The Golden Fleece Read online

  Jarndyke seemed to be busy thinking about that, and thinking hard. Not wanting to let silence fall, Adrian added: “Your business sense and the inventive acumen of your reverse engineers have made you the most successful textile manufacturer in the world, Mr. Jarndyke. As you just said, in terms of efficiency of production and texture, your wools, silks and hybrids are near-perfect. In terms of the sense of touch, they’re practically unbeatable, but in terms of the sense of sight—especially color—they have a long way to go.”

  “We’re supposed to be talking about you, Son, not me,” Jarndyke pointed out. “Personal reasons?”

  “That’s right,” Adrian replied, gathering his courage. “Some people have perfect pitch—they can hear the music more clearly and more subtly than their fellows, because they can discriminate the notes more precisely. I have perfect color sensation— or, at least, far better color sensation than the vast majority of people. My retinas are first-rate in that respect, my brain too, but most importantly, I’m fully conscious of what they’re registering. I don’t say that there aren’t people in the world even more sensitive than I am, but I’m plenty good enough to do anything you need me to do.”

  Jarndyke frowned at that. “I’ve told you, Son,” he said, “that you don’t need the sales pitch. I know you can make me money, with or without being able to see twice as many colors as the man in the street. I gather that you’ve had difficulty in the past convincing people that you really can see things they can’t?”

  Adrian nodded. “Some people,” he admitted, “think I’m... well, bullshitting. Seeing is believing, they reckon, and if they can’t see something, they can’t believe in it.”

  Jarndyke nodded slowly. “But you’ve met other people who can make the same discriminations?” he said.

  “After a fashion,” Adrian admitted. “I’ve run into others who are better than average, but I’ve never actually met anyone with my degree of sensitivity—not in the flesh. I know they exist, though, because I can see it in their works. Claude Monet. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Caravaggio.”

  “Painters.”

  “That’s right. They’re probably not the only people who can reflect their perception in their work—some fashion designers can surely do it too—but painters are the most obvious.”

  “Why didn’t you become a painter?”

  The bluntness of the question surprised Adrian slightly, but he met it with his customary wry smile. “Because I can’t paint,” he said. “I can see, but I don’t have the hand-eye coordination that would allow me to reproduce what I see. I can visualize shapes very well, even in three dimensions, but I can’t reproduce them with my incompetent fingers and a pencil or a brush. I don’t even have the kind of design-control that would allow me to be an adept abstract expressionist, like Jackson Pollock. Sometimes, I think that I’m only half the person I might have been, with only half a talent, but I’m not entirely certain that the painters were that much luckier. After all, the number of people who can measure their true achievement—consciously, at any rate—is very small. Can I talk about textiles again now? I know I don’t need the sales pitch, but I really would like you to understand where I might fit in with your enterprise.”

  Jarndyke frowned, and his mouth twisted into what might have been an expression of annoyance, but he nodded his shaggy head. “Go on,” he said.

  “In the beginning,” Adrian said, “what I can do for you is help to produce a basic color range for your various fabrics. I’m a geneticist; I don’t expect to be involved in the tailoring end of your operation. I really am interested in the psychology of color as well as its genetics, though, and the way that the two intersect and interact. I’d like to do pure research in that area, for my own esthetic satisfaction—but I’d like it, too, if the results of that research had some practical application for you, and I think they might.

  “In the fullness of time, I hope that I might be able to help your designers understand what they need, in terms of coloring your fabrics for particular styles of tailoring. I won’t be able to give you natural patterns for a while, yet—even stripes and polka-dots might take a decade or so—when I can, I think I’ll be able to work out the best color combinations. I hope that I can not only give you the best reds, the best blues, the best browns and the best blacks, but good combinations and designs—and good advice as to how to use them for maximum subliminal effect.

  “I hope that you’ll see the effect on your balance-sheet of my initial labors by the end of next year, but that might be only the beginning. With the opportunities you can give me...well, I really don’t know as yet what might be possible, but I really would like the chance to find out. There’s a lifetime’s work in it, and more, but I’m keen to make what progress I can. I can’t paint—but I’m a scientist, and I can hope to do what the painters never could: understand. I could do that sort of research in Academe, I suppose, but I really do think I’d have more incentives and more opportunities—and I’m not just talking about salary and equipment—working in your industry, Mr. Jarndyke. That’s why I was so pleased to hear from you, and why I’m so grateful to your spies. That’s not bullshit—it’s the truth.”

  Jarndyke’s eyes looked him up and down, and Adrian felt that every physical symptom of his youth and innocence was being interrogated, skeptically. He knew that he didn’t really look the part. He didn’t look like an Argonaut of science, let alone the possessor of a superpower. He knew full well that, in terms of Yorkshire parlance, he probably looked like “a bit of a pansy”—but every word he’d said really was true, and he hoped that he’d said enough to make Jason Jarndyke doubt the evidence of his own unpolished eyes, and the blunt common sense that guided them.

