Why You Were Taken (32 page)

  ‘Let me do it,’ says James. He finds something that looks like a pen in the side pouch, snaps the vial of insulin into it, and presses it against Keke’s thigh. He presses a button and Kirsten hears the hiss of the jab, watches as the vial empties. He puts the back of his hand to her forehead, then measures her blood sugar, pressure and pulse with his phone.

  ‘She’s going to be okay,’ he says. Kirsten doesn’t answer him, doesn’t look at him, pushes him out of the way and grabs Keke’s hand, bunches it into a tight fist, covers it with a blanket.

  ‘We wouldn’t have let her die,’ comes a voice from behind the mahogany desk. Dr Van der Heever swirls around in his chair and Kirsten recognises the icy irises behind his black-rimmed glasses (Wet Pebble).

  ‘You,’ says Kirsten. The word comes out the colour of trailing seaweed.

The doctor nods at Mouton, who forces Seth’s hands behind his body and clicks handcuffs on him. James takes Kirsten’s arm out of her sling to handcuff her. He does it as gently as possible, trying not to hurt her. She winces and squirms at his touch, as if his skin burns hers. There is a neat, metallic click, a perfect aqua-coloured square. She doesn’t see the second click, the bracelet for her injured arm, and James squeezes that same hand. She glares at him and he looks away. Slowly she tests the cuffs, and it’s true: he has left one open.

The doctor notices her hostility.

  ‘Dear Kate, don’t blame James,’ he says. ‘He had no choice but to bring you in.’

  ‘There’s always a choice,’ says Kirsten.

  ‘True. His options were: find a way of bringing you two in, or see you die. He has seen Inspector Mouton’s … convincing … work. He chose to bring you in.’

  ‘Mouton has been the one killing for you? A policeman?’ she asks the doctor. Then, to Mouton: ‘You killed those people? A sick woman, a young mother?’

  ‘He was simply following orders. He is extremely good at his line of work.’

  ‘Plus he gets to clean up the mess when he walks in as an inspector. I bet he’s really good at covering his tracks,’ says Seth.

  ‘Just one of his many talents,’ says the doctor.

  ‘Why?’ asks Kirsten, ‘Why the list, why the murders?’

Doctor Van der Heever pauses, as if considering whether to answer.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ he says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Keke’s breathing seems to get deeper; her sheen is disappearing.

  ‘The truth is,’ says the doctor, ‘the truth is that Deletion is always a last resort. We did everything we could to stop it from getting to this stage. Unfortunately, people don’t always know what is good for them. Or their daughters.’

  ‘You mean my parents? My so-called parents?’

  ‘Your – adoptive – mother. After being loyal for over thirty years she suddenly decided that she wanted to tell you about your past. She was a brilliant scientist, a real asset to the Project. Her decline was most unfortunate. If she had just been quiet, as she had been all these years … so many lives could have been spared.’

  ‘Including hers?’

  ‘Including hers. Your father’s. And your cell’s.’

  ‘What? Cell?’

  ‘Your mother deciding to tell you about the Genesis Project compromised the cell. We don’t take chances. Compromised cells are closed down, their members removed from the program.’

  ‘Killed,’ says Seth.

  ‘Deleted is our preferred term.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ says Kirsten.

  ‘Every generation,’ says the doctor, interlacing his fingers in front of him on the desk, ‘the Genesis Project selects 7 very special infants to join the program. We are very rigorous when it comes to this selection and hundreds of babies all over the country are considered. They need to match certain – strict – criteria. They must be absolutely healthy, highly intelligent, and have some special talent or gift. Also, during their gestation, their parents must have at some time seriously considered family planning –’

Kirsten: ‘Family planning while pregnant? You mean … abortion?’

  ‘Abortion, or adoption. They must have gone as far as signing the papers: a demonstration that they were not 100% committed to raising the child themselves for whatever reason.’

