'Do you like it?'
Kester leapt forward in fright onto the floor of the booth. It was soft and he stumbled as he turned around.
'Jesus, you nearly –' Kester checked himself.
Alexis Farrell was standing in the doorway of the booth, one hand on either side of the frame.
'I've never seen one before,' Kester confessed in his hurry. 'I didn't know what to expect.'
Farrell kicked her shoes into the booth, then slunk in after them. She moved like fine cloth.
'The lab,' she said. 'I meant the lab.' Her hair was pulled back tight and she had the same hard business face on that Kester remembered from the interview. Not at all like the other night in the bar.
'The lab.' Kester's mind flicked back to the lab, the suite, everything and he was filled with a bustling joy. 'The lab is perfect – I can't believe it – thank you so much.'
Mrs Farrell put a hand on his chest and pushed him backwards until the ledge at the rear of the room chopped the back of his knees. He sat involuntarily. She pressed a button on the vending machine, caught the capsule as it left the opening and slipped her hand up her skirt discreetly. Kester could see that she was still wearing his new virus. Her eyes were still golden, solar flashes. He could feel his trousers growing tight. His pulse was all in his crotch: all flow; no ebb.
'Next stop, the tailor,' Mrs Farrell said, hitching up her skirt and straddling Kester. She found a dip for each knee on either side of him.
'I don't have anything new for you,' Kester mumbled to his chest as he watched her unzip his trousers.
'I know. Think of this as a welcome.'
Farrell grabbed the handholds on the wall and pulled so that she lunged violently towards Kester, her hot bosom rising to his face. In moments, they were humping like teenagers. She held white-knuckled to the hand grips on the wall behind him. He was a fairground horse, spinning round, rising and falling surrounded by colour, like a fitting in the booth made for riding. Wrestling her shirt from the tight waistband of her skirt, he forced it up over her breasts, then bit and sucked her hard-working flesh. Who cares, he thought. Fuck it, who cares.
'Let's make it quick,' Mrs Farrell said through gritted teeth, without stopping. 'Gerald will be on his way back down.'
'Not a problem,' Kester said, the colour in his chest rising. He let out an involuntary cry as she upped her speed and their pubic bones clattered together like machine parts. 'After you,' he struggled out.
'No!' He felt her clench her muscles around him.
Her permission came just in time. On the word, Kester's eyes glazed, his jaw muscles clenched and twitched. He gripped her wiry body, pulling her tight down onto his lap, forcing her to stop her pounding. The room was moving.
They relaxed in each other's arms, Kester involuntarily, Farrell through control.
'Didn't think you'd ever use the booths, did you?' she asked, sitting up, still perched on top of him. She brushed a slight sweat from her forehead and smoothed her hair back.
'No,' Kester said, half-laughing. 'No.'
He leaned in to rest his forehead against her chest but she dismounted suddenly, letting him slump forward.
'Let's get cleaned up before Gerald gets here.'
Farrell reached back to the dispensing machine for a Dryvul. Kester looked away for a moment as seemed polite. Smoothing down her skirt, Farrell stepped towards the door, which opened onto the decon room without giving its usual greeting.
'Oh,' Kester said, hurriedly tucking himself back into his trousers. 'The room was moving.'
'Come on, step to it.' Farrell rushed him. She held her hands under the sanitiser by the door, then rubbed them briskly. 'I like to keep my comings and goings to myself,' she added with a smirk, 'if you get my meaning.'
'I do.' Kester walked to the door, his legs unstrung, a small pool of disappointment sloshing in his stomach.
'You're not bad looking you know,' Farrell said as he stepped through the door. She was scrubbing her hands in the decon room sink. 'Moody suits you.'
She said it as if she had only just considered him aesthetically.
Back in the lab, they had fallen into genuine work conversation by the time Gerald returned.
'Welcome…Gerald.'
'Mrs Farrell,' Gerald said. 'Is everything in order?'
'Yes.' She turned away from Kester's monitor. 'Most impressive. Doctor Lowe was just telling me what he'd like to get started on first.'
-o-
Kester's flat seemed even smaller and darker than it had that morning. He put his feet up on the table and flicked on his wall display. His Book rang. It was his mother, looking for some information to base her fancies on. Kester could imagine her sitting at the kitchen counter with her Book in one hand, watching the neighbours out of the front window as she spoke to him. She would take the information she gleaned from this conversation, add in some things she'd seen on the telly, times it all by five, turn it back to front and inside out and that's how it would get reported to the rest of the family. He put the wall on mute and answered.
'Hello, dear,' she said.
'Hello, Mum.' Kester just about managed to get the words out before she jumped on him.
'Well?'
'Well what?' Kester was suddenly anxious that it was an angry 'well'. A 'well, what on earth have you done to Delilah'.
'How did it go? Your first day in the big City!'
'Oh. It was…strange…great, it was great, but it was strange.'
'Strange. Strange how?'
'Just the way new work is.'
'I suppose they're all at it all the time,' his mother said, distaste in her voice. 'I've seen it on the web you know.'
