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

  “It really would be better to get things moving as soon as possible,” Mr. Keyson said, rather weakly. “I live nearby—I can bring the papers over at a few minutes notice.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Mum promised. Stevie thought that she probably meant it—but he figured that it probably wouldn’t matter when he peeped through his bedroom curtains a few minutes later and saw the BMW pulling into the parking-spot that Mr. Keyson’s black Peugeot had vacated only a few minutes before.

  * * * *

  Stevie knew better than to go down immediately to greet his father. It was safer to wait until he was sure that he wasn’t about to step into a battlefield. It was as well that he waited; within two minutes of the living-room door being closed he heard the row beginning, and knew that it was going to be a big one.

  He crept down the stairs to the half-way point, directly opposite the living-room door, although the voices were raised so high that he could have heard them well enough from the top.

  “What the hell do you mean, independent representation?” Dad said. “He’s my son, for Christ’s sake. It’s my gene we’re talking about. Mine and his. Father and son. The bastard should have come to me.”

  “He should not,” Mum retorted—although Stevie knew that if he had understood the fruits of his earlier eavesdropping correctly, it was indeed Dad that Mr. Keyson had come to see, because the agent had had no way of knowing about the separation and the loft. “The agent said that it could be a mutation—something new. In which case, I’m the one who’ll decide what to do. I’ve got custody, remember.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Do you know what the odds are against a spontaneous mutation? Of course you don’t! You can’t even add up a restaurant bill. And you don’t have custody either, because the divorce hasn’t even got to the decree nisi yet. It’s my gene—he got it from me. He’s got to be part of the package. If he goes to someone else, it won’t just cut the value of what we’ve got in two, you know. This is a very complicated risk calculation for the drug company—a monopoly is one thing, but it can’t be halved. A race without opposition is a walkover, but competition changes everything. I’ve got a nice deal here, Stacy, and I’m not going to let you foul it up. It’s not just me you’ll be fouling it up for, but for Stevie as well. You have to let me handle this. You have to.”

  “I’ve let you handle things for far too long! No more. From now on, I go my own way. I won’t be bullied. I’ll decide what’s best for Stevie. You can’t cut me out.”

  “I’m not trying to cut you out, you daft cow! I’m trying to make sure that we all get what we can from this. It’s a chance in a million, and if you fuck it up it’ll cost us all. I’ve got the biggest pharma company in Europe begging me to take a promotion, but I have to be able to commit for both of us. The last thing we need is some sleazebag agent coming between us, skimming twenty or thirty per cent off the take and dropping me in the shit with the company. I can get a big step up here, if I play my cards right. It’s not just money, it’s my career.”

  “If you hadn’t been so fixated on your bloody career we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. I don’t care whether they want to make you executive vice-president in charge of overwork, and I don’t want to sell exclusive rights to Stevie’s DNA to some multinational corporation. I just want the two of us to have some semblance of a normal life, and if Mr. Keyson can get that for us....”

  “You’re crazy, you know that? Normal life? This could be the jackpot, Stacy. This could be a ticket to the good life for all of us, but you have to let me handle it. What the hell do you know about business? I’m a salesman, for God’s sake—a professional! Do you really think that appointing some shark to act for you will safeguard Stevie’s interests? It won’t. He’ll get ripped off, you’ll get ripped off and I’ll be stuck where I am in Deadend Street. I need him, Stacy, and he needs me. You have to let me take care of this.”

  “Now you need him! For eleven years he’s been a toy you’ve picked up when you wanted to play and handed back when you finished. For eleven years he’s been my job, my responsibility, my entire bloody world, but now you need him. Well, you can’t have him, Jack. You can take him out on weekends and fill him full of all the junk food he can eat, but his body and soul are mine. I gave birth to him and I brought him up, and I’ll decide what’s best for him...and me.”

  “It’s my bloody gene, you stupid bitch!”

  “It’s not your bloody gene, Jack. I didn’t understand much of what Keyson was saying, but I understood that. The only thing that’s patentable is a manufacturing process for the protein. The gene is God’s, or Mother Nature’s, or Stevie’s, but it’s not yours.”

  Stevie felt a tear rolling down his cheek—which surprised him a little, because he hadn’t been aware that he was about to start crying. He wanted to go into the living-room and throw himself between the two of them, and make them understand that he had a voice in this too, but he knew from long experience that it wouldn’t work. Separately, they were manageable; together, they were impossible. Whatever he tried to do now—except for creeping back up the stairs and putting himself to bed—would only make things worse.

  Tomorrow, on the other hand, would be another day.

  Stevie wiped away the tear. Then he went to bed—but not to sleep.

  Maybe, he thought, Dr. Greenlea would be able to help. Or Mr. Winthrop. Or the Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Someone must be able to point him in the direction of a middle way, which would at least prevent his parents from going to war with one another, even if it couldn’t bring them back to being on the same side.

  * * * *

  It was already getting light when Stevie was shaken awake by his Dad. He opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but his Dad clamped a gnarled hand over his face and said: “Quiet, Stevie. We have to be very quiet.”

