“So how does Mathew fit into this?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I’m going to find out.”
28
The more he thought about the story with Mathew, the Walden Centre, Deon and now this new aspect of the cell donors, the more Philip could feel the piece becoming obsessive. The girl, Reiko, could be useful, as long as he played her right. She was aloof and unsociable, but while she could keep him informed he needed her, and he suspected that she realised that she needed him too. Of course life would be easier if she’d just stop talking in jargon, but he may just have to live with that. But he still couldn’t connect all the parts, and see where the story was going, although he was sure there was a connection. Warwick was involved in a process that was ground-breaking, but teetered in the balance between ethics and legality. If he’d published his findings 2 years ago he could have been the talk of the medical world, well, in the West at least. But he hadn’t. He’d worked on it in underground experiments and kept it quiet, and it had only come to light by Reiko looking for something else. In the meantime he’d used some of the same technology to bring a man from the twentieth century back to life. Which was amazing, but, let’s face it, it seemed a little pointless really. Lyal himself wasn’t important, Philip was sure of that. There was nothing remarkable about him. It was just the fact of resurrecting someone that was the concern. Now maybe Warwick was just boosting his ego; Philip knew that he had one of those. But there had to be more. Sure, he’d brought the clinic to the attention of the world’s media, and bolstered his personal wealth, through some stock sales that pointed to an illegal acquisition of stock years earlier. Perhaps this was all just the prelude to the release of the findings on the tissue regeneration process; but why did he feel he needed to produce a whole living specimen before publishing the work undertaken two years previously. It neither rational, nor in keeping with what he knew of Warwick’s character, and Philip hated things that didn’t make sense.
He swilled a large straight JD around a glass and went over the facts in his head. Lost in his thoughts he was suddenly brought to by the beeping of his c-pac. He activated it and checked the screen. It was broadcasting an interview that he’d set it to remind him about. The BBC was hosting a series of discussions on the ethical dilemmas of the day, and today’s was the Lyal case. It was precursor to the debate that the Ethics Commission would chair between health officials, the major religious community leaders and the ministry on the last day of the month. The stream of letters to the press that Philip had been reading showed a varied reaction, and the story was gathering momentum. He switched on to watch live, something he hardly ever did, preferring to replay programmes later so that he could forward through the parts that didn’t interest him. There may be something in this, he hoped, that would allow him to get an angle on his story before the whole piece became last week’s news.
The debate had inevitably fallen from its austere scientific commencement and declined into a philosophical and ethical argument. The representative from the Church of England had gently condemned the process, while maintaining that the issue to be dealt with was a human one as there was a person at the centre of this to be considered. Both the Roman Catholics and the Muslims agreed in principle with this, but argued that the medical world was yet again taking into their hands the responsibilities that only God or Allah should truly have. Despite this, Philip noticed that they still managed to find room to disagree with each other. Rabbi David Ford was backed into a corner and at one time suggested that so long as no Jewish people were involved it was not an issue that the Chief Rabbinate would feel compelled to make judgement on at this time. However, if that situation did arise, he suspected that they would feel obliged to condemn the procedure.
“At the moment we have to remain aware that we live in fragile times,” the Rabbi added. “The factionalism within many religions, especially I feel the Christian faith, is highly volatile. On top of this there seems growing intolerance between faiths, while there are also burgeoning schisms within them. We need to remain very conscious of where we stand on issues, especially contentious ones like this, if we are going to ensure that our respective followers do not fall into the violent fundamentalism we have seen in North America over the last few decades. The last thing that we need across Europe now is a repeat of the vigilantes and pitch battles seen 20 years ago in countries like Virginia and the Republic of Louisiana. People become polarised on issues like this, and unless our voices are clear and united, we send a confused message to the populace and that, in a worst case scenario, may result in inter-religious combat.”
Leading doctor in philosophy from Oxford and author on Vedic Hinduism Moksada Chandra claimed that, although she could not talk for Hindus as a whole, the process of artificially bringing life back to a person, after such a time from the initial death could have an effect on the soul and interfere with the samsara of the individual. If the cycle of the soul was interrupted and reversed then the karmic effects could be seen to be disastrous.
The governmental ethics spokesperson was suitably noncommittal. “We could be watching a major breakthrough for the West,” she claimed. “This could be the start of a renaissance of Western medicine. Although obviously we need to fully investigate the ethical dimensions of this, the implications for this cannot be understated. Also, of course, the process could have long lasting and advantageous repercussions for humans as a species and it’s important to keep track of this and remind ourselves that this has occurred in Britain and under the incumbent government.”
Philip watched as the debate opened up to the public, and was unsurprised when people claimed that this was the modern-day version of Voodoo and witchcraft, and that doctors were once again playing at being God; a phrase that was always brought out at moments like this. A shrieking woman from Leeds joined the discussion to say that she would have given anything to have her recently deceased brother returned to her, and a man who sounded drunkenly-slurred claimed that the public were not able to accept reality today, and now we were seeing the results of this in these preposterous processes.
