In the Flesh and Other Tales of The Biotech Revolution [SSC] Read online

  “It will be better when I have my Asp,” she told me. “You’ll see, then, what dancing is.”

  Orangutans are not built for dancing. Not, at any rate, the kinds of dancing that a human can do. Our genes are very similar, but the instructions etched in our cytoplasm are more faber than walker.

  I nodded my head, as if to agree with her—but she refused to understand me, even in a gesture so simple. Her redirected attention was already fixed on Dr. Prospero. His had never wavered.

  I left, and went to talk to Python.

  “You’re not built for dancing either,” I told him. “I’m all arms, you’re just a mammoth’s thigh stretched to absurdity, too much mass to move with grace. But she’s going home now, and Dr. Prospero will be all ours again. Yours and mine, I mean—because the mammoths and the tapirs, and Ariel and Caliban are all too stupid to care. You and I are the only ones who really love him, because we’re the only ones who can.”

  He licked my face when I finished, as if he wanted to comfort me, but didn’t quite know how.

  * * * *

  Then I waited for life to return to normal. I waited for Dr. Prospero to return to himself. Initially, I put his distraction down to the stress of his continued labours in connection with the gestating Asps. Then, after some thought and a certain amount of research, I figured that there must be some kind of hormonal echo afflicting him, the way Caliban’s echoes occasionally afflict me. I thought that his body might be missing her, even though his mind must be eager to return to a more productively ataractic state.

  I did what I could to help. I was attentive but discreet, always ready to talk and never to nag, always concerned but always careful.

  It did no good. He remained moody. I’m sure that his work didn’t suffer—-his work on the Asps, that is—but it had been dislodged from its proper context. It was almost as if he were leaving the island to do it, commuting to some private v-space a million miles away.

  We had a hundred trivial conversations before he got around to it, but in the end the moment came.

  “I’ve been thinking, Miranda,” he signed to me, one evening after dinner when the stars shone bright, sending their frail rays through the infinite crystal corridors of the ice-palace. “I might have done everything here that I need to do. I might move south again, take an island nearer to the equator. The Continental Engineers have a couple of dozen virgins ready for allocation.”

  The word that hurt me most, oddly enough, was “again.” Dr. Prospero hadn’t worked anywhere else since Python was the size of his forearm. Given the limited carrying-capacity of human memory, and the way in which human personalities reshape themselves over centuries, he couldn’t have any meaningful sense of ever having been anywhere else. The Dr. Prospero I knew—the Dr. Prospero he knew—was as much a creature of the island as the alpha male of the mammal herd, or me.

  “I don’t want to leave,” I signed, hastily adding: “Not yet. In a hundred years, maybe. Or two.”

  “You’re only fifteen, Miranda” he signed back. “You have no idea what a hundred years means. In any case, you can say here if you want to.”

  And there it was: You can stay here if you want to. As if I were capable of wanting to be here if he were somewhere else. As if I could welcome a new tenant to his ice-palace, or become its chatelaine myself.

  As if, as if, as if. My fingers twitched as I repeated the phrase inside my head, itching with it even though they remained discreetly mute.

  “No,” I signed, eventually. “That’s not what I want. I want things to be normal again.”

  “You’re only fifteen,” he said, as if his fingers too were developing habits that were difficult to break. “You have no notion of normality. Fifteen years is a drop in the ocean of time. Things have been settled during that time because I’ve become stuck in my ways, but that’s not normal. Moving on is normal. You have to keep changing when you’re emortal, Miranda, or robotization might set in. It’s time I moved on. Past time, I think.”

  “Is that what Elise told you?” I asked, recklessly.

  “She mentioned it,” he replied, “but she only started me thinking. I needed that—to start thinking along those lines. Once the Asp is finished—finished here, I mean, not fully trained—it might be time for new surroundings, new stimuli. I need new ideas, Miranda. You have new ideas every day, simply because you’re growing up, but I’ve been grown up for a long time, and I need to move on if I’m not to stagnate. I don’t want you to stay here. I want you to come with me—but you’re free to make your own choice.”

  What about Ariel? I thought. What about Caliban? Well, what about them. They wouldn’t care, and they didn’t have a vote. I was the whole person, the real me. I didn’t want to go. But I didn’t want Dr. Prospero to go without me, either—even if tagging along with him, like an exhibit in his collection of freaks, turned out to be anything but paradise, anything but comfortable, anything but endurable.

  “There’s no hurry,” I said. “We have all the time in the world.”

  “That’s part of the problem,” he signed back. “Time moves so slowly here, where the day seems almost as long as the year. It’s worse than the moon. When Elise comes back....”

  “It won’t make any difference,” I signed, suppressing a tremor in my fingers in order to make sure that my meaning was clear. “Once she has her Asp, she’ll have no further use for you. Your deal will be over.”

  He raised his eyebrows in sincere astonishment. “I know that,” he signed. “It’s fine by me. We both got what we wanted, and it’ll be over soon enough for both of us. It’ll be time for us to move on— to seize new opportunities, to meet new challenges.”

