Perfect People (6 page)

And that was the real problem. Dettore was pushing them all the time to go for more options, to enhance their son in ways that even John hadn’t realized were already scientifically possible. And some of these options were tempting. My God, if they wanted, they could really make Luke into an incredible person!

But no thanks.

Luke wasn’t going to be some kind of laboratory rat that they could just terminate humanely with a needle if he came out different to how they were expecting.

He did not want to gamble with his son’s life. And yet what haunted him during the night was the knowledge that any child was just that, a gamble, a random throw of the genetic dice. What Dettore was offering was a way to reduce the odds, not increase them. In playing safe, would they be condemning their son to a life of mediocrity?

The machine beeped and the display flashed that another minute had passed. He was working out even harder on this ship than he did at home. Pushing himself into some kind of super-fit shape. Aware of his true reason for doing this, but having difficulty in admitting it to himself.

I want my kid to be proud of me. I want him to have a fit man for a dad, not some wheezing old fart.

It was totally deserted down here on G Deck, deep in the bowels of the ship.

His sole companion was his own reflection jigging up and down on all four mirrored walls, a reflection of a tall, slim man in a white T-shirt, blue running shorts, trainers. A tall, slim man with a tired, strained face and bags like black smudges beneath his eyes.

Young men see visions, old men dream dreams.

The damned line was going round and round in his head, in tune to the pounding of his feet, like a mantra.
I may have come here as a man with a vision
, he thought.
But now I feel more like a priest who is starting to question his faith.

But if we do tone Luke right down, throwing away this chance to make him something really special, will I live to regret it? Will I end up as an old man dreaming of what might have been, if only I’d had the courage?

Naomi’s Diary

If you haven’t been through this you have no idea of the pain. This injection the nurse gives me every morning to boost my egg production feels like a spike being hammered into my thigh bone. I tried again to get Yvonne to talk about the other patients here, but she instantly clams up, as if she’s scared to open her mouth.

John is being wonderful, very loving and putting no pressure at all on me. In fact, in terms of the openness between us, this is the best it has ever been since before poor Halley came along. I hug him in the nights, desperately wanting to make love to him, but that’s forbidden – we were banned from making love for two weeks before we came here – and we’re not going to be able to for weeks after, either. That’s hard. We need that closeness.

I’m finding this place stranger by the day. The atmosphere on this ship is truly weird – we walk around, and there’s not a soul apart from the occasional cleaner polishing a handrail. Where the hell is everyone? Are all the other patients so shy? How many are here? I’d love to talk to someone else, to one other couple, compare notes.

Four hundred thousand dollars! I think about all that money. Are we being selfish spending it on our unborn child? Should we have given it away to help children in need, or people in need, or medical research, rather than squandering it on bringing one new person into the world?

It’s moments like this when I want to pray for guidance. But I gave up on God when he took Halley, and told him so.

How are you, Halley, darling? Are you OK? You’re the one who should really give us the guidance, you were such a smart kid. The smartest kid I ever knew.

It’s thinking about you that keeps me here. I’m thinking about your face when that needle goes in and I’m biting my handkerchief. All that suffering you went through. We want to have a son again now, one who will be smart enough, maybe, to do some real good in this world.

Luke.

We hope Luke’s going to make great new scientific discoveries, we hope he will be smart enough to make some kind of a real difference. So that in the future, no child is ever going to have to die the way you died.

Today we dealt with the Housekeeping genes. Funny description! The Housekeeping group relate to things like the efficiency of each cell to replicate its DNA or synthesize proteins. Nothing too much to worry about there. Luke should heal faster and better from any injuries, which has to be a good thing.

But the cleverest work Dr Dettore is doing in this group is with adrenaline responses. He pointed out just how badly evolution has kept pace with modern life: adrenaline kicks in when we get nervous, giving us a boost of energy to help us run from an assailant. Fine in the days when a sabre-toothed tiger would appear in the mouth of your cave, he explained. But you definitely do not want to be breaking out in a sweat and shaking in a confrontation with the tax collector, or with anyone else in our modern world – you want to remain calm, feel relaxed, keeping your brain as clear as possible.

In other words, stay cool. That is an option I’m tempted by, because it makes so much sense. But we haven’t agreed to it, not yet anyhow, because we’re both worried about tinkering with such an important part of Luke’s body’s defence mechanism.

I’m already thinking of him as Luke now. At least that’s one thing we’re both agreed on. But now there’s another issue – something that’s really disturbing.

‘Compassion,’ John said.

Naomi, deep in thought, seated on a bench on the Promenade Deck writing her daily diary entry by hand into her iPhone, remained silent.

‘Compassion,’ John repeated, as if thinking out loud. ‘
Compassion.
How do you define it – how does anyone?’

They’d discussed the genes relating to compassion for over an hour in this morning’s session with Dr Dettore and now, during their free time until the afternoon session, John and Naomi continued toying with the subject.

As the ship headed south the weather was improving noticeably. The air felt gloriously warm to Naomi, and the sea was the flattest she had seen so far. They would be alongside the quay in Havana, Cuba, at seven this evening, but Dettore did not want them to go ashore. It was a fuelling and provisioning stop only. It was crucial over the next month for Naomi to be as healthy as possible; there was no sense risking picking up a bug in a cab or a shop or a bar, he had already told them.

John stood up. ‘Let’s walk a little, darling, stretch our legs. The nurse said exercise would help ease the pain for you.’

