by Kage Baker
Okay, what’ve we got?
The bright holovision images took their place in midair before his eyes.
Jovian Integrated Systems first, the Captain told him. This place look familiar? It’s off the coast of California. Catalina Island, remember? This was shot in 2120, when J.I.S. was founded They built a marine sciences academy in return for an open-ended lease. British-owned. That’s where Roger was an instructor, for a while. You’ve run tea there, Alec! What a coincidence, eh?
Yeah.
Anyway, J.I.S. don’t exist now as a corporate entity. It was absorbed into another company. I reckon you’ve heard of it. They call themselves Dr. Zeus, Incorporated.
What? I thought that was just a joke. You mean Dr. Zeus is real?
Oh, aye, matey, it is.
No way! They’re supposed to have figured out time travel. That’s all a lot of puckamenna, though, right? What do they really do?
Well, now, laddie, that’s an interesting question. They’re consultants, they say. Seem to be in the business of fetching anything for anybody, if the right price is paid. And I mean ANYTHING, son, do you understand me? If they ain’t got time travel figured out, then something bloody weird is going on. I thought I had yer assets pretty nicely obscured; Christ, you should see what these people got hidden! And I only got just the barest peep at it.
Huh.
Alec, I’m getting that feeling. smell loot here. This is going to bear looking into with an eye to boarding ’em, Alec.
Okay. One of these days. Anything else on Roger’s work there?
No, there ain’t. He went on indefinite sabbatical three years afore you was born. But, listen, son! Dr. Zeus ain’t just rumored to have invented time travel. There’s stories they found a way to make people immortal. Bullshit, says you; but they got the best genetic theorists from every country on Earth on their payroll.
Alec felt ice-cold suddenly. He didn’t want to think about why.
And there’s some old news you need to see. Watch, now.
Poor-quality holofootage began to dance before his eyes, the crackly kind familiar from historical documentaries, with a tinny narrative voice. There, May 2319, right about then he had been conceived, and what had been happening? Nothing much. Russia signed a treaty with Finland to build a new cold fusion plant. Somebody Alec had never heard of set a world record in surfing. Nasty accident: the Leaning Tower of Pisa had collapsed, taking with it the king and queen of Italy, who were up there watching a Restoration Night fireworks display. A Hapsburg cousin succeeded to the throne.
Alec reached for a sandwich, watching impatiently. July 2319: Arts and Entertainment. Joshua Spielberg’s The Blue Window broke all previous box office records, but was lambasted by the critics. Ariadne Moonwagon’s Diannic Dream was number one on the bestseller list. Some kind of scandal about a group called Earth Hand. Paternity suit? That wasn’t one you saw much anymore. Vaguely he remembered part of a documentary on “Great Crimes of the Century” and wondered that so much fuss had been made about somebody named Tommy Hawkins being in trouble with the Ephesians. Alec felt a brief twinge of sympathy.
Christmas 2319. A previously unknown painting by Leonardo da Vinci was discovered in the catacombs below the Vatican and auctioned off at Sotheby’s for an astronomical sum. Mars Two was founded on the slopes of Mons Olympus, the first extraterrestrial use of geothermal energy expected to make them a thriving and prosperous community.
You’ve found something, right? There’s a point to all this dead stuff?
Keep watching.
Here was that nasty business about Earth Hand still dragging on: Elly Swain was the victim’s name, and here was footage of a hysterical girl being loaded into an old-fashioned agcar by grim-faced Ephesians in bumblebee robes. Déjà vu. Alec poured himself a glass of fruit tea and settled back again, as the images flickered.
New Year Week, 2320. No announcement, in all the nine months beforehand, of any child being on the way for the sixth earl of Finsbury. Odd. Everybody else of any celebrity or rank made the news when a baby was expected, it happened so rarely now. But then, Roger and Cecelia hadn’t exactly been pleased with the prospect, had they? Alec sipped his tea, frowning.
