Gemsigns

by Stephanie Saulter

  She had also neatly boxed him into a corner. He could now never say that he was being blackmailed and had no choice. She had sensed he was about to put her in an invidious position, and, depending on what his own intentions were, she had either extended the hand of friendship despite this – or had put him there first.

  The file image pulsed on the screen. He tapped it and text rolled up, scarred with colour-coded links to vids, statistical analyses and genome data. ‘You should read the report itself,’ he said quietly. ‘The vids are what I really want you to see, I’m afraid, but the context in which they’re presented is important.’

  For the next forty-five minutes he watched as she read, followed the links, came back ashen-faced to the text and went on to the next section. She skipped nothing. When she was finished he made to speak but she raised a finger to silence him and went back to the report. She replayed some of the vids, slowing or pausing them so that she could scan every detail. He did not know whether her fortitude was admirable or appalling.

  After a while she pulled her own tablet out of a pocket of her voluminous cloak, glanced up at him briefly and said ‘May I?’ as she thumbed it on. He nodded, and then unable to bear it any longer said, ‘The vids are genuine. I’ve checked.’

  She was making notes, eyes flicking between the tablet and one of the endless genome tables. ‘I don’t doubt that they are.’ Her voice was terse.

  ‘Aryel.’ She continued to write one-handed, while her other hand flicked through the reams of data on the screen. ‘Aryel, please. Tell me what you’re thinking.’

  She looked up then, and he thought he saw tears in the blue depths of her eyes.

  ‘What do you want me to say, Eli? That this is an atrocity? That nothing like this should ever ever have happened?’ She squeezed her eyes closed, as if trying too late to shut out the images. ‘You know that already.’

  ‘What I’m asking,’ he said, feeling the stone in his belly and the hollowness in his throat, ‘is if you think it could ever happen again.’

  8

  Declaration of the Principles of Human Fraternity

  Agreed to be the shared and universal basis

  for national laws pertaining to all individuals,

  groups, civilisations and cultures

  Issued by the United Nations, Tokyo, 21 December 130AS

  The Peoples of the World, having passed through great calamity, and having secured the survival of our Species only by dint of certain manipulations and interventions, executed under direst emergency and with the willing participation and to the mutual benefit of all nations and races, now hereby declare and affirm these several Principles which all human beings, regardless of origin, nation, heritage, circumstance, condition, capability, conviction or disposition shall rightly and reasonably expect to form the foundation of the laws that shall govern our Societies and the rules, regulations and restrictions to which we shall in fellowship submit.

  That it shall be the right of every human being:

  First: To be at liberty from incarceration, except as properly and lawfully required for the detention of suspects, the punishment of the guilty and protection of the public.

  Second: To be free and protected from unwarranted oppression, indignity, negligence or harm.

  Third: Not to be required to provide labour or perform services without compensation.

  Fourth: That movement, expression, association and employment shall not be unreasonably restricted.

  Fifth: That property and possessions rightfully and lawfully acquired shall not be arbitrarily removed or reduced; but shall be subject to the reasonable and ordinary contributions required by the state, or as agreed under contract or for the settlement of accounts.

  Sixth: That alterations, manipulations, procreation or reproduction of any individual, or utilisation of the cellular or genetic material of any individual, be subject always to the consent of said individual.

  Zavcka Klist’s face filled the screen. She was not amused. Eli had continued to ignore her calls until he was back in his hotel. He was still not entirely sure what she was expecting, but clearly it wasn’t this.

  ‘What do you mean by corroboration?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that the vids were fabricated …’

  ‘I should hope not.’

  ‘ … because I checked.’ That shut her up momentarily. ‘I’m now checking the databases of the other gemtechs.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Your report said it may not have been an isolated incident.’

  ‘It said we couldn’t rule that out.’

  ‘Fair enough. Maybe I can. Or maybe I’ll learn that your competitors have been just as negligent as you have.’

  She was seething. ‘The only reason we’re having this conversation is because I gave you that material.’

  ‘Yes, you did. A year after all gems were released from the appropriate oversight you’re so concerned about, and more than a year after you were required to deliver up all relevant genetype records. So tell me, Miss Klist: if what you showed me reflects a present danger to ordinary people, why have you only decided to worry about it now?’

  ‘It wasn’t brought to my attention—’

  ‘An assault, a violation like that wasn’t reported immediately, all the way up the chain of command? Please.’

  ‘Hear me out. The tragedy was recorded, obviously, and reported to the relevant authorities, and investigated immediately. But our full analysis, which you now have, wasn’t completed until after the handover. And in the confusion, with all the redundancies and reorganisation that we had to undergo at that time, it got overlooked.’ She stared up at him from the tablet, lips compressed into a thin line. ‘I make no excuses. We should have stayed on top of it, and we didn’t. Eventually it was sent to me. As soon as I understood the implications I handed it over to you.’

  You mean as soon as you found a way to use it. Eli slapped at the thought, trying to curb his own cynicism.