  It was at this point that Stevie realized that he was being what TV newsreaders called “abducted”—or would be, if he didn’t prevent it. Did he want to prevent it, though? Which would be worse, all things considered: being abducted, or trying to stop himself being abducted?...”trying” being what Dad always called “the operative word.”

  “Dad,” he said, his voice muffled by the restraining hand. “I have to go to school.”

  “You have to be quiet, Stevie,” Dad said, giving not the slightest indication that he had understood what Stevie had tried to say, or the calm reasonableness that lay behind the words. “Get dressed.”

  In order to get dressed, Stevie had to push his Dad’s hand away, which Dad consented to let him do, but that didn’t mean that Dad was ready to listen to reason.

  His school clothes were neatly laid out on the chair, as they always were. They weren’t the clothes Stevie would have chosen to run away in, but he knew it would only cause trouble if he asked whether he could get his jeans and sweatshirt out of the drawer. He decided to play for time by getting dressed slowly. While he buttoned his clean shirt reverently he said: “I really should go to school, Dad. I’ll get behind.” Actually, he was more concerned about leaving Suzie a clear field to continue her seduction of poor misguided Pete, but he certainly wasn’t going to mention that to Dad.

  “We’re not divorced yet,” Dad whispered. “I’m not breaking any laws. I’m just looking out for you, Stevie. We have a chance here, you and me, if we stick together. We’re two of a kind, Stevie—the only two there are, with luck. You’re a chip off the old block. We have to stick together.”

  “It’ll only make Mum mad,” Stevie said, as he pulled his pants on, although he knew that he was stating the obvious. “If you could just patch things up with Mum....”

  “It’s beyond patching, son,” Dad murmured, with a slight catch in his voice. “The state she’s in, she’d sign a deal with the Devil just to shaft me. The only way that we can salvage anything is to cut her out. If there were any other way....”

  By now, Stevie was fastening the shoelaces on his black Oxfords, regretting that he hadn’t take
n the opportunity to reach under his bed to get his trainers. “I ought to pack a few things,” he said, hopefully, as he reached out for the mobile phone on the bedside table.

  “No time,” Dad retorted, as he gripped Stevie’s wrist and pulled it away from the phone. “Best leave that behind, don’t you think? Downstairs now—quiet as a mouse. I know you can do it.”

  It was now or never, Stevie, thought. If he was going to make a racket and wake Mum up, now was the time. But what would happen then? Another row? A fight? He might still end up in the BMW, leaving Mum wailing on the stairs, or bleeding, or worse. If he did as he was told, though, he’d have a chance to talk—to make Dad see sense. Mum would think he’d betrayed her, but it was the best way...the only way to be sure that everyone would be safe. It was a pity about the mobile, though; he ought to have tried to sneak it into his pocket while Dad wasn’t looking.

  “Okay,” he said, resignedly.

  “Good boy,” Dad whispered, smiling broadly. “I knew I could rely on you, Stevie. A chip off the old block.”

  So they made their way downstairs, and out of the front door, and round the corner to where Dad had parked the BMW, without causing any alarm.

  When the car got to the main road, though, it didn’t turn right in the direction of the loft. It turned left, and headed for the motorway.

  There was still ninety minutes to go before rush hour, so they made it on to the motorway in less then ten minutes. There was no queue as yet for the London-bound carriageway.

  “Where are we going?” Stevie asked.

  “HQ” Dad replied, tersely.

  “What’s HQ?”

  “Headquarters. We’re in the big league now. There’s nothing to worry about. We’re just going for a check-up. A few tests.”

  “Blood tests?”

  “Among others.”

  “I already had that. Why do they have to do it again?”

  “It’s nothing to be scared of, Stevie. It won’t take long. Once they know what they need to know...well, I’ll be a lot more use to them than you will, given your age. We just need to make absolutely sure that you’re on side. It’s just as well, in hindsight, that we’re both only children, although...well, if your Granddad hadn’t died in that car crash....”

  Stevie could tell that his Dad was worried about something, but figured that he must be anxious about the police car that had just overtaken the BMW. “Dad...,” he began—but he didn’t know how to carry on.

  “Good job you were ill, too,” Jack Pinkham went on. “Could have been years before the Generalissimo got around to forcing me to get profiled. By that time the divorce would have gone through and we might have been living in different continents.”

  “I wasn’t ill,” Stevie said.

  “No? Faked it for the sake of a long weekend, did you? Don’t worry, son—I used to do that myself. Two of a kind. Got to do your schoolwork, mind. Can’t get any sort of job without a degree these days, and anything short of an upper second is a ticket to Deadend Street...unless you turn out to be sitting on a gold-mine without even knowing it.”

  “It was Mum,” Stevie said. “She got overanxious.”

  Dad laughed out loud. “Well,” he said, “I guess that qualifies as ironic. We’ll send her a postcard to say thanks.”

  A postcard! How far, Stevie wondered, was Dad thinking of taking him? Had his reference to different continents been more than a figure of speech? Stevie wanted to ask, but he didn’t dare.

