Perfect People (22 page)

Dicks swilled his mouthful down with some more wine. One shred of batter dangled precariously in his beard and John found himself watching it, waiting for it to tumble.

‘It’s something we haven’t talked about. A lot of people here did read that unfortunate interview you gave in the States. But of course, being British, no one wants to embarrass you by raising it.’

‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’ John asked.

Dicks shrugged. ‘I was waiting for you to do that. I respect you as a scientist. I’m sure you wouldn’t have done anything without a great deal of thought and investigation.’ He broke off a piece of his bread roll and buttered it. ‘And of course, I know the press must have got it wrong. Designer babies aren’t possible, not yet, are they?’ With a broad grin he again stared hard at John, as if for confirmation.

‘Absolutely; they got it wrong.’ John gave a hollow, phoney, uncomfortable laugh.

‘How are Luke and Phoebe?’

‘They’re terrific.’

‘And Naomi?’

‘She’s exhausted. But she’s happy to be back in England.’

They ate in silence for some moments, then Dicks said, ‘If you ever did want to talk about anything, John, in total confidence, you can always come to me. You do know that, don’t you?’

‘I appreciate it,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

Dicks picked up his glass again. ‘Do you remember something Einstein said, back in the 1930s? Why does science bring us so little happiness?’

‘And did he have an answer?’

‘Yes. He said it was because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.’ Again he gave John a penetrating stare.

John looked down at his food, then fingered his glass, tempted to drink more to alleviate his awkwardness. But he was already feeling a little light-headed from the first glass, and he was determined never to make the mistake of opening up to anyone again, not even to someone he could trust as much as Carson Dicks.

He reminded himself, as he had to frequently, why he and Naomi had made the decision they had. And he thought of the two beautiful children they had now brought into the world. Two children who would never have been born if it hadn’t been for science.

‘Einstein was wrong about a lot of things,’ he said.

Carson Dicks smiled.

John felt decidedly unsteady as he walked back from the car park with his boss, hands in his pockets and his coat buttoned against the March wind. He entered the shabby lobby of the tired red-brick building, four storeys high, known simply as B11, that housed the Artificial Life Centre.

He’d broken his resolution to have just one glass with Carson, and they’d managed to get through two bottles between them, followed by a brandy each. Somehow, through the haze of alcohol, they’d managed to crack the design for the experiment John would spend the next three months on. He wasn’t sure how Carson had been able to drive back, although the man had always been a heavy drinker, so maybe it affected him less.

‘It’s Caroline’s birthday next weekend,’ Dicks said. ‘We’re having a little dinner party on Saturday – are you and Naomi free?’

‘Sounds good – I’ll check with my social secretary!’ John said. ‘Thanks.’

The paintwork was peeling, there was a row of Health and Safety Executive notices stuck to the walls, a yellow radiation warning sign, a poster advertising a concert, another advertising a car-boot sale, and a list for names for a three-day coach visit to Cern in Switzerland.

Ignoring the slow and decrepit lift, both of them climbed the four flights of stairs. At the top, Carson Dicks put an avuncular arm around him.

‘I mean what I said, John. If there’s anything you ever want to talk about, I’m here for you.’

‘I appreciate it. You’re a brick.’

‘I’m just glad to have you on my team. England’s lost too many good scientists to the States in the past fifty years. We’re lucky to have won one back.’ He gave John a reassuring pat and headed off towards his office.

John walked along the corridor and entered lab B111–404, a long room filled with computer workstations, seven of which were occupied by members of his team, most of them in such fierce concentration they barely noticed his arrival.

Back in his own office, he took off his coat and somehow managed to miss the hook on the back of the door, watching in surprise as the coat slipped to the floor in a heap.

‘Oops,’ he said to himself, bending down and picking it up. He felt very woozy. Not good. He had a heavy afternoon workload to get through, the first item of which was to try to analyse a very complex set of algorithms.

First, he rang Naomi, as he did several times each day. ‘Hi, darling!’ he said. ‘How are you?’

Her voiced sounded cold and he realized he should have waited until he was more sober.

‘Luke’s just been sick,’ she said. ‘And Phoebe’s screaming. Can you hear her?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘That’s how I am.’

‘OK,’ he said, ‘right.’

‘What do you mean,
OK, right
?’

He was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘I – I – just – wanted to say that – I’ll try to get home early. Oh – Carson asked if we could go to dinner on Saturday – it’s Caroline’s birthday.’

There was a long silence. ‘Sure.’

There was a reluctance in her voice. John knew that Naomi found Carson’s heavily intellectual wife a little difficult. ‘Honey, I think we should go – if you don’t mind?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Great. See you about six.’

‘Six? I’ll believe it when I see you.’

‘I mean it, hon—’

He heard a sharp click. She had hung up.

Shit.

