by Ken MacLeod
‘Pardon me,’ he said. ‘OK. One more time: can you please tell me what all this is about?’
She told him how she’d come across Hope’s name and predicament, and how her friend Maya had tried to help. He listened, with an uneasy feeling of having been watched from behind.
And then she looked away and looked back and said:
‘One thing about the fix that I know and most people don’t, Mr Morrison… there is a basis for exemption apart from the conscience clause.’
‘What!’
‘It’s buried in the miscellaneous administrative provisions, not in the primary legislation. Even the recent rulings don’t change it, they can’t because, well’ – she smiled here – ‘it’s unexpressed, so to speak. I mean, the legislation was drafted with one eye on the possibility – which the government was publicly denying at the time – that some day it might become compulsory. That’s why they built in exemptions in the first place. The main way the fix works is by correcting the expression of deleterious genes, right? It turns genes on or off, depending. Sometimes it repairs a stretch of code. It doesn’t really add or take away anything. That’s one reason why it’s acceptable even to the bloody Catholics.’
His eyebrow twitched at that, and his gaze flickered to the cross on her neck, but he just nodded.
‘So,’ Geena went on, ‘this usually involves changing a mutant allele back to the wild type. But there are complications. You know about sickle-cell anaemia?’
‘Sure, that’s the one that’s bad for you in some ways but protects you from malaria. Does the fix leave that one in, then?’
‘Good grief, no! It’s a very painful condition, and it doesn’t have any advantages now even in Africa. But some young hotshot in the Lords who was on the committee that drafted all the amendments had had a smattering of biology education, and he was quite exercised on this point. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and all that. So he got a line or two stuck in that stated that a good medical reason for not taking – or more to the point, because it wasn’t compulsory then, not prescribing – the fix would be if you could show that your genome had a beneficial mutation.’
‘But how could you show that? How could you know?’
‘Well, exactly. In practice it would be vanishingly rare anyway. So after a bit of to-and-fro, their Lordships decided to let him have his way, assuming no doubt that this was’ – she smiled again – ‘the legislative equivalent of non-coding DNA. It’s certainly never been publicised, probably because they don’t want people coming up with nonsense claims about their beneficial mutations. Of course, people who would do that are the same people who’d in any case be exempt on the grounds of some wacky religion, so it all comes out in the wash.’
She cocked her head to one side and smiled at him, as if waiting for applause.
‘But you know this,’ he said, ‘because you learned it in sociology of science, or something?’
‘No, Mr Morrison. I actually found this out a couple of weeks ago, when I asked Maya to look for something like it in the Act and the administrative provisions. I just knew there had to be an allowance for rare but beneficial mutations. Well, I didn’t know, but I guessed. And the reason I was looking is’ – she flung out an arm, ta-da – ‘I found that you and your son have a possibly beneficial mutation.’
‘How did you find out?’
Geena looked uneasy. ‘Um, I ran some scanning programs on your genome sequences.’
‘I could figure that out for myself. You’re not supposed to do that, are you?’
‘Uh, no, but…’
‘What I mean is, how do you know it’s beneficial?’
Geena put her empty mug down on the trestle and began waving her arms around. ‘Well, the way syn bio works is they run sims of how a gene translates into a protein; you can actually see the exact cascade, and you can predict the properties of that protein.’
‘I know that, too,’ said Hugh. He did some hand-waving of his own, at the cornices. ‘New wood. I work with it. I read the specs.’
‘Of course. I should have known. Anyway. The mutation I found – there were lots, of course, everybody has some, but they were nearly all neutral, and anyway they were already well documented, but this one wasn’t in any of the databases. It’s in the genes for the retina. Specifically, the one for rhodopsin, that’s one of the rod-and-cone components. This gene results in a rhodopsin variant that has greater sensitivity to light, including outside the visible spectrum. So – how’s your night vision, Mr Morrison?’
Hugh shrugged. ‘Good, I suppose. Can’t say I’ve ever noticed any difference from other people’s, though.’
