by Kage Baker
“By all means,” says Edward. “Your brother was about to give his analysis of the Lunar political crisis of 2315, if memory serves. Proceed, Nicholas.”
Nicholas clears his throat. Flint crawls forward and holds up the holoprojector. An image forms in midair: a dreary-looking grid of streets and quadrangles, and beyond them a world all in silver and black. It is the mountains of the moon. Nicholas lifts his head and speaks clearly.
“Herein the dispute ariseth: the Ephesian Church is suffered to build its Artemisium in the disputed precinct of Mare Fecunditatis,” he says. “Which will lead in turn to the rise of the Ephesian Party within the Council, whereat the Secular Protest Movement ariseth in opposition.
“And so bitter, and so dire their discords, that the miners under contract to the British Lunar Company shall at last emigrate to Earth, as seabirds take shelter inland when storms rage upon the bosom of the ocean, nor can they in any wise be persuaded to return. And with them prosperity shall flee, and in 2217 the Lunar Council will be dissolved.”
Alec snickers and applauds. Edward merely raises his eyebrows. “Very good,” he says. “A reasonably insightful assessment. Fifty demerits for willful use of archaic idiom, full marks for content. Now, your observations? In Cinema Standard this time, if you please.”
“Obviously the principle of separation of church and state should be extended to Luna,” says Nicholas. “Or they’ll all go bankrupt up there.”
“Precisely. A clear call for secular morality!”
“Or immorality,” continues Nicholas, folding his arms. “Considera bellum mercatorium gestum inter Puellas Sodalitatis Felicis Lunaris et Scorta Templaria Dianae Lunari sacra.” He narrows his eyes at Edward. “I can go on in Greek, if you’d like. Or Chinese. Shall I, sir?”
“Arrogant, aren’t we?” says Edward fondly. “I want a monograph from you of no less than thirty thousand words, title to be: The Origins and Direct Causes of the Third Punic War. You have three days to deliver it.”
“Talk about pointless,” says Alec.
Edward rounds on Alec. “I beg your pardon?” he says in a quiet voice. Nicholas groans and averts his gaze.
“This is just another example!” says Alec. “I hate this! I hate these stupid lessons in subjects that are totally irrelevant to my life, and I hate not being able to do anything unless you permit it, and I hate these clothes, and I really, really hate listening to you pontificate for hours on end!” He gasps for breath. “You—you conceited, dictatorial, long-winded, boring—”
“Oh, not boring, surely,” says Edward, taking a step closer to him and grinning with a terrifying show of teeth. “I may make your life miserable, boy, but can you really tell me you’re bored? Clearly I haven’t been forceful enough.”
Alec steps back involuntarily, wide-eyed, and then catches himself. “You shracking bully!” he shouts.
“And thus you demonstrate your capacity for enduring provocation,” says Edward. “What have I taught you about self-control? I believe my point’s proven. I put it to you, Alec, that this latest disgraceful demonstration of violent resentment stems not from your dissatisfaction with your curriculum, nor your dependent status, but from sexual frustration. Would you care to explain it to him, Captain?”
No thank you, Commander, I ain’t organic in any way, shape, or form and I ain’t touching this question with an electronic pole. You leave me out of this.
“It’s not true anyway,” says Alec, blushing furiously. “And that’s another thing. I’ve outgrown that bunkbed. What about my own room, and some privacy for a change?”
“Still more demands.” Edward paces before him, hands clasped behind his back. “Let us consider the fundamental issue. Young Alec is at a crisis in development as regards certain … physical imperatives, as it were, over which he is apparently unable to assert any mastery whatever. Unlike his brother.” Edward nods to Nicholas. “If he were, in fact, the late Alec Checkerfield, there would be nothing preventing him, in his agonies of thwarted lust, from applying to our dear Mendoza for remedy.”
“Oh!” Alec covers his mouth with his hands and turns away.
“But! As he has so forcefully reminded us on numerous occasions, he is not the late Alec Checkerfield. To admit as much would be to oblige himself to face certain uncomfortable issues relating to Alec Checkerfield’s criminal past. An unenviable dilemma! Alec is either an innocent lamb with unresolved Oedipal desires, or an adult with unexpiated guilt and grave responsibilities to mortal humanity. Perhaps you ought to set your astonishing powers of analysis to the problem, Alec. Which is it?”
