by Kage Baker
Chatterji started and looked around involuntarily. “I say, now, Rutherford—”
“Well, of course we’d never do it,” lied Rutherford, blushing, “but we’d like to! And he does. The life we sit around dreaming about, he goes out and actually lives. Look at the other images. Go on.”
Ellsworth-Howard found the ship so beautiful he could have stared at her for hours, but he squeezed in his request reluctantly. The Captain Morgan vanished, to be replaced with a holo of Alec pacing along a quay on some Caribbean waterfront. The background was dreamy as a travelog: green palm jungle and stately pink mansions, flowering mandevillea vines, a shell merchant holding up a queen conch with his smile very white in his black face, a blue and gold macaw perched on his shoulder. Alec wore his customary brilliant tropical shirt, ragged dungaree trunks, and sandals. The only thing out of place in the picture was the box he was carrying, which bore the logo of an electronics shop.
“Blimey,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Imagine being able to get away to places like that! I could never make the trip, though. I get motion sick.”
“The humidity would get to me, I’m afraid.” Chatterji shook his head longingly. “And the microbes in the drinking water. And the pollen count.”
“Me, too,” said Rutherford. “To say nothing of the UV levels. Look at him, though, all ruddy from the weather. He’s not afraid of the sun.”
“What’s that box?” Ellsworth-Howard peered at it. “Is that from Abramovitch’s? Do they have Abramovitch’s out there?”
“I expect those are components for his marvelous cyber-system,” said Rutherford. “He appears to have hookups to weather surveillance satellites and coordinates them with whole libraries of three-dimensional charts, all in his head. He runs that entire ship completely by himself. All those sails and the, uh, ropes and things. That’s what he can do with that brain of his, Foxy. You ought to be proud.”
“Maybe I am, at that,” said Ellsworth-Howard, ordering up the next image. It had been taken at night, in some club. Alec, resplendent in evening dress, sat at a table. He was in languid conversation with a girl. Her eyes had widened at something he’d just said to her. He was smiling, making some point with a gesture, and the girl looked enthralled. On the table before them were two tall drinks, wildly overdecorated with paper parasols and orchids.
The three friends regarded the image in silence for a long, long moment.
“See? That sex drive wasn’t such a bad idea. I’ll bet he don’t half get the girls,” said Ellsworth-Howard at last. “Lucky sod.”
“I should imagine he’s wildly successful in that line,” said Rutherford airily. “Girl in every port and all that sort of thing. Learned better than to marry them. Keeps it all sensibly impersonal.”
“I think we’ve edited out any disastrous urges for intimacy,” Chatterji agreed. “Doesn’t he look splendid in that suit! What a pity he dresses so badly the rest of the time.”
“He needs a few endearing flaws, don’t you think?” said Rutherford. “It just shows he’s not vain about himself. Real heroes don’t care about things like that.”
Ellsworth-Howard summoned the next image.
“This was almost my favorite one, really,” said Rutherford. Alec was walking along a street, against a background of fields and distant orchards. “This was taken by the Facilitator resident in Ephesus, as our man was leaving. Look at his expression. Bold, determined, dangerous!”
“He don’t look happy, anyhow,” said Ellsworth-Howard.
“By Jove, I’d hate to cross the fellow,” said Chatterji. “The committee had certain concerns about this visit, Rutherford. Nasty bit of coincidence. It seems that not only is the former Lady Checkerfield living at that mother house, but the place has a hospital ward, and one of its inmates is Elly Swain.”
Rutherford started.
“I say! I really think we do have some sort of Mandelbrot operating here. No harm done, at least. He can’t have found out about her. And, you know, this is one of the hazards of operating in real time. Less direct control.”
“That’s just the point the committee made,” said Chatterji.
“Yes, but I think we’ve more than compensated for the setback when—well, you know.” Rutherford was referring to the fact that all of the initial data on the third sequence had been lost when Ellsworth-Howard’s buke had been spiked. It had resulted in a gap in Company surveillance on the project between the years 2326–2336, when Alec had been well into his higher education.
Rutherford hopped up and began to pace nervously. “The fact that our man’s done this well with minimal guidance just shows how sound our methods were. He’s an unqualified success, if you want my opinion. Yes, we should draft some sort of statement to that effect for the committee, don’t you think? Mission accomplished?”
“It’s early days yet,” said Chatterji. “If he can be brought into the Company fold, perhaps then we can talk about unqualified successes.”
“Oh, bother.” Rutherford pouted.
“I was wondering about something,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “This has been a lot more complicated than making up the old Enforcers. All this special fostering and guilt complexes and handlers and all?”
“For a much more complex product,” said Rutherford.
“Yeah, but with the Enforcers, you could just raise ‘em in the base schools and put ’em straight into the army, and they worked. These heroes, or whatever the shrack you’re gonna call ‘em, are they gonna have to be spoon-fed everything like the prototype has been? ’Cos you’re getting into a logistical nightmare if they are,” Ellsworth-Howard pointed out. “Think of all those foster homes.”
