The Life of the World to Come (31 page)

Read The Life of the World to Come Online

Authors: Kage Baker

Tags: #Adult, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Fantasy, #C429, #Extratorrents, #Kat, #Travel

BOOK: The Life of the World to Come
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“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. Fine 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?
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I refused. And he told me I couldn’t! He only hinted at the things that might happen if we disobeyed. I wanted the truth, and at last he broke down and admitted that we’d be raising Elly’s baby. Why on earth would a Company with that kind of power interest itself in the affairs of a pop star?
“Roger couldn’t explain. He kept saying there was nothing we could do, and if we gave the baby a better life than the one he’d have had with his natural parents, where was the harm?”
Where was the harm. Alec closed his eyes for a moment, hearing Roger before the cold educated voice swept on over his memory:
“So I went along with it, may She have mercy on me. I signed the damned agreement, swore to keep the lie. I’m violating that oath now. What do I care, after all this time? Let them try to come after me here! But I never saw Roger with the same eyes again.
“Can you wonder that I could never bring myself to touch you? I know it wasn’t your fault, and I can’t expect you to forgive me. But you had plenty of affection from everyone else on that boat.”
“You pushed me away,” said Alec in a thick voice. Cecelia shrugged.
“I’m sure you didn’t miss me when I left. There was simply no point in continuing with the charade. Roger was miserable and, believe me, I was as miserable as he was. I came here and consecrated myself to a life of penance for what I’d done.”
Cecelia had rehearsed that speech a thousand times over the years. What a feeling of release now, what a weight was gone! She tilted her head slightly, watching the effect of her words on the man. He’d gone very pale; all that high color had just fled from his face.
“What happened to her? To, to—Elly?” Alec asked.
“She never recovered from what they did to her. She’d been a little slow before, you see. After you were born, she just went away to another planet It’s a happy place. I have that much consolation: she at least has stopped suffering.”
“Where is she?”
Cecelia considered him.
“I’ll take you to her,” she said at last. “I don’t think you can do her any harm now.”
She led him out of the Epona chapel through a curtained alcove, across a quiet garden. Somewhere there was the staccato chanting of contralto voices, a vaguely frightening sound in that peaceful place; but it grew fainter as they emerged onto a wide lawn.
There was a croquet game in progress there. Half a dozen girls in white were scrambling about clumsily after wooden balls, watched by reserved-looking women in blue robes. One or two of the girls wandered by themselves or sat on the grass rocking to and fro. Alec realized with a start that they weren’t girls, but damaged women. One grimaced uncontrollably, another’s laugh was far too shrill and constant; another staggered like a baby just learning to walk.
The women in blue were clearly their attendants. One approached now, questioning Cecelia with her eyes.
“Will you bring Sister Heliotrope, please?” said Cecelia. “She has a visitor.”
The attendant glided away and returned a moment later with one of the more enthusiastic players, gently relieving her of her croquet mallet as they approached. She protested, but only until she spotted Cecelia. She ran forward and hugged her gleefully.
“Mother Cicely! Nice seein’ ya!”
Cecelia hugged her back, apparently with genuine affection. Alec stared. He looked at the plain round face, imagining it with the garish makeup of the ’twenties, trying to see
the horrified girl of the news footage. Not this smiling creature with her blank china-blue eyes. She looked nothing like him at all.
“Heliotrope, dear, this man has come to see you,” Cecelia told her. Elly turned to notice Alec and looked away, taking two little sideways steps to put distance between them, like a well-behaved animal avoiding a noisy child.
“Too busy,” she muttered.
“Now, dear, be nice. He’s come a long way. Let’s go sit in the shade, shall we?” Cecelia led them to a bench and sat down with them. “There we are. I won’t go away, dear, it’s all right. Did you have anything to say to her, Alec?”
Alec reached out to take Elly’s hand. She looked at it with an unreadable expression.
“I—I just—Are you okay here?”
“Yeh,” Elly said.
“Are you happy?”
“Always ’appy, ain’t I?” Elly grinned, showing gappy little teeth. “Lucky me!”
Her voice was still young, her accent that of the London clubs where the bands had played and the kids had danced, a million miles from this place she’d come to.