Geena smiled. ‘Like you said, it’s a hard problem. But there must be ways of objectively testing for that, and for other sensitivities – I suspect you may be able to see a bit into the ultraviolet, for example. In any case, you have a perfect get-out card to give your wife. She doesn’t have to take the fix, and she doesn’t need to plead conscience.’
‘But she doesn’t have the mutation.’
‘No, but you do, and your son does. Who’s to say the next baby won’t?’
‘Well, there’s one problem right there,’ said Hugh. ‘The chances are fifty-fifty the baby won’t have it, and I don’t see any way of proving it one way or the other without some kind of intrusive sampling, which I don’t think Hope would go for. In fact, you can take it from me, she wouldn’t. I think it’s her squick about that sort of thing that’s behind this whole objection she has to the fix.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Geena. ‘The wording of the provision is quite clear. It just has to be one of the parents, and therefore a possibility in the offspring.’
Hugh took a couple of steps back and rubbed his eyebrows, eyes closed tight behind his hand. Patches of false colour swirled and exploded like fireworks, behind a fading after-image of the big bay window. He wondered how much, if anything, to admit. It was only a week since he’d told it all to Hope. He didn’t feel like going through it all again with a total stranger. Come to think of it, he hadn’t told Hope everything… Maybe he should have. He felt guilty about that.
Then another point struck him with such force that he blurted it out.
‘Wait a minute!’ he said. ‘The gene’s recessive!’
‘What?’ Geena shook her head. ‘I didn’t say that. It must be a dominant allele, if it’s not in one parent but still shows up in the child.’ She frowned. ‘Do you know about this gene already?’
Hugh felt like kicking himself. He covered his confusion with a sheepish grin.
‘Sorry, just a conclusion I jumped to. I was thinking about sight, and – ah, forget it.’
‘No, no,’ Geena insisted, leaning forward on the stool. ‘What?’
‘It’s… kind of embarrassing.’
Geena made a show of peering around, hand cupped behind her ear. ‘Nobody’s listening, Mr Morrison. Except me, and I’m a scientist.’
‘That’s just it,’ said Hugh. ‘That’s why it’s embarrassing. It’s about a… superstition. Well, a traditional belief.’
‘I can cope with hearing about traditional beliefs, Mr Morrison.’
‘Well… where I come from, in the Highlands, there’s a traditional belief in second sight. It covers what the old parapsychologists used to call remote viewing and precognition. Except it’s pretty much involuntary. Maybe other things too, like, uh, seeing ghosts or… or the like.’ Hugh grimaced. ‘Runs in families, but in odd patterns. Skips generations, that sort of thing. When I was a callow lad, I sort of figured that the patterns were like those for a recessive gene. That’s all.’
‘Are you telling me you have this second sight?’ Geena sounded excited.
‘Not exactly, no.’ He shrugged. ‘Just… a speculation, is all.’
Geena slid off the stool and stepped towards him. Eyes bright, the short black hair that framed her face all aquiver.
‘Have you had any experiences that this might help explain?’
<
br /> Hugh backed away, towards the door. ‘No!’
He could hear the lie himself, in the vehemence of his denial.
‘Why don’t you want to talk about it?’
‘Well, you know, it’s all hearsay. Old wives’ tales. Village rumours. Playground tittle-tattle. And it can be very damaging.’
‘Damaging? How?’
This was the bit he hadn’t even told to Hope. He nerved himself to spit it out.
‘It can lead to accusations of witchcraft.’
‘Witchcraft?’ Geena laughed in his face.
His forearms came up and his hands clawed, as if to grab her shoulders and shake her.
‘This is no laughing matter, dammit!’
