The Ambassador (15 page)

‘Why are underground workers allowed indulgences? What do you mean?’ the Ambassador asked him quickly. ‘D’you have to stay here the whole time? Aren’t you allowed on top?’

‘I
am,’ Winston replied with dignity. ‘I’m a higher clerical officer, the highest rank you can get without being an NT. I live in a cottage near Stony Stratford.’ As if to defy them, he blew a smoke ring in their direction. Lisa coughed discreetly.

The Ambassador took a chair at the side of Winston’s desk. ‘You seem to be, if I may say so, Mr Kerry, a rather unusual chap,’ he said, cautiously.

‘Oh, yeah, I am that,’ Winston said, but there was bitterness in his voice. ‘I’m black, I’m brainy, I’m as ugly as sin. And I know what goes on – what
really
goes on – in the NT programme. More than Dr Pasteur does.’

‘Why do you say you’re ugly? You look quite normal to me.’ The Ambassador seemed genuinely nonplussed.

‘Oh, come
on
. I’m type A-C 14, skin colour B3. Hair F-16 – and that’s F for frizzy, mind. Almost as black as you can get. Thick lips, flaring nostrils, buck teeth. In a world where the upper echelons are Anglo-Saxon blonds with long thin hands and enhanced IQs? They don’t think me cute. Not by a long chalk.’

‘Does it matter?’

Winston got the impression that his physiognomy was not quite what the Ambassador had come to investigate. A softening-up exercise? Yet the American’s manner exuded sincere concern. Maybe he meant it.

‘Does it matter if we look different? Sure it does. If I wrote an essay and a blond white NT wrote an essay I could probably beat him hands down – not in breadth of knowledge, since people like me are denied the education
they
get, which I have to pay for with my taxes. If it’s creative stuff you’re after, I have the edge. I might even be preferred. But put us both in the interview room, and there’s no contest.’

‘But physical appearances are not important,’ Lisa interposed gently. ‘The codes make that much specific. Discrimination on any grounds is forbidden. On race, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation – especially on race.’

‘That’s balls, and you know it,’ Winston responded. The cigarette had burned in his fingers down to a glowing butt. Without asking for permission he lit another from it. ‘Whatever the codes say, it’s easy to keep people like me down here. The same prejudices
keep you in your place too. How many women are directors of laboratories? How many are professors? And the only black professors are in Afro-Caribbean Studies. Fat lot of use that is.’

‘The majority of MPs are women,’ Lisa responded stoutly.

‘Right. And that proves my point. That’s because it’s an insignificant job. Glorified social workers, most of them. And when did we last have a woman Prime Minister, let alone a black one? Nineteen ninety, that’s when.’ Winston snorted and sucked at the cigarette.

‘How would you respond,’ the Ambassador seemed genuinely curious, ‘if I suggested to you that you have a chip on your shoulder?’

‘I’d say amen. Sure I have. So would you in my place. Hip, hideous and unhappy.’

‘Stop that,’ Lisa chided. ‘I brought Bill here to understand the programme, and maybe to share one or two problems with him that I couldn’t easily in Porton Down. The walls have ears there, I swear. Now are you going to be co-operative, or is that nicotine poisoning your soul as well as your lungs?’

By way of apology Winston stubbed out the cigarette and folded his hands across his chest. He had not missed Lisa’s slide into first-name informality. ‘I’m ready.’

For ten minutes he called up documents and explained the classification system, with comments from Lisa. The Ambassador was trying hard to follow, but became animated when Winston touched on the issue of parental choice.

‘So let me get it,’ he said. ‘The couple have been granted their permit. They’ve decided to use their own egg and sperm, and in many cases you have their printout. That must save you a lot of effort.’

‘Yes – provided it’s genuine. We gotta run a check to be sure.’

‘It can’t be faked, surely?’

Winston grinned. ‘You’d be surprised. That printout is a very precious document – more important than birth, marriage and death certificates rolled together. There’s a lively black market in high-quality forgeries. If I wanted, I could get one for myself that said I was a light-skinned Caucasian with pale blue eyes and an IQ of a hundred and sixty. Only the last bit’d be true. It’d cost, ’cause that’s what everybody wants. We
always
check.’

Strether was shocked. ‘What then? The parents present you with a list of preferences?’