  I knew that he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see that the deal wasn’t over, and never would be—because she’d changed him. She’d drifted into his life and drifted out again, but she wasn’t gone. Even when she had her Asp, she wouldn’t be gone. Things had changed. They would never be the same again. But what could I say? What could I sway that couldn’t be countered with that ridiculous, appalling, insulting rejoinder: You‘re only fifteen, Miranda. You don’t understand.

  Because I am only fifteen, and I don’t.

  When there was nothing further to say, I went to see Python again, because he wasn’t only fifteen, and he did understand.

  “We’re leaving, Python,” I told him, my fingers dancing on his glittering scales as if on a dance-floor that went on forever, glittering all the way. “We’re leaving, and never coming back. Nothing will ever be the same. You’re coming too, of course. Just you and me and Dr. Prospero. And Ariel and Caliban, I suppose. Sometimes I wish that I could go to sleep for a thousand years, and wake up when they’ve had a chance to grow up and become as wise as they ever can—but I can’t, because wakefulness is just as essential as sleep to a highly-developed mind. Even you can’t sleep forever, Python. Truth be told, they can’t grow up if I’m not around; they can’t even live for long if I’m not around to draw them together and nourish their dreams.

  “And while we’re admitting the truth, it’s possible that Dr. Prospero is right—that Elise Gagne is right, though it would choke me if I had to say it with my throat—and that he really does have to move on. He’s only human, after all. Three’s a crowd, you know, inside or outside your head, but everything on the surface of the Earth is one big crowd, even when you’re on an island surrounded by a hole in an ice-sheet that goes all the way to the pole on one side and calves into the great grey sea on the other. I hate Elise Gagne, but she knows how to dance. She certainly knows how to dance.”

  Python yawned, and stirred. I knew that she was feeling hungry, that she wanted to be away. She’d probably been perfectly content before I arrived, but I’d sparked the restlessness in her and now she wanted to be off, hunting for rats in the tunnels, or tapirs on the slopes.

  “It’s still winter, old man,” I said to him. “It’s cold outside, even in the meager daylight. There’s no hurry, is there? And there’ll a
lways be plenty of rats. Even in the depths of the ecocatastrophe, there were always plenty of rats.”

  I left him to it, and went through the tunnels myself, out on to the mountainside above the tree line. Far below, I could see the mammoths huddled in a clearing, like a great white tumor in the forest’s dark flesh.

  The stars were shining, but there were no stars falling, and no aurora to echo the storms on the sun.

  If I were able to sleep for a thousand years, I thought, I might wake to a braver new world, where the legacy of billions of years of natural selection had at last been balanced by the legacy of two millennia of godlike power. Or not. One thing that was certain was that I wouldn’t be awakened by a prince’s kiss, or any other sign of destiny.

  Anyway, I had no choice. Wakefulness is as essential as sleep; ambition is as necessary as dreams. And the only place on Earth that never changes is the utmost ocean floor, into which nothing falls but the corpses of sea-dwelling mammals that have finally been consumed by sleep, Ariel-twin and Caliban-twin alike.

  <>

  * * * *

  casualty

  Even though it seemed to take every last vestige of her strength to drag herself into the kitchen, Jenny found the impetus to cook breakfast. While she was waiting for the frying pan to do its work, she ate a bowl of bite-sized Shredded Wheat sprinkled with sultanas. Then she ate two fried eggs, two pork sausages, four rashers of bacon, three slices of fried bread and two fried tomatoes. She washed it all down with half a liter of orange and cranberry juice and three cups of coffee with sugar.

  There had been a time when she was proudly eating for two, carrying the future of the human race in her abdomen; nowadays she was just ravenous. She had hoped that the food would restore her strength and sense of well-being, but it didn’t. She didn’t want to vomit, but she still felt utterly drained, hardly capable of movement. She had too much pride actually to crawl back to bed, especially as she had put so much effort into getting dressed, but she collapsed onto the settee like the proverbial ton of bricks.

  She called Jackie first, but Jackie was at work and had her mobile switched off. The “Ride ol the Valkyries” ran its course and then gave way to voicemail. Jenny cursed, not having realized that it was already after nine. She didn’t leave a message. She called the Health Center, where she was due to pick up her Genetic Profile results—and, if necessary, to discuss their implications with Dr. Kitteredge. Her hand was trembling as she held the phone to her ear, although it weighed next to nothing.

  “This is Jennifer Loomis,” she said, as soon as the receptionist answered. “I have an appointment at eleven, but I can’t make it. It’s just not physically possible. I know you don’t like giving out results over the phone, but could you just tell me whether the baby’s Genetic Profile is clear? I think I’m going to have to ask the hospital if they can take me in today—I’m supposed to have three weeks plus to go, but I just can’t go on. If I weren’t living in a ground floor flat, the stairs would have done for me already.”

  She felt thoroughly ashamed of herself as she finished the rambling speech. She had always thought of herself as a strong person, capable of heroic effort when the need arose, and she had tried with all her might to believe what the veterans of the prenatal class told her about every first-time mother being taken by surprise by the awfulness of the experience, but she could no longer doubt that something was seriously amiss. It was one thing to be so lethargic that Jackie had to do the shopping for her, but quite another to find it impossible to move from room to room within the flat. She’d got into this mess because she’d heard the famous metaphorical biological clock begin to tick too furiously, but now its tick had been replaced by the knell of doom.

