Axiomatic (11 page)

Then I realised the spray had hit me, too, and I was paralysed. It was such a relief to be powerless that I slipped into unconsciousness feeling, absurdly, more peaceful than I had felt for a very long time.

* * * *

I woke with a mixture of panic and lethargy, and no idea where I was or what had happened. I opened my eyes and saw nothing. I flailed about trying to touch my eyes, and felt myself drifting slightly, but my arms and legs were restrained. I forced myself to relax for a moment and interpret my sensations. I was blindfolded or bandaged, floating in a warm, buoyant liquid, my mouth and nose covered with a mask. My feeble thrashing movements had exhausted me, and for a long time I lay still, unable to concentrate sufficiently to even start guessing about my circumstances. I felt as if every bone in my body had been broken — not through any pain, but through a subtler discomfort arising from an unfamiliar sense of my body’s configuration; it was awkward, it was wrong. It occurred to me that I might have been in an accident. A fire? That would explain why I was floating; I was in a burns treatment unit. I said, ‘Hello?

I’m awake.’ The words came out as painful, hoarse whispers.

A blandly cheerful voice, almost genderless but borderline male, replied. I was wearing headphones; I hadn’t noticed them until I felt them vibrate.

‘Mr Segel. How do you feel?’

‘Uncomfortable. Weak. Where am I?’

‘A long way from home, I’m afraid. But your wife is here too.’

It was only then that I remembered: lying in bed, unable to move. That seemed impossibly long ago, but I had no more recent memories to fill in the gap.

‘How long have I been here? Where’s Marion?’

‘Your wife is nearby. She’s safe and comfortable. You’ve been here a number of weeks, but you are healing rapidly. Soon you’ll be ready for physiotherapy. So please, relax, be patient.’

‘
Healing from what?’

‘Mr Segel, I’m afraid it was necessary to perform a great deal of surgery to adjust your appearance to suit my requirements. Your eyes, your face, your bone structure, your build, your skin tones; all needed substantial alteration.’

I floated in silence. The face of the diffident youth in
The Caress
drifted across the darkness. I was horrified, but my disorientation cushioned the blow; floating in darkness, listening to a disembodied voice, nothing was yet quite real.

‘Why pick me?’

‘You saved Catherine’s life. On two occasions. That’s precisely the relationship I wanted.’

‘Two set-ups. She was never in any real danger, was she? Why didn’t you find someone who already looked the part, to go through the motions?’ I almost added ‘Gustave’, but stopped myself in time. I was certain he intended killing me anyway, eventually, but betraying my suspicions about his identity would have been suicidal. The voice was synthetic, of course.

‘You genuinely saved her life, Mr Segel. If she’d stayed in the basement without replacement hormones, she would have died. And the assassin we sent to the hospital was seriously intent on killing her.’

I snorted feebly. ‘What if he’d succeeded? Twenty years’ work and millions of dollars, down the drain. What would you have done then?’

‘Mr Segel, you have a very parochial view of the world. Your little town isn’t the only one on the planet. Your little police force isn’t unique either, except in being the only one who couldn’t keep the story from the media. We began with twelve chimeras. Three died in childhood. Three were not discovered in time after their keepers were killed. Four were assassinated after discovery. The other surviving chimera’s life was saved by different people on the two occasions — and also she was not quite up to the standard of morphology that Freda Macklenburg achieved with Catherine. So, imperfect as you are, Mr Segel, you are what I am required to work with.’

* * * *

Shortly after that, I was shifted to a normal bed, and the bandages were removed from my face and body. At first the room was kept dark, but each morning the lights were turned up slightly. Twice a day, a masked physiotherapist with a filtered voice came and helped me learn to move again. There were six armed, masked guards in the windowless room at all times; ludicrous overkill unless they were there in case of an unlikely, external attempt to rescue me. I could barely walk; one stern grandmother could have kept me from escaping.

They showed me Marion, once, on closed-circuit TV. She sat in an elegantly furnished room, watching a news disk. Every few seconds, she glanced around nervously. They wouldn’t let us meet. I was glad. I didn’t want to see her reaction to my new appearance; that was an emotional complication I could do without.

