Relatively Strange (28 page)

Miss Peacock was as usual, white and grey, skirted, shirted and cardiganned but as a concession to the dubious warmth of the April afternoon had discarded a black raincoat and folded it neatly over the back of her seat. Ruth, when I glanced back, appeared to have fallen promptly asleep. She’d, in honour of the outing, donned a bilious orange, sleeveless top which, unfortunately, had a jacket to match. It wasn’t possible to look at her for too long without getting an after-image. Glory had dressed down, going with a long mauve shirt over black slacks, hair knotted at the nape of her neck. She’d restricted herself to a mere half inch or so of gold earring, nothing to speak of really and was, as always sitting carefully upright in the seat, no slouch our Glory. I couldn’t see the dog, but every now and then a gentle snore rose from the van’s nether regions, blending and harmonising with Ruth’s exhalations and the sound of the engine.

We drove for a while in silence although I could, if I listened, hear Buddy Greco – with Ed there really was no call for a car radio. Glory seemed lost in thought but I couldn’t wait all day and it wasn’t going to be that long a journey, I leaned over and poked her firmly in the ribs with my finger. She jumped,

“What?”

“Peter?”

She heaved a sigh,

“Can’t a person get any peace? Where’d we get to?”

The coming together of Peter and the Doctor was a match made in hell, a recipe for disaster. Adult ambition, ruthlessness and amorality meeting its match in a twelve year old boy. Peter had soared through the initial round of tests, nearly knocking the conducting member of staff off her chair with excitement at his scores. The Doctor and Miss Merry were notified and hastened to one of the two-way mirrored rooms to watch, while Peter obligingly completed more tests. His power was raw and uncontrolled but there was no doubting its strength. Glory, listening in cautiously from a distance, could feel it peaking and subsiding, reaching beyond the glass to the other room where the two adults were standing, and she could feel his amusement that they thought they could spy on him without him knowing.

Sidling in a few moments later, beaming with delight and tailed by Miss Merry who didn’t really do beaming, the Doctor, at his oiliest oozed into a chair across the table from Peter. He would he said, like to invite him, with of course the permission of his parents to stay on at the clinic for a while longer to participate in further tests. Peter didn’t let him get very far before he put him straight on several things including his awareness of what they were after, the naffness of these tests for someone of Peter’s ability and the stupidity of hiding behind a two-way mirror. He suggested the Doctor and his happy clappy friend there, cut the crap and tell him what this was really all about. If Miss Merry didn’t do beaming, Peter didn’t do subtle.

He stated he was fully prepared to take part in whatever experiments were necessary, as long as they didn’t hurt and on condition they’d help develop his talents to their fullest extent. There were also some other things he’d like which he’d get to later – Glory was amused, despite herself to see that in his mental list of priorities, a regular supply of Coca Cola came just after pots of money – he was, after all, only twelve. He was not, he stated baldly, thumping the table for emphasis, a gesture he’d seen and fancied on Z Cars, but never had the opportunity to practise before, under any circumstances prepared to be pissed about, but if the Doc played fair with him, he’d play fair back.

The Doctor, if a trifle taken aback at the ease with which the boy had assimilated the situation, not to mention his use of the vernacular, agreed and Miss Merry was despatched post haste to obtain Peter’s mother’s permission for him to enter the clinic for a few days and to ease any parental concerns. It transpired that Peter’s mother, by this stage in fond and frenzied pursuit of husband number two, wasn’t concerned in the slightest. In fact lately the boy had been giving her the creeps. He seemed to know what she was going to say before she did herself and certainly couldn’t be counted on to give a good impression to her gentleman caller. Yes, yes, she agreed, anxious to get Miss Merry off the phone, she’d certainly inform the school and yes indeed, a call in a few days from the clinic to let her know how Peter was getting on, would be nice – if she wasn’t in, perhaps they’d just leave a message with the au pair.

There were no school pals of whom Peter wanted to take a fond farewell and truth to tell no-one seemed to notice he didn’t join them for lunch that day. If anything, his supervising teachers seemed mightily relieved to be told by Miss Merry of the new arrangement. Peter was escorted through to the clinic, where he was given into the hands of the capable Mrs Millsop with instruction to give him a full physical and, in the interests of not letting grass grow under anybody’s feet, his first dose of L/24. Glory didn’t try to make direct contact with Peter again. She’d told him what was what, choices he made subsequently were his. She was however aware of the need now to shield herself more than ever. She didn’t think she’d given anything away – as far as Peter was concerned, the words of warning could have come from anyone, but better play safe than sorry.

Whether L/24 had a different effect on Peter than it would have had on someone else is a matter for conjecture. Everyone has different reactions to even fully standardised and tested medications and if there was anything to be said about what the Doctor was producing, un-standardised and un-tested about summed it up. Glory, whose toilet had in the last several months, carried more pills than Boots the Chemist, was vastly relieved she’d never taken it even once.

She had though, smuggled a sample of L/24 to the Peacocks for analysis. The report had been rushed through and delivered back personally by a research scientist associate of theirs. He didn’t know, he said, nor did he want to, where they’d obtained the sample they’d given him but he couldn’t even begin to conjecture what such a drug combination could have been developed to treat. Two of its components, a powerful hallucinogenic stimulant and a strong muscle relaxant would appear to act against each other and a third was currently banned from use, pending investigation into untoward side-effects. He would, he added, eat his hat with mustard on it if this ever came anywhere near being granted a licence by the authorities. The Peacocks thanked him, sent him home with one of Ed’s fresh-from–the-oven strudels, and forebore to share that the drug in question had, in fact, been developed in a Government funded laboratory.

