Zodiac Station

by Tom Harper

  It’s always a mistake to attack Louise. Hit her with a punch and the knife comes out. She put her hands flat on the table, shoulders tense, like a swimmer about to push into the deep end.

  ‘You only cared for Luke because it was the one thing where you could compete with me.’

  We’d had this argument before. This time, I wasn’t going to play. Louise lapsed back into silence; I looked around the room. Once you got past the post-industrial concrete chic, you could see how primitive it was. There was a small kitchenette at the back, and a couple of doors that must be a bedroom and a bathroom. They’d obviously blown the budget on the lab space.

  ‘Who pays for this?’ I wondered.

  ‘I had some grant money left over. Beyond that, a few discreet and far-sighted philanthropists keep us topped up. Our overheads are fairly minimal – just supplies, and a couple of support staff off-site.’

  ‘Off-site?’

  ‘UPS doesn’t deliver here.’ An ironic smile, permitting me to laugh. ‘I pay the cook at Zodiac a small retainer to order in what we need, and leave it where we can fetch it.’

  I rubbed my eyes. ‘Danny’s part of this?’

  ‘He thinks he’s supporting a global counter-terrorism conspiracy at the highest echelons. We also have a technician in Iceland. As you’ll understand, to accomplish what we’re doing takes vast computing resources. Computers need power, and power is in short supply up here. The number crunching is done on servers in Reykjavik – we appreciate their laws on data secrecy – and beamed to us here on Utgard. Your colleague Bob Eastman found our transceiver in Vitangelsk.’

  ‘Is Eastman working for you, too?’

  ‘Emphatically no.’ He steepled his fingers, contemplating a problem. ‘Eastman is a real danger to us, much more than the unfortunate Martin Hagger.’

  ‘But Hagger found you out.’

  ‘He came close.’

  ‘So you killed him.’ All the impotence and anger inside me suddenly found a point to fix on. ‘You talk about the sanctity of life—’

  ‘Life with a capital L.’

  ‘You talk about building a better human. There are some pretty obvious upgrades you can make yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Martin Hagger, Thomas.’

  ‘He’d almost rumbled you.’

  ‘And I had found a way to, ah, discourage him. Who do you think told the Nature editors to re-examine Hagger’s sample? Who planted the idea in Francis Quam’s head – discreetly, of course – that if Hagger stayed it would jeopardise his precious funding? Everything was in hand.’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘Unforeseen circumstances.’ Again the five fingers curled into a fist, like a flower closing its petals. ‘For some time, we’ve allowed Thomas – our Thomas – the liberty of the island. We felt it was important to his development; also, we wanted to observe him in the wild. Obtain real-world data. Thomas is relatively impervious to extremes of heat and cold; he lived in an abandoned building in Vitangelsk. One day – last Saturday, to be precise – he came across Martin Hagger on our back doorstep.’

  ‘He didn’t know what he was doing,’ Louise said. ‘He was frightened.’

  She looked too tired for someone so young. Bags under her eyes, a grey tint to her skin. I don’t suppose she saw much sunlight, but it was more than that. It can’t have been easy for her, alone with Pharaoh so long. He’d always needed fuel for his tremendous energy, I remembered, and he drew it from other people. That was why so many of his students burned out.

  ‘Hagger provoked him. Thomas overreacted,’ said Pharaoh briskly. ‘Thomas’s emotional development has not kept pace with his physical and mental capacity.’

  Again, I thought of Greta climbing towards the light.

  ‘You mean he’s got the body of a wrestler, Mensa-level intelligence and the moral compass of a two-year-old. There’s a word for that kind of person in real life. We’d call him a psychopath.’

  ‘There’s an interesting debate to be had on the co-morbidity of certain desirable and undesirable behaviours. What’s socially acceptable may not ensure the species’ survival. How that plays out in Thomas’s development is one of the major factors we’ll be looking at over the next few years.’

  ‘Did he sabotage the plane as well?’

  ‘He couldn’t bear to see you go.’ That smile again, like someone speaking a foreign language, not sure you understand him. ‘Thomas has developed a certain fascination with you. It was he, you see, who attacked you on the glacier when you went back there. He recognised you, then; he understood who you were. That’s why he let you go.’