As I slowly became functional, I began to feel a deep sense of panic that I’d yet to think of a plan for keeping us alive. I tried striking up conversations with the guards, in the hope of eventually persuading one of them to help us, either out of compassion or on the promise of a bribe, but they all stuck to monosyllables, and ignored me when I spoke of anything more abstract than requests for food. Refusing to cooperate in the ‘realisation’ was the only strategy I could think of, but for how long would that work?

I had no doubt that my captor would resort to torturing Marion, and if that failed he would simply hypnotise or drug me to ensure that I complied. And then he would kill us all: Marion, myself, and Catherine.

I had no idea how much time we had; neither the guards, nor the physiotherapist, nor the cosmetic surgeons who occasionally came to check their handiwork, would even acknowledge my questions about the schedule being followed. I longed for Lindhquist to speak with me again; however insane he was, at least he’d engaged in a two-way conversation. I demanded an audience with him, I screamed and ranted; the guards remained as unresponsive as their masks.

Accustomed to the aid of the priming drugs in focusing my thoughts, I found myself constantly distracted by all kinds of unproductive concerns, from a simple fear of death, to pointless worries about my chances of continued employment, and continued marriage, if Marion and I did somehow survive. Weeks went by in which I felt nothing but hopelessness and self-pity. Everything that defined me had been taken away: my face, my body, my job, my usual modes of thought. And although I missed my former physical strength (as a source of self-respect rather than something that would have been useful in itself), it was the mental clarity that had been so much a part of my primed state of mind that, I was certain, would have made all the difference if only I could have regained it.

I eventually began to indulge in a bizarre, romantic fantasy: the loss of everything I had once relied on —

the stripping away of the biochemical props that had held my unnatural life together — would reveal an inner core of sheer moral courage and desperate resourcefulness which would see me through this hour of need. My identity had been demolished, but the naked spark of humanity remained, soon to burst into a searing flame that no prison walls could contain. That which had not killed me would (soon, real soon) make me strong.

A moment’s introspection each morning showed that this mystical transformation had not yet taken place. I went on a hunger strike, hoping to hasten my victorious emergence from the crucible of suffering by turning up the heat. I wasn’t force-fed, or even given intravenous protein. I was too stupid to make the obvious deduction: the day of realisation was imminent.

One morning, I was handed a costume which I recognised at once from the painting. I was terrified to the point of nausea, but I put it on and went with the guards, making no trouble. The painting was set outdoors. This would be my only chance to escape.

I’d hoped we would have to travel, with all the opportunities that might have entailed, but the landscape had been prepared just a few hundred metres from the building I’d been kept in. I blinked at the glare from the thin grey clouds that covered most of the sky (had Lindhquist been waiting for them, or had he ordered their presence?), weary, frightened, weaker than ever thanks to not having eaten for three days. Desolate fields stretched to the horizon in all directions. There was nowhere to run to, nobody to signal to for help.

I saw Catherine, already sitting in place on the edge of a raised stretch of ground. A short man — well, shorter than the guards, whose height I’d grown accustomed to — stood by her, stroking her neck. She flicked her tail with pleasure, her eyes half closed. The man wore a loose white suit, and a white mask, rather like a fencing mask. When he saw me approaching, he raised his arms in an extravagant gesture of greeting. For an instant a wild idea possessed me: Catherine could save us! With her speed, her strength, her
claws.

There were a dozen armed men around us, and Catherine was clearly as docile as a kitten.

‘Mr Segel! You look so glum! Cheer up, please! This is a wonderful day!’

I stopped walking. The guards on either side of me stopped too, and did nothing to force me on.

I said, ‘I won’t do it.’

The man in white was indulgent. ‘Why ever not?’

I stared at him, trembling. I felt like a child. Not since childhood had I confronted anyone this way, without the priming drugs to calm me, without a weapon within easy reach, without absolute confidence in my strength and agility. ‘When we’ve done what you want, you’re going to kill us all. The longer I refuse, the longer I stay alive.’

It was Catherine who answered first. She shook her head, not quite laughing. ‘No, Dan! Andreas won’t hurt us! He loves us both!’