“And what about jobs,” he carried on in his alcohol-fuelled rant. “There ain’t enough jobs now, what if everyone has two lives, an’ wants a new job, what about the people ’ere already. Ain’t enough to go round now. We need less people, not more. We don’t want dead people coming back, taking our jobs. And where will they all live?”
“Has anyone considered the diseases that these poor dead souls could bring back from the past,” said the anonymous caller from Edinburgh.
“Where will it all end?” the last caller of the day asked. “Which people from the twentieth century are we having back? How about Hitler, or Pol Pot? Who is going to decide which of these frozen dead we have and what we should do with them?”
Philip switched the screen off as the studio faded into theatrical darkness. A second debate was now scheduled for the 1st of June. The most vociferous of the British public were out in force, and they were definitely not on the side of the Walden Clinic. He poured himself another JD and considered the thoughts he’d heard expressed over the last half-hour.
“I bet Warwick’s glad he’s sold those shares in the clinic now,” he muttered as he began searching through his material for something that may help him to focus on the direction of the story now, ’cos I can see this wrecking the Walden Centre.”
29
Rei wondered how she would continue her search through the clinic’s archives. None of it was easy. James, or whoever he really was, had allowed her to access the database, and she could not do that on her own. Her own security level allowed her to view some files and with a little creativity, and some physical trawling, she could get enough information to fill in the gaps. What she needed now was some way to link this all to Mathew, which it almost certainly did. Meanwhile she had other things to do. All of this undercover work was in danger of taking over her actual job.
The crowd outside the clinic was la
rger again today. Each day more people joined it, and the over-zealous treatment of the protesters by the police had only given the demonstration a greater sense righteousness. The police now kept a careful vigil from the far end of the street; looking menacing in their black uniforms and faceless helmets, but they had not charged again. It had been an embarrassment for all involved: two dead, thirteen wounded, and one critically injured. This was not the way that peaceful protests were supposed to be handled, Rei thought as she passed the first cordon of officers. She glanced at the crowd, contemplating just how peaceful they were. Many of them carried bags and small backpacks, which could contain anything from knives to missiles. The entire staff had received instructions about their personal safety, and had been asked to speak to no one who they suspected could be from the press or an action group. This, in effect, could of course be just about anyone at all. Rei had felt especially vulnerable since James had been attacked, although there seemed some confusion about whether the mob or the constabulary had been responsible for that, and James wasn’t able to clarify this.
Near the entrance to the clinic Rei took the prearranged diversion and headed through the alley to the fire escape that allowed the staff access to the building for the time being, until someone worked out how they were getting into the facility and blockaded that as well. She walked beneath the building workers’ scaffolding that had stood here for 15 months while the air-conditioning system was being corrected, and entered the hospital, passing two men fixing a screen to the wall with a nail gun. The repairs to the building seemed to be immeasurable, and there always seemed to be two workers for each job. She put her eye to the scanner and the door to the restricted elevator slid open with a clang. It was one thing that puzzled her. She knew people would often buy their jobs and changing a security card, or bribing a guard to take no notice of it, was easy. But James was regularly on the 54th floor, so he must have re-jigged his security access code to accept his own retina scan, otherwise he’d have no way to gain entry. It was an area of their security that she’d been told was virtually impossible to by-pass. It was one of the things that made her trust him, in a bizarrely converse way. If he had that sort of skill, and was not working for an underground group, he must have some greater altruistic motive, she thought. It made some sense in a strange way.
She spent most of the morning working her way through charts and schedules, making sure that there was time for Mathew’s exercises between the chiropractor, the osteopath, and the councillor. Then she checked his statistics and medical intake, looked at his progress charts and arranged an upgrade on his mobility exercise from tomorrow. He was now able to walk with just a stick most of the time, and could be considered almost fully mobile. His physical body was in good shape; it was his mental state that she had less idea about, and until he opened up more they wouldn’t know how he was really coping. She made him a coffee, which he insisted on drinking from a china mug, which she found beautifully quaint (once she’d found one), and entered the locked area where he was still held in isolation.
“Good afternoon Mathew. How are you feeling?”
He slipped off the c-pac that he’d been using and smiled from the chair where he usually positioned himself.
“Yeah, good, you know. Good as… at any rate. Bloody battery’s gone on the PDA,” he said, gesturing at the c-pac.
“It’s not a PDA, whatever one of those is, and it is not powered through batteries,” she replied with a smile, activating the device. “It just has a little trouble recognising your accent.” She spoke generally as she whisked about his room setting and resetting the monitors, then settled on the seat next to him.