  When they reached the junction with the M25 the BMW eased into the slip-road, then took the clockwise carriageway heading north-east.

  “Mum’ll be up by now,” Stevie observed. “She’ll be worried.”

  “She’ll work it out,” Dad said, curtly.

  “I should have brought my mobile. Can I borrow yours?”

  “No. We have to remain incommunicado, for today at least. You can phone her tonight, if everything works out. Just be patient, for now. It’ll all be all right. I promise you that.”

  Stevie didn’t doubt that his Dad meant the promise, although he knew that he could have found reasons enough to doubt it if he’d cared to think back to earlier promises that had gone unfulfilled. What he did doubt, even without the aid of hindsight, was that Jack Pinkham’s definition of “all right” was anything like his. That was what scared him—but he knew that being scared wasn’t going to help. He had to be patient, just as his Dad said. And he had to be tough, because he had to put crying behind him now. And above all else, he had to be clever, no matter how little homework he’d done by way of preparation. He was, after all, the one with the gene that might provide a cure for wrinkles—which might, if luck was with him, turn out to be a mutation that was his alone and not a chip off any old block.

  Who, he thought, grimly, would be in the driving seat then?

  * * * *

  HQ turned out to be a complex of ultramodern buildings set among green fields and enormous carparks. Stevie’s Dad cursed a few times as he drove around a hideously complicated one-way system looking for the correct approach-route to the building he was aiming at. Stevie was impressed by the almost total absence of graffiti which would have been total if someone hadn’t defaced the plague mounted beside the main doors. The plaque had been intended to proclaim that Dad’s company were duly-certified INVESTORS IN PEOPLE, but someone with an aerosol can had inked over PEOPLE and scrawled PILLS AND POTIONS above the splotch.

  It was cool inside the building, and very quiet; it reminded Stevie of the time Gran had taken him to church. They had to wait for quite a long time in reception before a white-coated young man arrived to lead them through the double doors into a maze of corridors. Stevie found the maze of corridors interesting. It wasn’t just Ultimate Labyrinth that was full of mazes—these days, three in every five computer games had a level you couldn’t get to without solving a maze.

  They ended up in a room that made Dr. Greenlea’s consulting-room look woefully underequipped, where even the chairs looked threatening in their shiny black imitation-leather upholstery. Three people were waiting there, all of them much younger than Dr. Greenlea—and, for that matter, Stevie’s Dad. Stevie had to sit down in an uncomfortable chair, but he didn’t have to roll up his sleeve immediately, because the doctors were busy looking things up on computer screens and talking in low voices. It seemed to take a long time for any of them to acknowledge that he was there—and even then, it was only one of them: the only woman in the party. She had blonde hair like Suzie’s, and didn’t look old enough to have children of her own. She came over to Stevie, leaving her fellows in conference with Dad, knelt down beside his chair and said: “Hello, Stephen. I’m Evie—short for Evelyn.”

  “I’m Stevie,” Stevie said. “We rhyme.”

  “So we do. Don’t worry, Stevie—we’re not going to hurt you.”

  “Yes you are,” he said. “You’re going to stick needles in me. Dr. Greenlea already took an armful of blood, and that was only on Friday. It’ll take me ages to grow it back.”

  “I don’t think we’ll need any more blood today. Maybe in future—but we’ve got your Dad’s results back now, and they look promising. If everything goes smoothly, we can probably put you on ice for a year or two.”

  “On ice?” Stevie queried.

  Evie smiled. “Not literally,” she said. “You should be glad, you know. A gene like that’s a good thing to have. You’re practically a national treasure. If you were a year or two older...but that’s okay. You’ll grow. And in the meantime, nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  “Will I have to go to a special school?” Stevie asked.

  Evie smiled again. “No,” she said. “In a year or two, you’ll be able to understand....”

  She broke off abruptly and stood up. A man with grey hair had just come into the room. He was obviously Evie’s boss, but he didn’t even spare her a glance as he grabbed Dad by the elbow and took him to one side in order to whisper something to him.

  “What do you mean
, a problem?” Dad said, loudly enough to be heard in the next lab but one. “Are you trying to tell me that he didn’t get the gene from me?”

  “No,” said the grey-haired man in a normal voice, obviously taking the view that if Dad felt no need to whisper he didn’t have to either. “That result’s final. The problem’s practical.”

  “I signed the contract,” Dad said. “It’s legal. Stacy can’t do anything about it. I’m his father. We’re not divorced.”

  “It’s not that kind of practicality.” The white-coated man glanced in Stevie’s direction with a slight show of reluctance, but went ahead anyhow. “It’s your sperm-count, Mr. Pinkham.”

  Stevie pricked up his ears at that. Sperm-counts were always in the news, because they were said to be falling all over Europe, and Mr. Winthrop had taken the trouble to explain it because he “believed in moving with the times”, especially in SexEd.

  Meanwhile, Evie’s boss continued: “It’s...well, the bare fact is, Mr. Pinkham, that we’re not going to be able to harvest copies of the gene that way. Given that Stevie’s only eleven, we’re....”