January 6, 2320, Elly Swain had a baby boy. Punch did a comic skit on the affair, but the next day things stopped being funny: the baby had been kidnapped. Alec remembered, now, why this was one of the crimes of the century. He felt queasy as he watched the famous surveillance camera film. Tiny red baby with a birth-bruised nose asleep in a glass-sided cot, there one minute, gone the next. Winking out like a little soap bubble, never to be seen again. What in the world had happened? Had the kid gone into another dimension?
He followed the story through the next week. Where’s Elly’s Baby???? A journalist disguised himself as an Ephesian brother and got in to see Elly Swain, who wept and said that she’d given birth to the Antichrist.
Alec shook his head sadly and had another sip of tea. 12 January 2320. Would there be an announcement of his birth? Yes. Here it was. Roger and Cecelia must have decided to go through the motions. Proper news release with a family portrait. Hadn’t they looked young! And awfully unhappy, though they were both smiling for the camera. Roger looked blurry, hung over. Cecelia was really more almost baring her teeth than smiling, stiffly holding out the tiny red baby with its bruised nose …
Alec choked on his tea.
I was wondering when you’d notice.
Freeze image! Hold it and bring back the footage with Elly’s baby just before it disappeared. Isolate and enlarge!
The Captain obliged. Two babies floated in midair. They might have been twins, but most babies bear a certain resemblance to each other.
Enhance!
The images grew so sharp and perfect there really did appear to be two flesh-and-blood infants floating there in the room. Both Elly’s baby and little Alec Checkerfield bore identical discoloration in their tiny faces. Alec’s eyes were less puffy, his nose less swollen, but the bruise matched exactly.
Analyze images. Compare points of reference.
I done that already.
Well?
It’s 99.9 percent it’s the same kid, Alec. Yer Elly’s baby.
Alec sat motionless a moment. You knew, he said at last.
I guessed. I didn’t know until I was compiling all this stuff whilst you was in the shower. But this would answer a lot of questions, eh, lad?
It’s not true. This is nuts. Why the hell would Roger and Cecelia have Elly’s baby kidnapped? They never wanted a kid. I wrecked their marriage!
What if they didn’t do it? What if somebody gave them a baby and told them to pretend it was theirs? That would explain a bit, wouldn’t it?
Alec’s eyes were glittering with that expression that had always unnerved Lewin, that suggestion of not quite human rage.
Bring up the clearest images you’ve got of Elly Swain and, what was his name, Tommy Hawkins.
The Captain produced two portraits. Here was a still shot from on stage during a concert, shadowed in lilac and green, but clear white light on the lead guitarist’s face. Here beside it was a still shot from the scandal footage, a very young girl with her mouth open in a cry of dismay. Alec stared at them fixedly. Insofar as they were both fair-haired and blue-eyed, Tommy and Elly resembled him, but not otherwise. He couldn’t see a single feature of his own in either face.
Best portraits you’ve got of Roger and Cecelia, please.
Four faces hung before him, now. They might all have been cousins. Not one of them shared a facial feature with Alec, however, except for a slight cleft in Cecelia’s chin.
Cecelia.
“ … because your mother is a votaress of our order …” It had seemed almost funny, an absurdity to take his thoughts off Lorene, and then he’d put the whole miserable business out of his mind and never thought about it again.
Is my mother still alive? Cecelia Checkerfield, I mean?
Aye, lad, she is.
WHERE
IS SHE?
She joined the Ephesians in 2325. Took the veil, the vows, the whole rigmarole. She’s a priestess now at their main mother house.
Where’s that?
Ephesus, where d’you think? The big temple itself.
Then weigh anchor and lay in a course for Ephesus.
Aye, matey!
Alec rose from his chair and paced, flexing his hands. They had begun to ache from his session with the punching bags. Ordinarily he’d go up to the saloon and fix himself a drink, but he didn’t want one at the moment.
The original archeological excavation of Ephesus had been done in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by inspired masters, and from their labors it had been possible to reconstruct the place down to the smallest detail. Of particular interest was the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The fact that the holiest of shrines to the Great Goddess could be seen as it was in its glory appealed tremendously to Goddess-oriented religious groups everywhere.
