“You mean your father.”
“Yes,” Od sighed, “my father. Bring him here now, or else.”
“Or else what?” said d’Arc. “You’ll vaporise me where I stand? I think not. You’ve already shown a reluctance to take life. You don’t have it in you.”
“OK then.” Od turned, aiming the Warsuit’s arm out over the catwalk handrail. “All these cool-looking aircraft of yours? Worth a few quid, I’d say. How about I start lobbing missiles at them? I bet there’d be some spectacular fireworks.”
“You could, I suppose.” If d’Arc was in the least bit worried or intimidated, he gave no sign. If anything, he seemed faintly bored. “I’d advise against it, though. Don’t forget we’re in a submersible vehicle some considerable distance underwater. You start blowing things up willy-nilly, who knows what might happen? A chain reaction, perhaps. A series of explosions of unstoppable momentum that will punch a hole in this vessel’s shell and doom us all. You wouldn’t want that, would you? Especially not with dear old Daddy aboard. What if I propose a simpler alternative?”
D’Arc snapped his fingers and two grey-suited T-Cell operatives emerged from behind a nearby bulkhead. They marched onto the catwalk supporting a third figure between them, a man in civilian clothing who staggered along, tripping over his own feet. Od quickly saw why. The man’s head was covered in a linen sack. He couldn’t see where he was going.
Halting beside d’Arc, one of the T-Cell paramilitaries tugged the sack off, and there stood Od’s father.
He blinked dazedly around. Then his gaze fell on Warsuit 1.0 and, with an expression that was both glad and rueful, he nodded.
“Dad,” said Od, feeling a terrific rush of relief.
“Well done, son,” said Professor Tremaine Fitch. He looked unharmed. Haggard, exhausted, somewhat wobbly on his legs, but basically OK. “Good work. You did everything I asked. Only, now I wish you hadn’t. Not your fault, but when I set things up for you to take the suit and come after me, I had no idea just how demented these people are.”
“Demented?” said d’Arc. “No. Determined, maybe. Willing to take extreme measures. But not demented.”
“What’s he talking about?” Od asked Wes. “There’s something here I’m not seeing.”
“I think I am,” said Wes. “I’m running a thermal image scan of your father. There’s something inside him, a foreign object of some sort.”
Od’s father’s body was displayed onscreen in a spectrum of colours, showing the hotter and cooler parts of him. Wes zoomed in on his head. Where Tremaine Fitch’s skull met his spine, amid warm reds and yellows, a tiny blue oblong stood out in sharp contrast.
“It’s inorganic,” Wes said. “The casing is plastic and silicon. Inside there’s a substance, some sort of resinous compound I can’t identify.”
At a gesture from d’Arc, the two T-Cell operatives shoved Tremaine Fitch to his knees. One of them forced him to turn his head, exposing a small bandage on the side of his neck.
“We,” said d’Arc, “have taken the liberty of carrying out a minor surgical procedure on your father, Odysseus. Nothing too traumatic. It was done under a local anaesthetic. Quite painless, I’m assured.”
“What is it?” Od said menacingly. “What have you put in his head?”
“You can’t tell from your thermal image? We’ve implanted a capsule containing a few milligrammes of PETN, an ultra high explosive. The capsule has a remote detonator the size of a pinhead attached to it. And, oh look, here’s the transmitter trigger.”
D’Arc undid a couple of shirt buttons to reveal a small black plastic rectangle attached to his chest. It reminded Od of the key fob you use to unlock a car electronically. A tiny red diode winked in the very centre of it.
“The trigger is synched to my heartbeat,” the T-Cell leader went on. “As long as I continue to have a detectable pulse, the transmitter will continue beaming a suppression command to the detonator. Should for any reason my heart stop… Well, you can work out the rest.”
Od let out a growl.
“Yes, surely this is the very definition of irony,” said d’Arc. His face was calm but there was a gloating glint in his eyes. “That capsule is lodged right at the base of your father’s brain stem, the exact same location as your mother’s tumour. She had a cancerous time bomb ticking away inside her head. Now he has an actual bomb in his. It’ll be a much quicker death than hers, of course, but no less permanent. Only you can prevent it from happening, Odysseus.”