“No, no, of course we’ll streamline the process when we start mass-producing them,” Rutherford said. “Don’t forget we’ll be able to program the new fellows directly because they’ll be biomechanicals. If Tolkien had been given this project, what would he have done? Think of a marvelous School of Heroes, much more Socratic, less militaristic than the old Enforcer training camps.”
“Yes, I like the sound of that,” said Chatterji thoughtfully. “What to do with our prototype, though? Won’t we have to tell him the nasty truth about himself?”
“Of course. And I daresay he’ll be surprised, but how on earth could he be anything but grateful to us?” Rutherford waved dismissively. “With that magnificent health and intelligence, to say nothing of that ship, that wealth, all those adventures in exotic places? Why, it’s a wonderful life!”
THE YEAR 2350:
Alec Visits the Doctor
Though he had sworn he’d never set foot in the Bloomsbury house again, all dust, echoes, and palpable misery as it was, Alec stood in its parlor now.
He was overseeing the workmen who were bringing in new furniture and carpets. Alec had decided to redecorate the house himself.
It seemed like a properly stupid-aristocrat thing to do—fuss about new furniture and wallpaper in a place he never visited—and anyway the pale yellow mid-twentieth-century revival stuff he’d had before reminded him of Lorene.
Over the past few months he’d made a great public show of his new interest in buying antiques, spending outrageous sums of money on acquisitions of widely varying quality. Many of them were hideous, if authentic. Some—sadly, the more tasteful ones—were obvious fakes. All hope of bringing grace to any room they might occupy was dashed by Alec’s planned color scheme, which featured lots of purple and gold. Balkister, horrified after a virtual tour through the plans, told him it looked like what Disneycorp might produce if it ever decided to build a whorehouse in Fantasyland.
Alec was pleased. The stupider it looked, the better. He had no intention of living there.
The house was, in fact, a trap; or would be when he’d finished with it. He’d spent weeks fitting components into certain of the antiques he’d bought. Some were merely backup systems, if virtually undetectable, for the considerable security system Alec already had in place. Some were rather more than that.
He was especially proud of the system he’d designed to tag and track intruders. In San Francisco he’d found a twenty-first-century aromatherapy dispenser, a massive lump of hollowed amethyst with a hulking gilded cherub mounted above it. It was stupefyingly ugly, but nobody could deny it went with his color scheme, and now it did much more than its original work of misting fragrance into the air from the reservoir inside the amethyst while soothing chimes tinkled.
Now, there was a brain of sorts behind the cherub’s staring eyes. Once it was mounted over the fanlight in the entryway, it knew it was to watch for anyone entering through the door below. If it observed anyone who wasn’t Alec, or accompanied by Alec, it would part its fat lips and blow out a steady spray of scented microdroplets, sending them wafting down on the unwanted visitors. The perfume was an unusual one. Alec had compounded it himself, so it was unique in that sense, but it also contained millions of nanobots designed to permanently embed themselves in anything they encountered.
Not terribly deeply, and when they were in an intruder’s skin all they’d do would be to release more of the perfume, in tiniest increments over a period of years. Nanobot technology was too jealously guarded by its principal developer—Dr. Zeus Incorporated—for Alec to be able to get them to do much more, but once the intruder was tagged, Alec would be able to pick up his or her scent anywhere.
The cherub also whistled “Lilliburlero.” There was no hidden purpose there; Alec simply liked the tune.
Now Alec watched the workmen impatiently, wishing they’d hurry up. Not a wall, not a floor or window but reminded him of dead time.
He still wasn’t sure just what he was. Perhaps Dr. Zeus had been experimenting with disease-resistant humanoids; he’d never had so much as a head cold in his life.
Most likely the Company was even now aware of his every move, might know he was planning to broadside it and do as much damage as he could. And if it was able to stop him? If somebody, somewhere, was able to press a button that would terminate the Alec experiment? Probably a damned good idea, on the whole.
Boyo, this house is bad for you. Yer depressed. Yer blood sugar’s low. Eat something, for Christ’s sake! I told you you should have had breakfast afore the car came.
Shut up, responded Alec, but he groped in his coat pocket and found a carob-peanut-fig bar. He was unwrapping it when one of the workmen peered into the room apologetically.
“My lord? Where would you like this?” He held up a vividly enameled solid brass representation of Queen Victoria in a howdah atop an elephant’s back. Its only function was to offend the eye.
“Over there,” Alec told him, gesturing at a gilded table under the front window.
“In the window, my lord?” The man looked pained. “Where it can be seen?”
“Do it! No problem, okay?” Alec took a bite of the carob-peanut-fig bar. It was very hard, very dry, and tasted like hay. His pocket communicator shrilled. He exhaled in impatience and opened the call. “Checkerfield,” he growled, chewing laboriously.
“Is that Alec Checkerfield?” inquired a vaguely familiar voice on the other side of his tympanum.
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“My God, you’re a hard man to connect with.”
“Try Burke’s Peerage next time. Who is this?”
“It’s Blaise! Tilney Blaise, Checkerfield.”
