,” said Alec in surprise.
“I ain’t talking about data plunder, son. I mean money. I plan to build up a private fortune for you. One I can hide so nobody knows it’s there to tax, see? That way, even if you and Jolly Roger should have a difference of opinion some day, it won’t matter if he cuts you off without a penny,” x
“How could we ever argue about anything?” Alec demanded. “Roger never talks to me at all. Birthdays and Solstice I get presents, if he remembers, but not even an audiomemo in ten shracking years!”
“Well, now, son, even if you does get yer inheritance without a hitch, there ain’t no telling when that’ll be, and you want to be free and independent in the meantime, don’t you?”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
“So here’s what we does, matey.” The Captain grinned, showing a lot of very white teeth in his dark face. “You’ll peer about their encryptions a bit, like the smart lad you be, and get me into the databases of the Eurobank and Wells Fargo and some of them other fine big old houses. I goes to work and does a little old-fashioned transference theft, like nobody ain’t done in decades on account of it ain’t supposed to be possible nowadays. Just a yen here and a dollar there and all of it stowed safe in a nice Swiss account under a fictitious name, eh? Just enough to get you a nice nest egg of, oh, a million pounds or so, what I can start with.”
Alec had been listening intently, and now he frowned.
“Wait a minute. Did you say theft? You mean you want us to steal money out of a bank?”
“No, no, matey, not one bank. Somebody’d notice that! We’d lootbanks all over the world,” the Captain explained. But Alec was shaking his head.
“That’d be stealing, Captain. That’s wrong. Breaking in and copying data’s one thing, but we’d be actually hurting people if we took their money,” said Alec.
The Captain growled and rolled his eyes. “Son, I’m talking about the teensiest little amounts. Nothing anybody’d miss. A flea couldn’t light on what we’d be taking. You could put it up a canary’s arse and still have room for—”
“Nope. I’m not going to do it,” said Alec, with a stubborn downturn of mouth that the Captain knew all too well. He pulled at his beard in exasperation, and then mustered all his tact.
“Alec, laddie. All these years I been a pirate, just like you wanted me to be when you first set me free from that damned Playfriend module. Ain’t I been a hard-working old AI? Ain’t I gone along with the earring and cocked hat and cutlass and all the rest of the program? Ain’t I schemed to keep you safe and happy all this time? And don’t you think, being a criminal like I am, that once in a while I might get a chance to actually STEAL something?”
“Aye, aye,” he said. “No robbing banks, then. What kind of a score’s that for a sailor, anyhow? Belike we won’t steal nothing from nobody after all. Belike there’s a better way.”
“I’ll bet you can come up with lots better plans,” agreed Alec hurriedly, for he was experiencing the qualms of guilt any other boy would feel on telling a beloved parent he was dropping out of school. The Captain eyed him slyly and paced up and down a moment in silence.
“We got to get money, matey, no arguing over that. But… we might earn it.”
“Yeah,” said Alec at once, and then a certain reluctance came into his voice. “Er… how?”
“Oh, you could use up yer holiday in Bournemouth getting some lousy summer job,” said the Captain.
“Wearing a little white hat and peddling fruit ices, eh? Grilling soy patties in a back kitchen or waiting tables for tips? Mind you, it’d take you all yer summer holidays clearthrough to university to earn a tenth of what we need. That’s if you could find somebody to hire you once they found out you was peerage and trying to take employment away from less fortunate boys!
“Or… we might do a bit of smuggling.”
“Smuggling?” Alec’s face cleared.
“Aye! Ain’t smuggling just supply and demand? Long as we didn’t smuggle nothing that’d hurt nobody, which we wouldn’t. But all them bloody stupid Euromarket laws makes for no end of opportunities for a likely lad with a fast craft. You was planning on chartering another little sailboat for the summer, weren’t you?”
“That’s right,” said Alec, his eyes widening as he began to see the possibilities.
“Well then! We’ll put her to good use. You let me scan the horizon, son; I reckon I’ll find us some honest folk what could use a little help in the export trade,” said the Captain, watching Alec’s reaction.
“Yeah!” Alec’s face shone with enthusiasm. “Wow, Captain, this wouldn’t even be a game, would it?
This’d be real! With real danger and everything!”
“Certain it would, matey,” the Captain told him, privately resolving that there wouldn’t be the least possibility of danger.
“What an adventure!”
“But we got to sign articles first, son. I got to have yer affidavy you’ll keep yer hands off the little missies in yer Circle of Thirty,” said the Captain.
“Sure!”
“I mean it, now! No more of that sweet talk about asking ‘em to explore the amazing mysteries of life with you and all that,” said the Captain, stern now he had leverage. Alec scowled and turned red again. “That wasn’t exactly what I said.”
“Aye, but it near bagged you a Right Honourable, and you without a box of Happihealthies. One week till the end of term, son. My boy can keep his hands to hisself until then, can’t he?”
“Aye aye,” sighed Alec.
“There’s a good lad. I’ll just get myself into the maintop, now, and see if I can’t spy us out a few connections. Shall I?”
Alec nodded. The Captain winked out. Alec sat there for a moment, before rising to his feet and pulling out the graphics plaquette he had hidden in his pocket on hearing Lewin’s knock. Holding it close to his face, he thumbed it on and peered at the screen. His pupils dilated as the tiny woman appeared onscreen and smiled at him invitingly. He glanced sidelong at the Captain’s cameras. M. Despres had an office in Cherbourg, in Greater Armorica. He neither bought nor sold commodities, but he made arrangements for others who bought and sold them.
