Asimov's SF, September 2002 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-10T14:01:04+00:00

The Likely Lad by Kage Baker

Kage Baker returns to our pages with a new story about Alec Checkerfield. Ms. Baker is currently finishing up a full-length novel about Alec that will be titled The Life of the World to Come.

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Alec’s growing up into such a nice boy,” said Mrs. Lewin fondly, pouring out a cup of herbal tea. “So thoughtful. Do you know, he’s doing all his own laundry now? I never have to remind him at all.”

Lewin grunted acknowledgment, absorbed in his cricket match. It was only a holo of a game played a century earlier—competitive sports had been illegal for decades now—but it was one he had never seen.

“Though the water rate’s a bit high,” Mrs. Lewin added, setting the pot back in place and covering it with a tea cozy. “Not that his lordship can’t afford it, goodness knows, but the Borough Council get so nasty if they suspect you’re wasting anything! I said perhaps Alec ought to save it all up for once a week, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Changes his sheets every day. Won’t let me do it for him at all. Well, I can understand that, I said, fresh bed linens are a treat, and aren’t you the dear to save me coming all the way upstairs and rummaging in that old hamper for your socks….”

Lewin dragged his attention away from the lost green paradise of Lord’s and played back what she had been saying.

“Changes his sheets every day?” he repeated.

“Yes. Isn’t that responsible of our Alec? It seems like only yesterday he was toddling about and screaming every time I tried to take the face flannel to him, and now…”

“Now he’s fourteen,” said Lewin. “Hm.”

“How time flies,” observed Mrs. Lewin.

“Hm.” Lewin paused the holo and stood. “Yeah. Think I’ll go have a word with the boy about the water rate, all the same.”

He plodded up the kitchen stairs.

Mr. and Mrs. Lewin were Alec’s butler and cook. He lived with them in a mansion in London. Alec’s father, the sixth earl of Finsbury, lived on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean and his mother, the Right Honorable Cecelia Ashcroft, was somewhere else, and Alec hadn’t seen either of them in ten years. As a result, Lewin had been obliged to shepherd Alec through most of his childhood. Lewin was not the only one providing Alec with fatherly advice, though he was unaware of this. If he had been aware, he might have spared himself the long climb up to the fourth floor of the house, which was Alec’s domain.

Wheezing slightly, Lewin paused on the third floor landing. He could hear the hideous dissonance of Darwin’s Shoes vibrating above, loud enough to rattle the pictures of Alec’s parents in their frames.

Lewin didn’t mind that Alec was listening to crap music much too loud—he was always secretly relieved when Alec did something normal for a boy his age, for reasons that will shortly become apparent—but if the music were loud

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