In the late twenty-first century the First Maternal Synod had been held at Malta, accomplishing two things: it (for the most part) united the various feminist and ecological faiths by combining their diverse scriptures into one comprehensive and fairly consistent text. It also united them in a stated goal: the reclamation and restoration of Ephesus.
The reclamation was a major media event. A religious leader by the name of Crescent Greenwillow led her disciples in an assault on Ephesus, took tour guides hostage at the archeological site, and sent word to the affronted Turkish govemment that the Goddess had reclaimed Her own. There was a minor international incident before, supposedly, a miracle happened. There were several versions of just what the miracle was supposed to have been, but nobody caught it on film.
Anyway, the Turks agreed to let the infidels stay, which was undeniably miraculous. Ephesus was given its own political status, as an independent zone not unlike the Vatican, in return for annual payments to Turkey that compensated them for lost tourist revenues.
The hoopla almost took the world’s attention off the Second Civil War in America. The Ephesian Church (as it was now known) became very wealthy indeed, and fairly politically powerful too, within a few short years.
Almost immediately its leaders set about the restoration of the Temple of Artemis. To this end they employed the services of Lightning! A Company, a small firm based on an island off California. Lightning! A Company specialized in historical reconstructions of amazing detail, in authentic materials, with adaptations to suit modern taste and needs. Very shortly the temple was once again a wonder of the world, and the Ephesian Church settled down to a long reign marked only by the usual bitter quarrels, heresies, and internal dissent through which all major faiths struggle.
Any religion begins in a moment of transforming truth. That moment quickly shatters into falsehood and shame and stagecraft, bitter comedy, sometimes murder. Thieves catch hold of any chance for power. The early years of a faith are best not too closely examined by its faithful.
But with the passage of enough time, the lie becomes truth again, the broken mirror flows together as though it were liquid. The nasty commonplace facts erode away and leave the white marble bones of the myth, beautiful certainty beyond proof. If Ephesus was reborn by political audacity and clever computer graphics, it had become now the glorious city of antiquity where She walked breathing and granted hourly the prayers of Her daughters and sons.
So this is it.
This is the place, lad.
Vehicles were not permitted in the holy precinct, so Alec was striding the length of the processional way on foot. It crossed a fertile river plain coming down from mountains. The air was bright, and shimmered with heat above olive groves and orchards of nectarines, almonds, figs, vineyards of red and amber grapes. Blundering or flying sharp and straight across the wheatfields were the same golden bees that were depicted on the priests’ robes.
The city below the hill was particolored, the white of new marble and the honey color of ancient marble. There was a hot wind coming down and it brought Alec the smell of fresh bread, of overripe melon from the food concessions, of incense from the temple. He passed pilgrims making the journey on their knees, inching painfully along over the hot stones. He passed vendors in long lines, portaging in their wares balanced on their shoulders: cases of images of the Goddess in every conceivable material, from pink plastic to pure gold. There were priests and priestesses in their patterned robes, leading the rows of neophyte children, boys and girls with their heads shaved, hair gone in their first sacrifice to Her.
Alec, raised in London, found it all like an erotic film: an insult to the rational mind but irresistibly compelling, calling up an echo in himself he didn’t want to admit was there. What could they be thinking, those people burning their hands and knees on the pavement as they crawled along? And what would it be like to spend money on one of those cheap figures with its dozens of breasts like a bunch of grapes and believe, really believe, that it had the power to heal or come to him in dreams?
He found his way up to the temple without much trouble. It was unmistakable: a hundred and twenty-seven Ionic columns like trees in a stone grove and, in the deep shade at the back, massive golden doors. Everyone was going there. Long lines of people stretched between the columns, waiting with greater or lesser degrees of patience. Alec had no intention of waiting. He went straight up to the nearest priestess and stepped into her path.
“Excuse me, I’ve got an appointment to see Mother Cicely. I mailed her, okay? Can you tell me where she is?”
