Manhattan in Reverse (13 page)

‘Yes. I loved him, too, with all my heart. We could have had all this future together, if he’d just made an allowance for what I was. But he wouldn’t compromise, he wouldn’t listen. Then he threatened to tell my college if I didn’t stop taking the progestin. I couldn’t believe he would betray me like that. I would have been a disgrace. The college would have sent me away. I didn’t know how much value the Caesars would place on me, not back in those days, before I’d proved myself. I didn’t know if they’d cover for me. I was twenty-one and desperate.’

‘So you killed him.’

‘I sneaked up to his room that night to ask him one last time. Even then he wouldn’t listen. I actually had a knife in my hand, and he still said no. He was such a traditionalist, a regular bloke, loyal to his family and the world’s ideology. So, yes, I killed him. If I hadn’t, today wouldn’t exist.’

I looked up at the delicate strata of red light washing across the sky. What a strange place for this to finally be over. I wondered what Francis would make of it all. The old man would probably have a glass of particularly fine claret, then get on with the next case. Life was so simple when he was alive.

‘It would,’ I said. ‘If not you, then someone else would have reached the breakthrough point. You said it yourself, we were freefalling to the plateau.’

‘All this does put us in an extremely awkward position,’ Neill Heller Caesar said. ‘You are the inventor of biononics, the mother of today’s society. But we can hardly allow a murderer to go around unpunished, now can we?’

‘I’ll leave,’ she said. ‘Go into exile for a thousand years or whatever. That way nobody will be embarrassed, and the family won’t lose any political respect.’

‘That’s what you want,’ I said. ‘I cannot agree to that. The whole reason that we have family command protocols built in to biononics is to ensure that there can be no radical breakaways. Nobody is able to set up by themselves and inflict harm on the rest of us. Humanity even in its current state has to be able to police itself, though the occasions where such actions are needed are thankfully rare. You taking off by yourself, and probably transcending into a pure energy form, is hardly an act of penance. You killed a member of my family so that you could have that opportunity. Therefore, it must be denied you.’ My cybershadow reported that she issued a flurry of instructions to the local biononic connate. It didn’t acknowledge. Neill Heller Caesar had kept his word. And I marvelled at the irony in that. Justice served by an act of trust, enacted by a personality forged in a time where honesty and integrity were the highest values to which anyone could aspire. Maybe the likes of he and I did have something valid to contribute to everything today’s youngsters were busy building.

Bethany Maria Caesar stiffened as she realized there was to be no escape this time. No window with a convenient creeper down which to climb. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘What do you think my punishment should be? Am I to hang from the gallows until I’m dead.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ Neill Heller Caesar told her. ‘Edward and I have come to an agreement which allows us to resolve this satisfactorily.’

‘Of course you have,’ she muttered.

‘You took Justin’s life away from him,’ I said. ‘We can produce a physical clone of him from the samples we kept. But that still won’t be
him
. His personality, his uniqueness is lost to us forever. When you’re dealing with a potentially immortal being there could be no crime worse. You have wasted his life and the potential it offered; in return you will be sentenced to exactly that same punishment. The difference is, you will be aware of it.’

Was that too cruel of me? Possibly. But then consider this: I once knew a man who knew a man who had seen the Empire’s legionaries enforcing Rome’s rule at the tip of a sword. None of us is as far removed from barbarism as we like to think.

SEVEN

LIFE TIME

Bethany Maria Caesar was taken from the Eta Carinae habitat on our deepflight ship. We disembarked her on a similar habitat in Jupiter orbit which the Caesars had resource funded. She is its sole inhabitant. None of its biononics will respond to her instructions. The medical modules in her body will continue to reset her DNA. She will never age nor succumb to disease. In order to eat, she must catch or grow her own food. Her clothes have to be sewn or knitted by herself. Her house must be built from local materials, which are subject to entropy hastened by climate, requiring considerable maintenance. Such physical activities occupy a great deal of her time. If she wishes to continue living she must deny herself the luxury of devoting her superb mind to pure and abstract thoughts. However, she is able to see the new and wondrous shapes which slide fluidly past her region of space, and know her loss.

Her case is one of the oldest to remain active within our family thoughtcluster. One day, when I’ve matured and mellowed, and the Borgias have left the Vatican, I may access it again.

Footvote

I Bradley Ethan Murray pledge that starting from this day the First of January 2010, and extending for a period of two years, I will hold open a wormhole to the planet New Suffolk in order that all decent people from this United Kingdom can freely travel through to build themselves a new life on a fresh world. I do this in the sad knowledge that our old country’s leaders and institutions have failed us completely.

Those who seek release from the oppression and terminal malaise which now afflict the United Kingdom are welcome to do so under the following strictures.

1) With citizenship comes responsibility.

2) The monoculture of New Suffolk will be derived from current English ethnicity.

3) Government will be a democratic republic.

4) It is the job of Government to provide the following statutory services to the citizenship to be paid for through taxation.

5) It is not the job of Government to interfere with, and over-regulate the life of the individual citizen. Providing they do no harm to others or the state, citizens are free to do and say whatever they wish.

6) Citizens do not have the right to own or use weapons.

