by Hammond, Ray
She was both surprised and annoyed when, early in her afternoon off, the entry system to her flat chirruped unexpectedly. You didn’t get unexpected callers in the inner city. She looked at her video screen and saw a tall, fair-haired man with spectacles.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Jack Hendriksen. I work for the Tye Corporation. You gave me this on Wednesday. At Earl’s Court.’ He waved an envelope towards the camera.
‘Just a minute.’
Christ! Here in person? She’d hoped for a reaction, but she realized that she hadn’t prepared for this. Look at the state of the place. Look at the state of her!
‘Can you come back in ten minutes?’ she asked quickly.
The man nodded, waved the envelope at the camera again and moved off. She ran to her second-floor window and watched as he crossed the street and disappeared into the park. Where was his car? She wondered if he was a Tye Corporation lawyer, but this was a Sunday, she told herself.
She ran through the flat, waking her computer up as she passed. She had no time to shower or wash her hair, but she pulled on her jeans and a clean sweatshirt. She took her makeup into the living room and sat in front of her computer screens.
‘Call Flick’ she said as she removed the traces of last night’s mascara and shook her lens bath. Be in, just be there, she willed her sister.
She heard the ring, then Felicity said, ‘Haley. Hold on.’
Felicity’s face appeared on the central screen and then a tiny finger stretched towards the central camera lens.
‘Hi, Flick. Hi, Toby. Can you keep this line open for a while?’
Haley explained what she wanted and then turned her screens off. She was applying lipstick in her hand mirror when she saw the reflection of her cuttings on the wall behind her.
She ran to the bedroom and pulled a folded sheet from a drawer. She was applying the last piece of sticky tape to the wall when the entry system sounded again.
‘You’re alone?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Second floor.’
She buzzed him in.
Her visitor was at the door before she’d finished scooping the newspapers from the floor. She thrust them under the sofa, checked the door monitor to confirm he was alone and undid her security locks.
‘Miss Voss? I’m Jack Hendriksen.’ He gave his name again as Haley opened the door. Beige lightweight jacket, open-necked white shirt. Understated but expensive. A well-honed, honest face. Wedding ring. Tall. She realized he wore his spectacles for high-level communications, not short-sightedness, and he didn’t bother with any of the fashionable unisex ear jewellery to disguise his clear plastic earpiece. Haley felt the briefest dry pressure as they shook hands.
‘Come in.’
She seemed smaller than she had in the crowd but her face was even more open, even more humorous and attractive than he recalled. He guessed she was in her early thirties. The apartment was bright, well furnished and suggested a greater degree of affluence than he had expected – air-conditioned, he was pleased to note. One wall was nothing but books. The door slammed behind him.
‘Oh, here.’ He held out his ident.
‘Vice-President, Corporate Security, the Tye Corporation,’ she read out loud. She picked up her VideoMate, copied the ident and received confirmation. ‘What does that make you – a private policeman or chief bouncer for the Touchers?’
‘A little of both, I guess.’
His blue eyes were straight and steady as he stared down at her. He seemed calm and she detected no tension in his face or in his body language. She felt a sudden pull inside her, low down, that she hadn’t felt for a long time.
‘So they’ve sent you to sort me out in person, have they?’ she asked, handing the ident back.
He smiled, tiny laughter lines appearing by his eyes. He produced her envelope from inside his jacket.
‘You should be careful what you do with stuff like this. You’re making some pretty wild allegations.’
‘Am I?’ said Haley, her jaw jutting sufficiently for Jack to see a hint of real determination. ‘All I’m asking is for Thomas Tye to talk to me about these things. My biography will be published with or without his input, or consent. He might as well have his version of the truth included.’
‘Mr Tye doesn’t give any interviews, as you must know. And, according to this first page, the corporation has injunctions granted against you in eleven countries.’
‘Injunctions are only temporary, Mr Hendriksen. Any lawyer will tell you that. Once my publishers submit my manuscript to the courts they will be lifted.’
