In World City

by I. F. Godsland

  Miranda tasted the acid and looked at him with a mock-sour expression. “You’re right, Dion. Maybe the promise of death is the only thing that can keep us from spending the whole of our lives in a dream. And the Ageing Initiative is putting out everything it’s got and more to sustain that dream for ever and ever. They’re getting the economics of it in place. Now all they have to do is fix people up so they can live up to what the economics can deliver. And I’m planning to be one of their greatest contributors.”

  She stopped and turned to face Dion, standing in the middle of the shattered pavement where they had been walking, unmindful of the occasional knots of people passing slowly by, unmindful, Dion noticed, that she was standing in a particularly filthy puddle. She said, “But I’m not doing what I’m doing because I think it’s all a lovely dream, Dion. I’m not doing it because I’ve swallowed the lie and think I’m going to get to live the perfect life without ever having to worry my pretty little head about dying. I never thought I was going to live forever. I thought I wasn’t and it was that thought that drove me to do what I have, here, in the Waste, with those kids, who’ve never given death a thought, one way or the other.”

  All the surface gloss her wealth sustained seemed to have left her. She looked bedraggled, destitute, utterly alone. “Dion,” she said, in a voice that was beginning to crack, “Death is obscene. It’s horrible. It isn’t some great challenge to be overcome, or anything grand like that. It’s just nothing. It’s completely nothing. And it makes nothing out of everything you might ever do in life. Because whatever you do it’s always going to be there at the end. And that’s it. Nothing. It’s just filthy, horrible nothing. It needs to be stopped.”

  She looked down into her reflection in the black water where she was still standing. “You once asked me why we’re born perfect. I told you we weren’t but you didn’t believe me. Yes, I know I could have told you a load of stuff about how we’re born as a new mix of genes with much of the damage eliminated so we don’t look so bad to start off with. Or I could have said that the better integrated we start the longer it’ll take for us to disintegrate. But that’s not what you were talking about was it?”

  Miranda had now had years to take in the faces of the children she had been offered and she had seen in them the same freshness and openness that was, even now, blowing through the Waste on the spring wind. She had also seen the hurt and the anger and the pain and the fear. But though that went deep, it was still an overlay. In the constrained cubicle of Dion’s Place, she had watched their histories fall away. They relaxed and looked at her with wondering, insolent curiosity. She was touched by this and had used her status back in World City to get an entry into a hospital birth unit. ‘Why are we born perfect?’ Dion had asked her and she had looked at the babies, thinking of his words. And afterwards, she had gone back to her penthouse in Basel to cry her heart out without knowing why.

  “You’re talking about the way we are, aren’t you,” Miranda went on. Then, less certainly, as if struggling with a new language, “You’re talking about the way we get experienced. I don’t know how that can be perfect, but I know what you mean. Perhaps, it’s the experience itself. Perhaps perfection is something we grant others.”

  Dion found the clarity in the air – washed clean as it had been by the sharp, hard shower, and blown by the cold spring wind – suddenly dangerous. Standing in the derelict street, struggling with her words as if trying to remember a poem or lines in a play, Miranda appeared to him unbearably beautiful. He felt as if he was about to dissolve into the clear light that was now shining on the rain-glazed street. Somehow he needed to re-establish some distance.

  “If you know we’re born perfect, what is it you’re trying to improve on?” he asked harshly.

  “I’m not trying to improve on anything,” Miranda came back, the struggle in her voice giving way to desperation. “I’m trying to prevent, preserve, hold back. What I let loose in those children – it’s like a restraint on the clock hands. That’s all. I’m not putting in something that should have been there already. I’m trying to change the fact that they’re born into a world that works to destroy them. Yes, they are born perfect and from then on they’re under constant attack. Everything works to damage and destroy them: bacteria, viruses, toxins, cosmic rays, radiation, oxidants, other people. All I’m trying to do is give our children some extra protection; protection against what’s trying to kill them right from the start.”

  She hesitated, the muscles of her face working. Then she cried out, “Listen Dion, the only time ever I didn’t believe that it all ended in death was when you showed me the pool on your island and I floated in the water looking up into the trees and the sky. It all dropped away then. I didn’t believe that death was all there was. I felt like I could live forever and ever and ever.”

  She began weeping bitterly and Dion felt a terrible wave of loss sweep over him. His head swam and the broken pavement tipped, but he tensed himself and stepped forward to catch Miranda before, as it seemed to him, she crumpled in a heap. She howled into his shoulder and he held onto her, a distraught child crying in his arms.

  After a while, her sobs stilled and she pulled away from him, sniffing. She said, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really know what’s going to happen to the children. I’ve no idea.” She gave herself a shake, adjusted her coat, and stepped out of the puddle they had been standing in together.

  *

  The kids hit adolescence. The diffuse, romantic eroticism of childhood was becoming more focused, more aggressive, more about what was happening between their legs. The older ones compared pubic hair lengths. The younger ones overheard a lot of stuff which they put together rather haphazardly, like anyone basing their ideas on other people’s experience. They all masturbated furiously, even the younger ones who’d picked up on the sign language of adolescent sex and hoped that something might happen if they made the right moves.

