THE FOREVER GENE (THE SCIONS OF EARTH Book 1) (35 page)

"Me?" said Hal, startled.  "No."  He pointed at Winston.  "He is."

The stranger looked across at Winston, who nodded.

"I am the…" he paused, as if trying to think of the right word, "…pilot of this shuttle.  "Would you accompany me to the command deck?  Please.  There is much to discuss before launch."

Hal exchanged glances with Winston and Connie.  Launch?  Where was the shuttle going?

"Certainly, captain," said Winston.  "I trust that my companions may accompany me?"

The pilot inclined his head, which seemed to signify assent, and then led the three of them through another hatchway.  They found themselves in a smaller passenger cabin, which Hal surmised was where the crew sat during flight.  At the other end of the crew's cabin was the bridge, a large, semi-circular space where a number of individuals in blue-yellow robes were tending to some very strange equipment.  Some of them were standing within what looked to Hal like frameless shower cubicles.  He had never seen anything like it.  Instead of water, the cubicles were filled with insubstantial patterns of light and colour.

The pilot showed them to a large console in the centre of the space.  He tapped a panel set into the console and a miniature version of the cubicles sprang into view.  With a few flicks of the elongated fingers of his right hand, he brought up video footage of greater London on a large screen above the console.  Hal, Winston and Connie watched in horror as scene after scene of devastation scrolled by.  Not much had been left standing by the missile strikes.

The video footage moved on to show similar scenes from elsewhere around the planet.  Hal was stunned.  In prison, news of the outside world was controlled, and sometimes censored.  In the interests of maintaining order, the authorities believed in filtering potentially disruptive news through slowly.  He knew that things were bad outside the prison walls, but had no idea how bad they really were.  He had not been aware that radiation levels had become life-threatening in many parts of the planet.

"Our Ancient Council has sent us to offer sanctuary to all who wish to leave Earth," said the pilot.  "Many shuttles like this one have landed in your city and in many other places all over the planet.  Each is tasked with dispensing medical assistance and with taking volunteers to our star ships in orbit.  Our mission protocol requires that we refuse no-one who wishes to go and respect the wishes of all who wish to stay."

"I see," said Winston slowly.  He was obviously more familiar with the state of the planet than Hal, but even he seemed shocked by the pilot's footage.  "I appreciate your offer, captain," he said, "but I cannot leave my people now.  I am their elected prime minister and I cannot desert them in their hour of need."

The pilot wiggled his fingers within the cubicle, and the footage being shown on the big screen changed.  The videos of bombed cities, polluted rivers, and homeless refugees faded, to be replaced by a rolling vista of towering, white-capped mountain ranges and lush valleys, all under a reddish-yellow sky.  If it hadn't been for the vibrant blue flora carpeting the valleys, and the startlingly alien cast of the sky, Hal might have thought that he was watching scenes from somewhere in the South American Andes, or perhaps New Zealand's South Island.

"Your future as a race no longer lies on Earth," said the pilot.  "Our analysts have calculated that your population has reached a critical level.  Even with careful management, your planet's resources would not have been able to sustain your civilisation in its current state for more than fifty of your years.  With the damage that has been done recently, even that time frame is no longer feasible.  Those who survive the radiation and concomitant acceleration in global warming will be few, and their existence will be harsh and unfulfilled.  Your future now lies among the stars."

His fingers wiggled again and a city appeared on the screen.  Hal stared, mesmerised by its beauty.  As a boy, his father had read him stories from a picture book about elves and sprites, nymphs and dryads, pixies and goblins.  It was one of the few memories he had of his father.

The picture on the screen could have come straight out of his father's old book.  It was a place of tall, elegant buildings; many topped with sharp spires and elaborate pinnacles.  Colourful banners and pennants fluttered gently in the breeze.  Most of the buildings featured beautifully carved wooden panels and were separated by wide mossy pathways rather than tarred roads.  Tall trees with blue foliage and vibrant yellow flowers dotted the areas between buildings.  Tiny airborne vehicles glided through the air in intricate patterns; a harmonious transportation system which enhanced the amenity of the city rather than burying it in grime.  There was no traffic or pollution, and he could almost taste the crisp, clean air.

The picture panned across the cityscape, which spilled out of the hills into a verdant blue valley.  By the time the screen showed a patchwork of green rivers snaking through cultivated blue fields on the valley floor, Hal had fallen in love with the place.

"Even if what you say is true, captain," said Connie, "we must stay here.  We have family; children and grandchildren.  We don't even know if they are alive."  She stopped speaking, tears welling up in her eyes, and Winston put his arm around her thin shoulders.

"Our star ships are linked by a radio network which is connected to what remains of your planetary communications system," said the pilot.  His fingers danced within their cubicle and Hal heard Winston's 'link chime.  "I have connected you to it.  You are at liberty to make whatever calls you wish.  I am authorised to do the same for any of your people who wish to communicate."

