Descent (29 page)

‘That’s a truism,’ said Baxter.

‘Uh-huh. But here’s my hypothesis. The ionisation engine produces a powerful electromagnetic field; ionised air has an electric charge; and between them they do very odd things to people’s brains. Not everyone’s, and the pilots and crews of these aircraft can wear metallic helmets and suits – flexible Faraday cages if you like – to counter the effect. For ordinary civilian use, that would be a bit of a nuisance to say the least, but hey, not a problem really, no civilians are going to be on board, and any who do encounter the machines up close can attribute any weird experiences they have then or afterwards to alien Greys or just hallucinations. Even so, you’d want to check up on as many of these civilians as possible, just to be sure they weren’t saying or doing anything too awkward. You’ve got the whole UFO mythos working for you, not to mention the Men in Black mythos. As long as people believe that it’s all about the government covering up its knowledge of aliens, you needn’t worry for your military secrets. And by monitoring their reactions, you gather some interesting data on the physiological and psychological effects of the fields. So far, so good.

‘Eventually, though, your secret propulsion system and your advanced metamaterials are superseded by something new – could be just the sheer ubiquity of surveillance satellites and drones, could be a new stealth system or cloaking device, it could even be some breakthrough technology out of the blue-sky section of the black budget. Anti-gravity, space warps, whatever. Doesn’t matter. Your hitherto top-secret technology is obsolete. So what do you do?

‘Well, for a start you can just reward your loyal defence contractors and sub-contractors who’ve kept your secrets all those years by letting them roll out the ionisation engine and the metamaterials for civilian use. Strange fabrics flap on catwalks, silvery globes flit through the skies at air shows. And here we have a problem. A significant fraction of the population will have a noticeable reaction to the electromagnetic fields, a smaller fraction I think will have no reaction at all, and most will be somewhere in between and just not feel good about the whole experience. You can’t have random passengers and crew seeing visions, or having an uneasy sense of unseen presences, or even just a feeling of being watched, every time they ride the shiny new flying machines. I suppose you could issue everyone with special suits or helmets, but come on, that’s inconvenient and it doesn’t build confidence.

‘So what do you do? You limit the engines’ output to a level that doesn’t affect people, at least not in such a drastic way. The civilian selling point of your new machines isn’t speed, after all – it’s manoeuvrability, dirigibility, silence, vertical take-off and landing, et cetera. They don’t need engines powerful enough to run rings round MiGs and startle airliner pilots.

‘But still … let’s think of the future. You might want to have faster and more powerful machines. You might want to compete with the airlines. Heck, the airlines themselves might be interested. The freight market looks very inviting. So there’s a continued pull towards more powerful engines. Wouldn’t it be handy if you knew in advance who was likely to have a bad reaction? And who could be sure not to have any reaction at all? And suppose you knew the genetic basis for these differences? That would open the way to isolating the biological mechanism – and then maybe the whole problem could be circumvented by something as simple as a pill, like a seasickness pill. Wouldn’t that be worth having?’

Baxter looked at his watch. ‘Are you finished?’

‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘Still in the spirit of letting bygones be bygones … like I said, I and a friend had an encounter with one of these machines ten years ago, and I had some very unpleasant and vivid experiences afterwards. My friend didn’t. I’ve traced his family history, and I’ve found evidence of a lineage of people who form an almost isolated reproductive group within the population. It ties in nicely with other evidence of speciation within humanity, from infertility studies and so on. I’ve made a family tree, with notes. I think you might find it interesting.’

I picked up the file from my pad and flicked it onto Baxter’s desk. He frowned, looked down at it, and poked about with his fingers.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I’d be interested in that sort of thing. Why do you think I would be?’

‘Apart from the value of the genetic information to BAS?’

‘Yes,’ said Baxter. ‘Apart from that. The value isn’t much in any case. It’s an interesting speculation to be sure, but even if there’s a genetic basis for different reactions to electromagnetic fields – which I’m sure there is – it’s of very little practical use to an avionics company. Even a drug company would pass it up. Going from genomic information to medical treatments takes years, as you must know, and frankly I don’t see such a minor projected benefit passing muster with the regulators, or being of much interest to investors. And apart from that … what?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it might be of interest that there’s a new race of people emerging who would, if you could identify them, make ideal pilots for the new aircraft if the companies ever do want to go in for heavy lifting.’