“You bastard,” cries Alec. “Freud is all bollocks anyway! Look, Captain, you knew Alec Checkerfield. I’m not him, am I?”
Well, now, son … lying’s a useful talent and it do come in handy, but sometimes it don’t answer. You’d best sign articles, lad.
“Oh, piss off, all of you,” says Alec miserably. “Everything would be all right if you’d just let us leave time like you have, Dead.”
“Which in turn presents your obedient servant with a moral dilemma of his own,” says Edward. “How can I possibly justify granting unlimited power to an appallingly conflicted and undisciplined youth, unable to learn from his past because he will not confront it, unwilling to make any recompense to the mortals he has wronged?”
Aw, he ain’t as bad as all that.
“He has the potential to be far worse,” says Edward. “So much for my theory that a happy childhood would strengthen character. Allow me to suggest a solution to your difficulties, Alec: you must enact the myth of Oedipus to emerge at last from the prison of infantilism. You must, in best archetypal tradition, kill your symbolic father and possess your symbolic mother.”
“What abomination is this?” demands Nicholas, scowling.
“I’m speaking in a ritual sense, for God’s sake,” replies Edward. “You’d prefer another archetype? Consider the tale of Zeus deposing Cronos and taking his place, then. The son must defeat the father to earn his liberty.”
He looks at Alec. “Here’s what I propose, boy: I’ll give you a week to prepare, and then you and I will engage in a pugilistic competition. If you’re able to defeat me, it’ll mean you’ve come of age. You will be freed from linear time, entitling you to unimaginable, yet psychologically guiltless, intimacy with the lady of your guilty dreams. If I defeat you, well then! You’re still a puling boy and must wait for emancipation a while yet.”
“This is monstrous,” yells Nicholas.
“You mean I’d get to fight you?” Alec says. There are profoundly mixed emotions on his face.
Yer a trained killer! My lad ain’t going up against the likes of you, protests the Captain.
Edward looks amused. “Surely he can withstand a mere sparring match! Three rounds, three knockdowns, and boxing gloves to be used, of course. Broughton’s rules strictly observed, with the addendum that no hyperfunction will be employed. You yourself will referee, Captain.”
I still don’t like it.
“You never know; Alec is lighter than I, and has boxed before against the bags in his gymnasium. I, on the other hand, have no experience with fisticuffs other than attending a match or two in my mortal days. It ought to even the odds, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” says Alec, beginning to be taken with the idea.
“For shame! This is stupid,” says Nicholas in outrage.
“You used to go punching people all the time,” Alec points out. Nicholas turns red. He unclenches his fists and puts his hands in his pockets.
“I was mortal then,” he mutters. “I’ve repented since.”
“Well, bully for you, yeah?” says Alec. “But I have to do this, Nicky. I have to strike a blow for freedom!” He slams his fists together in anticipation.
“If you can,” says Edward with a cold smile. “Boy.”
One Week Later, Linear Time
Alec is in the gym on the Captain Morgan, where the match is to be fought, by common consent;
it is less likely to draw Mendoza’s attention than the exercise hall in the house. He paces back and forth, regarding the punching bags.
There ain’t no need to be afeared, now, son. You used to whale the daylights out of these, and it always done you a power of good. Come on, then; take a poke at ‘em.
Alec raises his right fist, connects, and sends the bag sailing off across the room, trailing steel springs and wiring.
Of course, you weren’t no cyborg back then. Well, see how strong you are? You’ll do fine.
“Except that Deadward’s a cyborg, too, remember?” says Alec, in a choked voice.
Nicholas shrugs, absorbed in trying to coax a tune from a hurdy-gurdy. “Stupid,” he says.
Right, then; let’s go over the basics. Legs apart, weight on the balls of yer feet. Knees slightly bent. Come on, son, you got to try. Left fist up to yer shoulders, right back by yer chin. That’s my boy!
“Yes! I can do this. I’m faster than he is, he even said so. I’ll be a blur!”Alec turns to regard himself in the gymnasium’s full-length mirror.
