Perfect People (24 page)

‘I think about it all the time.’

‘You still believe man should take control of nature, don’t you?’

‘Yes; nothing’s happened to make me change my mind.’

There was a brief silence, then she said, ‘You do love Luke and Phoebe as much as . . .’ Her voice tailed off.

‘As?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

He caressed her hair again. ‘Yes, of course. I love them – incredibly – I didn’t know I was capable such love. I—’

‘If you had to make a choice,’ she said, ‘between saving them or me, who would you save?’

‘It will never come to that.’

Her voice became a fraction more insistent. ‘Just supposing it did – just supposing you had to make a choice – who would you save? Luke and Phoebe or me?’

John thought carefully, unprepared for the question.

‘Who?’ she probed.

‘You,’ he said. ‘I would save you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if anything ever happened to them we could have more children. But I could never replace you.’

She kissed him. ‘That’s a very beautiful thing to say – but do you mean it?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let me ask you another question. If you had the choice of saving yourself or them, who would you save.’

His answer came out almost instantly. ‘Them.’

She sounded relieved. ‘So you do love them, don’t you.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘Why do you have doubts?’

‘I wonder, sometimes. I wonder if you feel that if you could turn back the clock, that—’

‘Never.’ He shrugged. ‘OK, I wouldn’t have done that bloody interview. But—’

‘You’d still have gone to Dettore?’

‘Yes. And you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hon,’ he said, ‘throughout history, people who have tried to challenge established thinking have been persecuted. Not everyone has been right, but if nobody had tried – well – the human race wouldn’t have progressed very far. We might not even have survived this long. We’d certainly be living in some kind of dark age right now.’

‘And we aren’t?’ Naomi said. ‘These people – the Disciples of the Third Millennium – the fact that they can be out there, roaming around, believing they have the right to kill people for their own beliefs, and that no one can do a thing about it – that doesn’t signal to me what we think is civilization is anything more than a very thin veneer.’

‘That’s what we are trying to change. That is what going to Dettore was all about.’

‘Is it? I thought going to him was about having a child who wasn’t going to die at four years old from an inherited disease. Is it about something else? Something you haven’t told me?’

‘Absolutely not. I tell you everything.’

She was quiet for some moments, thinking, then she said, ‘You would have told me, wouldn’t you, if—’

‘If what?’

‘If you and Dettore had discussed anything else about – the babies.’

‘What do you mean by
anything else
?’

‘All the options he gave us. All those boxes we had to tick. I’d have no way of knowing if you and he had decided to – to go behind my back.’

‘No way,’ John said. ‘No way I would ever have done that, darling. Not in a million years. Don’t you trust me?’

‘Yes, I do, of course I do. It’s Dettore. I look at Luke and Phoebe all the time, and wonder – you know – I wonder what he’s done, what’s inside them, what surprises we have in store. It would be great, wouldn’t it, if we could get their entire genomes read. Then at least we’d know.’

‘And if you found out something you didn’t like, what would you do about it?’

She was silent. She had no answer.

Down here in the dark of the sewer there is only one light that shines, my friends. It is His light. He shows the path to those who follow, and if you choose not to follow, that’s your call.

You are doomed.

You, who do not follow, call evil good and good evil. You turn darkness into light and light into darkness. You make what is bitter sweet, and what is sweet you make bitter. Isaiah 5: 20.

I have your names written down on paper, my friends. And I have you written in the memory of my computer. And written in my head. Today you are everywhere, basking in your self-importance. But, my friends, you are doomed. And not just here on the earth plane. Fear not me who can kill your body but cannot kill your soul. Rather be afraid of God, who can destroy both body and soul in Hell.

How are you finding it down in Hell, Mr and Mrs O’Rourke and your hideous spawn, Jackson and Chelsey? Have you repented yet? Don’t worry, you have plenty of time, all the time in the world. Everything that happens in this world happens at the time God chooses. And God chose you first, Mr and Mrs O’Rourke. Soon others will be joining you.

The Disciple sat on the hard wooden chair in the shade of his cell in the monastery, and stared out through the window at the walled kitchen garden below. Tiny green shoots appeared in the furrowed earth. He had planted tomatoes, broccoli, courgettes, lettuces, potatoes. Organic. Real vegetables. Not like the shit in supermarkets. Not like the shit growing in the wheat fields beyond the monastery’s garden. You could see the fields that had real wheat and those that were spawned by the Devil. The real wheat glowed a golden yellow colour under the sun because it had God’s blessing. The GM stuff stayed a murky brown colour; it grew, ashamed, in perpetual shade.

A sharp, mantric rapping sound rose through the tranquillity of the warm morning air. The midday call to prayers. He rose obediently and placed his black veil over his head.

The abbot had made him the Assistant Guest Master. His duties impinged little on his thoughts and his plans. Here in the wilderness of Iowa they did not have too many pilgrims visiting. His duties here were light compared to his duties to God.

The completion of the Great Rite.

And then God’s blessing.

I look down the names on my list and I see you all. I read your names and I see your faces in my head. I see your homes, I see your children. There is never one moment when God permits me to stop thinking about you all in turn, in rota.

I see your name on my list, Dr Klaesson. Dr John Klaesson and Mrs Naomi Klaesson of Los Angeles, California. I am thinking about you at this moment, wondering how you are feeling right now. You will have spawned by now. How are the creatures, Dr and Mrs Klaesson?

How are you feeling about what you have done?

