In World City

by I. F. Godsland

  25

  Just before prophesy had taken her completely, Miranda Whitlam had caught sight of a picture of herself injecting the boys with her cocktail of molecular machines that might even get them a hundred years more on their lives. She had been moved by the image to scream and laugh.

  Had she really done that thing?

  Done what thing?

  The words for what she had understood in that moment were only put together much later. But unlike many such words, they came close to the truth. “It was like this,” she said to Dion, as they lay in bed together talking in that easy flow of associations that comes after complete abandon. “I died that evening and death was not what I thought it was. It’s true I was trying to hold death back in what I was doing with the boys. I was trying to hold death back in all the work I’d ever done. That’s the way it is in World City. You want to take it with you and since you can’t, you want to live forever. That’s what I did with the kids. I operated on them so new ways could be found of keeping death away. I operated on them with little molecular machines; little, hard, predictable devices that would harden up the predictable little bodies I had made of them, and myself and everyone else. But that’s why I wanted to laugh – I wanted to laugh at the irony of it. Because by working that way, I worked to guarantee the death I was trying to avoid. Gain control and you die into nothingness. Lose control and you die into eternity. That was why we went and found that room to spend the night together where I died again and again.”

  The world Miranda Whitlam returned to after their night together was a shadow play. The plans she’d had and the schemes she had set in motion were moves in a game she had no sense of ever having been interested in. She enjoyed seeing the children though. Children? It was eight years into the project and the oldest, Nial, was nearly eighteen. “We ought to tell them, Dion,” she said one morning, waking up beside him in some World City hotel room. “We ought to tell them what we did.”

  “Why?” He agreed with her, but wanted to hear her reasons.

  “Because I don’t want to make anything of it anymore – just see it through and if it works, hand it over for free to the Ageing Initiative.”

  “Why tell the boys now if you don’t want to make anything of it?”

  “They need to know before firm evidence starts coming through.”

  “Isn’t that the time to tell them?”

  “No, that’s when not to tell them. Tell them then and it’ll just get fixed in some little history they’ll put together for themselves – past or future. The only real gift I can give them now is uncertainty, the kind of uncertainty that might allow them to fall through the gaps in all this.”

  The turn of her head took in the perfectly appointed hotel room, its spotless carpets, heavy curtains, desk, hotel headed paper, World City, the Waste, all the things she had sought to preserve for a few years longer in the eyes of reprogrammed bodies the world over. “They may hate me forever for what I’ve done, which’ll just fix all this more firmly for them. But that’s a risk I have to take. You know I can’t choose for them. All I can do is help them to die in life not death.”

  Dion leaned over and kissed her. Her talk meant nothing to him and he had no desire to make anything of it. In their nights together, he had found himself with no option but to drown in her, to give himself up entirely. She seemed to have invited him. She had certainly accepted him. Her beauty and regard had finally closed over him after years of desire.

  Miranda felt his body warm and taut against her. She stared at the ceiling a moment longer then rolled over against him, returning his kisses. She still melted every time, from the first touch of his skin against hers to the time outside of time when he was deep inside her and her whole body was a smooth, great wave that grew greater and then wilder until she broke apart in some helpless instant.

  Afterwards, when they had subsided into mutual stillness, Dion asked, “So when are you going to tell them?”

  “Don’t know,” she murmured, “Don’t know whether to tell them one by one or all together. Don’t know. There’ll be a moment.”

  *

  The moment came when Nial said to her, up in Dion’s Place, “Miranda, I need to know what you’re doing to us. Outside of here I’m a company man. I’m running my own life. But in here I feel I’m still a child. It’s still the same thing we had when I was nine. The only difference is I can talk to you now. I don’t know what you shot us up with. I don’t know what you’re finding. I don’t even know what you’re looking for. Come on, I need to know. It’s not even like I need the money anymore. The cash is handy, but that’s all. I need to know what it’s all been about, if it’s still going to feel worthwhile.”

  Miranda took in Nial, his words, the concrete box of Dion’s Place. They shouldn’t be meeting here. It was out of date. It was a little, safe, secret place for small, wild street animals. Nial wasn’t one of those anymore and hadn’t been for some time. Even the youngest were out of place here. She ought to be taking the samples in some swell clinic commensurate with their growing standing in the world. She ought to tell them about the project at a fashionable restaurant or cafe, a place where they could celebrate how far they had come together.

  She said, “We’re finished with this place. There’s a clinic in Cologne I know. I can rent consulting rooms there, say over three days each month, and you guys can come when you like over that time. God knows, you’re all heading out that way most days. You can take your time; stop over for lunch or dinner – talk about the project or whatever.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s about, Nial. What I gave you in that injection was a mixture of virus-based vectors that carried a whole range of cell function modifiers. Theoretically, they should put fifty to seventy years on your lives, even a hundred maybe, providing you don’t get yourselves shot to pieces in the meantime. What do you say to that?”

  Nial was a thinker. He never said much to anything until he’d thought it over, sometimes for a long time. He showed about as much reaction as if he’d been told his blood group. “I’ll think about it, Miranda,” he said.