  ‘And I am now working to independently confirm whether your assessment is correct.’

  He could see her mastering her temper, selecting an appropriately measured response.

  ‘With all due respect, Dr Walker, even if you don’t turn up any comparable episodes it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. Frankly I’d be surprised if there’d been similar incidents. For the rules to have been broken in exactly the same way elsewhere, and in the presence of a susceptible genetype, seems very unlikely.’

  ‘But you don’t think such an … episode … is unlikely now?’

  ‘There are no rules now. They’re out in the world. An equivalent situation could arise very easily.’

  ‘Exactly how many are out in the world, Miss Klist?’

  ‘Gems?’ she blinked at him. ‘You must have better population data than I do. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.’

  ‘How many with this flaw?’

  ‘We don’t know. We weren’t aware of it until …’ She waved an aristocratic hand. ‘What you saw. We’d never have implanted or allowed it to come to term if we had been.’

  ‘And what caused it?’

  ‘Unclear. Prior to the incident the subject’s behaviour was not what you’d call exemplary, but it wasn’t particularly threatening. Although the circumstances represented a complete breach of protocol, there’s no way anyone could have predicted that reaction.’

  ‘Then what do you mean by a susceptible genetype?’

  ‘Well clearly he had a predisposition to violence, but I can assure you it wasn’t intentional on our part. We haven’t been able to identify the error that encoded that kind of aggression into the genome. If we had a lot of cases to study we could probably find it, but of course,’ she looked earnestly out at him, ‘our priority has to be to ensure that there aren’t any more.’

  ‘If you don’t even know what the error was, what makes you so sure it wasn’t isolated to this individual?’

  ‘Are you prepared to take that chance?�
� He was silent. She went on. ‘The fact that there was nothing particularly unusual about this gem’s engineering is precisely the point. Whatever was hiding in his genetype could be hiding in any number of others.’

  Eli sighed, rubbed his face. The satisfaction he’d felt at putting her on the defensive was evaporating quickly. The gem had been one of many engineered for segregated, often solitary work in closed-shop industries. It had never been anticipated that they would interact with norms other than their specially trained supervisors and carers. They were among the ones Rob Trench had talked about yesterday in the taxi, floundering in a world they did not understand, constantly confronted by situations and stimuli of which they had no experience. His meeting that morning at the Squats had confirmed that they were the ones about whom other gems worried most.

  He could not disregard the possibility that Zavcka Klist might be right.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The gem, Miss Klist. The gem who committed the assault.’

  ‘He was taken down by the security team …’

  ‘I saw that. Unavoidably shot in the head, I believe. Killed?’

  ‘No. Severe brain damage. He was left in a vegetative state in one of our hospital wards.’

  ‘Now under state control?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And the victim? Her mother?’

  ‘The young girl’s injuries weren’t survivable. Our staff member, the one who ignored proper procedure in the first place, was also very badly hurt. I understand she was suicidal for some time. Given the situation there was no question of any disciplinary action. We did everything we could to assist the family. They’ve asked for their privacy to be respected.’

  So the child had died and they’d paid off the parents. The mother would have to live with the memory of what had happened to her daughter and the knowledge of her own culpability, which Bel’Natur would not have attempted to minimise. The killer was in no position to be questioned about what had triggered his cravings and his rage; about whether he’d had such urges before, or whether what he had done was as much of a surprise to him as to everyone else.

  As calamities went, it was remarkably tidy.

  ‘I have one more question. For now.’

  ‘Yes?’ Zavcka Klist’s tone was icy. Their follow-up discussion had not gone, Eli thought, quite as well as she’d expected.

  ‘Why have you only given this to me, and directly instead of through channels? If you really think there are gems out there who are ticking time bombs, why haven’t you gone to the police or the press?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Or are you planning to do that next?’

  ‘We considered it, of course. I don’t see what it would accomplish, other than creating panic and making all gems a target. That wouldn’t be good for them any more than for us. We’ve no way of knowing when one of these time bombs, as you put it, might go off. We don’t want to inadvertently create a situation that might make that even more likely.’

  ‘Why would it?’

  ‘Gems have tablets now, they read the streams. I worry that if the details of this start being passed around that in itself might be a trigger.’

  She had moved from frigid to frank, almost conspiratorial. They were back on track. ‘Let’s be honest. It’s not going to do Bel’Natur’s reputation any favours if and when this information breaks, but it would be even worse if we hadn’t at least tried to protect the public. You’re in charge of the analysis that will underpin whatever settlement comes out of this Conference. I think you understand now why I felt so strongly that this was something you needed to know. My preference is for it to be addressed in context, as part of a broad review, but,’ she threw her hands in the air, ‘if you think the right thing to do is to send it to the newstreams and the security services, I won’t argue. It’s in your hands, Dr Walker.’

  And there it was: manoeuvred into another corner by another clever, calculating woman. At least he’d seen this one coming.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, and winked out.