‘Correct. And we tidy them up, too.’

‘You are being remarkably frank.’

Winston glanced at Lisa, who nodded imperceptibly. He shrugged. ‘Yeah, why not? You’re here for secrets. I got ’em.’

‘In that case, please continue. You – what did you say? – tidy up the requests? You mean, you interfere with parental choice?’

‘Not officially, natch. Parental choice is inviolable, says the code. Well, those choices are so silly – even the professional families’. Most parents want their kids to be smarter and neater than they are, non-fade yellow hair, straighter white teeth, brighter blue eyes – though pale ones are heading the list recently. Some pop star they’re taken with. If we didn’t play around down here, we’d have the whole of northern Europe looking alike in one generation. They might not be identical NTs, but they’d look it.’

Strether took a breath. ‘Clones?’

Winston shrugged. ‘You been told it’s not done? It is, but not in state-run laboratories. Me, I do my best to ensure that the common herd’s yearning to ape the latest TV idol is tempered by good sense. I can’t control what they call the kids – Alepha or Zedoko or God knows what – but I can improve on other temporary fads. Like, I fiddle it, with a bit of randomness. When I get stuck I take a pack of cards and play poker with myself. That does the trick.’

‘Good Lord.’ Strether pondered. ‘Tell me, are there any official changes you have to make without telling anyone, where parents have made a request which is apparently OK, but you’re required to change it? Or where they’ve named no preference, but you think there ought to be one?’

‘He’s a smart cookie,’ Winston remarked to Lisa. He turned back to the Ambassador. ‘Several. Skin colour, sir. If a black or Asian family demands a lightening of skin colour, that’s fine. If they don’t, I’m supposed to do it anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If Mr and Mrs Patel decide that little Nirmal’s future genes are to be checked out, he will emerge a lighter colour than they are – several shades, typically from B5 to B7 or B8. And I can tell you, because we do the market research, that they’re delighted. They think it’s a side effect of cleansing. Nobody suspects – and, of course, their own consciences are absolved, since they didn’t ask for it to happen. That’s why the programme is so popular with a certain class of upwardly mobile non-white.’

‘Doesn’t it bother you?’

Winston shrugged again. ‘They shouldn’t ask for the cleansing in the first place. There’s no need. The worst contamination died out decades ago. The gene bank is pretty clean. A century ago there were four thousand known human genetic disorders. After the explosions it went up to over ten thou. Now it’s down to under five – more, I grant you, than before but not
that
many more, and the chances of most are less than one in ten million. They do it out of vanity.’

He paused a moment before continuing. ‘D’you realise what’s happening? Ever heard of regression to the mean?’ Lisa smiled, Strether frowned. ‘A simple old theory of mathematics,’ she said quickly. ‘The more examples you take, the more the results will tend to hunker down to a mean – the average.’

‘It works with people, too,’ Winston added. ‘The bigger the mass, the more they want the comfort of some broadly standard pattern. Odd bods like me are not wanted on voyage. Given the choice, most adults would iron out any miseries for their children they’ve experienced in their own lives. Big noses become moderate noses. Chinese eyes disappear. Acne’s abolished. Asymmetric faces become perfectly heart-shaped. Big breasts smaller, small ones bigger.’ He hooted suddenly. ‘There’s one exception to that.’

‘Really?’

‘Men always want larger pricks. For themselves, and for their sons. Serious tackle. Nobody wants a pinkie for a penis.’

He snickered. Lisa blushed and twiddled her ring. Strether smothered a smile and leaned forward, chin cradled on his hands. ‘But, Mr Kerry, aren’t you ever tempted to ignore your instructions? Especially when they clash with your own laudable principles.’

Winston’s eyes bulged. He cackled with laughter and slapped his thigh. ‘Oh, man. It’s
more than my job’s worth. That’s one thing they
do
check up on, from time to time. In fact I suspect that a couple of the Asian or Afro-Caribbean cases I deal with every month are test runs. To make sure I know my place.’

‘Why don’t you resign? Find some other post? It wouldn’t be difficult with your talents,’ Strether pressed.

‘I’ve thought of that.’ Winston’s expression became brooding. He glanced at Lisa and his face softened. ‘Because if I left, some other idiot’d take my place. The mistakes’d be mistakes, not the occasional undetectable twiddle. And I’d be cut off for ever from being able to do anything, even those little bits of sanity I do manage. Once you leave here, you never come back.’