  The figure from my dreams. The arm raised, the face staring down at me. Recognition.

  ‘Why would Thomas care about me?’

  ‘When we made Thomas, we didn’t start with a blank sheet of paper. That would have taken too long. We took an existing human genome and edited the code. No point reinventing the wheel. Thomas is aware of that. He’s fascinated by the idea that he has a twin brother.’

  The words hit me like a bullet. ‘You used my DNA? My DNA to create this …’

  I caught Pharaoh smiling at me. I almost punched him – but I had to know.

  ‘Not yours. You and he share only fifty per cent of your varying DNA. Before improvements.’

  Louise was trying to look at me without catching my eye. The way I used to watch her in the lab, sometimes. Pharaoh glanced at her.

  ‘You’d better do this.’

  Louise put out a hand to steady herself. The mug rattled on the glass tabletop.

  ‘He’s talking about Luke.’

  Fifty-one

  Anderson’s Journal

  Emotions erupted I never knew I had. ‘You used our son’s DNA for this?’

  It wasn’t the most outlandish thing they’d told me that night. In fact, it made all the sense in the world, a piece that fitted perfectly. None of the rough edges that distinguish a lie. And for all that, it was the hardest thing I was being asked to believe.

  She nodded.

  ‘How?’

  ‘The cord blood.’

  Umbilical-cord blood is rich in stem cells; at birth, you can take a sample and freeze it. We did it for Luke when he was born – Louise insisted, though it cost a thousand pounds we didn’t really have. Imagine if he gets leukaemia, or needs a transplant, and those stem cells are the only thing that can save him, she said. And of course, I agreed. For Luke’s sake.

  ‘That was for him.’ I felt empty, as if the most precious thing I owned had been snatched from me and dashed to pieces. ‘Not this …’ I didn’t shy away from saying it any more. ‘… this monster.’

  I stood. Hurt and anger charged up inside me, years of accumulated friction ready to discharge like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t mind if it killed me. As long as it took her too.

  Remember Luke, I told myself. I had to get back to him. For all the menace in the room, the strange unreality, I wasn’t a threat to Pharaoh. He hadn’t broken any laws – there weren’t any on Utgard. If I revealed what he’d done, he’d be hailed as a genius, biology’s Einstein. Or maybe Robert Oppenheimer. As long as I kept calm.

  I forced myself to sit, gripping the sides of my chair.

  ‘So what happens now?’

  Pharaoh went to the kitchenette and got a bottle of whisky and a glass from a cupboard. He poured himself a generous measure. Didn’t offer me one.

  ‘We’re not going to publish in Nature, if that’s what you mean. We won’t make ourselves popular if we announce to the world that seven billion humans have just become obsolete. My company is discreetly patenting some of the more advanced techniques we’ve developed. We’ll feed them into the mainstream gradually, educate public understanding until this process feels as natural, as logical, as giving your kid his shots.’

  It was a good spiel. Pharaoh had enough bombast that he almost carried it off – certainly, if I’d been an investor, I’d probably have opened my wallet. But coming from a man as sharp as Pha
raoh, it all sounded rather vague. Some of the things he was describing might come to pass, and some might not, but there wasn’t a master plan. He’d done this thing to prove he could. Because he was curious. Because he wanted the power.

  ‘And me? Do I get pushed down a crevasse too?’

  Another tic of irritation. ‘I’ve already told you …’

  ‘Or will you have your creature do your dirty work?’

  ‘I’m not a murderer, Thomas. I’m in the business of improving life, not ending it.’

  ‘What about him? Will you take him to New York, unveil him on Broadway? You’d make the cover of Time, no question.’

  ‘I think Life would have been more fitting, don’t you? If it was still with us.’ Another chuckle. ‘No. Thomas will stay here. The accelerated development you noticed means he probably only has a few years of life. We’ll observe him, and apply those lessons to the next generation. In that respect, Utgard’s perfect. A quarantine zone with no escape.’