Od knew what was coming next.
“A trade,” d’Arc said. “That’s what I’m offering. Your father for the Warsuit. Surrender the Warsuit to me, and your father gets to live. I’m giving you sixty seconds to decide. Otherwise, I simply pluck the transmitter off my chest. The instant its sensor loses contact with my skin, the capsule detonates. There’s enough PETN in there to entirely obliterate that magnificent brain of his.”
He bared his wrist, on which hung a Rolex watch with a crocodile-hide strap.
“Your time starts… now.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Quick, Wes, what are our options?” said Od. “Shoot him?”
“But if we kill him, your father dies, and if we only wound him, he’ll still be able to pull the transmitter off, or one of his men can do it for him.”
“What if we shoot the transmitter itself? Destroy it?”
“Bad idea. It’s keeping the bomb from going off. If it stops working, the detonator automatically discharges.”
“Forty-five seconds left,” d’Arc announced.
“Don’t do it, Od,” his father called out. “I’m not worth it. Don’t let him have the suit at any cost. It’s far too powerful to fall into the hands of a lunatic like d’Arc.”
Od was growing frantic. “Can we maybe jam the signal between the transmitter and the bomb?”
“Again, bad idea,” said Wes. “Interfering with the transmission would set the bomb off. D’Arc’s got us over a barrel, I’m afraid, Od. It’s the suit or your father. There’s nothing else.”
“There must be!”
“Twenty-five seconds, Odysseus. Time’s running out. I need an answer.” D’Arc clasped the transmitter as if preparing to remove it from himself.
“Don’t, Od!” his father called out. “I know what this man’s plans for the world are. If he has the Warsuit, he’ll be almost unstoppable. Millions will die. My life’s nothing compared to that. Stay in there and blow the arrogant so-and-so to kingdom come.”
“How noble!” d’Arc sneered. “Ten seconds, Odysseus. Nine. Eight…”
“Wes?” Od’s throat was tight with fear.
“Your call. It’s out of my hands. You decide what’s best.”
“Five. Four. Three.”
“All right!” Od said over the external speaker. “All right. You win, d’Arc. It’s yours. The suit is yours. On one condition. You take that bomb out of my dad’s head, you hear me? Soon as I’m out, it’s gone.”
“Agreed,” said d’Arc.
“Promise?”
“You have my word, and I am, trust me, a man who keeps his word.”
Od didn’t trust him. Once d’Arc had the Warsuit, however, what did he stand to gain from leaving the bomb inside Od’s father?
“Then we have a deal,” he said.
Tremaine Fitch dropped his head and let out a shuddering breath. Ready as he’d been to die, it was a relief not to have to.
“You’ve done the right thing, Odysseus,” said d’Arc.
“You’re going to have to give me a moment,” Od said. “It’s not easy getting in and out of this thing.”
D’Arc bowed, generous in victory. “Take as long as you want.” To Od’s father he said, “I knew I’d be able to winkle the sardine out of the can. All it needed was the application of the right sort of pressure in the right spot.”
“Oh, just shut up, will you?”
“Come now, don’t be like that, professor. Nobody likes a sore loser. And co
ntrary to your claims, I am not a lunatic. I have such dreams for the people of earth, such a glorious vision for the future!”
“You’re a monster and a megalomaniac.”
“Incorrect!” barked d’Arc. “But as I am the one who’s holding your life in the balance, I’d advise you to keep a civil tongue in your head – or else you won’t have a head at all. Ah! And here, if I’m not mistaken, is your youngster. The snail emerges from its shell.”
The hatch in the Warsuit’s back opened and Od wriggled out and jumped down. His limbs were numb and stiff from being confined in the suit for so many hours. He stretched them, joints cracking. Then he went over to his father.
“Dad? You all right?”