  The receptionist seemed to have taken forever to summon her notes to the screen. “It’s a good job you rang, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said, scrupulously following the rule that required all maternity cases to be addressed as “Mrs.” Whether they were married or not. “Your appointment has had to be cancelled.”

  “Well, thanks for letting me know,” Jenny said, unable to inject the requisite sarcasm into her tone. “He’s all clear genewise, then? Too bloody healthy by half, I dare say. It’s me that can’t take the strain.”

  “I’m not able to confirm or deny that, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said. “But there is a note here about contacting Dr. Gilfillan. It’s marked urgent. Will you call him or shall I?”

  “I’m with Dr. Kitteredge,” Jenny told her.

  “Yes, Mrs. Loomis, of course. Dr. Gilfillan is a consultant. It really would be better if you called him yourself. That way, you can describe your symptoms. His number—”

  “Hang on!” Jenny complained. “What kind of consultant is he? What’s his specialism?”

  “I really can’t tell you, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said, frostily. “All I have here are his qualifications: PhD, RAMC.”

  “PhD?” Jenny queried. “Isn’t it supposed to be MD, if not FRCS? And what the hell’s RAMC?”

  “Royal Army Medical Corps,” the receptionist informed her, with a smugness that reminded Jenny of the general knowledge freak she’d got stuck with the last time Jackie had talked her into going down to the local pub on quiz night.

  Awareness of what the voice at the other end of the phone had actually said burst in Jenny’s mind like a bomb just as the baby kicked her again, like a kangaroo taking a penalty. “A PhD in the Royal Army Medical Corps?” Jenny repeated, incredulously. “You mean he’s some biowarfare boffin from Porton Down? What the hell did that Genetic Profile throw up?”

  “I really don’t know.” The receptionist’s disembodied voice suddenly seemed quite unhuman. “I dare say that he’ll explain everything when you call him. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. May I give you the number now?”

  You absolute cow! Jenny thought—but all she said was: “Go ahead.” She tapped it into the phone’s memory as the receptionist read it off, and rang off as soon as she’d strangled a mumbled “thank you,” without waiting to be told that she was welcome.

  Jenny’s hand was really shaking now. She cursed several times. She’d known, of course, that the Genetic Profile wasn’t any mere formality—there were horror stories in the papers every day—but she’d had no reason to think that anything serious might be wrong. She had a better than average set of genes herself, and one of the pros of having selected an unwitting member of the armed forces as a potential father was supposed to be the screening that every recruit was put through nowadays. Except, of course, that she had had a reason to worry...

  Jenny hit the speed dial, not to call the mysterious Dr. Gilfillan but to get to Jackie’s voicemail. “Something’s wrong with the bloody Profile, Jackie,” she said, unceremoniously. “Pick up a soldier, you said. Guaranteed A-one physical condition, government screened, guaranteed never to show his pretty face again. The perfect combination of genetic quality and moral irresponsibility. I knew I should have gone for brains instead of brawn. All that stuff about the tactics of biological warfare wasn’t bullshit, Jackie. He really did know what he was talking about, the bastard. Something is very, very wrong, and I think I’ve just become a casualty in Plague War One. Call me when you can.”

  Then she called the number that the receptionist had given her. She was expecting another receptionist, but the voice that answered on the third ring was male, deep and authoritative.

  “Dr. Gilfillan?” she said, querulously.

  “Speaking,” was the reply.

  “My name’s Jennifer Loomis…”

  “Miss Loomis! Thank god you called. I was beginning to think there’d been some kind of cock-up, or worse—”

  Jenny cut him off, brutally. “There was some kind of cock-up,” she told him, “and worse. I just got your message now, when I called the Health Center to tell them I wouldn’t be in for my nonexistent appointment because I’m too bloody ill. Now, will you please tell me what’s wrong with my kid before I call an amb
ulance to take me to the hospital?”

  “That won’t be necessary, Miss Loomis. An ambulance will be on its way within a matter of minutes, and I’ll be on board. Keep talking—I’ll bring the phone with me.”

  “No, no, no!” said Jenny, horrified by the fact that her face seemed to be welded to the arm of the settee, so that she was unable to sit up. “You’re not shipping me off to bloody Porton Down! Apart from anything else, it must be sixty miles away!”

  “I’m not at Porton, Miss Loomis. I’m at a private hospital in South Oxfordshire, no more than twenty miles away. If there are problems, you really would be better off here than your local maternity unit.”

  “What do you mean, if?” Jenny complained. “You know damn well there are problems. What’s wrong with me, Dr. Gilfillan, PhD, RAMC? Exactly how did I become a casualty of this month’s bioterrorism scare? Because it seems to me that I’ve been hit by friendly fire, and if that’s the case ...”

  “Please don’t get carried away, Miss Loomis.” The voice didn’t sound so authoritative now. Jenny had observed that male voices usually lost their edge when confronted with female hysteria—a serious weakness, she’d always thought. “We’ll be with you in less than half an hour. Now, can you tell me... ?”