He was almost shouting. He stepped back at the same moment as she recoiled from him. He took a deep breath and let his arms hang down. She looked scared.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ said Geena. ‘I had no idea you were so serious about it. Is it something to do with the churches up there… what do they call them, the Wee Frees or something?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Hugh. ‘It’s a bit of that and something else. The population of Lewis – that’s the island I’m from – has more or less doubled this century, after declining for a very long time. Mostly because of the wind farms and immigration, but that in itself helps to retain the native population, with jobs and opportunities and so on. And just when this turnaround was beginning – way before the wind farms, towards the end of the last century – a lot of the incomers were kind of New Age types, people who wanted to get away from the cities and open a wee craft business or start an organic farm or whatever. Some of them were hippies, pagans, that kind of thing. Big families, kids running wild, all that. One consequence was a child abuse scandal that got fuelled by local suspicions on the part of those Wee Frees you mentioned about anyone who wasn’t a good Christian, let alone people who openly called themselves pagans and witches. Whatever the details of the original case – it may have been open-and-shut for all I know, it was many years ago – that kind of thing can rankle for generations. Some people in the generation after those pagans and witches found a way of hitting back, and a very nasty, underhand way it was too. They kept an ear to the ground for rumours of the second sight, and passed anonymous tip-offs to social services about anyone who was said to have it. On the grounds, you see, that this was an occult practice and therefore a risk indicator for satanic child abuse. They witch-hunted the locals right back. And of course in wee close-knit communities like that, just getting investigated is a disgrace, even if there’s nothing in it.’
Geena was shaking her head slowly in amazement. ‘That’s appalling!’
‘Aye, it’s appalling. Now this was before my time, the last case like that was before I was born, but people have long memories in small communities. So when I first got curious about the second sight – I found the term in an old book on Highland folklore that was lying around in our house – I asked my pals at high school, and they sort of tapped their noses and talked behind their hands about certain folks in the locality, and next time I was home I asked my dad about it, like, “Dad, is it true that old Mrs Macdonald has the second sight?” I guess I was about, uh, thirteen or so, not a little kid, and for the first time in my life my dad takes me out the back, literally behind the woodshed – well, the peat shed – and gives me a clip on the back of the head. Not hard, not to hurt, but like a glancing blow, you know?’
Geena nodded. ‘Uh-huh. I’ve had a few myself.’
‘Right. It was enough of a shock to me, I can tell you. So now he’d got my attention, so to speak, he told me what I’ve just told you about what had gone on, the investigations and that. He said never to mention the subject again. And I didn’t. Until now.’
Hugh felt a pang as he said that. He hadn’t even told it to Hope.
Geena was giving him a very quizzical look.
‘Why did you get interested in the second sight in the first place?’
‘I was a curious lad,’ Hugh said.
Geena considered this.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘none of this really matters any more. The point is your wife now has a good case for not taking the fix, and maybe identifying this gene will clear up all the superstition about the second sight.’
Hugh glared at her. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘There’s just no way I’m going to open that can of worms. No fucking way. I’ll tell Hope about it, and it’ll be her choice, but I’m sure she’ll agree.’
‘You think?’
‘Yes. I know my wife better than you do.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Geena. ‘But I’m betting otherwise.’
‘Like it’s any of your business.’
‘I just wanted to help,’ said Geena, sounding upset.
‘I know, I know. I appreciate that.’ Hugh frowned. ‘Why did you want to help us, anyway? Why take these risks? Is it because you’re a Christian, or what?’
Geena snorted a laugh. ‘I’m not a Christian! What makes you think that?’
Hugh pointed. ‘That cross around your neck.’
Geena looked away, then back. ‘It’s a cross I have to bear,’ she said.
‘Family pressures?’ Hugh guessed, with some sympathy.
‘Good God, no! My parents are as godless as I am. It’s a… cultural thing. I’m from a Catholic community – Goan, you know?’
Her voice had taken on a higher pitch: light, over-casual.
‘Oh, I get it,’ said Hugh. ‘Same reason as my colleague Ashid’ – he jerked a thumb over his shoulder – ‘wears the round cap, even though he isn’t a Muslim. Community identity, loyalty to—’
Ashid’s voice suddenly boomed from the hallway, through which, in one of those bloody-typical moments, he happened to be lugging a bucket of rubble.
