The Meddlers (21 page)

“An offer? What of? What can your newspaper offer me apart from the type of support it already gives?”

“Money.”

George raised his eyebrows. “Oh? Do you propose to run an appeal on behalf of the project? I doubt there’d be much point in it if you did. From all accounts, the publicity about it has only had the effect of making large numbers of people send donations to children’s charities, and provide this absurd religious revival cult with considerable funds. But not one solitary donation has come my way. Not one.”

He laughed a little bitterly. “It’s ironic, you know. The only reason I consented to give a press conference in the first place was because I had been led to believe I would gain public sympathy for my work and thus be able to finance it. In the event—”

“In the event, you are almost at the end of your resources. Your staff have agreed to work at half salary-most devoted of them—you and your daughter are living in difficult straits since you left your wife, and unless something is done soon, there is a real danger the project will founder by the end of the year.”

George’s cup clattered into its saucer. “How in hell’s name—”

“Do I know all that?” Sir Daniel leaned back in his chair and produced a bland smile. “I am a newspaperman, Dr. Briant. It is my business to know. I know one or two other things too. Such as
that your son appeared at Bow Street the other day on a charge of possessing cannabis—oh,
you
were unaware of that fact? Well, well. It wasn’t reported, of course. The
Echo
was the only paper to discover that Ian Webb and Ian Briant were the same person. Your wife’s name, was it not? And I made a point of keeping that information out of our news columns.”

“That stupid—my God, how could even
he
be so stupid? If he wants to behave in so, so lunatic a fashion, it’s his concern. But to risk—”

“Bad publicity for you? May I tell you something, Dr. Briant? Your son actively
wants
bad publicity for you. He is a very bitter young man. Extremely bitter. And very voluble about his feelings. I may say it is costing the
Echo
quite a sum to ensure he controls that volubility. And only as long as we—I am willing to maintain the control at the level he demands will his urge to talk be held in check. I wonder if you are beginning to understand why I was so anxious to arrange this meeting?”

The attempt to disguise suspicion was abandoned. George sat very erect in his chair, staring at the man opposite him.

“Sir Daniel, I am a practical man. Not in the least devious. I must ask you to what all this is leading, and ask you to tell me in direct terms. Otherwise, I must go. I am not prepared to sit here and be threatened.”

“My dear Dr. Briant! I am not threatening you! I told you, I am here to offer you the money you so desperately need. All the rest of our talk was designed to sketch in some of the background! No more than that.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you offering me money? What is it you want to get out of me? Because it’s bloody clear you want something! You tell me you’ve used your money already to keep my son quiet, offer me more. I may be a practical man, Sir Daniel, and unskilled in the maneuverings you appear to find so enthralling, but I’m not such a fool as to be unable to recognize manipulation when I meet it.”

“Manipulation? Oh, come, Dr. Briant! You’re most unjust! I am prepared to offer you a straightforward businesslike arrangement,
and you virtually accuse me of chicanery! Let me point out that I made my first approach to you before your son was so… indiscreet. I merely added his, um, involvement to my list of reasons for persuading you to consider my proposition. Any man would be entitled to feel hurt, even offended, at your cavalier response!” But he didn’t look at all hurt or offended; he was patently enjoying himself.

“Ah! We begin to get to the point! Businesslike, you say? Proposition? What is it you want to buy, what have I got that could be of any use to you?”

“Baby George Briant,” Sir Daniel said softly.

“What? The baby? You want to buy the
baby
?”

“Precisely. Or, rather, world rights in him. I want to obtain for the
Echo
full reporting rights on his life, his progress, everything about him, and also all the pictures of him we can get. And I mean full
world
rights, in newspapers, magazines, television, advertising—”

“
Advertising
? Are you out of your mind?” And George suddenly threw back his head and laughed.

