Creations

Rot in hell you sick piece of shit. In any righteous world you would be hanging from a rope by now. Do you have no idea what you’re up against? Or do you think you can pour your Godless filth down innocent children’s throats and get away with it? Because I am going to make sure you don’t. Chile and Brazil are God-fearing countries, we have many friends there. You will pay for feeding them your lies
.

To think your wife betrayed her faith to be with you. I await the day when pigs like you and her get their throats cut. I will be praying for your salvation
.

Max Lowrie sat in the marble-floored reception area and winced as he read those words again. He was projecting them from his omni, using the surface of the table for want of a better viewscreen, scrolling through the scanned copies sent to him by a campus security staff now well accustomed to the attention that his extra-curricular activities were generating. The first had arrived almost a year previously, this latest, two weeks ago, sent in hardcopy, with no clear sign of who they were from, only a series of far-flung and blatantly random mailing points to show just how widespread his fan club’s membership must be.

Except now, if the latest one was to be believed, they knew about the South America trip, and the school talks he planned to give between research assignments. And that meant he had a serious choice to make. He did what he did for a reason, but people like him had received more than just threats before now and he had his safety to consider. Maybe Indira was right, maybe scrapping that trip and taking this other job wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.

“We’ve had an invitation to put you forward for a project,” she’d told him when she’d called him into faculty management the week before. “It’s a marine engineering company called ESOS. They haven’t told us what the job is yet but they’re asking
for you by name, and they’re willing to pay big numbers.”

Big numbers. Big enough to fly Max and his wife right across the country to meet him in person, giving them a free trip to Washington in a time when corporate flight quotas meant nonessential journeys were effectively illegal.

Getting bids for commercial work was nothing new, but Indira was pushing this one for good reasons. The welfare of her staff had always come first.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, Max, but I have some grave concerns about sending you to Chile. I’ve yet to consult with our security experts but I think exploring other options might be advisable. I’d like you to go to D.C. You’ll be meeting a man called Victor Rioux. Talk to him, find out what he wants, then report back to me.”

Max looked round the ESOS lobby as he waited, and tried to imagine the money that must have gone into the place. A huge screen at the far end was showing company promotional clips, endlessly looping testaments of glossy self-congratulation for the many and varied achievements that had brought the Echo-Sounding and Ocean-Surveying company to its current position. Outside, beyond the reach of the aircon, ornamental lawns sat between the road and the building. Max even recognised one of his own creations in amongst the mist from the sprinklers, the Jardina-San maintenance machines, small six-legged robots cutting and pruning the borders until they had to return to their storage site to recharge. Products of the design codes Max made his living from, for six whole months they’d only existed inside a computer while seven million generations of simulated evolution turned them into something more compact and efficient than a human designer could ever have created.

He didn’t know what made him look across the room at that point. Maybe he knew he was being watched, but he saw her straight away, sitting on the other side of the waiting area with her head to one side, frowning at him as if trying to remember his
name. Her frown turned into a smile when she saw him looking back, and she got up and walked over to join him.

“Something tells me I should know who you are. Didn’t you do that Space Sciences conference a few years ago? Optimised satellite design, right?” Her accent was somewhere between Georgia and Northern Florida.

“You’ve got a good memory. Yeah, that was me.” He thought back to the people he’d met at the conference, or rather seen across the telepresence link from his office in L.A. He didn’t remember her, but then there’d been over two hundred researchers connecting up at one time or another, attending in virtual form now that travel restrictions had made mass gatherings a rarity. “I’m Max Lowrie.”

They shook hands. “I’m Safi. Safi Biehn. Hi.”

She was about the same height as Max, and slim framed with it. Her hair was straight and shoulder length, and very fair in colour, fair enough to almost look white at a distance. Her age was hard to place, mid to late thirties perhaps, fine lines just starting to show around her eyes. Her eyes also gave away her intelligence, something Max could spot easily whenever he met someone. It was a skill often found in salesmen and diplomats, but rarely in biologists.

“So what are you here for today?” he said.

She laughed. “I wish I knew. I just got this message a couple of weeks ago asking me to show up. They paid for me to get here though, said I’d regret it if I didn’t.”

“Could be we’re here for the same thing then. My faculty head had something similar, asking for me to come. From a guy called Victor Rioux, right?”

“You too? Wow, curiouser and curiouser, I wonder what the hell this could be.”

In fact in the ten days since they’d asked Max to come, they hadn’t once given any clue what they wanted him for. Even when Indira passed on their invitation, all she knew was that ESOS
were citing the Turin Protocol, a sure sign they had something valuable on their hands, something they would protect like a state secret, and take to the World Intellectual Property Court in Turin if anyone used it fraudulently.