  Jetter, who by the grace of Miranda’s bonuses to the minders had survived long enough to gain some sense, was still not a thinker. “One hundred fucking years, Miranda? You mean I get one hundred years extra? One hundred years! What am I going to do with it all? I could get to do anything with all that time.”

  “I don’t know if it’s going to work yet, Jetter.”

  “Course it’s going to work. You’re a smart lady, Miranda. You wouldn’t have taken this on unless you knew it was going to work.”

  “It’s taking longer than I expected for the benefits to show through. Don’t get too excited.”

  “Longer to show through? Your lab’s fucked up, that’s all. Go and turn it inside out. I bet you find it’s working already.”

  She was working down by age. Biv was next. He looked scared. “What do you mean, Miranda – viral-based vectors?”

  She explained.

  “But couldn’t they be doing all kinds of things you hadn’t expected. I mean, they could be causing cancers or mutations or something.”

  She talked about all the safety testing she had done. Biv still looked uneasy but nodded his acceptance.

  The younger they got the less it meant, though it still meant a lot, even to the youngest, who preserved some of the child’s sense of grown-ups and their plans as a natural force, something that happened to them, like wind or rain.

  Nial, Jetter and Biv’s reactions – reserved judgement, excitement, fear – were typical of the whole, although excitement and fear predominated. The boys argued over whose was the right reaction. Excitement simply dismissed fear, whilst fear sought more indirectly to undermine excitement’s confidence. However, it was reserved judgement – Nial, Mayer and Mysté – that recognised the real problems.

  Nial sat with Miranda and Dion in the warmth of the glass pavement-extension of a Cologne bistro, watching the snow fall.

&nbs
p; “Miranda?” Nial asked, “Me and a couple of the others have been talking. What happens when you’re sure this treatment you’ve given us works?”

  “I tell you it’s worked.”

  “Then what?”

  “I start telling other people.”

  “What other people?”

  “Have you heard of the Ageing Initiative?”

  Nial nodded. He had been researching hard since last talking to Miranda.

  “I tell them, I show them the data and I hand it all over – but on a lot of conditions, aimed at safeguarding yourselves.”

  “What do we get?”

  “Privileged status in World City and regular income. That’s what I’d be holding out for.”

  “Suppose we don’t want any of that?”

  “That’s why I tell you first. It gives you the chance to cut and run.”

  “That puts us out of work.”

  Miranda nodded soberly. “I’ve realised that – now. It never occurred to me before that any of you would want out. How much compensation would you consider?”

  Nial shrugged, making it clear the sum was not an immediate issue. He was drinking red wine and picked up his glass. He took several widely-spaced sips, staring across the soft whiteness of the square outside and the scattered figures bundled against the cold. He said, “Miranda, I don’t think we’d be allowed to disappear. I think people would try and hunt us down. I’ve read about your Ageing Initiative and I think we’d be too interesting to lose. You’ve made freaks out of us, Miranda.”

  She leaned back in her chair, pulling her hair back from her forehead with both hands. “Yes I have, Nial. That’s right. When I started this project, I thought the extra life I’d given you was all anyone could ever want. I thought delaying death would be a magnificent achievement. I don’t think that anymore. I don’t think that way about death anymore. What way do you think about death, Nial?”

  Nial filled his wine glass from the bottle they were sharing. After another half-glass, he said, “I’m alive. I don’t think about death. I’ll think about death when I’m dead.”

  Miranda laughed, “It sounds as if there’s not much I can teach you then. There must be something you want, Nial.”

  Nial thought some more. “I wanted anonymity,” he said eventually. “I wanted to be a complete unknown. That way I’d have been free to move around how I wanted. I’d have set up operations all over the place – World City even. But I can’t do that now because I’ve been set up to be one of the most famous twelve people around. I’m still trying to work out what that means.”

  “Why don’t you stick around and find out?”

  *

  Nial stuck around just twenty-four hours. Then he was gone, along with Mayer and Mysté.

  The debate between the fearful and the excited intensified. The fearful – Biv, Tel, Dom and, for all the status accorded him by his eye patch, Ferrie – assumed Nial, Mayer and Mysté had left out of fear. The excited – Juan, Face, Sigi, Georgio and Jetter – assumed they’d left because the excitement was too much to take and they wanted to get on with their lives. Neither side thought about what was actually going to happen to them.

  Miranda thought, and thought the ones capable of learning how they might fall through the gaps between Waste and World City were now all gone. That left the others and the sooner some structure was put in place the better chance they had of handling the consequences of what she had done to them. She said to Dion, “I’m thinking of handing the whole thing over right now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, I just don’t see any point in my being involved anymore, not with the experiment anyway. I’d still like to see the boys though, arrange access, that kind of thing. So I’m going to hand it all over to the institute and the institute can decide how to deal with the Ageing Initiative. Burger’ll be over the moon, even though he’ll pretend to be outraged. I want to do this before Sylvie leaves, too. She’s had some involvement in the science, even though she doesn’t know it.”

