Sequela

by Cleland Smith

  Suddenly, there were people everywhere. Rita appeared from behind a clothes rack.

  'Thanks, Cherry!' Rita said, as she saw Cherry shuffling the papers into a pile. 'What a state, huh?' She waved her arms at the carnage on the benches and long dressing table.

  Cherry looked up at her questioningly. 'Just chuck them?'

  'Yeah.' Rita handed her an empty cup. 'This too if you don't mind, love. Then can you tell your lot I'll need them back here in fifteen minutes for final prep?'

  'No problem.'

  Letting her hand brush over the station next to her, Cherry lifted an eyeliner pen and held it tucked against her wrist. She rushed away and slipped into the wings, eyes clambering along the scaffolding, looking for an obvious viewpoint. The only people around here were the lighting technicians and they were storeys above her where they could get a real view of the square. Their lift was stationary at the bottom of the scaffolding, so they weren't coming down any time soon and she would have a few minutes warning if they were planning to.

  Cherry spotted a series of slim ladders leading up to a small landing. She looked around again to check that there was no-one there. Confident she wouldn't be seen, she stripped out of her sheer kaftan, down to her skin-coloured knickers, stuck the paper and pen between her teeth and started to climb.

  -o-

  The first models were about to go on. Kester went to take Alexis' hand, but she was rummaging in her pocket. He looked back to the display to see six cloaked figures walking down the catwalk. When he turned his gaze back to Alexis, she was looking up, holding something above her face – a tear-shaped bottle – eye drops. He recognised the label. They were the eye drops he used for viral side-effects. He grabbed her wrist.

  'Alexis – what's going on?'

  With the headphones on Kester could hear himself, his voice soft and rounded, simple-sounding in his head. But Alexis could not. She pulled her arm away and put the drops in her other eye. Kester stood up and, despite her wriggling protests, led her away from the display back into the foyer of the V building where they could hear one another.

  'Kester, what's wrong with you? The first models are going out!'

  Kester could feel the glass walls booming as if they might implode at any minute.

  'What's going on with your eyes? Where did you get those drops from?'

  'From Gerald – he said if it was a viral side-effect –'

  'We haven't had any of this sort of…' Kester felt a weight in his gullet.

  'Look – this isn't the time.'

  'Alexis, this could be another attack.'

  'What?'

  'This isn't one of tonight's viruses. I'm certain of it. We haven't had any side-effects like this.'

  'You've given me something new then?'

  'No.'

  'Nothing's shown up on my screen. You really think this could be an attack?'

  'It's OK.' Kester put his hands out.

  'OK?' Alexis' voice ripped through the noise in the foyer. 'What am I infected with? What the hell is this?'

  'Just calm down – I need to get you upstairs to find out.'

  'Don't tell me to calm down, Kester!'

  Alexis flipped into efficiency mode. Her face calmed and Kester could see her thinking things through, only tiny movements in her facial muscles, small physical tics, betraying the urgency of her thought process.

  'The first models are out there,' she said after a few seconds. 'They're in the exchange booths by now. If I'm infected, who else is? Fuck – I've slept with half of them.'

  'Half of who?'

  'Half of everybody else! I wish I could tell you that it's only you, Kester – I wish I could – but old habits die hard.'

  'We need to get up to the lab now. Call Chen.' Kester grabbed her arm again and pulled her towards the lifts.

  -o-

  Panting slightly, Cherry dismounted the bottom ladder. She hadn't had time to wait and see what happened. A scream went up from the crowd and she tensed for a moment, but it was just the band starting another song. She checked the running order. It was an unscheduled song. The next lot of models should be on already.

  She rushed back through to the waiting area and waved to her fellow models to follow her to the makeup desks. Rita tapped at the time on her Book, then pulled Cherry onto the bench in front of her and started poking at her hair with a pointy-ended comb. Cherry listened to the crowd as the band played. Nothing. Well, nothing besides the normal screaming and singing along. It hadn't worked.