“Hyperfunction is forbidden,” Nicholas reminds him, tightening the hurdy-gurdy’s strings, testing for correct pitch.
“I meant figuratively,” says Alec. “I’m a lean, mean cyborg machine. See?”
Nicholas shakes his head. “This is wrong,” he says.
“No, it isn’t,” says Alec with feverish certainty. “This is payback time! This is my revenge for everything Dead’s done to us.”
“What’s he done to us in the last seventeen years?”
“Bullied us! And—and that was absolutely vile, what he said about my feelings for M-Mendoza. He’s got a filthy mind. And there’s no reason for keeping us from timewalking like he does, except he’s got these huge control issues. All I want is to escape into that other place they go to! If it’s complete utter bliss like she says, why can’t we share it? Where’s the harm?”
“Do you deserve complete utter bliss?” Nicholas asks him, as his fingers beat out a little tune on the keys: “Lilliburlero.” Alec freezes, staring, remembering the melody. A certain man had liked it once, enough to whistle it on his way to deliver weapons to Mars.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he says at last. “Alec Checkerfield did something wrong; but he died. Doesn’t death pay everything off?”
“I don’t think so,” says Nicholas, remembering flames at Rochester.
“Maybe your death didn’t,” says Alec, who is finding the hurdy-gurdy music intensely irritating. He paces back and forth restlessly. “And Edward’s definitely didn’t, because he didn’t learn anything, see, he just remained the same shracking monster he’d always been, and he has plans to rule the world, in case you hadn’t noticed, and shouldn’t somebody try to stop him? Maybe it was always going to come to this. Maybe that’s my way to … pay for what that other guy did.”
“So you do think you need to expiate your sin,” says Nicholas.
“Will you put that damned music box away?”Alec shouts. “It sounds like a belt sander! What about you atoning, Nick? You must remember all the rotten things you did pretty clearly. But you’ve got nothing on old Deadward. He deliberately killed people, you know! He was a murderer and a seducer and a backstabbing bastard—he trapped us in the Library—”
“So you remember the Library,” says Nicholas, laying aside the hurdy-gurdy.
“Yes, I remember the shracking Library!”Alec throws a punch at the boxing duffel, so hard it smacks into the wall and slides down, torn from its mooring. “And, you know what? Happy childhoods or not, we’re still stuck in there! I want to escape! And if I beat Edward, he’ll have to let me out!”
Nicholas rises to his feet. “Is Edward really the one who hasn’t learned anything?”
“Piss off!” Alec shouts. Nicholas narrows his eyes and stalks out.
He has crossed the gangplank, and is going up the path from the pier, when he meets Edward coming through the garden. “Not staying to watch?” Edward inquires.
“It’s wrong,” Nicholas mutters.
“Wrong? Certainly. That was the rule of our mortal lives, boy: a little wrong to buy a greater right,” says Edward. “Remember?”
“We’re immortal now. I won’t live by that lie ever again,” Nicholas replies heatedly.
“Admirable of you. Think you’re ready to be set free yourself, do you?” Edward gives him a sharp glance.
“I must be a better man first,” Nicholas replies. Edward nods, an unreadable expression in his eyes.
“Well, do as you like; pity your brother hasn’t got your advanced spiritual wisdom, or somebody’d be spared a thrashing,” says Edward, stepping past him and going on. Nicholas turns back.
“Have mercy on him,” he urges.
Edward turns back, too, raising one eyebrow. “‘I must be cruel, only to be kind,’“ he quotes. “I’d be obliged to you if you could distract her, should she wonder where we’ve got to. I left her on the upper terrace, working with her Indian maize cultivars. This shouldn’t take long.”
Nicholas sighs and continues on his way. Edward goes his way, too, on down to the landing and aboard the Captain Morgan.
In the gymnasium, Flint is just offering Alec his choice of boxing gloves when Edward walks in. Alec’s eyes widen, and he draws back slightly as Edward strides toward him, shrugging out of his coat.
“Cringing already?” says Edward. “You can always give it up, you know. I won’t tell anybody you’ve been a wretched coward.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” shouts Alec, feeling like an unshelled oyster.
