The Life of the World to Come (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “Oh!” Tears stood in Rutherford’s eyes. “I say. Here, you must have yours—” He ran and brought out a pair of little boxes, one for each of them. Ellsworth-Howard stuck his spoon back in the blancmange and there was a brief pause in the conversation, full of the sounds of tearing paper.

  “Cuff links,” said Chatterji. “By Jove! I’ve just found a shirt to go with these, too.”

  “A tie,” gloated Ellsworth-Howard. “Now I am gonna look spiff. Thanks a lot, Rutherford. I got you a book.”

  “Oh, you’re not supposed to tell me—” fussed Rutherford, pulling it free of its shiny wrapping. He tilted it on its side, peering at the words on the spine. “What’s it say?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Ellsworth-Howard shrugged and had another mouthful of blancmange. “Lots of pictures of superheroes, anyway.”

  “No.” Rutherford strained to spell out the words. “It says JOSEPH CAMPBELL. It’s about ancient gods! Thank you, Foxy.” He set it down and tore open the other package. He drew out an old wooden box and looked at Chatterji in wild surmise. “Chatty? This is never what I think it is.”

  “Open it and see,” Chatterji said. Rutherford lifted the lid cautiously and nearly screamed in excitement. There they were, still in the cellophane wrappers in which they’d arrived at a tobacconist’s two centuries earlier: three dozen cigars. The faintest perfume was still perceptible, a melancholy breath of brandy and spices.

  “Good God.” Rutherford’s hands were shaking with joy. “Chatty! Wherever did you find them?”

  “Oh, just a discreet little shop.” Chatterji waved his hand in an airy sort of way.

  “Cost him a packet, too,” Ellsworth-Howard informed Rutherford.

  “Well, what’s money for, after all?” Chatterji looked over the buffet and selected a wholemeal biscuit. “Anyway, Foxy has another present for you. Haven’t you, Foxy?”

  “No I haven’t,” said Ellsworth-Howard with his mouth full. “Oh! I’ll tell a lie. I forgot, just got word this morning: another host mother’s been found. We can start the third sequence for our man.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Rutherford carried the cigars to the sideboard and arranged them carefully beside his pipe rack. “I was beginning to think they’d never find anybody suitable again.”

  “Well, it certainly took them long enough, but here’s the great thing—” Chatterji paused, pouring himself a tankard of hot punch. He looked up meaningfully. “The report came in from 2319.”

  “Thirty-odd years ago?” Rutherford stared blankly a moment before the implications sank in. “But that would mean—he’d be alive right now.”

  “Exactly.” Chatterji nodded. “And all the indications are that he’s secured a place in history already, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that we’ve secured it for him.”

  “What do you mean?” Rutherford’s eyes got big behind his glasses.

  “‘WHERE’S ELLY’S BABY?’” cried Ellsworth-Howard in a shrieking falsetto.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Earth Hand kidnapping case, Rutherford, surely you’ve heard of it?” Chatterji nibbled another biscuit. “It’s never been solved, you know. BBC Delta does a retrospective on it every now and then.”

  “Oh.” Rutherford frowned. “Well, police cases aren’t exactly my line. Some scandal, wasn’t it? Paternity suit or something?”

  “I remember it on the tabloids,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Just a little bugger then, but I remember that fat lady yelling ‘Where’s Elly’s baby?’ My mum and dad used to listen to Earth Hand all the time. Tommy Hawkins, that was the lead guitarist, had this go-girl he kept with him, see, and suddenly she’s about to have this baby! Only he and she ain’t got a permit, and anyway he says it ain’t none of his. She went off her nut and had to go in an institution. The Ephesian church took it up as a cause.”

  “But Hawkins wouldn’t back down,” Chatterji said. “He refused to admit he’d fathered the baby and he refused to pay the unauthorized reproduction fines. The Ephesians wanted his head! And legions of Earth Hand fans were just as positive he was innocent. There were riots, for heaven’s sake. And then she had a little boy, and genetic assay results were published showing that the child was Hawkins’s.”

  “How sordid,” said Rutherford.

  “Yeah, well, it got worse,” Ellsworth-Howard said. “Tommy Hawkins says the assay results are faked. He demands another one done in front of a camera! Full blood test, too. It would have been a shracking media horrorshow, I can tell you. Only problem was, the baby went and disappeared.”