Winston and Connie moved away, anxious to see if they could contact their children.

Hal found himself alone with the pilot.  "What is that place?" he asked, gesturing towards the big screen.

"That is Azura City.  It is on one of the planets of our home system.  Living facilities have been prepared for your people in some of its valleys."

"So whoever goes with you will live in a place like that?"

"The facilities prepared for you are constructed of hard-water and look somewhat different.  But the landscape is similar and there will be opportunities for you to travel to the city.  If the settlement of your people on the planet is successful, some of you may even go on to live in our cities."

The pilot moved away.  Activity on the bridge had increased sharply and Hal realised that the shuttle was preparing for take-off.  He walked towards Winston and Connie and was relieved to see their faces wreathed in smiles.

"Our daughters Mary and Jessica are safe," said Connie.  "They live with their husbands and children in Kent, which wasn't hit by the missiles.  And we have just spoken to our son Peter, who lives in Australia.  He and his wife have already decided to go with the Faerie Folk.  They want their children to grow up in a better world than this.  They have been desperately trying to contact us to persuade us to go too.  Our daughters say that they will do whatever we decide to do."

She glanced uncertainly at Winston.

He was staring uncomfortably at the floor.  "How can I leave?" he asked, despondently.  "I am the prime minister of the United Kingdom.  My responsibility is to its people."

"You have a responsibility to your family, too," said Connie gently.  "We have a responsibility," she amended.  "We need to keep them safe, and this planet is not safe anymore.  We have to go, Winston."

Winston's shoulders slumped.  "I agree," he said.  "The family must go, and you must go with them.  But I have to stay.  I took an oath, Connie."

"No, Winston," she said miserably.  "If you stay then I will stay."

"But then Mary and Jessica will stay too," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders.  "As much as I have to stay, you have to go."

She shook her head angrily, too upset to respond.

Hal cleared his throat.  "What about them, sir?" he asked, jerking a thumb in the direction of the passenger cabins.

"What do you mean?" replied Winston.

"The people who are going with the Faerie Folk; you are their prime minister too. If you stay behind, you will be deserting them."

"He's right, Winston," said Connie with a sniff.  "It isn't that simple.  You are going to have to desert someone."

Winston looked even more stricken.

"It's like the pilot says," said Hal.  "Our future is among the stars.  That is where your leadership will be needed most.  The people left behind are probably not going to survive, whether or not you stay.  But the people leaving have every chance, especially if they have someone like you to lead them."

"You fulfil both of your responsibilities if you go, dear," said Connie.

She and Hal were silent as a war was fought within Winston's mind.

Eventually the prime minister smiled and nodded.  "You are right, young man," he said, shaking Hal's hand.  "I must say, I wasn't sure about you at first, but you have proved me wrong."

"I hope you will come with us," said Connie to Hal, wiping her eyes.

"Just try and stop me," said Hal.  "By the way, does this mean that I won't have to go back to prison?"

Connie laughed.  "You won't have to go back to prison," she said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

David skirted the common, keeping a sharp lookout.

Once, not so long ago, he would have enjoyed sauntering across its well-manicured lawns to his favourite coffee shop.  But now, the shop was closed, and the lawns were long and unkempt.  Drug dealers and gangs had made the place their headquarters and no ordinary citizen in his right mind would go there.

Daylight began to fade as he hurried through the streets, and he pulled his overcoat closed to keep out the evening chill.  He took more than one detour, preferring to take his time getting home rather than risk passing too close to any people loitering about.  You couldn't be too careful these days.

When he got to the river, he turned left and quickened his pace.  He resisted the urge to run; it might attract the wrong sort of attention.  He strode down Storrow Street, the once busy motorway now devoid of traffic.  Once he got to the Back Bay area, he turned into Exeter Street, and then Marlborough, quickly reaching the block where he and Pris now lived.  He had bought a small apartment with the last of the money he had been able to extract from the Factory before it folded.

The once sought after area was now shabby and dilapidated.  Service delivery of electricity and water was intermittent at best, and refuse removal non-existent.  Gang members controlled these streets, as was the case everywhere these days, but so far there had been no serious trouble.  The relatively stable Back Bay gang ruled with an iron fist and none of the other metropolitan gangs had the muscle to challenge them on their turf.  The area had been spared the bloody street battles which had taken place in other parts of town and as long as residents paid their weekly 'taxes', as they were euphemistically called, the ruling gang left them alone.