  Then she heard one solitary note of fear rise above the clamour.

  -o-

  'You think she's got what?' Chen was as Glaswegian as Kester had ever heard her.

  Alexis was standing at the lab window, forehead against the glass.

  'We called it Ladies' Choice. It was a virus I developed at the Institute for export, a population control virus. It's self-administered, normally…'

  'Another one of yours – great. What does it do?'

  'It's a form of biological spaying. It makes women infertile.'

  'It what?' Chen looked up at Alexis.

  'Let's not mourn the loss of my ovaries, Chen. We both know I screwed them up a long time ago.'

  'It's irreversible,' Kester said.

  'It's what?'

  'Once it's run its course. It could be another attack and it could be serious. This thing is a registered approved therapeutic virus, so it won't show up on people's screens. We don't know –'

  'You'd better have some solutions for me right now, Doctor Lowe, or I'm going to personally throw you out of that fucking window.'

  Kester glanced anxiously at the window.

  'And I don't care if it doesn't open,' Chen added.

  'It's not his fault, Chen,' Alexis said, still forehead-to-glass.

  Chen ignored her. 'Where has it come from?'

  'We don't know. Alexis could have been infected by anyone she has slept with in the last –'

  'Are you infected?'

  'I'm running analysis on both our bloods now.' Kester glanced at the machine suspended over the bench opposite. The light was still flashing. 'We'll soon know if it's what I suspect it is. Where the thing's come from is irrelevant for now. The good news is we have some time.'

  'Time?' Chen growled. 'The band has played two extra songs. The crowd is getting restless. And if the models are infected, one lot have already done their damage.'

  'The infection takes around a week to render the host infertile. It's the deletion virus that causes the weeping eyes.'

  'Deletion virus?'

  'The product is…' Kester tried to clear his mind of technical terms. '…a bacterium that does the dirty work coupled with a virus that clears up the infection once it's run its course.'

  'Which means?'

  'Two things. Firstly, we can stop the bacterium before it does any damage if we administer the clean-up virus to anyone who has been infected. Secondly…when I said where it's come from was irrelevant…we can't track it. It's designed to –'

  'I don't care how it's designed to function. You can treat it?'

  'Yes, inside a week.'

  'And all they'll get is runny eyes?'

  'Yes. And only a small percentage of them.'

  'For how long?'

  'Twelve to twenty-four hours.'

  'OK.' Chen lifted her Book to her ear. 'You still there, Yule? Tell them to go ahead. But there's to be no possibility of infection outside the guest-list. Get to Hera – tell her to keep it under control – no going over the barriers.'

  Alexis looked round. Kester's eyes danced between the two of them.

  'Chen?' Alexis walked towards her.

  'Everyone who has potentially been infected by us tonight will be there at the after-party. Kester, I need you to put together a "gift pack" for the guests. It's another freebie – infection isn't 100% certain via intercourse, so this is a sort of compensation if it doesn't work for them. They need to receive the clean-up virus, but we need some cover for it – o
ne of the viruses from last time, maybe – anything that's tried and tested. We give them the drops and tell them that the weeping is a rare side-effect of infection. Make Corona the free gift so that the story stands up – it had that effect on one or two test subjects, right?'

  Kester went through it in his head. Yes, it would work. This was why she was running the place.

  'And the preshow clients?' he asked. 'We'll need to treat them soon. If Alexis is presenting now and she infected me then they may have been exposed.'

  'A personal aftercare visit with a free gift. Talk to Yule about it – he's better at these things than me. Just treat them and make sure it doesn't look suspicious.'

  'Yes. I'm on it.'

  'Alexis –'

  'Shit…' Alexis was back at the window. 'Chen.'

  Chen and Kester rushed over. Kester's vision of the tumbling walls had come alive. The square was in turmoil, the crowd swelling towards its back corners as if two sluice gates had been opened. The boxes were emptying, their occupants flowing down the metal staircases, some attempting to climb down the outside in their panic. Alexis gasped as a tiny figure fell and was swallowed by the crowd.