  “So,” Jason Jarndyke said, eventually, “you’re telling me that, given time you can make me the authentic Golden Fleece.” He didn’t smile ironically, as Professor Clark would undoubtedly have done. “Not just golden, but magical.”

  “You could put it like that,” Adrian conceded. “At least, I can try.”

  “Then I really don’t have any alternative but to hire you, do I?” the businessman said, casually. “And not merely to hire you, but to let you go your own mysterious way. Okay—I’ll play. There are three conditions, though.”

  “No problem,” Adrian assured him, but added, for form’s sake: “What are they?”

  “One: you move to headquarters, in Airedale. I need you working in my lab, behind my security-wall, under my beady eye. No telecommuting, no gallivanting, no loose talk. We live in an era of intense industrial espionage, and I’m in a highly competitive business. Two: you’d better deliver on your promises, Son, because I don’t like to be disappointed, and I really hate it if I find out that someone’s been bullshitting me, because it hurts my pride. Once you sign on to work with me, one way or another, you won’t ever work for anyone else.”

  Adrian had already nodded twice, having expected nothing less, and was poised to nod again when everything changed. “Three,” said, Jason Jarndyke, in exactly the same tone, “you keep your fucking hands off my wife.”

  Shocked to the core, Adrian blinked hard several times, and forgot to nod.

  Then Jarndyke grinned, broadly, and said: “I knew I could throw you off your stride, you cocky little sod. Just winding you up, Son—except, of course, that if you were to violate that particular condition, I’d have to kill you. There are firing offences, and there are shooting offenses.” He was still beaming, as if to make it obvious that it was a joke—a Yorkshire joke, orientated to a peculiar sense of humor, but a joke nevertheless—but there was something false in the smile, as if there were some secret behind it that Jason Jarndyke was nursing carefully.

  Adrian didn’t think that mattered. He felt that he had coped with that aspect of his inadequacies very well, this far, and didn’t expect any significant problems in future, even with regard to the kind of Medea that Dante Gabriel Rossetti might have invested with all kinds of subtle charms, imperceptible to the common eye.


  “I’m sure I can comply with all your requirements,” Adrian said, all too conscious of how frail his voice sounded, all of a sudden. But then, he’d never claimed to have perfect pitch— merely command over a visual spectrum more complete than Isaac Newton had ever been able to see.

  “Good,” said Jarndyke, extending his meaty hand to be shaken. “We have a deal. Enough of piddling billions—let’s make me a real fortune.”

  ~ * ~

  Relocation from London to Jarndyke’s estate, in the Aire valley between Bingley and Shipley, was easy enough and almost painless. Adrian didn’t really have anyone to say goodbye to except Professor Clark, and the stuff he couldn’t fit into the removal van was just stuff, of no intimate significance. He was aware of how sad that might make him seem to an objective but color-insensitive eye, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t his fault that he was an orphan, after all, and even if it was his fault that he had no friends and no girl-friend, he didn’t think that it was really a fault, as such. Yes, he’d been married to his studies with an obsessive intensity, for seven long years since turning eighteen and leaving school, but that had been required by his life-plan, which couldn’t be similar to other people’s life-plans, because he wasn’t like other people—because he could really see, and they couldn’t.

  Anyway, he thought, if you’re going to be obsessed, you have to take it seriously, don’t you? No half-measures.

  Getting settled in to the new labs and the new flat were a little more difficult, because Adrian wasn’t all that fond of changes of scene. It wasn’t that the flat had nasty wallpaper, or that the new people crowding the labs were unfriendly. Indeed, the wallpaper was a nicely icy shade of egg-shell blue with unobtrusive silver arabesques, and his new colleagues, including the hot-shots from various parts of south-east Asia, seemed to take a conscientious pride in trying to live up to the local delusion that Yorkshire folk were famed for their hospitality. The problem was in him, and the purely psychological discomfort that descended upon him like a particular shade of indigo when his work and domestic routines needed retuning—but because he was conscious of the problem, and knew that it was a problem, he knew that he’d be able to cope, given time.

  In consequence, he set about using his time methodically and effectively. He introduced himself to all his colleagues, and tried to figure out how they all fitted into the great genetic project of producing sheet fabrics without such inconveniences as breeding lambs, feeding them, shearing them and then doing all the mysterious things to the bundled fleeces that had once been necessary to turn them into merino sweaters, coats and skirts. He visited the factories too, which were all lined up along the banks of the Aire, because water was their most crucial limiting factor, given the abundance of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the ease of producing artificial light with any spectral composition the doctor ordered.

  He allocated five hours a day to the intensive study of all the data hidden behind Jarndyke’s security wall, and was politely amazed by its extent, its complexity, and its sheer beauty. Adrian could visualize three-dimensional organic molecules, and even though their colors were invisible in chemical diagrams and computer simulations, he was still sensitive to the esthetics of their topology. He knew—not thought, but knew—that DNA was the most beautiful molecule in existence, the standard by which all others had to be judged, just as he knew that there were seven shades of improvement on chlorophyll’s green in its super-efficient artificial rivals, especially the ones that the unwittingly half-blind thought of simply as “black.”