‘Not if it’s libellous, they won’t.’
‘A libel is only a libel if it is untrue,’ said Haley.
‘So you can prove all this?’ He waved the papers.
‘Buy a copy of the book. I’ll sign it for you.’ Her voice cracked and Jack could sense the agitation behind her apparent composure.
‘You must know that your book will never be published,’ he reasoned, walking over to the window and looking out across the park. ‘The Tye Corporation can throw so much money into litigation your publishers will simply run for cover. They’ll realize that even if they won in court, the legal costs would be more than they could ever make from your book, even if it was a best-seller.’
‘So you’re here to scare me off.’ Her voice was becoming hoarse.
No, no, this isn’t the way he wants it to go. Start again. ‘Would you mind if I sat down?’ he asked.
She waved a hand towards the sofa.
‘I’ve done my homework,’ he smiled as he shrugged his jacket off and eased his tall frame down into the cushions. Haley remained standing, arms folded; a slight but determined figure. ‘I know you’re highly respected as a biographer. That film star’s biography, Josh Chandler, of course: it’s famous – you’ve made a lot of TV appearances about him. And some of the reviews I’ve found . . . your Book of the Presidents, was that the last? . . . I saw it got some great notices. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.’
‘Go on.’
He hesitated, then plunged. ‘Look, I’m not really here on company business. I haven’t been sent. I’m not even authorized to speak to the media and . . .’ he hesitated ‘. . . I’m the only person who’s seen your questions so far.’
Haley looked down at him. In her mind she knew he was likely to be lying, but instinct told her he wasn’t.
‘I don’t believe you. One way or another you’re here to try and stop me telling the world where the Tye Corporation is heading.’
‘I’m not. No one knows I’m here.’ He had an idea. ‘I’ll prove it. May I use your system?’ He pointed at her computer on the desk.
Panic. Don’t show it. ‘No, my system’s down,’ she lied. ‘Tye software, I expect.’
He smiled, watchfully.
‘I’ve got my VideoMate.’ Haley touched the unit at her belt.
‘It’s OK, I’ll use mine,’ said Jack. He pulled his Tye communicator from its belt clip. Then he remembered that he had deliberately switched it off to disable its location function.
‘Sorry, you’re not the only one with system problems,’ he smiled ruefully as he removed its memory card and returned the small device to its holder.
‘Here,’ offered Haley. ‘Mine’s a Sony.’
He flipped the small mobile device open, inserted his card and touched the screen. He searched through the recording.
‘Look,’ he prompted, handing her the VideoMate.
She watched the small screen. ‘That looks like Tye,’ she exclaimed. ‘When was this–’ She stopped mid-sentence as she saw that the screen display showed the recording had been made at eight that morning.
‘Enjoy your day,’ Tye was saying to the camera. ‘Go to an art gallery or something.’ She heard Jack’s voice respond as Tye sprayed his mouth, pulled on a face mask and walked out of the hotel lobby to the waiting limousine. Tye turned back to the camera with a laugh. ‘Take a punt out on the river!’
Then he was gone: into the car with another man and a woman and off through the city streets.
She stopped the replay, searched backwards and then zoomed in on Tye’s face.
‘That is Tye, isn’t it?’ said Haley. ‘Why’s he wearing a mask? I thought that was just another of the Thomas Tye jokes?’
‘Well, he does wear them in private,’ confirmed Jack. ‘He’s afraid of germs.’
She frowned and replayed the clip from its start. ‘Isn’t that Cambridge? It looks like Regent Street.’ She recalled it from her university days. ‘I didn’t know Tye was still over here.’
‘We came back yesterday. TT – Tom – has some private visits to make.’
Haley put a finger to her chin in parody of a thought occurring to her. ‘Let me guess: Moleculture plc, Bioneme Ltd, Erasmus Research plc and Genome Technologies.’
Spot on, thought Jack. ‘Tom has a lot of investments around Cambridge. But, as you saw, this is my day off I’m not here for the Tye Corporation.’