He ran up three flights of stairs, careful not to stumble in the gloom of the unlit stairwell.  The light bulbs had died or been stolen months ago and no-one had replaced them.  Light bulbs were the least of it, unfortunately, and lately almost everything had become scarce.  It had begun with commodities like oil and gas, the prices of which had been significantly inflated by the demise of much of the production in places like Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East.  Even in the States, labour problems ignited by the Faerie Blood craze had caused the cost of production to rise sharply.  Supply diminished to alarming levels and the price rose dramatically.  Soon, fuel was virtually unaffordable and traffic died away to almost nothing.

As a result, the price of everything else soared.  Although the air-vortex technology had reduced the economy's reliance on fossil fuels, they were still needed to power the engines which produced the vortex.

The gangs, always present in the seedy underbelly of American society, wasted no time taking advantage.  They understood that when commodities were scarce, whoever controlled them called the shots.  For decades, drugs had been the only scarce commodity in town, and the vigilance of an efficient justice system had kept the trade at a minimum.  The gangs were small and their operations marginal.  But, as soon as everyday things like food, water, and electricity became scarce, a massive black market sprang up almost overnight.  With all of the nefarious means at their disposal, the gangs were able to offer commodities at much lower prices than legitimate outlets.

Ordinary people, most of whom were unable to afford official prices, had no option but to buy from the gangs.  Within months, the black market had taken over the economy in most cities.  The police, district attorneys and judges were its customers too, so prosecutions were few and far between, and almost never successful.  As the gangs' wealth and power grew, they began to attract more and more members.  The desperate and the destitute, not to mention the ambitious, joined the gangs and their membership skyrocketed.  New gangs sprang into existence too and turf wars became commonplace.

David never joined the endless debates about who, or what, had caused the crisis.  To him, the identity of the culprit was plain as day; the Faerie Folk. Their introduction of Faerie Blood had changed the way most people thought about life.  Living for a limited period of a hundred years or so was a very different proposition to living indefinitely.  He knew that better than anyone.  People could stop worrying about old age and its attendant diseases.  Humanity's most implacable enemy, death itself, had been vanquished at a stroke.

The consequences of such a fundamental change in the human psyche could not be understated.  People who no longer feared death no longer feared anything.  They had no need for religious beliefs and no use for law and order.  Compassion for one's fellow man was no longer a virtue, it was a weakness.  Morality was an outmoded concept; supplanted by the most basic of humanity's instincts, survival of the fittest.  Suppressed for millennia by the laws and morals which kept most people honest, the primal genie was out of the bottle.

He kept waiting for someone else to make the connection, but no-one did.  He couldn't understand it.  Perhaps it was because no-one else had been betrayed directly, as he had.  No-one else had experienced the brazen theft of his livelihood by the ostensibly benevolent Faerie Folk.  Or perhaps it was because the true effects of their parting gift had not been noticeable at first; and by the time they were, their cause was masked by numerous other factors.

For a while, most Americans had been haughtily dismissive of the so-called Faerie Blood. Centuries of built in xenophobia were not easily swept away.  The cheap alternative to the Forever Gene gained better traction in Asia, Africa, and South America, and most branches of the Factory on those continents closed down.  To David's immense chagrin, one of the closures had been of the brand new facility in Buenos Aires.

On the whole, although the profits of Forever Incorporated were significantly affected, the company's branches in North America and Europe kept it afloat.  With a great deal of belt tightening, it looked as if it would survive.

But, just as David and the other shareholders were breathing a sigh of relief, the Food and Drug Administration's report hit the streets.  It's finding, that the Forever Gene and the Faerie Blood serum were almost identical, had ramifications as extensive as they were unintended.  Within days, Faerie Blood became the new craze worldwide and almost every order on the Factory's books was cancelled.  With no source of income, the company was bankrupt, and David soon had no choice but to close it down.

He tried to keep the facility on Shelter Island going for a while, hoping that, if he kept a spark alive, it might later be used to reignite the company's fortunes.  But his efforts were futile.  Without income, there was no way to pay any expenses.  Its staff had to be laid off, its doors closed and the facility itself sold off to creditors.

The mansion in Westwood was already a distant memory.  He and Pris still owned the property, but it was no longer feasible to live there.  For months they had been harassed by dissatisfied patients and creditors of the Factory.  People who had spent millions of dollars on the Forever Gene wanted their money back when they discovered they could get Faerie Blood for next to nothing.  He and Pris endured an avalanche of calls, protests, and petty vandalism.

Then legal papers began arriving; demands, summonses, and writs, all claiming some form of compensation from the company and its directors.  David tried to deal with each one at first, but as the quantity of claims grew from a trickle to a flood, he couldn't keep up.

He had to hire private security to protect the house, but when income from the Factory dried up, he could no longer pay for it.  Once the security guards left, the break-ins started.  Some of them were clearly the work of petty criminals, but others seemed to be instigated by angry claimants who seemed to believe that they were justified in taking whatever they wanted as restitution for the perceived wrongs they had suffered.

