Zodiac Station (40 page)

But it didn’t add up. ‘How old is he?’

‘Eight hundred and sixty-eight days. Two years, four months.’

Pharaoh laughed at the look on my face. ‘Quite the bouncing baby, isn’t he?’

‘Then how is he so …?’

‘Mature? An error.’ A tightening at the corner of his mouth; I remembered how much he hated mistakes. ‘One of the segments we snipped turned out to influence cell replication and development. He’s aging at approximately twelve times the normal rate. We’ll fix it next time.’

Something like fear crossed the creature’s face. It really was a child’s face: plump cheeks, skin unscuffed or worn. I couldn’t help thinking of Luke, when he was a toddler.

‘And the speech …’

‘We’ve spent the last two years educating him. Genes for general intelligence, “G”, are relatively easy to identify – that was the first area we improved. Married to his rapid development, it means he’s quite the conversationalist. He also plays a mean game of chess.’

Looking at him, I started to see why I’d believed, intuitively, Pharaoh’s impossible claims. Nothing obviously wrong: no bolt through the neck, or clumsy stitches up his cheeks. Not the sheer size, though if you’d met him on the street you’d certainly have stared. The arms, the legs, the nose and mouth were all correct. Even the eyes, the windows to the so-called soul. It was something greater, the way the whole package fitted together. Nature trains us in certain proportions: his were subtly different. I suppose Pharaoh would have said ‘better’.

He was still waiting, staring at me as if he wanted something. More than wanted.
Coveted
.

‘Go on,’ Pharaoh said to him. ‘Before she has a chance to get back to Zodiac.’

The creature – I couldn’t think of him any other way – turned to go. There was no way I could stop him, but I tried anyway. For Greta’s sake. All I got for my efforts was another bruise, and a scornful look from Pharaoh.

I sat down at the table, rubbing my arm. I tortured myself imagining Greta. Surviving the ice fall, dragging herself through the tunnels. Hauling herself up the rope towards that tiny circle of light. Coming out into the cold, thinking she’d made it. And then the monster’s hands around her throat.

But even that was optimistic. More likely, she was buried in the ice.

I had to talk or I’d go mad. ‘How did you do it?’ I asked.

Pharaoh was happy to answer. To show off. ‘The same way the Maryland group did it. Or, for that matter, what Roslin did with Dolly the sheep. We injected the synthesised genome into a human egg with its own genetic material removed, and then we implanted the egg in a host and brought it to term in vivo.’

In vivo. In life – in a human being. I looked at Louise.

‘You gave birth to this … creature?’

‘We prefer the term synthetic human,’ Pharaoh said.

I thought of the specimen jars, the fleshy masses floating in the fluid. I remembered a phrase from the literature:
viable embryos
. Pharaoh had made it sound so routine, just shake and bake. But science is messier than we pretend; we never get it right first time. It took almost three hundred tries to make Dolly the sheep.

I had no sympathy.

‘It’s a shame you didn’t give a damn about the son you already had. He still wakes up screaming in the night, by the way, because he thinks he doesn’t have a mother.’

It’s always a mistake to attack Louise. Hit her with a punch and the knife comes out. She put her hands flat on the table, shoulders tense, like a swimmer about to push into the deep end.

‘You only cared for Luke because it was the one thing where you could compete with me.’

We’d had this argument before. This time, I wasn’t going to play. Louise lapsed back into silence; I looked around the room. Once you got past the post-industrial concrete chic, you could see how primitive it was. There was a small kitchenette at the back, and a couple of doors that must be a bedroom and a bathroom. They’d obviously blown the budget on the lab space.

‘Who pays for this?’ I wondered.

‘I had some grant money left over. Beyond that, a few discreet and far-sighted philanthropists keep us topped up. Our overheads are fairly minimal – just supplies, and a couple of support staff off-site.’

‘Off-site?’

‘UPS doesn’t deliver here.’ An ironic smile, permitting me to laugh. ‘I pay the cook at Zodiac a small retainer to order in what we need, and leave it where we can fetch it.’

I rubbed my eyes. ‘Danny’s part of this?’

