Perfect People (58 page)

‘Who’s financing all this, Dr Dettore?’ John asked, unmoved.

Without slowing his pace, he answered, ‘Concerned people. Philanthropists around the globe who don’t want to see civilization fall back into the hands of religious fanaticism and despots, the way it was in the dark ages. Who want to secure a future for humankind based on solid science.’

‘I want to know something,’ Naomi said. ‘Why, when we came to you wanting a boy, did you deceive us and give us twins?’

Dettore stopped and faced them. ‘Because you would never have understood. Simple as that.’

‘Understood what?’ John said.

He looked at each of them in turn. ‘Your child would have been lonely without someone to share his superior intellect with. He would have felt like a freak among other kids. By having two, they were able to bond and see the world clearly, in perspective.’

‘Don’t you think that should have been our decision?’ Naomi said.

‘I didn’t feel you were ready to understand,’ he replied.

John felt his anger rising. ‘That is an incredibly arrogant thing to say.’

Dettore shrugged. ‘The truth is often hard to accept.’

‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. We agreed – you, Naomi and I – a list of enhancements for our child. How much more did you add that you never told us about?’

‘Important things that I felt you were overlooking.’

‘And what the hell gave you the right to do that?’ Naomi said, her voice rising.

‘Let’s go back to my office,’ Dettore said. ‘You look hot and uncomfortable. You guys need a shower and a change of clothes, and some food and some rest. You’ve had a long journey and you’re tired. Let’s get you freshened up and rested, and we’ll talk more.’

‘I don’t need to freshen up,’ Naomi said. ‘I don’t want to rest. I want to get on a plane back home with my children. That’s all I need. Don’t
tell
me what I need.’

Dettore’s expression hardened. ‘There are a load of smart people here, Naomi. All of us with one common interest: the future of the human species.’ He turned to John, then Naomi again, to include both of them. ‘We have three Nobel Prize-winning scientists and eight McArthur Award-winners here. And twenty-eight scientists who have been put forward for Nobel Prizes. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to think I’m just a lone charlatan working in the dark here, or some kind of lone crazy voice in the scientific wilderness.’

‘You’re entitled to whatever vision you want, Dr Dettore,’ Naomi said. ‘But you are not entitled to abduct children and turn them against their parents.’

‘Then, for the moment, we’ll have to agree to disagree.’ He smiled, and walked on.

John followed him, angry at Dettore, angry at himself for feeling so damned helpless and useless here, his brain churning. Then he heard a thud.

He looked up. For an instant he thought part of the back of Dettore’s head had been blown off; something fell away from it, taking a chunk of hair and skin with it. A lump of rock, he realized, turning for an instant in horror to Naomi, who was standing, her arms outstretched, with an expression of grim satisfaction on her face.

Then he turned back to Dettore, who sagged onto his knees, almost in slow motion, then fell headlong forward and lay still. For an instant the exposed patch on his head looked pale grey, like cracked slate, then blood rapidly began covering it over and spreading into the hair beyond.

Naomi bolted, sprinting back down the path. The fading slap of her shoes, the drumming of his own heart and the roar of panic in John’s ears were the only sounds.

John ran over to Dettore and knelt beside him. He stared at the blood spreading across the collar and shoulders of Dettore’s jumpsuit. Panic spread deeper through him.

He scrambled to his feet and ran after her. When he was a few steps behind, he called out, ‘Naomi! Stop! Stop! Where are you going?’

‘To get my children,’ she said without turning her head.

He grabbed her arm and jerked her to a halt. ‘Naomi! Hon!’

She stared at him with eyes that were barely focusing. She was shaking, hysterical. ‘Let me go!’

‘You might have killed him.’

‘I’ll kill you, too,’ she said. ‘I’ll kill anyone who tries to stop me taking my children home.’

John looked over his shoulder at the distant, motionless figure. Then up at the windows of the buildings all around. Any moment doors would open and people would be running towards them. They had to get out of sight, that was their first priority. Beyond that, he had no thoughts, no ideas, no plan. All his instincts told him that Dettore had been their one lifeline here. This wasn’t about taking their children home any more. It was about trying to survive.

Frantically, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. He stared at the red-brick structure that he thought Dettore had said, just a few minutes before, housed the Department of Astrophysics. Then at another housing the Library and General Research Facility. As his eyes roamed from building to building, he simply had no idea which was the one they’d seen Luke and Phoebe in – it could have been any of two dozen different ones. A voice inside his head screamed:

Get inside! Got to get inside! Out of the open! Under cover!

Shelter!

Hide!

The Department of Astrophysics was the nearest. Holding Naomi’s hand, he dragged her, half running, half stumbling towards it.

Where the hell’s the door?

They ran along the front of the building, past huge darkened-glass windows, past flower beds and a pond, and around the side. A small glass door in front of them was marked
FIRE EXIT ONLY
. He tried to pull it open, but could get no purchase; there was no handle on the outside, no gap big enough to get his fingers inside.

‘Are they in here?’ Naomi said. ‘Is this where Luke and Phoebe are?’

‘Maybe. We’ll start here.’

She was sobbing. ‘John, I want my children. I want Luke and Phoebe.’

‘We’ll find them.’ He dragged her further along and round to the far side, and realized this must be the main entrance. Ahead of them two children, a boy and a girl of about six, walking hand-in-hand in their white outfits, skipped up some steps then carried on straight towards a window in the centre of the building. When they were a couple of yards from it, a section of the glass rose, then dropped seamlessly behind them after they had entered.