  He could only allocate five hours a day to that essential work because he had to dedicate a further five to setting up his own projects—which was not just a matter of setting up his molecule-modeling programs and establishing a pipeline by which cyberspatial planning could be turned into solid product, but also involved such messy supplements as interviewing and selecting assistants capable of working under his direction, and building them into a team.

  Adrian hated messy work; it was too time-consuming— and there were, after all, only twelve hours in a working day, because he had to sleep for eight, having long since given up on trying to train himself to get by on four, and he needed a further four for eating, relaxation and esthetic sensation. Some politicians, he knew, got by on five hours sleep and no relaxation or esthetic sensation at all, but they were just imbeciles who did nothing but messy work—and badly to boot—while he was a true scientist, and a true seer. He had to look after his brain. That meant treating it right in all respects, not just making sure that it got an adequate dose of all the right oils and minerals.

  Jason Jarndyke welcomed him when he first arrived, but didn’t keep looking over his shoulder thereafter—not obtrusively, at any rate. For the best part of a fortnight, Adrian hardly caught a fleeting glimpse of his employer in the distance, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before he received his first Official Visit. Inevitably, the moment came—but Jarndyke was obviously sufficiently familiar with the new routine that Adrian had set up to slide into one of its interstices, so as not to throw him off his stride.

  “How’s it going, Son?” the big man asked.

  “I’m getting a grip, Mr. Jarndyke,” Adrian assured him. “I think I might be ready to set up some experimental runs in a mock-up shed within a month. If they go well, I’ll probably be able to bring you a proposal for industrial incorporation in... maybe another five weeks, but say six to be on the safe side. Co-adaptation to your tissue-culture genomes shouldn’t be a problem—your genomic designers have done a fine job, fundamentally as well as phenotype-wise.”

  “Don’t be in too much of a hurry, Son,” Jarndyke advised him. “This is a marathon, not a sprint. I understand that these things take their own time. Rome wasn’t built in a day—and the poor buggers couldn’t make it last even with the time they actually took. We’re better than that, and we’re not slapdash. We want product, but we don’t want hitches. Settle down. My spies tell me you’re working way too hard.”

  “I don’t think so,” Adrian said.

  “And you’re one of those silly sods who won’t ever be told—I know that. I’ve got half a hundred of your type in the labs already; you probably know who I mean by now. You really do need to get out more, socialize a little. This place might not be London, but it’s not a bloody cemetery.”

  “I’ve been to see the Hockneys at Salt’s Mill,” Adrian said, defensively, although he wasn’t entirely sure why he needed to be defensive.

  “Bully for you,” said Jarndyke, with a sigh, like a man who was used to being deliberately misunderstood. “Okay, your own time’s your own time. I don’t have any right to have an opinion about it, and I’d be an idiot if I started trying to turn my oddball geniuses into ordinary human beings. Come to dinner on Sunday though. Proper dinner—two o’clock. Spend the afternoon at the Old Manse. And don’t even think of trying to say no.”

  Adrian hadn’t been thinking of making any such attempt. Sunday afternoon was usually study time, but he wasn’t inflexible. Taking obsession seriously was one thing, but being imprisoned by it was something else. Complying with the boss’s requests wasn’t really socializing, in any case: it was part of the job.

  “Thanks very much,” he said.

  “You don’t have to dress up,” Jarndyke assured him. “We’re very informal. You don’t have to bring a bottle, either—I’ve got the best cellar in England. Yorkshire, anyway. Just turn up, enjoy the grub—and for God’s sake try to relax.”

  Adrian nodded.

  Jarndyke had actually turned away, having reached the bottom line, business-wise, but he suddenly turned back. “Have you ever seen the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas?” he asked. He had a real talent for the unexpected, when he applied himself.

  Adrian blinked several times. “As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “I went to reverse engineering conference in Houston a couple of years ago, and made a special trip.”

  “I thought you might have done,” Jarndy
ke said, obviously having taken note of the conference in Adrian’s CV. “What did you think?”

  “Magnificent,” Adrian said. “Brilliant work. I’m not sure I appreciated the religious context, being an atheist, but the artwork...I couldn’t help thinking of it as an anticipation of the esthetics of artificial photosynthetics—I find APs beautiful too, if skillfully applied.”

  Jarndyke nodded his head, as if he’d expected to hear exactly that answer, bizarre as it was, in exactly those terms. “Angie dragged me to see them,” he said, thoughtfully. “To me, they looked like so many black rectangles. I just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Emperor’s new clothes, I thought. Nothing there, but these arty types pretend, just to make suckers of the rest of us. I was wrong, eh?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Adrian, not beating about the bush. “They’re not just black. There are other colors in there, if you have the eyes and mind to see them. They really are superb—but it’s not your fault if you can’t perceive it. It’s your eyes, or your brain....”