The Graveyard Game (15 page)

There were a couple of schisms—both the Diannic Feminist extremists and the Sons of Cernunnos walked out of the synod, and terrorists from both factions bombed each other’s shrines. At the end of a year, though, they’d managed to put together a book of holy scripture and forge a new maternalistic religion every bit as violent and repressive as the old paternalistic ones had been. With the shoe now firmly on the other foot, the nonsecular world limped on.

I don’t think it was a judgment of Jehovah—or Diana either, for that matter—but about this time the Sattes virus swept through the prisons of the world, killing off most of the inmates as well as the guards and their families. In every nation on Earth. How much did you know about that one, father? Was it planned? Would you have forbidden it, if you’d been able? Well, the mortals lived up to your expectations, I’m afraid. The stupefying improbability of it all was mostly ignored, the official investigations perfunctory at best, because everyone was so secretly grateful.

Then the virus broke out in the world’s armies, and they weren’t so happy anymore.

When it ended, abruptly and mysteriously as it had begun, there were a lot fewer people; but the infrastructure for the new world was intact, so a boom period of prosperity followed. Wages were up, labor was satisfied. No wars for a while, except in places where it never stopped, with or without armies.

Like Northern Ireland. Somebody nuked Belfast, with a dirty little stolen bomb, probably one of the old ones misplaced by the former superpowers. Nobody’s quite sure who was responsible. But, surprise: when the mushroom cloud dissipated, the place was neither green nor orange. It was dead. Did that teach them anything? You’d bet it wouldn’t, father, and you’d be so right.

America had its troubles too, race wars and a growing antifederalist
movement, until the epidemic hit. Things went steadily on to hell in California, with two big earthquakes and an urban war in the south before the epidemic. Most of the population fled to the northern end of the state. Fusion power finally made the scene, and New York sued New Jersey to get its garbage back, now that the stuff could be used to power generators. Taxes went up. The pieces began to fall into place for the Second Civil War. I saw it, working in Texas, which was a big economic giant flexing its muscles. None of the mortals saw it coming, though.

Things went on in China and Africa about like they always had, insane repressions and bloodbaths in some places that made the news, peace and relative prosperity in other places that didn’t. Same with India. Quebec split from Canada and tried, without success, to join the European Union. The Inuits got a full-fledged nation to themselves up in the Arctic Circle. Parts of Japan sank following three major earthquakes in a row, and Mexico suddenly found its lap full of yen. Europe manufactured things and grew a lot of genetically improved vegetables.

The first Luna colonies were founded, and boomed, because the colonists got rich in short order. Even the janitors became millionaires up there. High wages, nothing to spend them on, good benefits. People fought to go.

And the Recombinant was born. And died.

In the Netherlands, as it happened. Some laboratory had been working away, unfettered by any laws against genetic engineering, and one day announced proudly to the world that they’d produced the first designer human being. Not only that: they’d done it six years ago, and the perfectly normal, healthy boy was now of an age to make statements to the press.

Though he didn’t, much. I remember seeing the footage of a terrified little kid at a press conference, holding tight to the hands of the two scientists who’d raised him. He was slender and dark, and all he said for the cameras was that he was very happy to meet people and really looked forward to going to school. That didn’t disarm the
people who screamed that his very existence was blasphemy. Maybe in time they would have been disarmed; but then the new plague began, all around the boy. Children he played with got it. People he shook hands with got it.

A mob broke into the house where the kid lived and shot him and the scientists who’d raised him.

They burned the house, with the bodies and the laboratory and all the records of the experiment. I personally doubt that the work was lost. Dr. Zeus must have had somebody on the scene to retrieve all that data. But every nation in the world signed an agreement: Never again would anyone attempt to create another Recombinant.

And if there were any of us immortals who still believed that the day would come when Dr. Zeus proudly introduced us to an astonished world—Look, these are the wonderful cyborgs we created to save the planet for you, and now that they’re retiring, they’d like to move into your neighborhood—if there were any of us who still believed that, well, we must have been a little shaken.

