In World City (19 page)

They sat in silence, unwilling to disturb the sense of aftermath. Miranda considered the criminalisation of her life. Her experiment was criminal and now she was paying criminals to do their own work more effectively. She thought she might as well compound it by springing Jetter from juvenile detention. “Where is he?” she asked.

Dion looked up, questioning.

“Jetter.”

“He was picked up in a store in Frankfurt.” He named the store. “I don't know where he was taken after that.”

“Do you know anyone who does identification papers, that kind of thing?”

Dion knew someone and told Miranda where to find him.

*

Jetter appeared three days later, awestruck but in no way subdued. “I was in JD-holding with a lot of half-arsed World-City kids who'd nicked their daddy's loose change, stuff like that. Then in comes Miranda. The man says to me, you're in luck, boy. Your aunt's decided to have you back. You know what she did? She got me a birth certificate and ID with a morphed-up image that even looked half like me and this story about what a bad boy I was but she loved me all the same. She paid the store to drop charges, paid JD for my lodging. She even paid the man for the time I fucking bit him. She was fucking incredible, just incredible. I got a ride in her car too.”

Dion told his company men about the bonus scheme. They were curious. “So, what's she doing to them, Dion? What's so special about them? Why doesn't she just take them off to World City?”

Dion fielded the questions he had been trying to avoid as noncommittally as he could: it was long-term work; all she did was take blood samples from them; it was a scientific experiment.

“Don't you want to know, Dion? Don't you want to know what she's doing to make them so precious?”

Dion shook his head. “It's good money they bring in,” he said, trying to close off the questions by reminding his company men just how much they were all benefiting.

He thought back to the first two years of the project. There had been an unconsciousness about it that had allowed for a kind of dark, warm, unstated intimacy to develop in the little room high above the Waste. It had felt like an animal's lair in midwinter with the cubs just born. That was beginning to break apart now. There was light shining in on what they were doing. The kids were coming out into the open.

Dion said to Miranda a few days later, “What's going to happen to them? They must find out sometime. We're not going to be able to just walk away from it all at the end of ten years.”

“We'll worry about it when it happens, Dion,” Miranda said and Dion looked back at her as if he suddenly didn't know her anymore.

Miranda Whitlam wasn't thinking about ten years' time. Right then, she wasn't thinking about any kind of future. She was thinking over and over about the profound sense of familiarity that had come over her when Dion had been shouting at her. It wasn't anything to do with his words, even though she had found she could hardly deny their truth. It was something else, like some gap opening up onto something so close to her she could hardly bear it. She would find herself thinking of the view out over the wildwood as she stared from her bedroom window as a child. She could recall herself thrusting the view aside, with its awful immensity and the burden of fear it carried. But now she stretched her mind back to those times, probing the fear like the broken edge of a tooth, probing other memories that held the same profound fascination: the blank wall of jungle when she had stayed on the island; Dion by that pool; and herself floating in its water just before Donnell arrived. She had been gazing up into the light between the leaves of the jungle trees, shocked at first and then thrilled by the marvellous sense of forever that had been stealing over her. It was like dying, that feeling that was so close to her, and it had been sweet and horrifying beyond anything she could have imagined.

When she had gone to collect him, Miranda had wanted to say she was Jetter's mother, but that was too easily contradicted to be useful. Then, without being able to find a convincing reason she could give him, she asked Dion if she could start staying overnight in the little concrete cubicle that carried his name. He said it was no problem but, sometime after, Dion was surprised to see his old poster of the jungle-clad tropical island was no longer taped at four corners but had been framed and rehung. The persistence of the image disturbed him. Once, he had actually lived in that picture. After that, the picture had been under his bed in his father's apartment in World City, and it had been over his bed during his first years in the Waste. Now it was remounted like some precious icon, a part of his experience that had been mysteriously appropriated by another.

“What have you done with that picture?” he asked suspiciously.

“Oh, I don't know. I suppose I just wanted to make the place a bit more like home. Where did it come from, anyway?”

“It was just something I picked up when I was kid.”

Miranda looked at the picture and thought of Dion as a kid, on an island that looked not unlike the one she was looking at. She remembered him shouting about her father having been the cause of his leaving.

“Do you want to go back there?” she asked.

“Back where?”

Dion felt wary. Something had changed in Miranda Whitlam since their fight. She was talking to him dead straight, which had been what he had always wanted. But it hadn't happened under his control, and she was giving him no acknowledgement for the change. Apart from that whispered apology way back for having denied him in front of that man who had beaten him up, she had never said anything to suggest any change of heart. Yet she had reframed his most precious picture, and now she was asking him where it had come from, and she was asking him if he actually wanted to go back to the place that was now no more real to him than a picture.

“Oh, you know,” she replied.

“What's it to you?” he couldn't help demanding, like a defensive adolescent.