The man came towards me. Had Andreas Lindhquist faked his death? His gait was not an old man’s gait.

‘Mr Segel, please calm yourself. Would I harm my own creations? Would I waste all those years of hard work, by myself and so many others?’

I sputtered, confused, ‘You’ve killed people. You’ve kidnapped us. You’ve broken a hundred different laws.’ I almost shouted at Catherine. ‘He arranged Freda’s death!’, but I had a feeling that would have done me a lot more harm than good.

The computer that disguised his voice laughed blandly. ‘Yes, I’ve broken laws. Whatever happens to you, Mr Segel, I’ve already broken them. Do you think I’m afraid of what you’ll do when I release you?

You will be as powerless then to harm me as you are now. You have no proof as to my identity. Oh, I’ve examined a record of your inquiries. I know you suspected me—’

‘I suspected your son.’

‘Ah. A moot point. I prefer to be called Andreas by intimate acquaintances, but to business associates, I am Gustave Lindhquist. You see, this body
is
that of my son — if son is the right word to use for a clone

— but since his birth I took regular samples of my brain tissue, and had the appropriate components extracted from them and injected into his skull. The brain can’t be
transplanted,
Mr Segel, but with care, a great deal of memory and personality can be imposed upon a young child. When my first body died, I had the brain frozen, and I continued the injections until all the tissue was used up. Whether or not I “am” Andreas is a matter for philosophers and theologians. I clearly recall sitting in a crowded classroom watching a black and white television, the day Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, fifty-two years before this body was born. So call me Andreas. Humour an old man.’

He shrugged. ‘The masks, the voice filters — I like a little theatre. And the less you see and hear, the fewer your avenues for causing me minor annoyance. But please, don’t flatter yourself; you can never be a threat to me. I could buy every member of your entire force with half the amount I’ve earnt while we’ve been speaking.

‘So forget these delusions of martyrdom. You are going to live, and for the rest of your life you will be, not only my creation, but my instrument. You are going to carry this moment away inside you, out into the world for me, like a seed, like a strange, beautiful virus, infecting and transforming everyone and everything you touch.’

He took me by the arm and led me towards Catherine. I didn’t resist. Someone placed a winged staff in my right hand. I was prodded, arranged, adjusted, fussed over. I hardly noticed Catherine’s cheek against mine, her paw resting against my belly. I stared ahead, in a daze, trying to decide whether or not to believe I was going to live, overcome by this first real chance of hope, but too terrified of disappointment to trust it.

There was no one but Lindhquist and his guards and assistants. I don’t know what I’d expected; an audience in evening dress? He stood a dozen metres away, glancing down at a copy of the painting (or perhaps it was the original) mounted on an easel, then calling out instructions for microscopic changes to our posture and expression. My eyes began to water, from keeping my gaze fixed; someone ran forward and dried them, then sprayed something into them which prevented a recurrence.

Then, for several minutes, Lindhquist was silent. When he finally spoke, he said, very softly, ‘All we’re waiting for now is the movement of the sun, the correct positioning of your shadows. Be patient for just a little longer.’

I don’t remember clearly what I felt in those last seconds. I was so tired, so confused, so uncertain. I do remember thinking: How will I know when the moment has passed? When Lindhquist pulls out a weapon and incinerates us, perfectly preserving the moment? Or when he pulls out a camera?
Which would it
be?

Suddenly he said, ‘Thank you,’ and turned and walked away, alone. Catherine shifted, stretched, kissed me on the cheek, and said, ‘Wasn’t that fun?’ One of the guards took my elbow, and I realised I’d staggered.

He hadn’t even taken a photograph.
I giggled hysterically, certain now that I was going to live after all. And he hadn’t even taken a photograph. I couldn’t decide if that made him twice as insane, or if it totally redeemed his sanity.

* * * *

I never discovered what became of Catherine. Perhaps she stayed with Lindhquist, shielded from the world by his wealth and seclusion, living a life effectively identical to that she’d lived before, in Freda Macklenburg’s basement. Give or take a few servants and luxurious villas.