‘He thinks he’s supporting a global counter-terrorism conspiracy at the highest echelons. We also have a technician in Iceland. As you’ll understand, to accomplish what we’re doing takes vast computing resources. Computers need power, and power is in short supply up here. The number crunching is done on servers in Reykjavik – we appreciate their laws on data secrecy – and beamed to us here on Utgard. Your colleague Bob Eastman found our transceiver in Vitangelsk.’

‘Is Eastman working for you, too?’

‘Emphatically no.’ He steepled his fingers, contemplating a problem. ‘Eastman is a real danger to us, much more than the unfortunate Martin Hagger.’

‘But Hagger found you out.’

‘He came close.’

‘So you killed him.’ All the impotence and anger inside me suddenly found a point to fix on. ‘You talk about the sanctity of life—’

‘Life with a capital L.’

‘You talk about building a better human. There are some pretty obvious upgrades you can make yourself.’

‘I didn’t kill Martin Hagger, Thomas.’

‘He’d almost rumbled you.’

‘And I had found a way to, ah, discourage him. Who do you think told the
Nature
editors to re-examine Hagger’s sample? Who planted the idea in Francis Quam’s head – discreetly, of course – that if Hagger stayed it would jeopardise his precious funding? Everything was in hand.’

‘Evidently not.’

‘Unforeseen circumstances.’ Again the five fingers curled into a fist, like a flower closing its petals. ‘For some time, we’ve allowed Thomas – our Thomas – the liberty of the island. We felt it was important to his development; also, we wanted to observe him in the wild. Obtain real-world data. Thomas is relatively impervious to extremes of heat and cold; he lived in an abandoned building in Vitangelsk. One day – last Saturday, to be precise – he came across Martin Hagger on our back doorstep.’

‘He didn’t know what he was doing,’ Louise said. ‘He was frightened.’

She looked too tired for someone so young. Bags under her eyes, a grey tint to her skin. I don’t suppose she saw much sunlight, but it was more than that. It can’t have been easy for her, alone with Pharaoh so long. He’d always needed fuel for his tremendous energy, I remembered, and he drew it from other people. That was why so many of his students burned out.

‘Hagger provoked him. Thomas overreacted,’ said Pharaoh briskly. ‘Thomas’s emotional development has not kept pace with his physical and mental capacity.’

Again, I thought of Greta climbing towards the light.

‘You mean he’s got the body of a wrestler, Mensa-level intelligence and the moral compass of a two-year-old. There’s a word for that kind of person in real life. We’d call him a psychopath.’

‘There’s an interesting debate to be had on the co-morbidity of certain desirable and undesirable behaviours. What’s socially acceptable may not ensure the species’ survival. How that plays out in Thomas’s development is one of the major factors we’ll be looking at over the next few years.’

‘Did he sabotage the plane as well?’

‘He couldn’t bear to see you go.’ That smile again, like someone speaking a foreign language, not sure you understand him. ‘Thomas has developed a certain fascination with you. It was he, you see, who attacked you on the glacier when you went back there. He recognised you, then; he understood who you were. That’s why he let you go.’

The figure from my dreams. The arm raised, the face staring down at me. Recognition.

‘Why would Thomas care about me?’

‘When we made Thomas, we didn’t start with a blank sheet of paper. That would have taken too long. We took an existing human genome and edited the code. No point reinventing the wheel. Thomas is aware of that. He’s fascinated by the idea that he has a twin brother.’

The words hit me like a bullet. ‘You used my DNA? My DNA to create this …’

I caught Pharaoh smiling at me. I almost punched him – but I had to know.

‘Not yours. You and he share only fifty per cent of your varying DNA. Before improvements.’

Louise was trying to look at me without catching my eye. The way I used to watch her in the lab, sometimes. Pharaoh glanced at her.

‘You’d better do this.’

Louise put out a hand to steady herself. The mug rattled on the glass tabletop.

‘He’s talking about Luke.’

Anderson’s Journal

Emotions erupted I never knew I had. ‘You used our son’s DNA for
this
?’

It wasn’t the most outlandish thing they’d told me that night. In fact, it made all the sense in the world, a piece that fitted perfectly. None of the rough edges that distinguish a lie. And for all that, it was the hardest thing I was being asked to believe.

She nodded.

‘How?’

‘The cord blood.’