  “Just vanished,” said Chatterji. “One minute he was there in his cot in the mental health centre and the next he was gone. No trace of a kidnapper on the hospital surveillance recordings. No ransom note. And the tabloids screamed: ‘Where’s Elly’s Baby?’ But no one ever found out, you see.”

  “Both sides swore the other one done away with the little sod. Earth Hand’s next album was called You Ain’t My Shracking Kid,” Ellsworth-Howard recalled. “Title track was a lullaby my mum and dad would play for me all the time. Ephesians nearly burned down the recording studio. Little Elly never came off the meds, ever again. Last I heard she was in one of the Ephesians’ cloisters, shut up tight. Tommy Hawkins died of something, a couple of years back. But nobody ever found the baby.”

  “I really fail to see the point of all this,” said Rutherford.

  “The point, my dear fellow, is that the host mother our Facilitator has located in 2319 is a sixteen-year-old go-girl answering to the name of Elly Swain.” Chatterji smiled. “And the man with whom she is cohabiting is none other than Thomas Eustace Hawkins.”

  “Oh,” said Rutherford.

  “Which means, you see, that in the act of creating one of the greatest mysteries of the century, we’re also solving it,” Chatterji said with an air of triumph. “You see? Hawkins really wasn’t the father at all. Little Elly was abducted by our operatives and implanted. And obviously Elly’s baby vanished because we took him.”

  “By Jove, Chatty, I won’t say I approve entirely but—there is a certain mythic quality to all this,” said Rutherford.

  “And, think about it—there will be no tragedy.” Chatterji sat down in his favorite chair. “My mother used to cry and leave the room whenever the case was mentioned on holo shows. Couldn’t bear the thought of that little helpless child lying dead somewhere. But we know he’ll really be alive and all right! No sad ending after all.”

  “Except for little Elly in her rubber room at the convent,” added Ellsworth-Howard.

  “Well, that can’t be helped. But think about it for a minute: isn’t this the sort of thing the Dr. Zeus mission statement is all about?” Chatterji’s eyes shone. “History cannot be changed, but if it is possible to work within the parameters of recorded history, tragedy can be transmuted into triumph. Nothing lost to the ages—simply hidden away safely by Dr. Zeus. Children rescued, not murdered! Little Romanovs, little Lindberghs, little Makebas. Little Elly’s baby. All secure in some fold of unrecorded history somewhere.”

  “Yes, you’re quite right.” Rutherford began to pace. “We’re almost obligated to do this, aren’t we? Very well—suppose we put the order through to implant that wretched girl. Nine months later, the baby’s born. We’ll have to order the operative in charge to fake genetic assay results showing that he’s the musician’s offspring.”

  “Hang on.” Ellsworth-Howard slid into his chair and pulled out his buke. He put on an earshell and mike and grunted in commands, inquiries, follow-ups.

  “Now, how do we kidnap the baby?” mused Rutherford.

  “That’s one of the things our Facilitators are best at,” said Chatterji.

  “Oh, this is exciting.” Rutherford rubbed his hands together as he paced. “Now, once they’ve got the baby, what will they do with him? Have to place him in a foster home, of course, but where?”

  “It’s coming together,” Ellsworth-Howard informed them, listening at
the shell. “Third sequence initiated. Girl’s been implanted. Shrack!” He gave a raucous shout of laughter. “If that don’t beat all. Now we bloody know why Tommy Hawkins kept yelling it wasn’t his kid.”

  “What do you mean?” Chatterji stood up and leaned over to peer at the screen.

  “Facilitator who did the implant got little Elly up on the table and had a good look at her, and guess what? She ain’t never done it with anybody!”

  “You mean she was a virgin?” said Rutherford.

  Ellsworth-Howard nodded, scratching around one of the rivets on his scalp. “He accessed some Harley Street bugger’s secret files and found out why, too. Turns out Tommy Hawkins had spent a fortune trying to get his dead willy fixed. Nothing worked, so he spent another fortune to have his secret kept.”

  “But he was sleeping with Elly Swain,” Chatterji said.

  “Yeah. Sleeping.” Ellsworth-Howard was silent a moment, grinning, listening. “You know what else our Facilitator found out? Little Elly wasn’t the brightest bit who’d ever gone for takeaway for a band. Blond and beautiful but just a bit to let upstairs, see? Dumb enough to settle for hugs and nighty-night kisses from her Tommy, as long as she was With the Band. Plus she was only shracking sixteen.”

