Gemsigns

by Stephanie Saulter

  She held up a hand to forestall Eli’s interruption. ‘And Gabriel is too old to have been born there anyway, I know. I think he came to the Squats – from where I don’t know – and was unofficially adopted by Gaela and Bal around the beginning of the year. It would have been at the same time that hundreds upon hundreds of gems were arriving after the Declaration, and I can only assume he arrived with one of them and was handed over. Which would be strange enough, although it’s possible that someone who couldn’t care for their child might want him fostered by a couple who could. But that doesn’t explain how a gem just released from a lifetime of lockdown could have had a natural-born four-year-old, or how or why our records were altered. Because that is the most bizarre thing.’

  She paused, looking at him as though anticipating his reaction to her next words.

  ‘I think that somehow, someone has been able to get into the datastream of that initial survey and alter it, and alter at least the first generation reports which included that data – and maybe second and third generation as well, since everything links back – to make it look as though he’s been with Gaela and Bal all along.’

  Eli stared at her. What she was suggesting was completely irrational, but she was deadly serious. She obviously believed it was possible.

  ‘Sally, that’s— Forgive me, but what you’re saying makes no sense. A completely untraceable security breach? How could that have been done? And if it was, why are we whispering about it in the pub?’

  ‘This is complicated and it’s going to sound nuts, but bear with me.’ She glanced around again to make sure no one was in earshot. Eli looked around himself, thinking suddenly of Donal.

  ‘I first became aware of Gabriel’s existence a few weeks after the Declaration. It was at a meeting at the Squats to introduce the social workers I’d assigned and to set up protocols for how we were going to support the community, assess ongoing needs, all of that early-intervention managerial stuff. Aryel Morningstar was there, and a Recombin gem named Mikal who was another pre-Declaration arrival, and Bal and a bunch of others, mostly newcomers. And someone just happened to mention Gabriel, very casually, as though anyone who knew anything about the Squats would know who they were talking about. I was baffled, but I didn’t say anything at the time because I didn’t know what was going on or how to deal with it. And honestly, I still don’t.

  ‘As soon as that meeting was over I did exactly what you did yesterday. I checked the datastreams. And I saw what you saw: an entry that showed him living in the Squats with his parents at least six months earlier.’

  She paused for breath and a sip of water, and leaned forward again.

  ‘But I’d been there when the community was still quite small. When the Declaration was issued and we realised what would happen, I was at the Squats a lot. And yes, almost a thousand flooded into the area within a month, but I never saw or heard anything about a child. The surveys were being updated daily and I referred to them constantly. There were a few pregnant women and a couple of babies but no record of an older child, either present or arriving. But if you log on to those archives now, he’s there. If you look at the statistical summaries aggregated from the data, he’s in them. And if you check the edit logs there is no indication that any of that information has ever been changed.’

  Eli was staring open-mouthed. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘It’s not supposed to be. I’ve never heard of such a thing happening, but think about it.’ She spread her hands. ‘If it did happen, how would we know? Everything is logged and uploaded and linked. We rely absolutely on the robustness of the data systems. If someone did have a way of changing the base data, how would you contradict it? All you’d have to go on is your own memory versus the machine’s. Unless you had lots of people all prepared to swear that the information had once been different, or like in old times when it was recorded on paper or stone or something, how would you prove it? Who would the authorities believe? Who would you believe, nine times out of ten?’

  She sighed. ‘You don’t know what a relief it was to me when you said what you said yesterday. I have been close to certain I was stark, staring mad a couple of times. I even went and got memory and psych checkups. Listening to myself today, I know I sound completely paranoid.’ She stared back across the table at him, something pleading in her eyes. ‘But I’m not, Dr Walker. This isn’t a figment of my imagination. I can be absolutely sure of that now.’

  ‘Because,’ he said slowly, ‘you and I both remember a different version of that early survey.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’re saying that version no longer exists, and there’s no proof it ever did.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the whole point of this change … this deception … is to disguise the fact that the child did not arrive at the same time as the parents? And the community is colluding with it?’