‘You’re a bloody fool, Hugh!’
Hugh turned, embarrassed, into the full beam of Ashid’s grin. The plasterer’s gaze basked in Hugh’s discomfiture for a second or two, then switched to Geena. He patted the top of his head and tapped his chest.
‘You and me for the same reason, eh? To show the cops we’re not bloody Hindus! Every time they stop me they check me over and I tell them I’m a good Muslim and then they send me on my way with the same joke: they miss the jihadists, hah-hah! Like their fathers missed the IRA!’ Ashid mimicked a posh English accent, very badly, to add: ‘Sporting chaps the IRA were, at least they didn’t blow themselves up!’
Geena giggled. ‘Yes, that’s it!’
Ashid waved and went on. When Hugh turned back to Geena she was blinking rapidly and sniffing.
‘What’s the matter?’
Geena turned away and blew her nose, then turned back. ‘Sorry, nothing. It just upsets me sometimes. The stops. You’d think with all the information they have on us they’d not bother, but they do.’
‘You get hassled by cops?’
Geena gave him a what planet are you on? look. ‘Yes. And so does your friend, by the sound of it.’
‘He’s never mentioned it.’
‘People don’t,’ said Geena, in a bitter tone.
‘Ah, I’m sorry about that, I didn’t realise. Still,’ he went on, trying to lighten the mood, ‘I know what it’s like not mentioning things.’
Geena gave him a pitying look this time. ‘No, Mr Morrison. You don’t.’
After half a minute of silence, she spoke again: ‘I think we’re about finished here.’
‘Thanks for trying to help,’ Hugh said, ushering her to the door.
‘You’re welcome,’ said Geena.
That evening, after the ten o’clock news, Hugh waved a hand in front of Hope to ask her to disengage from her glasses, on which she was surfing. She took them off.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve got a confession. Today a very pretty girl came to see me at work.’
‘How nice for you.’
Her tone was light but wary.
�
�Ah, that’s not really the confession.’
‘I didn’t think it was, somehow.’
Hope put aside her glasses and leaned back. Hugh leaned forward and began talking.
When he finished, her eyes narrowed, as they had when he was going through the bit about the witchcraft accusations.
‘That’s all?’ she said. ‘That’s everything? You don’t have any more secrets you’d like to get off your chest?’
Hugh thought about it. ‘No.’
‘Good.’ She sounded miffed, as well she might.
However, to Hugh’s surprise, she took the rest of his account of the morning’s events in her stride. She insisted that the new information didn’t change anything. The gene was probably for nothing more than a susceptibility to hallucinations. She certainly didn’t want to make it the basis for any appeal.
‘I couldn’t bear it,’ she said. ‘For Nick.’
‘The publicity?’ Hugh asked.
‘The being made to feel different.’
‘They make him feel different already,’ said Hugh, with some bitterness.
‘That’s just prejudice,’ said Hope. ‘I’d hate for it to be science.’
Something was bugging her about the science, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.
14. Joining Dots
The following morning Hope finished the nursery walk and the breakfast dishes and the beds before 9.30, then sat down at the table and fired up her glasses, stared at the endless scroll of language-mangled queries and thought: fuck this.
Let Searle handle the questions for today. She couldn’t concentrate. She hadn’t slept well. Hugh’s late-evening belated confession had shaken her even more than the one last week, the one that had started with her confrontation with him over the gun. That Hugh, in their apparently open, weepy, letting-it-all-come-out-at-last conversation, hadn’t actually told her what was evidently one of his biggest bugbears about his hallucinations, and one of the main reasons why he’d kept it bottled up so long – that really, really pissed her off. Especially given that this aspect of his story was directly connected with the matter of social services and child protection, not to mention making Lewis seem an even less attractive place in which to get away from all this for a while.