“Aren’t you? We’ll soon see,” Edward tells him, carefully hanging his coat on a hook. He removes his hat, waistcoat, and cravat as well; opening his shirt collar as he turns, he surveys Alec’s costume and bursts out laughing. “Good God, boy, are you really going in to fight me in your drawers?” he demands.
“This is what boxers used to wear when they fought,” Alec says, outraged. “I accessed all the historical references we had. Don’t you make fun of me!”
“It’s what prizefighters wore,” sneers Edward. “Not gentlemen. It’s a practical ensemble, I’ll grant you that much. Well, where are the gloves?”
Here you are, Commander, says the Captain, as Flint crawls forward and offers a pair. Do you need any help putting ‘em on? Our Alec knows how.
“No, thank you,” says Edward, pulling on one glove and snugging it about the wrist. “I fancy I can manage. I did watch a bout or two, remember.”
So you did, aye. Which advantage Alec ain’t got, and I’ll thank you to remember that.
“Oh, come now, Captain! It’s not as though I’ll do our little Alec any real harm,” Edward replies, pulling on the other glove adroitly. “I once saw the celebrated Tom Sayers go forty-one rounds with the American heavyweight challenger. Sayer’s arm was fractured in the sixth round and he simply kept fighting. The referee called a draw at last; the ring looked like an abattoir by that time! I’m sure we won’t come to such a pass.” Alec shivers. Edward steps forward and faces off with him.
“Now, Alec, here we are at last,” Edward tells him, grinning. “You’ve waited years for this day to arrive. Shall we dance?” He strikes a nineteenth-century boxer’s pose, stiffly correct.
Right! Round one of three commencing, lads. Let’s see a fair fight. No hyperfunction, no hitting below the belt, no hitting when the other party’s down. Wrestling holds permitted above the waist only. Round concludes at the first knockdown. Thirty-second rest period following each round. All clear?
But Alec is overwhelmed by memories, coming unbidden and unwanted. Riding on Edward’s shoulders, showing off to get his attention, gripping his hand in the final agony of the immortality process …
“Look, Deaddy, I’m sorry—” begins Alec.
“Ha!” Edward smacks his gloves together. “Lost your nerve, have you? I thought as much. Is it any wonder I was able to take command? And I suppose I’ll continue as master of the house a while lo
nger, since you can’t summon the will to depose me.”
“I can so! It’s just—”
“Look at me, boy. Here I am, face to face with you alone, and I put you where you are,” taunts Edward, beginning to circle him. “I took your ship, yes, and this fine living body, too, but best of all—I took your place in our lady’s arms.” He lunges, landing a punch on Alec’s left shoulder. Alec staggers and glares.
“Piss off!”
“Now, Alec, can’t you do better than that? Shall I tell you about what you’ve been missing all these years, you miserable conflicted little worm? I’ve been the lord and master in Mendoza’s bed and, oh, it’s been sweet,” Edward chortles, circling again, feinting another strike. “Ah, that put a glint in your eye. You’d love to trounce me, you’re dying to, but you don’t dare, do you? Even when I’ve graciously given you permission to try?” Whap, he punches Alec’s right shoulder, a bit harder than his first blow.
“Shame you’re such a weakling, Alec. What on earth can be holding you back? You want to escape time, don’t you? And we both know why. You miss her, don’t you? And you think you can just slip free and have her again, spiritually, without any uncomfortable complications. As though her soul had breasts—and lips—and thighs—”
Alec howls in rage, charging him, and Edward dances back, laughing.
“And so, HAVE AT THEE,” he cries, and dodges.
Mendoza is walking between the rows when Nicholas comes upon her. Her hair is slightly disheveled, and she clutches an ear of maize to her heart. She notices Nicholas and comes running out to meet him.
“Look, Nicholas,” she cries, holding up the corn and stripping back the husk. The kernels are like jewels, amethyst and ruby, topaz and pearl. “We’ve got it at last! Scan it. Perfectly amazing lysine content.”
Her face is flushed with triumph as she tilts back her head to look into his eyes. He catches his breath. The ages dissolve like mist and he is back in England, in the year 1554, having just fallen in love with the little girl in the garden.