  ‘Yes. As far as I can tell that’s the only piece of information that’s been tampered with. I’ve gone over and over the reports and everything else is just as I remember it. As for collusion it would only need to be a handful of people, the original members of the community. Who are all very good friends.’

  He felt suddenly, absolutely certain that Aryel must know the truth. He felt a pang of hurt at the thought. He had already discovered she could be nonchalant about withholding information, but somehow he had not thought her capable of active deceit.

  ‘But how could they pull off the datastream hack? And why?’ He had a vision of the little sandy-haired boy, the big, protective father. ‘What’s so special about this kid? If he’s not theirs where did he come from?’

  ‘The answer to all of that is, I don’t know. He’s a very empathic child, but I’m not aware of his having an ability as such.’ She was frowning at the table, doodling in the water that had condensed and run down the sides of her glass. ‘I thought if he was being hidden in the Squats for some reason then he must be missing from somewhere, and surely they couldn’t hide that. A kid disappears, there’d be an uproar. So I checked on all the gem families we have on record, which as you know aren’t many. And I checked every crèche and care home in the country. And before you ask I didn’t just look at their datastreams, I got in touch with them. I even checked, don’t ask me why, if there were any norm missing kids of around the right age. There aren’t. No one has reported losing this child.’

  ‘Then maybe he is theirs. Maybe they left him in someone else’s care while they got themselves settled and then they took him back.’

  ‘Then why not just say so? I don’t think Bal and Gaela could have been together long enough to have a kid that age, but even if I’m wrong about that or he’s from a previous relationship, why the deception?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The picture of the smiling child playing at his father’s feet was replaced suddenly by an image from the Bel’Natur vid: another child, bloody, brutalised and dying. ‘You don’t think he’s being … harmed in any way?’

  ‘No.’ The response was quick and firm. ‘That is one thing I’m sure of. I’ve kept as close an eye on them as I can, and if I thought anything untoward was happening in that household, or if the child wasn’t thriving, I’d say evidence be damned and be in there like a shot. But Gabriel is just about the healthiest, sunniest kid I can think of. He seemed a bit withdrawn at first – which would make sense, settling into a new place – but not any more. His parents adore him – see, even I think of them as that. Their friends dote on him, he calls them aunty and uncle. He’s been set up on a home-school programme and he’s in the top percentile. I suggested he do some general cognition and social awareness tests as well, just so we could benchmark his progress. I have a feeling Gaela knew exactly what I was after, but they went along with it. We did it under controlled conditions and he aced every test.’

  ‘So he’s a bright, happy, well-adjusted kid who loves his mum and dad. Even though he probably also knows they’re not.’

  ‘Exactly. He’s obviously
not pining for wherever he was before.’

  Her hands opened and closed in the air, as though she were trying to capture something ephemeral. ‘I’ve been doing this kind of work for a long time, Dr Walker, and it doesn’t feel like abuse or abduction to me. You know, they’re taking a big risk. It feels like they’re protecting this boy, and doing a damn good job raising him while they’re at it.’

  *

  Despite her improbable story, Eli did not think Sally Trieve sounded paranoid at all. She seemed in person just what he would have expected from her reputation and meticulous reporting: committed, competent and sensible. She had spent many months unable to decide what to do, her seasoned social worker’s instinct loudly warning that a by-the-book reaction would not deliver the best outcome for the child. Her relief at finally being able to share the burden was palpable.

  They agreed he would quietly pursue some avenues of his own. He did not specify what they were. She seemed content, like Zavcka Klist the day before, to put the entire matter into his hands and abide by whatever decision he made.

  He wondered how he had found himself in a position of such power over other people’s lives. His ambition had been to observe, understand and advise; he had never sought to sit in judgement. The mountain of things he did not know loomed over him, and he felt ill-equipped to serve as arbiter.