The priestess looked up at him. She didn’t speak English very well, but she had caught the main import of what he’d said, so she took him by the hand and led him over to a compound that opened off from the main temple. “You go there,” she said, and from a basket she carried, withdrew a carved rod of some purple wood. She put it in his hand. “Take that.”
“Okay.” Alec looked at it, looked after her as she hurried away from him. He squared his shoulders and went into the compound.
Inside he saw a desk at one end of a long corridor, with a priestess sitting there. He made for her, but at once threatening-looking priests converged upon him. They came close enough to see the purple rod he carried and veered off, apparently changing their minds. He grinned and walked on. Twice more along the corridor the same thing happened, priests darting out of alcoves to intercept him, stopped by the rod. The priestess at the desk watched the whole comedy with an ironical stare, folding her pale hands on her desk.
“Well, young man?” she said, when he finally reached her.
“I’m here to see Mother Cicely,” Alec announced.
“Are you?” The priestess turned to her register and made an inquiry. After a moment it gave her an answer, and she turned back to Alec. “You’d be the earl of Finsbury? Very well. Through there, in the Epona chapel. Not with that!” she told him sharply, putting out her hand for the rod as he started forward. “You leave that here. Go, now. She’s expecting you.”
Alec relinquished the rod and went in cautiously, but no priests mobbed him. He found himself in a dim silent chapel. All was stillness, until his eyes grew accustomed to the light. Then he seemed to be in the midst of a stampede. The walls were done in an earth-dark stucco, and all around the room and up the curved ceiling ran mares in riot, in frenzied motion, manes flying, eyes wide, painted with such vivid detail he found himself stepping back involuntarily.
Trick of the light, son, that’s all it is.
Yeah.
Alec steadied himself and focused on the actual space of the room. Nothing in there, really, except a pair of bronze censers smoking in two long plumes. No: now, stepping from the shadows, was a tall figure in a robe that fell in severe straight lines. He couldn’t make out the face clearly in the gloom, and walked forward cautiously for a better view.
He had crossed half the space between them when he began to recognize her features. Memory came flooding back unbidden. Fin
e autocratic features, bones and skin of the best breeding, stern beautiful mouth, eyes as cold as the North Sea. No, your Mummy’s reading, don’t you go bother her. Mummy’s got a headache, leave her alone now, Alec. No, Mummy doesn’t want to see what you drew, take it to Daddy. Let’s just sit in here quiet, Alec, Mummy and Daddy are having a disagreement. She smelled like electricity. And lavender. She always had.
“So you’re Mother Cicely?” he said.
She looked at him calmly. “I am. You must be Alec Checkerfield. Let me make one thing clear to you now, Alec: I am not your mother.”
“I’d guessed,” he snapped.
“I mean that literally, Alec. We have no kinship at all.” She studied him in a certain wonder. “Though now I can see why they thought the trick would work. You do—almost—look as though you might have been mine.”
“What trick?” asked Alec.
“The one that brought you into this world.” Cecelia lifted her head, her mouth scornful. “I bore some of the guilt, at least. I’ve been atoning for it every day of your life, Alec Checkerfield.”
“Whose son am I?” Alec thundered.
“Elly Swain’s,” Cecelia said. Watching his reaction, she narrowed her eyes. “You’ve found out that much, haven’t you? But not the whole story, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Tell me.” He advanced on her. She looked up at him, unperturbed.
“My, you’re tall. Roger and I were as far from civilization as we could put ourselves, but even we heard about the Earth Hand kidnapping when it happened.” She smiled thinly.
“I loved Roger Checkerfield. He was a kind man. We had a lovely life on that boat. I knew he was a weak man, too; I didn’t care, then. He’d never told me much about his Company, but I gathered they were connected with the government and very powerful.”
“Jovian Integrated Systems,” said Alec bitterly. She gave him a thoughtful look.
“You’re hunting them, aren’t you? Well, well. In any case, when Elly’s baby disappeared—they put out a hand and pulled Roger’s strings. He told me we were going to be given an infant, and we had to pretend it was our own child. We’d been at sea, we hadn’t seen anyone we’d known in months. Who’d know it wasn’t true?