  They would never have dreamed of trying anything on with Miranda, but she and Dion couldn’t help but pick up the energy that was around. Miranda would find herself getting charged looks and Dion would note the hint of squaring-up in the older ones when they faced him.

  “You know, Mayer really fancies you,” Dion said.

  “Of course he does,” Miranda replied carelessly, but found herself colouring. She giggled and added, “He’s the strong, silent type, full of hidden passion. Dion, they all fancy me. What am I going to do with them? They’re coming on like a bunch of young Oedipuses. They probably want to kill you, you know.”

  “They’re just kids.”

  “Exactly.”

  They laughed at the roles that had been thrust on them, and relaxed into their parts without any particular tension. Miranda asked Dion if he’d like to go and have dinner with her, out in World City, and he agreed, curious to see where she liked going.

  Where Dion liked going was the kind of businessman’s restaurant that combined simplicity with quality, functionality with comfort, and which preferably had a certain amount of soundproofing between the tables. In the course of expanding his interests, he was spending increasing time in such places. He liked the invisibility they cultivated, the feel of everyone minding their own business. He never bothered to spend much money; the food was simply a prop, part of the stage set. What mattered were the negotiations.

  Miranda took him to a tower in Dusseldorf, on top of which was an expanse of glass-walled, palm-filled space. Scattered around its perimeter were some tables, as far apart as planets. The master introduced himself personally and there was a waiter for each table. Their own personal minion pulled out for Miranda a high, deeply-padded chair from beneath the dark-grained, carefully-polished, hardwood table. He pushed the chair in behind her, as she and Dion sat down together. From somewhere deep in the foliage came the sounds of running water and a lone guitar, just audible in the vast space.

  Miranda eyed Dion in their individual pool of light. She felt some apprehension. Had she overstepped
the mark? Had she taken him so far out of his usual haunts he would be offended by the contrast? But he seemed relaxed.

  “You’d better order,” Dion said, eyeing the menu. “I don’t know what half this means.”

  “Do you like this place?” Miranda asked, reassured by his easy admission of ignorance. “It’s not over the top is it?”

  Dion shook his head, smiling. Liking or disliking the place was not an issue. What mattered was that he find out how it worked. After he’d mastered the use of it, then he’d decide whether he liked the place and the experience it had to offer.

  “Reminds me of Dion’s Place,” he said, “only the view’s better.”

  “That’s the difference between World City and the Waste,” Miranda replied more hastily than she had intended. “In World City you can see.” She stared out over the vast filigree of lights stretching away into the darkness. The sight made her feel wistful.

  Dion glanced out on the light-filled space and said lightly, “You can look, but you can’t touch.”

  Miranda looked across at him. Had that been addressed to her? But his attention seemed elsewhere – back in the spaces of the restaurant – taking it all in.

  Dion was relaxing. He found his mind unusually clear, free of its usual concerns about his business, about the kids, about Miranda and what direction she might be taking. He found himself suddenly curious about her. He’d never directly asked her what actually went on in her life

  He asked, “What are they like? – The people you work with.”

  “The people I work with,” Miranda mused, surprised and rather pleased he was taking this interest in her. “It’s not like your set-up, Dion. I get the feeling you’re all in it together, you and your company men. You just happen to be the one who’s the best at it. So they give you their allegiance. My place doesn’t work like that. I might be the most capable but I’m not the most experienced. That makes for a lot of politics and petty jealousies. You know, people trying to get position by filling in for my gaps. And science isn’t like business. In business you’re valued by the deals you make – or the product – or the profit. People argue that it’s the same in research, but only the crudest work gets done like that – research that’s little different from product testing. In real science there are no limits. You handle a problem and that generates ten new problems. People have to get selective about what they work on, and the more a line of investigation develops the more selective they have to get. What happens then is that there’s a lot of ego and talking-up. So a lot of the time I find myself having to take care of people’s need to feel important rather than what they’re actually doing.”

  Dion was looking around again, feeling mildly irritated. The restaurant they were in felt too high; there was too much space in it; the lights below stretched too far away into the distance. He turned back to Miranda, determined to recover himself. “But what are the people you work with like?” he persisted. “What would I make of them? Are they black, white, tall, thin, happy, sad? Who are they? What are their names? How do you get on with them? Come on, you know the people I work with but I don’t know anything about your place. How many are there?”

  Miranda was mildly shocked. She wasn’t used to Dion pressing his questions. Neither was she used to talking so personally. She decided to give it a try though. “There were fifty-four at the beginning of the month. I don’t know how many there are today. I know even less about that than I usually do, with all the time I’m spending with you. We have a high turnover: students doing vacation work experience; and strolling transients – you know, knowledge nomads who like to travel around on the strength of a particular skill – people like that. Those ones I don’t usually get to know personally. They come and go and it’s not worth the time or effort.

