by Andy Graham
Ray felt the bile rising in his throat. “Interesting way of valuing people.”
“Please, spare me the sanctimony. You’re in the military. Science is supposed to be impartial, just like you legionnaires. We’re both tools to reach the truth, no? You would take a life to save a life.”
An exposed wire in the bottom left corner of the wall glowed bright white. The glass wall shuddered again as it was rammed by the gurney.
“If I assist one person to die to give a better life to millions, is it really that bad?” Lind asked. “And if that person is terminally ill, aren’t they helping humanity by dying purposefully?”
A number of guards ran past the door, too preoccupied to notice what was going on in the room. Ray pointed his baton at Lind. “And?”
“We have various projects going on here.” Lind pushed himself to his feet and tapped his desk-screen. “Some minor research into vaccines, less addictive analgesics than opioids and so on. Most of our resources have been dedicated to what’s called the Population Project. The president tasked us with finding a cure for some of the diseases that are making a comeback.” He took a deep breath and rushed the words out, dry-washing his hands. “And recently, I was required to devote the rest of our facility to this.”
The pictures of Rhys on the wall-screen were replaced by a document, the title in bold lettering. “A Targeted, Reverse-Engineered Disease Intervention Based on Genetic Markers Specific to the Mennai Population of Crops,” Lind said.
“I can read, Lind.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I hated it when my teachers read slides out, too. I’m not sure how people think that makes them ‘educational facilitators’.”
“Get on with it.”
“OK, OK. That was the official take. If you lose the last two words you get the real title. We were trying to recreate certain disorders in humans that had been eliminated by medical progress. The VP wants a dirty weapon, a genetic bomb that would leave those from Ailan untouched.”
Ray felt sick to his boots. “That’s possible?”
“Nothing’s ever 100 percent in science but we’re close. The more homogenous populations abroad are easier to target. Ailan and Mennai are much trickier. There’s been so much cross-pollination that the issue of race is almost a moot point. However, I think we cracked it. There’ll be some home casualties but that’s war, right?”
“I should kill you for this.”
“Someone else would just take my place. As for me?” Lind’s face darkened. “Why did I do it? Why did I put up with this, break every medical oath I took?”
A guard rapped on the window of the door. Lind didn’t react. Ray tapped his wrist with the baton. He wanted to get out of here. He was not going to leave here with Rhys, that much was obvious, but there were other things to deal with, both inside and outside this facility.
“The research for the president and the VP allowed me to conduct my own project. My family are carriers of an autosomal recessive genetic trait.”
“Keep it simple.”
“I am.” Lind looked genuinely puzzled.
“Simpler then.”
The tapping on the door became knocking, followed by shouts to the guard’s colleagues. Ray looked around the room for something he could use as a weapon other than the baton. He regretted leaving the rifle in the closet below. Even as a visual deterrent it would have been better than nothing, the military equivalent of Dr Swann’s stethoscope.
“OK, preschool level,” said Lind. “My wife and I are carriers. I tested her when we got together, without her knowing. She was fine; the mutation manifested later.” He ticked the points off on long, trembling fingers. “I wondered initially whether it was something to do with her work in the nuclear industry, but the condition is too widespread for that to have been a meaningful coincidence. That was a painful lesson in correlation versus causation for me.”
“Lind!”
“I’m getting there. We passed on the condition to our children.”
“Children? How many do you have?”
“Four.”
“You have four kids? How did you get round the law?”
Lind shrugged. “I paid someone off. We all use what we have to get what we want. You’re using brawn now, I used bribes then.”
“And your family?”
“The statistics didn’t work out for us. All three of our daughters are carriers. One is dead, another dying, the third, as yet, is asymptomatic. My wife called this morning to tell me our middle daughter took a turn for the worse last night. That’s where I’ve been all day. Much as I didn’t want to leave the facility once I learnt it had been breached, I’m not sure how much time she has left. Pregnancy seems to aggravate the disease. It’s some kind of hormonal trigger we don’t understand. That was part of my private research. The condition is spreading amongst society.” He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “My youngest daughter is pregnant, too.”
The knocking on the door got louder, insistent.
“And you were hoping to find the cure, to relive the glories of your bodyball playing days? To patent it, make millions and have the condition named after you? Your own Academy of Excellence maybe?” Ray’s words came out like knives.
“No. It wasn’t like that! I promise. I wanted to survive, I want my children to live.”
The glass wall boomed. The patients, now sitting on the makeshift battering ram, shielded their eyes at every impact. Ray fished the last of the grey boxes out of his belt pouch and moved Lind away from the desk-screen. The scientist didn’t seem to notice. He was chewing at a small scar on his upper lip.
“I wanted my children to live. I want my grandchildren to live,” he repeated quietly. “Do you want to beat me with that baton of yours for that?”
“For that? No. For everything else? Yes.”
Miescher’s face appeared at the door, streaks of eyeliner running down her face. The lock beeped once as a line of lights flashed from green to red. Her triumphant smile faded.