John led Naomi towards the window, and the section rose up for them as they approached. They went through into the air-conditioned chill of a huge, deserted atrium with a marble floor, and a massive Foucault pendulum suspended from the ceiling. It felt like the lobby of a grand hotel, except there was no front desk, no staff. Just twin elevator doors on the far side. The children had disappeared.

Where?

The elevators? It was the only possible place they could have gone, John thought, and, still holding Naomi’s hand, dragged her over. He couldn’t see any buttons. He looked up and down. Nothing, no apparent means of summoning the damned thing.
There must be!
He turned and looked behind them. The place was still deserted. There must be a staircase, a fire exit route. Moments later there was a chime, and a light went on above the right-hand elevator door.

John tightened his grip on Naomi’s hand. The door opened.

The car was empty. They went in; John looked at the panel and pressed the bottom button.

Then from across the atrium he heard a shout. Two figures in white jumpsuits, teenagers, were running across the floor towards them. More were coming in through the glass door.

Panicking, John stabbed the button again, then again. The first two were getting nearer, yards away. Then the doors closed.

Furious banging on them.

Naomi was staring at him like a zombie. The car started sinking. John pulled out his phone, stared futilely at the display. As before, it said,
NO SIGNAL
.

There had to be some means of getting through to the outside world. There had been a phone in Dettore’s office, must be satellite phones around. There must be supplies coming in by plane or boat, or both; there had to be some way of getting word out, or getting away from here.

How?

The doors opened onto a deserted monorail platform. He pulled Naomi out, looked right and left. Two dark tunnels. A narrow gridded inspection sidewalk went into the tunnel in both directions. He pulled her to the left, into the tunnel, running as fast as he could into the darkness.

They covered a few hundred yards, then heard shouting behind them. He turned and saw several flashlight beams following them. Naomi stumbled, recovered. There was light ahead of them, a long way in the distance. The flashlights behind them were getting closer. His lungs were aching, Naomi was silent, following him, clinging to his hand. He ran even faster now.

The light ahead was getting closer. The voices behind them getting closer, too. Gaining on them. They burst out of the darkness onto another platform. An elevator door, and beside it, an emergency exit door. He pulled it and led her through into a dimly lit concrete stairwell that only went up.

He pounded up the stairs, two, sometimes three at a time; Naomi, close to collapse, tripped repeatedly so that he was almost dragging her up by her hand. He could hear voices at the bottom. Then they reached the top and a door with a push-bar. He jerked the bar and shoved the door, and they both stumbled forward into a long, brightly lit corridor with a tiled floor and walls that looked like they were made of brushed aluminium. There was a double door with two glass portholes, like a hospital ER entrance, at the far end.

They raced down towards it, but a few yards before they reached it, two figures came through.

Luke and Phoebe.

More small figures began crowding in behind them.

Luke spoke sharply. ‘You have done a terrible thing, Parent People. You have brought your old ways to this place. You have shamed us. You have only been here a few hours and already you have sullied the place. No one has ever been violent on this island. The New People here didn’t even know what violence is. Now you’ve shown them. Are you proud of that?’

‘We . . .’ John started to reply, not sure what he was going to say, then his voice trailed away.

Naomi was trembling in shock at what she had done. ‘Where are we?’ she asked in a faltering voice. ‘What is this place? What is going on?’

‘You are not capable of understanding even if we were to explain it to you.’

‘You brought us into the world,’ Luke said. ‘Would you like to tell us why you did that?’

‘Yes, what exactly was your agenda?’ Phoebe added.

‘We wanted to have a healthy child, one that did not have the disease genes your mother and I were both carrying – that was our agenda, nothing else,’ John said, scarcely believing he was having this conversation.

‘Fine, here we are, you succeeded. We are healthy,’ Luke said. ‘Would you like to see our medical records? They are really quite exemplary. We are very much healthier than the world you have brought us into.’

Then Phoebe said, ‘Everyone seems to be afraid of genetics. We read that people are saying that Mother Nature isn’t great, but she’s better than the alternatives. Oh yes, hallo, what planet are you on? Mother Nature has dominated
Homo sapiens
since the species first appeared five hundred thousand years ago. And what a screw up! If Mother Nature was a political leader, she should have been executed for genocide! If she was chief executive officer of a multinational company, she’d have been fired for incompetence. Why not give science a chance at the helm? Is science, in the right hands, going to make an even bigger mess?’

‘What do you call
the right hands
?’ John replied.

‘The man you have just tried to murder,’ Luke said, staring at Naomi. ‘Dr Dettore. The biggest visionary this planet has ever seen. The man you just tried to kill.’

‘You need to leave now, Parent People,’ Phoebe said darkly. ‘Before too many people here find out what you have done. We will take you to your plane. You need to know that everything on this island is recorded. If you go now, we’ll erase the tape showing you trying to commit murder, Mother, which is more than you deserve, but you are our parents . . .’

‘We don’t really want to kill you,’ Luke said. ‘That would just bring us down to your level. We want you to leave. Forget you were ever here. Forget all about us and everything you saw.’

‘I can never forget you both,’ Naomi said.

‘Why not?’ Luke replied.

Naomi blinked tears from her eyes. ‘You are our children and you always will be. Our home will always be your home. Maybe, one day, when you are older you might come and visit us.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Perhaps you have things you’ll be able to teach us.’

John nodded, then added, ‘Our doors will always be open. I just want you to understand that there will always be a home for you with us, if you ever want or need it. Always.’

‘We understand you very clearly,’ Phoebe said.