  “I can tell you about the other end, though – the ones I sometimes feel I know too well. At the top, there’s William Burger – my deputy. He’s just over fifty, married, wants my job. I had a thing with him once when I was a bit younger. He was a contender for the directorship when the last director died. The place lost its funding then and I had more money to put up than William, so I got the job. I suppose you could say I bought my way in. Things have always been a bit complicated with William. The trouble is, he’s good and he’s got fifteen more years’ experience than I have. I had to appoint him deputy director. I pay him twice what he’d be getting in industry and four times what he would get in the universities. He makes out this suits him but I still think he wants my job. Then I’ve got Morton Schulman as technical director. Morton’s fine. He’s a big, beardy, bear of a man. He looks like he’d tear you apart if he felt like it, but of course he’s gentle as a lamb. He’s absolutely reliable and I pay him a fortune, too. Then I’ve got my research director, Sylvie Lacombe. Sylvie’s into her career so I know exactly where I stand with her – you know, degree at Toulouse, doctoral thesis at one of the INSERM centres, post-doc fellowships in the States, Wellcome fellowships in the UK. No, sorry, you probably don’t know, but her track’s pretty well mapped out. She’ll probably spend another three years with me, then she’ll go for a professorship somewhere prestigious or she might just jump into industry. She’s not sure yet. We talk about it over lunch or dinner – it’s all out in the open what she wants. Beyond those three there are just managers and team leaders who I know to say hi to and use first names at meetings with, but mostly they deal with Burger, Schulman and Lacombe, same as I do. I don’t know. I’m leaving more and more of it up to them. And why not? I know them well enough to be pretty sure what they’re going to think and do. Maybe all I’m interested in now is what’s going to happen to the kids. The rest of it is predictable.”

  “This guy, Burger,” Dion broke in. “You said you had a thing with him. How did it end?”

  There was concern rather than curiosity in Dion’s question so rather than tell him to mind his own business, Miranda said, “He got too serious – wanted to leave his wife for me. I didn’t want that and that’s what I told him. I wasn’t too sure how much I wanted him, anyway. I suppose I was never too sure how much he wanted me. I thought maybe he was just thinking of the possibilities I might offer him – rich man’s daughter, that kind of thing.”

  “This guy’s interested in possibilities, yet he’s stayed on as deputy director for ten years, working for someone who’s fifteen years younger?” Dion urged. “What’s going on?”

  “I told you, I pay him a fortune. I daresay he’s stashing it all away somewhere. He doesn’t exactly live extravagantly. My guess is he’s intending to open a place of his own. By the time he does that, I’ll be ready to do without him.”

  “Is there enough room for two of you in the work you’re doing?”

  “Absolutely, especially now the Ageing Initiative’s getting so geared up. And he’s entirely focused on animal work. That was part of the deal when he agreed to stay on as deputy director – that I let him keep that. So William could take off anytime, especially given the level he prefers to work at.”

  “What level’s that? Do you mean the animal work?”

  “There’s more to it than that. William’s rather conventional. He doesn’t believe in interventions at the DNA level. He’ll go along with what I want at the institute, but what he’s really looking for are the secondary effects we set in motion when we work on DNA in our experimental animals. He believes that if those can be identified we can work out longevity strategies every bit as effective as anything that derives from changes in DNA itself but which get around the ethical problems. I don’t agree with him. If you want to make a change then you go ahead and make it, and you make it at as deep a level as you can. Everything else is cosmetic. William goes quiet when I talk in those terms. I think he might be getting religious in his old age. He certainly doesn’t give me the eye anymore.”

  “What will he say when you tell him what you’ve been doing with me and the kids?”

  “I suspect that’ll be the time when he says thank you and goodni
ght. He’ll make some speech about our ethical principles being irrevocably at odds and march off in righteousness with all the money I’ve paid him.”

  “What does he make of this Ageing Initiative?”

  “He thinks it’s great. He thinks pension fund managers are his kind of people. He’s the one who deals with them, mostly.”

  “Miranda, when you come out with what you’ve done, aren’t there going to be a lot of other people who feel the same way as this William Burger? How are you going to handle them?”

  “I don’t see any problem. I’ll be presenting a fait accompli. I’ve told you before, the world and the Ageing Initiative are going to be so hungry for what I’ve got the ethics’ll go out the window.”

  “But won’t William Burger do what you say he does – take what you’ve made happen in our kids and make it work without the DNA interventions?”

  “He’d need two to three years from the time I announce the findings. Nobody’s going to wait that long when I can offer something that works immediately. Come on, Dion, what’s up? What’s worrying you?”

  “But William Burger’s going to be tracking the project isn’t he?”

  “No, it’s between me and Sylvie and even Sylvie doesn’t know the half of it. William doesn’t get a look at this one at all, beyond the knowledge that I’ve got groundwork going on with some local children – just looking at basic ageing processes. That’s about all Sylvie knows too, except that she’s monitoring the analyses and data collection. They both think there’s this control group of kids who are simply being observed – nothing actually done to them – all ethical and above board – just looking at the way they get older. What I do is mix in the samples from our kids with those from the control group. I’m the only one who knows there are really two groups in there.”

  “You’re too confident, Miranda,” Dion said.