“James Lind Junior was the only one of my kids who wasn’t affected. He was a poor bodyball player,” Lind half-smiled to himself. “Terrible in fact, but he showed promise as a scientist. The military was his idea. I was against it. I thought he was too soft. I was against him using his first name instead of our family name, too. Why wasn’t he proud of his surname? I made so many sacrifices for my family – it should have been a badge of honour.”
The door slid open a fraction.
“Maybe he wanted success with a clear conscience,” Ray said. “We’ll never know now. But you would be proud of him; he played a pivotal role in unleashing the storm under the mountains.” Lind’s jaw went slack as Ray whispered in his ear. “We found Eddie Shaw, or rather he found us. That ‘gentle giant’ took out an entire squad of the 10th Legion’s finest. We were lucky to survive. Most of us. James Junior’s remains were carried out in a bag. I guess the VP didn’t tell you about that great scientific advance?” He patted the older man on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, son.”
The door was forced open another few centimetres. Ray plugged the last of his grey cubes into the desk-screen. Lind was sitting motionless, hugging himself. Ray placed the tip of his baton in a crack in the glass wall, where a thin wire sparked. He turned back to the red-eyed man by the desk. Tears were rolling down Lind’s cheeks.
“I think some of your congregation want to hear another one of those wonderfully rational sermons of yours.”
Ray flicked the switch on the handle. He threw his arm over his eyes. A grid of blue-white light screamed through the air. Cracks appeared, chasing each other along the wires. A fragment split and fell, followed by another and another. The wall disappeared in a charred waterfall of purple and black shards. They clattered to the floor. At that moment, the door burst open. Miescher hobbled in to the lab, ankle clumsily strapped. She was followed by a handful of weary guards.
As madness seized the room, Ray slipped out as silently as he had come in. The patients we
re too focused on Lind and Miescher to notice him go.
55
A Question
The VP had goosebumps. He’d spilt wine on his trousers, too. The president’s dogs couldn’t decide if they wanted to play-fight or groom each other. These details were important; they were real. He focused on the woman in front of him. The woman who had just flipped his life upside down. He tried to block out the story she was telling him, willing the words to mean something else, willing his real father to be someone else. What Bethina had told him between tears had ripped apart any sense of identity he was trying to cling to.
She buttoned up her silk shirt, the material not so much banned since the Revolution as tacitly discouraged. She covered the small pair of wings tattooed on her left upper breast. “We, the leaders of the Window Riots, added a small detail to the wings, using photochromic ink. Every one who joined the cause had the tattoo. Only three people knew of the modification. It enabled us to keep track of who was who very easily. Luke Hamilton, the president at the time, never figured it out. He could never work out how we were always one step ahead of him.” Bethina rubbed the mole on the tip of her nose, that nervous tic of hers that had always irritated him. “The tattoo was another of David’s ideas; without him neither of us would be here now. The tattoo also means I’ve been able to track people down since the Window Riots to ensure their selective amnesia is genuine.”
“You slept with him?” was all he could manage. Loathsome as the thought was, it was easier to deal with than the revelation about his parents.
“‘A common bed and a common cause,’” she said softly. “I wish I’d never said it, and he never let me forget it. David didn’t let me forget a lot of things about the Window Riots. That suited him well. He has . . . had,” she corrected herself, “a talent for twisting historical facts to suit his argument.”
“I thought you said you wanted to get rid of Prothero, when we were by the river.”
The president’s head snapped round. “I said no such thing! I said my life would sometimes be easier without him, just as it would sometimes be easier without you. But we are stronger together. David was part of that strength. Regardless of our history, having him in opposition gave us legitimacy. David—”
The VP buried his face in his hands. “No, stop. Don’t say his name anymore.” The thought of what he had just done to Prothero corkscrewed through his brain. “His post of Spokesperson wasn’t just to keep the people happy, was it?” He was trying to deal with this in an orderly way, but no matter how hard he tried to reshuffle his questions, they were choosing their own order, ducking the main issue.
“No. It wasn’t.” One of the dogs came over and nuzzled her hand, the tender gesture at odds with its scarred face. It was an incongruous image. The type of picture the public wasn’t allowed to see very often. Something in his pocket clinked against the table leg. His fingers closed around the trophy he had taken off Prothero and brought to display to Bethina.
The VP had come here to gloat, to impress, to conquer. He thought he had taken care of Chester, Prothero and the Franklin family, and his succession was guaranteed. He despised everything the Franklins stood for: their contempt for the system, their rebellious nature, the undeserved fame of Major Rick Franklin. He hated them almost as much as the man he had thought was his father, and the man who had been his father. Go on, admit it, a dry voice rustled in his mind. You’re jealous of Ray Franklin, too. He’s everything you aren’t: athletic, brave and honourable. Just like the superheroes from the comics you used to read.
The broken glass of the pocket watch cracked under his fingers. In a few short minutes his meticulously laid plans had been shredded and lay in tatters at his feet. The woman who had done so, who over the years had at times appeared to be in two places simultaneously, was grinding the facts he had built his life on into myths.