  They spoke about the attack outside the nightclub. Sally had sent crisis counsellors into the Squats as soon as she’d heard, and would be there herself that evening. She only knew Callan by sight.

  ‘He was another one who didn’t need any help from us,’ she explained. ‘I gather he spent a lot of time outside the Squats, had no trouble making friends with norms. His looks would have helped, he is – was – a beautiful young man; but I suspect his ability did as well.’

  ‘What is it? No one’s actually said.’

  ‘He’s a linguist. Multiple languages and the ability to learn more really fast. Bel’Natur in particular seems to have been experimenting with those kinds of very specific mental gifts. I’ve met a number of children in crèche who were part of the same line, and the thing you notice about them is how well they socialise. Really high levels of emotional intelligence. My guess is Callan was a prototype.’

  He told her what Zavcka Klist had said on the train. ‘It strikes me as odd that she would go on about how gems can’t be independent or interact normally if her own company was turning out people who prove just the opposite.’

  Sally considered this.

  ‘I would say,’ she said finally, ‘that what she told you is about half right, and I guess that’s the half she wants you to focus on. You know that over forty per cent of the gems in this city either are or should be in the social services system, and nationally the percentage is even higher. They are,’ she ticked off on her fingers, ‘children in crèche who are mostly going to be okay when they grow up, adults who are too badly damaged to manage outside of an institution, and those who can live in gem communities as long as they have the right kind of support.’

  ‘That’s a lot of people who need to be taken care of. Especially since, unlike the gemtechs, we don’t find ways to force them to work.’

  ‘True, but the numbers in care are going to drop. Hugely. Even the kids who have problems are generally doing much better now that they’re being raised as children and not commodities.’ She kept her voice even but Eli could hear the anger in it. ‘The way they were conditioned for fast learning and adaptation means that most of them absorb the benefits of therapy really well. If we can keep the quality of care high until they’re grown up I think very few will require long-term support. And given time and resources I believe some of the adults can become more independent as well.’ She was thoughtful. ‘Some of them … the autistics … also have some of the most extraordinary abilities. I’ve wondered if it isn’t one of them who was able to change the datastreams.’

  ‘I’m not a techhead, but I always thought that kind of manipulation could only be done by someone who doesn’t need a binary interface, who can work with raw code. The gemtechs say they never achieved a true digital savant.’

  ‘The gemtechs say a lot of things. But I wonder if they would even know. The world has opened up so much for these people, they’re not limited in what they’re allowed to do any more. I think there are gems out there discovering talents the gemtechs haven’t even guessed at.’

  11

  Gaela craned to keep track of Gabriel, wishing she’d been able to leave him at home, or at any rate keep him away from the chaos of the community room. Not, she had to admit, that it would have done much good. The reaction to the attack on Callan was almost palpable, a fog of anger and fear that the boy had felt from the moment he woke up. He’d picked threads of meaning out of the jumble, woven them into a fairly accurate understanding of what had happened, and appeared in the kitchen, barefooted and pyjama’d, demanding to know who Callan was and why bad people had hurt him.

  It was a mercy, she thought, that Callan wasn’t one of the gems he’d met in his time at the Squats. As he wormed his way through the minds of others he seemed able to process the details and distress of the crime from enough of a remove to allow him to maintain his own equilibrium. She was sure he would have struggled to separate his responses from theirs if the victim had been someone he knew, like Aryel or Mikal or Wenda. Or Bal or herself.

  She blinked her vision into ultraviolet for a moment and spotted him, half hidden behind two gems who sat huddled with one of the counsellors from social services. He was standing next to Mikal, barely knee-high to the towering gem. She saw him look up and say something. Mikal glanced around until he spotted Gaela, nodded at her and rested a hand on the boy’s head in a don’t-worry-he’s-with-me gesture. She could almost have heard Gabe tell him that Mama was looking, and could he please let her know that he was all right.