  'What the fuck's going on?' Chen's Book began to buzz. 'Gaunt?'

  Alexis and Kester could hear Gaunt's voice shouting above the echoing rabble.

  'Something's spooked them. They think there's been an attack – is going to be an attack – a terrorist attack – a bomb maybe. They're not listening to the announcements.'

  'Why aren't the nets up?'

  'Too late. The crowd is moving too fast. I'm with the head of security right now. He says our best bet is to shepherd them safely through the exits. The line police and paramedics are dropping down low, ready to grab any casualties.'

  Chen looked out of the window at the line police. Alexis pointed to where a stretcher was already being hauled up to one of the platforms.

  'Jesus Christ,' Chen said. 'Get all the VIPs into the foyer.'

  'Already done,' Gaunt said.

  'Tell them…' Chen faltered and then looked up at Kester. 'Get them up to the lab now. Tell them we've got no reason to believe that any attack has happened or is imminent, but that we want to run some tests and administer a clean-up virus which will protect them in the event of one occurring.'

  Kester nodded encouragingly as she said it, a panicked grin on his face.

  'What?' Gaunt said.

  'Just do it.' Chen slammed her Book down on the workbench. She closed her eyes, put her hands over her mouth for a moment and breathed deeply. Dropping her hands, she was back. 'Right you two – rewind – we'd better get our story straight.'

  Chapter 24

  Alexis surveyed the square from the boardroom window. The cleaners were blasting the ground with high pressure hoses, transforming the muddied paving slabs into slices of reflected morning. Here and there a few men in orange vests were loading the last bits of mangled barrier onto carts. It was a miracle the place wasn't littered with bodies. They had been lucky: five or six broken limbs, two head injuries. Nobody had counted the cuts and bruises.

  She continued to watch the clear up and listened as the Board members entered the room one by one through the open doors. She didn't have to turn. Even had they not been announced, she would have known each of them by their little rituals, by the small noises they made as they settled down at their stations. Gaunt's brief chair scrape, jacket fling, pen toss; Agbabi's handbag rummage; Yule's embarrassed chair readjustment as he tried to get it centred underneath his huge bulk; Jones' silent entry, punctuated with small neat coughs and followed by the sorting of papers. Alexis was never sure what the papers Jones brought with her were. No-one else ever brought bits of paper to meetings any more, just their Books, and Jones hardly ever made reference to them. There was a distinct lack of greeting going on today. Then Chen arrived. Her leather-backed Book landed on the table with a fat slap.

  'OK,' Chen said, going straight into deliberating mode, pacing back and forth behind her chair. 'Where are we? Alexis?'

  Farrell braced herself and then turned to address the room.

  'Here's what we know. Another virus has been released, presumably by the same people who released the first one.'

  'But the screening on the Pigs – has it not worked?' Chen said. 'How widespread is this thing?'

  'There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that they got to Kester. Both he and I are infected and we're processing the results for everyone else. This isn't coming from the Pigs. We don't know where it came from and we're unlikely to find out.'

  'Find out,' Chen said. 'You may not be able to track it but it doesn't take much to make a list and get the thumbscrews out. And for fuck's sake, tell me the good news.'

  'The good news is that we've treated all the pre-show guests and the VIPs who were at the show. All of them accepted what we called a precautionary "clean-up" virus and didn't even blink at the possibility of having to use eye drops. These people are used to a lot worse than weeping eyes. But there's more bad news. It's more than likely that the Princess is infected.'

  'What?' Chen burst up from her chair. She shifted her weight from foot to foot for a moment as if she might take off and then sat down abruptly.

  'The virus would have run its course in her before we discovered it. We sent a team to check her out and while she didn't complain of weeping eyes – not everybody does – the virus Kester was supposed to be giving her had presented fully. That makes it more likely she would have contracted both. Pera Pera has escaped infection, possibly due to the fact she spent more time mucking around than actually getting down to business.'