“For Christ's sake, Dion, wasn't it my father kicked you out of there and you ask, what is it to me?”

She was half-smiling, half-angry and Dion found himself groping for a response. He remembered Leo saying once, ‘When everything else fails, and I mean everything, tell the truth. They just might like you for it,' though for Leo, the truth was merely something that might give you an advantage.

“I'm not too interested in going back there now. I've got a life for myself here. If I went back to my island, I'd just end up as a help in one of the holiday homes.”

Miranda turned away to look into the picture, as if deeply intrigued by some detail. Still not looking at him, she asked, “But what kind of life have you got, Dion?”

He could detect that judgement on him again, quite lightly placed, but definitely on him: Dion, the poor black boy, the criminal inhabitant of the Waste, judged by someone with wealth and position.

“I've got a good life, Miranda,” he said sharply, holding in his mind all he had been through to arrive at where he was.

He saw her turn away from the picture, looking down. She had felt the edge in his voice. Not long before, she would not have noticed it.

Dion's life was, indeed, a good one, and increasingly so. From his beginnings as inheritor of the electronics side of Leo's business interests, he had steadily developed a network of trusted aides, business connections, casual workers and contract men, all with him at the centre. He had extensive interests of his own now that were bringing in good money and some considerable respect. He had a fine apartment on the edge of World City, people who sought out his company and girlfriends who liked his image. He had abandoned the patch of ground where Leo's company had once congregated. Instead, he met with his men in hotel lobbies and restaurants. There was a gloss gathering around Dion's operation, which, untarnished as it was by drugs or vice, he tended carefully. Hardware was different, he told himself. It was clean. And with the influx of cash from Miranda, he was expanding further. His so-called ‘corporate operations', which had been the most sophisticated aspect of his inheritance from Leo, were growing to include intelligence and research activities, some of which might even have been considered legal.

After some moments, Miranda looked up at Dion. “Suppose I bought back the company that controls the island now,” she speculated. “We could all move there with the kids and live happily ever after.”

Dion looked at her, puzzled. Once that had been all he might have dreamed of, but now it was unreal. What did he want with his island? Hadn't he told her he had a life of his own now?

Miranda turned and contemplated the framed picture again. She looked at it some moments, then said, “No, we'd both go crazy, stuck there, watching the sunsets.”

Her unquestioned assumption that they had a life together shocked Dion. How had it happened? How was it that she could be freely offering him what he had once so desired? And why did he find himself so uninterested in the proposition? Fleetingly he remembered his grandmother and his times with her on the island. That was the absence he felt in the face of Miranda's offer. That was what was gone. His screen of dreams and memories had fallen away without him even noticing and he was awake in a life of his own now – a good life. He wondered what he could say to Miranda. He asked, “How much do you believe in what you're doing?”

“I believe in it pretty much,” she said, affecting unconcern.

The question had seemed to come from nowhere, but Dion was primed to ask it. He had come to wonder, over and over, why she was going to such an extreme to see her experiment through; why it was the only thing she had left; why it was life and death not only for the twelve children but for her as well.

Dion gave her a look, exaggeratedly unconvinced.

“It's the only way left to go,” she began briskly, collecting herself as if for a presentation. Then, teasingly, “What's it to you anyway, Dion?”

“Oh, you know,” Dion replied, ironically. “Come on, you've got everything anyone could ever want, yet you come here risking it all. And anyway, it isn't like these viruses you use are something new. My guess is they were easy enough to make. It's just that you've decided to be the one to risk using them. And that's a big risk you're taking if you've nothing of your own to prove.”

“I do have a few things of my own to prove, Dion. There are others in my institute who would take exception to what I'm trying, people who would never even give me the chance of seeing how well it might work. They're still talking possibilities and I'd like to see them confronted with the reality. But it's mainly a matter of timing. That's all. The time is just absolutely right. I couldn't not do it.”

“Timing?” Dion questioned.

Miranda laughed, recalling something. “Dion, have you ever seen films of penguins getting ready to jump in the water to go fishing?”

Dion shrugged. Why should he have ever watched penguins?

“No, maybe you haven't. But what they all do is gather right on the edge of the ice and jostle around, each one hoping it won't be the first to have to jump. There might be something nasty under the ice floe. But, finally, one of them does jump in and, providing he doesn't get eaten immediately, all the rest jump. Work in longevity is like that, Dion. Everyone is jostling around with what's safe but they all know that if anything is really going to happen, someone's going to have to jump into something dangerous. I'm the one who's jumped. If I come up with a mouthful of fish then all the rest of them are going to jump and to hell with the ethics. I'm using viral vectors to reprogramme the human body. That's the jump that no one else has dared take so far. If it works, it doesn't matter what people think of the way I've done it. The hope of a longer life is so tied to our most basic drives that any kind of ethical concerns will go out the window.”