‘“A new race”?’ Baxter’s voice was heavy with disdain. ‘I don’t like hearing talk about
race
. I don’t even like hearing Africans referred to as “the Pure Race”. I know, it’s meant to be flattering, in a way, a sort of compensation for past prejudices and worse, but it still reinforces the old racial thinking. In a global market we literally can’t afford that sort of thing. And what does it imply about people of mixed race – that they’re of
impure
race?’

For some reason, Sophie’s face flashed in my mind, adding weight to the hint of reproof.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I don’t think like that at all.’

‘I should hope not,’ said Baxter. ‘And I’d be offended if you thought I did.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But …’

‘But what?’

‘I think what I’ve identified here is an actual human speciation event.’

Baxter shrugged. ‘So what? Humanity isn’t a species, it’s an achievement. There have been several co-existing human species in the past. Maybe there still are, though it’s a little unlikely now we can peer into every thicket. If new species emerge among us, what of it? They’ll still be human, and so will we.’

‘It doesn’t bother you that the medical and genetic professions are keeping very quiet about this, even though they know it’s going on?’

‘Not much, no,’ said Baxter. He stood up and stepped to the window niche, and turned around with the daylight behind him, a shadowy figure. ‘In my line of work and to be blunt in my line of politics, I get my sleeve tugged every so often by sad little people who think I share their obsessions over statistics on IQ and crime and what they call “race”. They assure me the correlations are all kosher, so to speak, and that scientists are playing it down for political reasons. And you know what I tell them? I tell them I don’t know if what they’re saying is all true, and I don’t care. In a free society it has no public policy implications. And good day to you, sir, or madam.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It must be annoying, getting pestered by racists.’

‘Indeed,’ said Baxter, dryly. He stepped away from the window. ‘As for the matter you raised earlier. Let me put to you a point you may overlooked. I was for many years an employee of a defence avionics company. I rose to a position of some responsibility. In general, someone in such a position is required to sign the Official Secrets Act. Please note, I am not saying that I signed it. Now of course, the constitutional situation has changed since the days when someone such as myself might have done that. But it has been common knowledge for several generations now that persons who have signed the Official Secrets Act take their obligations under that Act very seriously. Unless a specific exemption is granted, nothing covered by the Act may be divulged. The commitment entered into is for life. It is inviolable.’

‘Are you saying that’s why you can’t tell me what really happened?’

Baxter sighed. ‘No. I’m not. I’m saying that someone who could tell you, speaking hypothetically as you put it, would be unable to answer your question. In my case there are two possibilities. One is that I don’t know. The other is that I do, and have solemnly sworn never to breathe a word of it. I am not saying which, but in either case you are wasting your time badgering me about it.’

I thought about this.

‘Well, I think that’s just about everything covered,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much for your time, Mr Baxter.’

‘Call me Jim,’ he said, as if by reflex. He sat back behind his desk and looked at a diary panel, genuinely this time.

‘That door handle’s a bugger,’ he said, barely looking up. ‘Close it firmly on the way out.’

I took the hint.

My article took the rest of that week to write, and was worth every minute. After a bit of editorial back-and-forth it was accepted by
Sci/Tech World
and syndicated elsewhere, and it did indeed lead to a few minutes of earnest discussion on one late-night news channel. The payment came through on time. The Rammie project featured the piece in its own publicity, and sent me an invitation for the Holyrood press conference scheduled to coincide with live coverage of the ascent on the day (whatever day that turned out to be). The whole thing was a win at every level, until the last.

On the day of launch I woke early and checked the news. The balloon with its controversial payload had lifted from Machrihanish on schedule at dawn. The day was calm with high cloud and what little wind there was coming from the east, weather fronts almost stationary far to the west. Conditions for the experiment were ideal. I knew the controversy inside out and I had no need or wish to follow the commentary on the craft’s remaining hours of uneventful ascent. I rattled out a few responses and then, feeling like a creep as usual, watched Gabrielle go to work.