‘I think,’ said Lisa quietly, ‘that you have made your point, Winston. Thank you for that. Now, look; I have a dilemma.’ Rapidly she sketched out the issue of the missing files and handed Winston a note with the approximate dates, culled by tracing accessible records and marking the gaps as far as she could.

‘D’you want me to do this now? It could take a while, if access is denied.’

‘No, when you have a moment. I’ll spend an hour or two showing Mr Strether round the Bunker. Maybe we can see you again later.
After
you’ve switched the camera back on, Winston. This is not a clandestine visit.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Winston grinned and reached once more for the forbidden tobacco. ‘Shut the door after you – and hold tight to that dude. I like him.’

The underground complex was mind-boggling, Strether was willing to admit. Marius had a point. Not that it was unique: Strether had once visited the original Disneyworld in Florida during a Democratic Party convention in Orlando nearby. They’d been proud of the antique mini-Maglev there, which connected the airport to the resort. The over-lifesize puppets and cartoon characters irritated him; Mickey Mouse should long since have been retired. The artificial concoctions of landscapes and deserts had also failed to please, so far removed were they from the open skies and clear air of his home. He suspected that, had he ever visited the castles of the Loire or Rhine he would have held the same low opinion of the fairytale vacuity that teetered over Main Street, USA.

But he had been fascinated by the subterranean network that maintained the park in pristine cleanliness. A piece of litter was placed in a bin; but the bin had no base. It was a rubbish chute. Ten metres below it led into a wheeled skip which, when full, was automatically trundled away and replaced. Below ground were the heating and air-conditioning which enabled buildings on the surface to reproduce accurately the style of an earlier era: no radiators, no bulging pipes. The only chimneys were for Santa Claus. The kitchens remained cool, the staff unflappable on warm days, the ice-cream solid, yet all without visible means. Both music and scent could be wafted out to customers. The sewage system naturally ran underground: at a discreet distance the output was churned, filtered, the water returned to the complex’s reservoirs, and after sterilisation the separated solids became fertiliser. The whole place was a perfection of recycling, and all done for purely commercial reasons.

In later theme parks miniature nuclear reactors were buried deep, with the close-down processes required for their end-life decommissioning built in from the start. At DisneyCity –
and at most new factories, such as Toyota’s in China – enough space was set aside for three generations of nuclear-power units, sufficient to last a hundred and fifty years. And not a scrap of pollution, visible or otherwise, sullied the air.

All below the surface: that saved space and reduced exposure to sun, ultra-violet rays and other potentially damaging radiation. Since earth was a natural insulator, energy was saved. The combination of warmth from lighting and from human bodies was enough, with no need for extra heat. What had been experimental had become fact, and well accepted.

What struck Strether about the Milton Keynes ‘Bunker’, by comparison with Disney’s imaginative creations, was its sheer scale. With little evidence of its presence overhead, an entire city hummed beneath the earth’s surface.

Much pleased by his appreciative comments, Lisa trundled him about the under-earth town on an electric buggy. He was not surprised to see whole shopping malls; they had been widespread by the late twentieth century, and thereafter climate change had made them a necessity. Indeed it was rare to find shops above ground these days, except in tourist areas (like Portobello Road) which attempted to re-create a lost ambience. Similarly he had expected stations, factories, colleges, dance-halls, places of entertainment, gymnasia, clinics, libraries, banks, accountants’ offices, lawyers: there was nothing new in that as such, but the number and sprawl were remarkable. On top of such excess, however, the football stadium, skating rink, bowling alley and running track through a full-scale forest were awesome.

‘Milton Keynes was always a go-ahead spot,’ Lisa explained. ‘I love it. If I had my way we’d shift the entire Porton Down operation here and return that site to sheep. It’s too restricted to develop, with Stonehenge so near. Milton Keynes council was the first to license a full-scale operation. They’d been to see what happened below the halls at the old National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, and they began to think big. I think it’s terrific – and it’s so much safer than on the surface. And more fun.’

Strether had put to the back of his mind the anxiety evident in her vidphone call. She would explain to him in her own good time. He wondered if she needed help, and whether he would be capable of providing it. But that was speculation, and must wait.