‘And you just happened to make that video to convince me of your sincerity, didn’t you?’ objected Haley, intrigued at the lengths her visitor was prepared to go to in order to convince her.
‘I normally record everything,’ said Jack simply. He took his spectacles off and touched the frame. Haley saw minute lenses in the corners. He touched the lapel of his jacket where it lay on the arm of the sofa and she saw others in the buttonholes. ‘Don’t you video meetings and so on? Just for legal safety, and security?’
She almost shot a look towards her desk. ‘OK, OK, I’ll play along for a while. You’re here for your own reasons. So what are they?’
I’m here because I’m every bit as worried about Tye and his company as you are, because your face has been in my mind since Wednesday – I even printed out a still – because you put your address on the first page and that was an irresistible temptation. Because I’ve been feeling lost these last few years. But I think I’m getting over it, maybe.
Jack banished his emotions to his subconscious and picked up the sheaf of papers from the sofa cushion. ‘Have you got proof of any of this?’
Haley hesitated. She looked into his pale blue eyes. His gaze seemed even and sincere. Should she trust her instincts again? They had let her down before.
‘I’ve got something for you to see,’ she said as she uncrossed her legs and rose from the sofa. She walked to her desk and pulled a thick wedge of paper from the centre drawer.
*
The vast greenhouses covered thirty-six acres of drained fenland and were triple-glazed throughout. Electronically operated foil blinds between the glass panes allowed the capture and escape of both light and heat to be accurately controlled. The vast area of glass was coated with translucent high-efficiency solar-energy cells made by Tye Solar Energy Inc. Inside, the air-conditioning system used the captured energy to hold the temperature at a steady 14°C for the sixteen-hour artificial ‘nights’ and 6° for the eight-hour artificial ‘days’.
In a warm twilight, Thomas Tye and his small entourage were led to a bed of shoulder-high maize. Tye alone wore a face mask and latex gloves. He was invited to pick an ear of corn. He took the small knife proffered by his guide and carefully snipped an ear from its mother plant. He pulled back the green protective leaves. The corn was plump and bright yellow. He passed it to Connie for her inspection. Next they came to a miniature wheat field. Once again, Tye examined the maturity of the ears and nodded his appreciation.
He was shown red Desiree potatoes freshly lifted from another bed, green beans from still another. He was then invited to inspect tanks of rice and soya beans, all plump and fully mature and, finally, a young arabica coffee bush already hung with maturing red beans. The party then crossed through a double-door airtight enclosure into a higher-ceilinged greenhouse that contained six beds of pine saplings. Small signs at knee height announced them as pinus strobus, pinus palustris and pinus nigra.
Tye nodded his approval again and followed his host from the greenhouse and along an enclosed corridor. The rest of his entourage and a group of accompanying researchers followed a few steps behind. At the end of the corridor the party stepped out of the rubber boots that had been provided and slipped their own shoes back on. They stepped into a corridor and Connie held open a bathroom door for her boss.
She waited a few minutes until he emerged without his mask and gloves and she led him into a large, brightly lit conference room.
The visitors were shown to their places at an oval conference table and Tye walked round to a chair that was still in its protective wrapping. Connie slit the tough plastic around the arms and seat of the chair and Tye sat down. The APU had visited the room the day before and Jack’s technical team had been able to confirm its secure status to Pierre, the security manager for the day.
Coffee, tea and soft drinks were served and all but Tye took some refreshment. Professor Sir Oliver Morton, the distinguished Cambridge University geneticist and co-founder of the company, stood at the head of the table, his thin, ascetic frame clad in a formal brown three-piece suit. He cleared his throat and fiddled with his cuffs.