As was only to be expected, Glory was called in at an early stage to work with Peter but she was prepared and cautious. She’d now had an opportunity to study him a little and knew that although he had perhaps the strongest potential of any of the kids she’d come across, he actually wasn’t that bright – which made him all the more dangerous. She was also delighted to read that although he did remember the brief contact when he first arrived, he put it down as another of the tests they were using, to see who registered anywhere on the psi scale.

When she was led into the room in which they were to do some supervised tests together, he automatically scanned her but unable to by-pass her shielding was not interested enough to try harder. He thought of her dismissively as the black, blind bint. He was told that, like him, she’d demonstrated psi abilities but as, during the tests they were called upon to do, her performance was consistently disappointing and low-scoring, she obviously wasn’t in his league so he was unbothered. The Doctor, on the other hand, was very bothered as well as disappointed and frustrated by the lack of effect his pet pill was having on Glory. The conclusion could only be that her talents lay in one direction and one direction only – she was simply an excellent diviner of other people’s abilities.

*

Within the first few days and with each successive drug dose, the effects on Peter became more evident. Whether this was genuine enhancement as a result of the pills or a question of barriers being broken and inhibitions released, Glory wasn’t sure. She knew only that she could sense him from wherever she happened to be in the building and with every increment in Peter’s power, her apprehension grew apace. She could see all too clearly what the Doctor, in a high old state of excitement now, clearly could not. The daily drug dose was increasing the power but not the ability, nor the intellect to govern it. It was putting a loaded gun into the hands of an emotionally unstable twelve year old and saying, there now, show us what you can do with this.

Some results were predictable, others not so much. Peter was having his lunch one day when Miss Merry entered the room. Quick as a flash, his plate with mashed potatoes – he’d asked for chips and they’d sent him bloody mash and green beans, how many times did he have to tell them he didn’t do vegetables – flew swift as a bird through the air, turned a leisurely 90 degrees and landed on her hair, with remarkably little spillage. Twelve year old humour?

On another occasion, one of the psychology students drafted in as testers, twenty-two year old Polly, who’d once told Glory if she heard one more kettle joke she might commit murder, was doing Peter’s daily update. As Polly gathered her notes and stood to leave, Peter, from the other side of the room where he was lounging, feet on table, blowing pinkly fat gum bubbles ripped her shirt from throat to waist and giggled. Polly was livid, less concerned that her white Playtex Cross Your Heart bra was on display than that she’d paid good money at M&S for the non-iron shirt only last week. Twelve year old lust?

Two weeks to the day that Peter began participation in the residential programme at Newcombe, all the lab rats were found dead. Exploded in their cages. Eighty or so of them. The mess was unspeakable, the devastation of Sid and Reg total. Twelve year old spite? And not slow to boast about it!

*

A small but urgent meeting was convened. The Doctor, Miss Merry – mash and beans gone but not forgotten or forgiven, Mrs Millsop – capped and formidable in blue and white starch and Glory. The meeting took place in one of the outside Portakabins coincidentally, although no-one mentioned it, on the opposite side of the building and at the farthest point from Peter’s quarters. The agenda was Peter’s progress, the hidden agenda far more complicated. Glory as usual was dealing with both.

The Doctor knew things were moving a little too fast, phrases like tiger by the tail, kept floating in and out of a mind made less opaque today by his agitation. But whilst the saner side of him argued caution and a slow approach, the side where the Nobel Prize was regularly buffed up was screaming go, go, go.

Miss Merry, given her way, would quite happily have strangled the little bastard. Her dignity and standing as second in command at the Foundation was hugely important to her and people turning away to hide their smiles as, mash-bedecked, she made her way down the corridor to clean herself up, lingered sourly in her memory.

Mrs Millsop, whose heart was in the right place, albeit not always immediately locatable under the starch, was uneasy. This was a cushy post, very cushy indeed. Money was good, she had her own nice little bed-sit with bath ensuite, furnished now just as she wanted it. She ruled the roost at the clinic which wasn’t too taxing, never more than a couple of patients at a time and then not really ill, just check-ups and obs. She’d be nowhere near as well off back in the NHS and back into the NHS she’d have to go if this didn’t work out. She’d never envisaged still having to work at this stage in her life and indeed wouldn’t have had to, had Mr Millsop not buggered off two years previously with Peggy from the Phone Exchange. Before he upped and offed, he’d not only re-mortgaged their Ruislip semi – only another year to go on that there’d been – but also cleared out their building society account. He was now living it up on the Costa del Sol with her hard-earned savings and stinking Peggy who, to add insult to injury, was only three years younger than Mrs Millsop herself and no oil painting to boot.

All said and done though, Mrs Millsop didn’t trust Dr Dreck any further than she could throw him. He’d not know a medical ethic if it came and bit him on the bum and as for that Miss Merry – Miss Moany more like – so stuck up it was a miracle she could sit down. Watching her with the children sometimes turned Mrs Millsop’s not inconsiderable stomach, the woman was a cold fish and no mistake. No, there was definitely something going on that didn’t feel quite right and if that L/24 pill was really a vitamin and mineral supplement she was Brigitte Bardot. Look at the effect it was having on that Peter, unpleasant little sod, another one she wouldn’t turn her back on for a minute. Mind you, she’d give him bloody psi factor right up his backside if he tried any of his funny business with her.

Glory sat quietly, sifting text from sub-text while Mrs Millsop, in best professional mode, delivered an up to date report on Peter’s physical condition which, she was pleased to say, remained 100%. Miss Merry discussed the exciting developments and improvement in his testable psi abilities, agreed, with a tight smile that he was indeed a feisty little chap and that brought them on to the recent drastic drop in the laboratory rat population. Mrs Millsop put forward the suggestion that perhaps Peter was coming on a bit too fast and the dosage of the supplement should be lowered and after some discussion, the Doctor reluctantly, Miss Merry far less so, agreed this might be the wisest course of action.