  She turned her attention back to the gem she was trying to comfort, a pitiably shy teenager named Jora who turned out to have a huge, and hitherto unguessed at, crush on Callan. Jora was doubled over on Gaela’s lap, sobbing uncontrollably. Gaela patted her back, thinking that poor Jora’s dreams would inevitably have been dashed one way or another. She was engineered for tissue regeneration, and as such was dumpy and lumpy with various odd duplications of features and organs; had poor social skills and limited intellectual potential; and moreover was female. She had clearly been unable to grasp the obstacle that this last fact presented to any hope of attracting Callan’s amorous attention.

  Gabriel frowned at her across the room. Gaela understood. Once you got used to his ability you didn’t actually need to share it to communicate without speaking. Of course I won’t say anything, she thought at him. I would never hurt her feelings like that. Mama’s done this kind of thing before, you know. He looked momentarily chastened, then slipped from under Mikal’s hand over to the kitchen where Horace was bringing plates of sandwiches out.

  The green-haired gem was uncharacteristically subdued. Gabriel silently helped him transfer baskets of crisps to the big refectory table. When everything had been delivered Horace fished out a crisp and crunched it absently. Gabriel did the same.

  ‘Horace?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How come you’re so confused?’

  Horace pushed a stack of plates closer to the edge of the table. ‘Everyone is a bit mixed up today, Gabe.’

  Gabriel munched another crisp. ‘Everybody’s really sad and scared,’ he declared. ‘And angry.’

  ‘Well, me too.’

  Gabriel frowned. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘but you’re … not sure about stuff.’

  ‘I just keep wondering … did Callan say something, did he provoke them in any way …’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have meant to. Sometimes you can make a mistake and not even know you made it.’

  ‘What kind of mistake?’

  ‘I don’t know, Gabe. Maybe if he’d kept a lower profile, hadn’t been where
he was …’

  He looked up, suddenly noticing the silence falling around them as people came up for food. Mikal stood at the periphery of the quiet, glaring. Horace dropped his head and busied himself pouring tea, muttering, ‘It’s just, if he hadn’t been there, he couldn’t have got hurt.’

  He jumped back an instant later as two fists crashed down, sending scalding tea splashing up at him. Sandwiches levitated with the force of the blow; plates and cups rattled and tilted. Everyone jerked away from Wenda, who stood across the table from Horace, her clenched hands rigid in the spreading puddle on the tablecloth, teeth bared, veins distended, the tendons in her neck tensed almost to breaking point. Her mouth worked as she struggled to speak. Only a prolonged, tortured grunt came out. Her teeth gnashed.

  Horace backed up, palms raised in startled placation. From beside him Gabriel stepped forward, head cocked to one side as he leaned on the table, staring at Wenda. Across the room, Gaela struggled to shove Jora off her lap.

  The tableau held for an agonising moment. Wenda looked poised to leap over the table and strangle Horace, an acceptable substitute for being unable to scream at him.

  Gabriel reached his small hand out to her.

  ‘Aunty Wenda?’ he whispered. ‘Horace didn’t mean it like that.’

  She did not look at him. All her attention remained focused on Horace.

  ‘Aunty Wenda? Aunty Wenda, I can tell them for you.’ He looked around at Horace. ‘She doesn’t like what you said,’ he explained unnecessarily.

  Wenda slapped a hand down hard on the table, the sound reverberating around the room along with the howl that finally ripped itself out of her. Mikal pushed through the crowd, but she shoved him away as he tried to lay his hands on her shoulders, and spun back to face Horace.

  ‘N-n-n-not!’ she shrieked. The word seemed a paltry contraction of a whole spate of meaning and emotion that she was desperate to convey. Her jaw contorted with effort. ‘Not h-h-h-him! Them!’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault, and you shouldn’t say it was,’ Gabriel translated. ‘It was their fault. They were bad people. He didn’t do anything wrong.’