  “I thought you said Burger was dead against gene-level interventions. Are you sure he’ll only be outraged?”

  “Pretty sure. But he’ll get the directorship and all the space he could wish for so he’ll find a way of dealing with it. And he’ll find a way of dealing with the boys and they’ll find a way of dealing with him. The ones who are scared will be only too glad to be part of something bigger than them. They’ll be financially secure and with some of the finest clinicians and scientists the world over giving them their best attention. The others’ll be okay as well. They’ll have a lot of fun with it.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I’ve had it, Dion. I can’t do this work anymore. I want to go and lose myself on your island. I want you to come with me. Do you want to come with me?”

  Dion hadn’t wanted his island when she had offered it him before but now he was lost in her. He didn’t mind where he went, as long as it was with her. “Sure,” he said.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Dion waved a hand. “We need to get the kids sorted first. When do you want to tell Burger?”

  “After New Year. And I’ll tell the boys then that I’m handing it all over. I think they’ll be okay with it.”

  “What about the ones who’ve gone?”

  “They’re slipping through the gaps just how I wanted them to. They’re on their own, and that’s how they wanted it. They’ll be working out ways to not get hunted down when this thing blows open. They’ll find a way, I’m sure of it. I miss them, though. They don’t matter as far as the experiment is concerned. The last update Sylvie gave me the trend was damn near significant. If it doesn’t come good with the last six months of samples, it’s never going to.”

  “How would a negative finding affect the ones who’ve stayed?”

  “Dion, it’s going to be positive. There’s no way it can’t work.”

  26

  On the first day after the New Year break, Sylvie Lacombe showed Miranda Whitlam precisely the trends and significances Miranda had been expecting for nine years. William Burger was ready with his alternative and Sylvie had spent Christmas and the New Year working up the last six months’ data so they would show all that Miranda had been expecting.

  Sylvie asked archly, “Miranda, what have you been doing? This study sample of yours, look, there are two distinct groups. I thought they were all from one group, like that one, showing normal progression of ageing indices. But that is only one half of the sample. This other half is different; it is showing significant retardation of the indices. Look, it’s there in every one of them. You have complete discrimination between the two groups.”

  From all she knew of Miranda Whitlam, Sylvie had been expecting eager, possessive excitement at this news. Instead, she saw the kind of ironic self-deprecation that was the usual response to experiments that had failed.

  Miranda said, “You’re not as innocent as all that, Sylvie. I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t been holding back data to give yourself time to manoeuvre. You didn’t think I asked Morton to work up those human viral vectors just for academic interest and you didn’t think I went over your head and asked four other groups to work on vector-mediated incorporation of sequence-specific modifiers just to save you the trouble. If you want to know, it was Marcus Olsen who put them together but by the time the material got to him it was all so far beyond discrete identification he might have been making vaccines. He has no idea what I put together with it all. It was the only way to do it, Sylvie. I would never have got ethics approval. But now it’s a fait accompli and there’s nothing anyone can do but accept it. Anyhow, I’m handing over the whole thing to William, institute and all. I’ve a trustees’ committee lined up to take care of the funding. The rest is up to you. Stick around if you want. Take that professorship in Perth if you want. I’m finished, Sylvie. I’m bowing out. I’m going to lose myself somewhere. You and William can take all the credit and if there’s any serious ethics problem you c
an blame me. I’ll leave you an affidavit taking full responsibility. Use it if you need to. I’ll be miles away. Anyway, everyone’ll be too excited to bother about the ethics – what’s up, Sylvie? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Uh – I asked the people in Perth not to contact you.”

  This was true, though they both knew it was inconceivable Miranda Whitlam would not have been sounded out for Sylvie’s suitability. The truth merely served to cover a far greater confusion in Sylvie’s mind.

  “Don’t worry,” Miranda replied airily. “I told them you’d be just what they wanted. You’ve a free choice.”

  Sylvie indeed had a free choice. For reasons she never bothered to work out, she used that choice to call Burger within seconds of her conversation with Miranda.

  William Burger had Miranda Whitlam arrested immediately. The holding charge was violation of the rights of minors. Some more charges would be thought of when the ethical-legal situation became clearer.

  *

  The first Dion heard of it was as breaking news on his ebony-encased screen, which was propped on the end of a bar in a third-rate World City hotel somewhere outside Bonn. The uncharacteristically low-grade rendezvous had been specified by a new corporate traitor who, given the time Dion had been waiting, appeared to be having second thoughts. Dion didn’t wait any longer. He called his five most reliable company men and told them to round up the nine remaining boys, put them in Dion’s Place and make sure no one went up – even if it meant destroying any World City security that happened that way. He was there within an hour. Six of the kids had appeared. The other three turned up after another two hours.

  “The experiment has worked,” Dion said.

  Jetter gave a whoop of joy and, characteristically, failed to ask where Dion’s information had come from, or where Miranda was.

  “You’re going to live God knows how long,” Dion continued, “but there’s going to be no more money in it.”

  “What do you mean – no money in it?”