  ‘And Zodiac? Is he going to pick off the scientists one by one, if he doesn’t like the way they look at him?’ I had to laugh, though it sounded borderline hysterical. ‘Like the fucking Thing.’

  This time, I hadn’t heard him coming. The door opened and the creature came back in, dressed to go out in a yellow parka and black ski trousers. For some reason, he had the DAR-X logo sewn on to the sleeve.

  ‘I told you to go,’ said Pharaoh. The icy voice of a parent who wants you to know his patience has limits.

  The creature crossed to the television on the wall and turned it on. You could see his strangeness in every step he took, disproportioned limbs making disproportioned strides.

  He’s a machine, I reminded myself. Made of flesh and blood, but still a machine programmed by a computer.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Pharaoh demanded. His voice had risen, a note of worry puncturing the confidence, and I suddenly realised that the experiment was ongoing. He was making it up as he went along. Two years and four months. I remember when Luke was that age, how little I knew him compared to now.

  The screen went white. At first, I didn’t understand what we were seeing. The contrast was so high, almost monochrome, that everything looked alien and unworldly. White-speckled black, with a thick black mass churning at the bottom of the screen, flowing from a jagged white hole. Ice forming?

  A shape at the top of the picture caught my eye. I recognised the familiar peaks that loomed over Zodiac. But then—

  I was looking at Zodiac. But not as I’d left it, a few hours earlier. The Platform had been blown open. Black smoke poured out of it. The jagged edges I’d taken for a hole in the ice were pieces of metal, broken struts and bits of roof that had been hacked open like a tin can.

  I looked at Pharaoh. He looked as confused as me.

  ‘What—’

  ‘I don’t …’

  He picked up a remote. He must have indexed the video; in a few seconds, he’d jumped to a different scene. The camera slightly straighter, the Platform intact. I could make out a cluster of snowmobiles in the foreground, a few of the huts further back. The time-stamp in the corner of the screen said 21:57.

  Pharaoh restarted the video. After a second, two figures came into view from behind the Platform and headed towards the snowmobile park. Too far and indistinct to make out, but they must be me and Greta.

  Greta. Even as a few distant pixels, it hurt to see her there. As we reached the snowmobiles, a third figure stood up among them. He’d been there all along, though I hadn’t noticed him. Quam. I watched us chat for a couple of minutes, then Greta and I walked away. Quam went back to fiddling with the snowmobiles. After another few minutes, I saw a blob that must have been the Sno-Cat crawling up the Lucia glacier in the background.

  Pharaoh hit the fast-forward button. The Sno-Cat climbed comically fast, up over the top of the glacier and out of sight.

  And then it happened. The centre of the screen flared into a white starburst where the explosion overwhelmed the sensor, smoke leaking from its edges. A second later, the whole picture shook as the shock wave reached the camera and knocked it askew. More explosions, more starbursts. Smoking pieces of metal flew in every direction, cartwheeling over the snow. The Platform’s legs buckled, and the whole rear end collapsed in an eruption of flames and smoke.

  ‘How …?’

  Pharaoh rewound the last few seconds and played it again at normal speed. The doomed Platform reassembled itself; the Sno-Cat hurried backwards down the glacier, reversed, and crawled back up and over the top. Quam came out from behind a hut and walked slowly towards the back of the Platform, under the mess windows. I thought of the others, all the Zodiac staff enjoying Thing Night.

  Quam fiddled with something, then extended his right arm, pointing at something in the space. The arm looked wrong, too long for his body, but that was because he was holding something. A flare gun.

  The camera was too far away to see him pull the trigger. Just the faintest flash, before the Platform exploded and engulfed Quam. It went up so fast, he must have packed oil drums or something underneath.

  I rounded on Pharaoh. ‘Is this something to do with you?’

  One look at his face quashed that idea. He looked as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

  I’m in the business of improving life, not ending it. I turned to the creature. ‘You?’

  The creature shook his head. Unlike the rest of us, he seemed immune to what we’d just played back. Wasn’t even looking at the screen, but staring at one of the Hockneys as if thinking about something completely different. Perhaps he couldn’t comprehend tragedy.