  “Please.” Rutherford held up a hand as if to shut out the nastiness. “The lurid details can be glossed over, can’t they? The essential point here is that the girl was a virgin. This is perfect, don’t you see? She’s the mother of our hero, our extraordinary man, our Arthur. Scandal and mystery surrounding his birth fits the mythic pattern exactly. Being born of a virgin is even better.”

  “You don’t find that blasphemous?” Chatterji looked mildly shocked.

  “Why? We’re the gods here, Chatty, have you forgotten? If it doesn’t offend Foxy and me, it certainly shouldn’t offend you.” Rutherford was racing around the room now on his stout little legs. “So. I daresay our Facilitator finds it rather tricky to arrange a foster home, in this day and age?”

  “Yes indeed,” Chatterji said, getting up to pour himself another punch. “There were house-to-house searches all through England.”

  “Then he must have been smuggled out of the country, somehow.” Rutherford paused to grab a biscuit and kept pacing. “Placed with one of our paid people in that era, I suppose. Somebody with security clearance. A British national living abroad.”

  “Sequence proceeding,” Ellsworth-Howard informed them. “Baby’s born.”

  “Who’ve we got in that time period?” Chatterji sat down again. “Access the records, Foxy. Who’s on the Company payroll, British, married, living abroad?”

  Ellsworth-Howard pulled up a long string of names. “Got ’em.”

  “All right, narrow search: reproductive age, both parties of similar genetic profile to subject.”

  “Yeah.” Ellsworth-Howard worked the buttonball and the list grew abruptly shorter.

  “Now.” Rutherford turned on his heel, “Search for any who announce the birth of a son in the period immediately following the disappearance of Elly’s baby.”

  “Here they are,” said Ellsworth-Howard at once. He listened again. “Junior executive with Jovian Integrated Systems: Roger Jeremy St. James Alistair Checkerfield, sixth earl of Finsbury. Married to the Honourable Cecelia Devereaux Ashcroft. Pleased to announce birth of son, Alec William St. James Thorne Checkerfield. Date of birth given as one week after Elly’s baby.”

  “A peer!” Rutherford threw up his hands. “Perfect. They don’t need reproduction permits. Whereabouts abroad were they living?”

  “Hm.” Ellsworth-Howard squeezed in a request and listened. “In the Caribbean. Baby supposed to have been born at sea. Parents’ address given as the Foxy Lady out of Southhampton. Living on their yacht, I reckon.”

  “Better and better.” Rutherford began to do a little hopping dance, skipping back and forth between the table and the fireplace. “No witnesses other than paid servants. What’s the rest of the story like? To the present day, I mean?”

  Ellsworth-Howard asked for more information.

  “Marriage goes bang in 2324,” he said. “His lordship stays on the Foxy Lady. Kid raised at London home here by servants.”

  “It’s all falling into place,” said Rutherford. “There’s the sense of shame we need, you see? Not illegitimacy this time, but rejection by his parents. Perhaps he can be made to feel he was responsible for the divorce.”

  “Here’s his schools,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Here’s his entry in Who’s Who and shracking Burke’s Peerage. Became seventh earl of Finsbury after sixth earl had a nasty accident whilst diving. That was in 2337.”

  “Good lord! Funny to think he’s alive right now, isn’t it?” Chatterji remarked. “He is still alive, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ellsworth-Howard said. “Only thirty.”

  “Can we—can we see a picture of him?” Rutherford advanced toward his chair. “That will prove he’s the right man, you see.”

  “Might take a second,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “This is in real time, you know.”

  “Make it so,” said Rutherford. He resumed his comic dance, waving his arms in the air. He began to chant. “Spirits of Cause and Effect, I summon thee! I bend thee to my will! Spirits of Action and Reaction, I conjure thee, grant my desires! Schrodinger’s Cat, heed my commands! Oh, Spirit of Time, oh, thou Chronos, oh thou, er, Timex, Bulova, um, Westclox, Swatch, Rolex, Piaget! Uh … In the name of Greenwich, in whose image all Time is made!”