He replaced the receiver. The buzz from the alcohol was starting to fade, leaving him feeling leaden, in need of a sleep, and with a slight headache. He stood up and walked over to the window. It wasn’t a huge room, but it had just about enough space for his desk, filing cabinets and books, and to accommodate a small group of visitors.

Staring down almost directly beneath, he could see the construction site, where the massive steel-and-glass edifice that would eventually house Britain’s largest particle accelerator was starting to take shape.

He watched two men in hard hats attach a girder in a cradle to a crane hook. Workers. Drones.
Genetic underclass.
Dettore’s expression came back to him repeatedly. Would people be bred to do manual tasks like that, in the future? Had Dettore’s prediction been right that there would be a whole genetic underclass created, to serve the needs of everyone else? How did it happen at the moment? What made today’s workers? A combination of lousy genes and poor education? Just random chance, circumstance, natural selection?

Would it be any worse to deliberately create such workers? Some people thought so. But was it really so terrible to contemplate doing that? What kind of a world would it be if you bred everyone to be a rocket scientist? Wouldn’t that be truly irresponsible of science? To have the power to create a balanced world and funk out of using it, and instead take the easy option of making everyone smart? Maybe that would appeal to some idealists, but the reality would be a disaster.

But how palatable would the alternative be to anyone?

He sat down, wondering whether to get some coffee. But he’d already had two double espressos in the pub.
Just deal with some easy stuff for a while
, he thought,
let the alcohol wear off, catch up on emails.

He glanced down the twenty new ones that had come in while he had been out. Mostly they were boring internal stuff.

Then he saw one from Kalle Almtorp, with an attachment.

John opened the attachment. It was a news cutting from today’s
Washington Post
.

His eyes frozen to the screen, he read on.

There was an icon for a photograph, and John clicked on it. Moments later the image appeared. A photograph of two good-looking people, a man in his mid-thirties and a woman in her late twenties. He recognized them instantly.

They had been on Dettore’s ship. There was no mistaking them. It was the couple by the
Serendipity Rose
’s swimming pool who had totally ignored them. The couple he and Naomi had jokingly called George and Angelina.

George and Angelina.
John sat at his desk, mesmerized by the two images of the couple on his computer screen.

One, which Kalle had emailed him, was a wedding photograph. Jack O’Rourke in a white tuxedo looked even more of a doppel-gänger for George Clooney than he had on the ship. His wife Jerry, hair in ringlets, wearing a classy white dress, seemed less like Angelina Jolie now, thinner, harder. They looked vain, as they had done on the ship, as if they knew exactly how beautiful and rich they were, powerful enough to buy everything they wanted, including perfect children.

The other was a close-up from the photograph he had taken surreptitiously on board the
Serendipity Rose
, of the couple lying on loungers by the pool. The match was evident; no question it was the same couple.

Twin babies
, he read again.

They had
twins
too?

He swallowed, his mouth dry suddenly, and his hand was shaking. He clicked on another icon and there was a photograph showing a driveway leading up to a swanky house with tall pillars.

John’s door opened and his secretary came in with some mail to be signed. He hastily clicked up a different window, one containing his weekly diary, then scrawled his signature on each letter, barely looking at them, anxious for her to leave so he could get back to the story.

As she closed the door behind her, he read to the end of the story. Then he read it again.

John O’Rourke was a sharp boy who had built up a billion-dollar real estate empire. His wife, Jerry, had genuine
Mayflower
ancestry; they were active in Washington political circles, had given Barack Obama a massive donation and were big fund-raisers for the Democrats. John O’Rourke harboured political ambitions of his own.

Their twins were called
Jackson
and
Chelsey.

Like their parents, the babies had been mutilated.

Slogans and obscenities had been written on the walls in their blood.

With hands shaking so badly he could barely hit the buttons on his phone, he rang Naomi. When she answered he could hear screaming.

‘It’s Phoebe,’ she said. ‘She won’t stop crying. I don’t know what to do, John, why won’t she stop? Why is she crying?’

‘Maybe you should call the doctor.’

‘I’ll see. What is it you want?’

‘Want?’

‘Yes – you just called – now you’re calling again.’

‘I – I wanted to see if you’re OK, darling?’

‘NO, I AM NOT OK,’ she shouted. ‘I’M DEMENTED. IT’S FINE FOR YOU IN YOUR BLOODY OFFICE.’

‘Maybe she’s got an infection or something?’ he answered lamely. Then he said, ‘Listen, are you—’

He stopped in mid-sentence. This was stupid calling her like this, stupid to worry her.

‘Oh Christ,’ Naomi cried out. ‘Luke’s being sick again. John – sod it
–
I have to call you back.’

She hung up.

John stared back at the screen, suddenly feeling very, very alone in the world.

He dialled Kalle Almtorp in Washington.

It seemed, he told John, that the Disciples of the Third Millennium were as elusive as they had been a year ago when they’d claimed responsibility for Dettore’s death. There were no names of any of the members and no clues where the organization hailed from.