The Relic Keeper (26 page)

“Good, then I have to explain what we need. We three have been spared the fate of the others at Unit because our purpose is not yet fulfilled. We have a task to undertake. I’m sure that you, Brother Deon, have often felt that God had a duty for you, but you were unsure of the precise nature of that mission.” Deon nodded. “You have several very unique attributes. You are valiant and true in your faith, you realise the importance of the mission that we are embarked on and you have access to this man Lyal, and I gather from what you have told me that you have gained his trust.”

“Yes, I’ve been helping him.”

“And you were right to, because now he can help you to help us to help God. You are aware that there have been a number of attacks on the Christian faith. Our churches, our leaders, our followers, all viciously assaulted. Our enemies are massing at our gates, Deon. They wish to destroy us, and they have already started. Our leaders and followers are tainted by their wishes to compromise with these people. This is why God is allowing them to be cleansed from the Earth. They are not truly worthy of the gift of life that He has granted us. But we know the truth and we can lead people to the right path. We have the power to give people the salvation that they seek, so long as they recognise it. We need to be visible in this task, and people need to be aware who we are and what we are doing. The attacks on Christianity allow us to do this. Now we need to build on this, and take the covert war that is being waged to a new level. We need the people of this country to know that the atheists and the Jews and the Muslims and the Asians are not our friends, but our enemies, and to work with them for peace is to allow them to use their covert methods to undermine and destroy our way of life and our path to salvation. Do you understand?”

Yes, Deon thought. It made sense that working with other religions for peace
must
weaken your own faith; after all, both points of view couldn’t possibly be right, could they? He nodded again, trying to ignore that mist that was rising, clouding his mind.

“To work with these people,” Caroline continued, “is to accept that their views have credence, but in doing so that means that we must accept the possibility that our views are wrong. And they are not, Deon, they are not wrong at all. To work with the atheist, the Jew, the Muslim, which ever group that is not part of our assembly, that is to work against ourselves. This is what the Christians have been doing, and this is why our faith is crumbling and God has decreed that these people may die. Those who have died have been the followers of a false and corrupt religion that is not the true faith. But we have liberated them from the shackles of Earthly slavery and have set in motion the way forward. Soon the vile enemies of God shall start to retaliate further, and so we will gain momentum in our task and a great throng of people shall join us. Already our followers have increased in number. For years the Church of Christ has been neglected, but now the people of this Christian country are again able recognise the work and importance of the one true king and are starting to return to the fold. Our enemies are many, but they are not united. As the new Church of Britain spreads across the country we shall be able to lead it in the fight for salvation, Deon. We shall be at its head. We need people like you, Deon, to aid us. Will you help us to establish a new, vigorous state Church that is true and formidable?”

“Like we did in Unit?”

“No, Deon. I do not mean to create a small commune. We shall do our work on a national scale, and re-establish the Holy Land right here.”

Deon heard the words reverberate around his head. The true faith, against the vile enemies of God. Some of Caroline’s words echoed flatly with no meaning, but most of it made perfect sense. Why help those who were destroying his faith? Yes, he could see that they were fighting a war, and this was his chance to aid the cause. He thought of the blast that nearly killed himself and Rei, not to mention Mathew and Philip. If Mathew were a victim in this war the consequences would be disastrous.

“Yes,” he said. “I should love to be part of this.” And he concentrated only on the parts of her speech that appealed to him, while his brain blocked the rest.

“Come,” demanded Aaron. “We have a place where you may rest and wait until we shall speak again.” And he started to lead him down the complex maze of corridors to a long room with flickering neon lights, where he was to remain for the moment.

Somewhere at the back of his mind a voice nagged Deon quietly. What exactly did Caroline mean when she spoke of those who God had decreed may die. But his excitement quickly quietened his doubts. And in his pocket his c-pac beeped every hour to remind him that it was still recording.

They’d had a hard day. After leaving Clifton Farm they had spent three hours heading south. Mathew seemed amazed at the time it took to cover any distance, but was highly enthusiastic about the Jaguar. Philip found the car hot and uncomfortable. He moaned without stopping about being boxed into the vehicle and not being able to walk about. Still, his sense of history allowed him enough interest to see the adventure, and when Mathew mentioned that his leg was aching Philip took over the driving after a brief lesson. The steering seemed heavy to him and co-ordinating his hands and feet to control the gearshift proved difficult, causing the car to judder ungainly as it picked up speed or turned a sharp bend – neither of which happened often. Rei watched with a sense of relief as Mathew and Philip discussed the controls of the car. It seemed to her that every time they appeared to be getting on better, something would happen to take them back to a level of mutual dislike. At least while they could talk about the vehicle and how to drive it they were not at each other’s throats, and for this reason she kept to herself that she already knew how to drive a car and had done so since she was 8, when she learnt on a farm belonging to her great aunt.