The twenty-second century arrived, and the year 2355 was another century closer.

L
EWIS WALKED QUICKLY
along Euston Road, past the bomb crater where the antiquarian bookshop once stood. He’d cleared out its treasures in one exhausting night just before the bomb went off, and managed to invite all his mortal coworkers out to breakfast an hour before the explosion, so that when the blast came, they were all sitting in a cafe arguing the merits of Thai iced coffee over Thai iced tea.

That was the last time he was able to afford inviting anyone out to breakfast.

England was poor now, like Lewis. Cutting loose Northern Ireland had seemed a good idea, but nobody had foreseen Belfast, and now there were roving Ulster Revenge League bombers carrying out reprisals for the Great Betrayal, as they termed England’s disengagement. A number of historic buildings were no more, including Lewis’s former place of employment. So far King Richard IV (dubbed Lucky Dicky because of his uncanny ability to dodge snipers’ bullets) and Parliament (who were less skilled in that regard than their sovereign, and died frequently) had been unable to come to terms with any of the several faction leaders demanding restitution.

It hadn’t helped when Scotland broke away. Terrorism was too tame for the Scots: they used lawyers. Richard’s predecessor, George VII (even less lucky than Parliament), signed away the Union of Crowns and was promptly assassinated by an enraged imperialist.

Now Wales was threatening to exit what was left of the United Kingdom, though its separationists were presently quarreling too violently among themselves to be able to draft a resolution to that effect.

London was once again a chilly place where people stood in queues for food, where children played in bombed-out ruins, where amputees hauled themselves along begging for change, where shop-windows were boarded up. Things would improve, eventually. They generally did.

Lewis pulled his coat tight about himself and sprinted up the dark narrow stair to his garret bed-sitter. Safely locked in, he took off his coat long enough to unpack the groceries he’d been carrying strapped to his body, chlorilar pouches worn like a diver’s weight belt: beans, consommé, mixed pickle, tomatoes, pilchards, raspberry jam, green peas. Not his favorites, but what he’d been able to get, and a nicely balanced haul. He lined them up on his shelf, rejoicing in a sense of abundance.

No evidence of mice this afternoon. Perhaps his latest strategy had worked. He made himself a jam sandwich, whistling, and wandered over to his communication terminal.

He had no fear the power wouldn’t come on. In these days of cold fusion, even England had dependable electricity. Not only that, the streets were kept tidy as people scavenged for trash to sell to the reactor stations. Taking a bite from his bread and jam, Lewis sat down and logged on.

On the little table at his elbow, Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax stared out at the world. Lewis had himself purchased the daguerreotype, and now it was one of several framed images Lewis owned and represented to his occasional mortal guests as long-departed family members. Usually, after identifying various nonexistent grandfathers and great-aunts, he’d tap Edward’s daguerreotype fondly and tell some story about a great-great-great-uncle who’d been a disgrace to the British Navy. His guests were invariably amused, and this kind of faked incidental detail never hurt when one was passing oneself off as a mortal.

Lewis had been working sporadically on what he had come to think of, ever since that long-ago weekend in Yorkshire, as the Edward Mystery. He hadn’t heard from Joseph in decades. For all he knew, Joseph had been arrested, and in any case Lewis didn’t want to think about underground bunkers and what was inside them. He had refused to admit that he was powerless to help Mendoza. He had stubbornly clung to the notion that following the long-cold trail of this mortal man might turn up some helpful detail, some useful clue.

Besides, Lewis found he had become unaccountably fascinated by Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax himself, who in some way was also the reincarnation of Nicholas Harpole. Lewis was beginning to understand how Mendoza could have loved these mortals to such a degree that she never stopped mourning one and threw away her career for the other.

Taking another bite from his bread and jam, Lewis clicked in. A particular combination of keystrokes encrypted all he saw and everything he was to upload that afternoon. Anyone monitoring his automatic transmission to the Company would read it as a long series of entries on the literature of the Socialist movement in Britain, guaranteed to send them channel-surfing on to monitor some other operative’s more interesting datafeed.