  *

  He might have felt slightly less disgruntled if he had been able to see Zavcka Klist’s face. She glared down, fists clenched on either side of the blank screen. How dare he, she thought, I wasn’t finished with him yet. She had been prepared to make another oblique reference to the potential rewards that might flow from a suitable settlement, albeit through gritted teeth. Dr Eli Walker was living up to his reputation for recalcitrance.

  She flicked the tablet back on, manually entered a comcode and sent a string of unintelligible alphanumerics. She took calls and responded to messages until the tablet pinged softly. She glanced at the screen, grabbed it and her coat, and headed out.

  Fifteen minutes later she was buying a coffee over the counter of a bustling café. She took it through to a small courtyard at the back, out of the wind but nevertheless deserted in the winter chill, sat on a damp metal chair and sipped.

  The coffee was half finished when the door opened again and a man stepped outside, glanced around and sat at the next table. She noted with irritation that he had not troubled to buy anything. His gloved hands rested on his knees. He did not look at her.

  She raised the cup to her lips, said, ‘Proceed,’ and sipped. The man looked down at his hands.

  ‘Immediately?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How extensive—?’

  ‘Don’t hold back.’

  The man nodded. She caught his eye as he made to rise, and he sank back into his chair. She drained her cup and left it on the table.

  The man waited for three minutes. While he waited he pulled out a tablet and composed a series of messages. As he sent the final one the tablet started pinging. He scanned the first few responses, nodding in satisfaction. Then he pulled his gloves back on and left.

  *

  When his earset buzzed a few minutes after he’d hung up on her, Eli braced himself for another round with Zavcka Klist. A glance at the comcode flashing in the corner of the tablet filled him with relief, immediately chased away by a flicker of embarrassment. He tapped to receive.

  ‘Dr Walker? Sally Trieve here. Sorry I wasn’t around earlier.’

  The face on his screen was reassuringly plain, the voice pleasantly professional. He wasn’t sure if she was apologising for not having been available to take the call he’d made as he was being driven away from the Squats, or for not meeting him there in person.

  ‘Not a problem, Sally. Thanks for getting back so quickly.’ He adjusted the earset while he thought about how to put what now seemed like a ludicrous question. Sally Trieve was responsible for coordinating all of the social-service support for gems in the Squats. It was complicated, pioneering work and after his visit that day he was even more inclined to think that she did it remarkably well. He decided it would be simplest to just come clean.

  ‘I’m not sure I really need to be bothering you after all,’ he said. ‘It was just that at the Squats this morning I met a family I hadn’t been aware of. Little boy and his father.’

  He thought he saw her tense.

  ‘Was anything wrong?’

  ‘No, not at all. Just that the child seemed too old to have been born into the community, and I couldn’t remember any references to a family joining the settlement who already had a son that age.’ He sighed. ‘I rang you too soon, to be honest, because when I went back and checked the datastream archives there they were. I can’t quite believe I never picked up on it when we first started studying the Squats, but there you go. I’m sorry to trouble you.’

  Her expression was carefully unreadable.

  ‘You met Bal and Gabriel.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you also didn’t remember there being any families registered in the initial survey.’

  ‘No, like I said I must have—Wait. What do you mean, “also”?’

  She grimaced at the question, then said, ‘Well I’m glad we were able to clear that one up. Oh and yes,
I’ve got time to meet while you’re in town.’

  He gaped. ‘I don’t—’

  ‘I agree, it’s always better to get a live review of the trickier cases. Of course if you think you’ve got the full picture from the datastreams, there’s no need.’

  For several long moments Eli was too baffled to speak. Sally was staring at him with a squinting intensity.

  ‘You’d like us to speak in person?’ he finally said, slowly. Either that was what she was trying to get at with this bizarrely offpiste line of dialogue, or the woman had gone insane. Her eyes were sharp and clear and trying hard to communicate something. She nodded vigorously.

  ‘Only if you still think it would be helpful.’

  He had made no such request. He felt another mystery coil itself around him.

  ‘Let’s meet tomorrow.’

  9

  A gust of wind pushed hard at Gaela’s back as she stood, cold fingers pressed against the Maryam House identipad, waiting for the door to open. The weather had turned blustery, bitter air from the north whistling down the narrow streets of the Squats. When the thick glass panel slid back into its housing she practically fell over the threshold.

  She pushed the closer, the door hissing shut behind her as she headed for the ground-floor lounge. The flats which had once occupied the space had been knocked through to create a big communal room with satellite kitchens, toilets and utility areas. She slipped inside, nodding greetings to the gems who glanced around as she entered. There were almost a dozen people in the room, most of whom did not look up. Heads glowed orange, blue, emerald and canary yellow as the more sociable clustered around tables. Others sat solitary, rocking back and forth, some staring into space and some into tablets. She pulled her hat off as she headed for a back room that served as an office, her own fire-bright hair tumbling past her shoulders.

  She tapped on the doorframe. The man behind the desk looked up. His face was almost in her eyeline, halfway between the desktop and the ceiling; giving the momentary impression of a short man standing up instead of an extremely tall one sitting down.