“There was a time when David and I would have done anything for each other.” Bethina’s cheeks reddened. “It was a love fuelled by the illicit thrill of rebellion that only got sweeter with every victory. But the reality of ruling is a harsh shock when you actually have to make good on the promises and rhetoric. Giving you up was the hardest thing David ever did but Ailan needed a strong leader. You can’t have that without balance or with a compromised history. You understand that.”
He pulled out the pocket watch. It had a smear of blood on the cracked screen. The three hands, two marked with a moon and one with a sun stood still. The president’s eyes widened when she saw it. “He didn’t give you that, did he?”
“No.” He couldn’t find the words to say anything else.
Bethina took a small knife out of her pocket. “Open it. The back.”
He dug the knife point into a worn groove under the winder and the back popped off. It clattered across the floor. The dogs watched it go, one of them letting out a low bark and rising into a half-crouch.
“Nothing is fixed, nothing is forever,” he read the inscription inside aloud. The first section had been the rallying cry Prothero had used many times.
“David first told me that during the Riots,” she said. “I’m not sure if it was a reference to the government of the time or our relationship. The watch was a gift from me when he was made Spokesperson. It was meant to be a joke. In retrospect, I think I was trying to make a point.” She pointed. “There should be a picture hidden inside it.”
The VP pulled out a small folded photo from the watch. Unfolded, it fit in the centre of his palm, the dog-eared edges curling in on themselves. He stared at the three people in the image, rage burning the tears in his eyes.
Prothero’s hair folded around his head in brown waves, a resigned smile on his face as he cradled the infant on his lap. The woman, the VP’s mother, his real mother, had her head bowed. Curtains of curly hair fell across her face. There was something familiar about her, something that grated on his already ragged nerves.
The president pulled her chair closer and clasped his free hand in hers. “David used to joke about child years; for every year a child aged, the parent would age twice that amount. Something died in him the day he agreed to give you up, but he said that at least he wouldn’t get old and die. Maybe things would’ve been better if he had stayed out of politics, stayed with his family, but I insisted he take on the role of Spokesperson. We needed balance. The public needed an outlet.
“I convinced him that Ailan needed him like it needed me. That he would be more use to you in government than at your side. I told him an adoptive family would give you the home and stability he never could, that he didn’t need to do the honourable thing by marrying your real mother, that it was a male knee-jerk response belonging to another age. He didn’t need to go through the sham of doing something just for tradition’s sake. Why? Just so other people would feel more comfortable about letting themselves be pushed into that pigeonhole themselves?”
“You’re saying running away is more honourable than standing by your actions?”
“If it tips the see-saw away from chaos, yes. Why should he be part of yet another dysfunctional family? Why be one of those people that limp along under the public illusion of a happy marriage, maintaining their masquerade with the show reel they post on the internet?”
“So I wouldn’t spend my life hating both my adoptive father and my real father? So I had a chance of a real family?” There were deep gouges in the palms of his hands. Skin under his nails.
“Does a real family depend on blood ties or emotional ties? Does a genetic connection always mean a better connection? I had a real family and I still hate my mother. David and I thought the family we chose for you was a good one. A better one. More stable. We got it half right.”
The VP heard every word like a full-bodied slap. He lurched to his feet, still clutching her knife. Stumbling over to the parapet, he looked down to the buildings below, drinking in the images of a life that was now not his.
Curfew had hit. The street lights had dimmed. Small headlights ran through
the streets, eager to get home before being caught. Officially, the thirty-minute grace period was extended to an hour at this time of year. Unofficially, it depended on who you were stopped by and whether the police body cameras were working or not. Giant projected images of the Midwinter Maiden in her jade dress danced on the buildings around the city, despite the power shortages. She looked over her shoulder, blew a kiss and slapped her behind.
When did she start doing that? She curtseyed when I was younger.
Her dress appeared to have been shortened again. It hugged her thighs way above her knees. He could remember a time when the dress had dragged around the Midwinter Maiden’s ankles, complete with a long train. Before long, the Maiden would hand the seasonal baton over to the Spring Herald. Their provocative costumes had inspired the barely-tolerated Veiled Carnival, a one-day indulgence of masks and alcohol and near-nudity to welcome the warmer weather. It had always been one of his favourite festivals. The freedom that hiding behind a mask had given him had been liberating. It had allowed him to pretend to be something he wasn’t, just like David Prothero had done for the VP’s entire life.
His mouth filled with sour spit. The intelligent glass that clad his own tower not so far away was playing a short film of Captain Electric. He was dressed in matching colours to the Maiden. The light from the figures on the buildings gave the impression that the streets had been washed in the viridescent river water. The VP pulled away from the grin of the giant soldier that now seemed aimed at him.
“If Prothero is your father,” the electronic image appeared to say, “then what does that make Joanna Miescher? Remember her? Prothero’s daughter. The nubile young woman who ‘thinks she’s a scientist.’ You made an exception for her and took her on a tour of the Palaces not just once, but twice.”