“Does that seem absurd to you? I can assure you that baby is worth a good deal of money, properly exploited. The way he’s fed, dressed, the equipment used for him-all this will have a powerful effect on the marketing of such goods. And, of course, the reporting of his story will have enormous appeal, for years and years to come. Oh, come on, Dr. Briant! Don’t try to tell me the possibility hadn’t entered your mind? Why else were you so adamant that no one should have access to the child? Because you realized the immense commercial value he has, surely! You insist you’re a straightforward man, lacking in deviousness, but you can’t be
that
simple!”

George was no longer laughing. “Perhaps I am simple. I refused access to him for one reason only—to protect the project. To expose the child to outside influences could damage the work irreparably. For Christ’s sake, your articles about my work—the things your man Bridges wrote—they made it clear to the public that this was why he had to be protected! Don’t you believe what you publish?”

“Of course! But one can publish the truth without publishing
every part of it! All right, I’ll accept that you never recognized the commercial possibilities of your project. May I suggest you recognize them now? I am prepared to pay you fifteen thousand pounds a year for the next five years, with an option on the following five, and so on until the child reaches his majority, in exchange for world rights in the story. It’s a fair offer. We’ll make a reasonable profit out of it, and you’ll be able to keep going. No one will be harmed. Indeed, the very opposite. It’s clear to me that without an injection of real money soon your work will founder. Remember, Gurney is hot on your tail! If this bill he’s announced gets through, then the chances are the little you get in grants from the sources which support you now will dry up completely. And you can be certain the hospital will have to close your unit. But I’m offering you enough money to equip a new unit, or at least keep the existing one alive. Come on, man! Use your head!”

There was a long pause, and George sat staring into the dregs of his coffee, trying to think. Then he looked up and said dully, “And if I refuse, take my chances on the bill being defeated? Its passage is far from being a foregone conclusion. I’m all right for the next six months, poverty-stricken though I may be, and by then I’ll be able to get more money, somehow. I always have before, and I can do it again.”

“If it becomes public knowledge that your own son is a delinquent? A junkie? That you haven’t been able to rear your own child successfully? Are you sure?” Sir Daniel said softly.

George nodded heavily. “Yes. Yes. I expected that. I can see now why—oh, ye gods, why is it? Why does a piece of honest science create such situations? I’m trying to show how to make better, more valuable people. I’m trying to pull humanity out of the mud of its own past, help it to leap into a future that— And I have to tolerate this sort of—
Why
?”

His voice began to rise and his face flushed as he banged his clenched fist on the table so that the cups rattled, and the people at the next table looked at them curiously. “Why, in the name of good sense, does it have to be like this?”

“Because we are still in the present, Dr. Briant,” Sir Daniel said crisply. “You promise a future world inhabited by people bred and
reared to be perfectly intelligent, perfectly in harmony with each other, perfectly beautiful. Well, that’s as it may be. But I won’t be here to see it, any more than you will, and I’ve more sense than to live totally on the hopes of the future, even if you’re prepared to. All I can tell you is that I see a way to make a practical deal, right here and now, in the present. If you can’t see that your picture of the future hasn’t a hope of becoming real without the help of people like me, then you really are a fool. And I gave you more credit than that.”

He leaned back in his chair and beckoned the waiter. “Perhaps you need a little time to think. A little more brandy and some hot coffee to replace this will bridge the time most agreebly. The Napoleon, and for heaven’s sake don’t warm the glass. Barbaric trick.”

  The baby was lying on his back, his eyes fixed on the brightly colored fish of the mobile fixed above his cot, dribbling a little as he spasmodically moved his hands toward it. The diffused light from the concealed fitting around the head of the cot shone on his hair, and Isobel’s lips curved as she looked at the curls that were already visible on his round head.

He’s come on a treat this past few weeks, she thought. Dr. Briant says he’s the most advanced baby he’s ever seen, and he’s right. He really is.

As she thought about Dr. Briant, she frowned slightly. He’d been so—what was it?—far away this past couple of weeks or so when she talked to him. From the day he and his daughter had moved into the rooms at the top of the Unit, he’d been more distant, even though she’d seen much more of him than she had during that very first week.