“So that genetic design stuff you were showing at the conference,” Safi said. “Do you reckon this could be something to do with that?”

“It could be,” he said. “It’s been my day job for the last eight years. That’s how the department makes its money, designing things by evolution.”

“But you’re a biologist aren’t you? Is that right?”

She obviously had a good memory for details. “Among other things, yes,” he said. “I was a palaeontologist at first though, that’s how I started.”

“So isn’t satellite design a weird sideline for a fossil hunter?”

“I guess it might look that way. But I’ve studied evolution all my life, now I’m using it as a design tool. It’s a natural progression when you look at it. And we use it for all kinds of design jobs, not just the SatComms work that you saw.”

“So what are you working on at the moment?” She leant over to get a drink from the table’s water dispenser as she spoke, revealing a bracelet on her wrist, a slim silver band topped with a large oval of amber. Presumably her omni; it was always interesting to see where other people wore them.

“Well, it depends,” he said. “I’m meant to be in South America in two months’ time, doing biodiversity studies, part of the GRACE controls. But my faculty head is thinking of dropping me from that.”

“So you can take this job instead?”

“Not just that. This job came at the right time, but she has other reasons for not wanting to send me out of the country.”

“Like what?”

“I, ah, I’m part of the campaign to see the teaching of evolution reintroduced into schools. Most of South America has
followed the US lead in faith-based education, and not everyone likes the idea. I’d been invited to give some lectures as part of the study trip. Let’s just say there are people out there who would prefer it if I kept quiet.”

She seemed to know where he was coming from. For the past year he’d been visiting schools with sympathetic biology departments unhappy with the government-sanctioned material they were given to teach. At each one he gave the same talk, a seemingly harmless how-I-got-where-I-am account of why biology and natural history were worthwhile subjects to pursue, that he would then seamlessly transition into the life story of Charles Darwin and a beginner’s guide to the theory of evolution. If he was honest, threats to his life should have been no surprise.

“What about you?” he said. “What do you do?”

“I’m a pilot at the moment, last couple of years anyway, doing regional cargo routes out of Atlanta. And before that I was working as a systems engineer up at —” Then she paused, and looked thoughtful for a second. “Now that’s interesting, bringing both of us here.” She’d said it more to herself than anyone else, a frown reappearing on her face.

“What’s the matter?” Max said.

She started to answer him, but seemed to think better of it. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m probably wrong.”

Max wanted to ask her more, but then they were joined by a third person. It was Victor Rioux’s assistant, the woman Max had spoken to when finalising his travel arrangements. She was still the closest he’d got to talking to Rioux himself.

“You must be Miss Biehn,” she said, marching across the lobby with her hand outstretched. “Jane Glenday, good to see you at last. And Dr. Lowrie, I don’t need to ask who you are! Welcome to Washington. Did you have a good journey?”

“Yes, we got in yester—”

“I am sorry to have kept you by the way. We’re still waiting
for one more person, but I think we should go ahead. If you’d like to come this way?”

She led them out of the reception area and into a wide, wood-panelled hallway. The bright sunshine outside was visible through slit windows at the top of the wall, but not much light was getting in and the corridor was lit by antique looking lights high above them. Even then it was still quite dark and almost completely silent. It felt comfortably cool compared to the heat and traffic outside.

“Have you seen anything of the city yet?” Jane said as they walked. “But then you only got in yesterday, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” Max said.

“Well you’ll have plenty of time for that. Did your wife come with you?”

“Yes, she’s here too.”

“Taking in the tourist sites I presume?”

“Yes. Well, sort of, she’s seen most of them before. She has relatives not far away.”

The pace was fast, and even Max, with height on his side, was having to take large strides to keep up with her.

“Right, we’re here,” she said suddenly. She stopped outside one of the rooms and held an access card up to the door, causing it to swing open silently. “If you’d like to go in, I’ll leave you with Mr Rioux. Drinks are in the corner there.”

Two other people were in the room when they entered, both men, one young and one old. They approached Max and Safi, the elder of the two taking the lead, and beaming broadly.

“Safi, Max, wonderful to see you!” he said. “I’m Victor, Victor Rioux.”

“Mr Rioux,” Max said, adding to the day’s tally of handshakes. “So does this mean we’re finally going to find out what this is all about?”

“Please, call me Victor. And yes, you’ll know what’s happening very soon. Can I call you Max by the way? We try to
be a bit informal here.”