Cherbourg was the ideal location from which to do business. Armorica, being a member of the Celtic Federation but also technically part of France, had two complete sets of trade regulations from which to pick and choose. Businessmen like M. Despres could custom-tailor a hybrid of statutes and ordinances from both political entities to justify any particular action taken on any given day. As a result, M. Despres scarcely ever ran the risk of arrest. This was good, for he did not enjoy danger. He left the more dangerous side of his business to certain persons whom he did not officially know. There were several persons he did not know working for him, doing things he did not know about, with ships that did not exist in official registries. So complicated was this little dance of deniability that when M. Despres’s shadow employees really actually stopped working for him, it sometimes took several months to determine that they had quit, and longer still to find replacements for them. In the meantime, nonexistent cargoes sat unshipped in nonexistent warehouses, and M. Despres lost real money.
In order to avoid the attentions of unpleasant men with Gaelic accents who liked to break arms and legs, he sent out a desperate inquiry on certain channels, and sat in his office in Cherbourg drumming his fingers on his communications console and hoping someone would reply soon. M. Despres was in luck on this Thursday evening. Someone did reply.
A yellow light flashed on the console, signifying that a holo transmission was coming through, and a moment later the console’s projector activated and a man materialized before M. Despres’s eyes.
“You’d be Box 17, Greater Armorica Logistics?” he inquired in a heavy English accent. He was tall and broad, and impeccably dressed in a three-piece business suit. His black beard was neat, if unusually thick, his black hair bound back in a power queue.
“I don’t believe I know you, sir,” said M. Despres cautiously. “I don’t know you either, dear sir, and that’s for the best, isn’t it?” The stranger grinned fiercely. “But we have friends in common, who inform me that you have a transportation difficulty.”
“That is a possibility,” admitted M. Despres. “References would be required.”
“And are being downloaded now. I understand your usual transport personnel seems to have left without a forwarding commcodc.”
M. Despres shrugged, hoping his holocam picked up the gesture.
“I understand,” continued the stranger, “that there’s Celtic gentlemen who would like some sugar for their tea, and are getting a little impatient that it hasn’t been shipped to them.”
“How unfortunate,” said M. Despres.
“Very unfortunate indeed, for yourself,” said the stranger. “I wouldn’t want to be caught between those Celts and the Breton sugar beet growers. You can’t afford to lose your business reputation, can you?”
“Who can?” M. Despres smiled noncommittally. He eyed the references; they appeared genuine, and gave M. Morgan the highest praise as a discreet and reliable operator. M. Despres attempted to verify them, and thanks to the elaborate double protocols Alec had built into the codes, everything appeared to check out.
“Of course, reputation can be a bad thing, too,” said the stranger. “As when certain vessels become too well known to the coastal patrols.”
“I suppose so.” M. Despres’s interest was piqued. Was this a new operator moving into the territory?
“I suppose in that case they might sail to Tahiti, which might create an opportunity for someone else.”
“So it might,” said the stranger. “But I’ve been remiss! I must introduce myself. M. Morgan, dear sir. I may be in a position to provide you with assistance in your present time of need.”
M. Despres, deciding the moment had come, said simply, “One run. Seventy-five billion Euros.”
The stranger looked thoughtful. “Seventy-five billion? That’s, let me see, nine hundred and fifty thousand pounds? Not much cargo, I take it.”
M. Despres gulped. “Six cases, twenty kilos each.”
“A trifle,” said the stranger, making a dismissive gesture.
“There is a slight difficulty.”
“Ah, now, that would drive my price u
p.”
“I said it was a slight difficulty. The cargo must be recovered from the place in which it was abandoned.”
“What unprofessional people you must have known, dear sir! Say, twenty per cent above the previous figure?”
“Fifteen. Recovery should be a simple matter. It’s off a Sealand outpost in the channel.”
“I’ll need my divers, then. Seventeen per cent. The destination?”
“Poole.”
“Very good. Time is of the essence, I imagine?”
“Not at all,” said M. Despres, lying through his teeth.
“In that case, then, I’ll consider the matter and get back to you in, say, two days?”
“Tomorrow would be more convenient, to be frank,” M. Despres said hurriedly. The stranger smiled at him.
“Why, then, tomorrow it is, sir. Au revoir. ” And he vanished.
“He bought it!” whooped Alec, jumping up from his console.
“Of course he did,” the Captain replied, preening. “If his bioelectric scans is any indication. We’ll clinch it tomorrow.”
“I’ve always wanted to do something like this,” said Alec, pacing restlessly. “The open sea, a fast boat, secret business, yeah! This is the closest we’ll ever get to being real pirates, I suppose.”
“Well, laddie, one ought to move with the times,” the Captain replied, pretending to shoot his cuffs and straighten his tie.
“That’s true,” said Alec, turning to regard him. He said casually, “Speaking of which, er… that’s a good look for you, you know?”
“Like that better than the old cocked hat and eighteenth-century rig, do you? Less embarrassing for a sophisticated young lord about town?” jeered the Captain. “Damn, boy, I like the suit myself. Sort of a gentleman’s gentleman but with some bloody presence. What do you say I appear like this from here on, eh?”
“Brilliant,” Alec said. Clearing his throat, he added in a small voice, “But… we’ll still be sea rovers, right?”