  ‘I don’t care what you’ve done,’ I told Pharaoh. ‘We need to get back there. If there are survivors …’

  ‘Of course.’ Pharaoh was still staring at the screen, hypnotised by the carnage. Beside him, Louise looked sick. She slipped her hand into his.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Fifty-two

  Anderson’s Journal

  My coat and trousers were hung on a hook in the stairwell, mostly dry, though the coat zipper was still broken. I Velcroed it shut the best I could. The hard edges of the notebook in the inside pocket pressed against my chest.

  I noticed again the DAR-X logo stencilled on the creature’s jacket. ‘Where did he get that? Another “overreaction”?’

  A tight look from Pharaoh told me I was on the money. ‘An unfortunate encounter last September.’

  They suited up, and led me down a long corridor lined with corrugated plastic to a heavy door in a concrete wall. Pharaoh unlocked it, stepped through some small sort of vestibule that smelled of sawdust, and out through another door. Daylight hit me, and I wondered what time it was. How many hours had passed in the tunnels, in the mine, listening to Pharaoh speak? It must be at least mid-morning. I’d gone through the night without sleep or food, and I felt it. I found my sunglasses in my coat pocket and put them on.

  We were at the top of a narrow mountain valley, looking down at a cluster of tin-roofed buildings joined together by chutes and covered walkways.

  ‘Vitangelsk?’ I guessed. I’d only ever seen it on the map.

  ‘Mine Eight.’

  We skidded down the slope, following soft tracks in the snow. At the bottom of the complex we came to a large building jacked up on stilts. It seemed to be the terminus for some sort of cable car or chairlift. In the space underneath, hidden behind sheets of rusting corrugated iron, Pharaoh pulled tarpaulins off two gleaming snowmobiles.

  ‘Get on.’

  All I remember about the ride is the cold. No spare helmet or goggles – they never expected guests – so I had to keep my head down and clench my eyes shut. With the zip broken, I could only Velcro my jacket shut and keep close to Pharaoh. He kept his rifle in a sort of holster attached to the saddle – I could probably have reached it, if I’d wanted. But what would have been the point? We were beyond that.

  Any hope that the video might have been a fake, some warped practical joke,
died ten miles from Zodiac. Pharaoh paused at the top of a rise; I opened my eyes, and saw a column of oily smoke polluting the sky. We went on; the wind cut my eyes and made me weep, but I couldn’t stop looking at it. Wishing it would disappear.

  We came down the Lucia glacier and saw the whole horror show. The Platform had blown open like a ruptured artery; several of the nearby huts had burned, and some of the further ones had been torn apart by shrapnel. You could see bare rock where the fire had melted away the ice around the Platform. The snow that survived was black and cratered with wreckage.

  No chance to get into the Platform. Fires still burned inside; even as we dismounted the snowmobiles, another strut gave out and collapsed in a shower of sparks and screaming metal. We could feel the heat twenty metres away. No one could have survived.

  Louise voiced the obvious question. ‘Why?’

  I thought of the video, Quam taking the gun from his holster and calmly putting a flare into a pile of high explosives and oil drums. I remembered that night I met him in the corridor, the dead look in his eyes. This island’s trying to kill us. Was it the pressure that had got to him? The endless funding threats; the egos and the sniping; something in his personal life?

  I think it was this place. Surrounded by nothing, his mind had expanded so fast it shattered, like brittle ice drawn from a deep hole.

  We wandered around the base, opening doors and checking the cabooses for survivors. If only, I kept saying to myself. If only Greta and I had stopped Quam when we had the chance. If only we’d guessed. If we hadn’t rushed off to the Helbreen.

  If we hadn’t gone to the Helbreen, we’d have been on the Platform and we’d be dead. That’s the truth.

  The mag hut was far enough from the Platform that it had survived unscathed. I drifted towards it and peered in the door. The machines had stopped. All I smelled inside was dust and darkness.

  But there was something else. A sound, a shadow, a sense of movement at the back of the room. It was too dark to see. I took off my sunglasses, but the contrast was so stark it made no difference. Could there be survivors? And if there were, did I want to give them away to Pharaoh? I hesitated on the threshold.