“You need to let the clutch out gently, Phil, and give her a little gas at the same time.”

“Yeah, remember it’s Philip, not Phil, ok? And I am letting the clutch out slowly.” The car shuddered to a halt. “The fuckin’ thing’s stopped again. If everyone had one of these things, why were they so hard to move?”

“It’s not hard. You’re just not concentrating, and now it’s stalled,” said Mathew reaching across and starting the engine again. “Now a little gas.”

“I’m pressing the fucking gas pedal.”

“No that’s the brake, the accelerator is the one to the far right, yeah that’s it, now gently lift the clutch, the one to the left, yeah, and we’re moving, that’s good.” Philip smiled as the car lurched forward and picked up speed.

“Yeah, this is simple,” he yelled. “Rei, you should have a go.”

“No, I like being a passenger,” she lied.

“Just keep it smooth and watch the road ahead for potholes. You sure you can drive with your hand like that?”

“Yeah, it’s fine, well, sort of. I’ve been shot before now, pal, a Roamer’s boot ain’t going to kill me.”

The Jaguar lurched south until they hit the coastal road. Deciding it was too late to get to Beer that day as none of them wanted to carry on driving in the dark they stopped for the night in a field off the main route. Mathew and Rei divided the small amount of food they had with them and Philip made notes onto pieces of paper and into his c-pac for several hours. He looked at the information that he had on the Walden Centre. It starting to make some sense to him, he thought. If he could still find someone to use his copy after this he’d have a hell of a story.

Mathew was asleep in the car, and Philip had finished all he was going to write for the day. He walked across to the small embankment where Rei was standing, staring out to the sea.

“Ok?”

“Yes,” she answered. “It’s very calm tonight.” The sea shimmered as it had for over 4 billion years, unconcerned by the anxieties of humans. The moon cast silver shapes on the crests of the small waves that broke quietly onto the stony shore.

“It’s been a hell of a week,” Philip said softly. “I just hope we can all get out of this mess ok.”

“A little faith, Philip, that’s what you need.”

“Yeah, well I’m not too comfortable with faith I’m afraid. I like things a little more prosaic.”

They stood silently, then both started talking together.

“Go on, you first,” prompted Rei.

“Well I was just going to say…about the row we had a while ago. You know, back at the camp before we left London. Well, I’m sorry, I’m a bit stressed at the moment, but I was wrong to speak to you like that. And, well, you did pretty well earlier at the farm. Are you really a champion shooter?”

“I do a lot of things. I’m sure I could be a champion markswoman if I wanted.”

Philip laughed. “You’re funny, you know that.”

“Well, I have to think on my feet, as Mathew would say. I don’t suppose that I’ll be the same girl when I get back to Japan. I think this whole episode has made me think in a different way.”

“How?”

“Well, about what I want, how I live. My perspectives have changed. I don’t know if Mathew was right to do what he did or not, but he obviously felt that he needed to spend more time with his family, and thought that the suspension process would help him do that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he thought it through, did he?”

“No, I don’t think he did. But it makes you realise how precious the time we have is. I think I’ll view my life differently after this. I think I need to make more time for people, and perhaps I shouldn’t be
quite
so concerned about my career. I’m sure that I can help people and live my life at the same time.”

“Well, yeah, I guess we could all do that.”

“It’s funny; you and I are quite alike in many ways.” Philip gave her a look that begged her to continue. “We are both intelligent people who put work before our personal lives.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true. Although I’m not certain that either of us will work again after all this. I’ve missed two issue deadlines with my story, broke a patient out of a hospital, crossed county borders without any papers, travelled with Roamers, witnessed a murder, nearly been part of another, and stolen an antique vehicle. Makes you wonder what we’ll do tomorrow, eh?”

Rei laughed. She looked especially pretty when she smiled, thought Philip. It was a shame that she did it so seldom. He felt an emotion that he’d suppressed for 10 years as he watched this girl that he hardly knew, and the guilt washed over him.

“I wonder how we’ll look back on everything that’s happened,” he said.