Gabrielle had been gone over half a year. A dozen pairs of her shoes were under the bed. Dried-out cosmetics and jewellery clutter made the top of the dressing-table a dusty shrine. Every so often I’d think of sweeping the lot into a black bag. Sometimes I’d get as far as taking a bin-liner into the bedroom. I’d stand there, half-crouched, my arm drawn back to swing across the surface.

The Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood overlooks a terraced plaza of concrete and grass, designed as a place for crowds to gather and demonstrations to culminate, and opens out to Holyrood Park and the lower slopes of Salisbury Crags. The effect, perhaps intentional, is to make any gathering there seem insignificant. The only one I’ve seen that didn’t was the Forum, all those years ago, and that was unique in its scale and purpose, overwhelming its surroundings like a great flood. The morning of the launch the space dissipated rather than contained a couple of hundred protesters, with the usual placards and banners and – high above earnest, angry faces – the more original gimmick of a bobbing fleet of silvery balloons, from which hung carefully and aptly safety consciously designed cardboard and plastic mock-ups of dangerous-looking bits of old ironmongery and deadly-looking missiles, nose-cones pointed down.

Under high cloud and a watery sun the chant went up: ‘Nae tae the Rammie! Nae tae the Rammie!’ With open space behind and beside and a complex facade in front, the sound died away amid its own distorted echoes, but it persisted. I forbore to sneer, but I didn’t spare the demonstration more than a glance before I ducked into the Media Tower. My face has long been on the list so that was no problem. Security scan is an automated archway of short-range radar and sonar, and always gives me a creeped-out feeling, a sort of shudder as I pass through, but that’s probably psychosomatic. I took a right and hurried up the stairs to the journalists’ pen in the lobby of the press conference hall.

At barely ten twenty I was early but the pen was buzzing, at least in a relative sense. The woman from the BBC was talking to the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Aberdeen, who was arguing against the Rammie on behalf of all the North Sea’s wind farmers, oil workers, ferry passengers and remaining fish. Karl from the
Guardian
, alarmingly younger than me, waggled his fingers in the air with an occasional pause to swig from a plastic cup. Two young women from a station in Jakarta were walking around wearing antique recording gear like tiaras over their hijabs, boom cams and mikes projecting from the sides of their heads. The dozen or so drones parked on a shelf had all been booked by agencies or channels. A couple of tables had been set up with company and project reps behind them and freebie clutter on top. I hung about for a minute, taking all this in on my glasses, and then checked in at the project table to pick up a badge. After a chat I moseyed into the cramped kitchen with its familiar smells of microwave and instant. A tallish guy with his back to me was moodily waiting for a kettle to boil.

He turned, looked up. It was Calum. Black hair fashionably collar length and wavy; three-piece suit. His face thrust forward, leading with the strong forehead and jaw; his bright inquisitive eyes under bushy black eyebrows looked momentarily startled. I could see the wheels turn, then he plastered on a grin and stuck out a paw.

‘Ah, Sinky! Good to see you, man!’

His voice rang with insincerity. I returned him the quickest handshake consistent with politeness. Calum had good reason to feel awkward and a bit guilty towards me, and he knew I knew. I had two entirely different, and each equally good, reasons to feel awkward and guilty towards him, but he didn’t know this, at least as far as I knew. Hence a certain froideur in our interaction. I tried to keep it out of my voice.

‘Hi, Calum. How’s things?’

‘Fine, fine.’ He poured hot water into a cup, added milk, fiddled with a sachet of sugar.

‘And what brings you here?’

‘We’re covering the weather.’

I already knew that Calum’s employer, StrathSpace, had that contract and/or sponsorship deal: hyper-local meteorology for the balloon ascent and the payload drop. I bloody well should have not just known that but expected him to be there, having a fortnight or so earlier written the article that had given today’s experiment its modicum of global publicity.