I wonder why, Georgie boy. She began one of her silent conversations with the baby in the cot beside her, her head bent over the rompers she was sewing for him. He didn’t need them, but she liked to make things for him, and Miss Hervey had shrugged unconcernedly when she’d asked if she could. It would have been much nicer to be able to talk out loud to the baby, but she couldn’t do that, not with that tape recorder stuck on her back all the time.

But a silent conversation was almost as good, the way he would turn his head toward her when she looked at him, would give her one of his wide pink smiles, and make his funny bubbly noises. Smiling, at a month old! A marvelous baby.

I wonder why, Georgie boy. Why he moved in, I mean. He’s got a proper home, after all. But that wife of his—hard, she looked, didn’t you think so, Georgie? But she’s keeping her promise, never comes messing around even if she is supposed to be your legal mother.

She dropped her sewing on her lap and looked at the baby, and he turned his head and looked back at her intently, his blue eyes milky and considering, and then he smiled, his mouth opening wide.

“Who’s a lovely boy, then? Who’s the best boy in the world, then?” Isobel murmured aloud. It was all right to talk like that into the tape recorder. Part of the job. It was only her private thinking that had to be kept a secret between herself and Georgie.

All the fuss there had been when that adoption went through. She’d caught the worry from everyone else, that week. They’d been sure the thing would fail, that the court would say no, what with all the fuss in the papers and on the television about the project, and Georgie being too young to be legally adopted yet. But there were ways around everything, it seemed, and Dr. Briant had managed it, somehow. He’d found some lawyers to work on his side, and they’d got it through.

It’s silly, Georgie, isn’t it? The way people go on and on about it, taking sides? One paper says about how wicked it is, you being here. And then that other one gets all excited and calls you the hope of mankind. I ask you! You’re just little Georgie, aren’t you? My little Georgie. All this taking sides! If they could only see you, the ones who keep on about how wicked it is to keep you here, they’d soon know there was nothing to worry about.

And for Isobel there was nothing to worry about in that sense. She read the papers regularly, saw the many television news programs about what was being said in the world outside the safe cocoon of the Unit, where she lived wrapped up in the baby and her
fierce secret love for him, yet none of it really impinged on her consciousness. Her only concern was the baby, and the importance of not upsetting anyone, in case they tried to send her away.

It was an always present concern that, the need to cover up the way she felt about him. She could not have explained even to herself why it was necessary to hide it. She simply had an instinctive certainty that any obvious display of her attachment would be dangerous.

There had been a few times, during the week after the
Probe
program, when she had been marginally affected by the reported fuss and discussion. Was what Dr. Briant was doing with the baby a wicked thing, as some people said? she had wondered. And then there had been the announcement of Kenneth Gurney’s private member’s bill—the Scientific Research and Human Experimentation Control Bill—and she had gratefully dismissed the question from her mind. If it was politics that was at the root of the fuss, it had no relevance for her. She didn’t care about Dr. Briant’s involvement with ideas, or lack of it, or possible political uses of his work. As long as the papers went on about dreary politics, she could not take their excited leader articles seriously.

As for the religious aspect, she had first been a little amused and then scandalized by the reports she read about that. She had long ago abandoned the little religion she had been taught in her childhood, clinging only to a vague acceptance of the existence of God as a beneficent creature who sometimes—just sometimes—involved Himself in her life, as He had when she had got the job looking after the baby. But she looked upon posturings and rituals of orthodox religious practice much as she would regard the games of children, with an indulgent attitude of “If it pleases them it’s harmless enough.”

But as the get-back-to-God cult took root, and more and more newspaper reports appeared on the meetings in Trafalgar Square, the rallies and marches, she had been shocked. Although she had no use for the practices of orthodox religion, she had a definite dislike of primitive evangelism. Her parents, halfhearted though they had been in their Catholicism, had at least ingrained that deeply into her.