“We can definitely learn from all this. Mind you, I’m still concerned about Mathew’s determination to meet Jessica. It really could put him in danger. And he has no idea how she will react to the return of her long-dead father.”

“Well, that’s the thing with kids, Rei. You have to remember that for Mathew it doesn’t really matter if he puts himself in danger, and I doubt he hasn’t spent an hour without wondering how the meeting with his daughter will go. But he feels that he
has
to do this. You just said that you feel that you should spend more time on your family and on your relationships. I don’t know anything about your family, your parents, what it was like for you growing up as an intellectual prodigy, but I bet that, whatever you may feel, your parents had your best interest at heart. They may have been wrong, but they almost certainly acted with good intent. That’s what Mathew did, and that’s what he is doing when he says he needs to see Jessica. When you have kids they become more important than your own life. It’s just what happens.”

“You have children, Philip?”

“Not anymore. Like I said, your kids become your life, when they die, you feel as if you’ve died too.” He gave a small smile and turned towards the car. “I’m going to try to get a few hours’ sleep. You should do too.”

Rei watched him walk slowly to the car. There seemed much more to Philip than she had ever imagined when she’d first met him back at the clinic. Now their lives had become inextricably linked, and every day she found out something more about him, and each time a piece of the façade that he used to cope with the world fell away.

I have a visitor. Someone has come to the apartment.

Mathew felt puzzled by the entry on the parent c-pac’s memory. It had evidently been broadcast two days ago, not long after they’d left Deon and journeyed out to the Roamers’ camp. The wind had picked up very early in the morning and they had all felt the cold, causing all three of them another night of little sleep.

Stiff, hungry and still tired all three had awoken early and decided to leave as early as possible. While Rei had been checking Philip’s hand once more Mathew had been fiddling with the c-pac and had found the new message. He hadn’t even been looking for entries from Deon, not really expecting anything until the route across the Channel had been fully arranged, but this memo, evidently left by Deon for himself, had come through, and somehow Mathew had played it. He listened again, and tried to work out if there was some more information on the memory as to whether this was likely to be a problem.

“What’s happening?” Mathew looked up as Philip walked across to join him.

“Not sure,” Mathew answered. “I seem to have a partial message from Deon. He’s left a note to himself about having a visitor, and then there’s a load of muffled voices and talking, but I can’t really understand any of it. It seems to go on for ages. Do you know anyone called Michael?”

“Not that I can recall? Not unless he’s been visited again!”

Mathew shrugged.

Philip mimed a prayer, and an exaggerated cross. “His angel friend?!”

“Could be. I can’t work most of it out.”

“Anything about the boat across to France?”

“Not that I can hear.”

“Fuck it. He’s screwed it up and done something weird hasn’t he?”

“Well, it’s certainly not the message that I was expecting. But the bit after saying someone’s gone to the flat doesn’t sound like he’s up to anything odd. From the bits that I can understand he just sounds like he’s talking to some friends.”

“More than one?”

“Yeah, there’s a male and a female voice, but I can’t really understand them.

“Is it Nasreen?”

“No, although I caught the woman’s name, she’s called Caroline.” Mathew noticed a feint flick of recognition in Philip’s face. “Do you know her?”

“To my knowledge I don’t know anyone that Deon does,” replied Philip evasively. “What do they talk about?”

“I think she might be another God-junkie, because I can make out something about divine missions and stuff like that, but mostly I can’t hear what they say. It could be something private, so I’m a little wary of listening. It’s a bit like eavesdropping.”

“Can you share that?”

“I’m not sure how,” replied Mathew, taking the device off his thumb and passing it over.

Philip reached across for the c-pac with his good hand. “Give us it here and I’ll try and enhance it. It may be important, we have to know what he’s up to, especially if he’s been in contact with other people but not with us. If what’s being said was private he wouldn’t record it onto a broadcasting c-pac, would he? It doesn’t sound like the police or anyone from the Walden, no?”

“Don’t think so,” said Mathew watching as Philip went through a list of programmes to boost the vocals. He heard Deon’s voice over the speaker, far clearer than he had it set, and waited for the conversation to start making sense, but as usual much of the start of the recording seemed to be Deon talking to himself.

“There’s about 2 hours’ worth on this by the look of it,” explained Philip as he made a note into his own c-pac, while listening to the one from Mathew. Why don’t you see if you can find out what Rei’s up to, then hopefully I’ll have something off this before we move out today.”