  'So the royal line has been cut off. We consider that bad news?' Gaunt asked.

  Chen looked round at him and he fell silent. 'Potentially cut off,' she said. 'So what can be done? If she is affected can we cure it?'

  'Short of POR, no,' Alexis said.

  'And offering to grow her a new set of ovaries might make her suspicious,' Jones said.

  'What the hell kind of weapon is this anyway?' Chen asked.

  'I can see how it might be used as a weapon,' Alexis said, 'but it's not designed for that. It's designed for private use by women who no longer wish to be fertile. Non-invasive sterilisation. That's why it comes packaged with this "master switch" virus that deletes the bacterium once sterilisation is complete.'

  'So the rest of our guests are OK,' Chen said. 'How many other infected persons are there?'

  'We don't know. Problem is that it's very hard to trace because it's self-deleting.' Alexis took a breath. There was a solution and she had to offer it, even though she knew Chen would take her head off. 'If we really wanted to make sure we've caught this thing we could tell Stark – they could send out a temporary instruction to the screens, get them to flag any –'

  'Hah! Tell Stark?' That was Chen's full appraisal of the idea.

  'If someone uncovers this and it gets out that it has come from Kester, we're in big trouble,' Yule said. 'It's going to look like we set this up as a publicity stunt – an attack that goes unnoticed on Stark's screen and threatens to sterilise the whole bloody City, a few days after we announce that we're going to manufacture a rival screen – it'll destroy Kester. And if Kester's destroyed so are our chances of taking his new screens to market. If they can't trust us…'

  'Realistically,' Chen said, 'if this gets out V will be shut down and we're all going to jail. There'll be no leniency and it won't matter that it was a mistake, that we've been compromised. We've a duty of care to our clients and frankly if our client is a member of the royal family and we don't carry out that duty – well, under the circumstances it could be considered treason.'

  'It won't get out,' Gaunt said. He rubbed his temples. 'This creation is self-deleting. Alexis just told us that. So we shall have no further problems unless someone in this room goes public with the knowledge that we've killed off the royal family.'

  'Gaunt.' Chen sounded like she was warning off a dog. She stopped pacin
g and stared at him. 'It pains me to say it, but you're right. Yule, what's your perspective.'

  'I've been keeping an eye on the press. Our so-called "preventative" treatments are being viewed favourably by our clients and, on the whole, by the press. But some people are asking if there has actually been an attack, if we're bluffing, and if so whether we've contained it.'

  'Which there has been, we are and we haven't,' Jones said.

  'Which we can't,' Alexis said, glaring at her, 'unless we find out where it came from. Yule, what else?'

  'The majority of the press has run with the story that it was a bomb scare that spooked the crowd. One of the sites has a picture that the editors seem to think is evidence of this – a squashed piece of paper with some smeary writing on it. And we might not want to disabuse them of the notion. It does seem a likely explanation from what those interviewed have said, and if that was some other joker's idea of an attack, they've done us a favour by providing cover for us. '

  Alexis felt a surge of relief as Kester appeared at the door. The sooner they could get to talking about the positive stuff the better.

  'Alexis asked me to come –' Kester began.

  'I want the show back on,' Chen said, looking around the table. 'I want it rescheduled today. And remember, it's not a big deal – nobody was seriously hurt and it wasn't our fault. Don't apologise for anything. Anyone with nasty injuries can get a backstage and VIP pit pass and a big fat goodwill payment.

  'The other thing we need is some good press, a distraction. Yule, I want you to work with Kester to produce a statement about his work on the new screens – they were expecting one at the show, so let's give it to them now – we've already said we're going to do it, but we haven't quite shot our load. We can tell them that we've already got a working prototype and that it's in torso testing now. I want Kester on every news site by lunchtime.

  'Kester, I need you to start your in vivo testing. Get your team together. Even better, get a new team together – this is going to be big, it's got to be big – get the best people you can onto it – internal, external, whatever you need.'