“Are you sure it's going to be okay with other people?” Dion questioned. This was a business he was unfamiliar with. He had never imagined his own transgressions would find any acceptance under the law.

Miranda nodded, paused a moment, then said, “Dion, do you know who runs World City?”

“International business,” he replied without hesitation. To his surprise she shook her head. “Government?” he hazarded, “... the Mafia? ... The Triads? ... The Freemasons?”

“No, none of those,” Miranda laughed. “The people who run World City are the pension fund managers.”

Dion was intrigued. It sounded just unlikely enough to be true.

“They're the biggest investors – have been for ages, but since governments started restricting how much profit-making capacity private investment can have a slice of, they've skyrocketed. They control every major corporation. They could make and break governments if they wanted. There's been nothing like it since the church in the high Middle Ages.”

“So how did they get so much power?”

“For the same reason the church did: because of the value people place on the product. The church offered eternal life. The pension funds offer a long and comfortable retirement.”

“So people in World City put all their money into retirement funds? How come they all look so rich?”

“Not all their money, but a high proportion of it. There's more though. The pressures the pension fund managers exert mean increased efficiency. So more and more is produced by fewer and fewer and most of the gain goes to feed the great promise of eternal retirement. There's some unevenness in who gets how much – that depends on the level they worked at when they were employed – but all those who paid into their statutory pension funds get a comfortable income.”

“And those who didn't?”

“They end up in the Waste. They're mainly the incorrigibles who spent everything they earned on lottery tickets and food, usually in that order – them and the likes of you.”

“So fewer and fewer people produce more and more. Isn't there some kind of limit to this?”

“I don't know. Maybe not. That's why I'm confident that what we're doing is going to be okay. You see, the fund managers are a strange people. They've been selected by the system not to feel at ease with limits. The funds they serve are not meant to have limits placed on them, they're meant to expand. So the fund managers want to push back the boundaries. And one of the ways they can do that is for people to live longer, which means the pension system has even more work to do. The fund managers are working it through a charity called the Ageing Initiative that pays for global longevity research. It started quietly – just a pension funds sideline – but it's been getting to be one of the most powerful research organisations there is. Believe me, Dion; the fund managers are crazy with the possibilities. When I talk to them, they make it sound as if there could be some single great productive instant in which everything anyone could ever want is made freely available and everyone lives forever. Up until recently, they were putting most of their weight behind robotics and nanotech with only a little set aside for longevity research. But now the whole focus is going to be on longevity. All the earlier tracks are on course; it's longevity research they want to put their money into now.”

“So do we get rich?”

“Very. I'm rich already, but you and the kids too. You'll be international celebrities. More than that, you yourself will probably get to live longer than anyone could have ever imagined. Because it isn't just what I'm doing with the kids that'll be bought with the money the Ageing Initiative will be making available. There'll be groups all over the world set up, working on every stage in the human lifespan. There'll be something for everyone.”

“How much longer will I have?” Dion was intrigued by this prospect. He had a good life now, and enjoying it longer was attractive.

“God knows. The focus will be on the early stages: children and adolescents. But you might expect twenty years more. What do you want to do with it?”

Dion thought about this. A while back, after a particularly successful corporate operation, he had revisited the area where he once lived with his parents and had walked once more past the glacial, unreachable shop displays. He had gone in through the door next to one such display and pointed to what would once have seemed the most unreachable object of all, a single ebony-encased personal screen, exquisitely and uniquely crafted and occupying the centre of the most select of the display cases. He had bought it and now kept it with him wherever he went. While waiting in some perfectly appointed World City hotel lobby for one of his company men to return from behind the doors of a carefully guarded development organisation, he would set his screen down on a table and watch it while he sipped bitter espresso coffee.

“I could pass the time quite well,” Dion replied.

Miranda turned back to the framed picture of the tropical island and thought of sunlit glades scattered across the wildwood, with birds singing and flowers blooming. “I really am desperately rich, Dion,” she said, turning to him, laughing. “My father had business interests all over the world. He died three years ago and left me the lot. Ever since I can remember, I've not wanted for anything.”

She turned away, wheeling on tiptoe, to end up again looking at Dion's picture of the island. “Isn't that what they say about the rich?” she said, examining the picture closely, “... that they want to live forever with the hoards of wealth they've accumulated. Isn't that why envious people say, you can't take it with you? I don't know, maybe that's why I'm hooked on longevity. Maybe people who've got it all want to keep it that way forever. What do you think?”

Suddenly, Dion didn't want to think anything. The lightness had gone in an instant. He didn't want to think about people keeping things the same way forever. He just wanted to think about his usual life and the promises it might hold. But something had moved inside him; some old door stiff from disuse had opened and he couldn't help but let out what had been hidden behind it. Without willing the words to come, he found himself saying, “Isn't that what the whole of World City is about – keeping it that way forever?”