Umbilical-cord blood is rich in stem cells; at birth, you can take a sample and freeze it. We did it for Luke when he was born – Louise insisted, though it cost a thousand pounds we didn’t really have.
Imagine if he gets leukaemia, or needs a transplant, and those stem cells are the only thing that can save him
, she said. And of course, I agreed. For Luke’s sake.

‘That was for him.’ I felt empty, as if the most precious thing I owned had been snatched from me and dashed to pieces. ‘Not this …’ I didn’t shy away from saying it any more. ‘… this
monster
.’

I stood. Hurt and anger charged up inside me, years of accumulated friction ready to discharge like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t mind if it killed me. As long as it took her too.

Remember Luke
, I told myself. I had to get back to him. For all the menace in the room, the strange unreality, I wasn’t a threat to Pharaoh. He hadn’t broken any laws – there weren’t any on Utgard. If I revealed what he’d done, he’d be hailed as a genius, biology’s Einstein. Or maybe Robert Oppenheimer. As long as I kept calm.

I forced myself to sit, gripping the sides of my chair.

‘So what happens now?’

Pharaoh went to the kitchenette and got a bottle of whisky and a glass from a cupboard. He poured himself a generous measure. Didn’t offer me one.

‘We’re not going to publish in
Nature
, if that’s what you mean. We won’t make ourselves popular if we announce to the world that seven billion humans have just become obsolete. My company is discreetly patenting some of the more advanced techniques we’ve developed. We’ll feed them into the mainstream gradually, educate public understanding until this process feels as natural, as logical, as giving your kid his shots.’

It was a good spiel. Pharaoh had enough bombast that he almost carried it off – certainly, if I’d been an investor, I’d probably have opened my wallet. But coming from a man as sharp as Pharaoh, it all sounded rather vague. Some of the things he was describing might come to pass, and some might not, but there wasn’t a master plan. He’d done this thing to prove he could. Because he was curious. Because he wanted the power.

‘And me? Do I get pushed down a crevasse too?’

Another tic of irritation. ‘I’ve already told you …’

‘Or will you have your creature do your dirty work?’

‘I’m not a murderer, Thomas. I’m in the business of
improving
life, not ending it.’

‘What about
him
? Will you take him to New York, unveil him on Broadway? You’d make the cover of
Time
, no question.’

‘I think
Life
would have been more fitting, don’t you? If it was still with us.’ Another chuckle. ‘No. Thomas will stay here. The accelerated development you noticed means he probably only has a few years of life. We’ll observe him, and apply those lessons to the next generation. In that respect, Utgard’s perfect. A quarantine zone with no escape.’

‘And Zodiac? Is he going to pick off the scientists one by one, if he doesn’t like the way they look at him?’ I had to laugh, though it sounded borderline hysterical. ‘Like the fucking
Thing
.’

This time, I hadn’t heard him coming. The door opened and the creature came back in, dressed to go out in a yellow parka and black ski trousers. For some reason, he had the DAR-X logo sewn on to the sleeve.

‘I told you to go,’ said Pharaoh. The icy voice of a parent who wants you to know his patience has limits.

The creature crossed to the television on the wall and turned it on. You could see his strangeness in every step he took, disproportioned limbs making disproportioned strides.

He’s a machine
, I reminded myself. Made of flesh and blood, but still a machine programmed by a computer.

‘What are you doing?’ Pharaoh demanded. His voice had risen, a note of worry puncturing the confidence, and I suddenly realised that the experiment was ongoing. He was making it up as he went along. Two years and four months. I remember when Luke was that age, how little I knew him compared to now.

The screen went white. At first, I didn’t understand what we were seeing. The contrast was so high, almost monochrome, that everything looked alien and unworldly. White-speckled black, with a thick black mass churning at the bottom of the screen, flowing from a jagged white hole. Ice forming?

A shape at the top of the picture caught my eye. I recognised the familiar peaks that loomed over Zodiac. But then—

I was looking at Zodiac. But not as I’d left it, a few hours earlier. The Platform had been blown open. Black smoke poured out of it. The jagged edges I’d taken for a hole in the ice were pieces of metal, broken struts and bits of roof that had been hacked open like a tin can.

I looked at Pharaoh. He looked as confused as me.

‘What—’

‘I don’t …’