Mathew left Philip to the disembodied voices and wondered off from where the car was parked towards the diminutive figure walking toward him. Something made him smile to himself slightly seeing Rei walking back from the small copse of woods on the horizon.

“What’s funny?” she asked.

“Nothing really. I mean it’s not even actually funny, it’s just, well, when I was visualising what the future would be like, you know, even before the whole cryopreservation thing even occurred to me, well, I never imagined that in the last part of the twenty-first century people would still need to be heading into the woods to have a shit.”

“You’re right, there was not anything funny,” the girl said, then flashed a tiny smile to prove that she had got the point. “What’s Philip doing? Is he ok this morning?”

“Yeah, you know, what happened yesterday shook us all up a bit. I think he’s trying to make amends a little now, bury the hatchet and that.”

“‘Bury the hatchet’? I wish you would speak English rather than constantly slipping into these quaint idioms. I take it you mean he feels rather indebted and wants a fresh start?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Good,” she said, and began walking with a noticeable spring in her stride. “Maybe he will forget to be an arrogant pig from today and start to deal with things properly. I have more pressing issues than Mr Brading’s vanity and chauvinism.”

Mathew ran slightly to catch up with Rei, and felt his chest tighten as he reached alongside the girl and walked beside her. “He’s listening to a memo on the c-pac from Deon. It came a couple of days ago, but I haven’t been listening to it recently, what with everything that’s happened. I was expecting him to contact us directly, you know, not leave messages for himself.”

“Is it about the boat?”

“Don’t think so.”

“I hope that he’s managed to arrange things.”

“Yeah, well that’s what Philip’s checking now.”

“Ok, let’s leave him to do that and we can organise some breakfast from the food we’ve still got.”

“Heard anything from Deon?” asked Rei as she approached the car where Philip was still working on something.

“Not really,” Philip replied. “Mathew got this message, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense and there’s a heap of it. I need to go through the whole lot before I can really tell anything. I’m still looking into the Walden Centre. I’m getting updates from Justine, this girl I know, and I may have been making a little progress. Meanwhile, I’ve linked Mathew’s c-pac to mine and it’s filtering out a synopsis of the conversations sent at the moment.”

“Ok. So what have you got about Warwick?” Rei asked as Philip worked on a series of paper notes that spilled out of his case and over the seat of the car.

“Not much, although the problems at the Walden are obviously taking their toll.” Rei lifted an eyebrow in curiosity. “It seems that you’re not the only one to leave the clinic. Dr Malik must have been pushed, or left, ’cos he’s setting up business on his own. He must have got some cash together earlier because for some reason he doesn’t seem to have had any Walden shares. They’ll be worthless now anyway if he had.”

“Oh, Malik won’t have Walden shares.”

“No? How come?”

“Because he is not an employee. He’s a freelance consultant. He worked exclusively for the Walden, but he remained off the pay role.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, I had a look at the consultants’ pay when I was there. I knew a girl who worked directly for Warwick in payroll and I got her to forward me the amounts that the consultants were paid. It sounds a bit mercenary, I’m afraid, but I thought at one time that maybe I should stay in Europe when I qualified, but seeing the pay I decided against it, which is why I was only on a short-term British visa. But I noticed Malik because he was paid a great deal more than the regular surgeons, and his tax coding was different. So I checked and found out that he was freelance. So any money he has would not be linked to the clinic, and he’d be free to set up a practise on his own quite easily. He is a top consultant and both highly paid and respected.”

“Well he must have been very highly paid, ’cos he’s in process of setting up a clinic in north London worth about 170 million bucks.”

“What? He can’t have that sort of money, can he?”

“Well, that’s what he’s done, and if he hasn’t got the cash he knows someone who has, ’cos the information that Justine has just sent me doesn’t show any bank involvement.”

“What sort of money does a top consultant get?” asked Mathew.

“Not enough to put 170 million into their own clinic,” said Rei without looking over.

“So where’s the money from?”

“Well, at a guess,” speculated Philip, “I’d say he needed someone who’s got a lot of spare money from investments, no ongoing investment programme, wants to invest into a new medical clinic and is one hundred per cent sure that any research undertaken there is going to bring in the bucks.”

“Are you saying that Warwick is his investor?” asked Rei.

“Well, it’s certainly possible.”

“Why would they do that, when Warwick came so close to losing everything through Walden?”