“All the better for seeing you, Od.” Tremaine Fitch embraced his son, burying his face in Od’s shoulder.
Od couldn’t remember the last time his father had hugged him. Had he done it since his mother died? It felt good.
“You shouldn’t have – ” his father began.
“Don’t,” Od interrupted. “You know I had no choice.”
“Family reunion,” d’Arc crooned. “How touching.”
“And you.” Od rounded on him. “You pompous windbag. Time to keep your side of the bargain.”
“Of course, of course,” said d’Arc soothingly. He motioned to the end of the catwalk. “Our on-board doctor is right this way. He’s waiting, in fact, all set to operate. You see, I knew you’d cave, Odysseus. It was a foregone conclusion. Love for a parent is one of the strongest motivations there is.”
“How would you know? You killed yours.”
D’Arc gave a slow, lizard-like blink. “I did not. That is a gross slander.”
“Well, someone did.”
“My parents are none of your business.” D’Arc turned on his heel and set off along the catwalk. “Follow me, both of you Fitches,” he said over his shoulder. “And you men.” This was directed at the T-Cell operatives. “Get our best engineers down here. I want them pulling that Warsuit to bits pronto. I especially want that operating system out of it. That’s the key to everything. Let’s tear that software apart and find out what makes it tick.”
Chapter Fourteen
D’Arc led Od and his father through the submarine, along corridors and through wheel-lock doors and up and down companionway staircases. It was a vast, humming labyrinth, full of laboratories and workshops in which T-Cell personnel were busy constructing and testing and fine-tuning various pieces of equipment. Od got the sense of an industrious empire, a self-contained little world like an anthill, where countless drones were subservient to the ruling ant – d’Arc – and toiled all day long to do his bidding.
He also grasped that there were different classes of T-Celler and you could tell them apart by their uniforms. Combat operatives wore grey jumpsuits, while engineers wore blue and scientists green. This colour coding added to the whole anthill impression. Everyone had a distinct role, like a soldier ant or a worker ant, knew their place, and could recognise their own kind at a glance.
“How was it?” Tremaine Fitch asked as they walked. “The suit? I have to know.”
“Pretty cool,” Od said.
“That’s all?”
“No, all right, it was amazing.”
“Thought so. Wes?”
“Worked like a charm. I got the feeling we were like friends, you know? He had my back, I had his. We sorted through problems together – though I was still the boss.”
“Good, good. That was the general idea.” In spite of their predicament, Od’s father allowed himself a smile of self-congratulation. “The whole point was to make something that anyone could learn to use, without needing years of training. An incredibly sophisticated tool made super simple. And of course, people work better in partnerships than on their own. Humans are social animals. We need interaction. So why not extend that to our relationship with technology?”
“Yeah,” said Od. “What’s weird is, I miss Wes already. He’s just zeroes and ones in a computer, when you get down to it. Just code. But he became… real, I guess.”
“For the suit to feel like a part of you, an extension of yourself, there has to be feedback between you and it, a continuous dialogue. Just as there is between your conscious mind and your subconscious. Wes is designed to mimic the function of the human brain and nervous system in controlling the body. The more real he seems, the better the suit and the suit’s wearer function together.”
“All very remarkable,” said d’Arc, “and your achievement, professor, will further T-Cell’s cause no end. But we’ve arrived at the ship’s sick bay. Here’s where you can be rid of the burden of that bomb. In you go.”
D’Arc held open the door with the red cross on it. The smell of antiseptic wafted out. Inside, a man in blue surgical scrubs was snapping on a pair of latex gloves. He beckoned to Professor Fitch, who went in. Od was about to follow but d’Arc held him back.
“Not you, young man. You and I, I think, should have a chat.”
Od looked at his father.
“Go with him, son. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“What about you?”
“Well, this isn’t going to be pleasant.” Tremaine Fitch put on a brave face. “But you know what they say. Better out than in.”
“Ten minutes, maybe less, and he’ll be good as new,” said d’Arc. “Let’s put the time to profitable use. When you learn a bit more about what we’re up to here aboard the Lux Aurorae, Odysseus, I predict you’ll be inclined to judge us a little less harshly.”