Alec had a blank second before he connected the memory. He gulped down his mouthful of carob-peanut-fig. “Hey, man, how’s it going?” he said, with simulated heartiness. “Haven’t seen you since, what, commencement?”
“It’s been that long, I think,” said Blaise.
“Well, well.”
“I’m doing very nicely these days, actually,” continued Blaise. “I’m working in California now. Just flew across for some business in the London offices and I thought—well, I just thought I’d sound you out on something. See if you’re interested. Still coaxing that cybersystem of yours to jump through hoops for you?”
Alec smiled at the mental image, while the Captain snorted indignantly. “Sort of. I’m only here for a month or so myself, actually. I spend most of the year in the Caribbean.”
“What luck I got through to you, then. Listen, why don’t we meet for lunch somewhere? Have you been to Club Kosmetas yet?”
“Er—no.”
“It’s in the Marylebone Road. Quite très très. Great Greek food. Say half an hour?”
Alec winced. Greek cuisine in a country where lamb, feta, and retsina were all illegal wasn’t his idea of dining.
“Well—”
“I’m awfully keen on telling you about this place I’m at. Dr. Zeus, Incorporated. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”
There was a heartbeat’s silence and then Alec made a thoughtful sound. “You know, I think I might have. Don’t they do some kind of consulting?” The Captain materialized beside him and pulled a cutlass from midair. Grinning evilly, he took out a whetstone and began to sharpen his blade.
“Something like that.”
“Okay,” said Alec in a bright voice. “See you there, then. Half an hour.”
He paused just long enough to give orders to the workmen and then bounded down the front steps of the house, tossing his unfinished carob-peanut-fig bar into the gutter as he went (and thereby violating several municipal regulations). He jumped lightly into the car and switched on the motor. Whistling “Lilliburlero” between his teeth, Alec zoomed away in the direction of the Marylebone Road.
We ain’t ready to take ’em yet, son.
Oh, I know. We’ll play it cool.
Cool as the polar ice, my lad. What d’you reckon this Blaise is one of their observers, one of the ones Cecelia warned you about? They must know you went to see her. They must be wondering how much you know.
And I don’t know a damn thing, not me. He can do all the talking.
Club Kosmetas was a long narrow place, occupying what had been a row of small shopfronts back when trade had been rather brisker in Britain. Now connecting doors had been punched through, and the walls had been painted a dark yellow and decorated with neon representations of Greek cultural icons, such as the restored Acropolis and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The tables were small and packed into each room, making it difficult for someone Alec’s size to edge his way through. The place was nearly deserted. He could see Blaise rising from a table three rooms in, smiling and waving. Cursing under his breath, he smiled and waved back, continuing his crabwise progress between the tables.
“My lord.” Blaise half-bowed.
“Yeah, hi.” Alec reached out to shake his hand. “Wow, it’s been ages, hasn’t it?”
Alec! God almighty, the man’s a cyborg!
You mean he’s had a job like mine done?
No!
“The Circle of Thirty,” said Blaise reminiscently. “Would you ever have thought you’d look back on those days as simple and uncomplicated?”
“Nope, never.” Alec kept a bland smile in place, though he tilted his head and inhaled deeply. Blaise smelled human … and slightly nervous.
“I … er … I was going through some things in storage just the other day. I found the costume I wore at the swing gaskell at McCartney Hall,” said Blaise. “Remember that night?�
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“Yeah.” Alec winced.
“The night Lord Howard caught us all on the catwalk with the gin,” said Blaise, as though he remembered it fondly. “You’ll never guess what I found in one of the pockets.” He reached inside his coat and slowly brought out the silver flask. “I cleaned it up a bit. Thought you’d probably want it back.”
“Oh, shrack, that was Roger’s,” said Alec, staring. It was a moment before he could stretch out his hand to take it. “Thanks, man.”
It’s bait. He wants you to feel you owe him. Alec, this ain’t a human being!
Alec suppressed a shudder as Blaise leaned back from the table, adjusting the fit of his coat, smoothing his lapels.
“We were worried about you—Balkister and I, you know—and all I could think to do was get it away from you, so you wouldn’t be caught with it.” Blaise gave a rueful chuckle. “But I wasn’t entirely sober myself that night, and then the catwalk came down, and I lost my nerve and scarpered. Took off the costume when I finally crawled home and never had occasion to wear it again. Those were the days, eh?”
“Memories, all right,” agreed Alec, reflecting that his most vivid ones were of stealthy sex and miserable hangovers. He wondered what sort of memories the thing at table with him had.
“I’m afraid I’ve lost touch with most of the old circle, though.” Blaise settled back into his seat and gestured to the waiter, who brought them two goblets of chilled mineral water. “You ever see anybody nowadays?”
He’s some kind of machine … he’s got organic components, though. In fact he’s mostly organic over a ferroceramic skeleton. I think he was human once.
Alec smiled, though he felt the hair standing on the back of his neck, and shook his head. “Nobody, except old Balkister. He’s needed cash a few times. I’ve made some donations to his causes. Probably they went to pay his rent, but …” Is this the same guy from my Circle of Thirty, or some kind of robot?