'Mum! What sites have you been watching?' Kester asked, a little taken aback. He stared at the voiceless images on his wall, a magazine programme showing the inside of a LadySqueal.
'Just the news,' his mother replied.
The prim reporter was indicating the main contraption, which looked a bit like a pink motorbike with an excited seat. She pointed to the handles and leaned over to rev them in turn.
'They talk about it all the time,' Kester's mother continued.
One handle increased and decreased the size of the fitting, the other did something unseen.
'So and so from such and such getting arrested at the Pigs. All the big-shot companies defacing old monuments with sex cubicles.'
'Exchange booths they call them, Mum.'
Talking seriously about some aspect of design, the reporter stepped out of one LadySqueal booth and into the neighbouring one, which housed a variation on the same theme.
'Sex cubicles, knocking boxes, whatever you want to call them – it's disgusting. And all running around wearing VD like scarves. I mean really – whoever thought it could be a sign of success to have a dirty sex-disease? If my mother had lived to see this she'd have had a coronary. And your father, well I swear it was all this nonsense on the news that did him in.'
'The news doesn't kill people, Mum.' Kester laughed at her softly, flicking off his wall.
'Tell that to his grave.'
'Mum!'
'He was a strong man when he was young, Kester.'
'He had cancer, Mum.'
'Modern living; that's all I'm saying.'
There was a pause while she took a slurp of tea.
'You wouldn't believe the size of my lab, Mum. It fills up a whole floor of the building. I've got ranks and ranks of workbenches and testing rooms and I'm going to have a massive staff.' Kester giggled to himself.
'Kester! The smut in that place is rubbing off on you already.'
Kester giggled again.
'Good Lord boy. So what are you and your army of lab people supposed to be doing?'
'Well, there are in-house projects, of course.' Kester swiftly sidestepped the entire nature of his job. 'But the best bit is that I can use the lab for whatever I want in my spare time. I can start working on my new screens.'
'That's great, Son.' There was unex
pected pity in her voice. 'But do you really think they'll let you do any good with it?'
'How do you mean?'
'Aren't V a pharma and therapies company too?'
'Yes.' Kester was surprised that his mother even remembered which company he'd moved to.
'And don't they make the drugs you have to take with your screens?'
'Yes. All pharma companies will soon – it's not under licence for much longer.'
'So…' She paused.
'Oh come on, Mum, you watch too many of those spookumentaries. We're not as much under their control as you think. And anyway, it's my own research time – whatever I do in my own time belongs to me. They don't have to know.'
'Well,' Kester's mother said in a warning tone and then switched subjects suddenly. 'How's Delilah?'
Kester paused. She would have said something if she knew, surely.
'She's fine,' he said.
'I haven't spoken to the dear for ages. She's never in these days. We used to have such nice chats.'
'It's a while since I've seen her too, to be honest.' Honest; the word dried out Kester's tongue. 'Betta reckons she's got herself a man, so she's busy I guess. I haven't been seeing her as much.'
'It won't last. Mark my words.'
'Mum.' Kester rolled his eyes.
'Some people just keep coming back to one another. I know you don't like to hear it but…'
'Mum, we were never together.' Kester felt himself turning into a teenager again.
'All I'm saying is, she's your oldest friend and your old friends are your true friends – you'll see. Once you're done having fun in the knocking boxes with all the pretty girls and boys in your office…'
'Mum!'
'…and you get to know all your new lab people, it's the old friends you'll end up back with.'
Kester let her finish and sighed.
'How are things with you?' he asked in an attempt to lead her off the subject.
'Oh, you know. The shop's doing well. People will always need underwear, as your father always said. Girls are going for bigger knickers again.'
'I'm glad to hear it.'
'Not inside the City, I don't imagine though. I shan't be sending you anything to give to the ladies – I expect it's all split-crotch, easy access fanny flaps with your lot.'
'Mother!' Kester shrieked, appalled, but blushing at the knowledge that there was a distinct shortage of underwear at V. 'You can't say that!'
'I'm a grown woman, Kester. I'll say what I want. Lord knows their dry cleaning bills must be astronomical with nothing between their mucky fu-fus and their fancy suits.'
'Please, Mum.' An explanation of how this was managed was involuntarily forming in his head. 'You're the last person I want to – can we not talk about this? How about you answer my question? How are you?'
'I'm fine, darling. I told you: business is good, I'm keeping well, the dog's picked up something nasty but I've got a special shampoo for it. Now there's a thing.' Finally, she had taken the bait. He should have asked after the dog earlier. 'They've been giving me medication for mange for two months…'
'You've got mange?' Kester let his head fall back and stared up at the ceiling; another new damp patch.
'Don't be silly dear, the dog does, and it wasn't working and it wasn't working and guess what?'
'What?'
'It's not mange at all! It's ringworm. Can you believe it? And I've had one hell of a time getting my money back. I said to them: my son's a doctor and I'll get him down here to sort you out. Here's my dog running around all falling to bits – he would have looked quite the thing in your office, no doubt, covered in scabs and tufts. Except I don't expect they eat their scabs.'