He opened the file headed
EASILY AND BEST FORGOTTEN
. There before him were the three letters in facsimile. The originals had long since passed into the possession of a museum in Southhampton, where they no doubt lay forgotten in some cabinet. It didn’t matter. Lewis knew them by heart now.

16th May 1843

My dear Richardson,

Here he is in all the full glory of his dress uniform—you’d scarcely know him, would you? Pray accept this remembrance from The Damned Boy as a token of his sincerest regard.

I fear all your assertions in respect to Navy life and morals prove more true than I can conveniently relate, and I
would not grieve you in any case with a recitation of my adventures. Suffice it to say that I cannot thank you enough for that advice on the removal of certain stains from one’s dress tunic, to say nothing of where to find the best purveyors of French letters.

You may hear something of the
Osiris
and her crew soon. I fervently hope so. Ten weeks of whist parties with the best small gentry of Southhampton—elderly daughters and solicitous mammas—I leave it to your imagination! I would welcome a howling Buonapartist, pistol in either paw. Especially at one of these whist parties.

I remain

Edward

10th February 1847

My dear Richardson,

You will undoubtedly have been informed by now. I maintain, and will maintain, that I did no wrong. I was derelict in no duty, disobeyed no order, indulged in no cowardice, conspired in no mutiny. I did strike a superior, if a vicious and stupid monkey in a uniform may be dignified with that title.

I am fully aware that my case is lost before it has even begun. Neither my conduct in the late engagements with the blackbirders nor the testimony of the common sailors whose capricious murder I prevented will weigh in my defence, given the birth and breeding of Captain Southbey.

Indeed, my only regret is that I did not kill the man outright, since his continued career ensures a drain on Her Majesty’s purse and certain danger to any men so unfortunate as to come under his command. There are certain offences to which I intend to testify, knowing full well they will not serve to acquit me but which must be shouted aloud. ‘Tell truth and shame the devil,’ says the poet, and so I must. He, at least, will suffer the indignity of hearing his particular monstrousness named before his peers. I WILL NOT BE SILENCED.

You cannot receive this news with any light heart, I know. Moreover, it has been forcibly given to me to understand that He of Whom We Must Not Speak has been seriously displeased by the news of my impending trial. How little I esteem his opinion you may well imagine, but the prospect of grieving your good heart is intolerable to me. You MUST understand that I have done nothing of which you would be ashamed, nor ever shall.

I remain

Edward

23rd September 1852

My dear old Richardson,

It grieves me more than I can express that I am unable to visit you at this time. None but you taught me the meaning of Duty, and mine requires my continued efforts here for the present, as I am certain you will understand, old soldier that you are. There will not pass one hour of the day when you are not continually in my thoughts.

You must get well, old man, you must obey Dr. Malcolm in every particular and avoid all care! I cannot imagine how No. 10 could continue without your ‘mailed and terrible fist’ to keep them all in line, and moreover, to whom shall I write if you leave me quite alone in this world?

For though One had the natural title and refused it, and Another assumed the title but bore it
in absentia
, God knows only you have ever done the office of a true Father to your Damned Boy

Edward

Lewis sighed, as he usually did on reading the last paragraph. There wasn’t a lot of material to run with, but over the years, through patient hours of cross-referencing and through the meticulous search of ancient archives, he had been able to piece together the following story.

On approximately August 1, 1825, a boy—almost certainly illegitimate—was born in a small country house near Shipbourne, owned by one Mrs. Moreston, who kept the establishment to accommodate well-born young ladies who needed a nine-month country retreat. One week later he was baptized Edward Alton Fairfax in St. Nicholas’s Church in Sevenoaks.

At this point in time, the property at No. 10 Albany Crescent in London was owned by one Septimus Bell, who resided there, childless, with his wife, Dorothea, and servants, chief of whom was the butler, Robert Richardson, a former sergeant in the 32nd Regiment of Foot. Mr. Bell’s occupation was listed as Gentleman.