David reported the first half a dozen incidents to the police, but gave up when he realised that they were not willing, or able, to do anything about what they considered to be petty crimes.  The proliferation of serious criminal activity was taking up all of their time and resources.  And when those resources ran low, they found themselves reliant upon the gangs, just like everyone else.

The demise of the American justice system was as rapid as it was inevitable.  Frustrated by their inability to maintain law and order, and attracted by the riches on offer from the black market, policemen, prosecutors, and judges joined the gangs in droves.  The government remained in place, but was utterly powerless to prevent the slide into anarchy.  New laws passed to deal with the rapidly changing landscape were simply ignored, and pleas for moderate conduct broadcast on the Personet fell on deaf ears.

Of course, the more radical gangs were not content to simply make money selling ordinary goods.  Some of them went after a much more valuable commodity, a commodity which could be found in abundance in the United States.  Weapons.  It was a relatively simple matter to infiltrate military bases where large quantities of weapons were stored, and it wasn't long before there was a roaring trade in guns and explosives of all descriptions.  The gun trade fed the gang wars, and the number of casualties escalated alarmingly.

Then, just when David thought things couldn't get any worse, they did.  As far as he was concerned, anyway.  About six weeks ago, scores of Faerie Folk star ships appeared in orbit around the planet.  They were accompanied by a message, broadcast on the Personet, offering medical assistance, mediation, and sanctuary.  To David's astonishment, the message was delivered by none other than Translator Vi, chief perpetrator of the theft of the Forever Gene.

The return of the Faerie Folk drew reactions which ranged from the euphoric to the homicidal.  Within days, people were flocking to the shuttles for medical treatment and free food.  Many took up the offer of sanctuary and were whisked up to the orbiting star ships, never to be seen again.  Others treated the shuttles as glorified shopping centres.

Some less trusting individuals in Alabama attacked a shuttle, justifying their actions by claiming that the Faerie Folk were demons who had duped mankind with their gifts and were back to reap their rewards in human souls.  David had a certain amount of sympathy with their views.  The attack was foiled with ease; the attackers ran into an invisible shield, which neither they nor their weapons could penetrate.  The shuttles were not as defenceless as they seemed.

Another fringe group tried a far more radical approach.  They infiltrated a large missile silo in the Midwest.  After subverting a group of demoralised soldiers guarding the facility, they wiped out its top brass in a brief firefight.  Taking launch codes from the dead bodies of the officers they had killed, they adjusted the target vectors of more than a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles.  Thinking that they had redirected them to take out Faerie Folk star ships, they fired the missiles.

What they didn't know was that they were dealing with surface to surface missiles, which could not be recalibrated to take out targets in space.  All they attackers had done was shorten the ranges of missiles set to strike terrestrial targets in Eastern Europe and Asia. The smart software within the missiles' targeting systems implemented the new ranges and automatically selected targets where optimal damage would be achieved.  The missiles rained down on major cities in Western Europe, devastating much of London, Paris, and Munich, among others.

David and Pris watched the horrifying scenes on the Personet.  Troops loyal to the government quickly recaptured the silo, but the damage had been done.  Not to mention the fact that a precedent had been set.  Within the next few weeks, a number of American missile bases came under attack.  None were successful, but the forces loyal to the government were dwindling steadily it was only a matter of time before they lost control completely.

Pris and Chunky had begun to argue that they should take up the Faerie Folks' offer and leave Earth for a new home.  David resisted, unable to overlook the aliens' casual betrayal of his trust.  Then Pris fell ill, and things got more complicated.

One of the first commodities targeted by the black market gangs had been medicine.  Easily obtainable and relatively cheap to transport, the market had been flooded with all types of drugs at very reasonable prices.  And no prescriptions were necessary.  The pharmaceutical companies were hit hard.  Many simply closed down, unable to afford to continue production on the income from the almost non-existent legal trade.  The ones that survived did so by electing to supply the black market directly.

Once the glut had played itself out, medicines became very scarce and very expensive.  There was no longer enough to go around and the gangs controlled who received medicine and who didn't.  David was unable to get anything strong enough to treat Pris' infection.  Her temperature rose higher and higher and her condition got worse and worse.  By the seventh day, she was dehydrated and delirious.  David took her to every doctor he could find, but they all had the same problem.  They knew what medicine she needed, but were unable to get any of it.

Chunky brought their mother Eunice in to nurse her, while he and David went out every day, scouring the city.  They learned a lot about how the gangs operated and who was in control of what, but they were not able to find what they were looking floor.

When David reached the third floor apartment, Chunky was already back.  David could see at a glance that nothing had changed; Chunky had been unsuccessful and Pris was still burning up.  He pulled out the bottle of painkillers he had been able to scrounge and handed it to Eunice.  It wouldn't help much but Pris would at least be a little more comfortable for a while.