'Well,' Kester said doubtfully.
A shriek of high pitched laughter made the speaker on his Book rattle.
-o-
For the next few days, Alexis Farrell kept a dedicated display on her desk for the lab. It was a curious fisheye view from the corner of the lab above Kester's office door, its only blind spot the benches on the far side of the central hub.
To begin with, Kester worked alone in the centre of the lab. Farrell smiled whenever she saw him there – leading from within a non-existent team, setting a sterling example to the fixtures and fittings around him. He looked like a cartoon character with his messy just-out-of-bed hair and dishevelled labcoat, attractive in his disarray, more like a band member than a scientist. His complete lack of awareness of his cool was charming.
Farrell timed her visits for moments when he was starting to look distracted. By the time she returned to her crow's nest he was always back at the centre bench, working with renewed enthusiasm. These small ego boosts were working for him, fuelling his confidence and with it his ambition. She was going to make him a star and in return he would propel her to the heights of V Global; the more inspiration she could provide, the smoother the ride would be.
The fitters came and went from Kester's suite as he worked, customising it to his steadily multiplying wishes. Gerald began to appear on camera more and more frequently, coming and going between departments, at first alone and then, as they became useful, with others to introduce. The activity in the lab grew slowly outwards from Kester, its epicentre. Racks, vials and reports multiplied, spreading out across the lab. One by one people filled the chairs around him.
Two weeks in, Kester's work projection for the next six months landed in Farrell's inbox along with a request for additional test models. Three weeks in, his office and quarters were pretty much finished and the lab was comfortably full. He had stopped returning to his flat in the evenings.
Chapter 6
'Lady wants to see you, babe,' Tim said, leaning into the dressing room.
'Me?' Marlene called from behind the rail and inside a wool dress that was refusing to fit.
'No, darling – Cherry.' Tim shook his head. 'Come on,' he said, looking back to Cherry.
'What are you? My escort?'
'I thought I'd walk you along. You never know what dodgy characters are hanging around in those corridors.'
Cherry rolled her eyes. 'Let me get some shoes first.'
'Those red ones.'
'Not too much?'
'If you're going to the corner shop, maybe.'
Cherry had managed to bagsy the black and red dress again and the shoes would go well. She grabbed them and slipped them on.
As they walked through the corridor, Tim took Cherry's hand.
'You're my little sweetie, you know,' he said.
'You're acting weird,' Cherry said. 'Who's she got in there?'
Tim looked at his feet for a few paces before he answered.
'Some stiffs from the Real Church.'
'Is that all? So what are you worried about? What do you think she's going to do to me? Send me to a nunnery?' She laughed.
When they got to the narrow corridor that led down to Lady's rooms, Tim stopped.
'I just hope you haven't been poking your nose into anything you shouldn't have.' He ducked towards the wall as he thought he heard Lady's door opening. 'I'm supposed to be out already.'
'Run along then spooky.'
Tim pecked Cherry on the cheek, smacked her on the arse, then skipped off down the corridor. She watched him for a moment. He was like a little inverted comma, lithe and light, seeming to spend more of his time off the ground than on it. His tunic just skimmed his narrow hips. He was just bone and muscle underneath, sculpted. Cherry couldn't imagine him really doing anything with a client. Except perhaps standing in the corner of the room holding to his lips their chosen piece of fruit, posed like a statue, motion captured. That, she could see. He glanced back over his shoulder. People never let him walk away without watching him go and he knew it. She laughed and turned to walk to Lady's office.
It was twelve more paces to Lady's door. Just enough to get nervous. The Real Church? Cheerful face of Christian fundamentalism. What were they doing here? Had Tim been serious or was his imagination getting the bette
r of him? What could they want with her? She stopped for a few long breaths before she knocked on the door. She could hear that there were two men in there talking to Lady, but she couldn't hear what about. She knocked.
'Come!' called Lady.
Cherry opened the door slowly, poking her head in first, body following after. There were two men seated on straight-backed wooden chairs opposite the sofa. They didn't look particularly clerical to her. At any rate they didn't look anything like the men who preached on the web. They weren't plastic enough. Lady was sitting neatly on a third chair alongside them, so that they made a semi-circle in front of the couch. It looked ominous to Cherry. It was set out like an interview, an interrogation maybe. Lady indicated the couch. Cherry walked over, sat down and gathered her dress neatly around her legs. She pressed her knees together and held them with her hands.
'I'm sorry, Lady, I haven't had time to do my hair and face.'
'Don't worry, Cherry dear, these gentlemen aren't clients,' Lady said.
A buzz rushed up the back of Cherry's neck. Not clients. She looked at the two men. One was tall and thin, one short and fat, like a straight man and his comedy sidekick, except that they both had stern, concerned faces. They were both dressed modestly in loose garb more befitting of monks than the showmen preachers she was used to – though the short man's clothes, obviously designed to be loose-fitting, stretched uncomfortably across his paunch. Their clothing was beige. The only things she could see that connected them to any church were the Real Church clockwork symbol pendants that hung round their necks.
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