Are you proud? Or have you woken and seen the light and been sickened?

You don’t have to worry for long. Soon I will liberate you from your shackles of guilt.

And hand you over to God. Who won’t be so merciful as me.

Timon Cort walked down the stone steps, along the cloistered courtyard; then he crossed the small, grass lawn, past the fountain and joined the sombre queue of brothers at the chapel door.

Entering through the screen into the sweet smell of incense, he was enveloped by the deep golden light glowing in the nave of the church. A sign.

God confirmed the sign in his prayers. God told him it was time to take the next step in the Great Rite.

Naomi’s Diary

Made a friend today! Her name is Sandra Taylor. She came up (in a green Range Rover, what else?) to ask if we’d like to subscribe to the Caibourne, Firle and Glynde parish magazine. Subscription three pounds a year. Bargain! Sandra has three young children, one just eight months old – the same age as Luke and Phoebe. There’s a toddlers’ group in the village, where the mums meet every Wednesday. I’m going to check it out.

Today, Mum came to stay and I went shopping for a pram. I hadn’t realized there were so many different designs of prams for twins. The salesman in the store pointed out the advantages of a side-by-side, explaining that would give each child an equal view, and a shorter wheelbase, enabling it to get round tighter corners. But that needed to be balanced against the problem of width in some supermarket aisles . . .

I worry so much. One of my worries is about cot death, and I constantly listen to the babyphone speakers around the house when they are sleeping. I wake in the night panicking that I can’t hear them breathing.

Another major cause for worry is that Luke and Phoebe seem to go longer between feeds than the books – and Megan, the health visitor – say is normal. The paediatrician thinks this is strange, too, yet he insists they seem totally healthy. And he says they definitely are bigger than normal for their age. Noticeably bigger. But I remember Dr Dettore telling us that they would grow and mature faster than normal babies, so that’s not such a big concern.

We’ve been told it is important to give them separate identities, not to call them twins, and to be sure on their first birthday, which is fast looming up, that they have separate birthday cakes and presents.

I’m thinking it’s strange how perspectives change. I know I should be grateful to have two such lovely, healthy babies. But how true that expression is about other pastures looking greener. Los Angeles seems a million years ago. A million years since I had a life.

Naomi, standing by the kitchen window at seven thirty in the morning, watched John drive off. She saw his brake lights come on as he reached the cattle grid, heard the clatter as he drove over it. Wednesday.

Baby and toddler group day today. Bliss! And it was, relatively speaking.

The highlights of her weeks weren’t much. The Wednesday toddler group she had started attending with Luke and Phoebe, held in a house in the village, at which she met other mothers – and caught up on the local village gossip. Occasional visits from friends or her mother. A cup of tea with the health visitor. Then there was the Friday morning arrival of Ron, the World’s Most Miserable Gardener, who came as part of the rental deal, and spent most of the morning tinkering around in the garage until it was time to leave. He was north of seventy and couldn’t dig because he had a bad back. For the same reason he couldn’t mow. He had no conversation and he smelled like damp furniture. Naomi had suggested to the rental agency that he be replaced. The agency had written to the owners out in Saudi Arabia and were awaiting a reply.

Her thoughts were disrupted by Phoebe banging on the side of her plate with her spoon, and moments later Luke began screaming, drowning out the theme tune of breakfast television. He hurled his cereal bowl onto the floor and the contents spattered all over the place.

She bit her lip in fury, staring at the mess, yet another thing – on top of the nappies, the sheets, the pyjamas, all the regular laundry and all the regular housework, now she had to scrape sodding breakfast cereal off the floor and the walls.

She felt like screaming back at him. Instead she found a teething ring and tried to get it into his mouth, but he windmilled it away with his hands, screaming even louder, and almost immediately Phoebe threw her spoon on the floor and began screaming, also.

Naomi grabbed the remote and hit the volume button, turning it up to maximum. ‘I’m listening to this interview!’ she shouted back at them, defiantly. ‘I like this guy, OK? He’s one of my favourite actors. We’re going to have some
Mummy Time
here. OK?’

Blanking out their screams, she stood right in front of the television and watched the interview all the way through, her ears ringing from the cacophony of sounds behind her.

Then, sinking the volume back down, she turned and, to her amazement, both babies were staring at her in total silence, mouths open, eyes wide.

Naomi grinned at them. ‘OK. So now we’ve figured out who’s boss around here.’ Then she gave each of them a kiss, made Luke a fresh bowl and spoon-fed him. He ate it all in silence without protesting. Good. Almost too good. ‘Very good!’ she said.

He stared blankly back at her.

‘And you’ve eaten all yours by yourself! Good girl!’ she said, wiping cereal from the edges of Phoebe’s mouth.

As if in some kind of synchronization with her brother, Phoebe stared blankly back, too, for a moment. Then they both smiled.

They remained silent as she carried them up and placed them on the bathroom floor while she grabbed her morning shower. Normally, before she had finished, two little heads would be peeking around the shower curtain, watching her. But today they lay motionless, where she had placed them.

Back down in the kitchen, as she threw the first load of laundry into the washing machine, they continued to remain silent. Usually they would have rolled around on the floor together, sometimes Luke, sometimes Phoebe crawling on top of the other, pinning the other down. But this morning, nothing.

She began to be a little unnerved.

At nine thirty she changed their nappies; afterwards, lying in bed, she gave them a feed then snoozed for a while. When she woke, they were still both staring at her, still silent.