JANNETTE

It was the day Gordon Brown was due to appear before the Iraq Enquiry again. He’d been called back because of discrepancies in his previous evidence. Opposition politicians (those we still had left) interviewed on Radio Four’s
Today
programme were full of eager anticipation, taunting their opponent to come out and face allegations about military funding deficits full on, confident he would screw up. Over in Brussels, the EU Commission was drawing up plans to send in teams of German and French engineers to take over critical shutdown procedures in UK nuclear reactors from our rapidly declining numbers of power station technicians. While in Russia, NovGaz was talking about payment in advance for supplying us with gas this winter. And I’d forgotten to buy Frosties for Steve.

‘Not muesli again!’ he spat with the true contempt which only seven-year-olds can muster. If only the Civil Service union leadership had that kind of determination when facing the latest round of abysmal Treasury budget cuts to compensate for the ‘migration situation’.

‘It’s good for you,’ I said without engaging my brain. After seven years you’d think I’d know not to make that kind of tactical error with my own son.

‘Mum! It’s just dried pigeon crap,’ he jeered as I stopped pouring it into the bowl. Olivia, his little sister, started to giggle at the use of the NN word. At least she was spooning up her organic yogurt without a fuss. ‘Not nice, not nice,’ she chanted.

‘What do you want then?’ I asked.

‘McDonald’s. Big Cheesy One.’

‘No!’ I know he only says it to annoy me, but the reflex is too strong to resist. And I’m the Bad Mother yet again. Maybe I shouldn’t preach so hard. But then that’s Colin speaking.

‘How about toast?’ I pleaded as a compromise.

‘Okay.’

I couldn’t believe it was that easy. But he sat down at the table and waited with a smug look on his face while I put the granary bread in the toaster. God he does so look like Colin these days. Is that why he’s becoming more impossible?

‘What’s the
prim
?’ Olivia asked.

Today
had moved on from sniping at the Prime Minister to cover the demonstration at Stansted.

‘Public Responsibility Movement,’ I said. ‘Now please finish your breakfast. Daddy will be here soon.’
He’d better be.

I put the toast down in front of Steve, and he squirted too much liquid honey over it. I didn’t chide. Both of them were suddenly silent and eating quickly, as if that would speed their father’s arrival.

I opened the flat’s back door in an attempt to let in some cooler air. Summer was so damn hot and dry this year. Here in Islington the breeze coursed along the baking streets like gusts of desert air. Desert air that had blown across a sewage plant.

‘Poooeee,’ Steve said, holding his nose as he munched down more toast. I had to admit the smell which drifted in wasn’t good.

Olivia crumpled her face up in real dismay. ‘That’s horrid, Mum. What is it?’

‘Someone hasn’t tied up their bin bags properly.’ Which was true enough. The pile of bags in the corner of De Beauvoir Square was getting ridiculously big. As more bags were flung on top, so the ones at the bottom split open. The Sky News and News 24 programmes always showed them with comparison footage of the ’79 Winter of Discontent.

‘When are they going to clear it?’ Steve asked.

‘Once a fortnight.’ Which was optimistic. Mass news media said that nearly ten per cent of the Army had deserted; the remaining political bloggers were putting the figure a lot higher. What was left of our armed forces was now having to provide civic utility assistance squads along with fire service cover, prison guard duties, engineering support to power stations. And a good percentage of the RAF was involved with the rollback from Afghanistan, getting the remaining ground troops out – much to the Americans’ disgust. We’d be lucky if the pile was cleared every month. I’d seen a rat the size of a cat run across the square the other day. I always though rodents that big were just urban legend.

‘Why can’t they take rubbish away like they used to?’ Olivia asked.

‘Not enough people to do that any more, darling.’

‘There’s hundreds of people standing round the streets all day,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s scary. I don’t like the park any more.’

She was right in a way. It wasn’t the lack of people, of course, it was money to pay them to work. The way sterling was collapsing while the rest of the world climbed out of the recession was chilling. What would happen when the true tax revenue figures for the last six months came in was anyone’s guess. Officially, tax received by the Treasury had only fallen by ten per cent since that little
shit
Murray opened his racist, fascist, arse-holing wormhole. Nobody believed that. But, naturally, the first thing the Treasury had reduced was local government funding, with Brown standing up in Westminster and telling the councils to
cut back on wastage
. What was left of the opposition parties had rocked with laughter when he said it. Who could blame them? That phrase has been a Central Government mantra for fifty years whoever is in power. It never happens, of course. This time however things are different for all the wrong reasons.

As a way to finally get the UK to sign on for the Euro, the pound in Zimbabwe-style freefall couldn’t be beaten. We desperately needed a currency that wasn’t so susceptible to our traitors. Except that suddenly, France and Germany were blocking us from joining, saying that Greece and the Mediterranean countries needed to regain their pre-recession economic stability levels first. Bastards.

For once Colin actually turned up on time. He did his silly little ring tune on the front door, and both kids shot off from the table screeching hellos. Do they do that when I turn up to his place to collect them? I think not.

He came in to the kitchen wearing a smart new sweatshirt and clean jeans; his curly brown hair neatly trimmed. I hate that old saying that men just get more handsome as they get older. But they do seem to preserve themselves well after thirty. Colin hadn’t put on a pound in the last two years. Well, not since he started jogging and visiting the gym on a regular basis again. I suppose that teenage bimbo he’s shacked up with doesn’t appreciate a sagging beer gut. Damn: why do I always sound like a stereotype bitch?