  Chatterji began to giggle helplessly, watching him. Ellsworth-Howard wasn’t noticing, frowning at the images that flitted past on the screen. Outside the snow fell ever faster, and in a distant tower ancient machinery began to vibrate. A hammer was cranked back in the dark and freezing air—

  “In the name of Big Ben, Lord and Keeper of our days,” said Rutherford. “Thou who hast measured all possible Pasts, Presents and Futures! I charge thee now, bring him to us! Bring him to us! Bring him to us! Let us in our time behold Adonai!”

  “Oi!” said Ellsworth-Howard. Just as the hour struck and the familiar bells began pealing, the face appeared on the screen: Alec Checkerfield, seventh earl of Finsbury, smiling at the camera that had taken his passport image. He was wearing a shirt with a vividly tropical design. There were a pair of sunglasses folded in the front pocket.

  “Oh, it is him!” Rutherford dropped to his knees, staring with Chatterji and Ellsworth-Howard at the image on the screen.

  “Height, one meter 97.46 centimeters,” recited Ellsworth-Howard. “Weight, 120 kilograms. Date of birth: 12 January, 2320. Dual citizenship Britain and St. Kitts. Residence: No. 16 John Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1. Communication Code: ACFin@777P17/33. Bloody hell! Want to talk to him right now, Rutherford? You could.”

  “No,” squeaked Rutherford, biting his knuckles. “I—we oughtn’t. But order Elly’s baby kidnapped, Foxy. This is our man.”

  Ellsworth-Howard gave a certain three orders in a certain sequence, and the invisible patterns of destiny in the room swirled and set. The clock had finished striking.

  “Well.” Chatterji collapsed backward into his chair. “I think this calls for a celebration, don’t you? What about some sherry?”

  “First rate.” Rutherford scrambled to his feet. He ran to the sideboard and filled three glasses, and brought them back without spilling much. They all settled into their particular chairs around the fire.

  “To the seventh earl of Finsbury,” said Chatterji, and they drank.

  “Ahh.” Rutherford settled back. “You know, I never imagined we’d be running a sequence in real time. This should be really interesting.”

  “Rather frustrating, too, I should imagine,” Chatterji said. “No more instant results. We have no idea how he’ll turn out, but we’ll get to watch it happen. What sort of heroic life is he leading this time around, don’t you wonder?”

  “You can find out,” said Ellsworth-Howard.

  “By Jove, we can, can’t we? Not what
he’s going to do but certainly what he’s done so far, over the last thirty years, with the noble programming we’ve given him.” Rutherford wriggled in his chair. “Pull it up, Foxy. Let’s see what sort of place he’s carved for himself in history.”

  Ellsworth-Howard requested the information.

  “You know, he probably works for Dr. Zeus,” said Chatterji.

  “Perhaps he’s a scientist who’s made some vital discovery,” said Rutherford.

  “Well … no, actually,” Ellsworth-Howard said, blinking at the screen.

  “Oh, don’t be silly.” Rutherford sat forward. “He has to be spending his life in service to humanity. It’s what we designed him to do.”

  “Seriously, Foxy, what’s he done with his life so far?” Chatterji pulled out his sinus inhalator and had a drag. Ellsworth-Howard squeezed in another request and listened for a moment.

  “Messed about on his shracking boat, so far as I can tell,” said Ellsworth-Howard dubiously. “The Captain Morgan out of New Port Royal. Doesn’t live at the Bloomsbury house. Spends all his time at sea, sailing about between islands. Not employed by the Company. Lives on investments and a trust fund left him by his father—well, the late earl. Absentee House of Lords. Regular layabout, it appears.”

  Rutherford looked horrified. “There’s got to be more to the man than that! Look further. What about his accomplishments? What about charities and humanitarian work? What are his politics?”

  “No politics.” Ellsworth-Howard shook his head. “No hospital visits, no village fêtes. He took care of the old cook and butler real well—nice place at Bournemouth and fat pensions until they passed away. Married twice. Divorced, no kids. Obviously.”

  “Married?” groaned Rutherford.

  “Hey!” Ellsworth-Howard’s eyes lit up. “Here’s something he did that made the news. Age seven, Pembroke Technologies sued him.”

  “Sued? As in, filed a lawsuit?” Chatterji’s jaw dropped. “Against a seven-year-old child?”

  “Yeah.” Ellsworth-Howard grinned. “I remember hearing about this on the news. Clever little bugger! It seems he made some unauthorized modifications on a Pembroke Playfriend his people had got him. Pembroke Corp. wanted to force his people to sell the unit back to them, so they could figure out what our boy’d done to it.”