‘We are delighted to have our chairman with us at Moleculture today,’ he beamed at the all-important visitor sitting to his right, at the rest of the visitors and at his own research team. ‘As you have seen, Tom, we have now successfully incorporated the genes of several semi-tropical C4 plants, mostly from the maize families, into the genomes of most of the C3 plants, the main cash crops of the northern latitudes. This means that they are ready to grow at almost any point in the twenty-four-hour cycle, when there is light. They must have rest periods, of course, but they now exhibit positive thermotropism – that is, they grow throughout the day and at very low light levels, typically those found at dawn and dusk.’
Thomas Tye nodded and then started a small round of applause in which the rest of the party quickly joined.
The biochemist bobbed his long, thin head appreciatively. ‘We have also managed to increase the crops’ conversion rate of solar energy from its usual one per cent to five point three per cent.’
Tye tapped his appreciation on the table top. Sir Oliver’s smile became broader.
‘And, in our main tree genuses, the pines of the northern latitudes, we have been able to increase their CO2 uptake by sixty per cent. Wherever they are planted, they will become a twenty-four-hour carbon dioxide sink!’
Thomas Tye banged the table hard in appreciation and the entire party clapped.
‘One for our planet,’ Tye commented quietly to Connie, but not so quietly that he couldn’t be heard.
The knight’s grin became Cheshire.
‘As a next step we are hoping to get permission to plant four acres of each crop in the Scottish Highlands so that we can measure how robust each of the new strains is under natural low-light and cool-temperature conditions. We would then be able to carry out the necessary transgenic tests to ensure there is no unintended cross-pollination, and to test ecological impact on insect life and the food chain.’
‘How long will that take, Oliver?’ asked Tom amiably.
Morton blinked and swallowed, aware that their VIP guest and main source of funding had just asked the most delicate question of all.
‘Well, that depends on the government’s Genetically Modified Organisms Committee,’ explained the professor quickly, looking around the table in canvass of his colleagues’ support. ‘We were about to file our applications for permission when the latest GM food scandals in France and Greece were uncovered. I’m afraid things have become rather difficult at present.’
‘So how long?’ persisted Tye, still smiling.
Morton cleared his throat again. ‘Well, I can’t see us getting permission to move into open fields in the current climate. At least, not for a year or two. Perhaps after the next election we–’
There was a cough from the other end of the table. ‘Of course, we have all we need to prove our sequences and secure
the patents,’ broke in Dr Frederich Zimmer quickly, his voice rasping and intrusive. Along with Morton, the German-born biochemist and co-founder had been the company’s initial source of funds. He had pumped nearly all his wife’s inheritance into the company, before they had run out of cash and Tye had moved in to save them.
Zimmer rose and walked to the front, his sharp charcoal-grey suit a contrast to Tye’s casual white shirt and chinos. He turned to face the man who had now become the company’s principal investor and largest shareholder.
‘The patents, they’re the main goal, aren’t they?’ he suggested. ‘To make low-light and pseudo-nocturnal crops ours.’
Tye nodded, still relaxed, his left arm slung over the back of his chair. ‘But what if someone else is getting to open-field trials with a similar idea, Fred?’ he asked as he looked up at the squat, florid German. ‘Remember, American patent law has now changed to come into line with the rest of the world. It isn’t first-to-invent any more; the World Patent Organization will only approve on a first-to-file basis and we can’t make a filing until we’ve done our field tests. We may have to adjust the gene sequence to suit natural growing conditions. First-to-test and first-to-file wins under unified patent law.’
Zimmer waved a hand dismissively. ‘One, I doubt that anyone else is working in this particular part of the plant genome and two, where could they be conducting trials? They’d have the same problem as us.’
Tye worked to control his notoriously short temper with this arrogant German geneticist. He had become marginally better at masking it in public in recent years.
He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘One, I know better than you, Zimmer, who else is working on low-light plant crops. Four other companies are in preparation for field trials of crops intended to be grown in more extreme latitudes. And, two . . .’ He trailed off, aware that he was letting go – and that he was saying too much. He took some short, deep breaths, then tried another tack. He walked to the head of the table and put his arm around the geneticist’s shoulders. At five feet, nine inches he was only an inch taller than the German.