“I have some news,” she said gently. “I don’t know exactly yet, but it looks as if we may have managed to trace your daughter.”
“You’ve found Jessie? Is she coming here? Where is she now?”
“Wait, wait, just a second. I said it looks as if we have traced her. No one has spoken to her, and it’s not confirmed. We have come across several people in the country and one of them might be Jessica. We don’t know for sure yet. And we won’t contact anyone until we’re certain who they are, and even then, it may be best if you were to make the first contact. We will look at that problem when it arises. At the moment we are waiting for confirmation from their data of who exactly they are. And they may be the wrong person, so you must be patient. Also, I’m not precisely authorised to do this for you, so I need you to keep this completely to yourself. Only you, I and James, the porter with the bad teeth, only the three of us know anything, so don’t mention it to anyone else.”
“Yeah, sure, but if you can make contact, that’s going to be so good. I just want… I just need to be able to…” and Mathew broke off, placing his hand across his face. “I need to speak to her. I thought I’d never see her.” He looked across at Rei, with eyes that should the loss he felt. “She’s still my little girl, whatever’s happened. Rei, I have to see her again. I have to.”
30
Deon was pleased with the progress he’d made tracing the Lyal daughter. He had narrowed down the search and was beginning to feel some certainty that the he had the right person. It hadn’t been easy though. Old people so seldom changed their details and that meant that they surfaced on file checks less, and in addition several of the candidates weren’t registered to any communication network. There wasn’t really any reason that he could see for people to try to stay out of contact, but that was exactly what many older folk seemed to want to do. Of course Deon himself did want to remain untraceable and anonymous, but he had a good reason. Until the problems with the massacre at Fort Burlington had blown over he needed to keep a low profile, and somehow he knew that Mathew would help that. This was God’s work he was undertaking now, and nothing should stop that.
And as traipsed through the rain he tried to think positively about his role in the events that were unfolding. He felt dejected at the slowness of the pace that the Truth was being revealed to him, and the weather and this job were depressing. He wasn’t a hospital porter, and had no real desire to be one, but the work he must do every day was critical to his cover, and that meant that he could gain some access to Mathew. But if events did not change soon he may have to construct a new plan. There was a limit to how long he could keep up the pretence. His account details would be available for inspection now, and if the authorities checked he would be discovered, and it was always possible that even in a corporation the size of the Walden Centre someone may have known Peacock, and recognition would lead to investigation, which would result in detection. No one seemed to have missed Peacock or spotted the deception. It seemed sad that James had no friends to notice his absence. But then Deon had none to speak of, only Mathew, Rei and Philip. Perhaps by assuming the persona of James he had befriended him in some way. Unless, he wondered, he had actually become James Peacock now. This was a thought that plagued him sometimes. He made a note on his c-pac to consider this further, and sent the memory bank contents to back-up. No, he was fairly certain that he was merely using James’ identity to achieve a result. He would have to be careful that he wasn’t uncovered, that was still important. It was a fine line he trod.
Someone called to him from a distance and he stopped to locate them, but couldn’t see anyone else in the vicinity.
He’d been concerned when he awoke this morning that things were coming to a crisis point. The number of protesters outside the clinic had swelled, and the threat of violence seemed on the increase since the police had attacked in order to control the mob. He had been there, and that increased his belief that he was intrinsically linked to these events. The news reports that he’d viewed today before leaving his dark lock-up suggested that there was a growing feeling of discontent in the public about the treatment of Mathew. Apparently some debate had managed to achieve the unlikely event of temporarily uniting opposing religious factions against the resurrection. Deon remembered the story of the Pharisees who had spoken against Christ. Within the Chr
istian Church, he knew, there were many different factions, and Caroline had always reminded them at Unit that they needed to remain united. “If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand,” she had said. The true messiah had few followers and many enemies, and Deon knew which side he needed to be on, and what the stakes were. The world should have ended, he’d been told, but it hadn’t. It had, however, shifted vastly in the last few weeks. There were greater things at risk here than his detection. He’d had this reaffirmed by one of the other news stories, which told how Bishop Peter Ross had been murdered on the doorstep to his own house in the early hours of the morning as he returned home. God’s own were being struck down, as the Disciples at Unit had been, and Deon realised that he was linked to the ending of this carnage and re-glorification of the true religion.
He had reached the crowd before he realised where he was and ducked through the safety of the prepared route into the building just before stumbling into the angry assembly. He gained access to the elevator in the usual way he had established and set about his errands for the day, wondering when the revelations of the work he was to perform would be made. As he pushed his trolleys along the cold and anonymous corridors of the clinic he thought to himself, It must all be happening soon, and this thought filled his mind and obliterated all others as his mental capacities fogged over, leaving him with the feeling that he was viewing his world through the light of an entrance to a tunnel that he remained lost in.
The Relic Keeper Page 14