‘I’ll try.’ She slipped her phone into her handbag and stood up. ‘What do you think Dettore meant that our child would grow up faster than ordinary children?’

‘I guess he’s implying because of the extra intelligence he’ll have.’

‘I don’t think we should
guess
anything, John. We need to be sure about everything. He talked about
accelerated
growth and maturity. We don’t want him being so different to other kids that he doesn’t have friends.’

‘We’ll review everything before we finalize anything.’

‘I’m going through those documents with a fine-tooth comb.’

With the breeze on their faces. they walked along the teak decking, past a muster station and an orange lifebelt printed with the ship’s name. Naomi was limping, her leg aching badly from this morning’s injection. She felt low today, and very vulnerable. Slipping her hand into John’s, into his strong, reassuring grip, made her feel a little better. She squeezed and felt him squeeze back.

They walked past a row of portholes and she peered at each of them in turn, trying to see in. But the glass was mirrored like every other porthole on the ship, and all she could see was her own reflection, her pale face, her hair tangled by the wind.

‘This secrecy thing is really getting to me,’ she said.

‘I guess if we were in any clinic on land, there’d be a lot of privacy. Also – it just feels as if it ought to be different because it’s a ship.’

‘I suppose. I just think it would be interesting to meet one or two of the other couples and compare notes.’

‘It’s a very private thing. Maybe other people don’t want to talk – perhaps we’d find it difficult to talk, too, if we did meet anyone.’

So far the only people they’d met on the ship, other than Dettore, were a doctor called Tom Leu, a pleasant, good-looking Chinese-American in his mid-thirties, whom Dettore had introduced as his senior medical assistant; the nurse, Yvonne; their chambermaid; and a handful of Filipino staff.

There had been no sign of the captain or any of the other officers, other than a voice through the tannoy system at nine this morning giving advanced notice of a crew safety drill. All access doors and gates to the bridge and crew stations and quarters were permanently locked off. Apart from their fleeting sight of the handsome couple they had jokingly called George and Angelina, there had been no sign of any other clients.

Taking a stroll late afternoon yesterday they’d seen the helicopter come in, then leave a short while later. It had hovered for some moments after take-off and John had just been able to make out a woman’s face through the darkened glass window. Taking a couple away who had changed their minds, they speculated.

‘Do you want lunch?’ Naomi asked.

John shook his head. He wasn’t hungry, but it wasn’t to do with the motion of the ship; it was the stress of worrying constantly about doing the right thing. Making the right decisions.

‘Me neither. Why don’t we sit out for a bit – it’s warm enough to sunbathe,’ Naomi said. ‘And have a swim? And try to talk this compassion thing through?’

‘Sure.’

A few minutes later, swathed in the clinic’s white towelling dressing gowns and daubed in suntan lotion, they made their way back outside and around to the stern. Naomi gripped the handrail to walk down to the pool deck, then stopped suddenly and turned to John.

George and Angelina were lying on loungers by the otherwise deserted pool. Tanned and beautiful, in sharp swimsuits and cool sunglasses, they were both reading paperbacks.

Moments later Naomi heard a click. Her eyes shot back to John, who was surreptitiously jamming something into his dressing-gown pocket.

‘You didn’t take a photograph?’

He winked.

‘That’s bad. You shouldn’t, you know the rules. We could get thrown off if you—’

‘I shot from the hip. Nobody saw.’

‘Please don’t take any more.’

They walked over to a couple of loungers near them. ‘Hi!’ John boomed cheerily. ‘Good afternoon!’

For some moments there was no reaction at all from either of them. Then, very slowly, the man they had nicknamed George lowered his paperback a few inches, then, equally slowly, he inclined his head a fraction, as if to confirm the source of the greeting. His expression did not change and he returned to his book, giving them no further acknowledgement. The woman did not move a muscle.

Naomi shrugged at John. He opened his mouth as if to say something further, then, appearing to think better of it, peeled off his dressing gown, went to the edge of the pool and dipped a foot in.

Naomi joined him. ‘Friendly, aren’t they?’ she hissed.

‘Maybe they’re deaf.’

She sniggered. John climbed down into the water and began to swim.

‘How’s the water?’ she asked.

‘Like a sauna!’

Naomi tested it gingerly with her foot, remembering that John was used to freezing lakes in Sweden. His idea of warm was anything that didn’t have ice floating in it.

Ten minutes later, when they emerged, George and Angelina had gone.

Naomi lay on her lounger, pushing her hair back and wringing out the water, letting the heat of the sun and the warm air dry her body. ‘I think that was incredibly rude,’ she said.

Towelling his head, John said, ‘Maybe Dettore should insert a
politeness
gene into their child.’ Then, sitting down on the edge of Naomi’s chair, he said, ‘OK, we need to get our heads around compassion – we have to get it resolved by three o’clock – that gives us an hour and a half.’ He stroked her leg, then ducked his head down impulsively and kissed her shin. ‘You haven’t sucked my toes for a long time – remember you used to do that?’

‘You used to suck mine, too,’ she grinned.

‘We’re getting too middle-aged!’

Then, looking at him a little wistfully, she asked, ‘Do you still fancy me as much as you used to?’

Caressing her navel suggestively, John said, ‘More. It’s the truth. I love the way you look, the way you smell, the way you feel when I’m holding you. When I’m apart from you, if I just think about you I get horny.’

She lifted his hand and kissed each of his fingers in turn. ‘I feel the same about you, too. It just gets better with you all the time.’

‘Let’s concentrate,’ he said. ‘
Compassion
.’