Philip collected his thoughts and tried to explain his theory as it grew. “Well, I don’t have any real proof of this at the moment, but I have a scenario that I think fits. Suppose they worked together on this from the start, and Rei you know more about the medical profession than I do, so stop me if this doesn’t work. But they start working on resuscitating the bodies they’ve inherited through Live Right, and somehow work out this way of using these to grow body parts. The patients are never brought round into consciousness, they’re just being used as hosts, and the organs from them cloned and farmed. Which would normally be completely illegal, but in the case of people who died before the legislation of 2027, it wouldn’t apply, technically.”

“What happened in 2027?” asked Mathew, trying to follow the flow.

“It was declared illegal to use proxy or cadaverous artificially maintained hosts for harvesting denotable third party organs or tissue within a 50 year period,” Rei enlightened him.

Philip went on: “It meant that you couldn’t use people who had died for transplants unless you used their original organs. So growing organs artificially became illegal, although technically there wasn’t any law banning it directly. The 50 year period was seen as ample to discourage anyone keeping corpses for the purpose, but of course they didn’t take cryopreservation into account.”

“Right,” nodded Mathew. “And how do you know all this?”

“’Cos I’ve just spent the last few weeks learning everything I can on the subject. I’m writing about this, remember. Was everyone’s attention span like this in the twentieth century?” Philip gave a sly wink to Rei, making sure that Mathew caught it too. He was quite proud of how medically adroit and articulate he’d become of late. “Actually, I started looking into different members of staff at the Walden when you suggested that Warwick was the victim of a scam. He’s covered his tracks fairly well, but this Malik guy kept coming up, so I followed that path.”

“But rather than being the victim, Warwick is actually working alongside Malik, yeah?”

“Right, so Warwick works with Malik on the practicalities of this human harvesting process, keeping the whole thing secret, and using the cash from the Walden Centre to fund it. Which is why there’s so much money missing from their real accounts, the public accounts are falsified, by the way, Rei. The clinic didn’t make anything like the money its employees thought it was making. Once they’ve got the process perfected, and probably even tried it a few times on patients, then they’re ready to launch it publicly. Some of the patients that have been through the system will probably have organs created in this way. Have there been any people that you can think of who recovered when they shouldn’t have, or vice versa?”

Rei thought for a second. “Oh my God. The kid I worked with, George. He had complete organ failure, but we were never told where the new organs came from, but normally pseudogenetic tissue won’t reject, and his did. He could have been a test recipient.”

“Quite possibly,” carried on Philip. “So they’ve got this system in place, but they’re running short of money, perhaps it took longer than they expected. They can’t advertise for investors, because it’s not quite legal, or at least not enough for anyone to want to put their name to it. So, they use the technology to actually resuscitate someone.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, enter Mathew. And suddenly the clinic’s in the spotlight and the shares are through the roof. Trouble is, they want to keep their process a lot more low key. So they decide to just wait til Mathew dies, unfortunately he does really well and starts making a full recovery.”

“Why’s that unfortunate?”

“Well for you it’s not, but for Warwick it is ’cos he’s got the world’s press everywhere, and being the egotistical bastard that he is he can’t keep it as quiet as he should, so he basks in it a while. Then he realises that Mathew may just get well enough to leave and that’s going to get a lot of interest in the clinic as a cryonic centre. But as we’ve already seen from Live Right, it’s not really a viably lucrative business. So what happens? The star patient dies, the interest in the clinic causes this to happen in a glare of publicity, the company collapses, and is sold off by Medical International at a huge loss, which, by the way, is in the process of happening. Meanwhile, Warwick has sold his shares at an inflated price and made an absolute fortune. He invests anonymously in Malik’s new clinic, having bought everything they need from the Walden via Medical International, and probably having pulled some of the frozen stiffs with them. Sorry Mathew, no offence meant.”

“Yeah, none taken. I’m a frozen stiff.”

“You know what I mean. So now they start up again, only this time Malik’s the visible face of it, and they’ve got stacks of free cash, access to cheap equipment, and I expect a client base of customers willing to pay for treatment by Malik, but unhappy at staying with the Walden. Malik’s got the kudos of being involved in your resuscitation, but hasn’t been tainted by the project’s end. So they can start targeting the Far Eastern market, which was always where the Walden Centre made its real money, and can practise without the publicity that the Walden had attracted. I should have seen this earlier, it’s an old trick.”

“So they run the company into the ground then just re-open with, basically just a different name on their letterheads?” said Mathew.