“They call us terrorists,” said d’Arc, “but then that’s the crude label that has been stuck on freedom fighters down through the centuries. Anyone who challenges the establishment, threatens the status quo, gets demonised like that. Even Jesus was considered a dangerous radical. That’s why the Romans got rid of him.”
Od and d’Arc were standing on the bridge of the Lux Aurorae, a control room where a crew of twenty sat at consoles and collaboratively navigated the immense vessel through the waters. Their T-Cell uniforms were white. Dominating the space was a monitor as big as a cinema screen, which relayed the view from a camera mounted on the submarine’s prow. Plankton and specks of floating organic debris glittered against an indigo backdrop, swirling like a heavy snowfall. Now and then a fish finned into view and darted away just as swiftly. A shoal of squid jetted past in V-formation, their skin aglow with ripples of bioluminescence.
“The fact is,” d’Arc went on, “we in T-Cell stand in opposition to a great injustice. We aim to correct an imbalance that is in danger of tearing the world apart. I’m talking about the technology gap – the gulf between the haves and have-nots, between the countries which want for nothing when it comes to modern conveniences and the ones which are condemned to an almost medieval level of existence by their lack of access to even the most basic consumer goods.”
“You mean the developed world and the developing world.”
“More or less. In industrialised nations we go through technology like we go through a box of tissues – use and discard, use and discard. People change their computers yearly, mobile phones monthly, with scarcely a thought. Never mind the environmental cost of such wastefulness. What about those who have nothing? The poor nations where a phone costs a year’s salary and a laptop is an unimaginable luxury? Why should they go without when others enjoy such abundance?”
“But that’s all changing,” said Od.
“Is it?”
“Yeah. Our class did a hook-up at school with a school in Botswana. We communicated with them for a term using email and Skype. It was quite good fun, actually.”
“One school in Botswana. A single school, in one of the few stable and prosperous African nations. But still, overall, the rate of inequality increases. The technology gap continues to grow. And then there are the inventions that could improve the lives of everyone, rich and poor alike, and yet are sidelined or ignored by governments, and sometimes even deliberately kept under wraps.
”
“Like the everlasting lightbulb? The car that runs on water? Those old rumours?”
“You may scoff, but as with all conspiracy theories there’s a grain of truth there,” said d’Arc. “Big corporations – the oil companies, the utility companies – do all they can to suppress revolutionary new sources of energy or power-saving devices. Anything that could damage their monopolies or their profits, they ruthlessly crush and quash. Governments go along with it because they’re in the corporations’ pockets. It’s a worldwide scandal – top-down cronyism that’s fleecing the public. Not to mention ruining the planet and inflicting misery on millions thanks to climate change.”
“So you’re eco-warriors, is that it?”
“Warriors, yes. Eco? Not so much. Progress is our aim – free and fair progress for all.”
Od noticed for the first time that one of d’Arc’s eyes was slightly discoloured. Within his left iris there was a bright red spot about the size of the head of a nail. It stood out against the iris’s pale brown like a drop of blood on a copper penny.
“But you kill to get your way,” he said.
“We must,” sighed d’Arc. “The only way to effect any kind of meaningful change in the global situation is violence. Governments protect their own interests with weapons and soldiers. We must meet their militarism with militarism of our own. I dearly wish it were otherwise.”
“And that’s where the Warsuit comes in. You want to copy it. You want to mass-produce thousands of your own, make a huge army of Warsuits.”
“Too costly,” said d’Arc, with a shake of his head. “Too time-consuming. What we want is simply your father’s control software.”
“Wes.”
“That’s the acronym you know it by, yes. We want to install a Wes in all of our fighter aircraft to make them more agile, more responsive to commands, more intuitive to their pilots’ needs and wishes. Not to mention make it possible for our personnel, many of whom have no professional combat experience, to fly them. It’ll give us the edge over the military might of every nation when – ” He stopped himself.
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