Alec blinked back tears. “I wanted you to know—how sorry I am about the bad stuff that happened, and—and to let you know your baby didn’t die. He was safe the whole time. He turned out okay.”
“Oh, yeh, I knew that, din’t I?” Elly nodded rapidly. “No aggro on that. No way Jose! All okay, you know why?”
“Er … why?”
“’Cos, ain’t I had ‘im just after Christmas? I was this virgin, see. Poor old Tommy never did it at all. I thought we was doing it and then the doctor and the police was going, you know, questions questions questions and it turned out we wasn’t doing it after all only I didn’t know better ’cos I’m so dumb. Not that dumb! I know you don’t get no baby from not doing it So I was scared it was like in that Ultimate Evil game with the Devil and all. An’ then the Forces of Darkness stole’m away.”
“Don’t argue with her,” Cecelia told Alec quietly.
“An’ it all came to little pieces and I was cryin’ so bad. But
then I got into the Goddess and everything was really cool. They told me the story, see? They’re all, a virgin has this baby at Solstice and ’e’s the child of light, and the bad guys take ’im away from ’er and she’s really sad, goes to jail. I was in jail. But then, ’e’s really okay, see? Because ‘e ain’t dead. ’E never dies. And then the virgin is so happy. And I knew that was my story, see? It’s all about me! Me and my child of light.”
Alec caught his breath. Out of the unwanted memories seeping up came a Christmas party, at least Sarah had told him it was a kind of Christmas party, when he’d been so tinywinji he hadn’t known there were any other children in the world, and then there were lots of them, black like Sarah, and he was with them around a tree trunk where there was a party for them all with cake … and the old black man bowing his head for them to pat his hair, and the black people smiling and clapping their hands and singing about the children of light. Sarah carrying him back to the harbor, sugar-sticky and sleepy, telling him he was her little child of light. It had been a sweet memory; suddenly it chilled him.
“Oh,” said Alec. “Well—I’m really happy for you, then.”
“That’s ’im up there.” Elly jerked her thumb at the sun. “See ’im? I can see ’im any time I like. Sun my son. Son my sun! Ain’t ’e neat?”
“Yeah.” Alec looked away, wishing he hadn’t come.
“Just
looks
like ’e dies every night. Not really.”
“No, of course not.”
“’E didn’t die! Not my baby, not my poor little tiny baby—”
“Heliotrope, they’re having lots of fun over there,” said Cecelia. “Why don’t you go back to play? I think we’ve had a long enough talk, don’t you?”
“Okay,” said Elly, and leaped up and ran away unsteadily. Alec sat staring after her. Cecelia watched him, and after a moment she said:
“Do you have any idea why they did it, Alec?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m going to find out.”
“I always wondered, you see … Roger mentioned once that there was a division of his company that did some kind of genetic work. And that awful man did swear you weren’t
his child, I mean really past the point where it made sense. He’d have had much less trouble if he’d just admitted to it and paid his fines.”
“Yeah.”
“And there was something different about you, Alec.” Cecelia shook her head. “There’s something different about you still.”
There’s
something
different, all right.
Alec shuddered violently. “You don’t think—there wasn’t some weird sick cultist agenda or anything, was there?”
“A religious one, you mean? At Jovian Integrated Systems?” Cecelia looked contemptuous. “Not if Roger was any example. He believed in nothing. Life was easier for him that way.”
“And they’ve never done anything with me! Nobody ever told me what I was or why I wasn’t like everybody else. I’ve had to figure it out for myself,” Alec cried.
“Perhaps they’ve simply been watching you, to see what you’d do,” Cecelia suggested. “Just how are you different, Alec?”
“I’ve got a couple of, er, talents,” Alec said uncomfortably. “I’ve done real well for myself in the world, as a matter of fact. But nothing I can do is worth what happened to the rest of you.” He turned to Cecelia.
“Listen to me. Jovian Integrated Systems doesn’t exist anymore. They were bought up by this even bigger company that calls itself Dr. Zeus Incorporated. I’m going after them. If anybody who’s responsible for me is still alive, I’ll find him, or her, or it.”
Cecelia gazed on him, a strange expression in her cold eyes.
“You’re a
good
man,” she said at last, as though she couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. She rose to stand before him and, placing both hands on his shoulders in a formal gesture, leaned down to kiss him between his eyes. He was amazed.

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