This stings Kirsten and Seth equally: so they were not wanted in the first place anyway. When they had discovered they had been abducted a little flame had ignited in their hearts: they were once loved, once cherished, before they were stolen away. Now that flame is snuffed out. Not one, but two sets of parents that didn’t truly want them. Kirsten knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, in the original story, Hansel and Gretel’s parents lost them in the woods on purpose.

  ‘Why?’ asks Kirsten, ‘why would the Genesis Project steal children?’

  ‘The Project is concerned with far more than seven little children. In fact, the clonotype program was really just a small hobby of mine in which the others indulged me. Our vision is far more all-encompassing than that.’

  ‘You wanted to clone us?’ asks Seth.

  ‘Not clone you as such … more like, try to isolate the genes you carry that makes you … different. Special. Then we could recreate those genes in a lab and, well, graft them into new babies being born. Can you imagine?’ he asks, eyes sparkling, ‘Can you imagine what our country could be if all our citizens were healthy, clever, strong, creative?’

  ‘So that’s what the Fontus thing is about,’ says Seth. The doctor throws him a sharp glance. ‘GeniX. Eugenics. You audacious motherfucker.’

Van der Heever shifts in his chair. ‘The word
eugenics
has become unpopular of late.’

  ‘Perhaps because it’s an archaic, racist, ethically reprehensible practice,’ says Kirsten.

  ‘What we do isn’t racist,’ he says.

  ‘Really?’ asks Kirsten. ‘Is that why you are using the country’s drinking water to practically wipe out South Africa’s black population?’

  ‘No,’ says the doctor, ‘not the
black
population. The
poor, uneducated
population.’

  ‘This is post-apartheid South Africa. Most of the poor people
are
black.’

  ‘Merely coincidence,’ shrugs the doctor. ‘Many non-whites are rich. In fact, very rich, not so?’

  ‘Coincidence?’ says Seth, ‘we have that fucked up legacy because of people like you who dabble in social engineering.’

  James manages to get Kirsten’s attention without anyone else in the room noticing.

  ‘Listen,’ Dr Van der Heever says. ‘Fertility rates are plummeting the world over. It’s a well-known fact that in first world countries infertility is most prevalent in the educated and employed strata – we may even go as far as to say – the intelligentsia. The higher IQs go, the less chance of procreation. To add to that, we have the Childfree Movement: Ambitious couples are choosing to prioritise their careers and lifestyles over starting families. And yet the world’s population is still mushrooming out of control. People with limited resources, limited faculties, are reproducing, putting a huge strain on the world’s – finite – reserves.’

James wiggles his finger to draw her eye down, then, barely moving, he points at his shirt, the couch, his jacket, then touches his hair.

  ‘It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen,’ says the doctor. ‘So, the three of us,’

  ‘The Trinity?’ asks Seth.

  ‘The Trinity,’ he says.

Kirsten, frustrated, looks away, but James keeps staring at her. When she looks at him again he does the exact same thing. Shirt, couch, jacket, hair. He actually points twice at the couch, which she missed first time around.

  ‘We met in varsity,’ says the doctor, ‘took the same ethics class in first year. The debate question was: should South African citizens be required to obtain a permit before they procreate? This is, after all, what people do in Europe and other such countries, when they want to adopt a pet, an animal. There is a battery of psychological tests; a home screening. The system works well. The whole class was in an uproar: of course not! everyone yelled. What about human rights? The constitution! But the three of us argued in favour of the hypothesis. Human rights on the one hand, quality of human life on the other.’

Shirt, couch, couch, jacket, hair.

Seth wonders how many times the doctor had given this impassioned speech; how often he rehearses it in the shower, or while shaving.

  ‘When tap water became undrinkable, it came to us. It was such an elegant solution. Dose only the state-subsidised drinking water, and leave the more expensive waters pure. If the privileged citizens drink Hydra for whatever reason, and find they have problems conceiving, they have the means to get help. Fertility clinics abound.’

  ‘It’s cruel. Barbaric.’

  ‘Nature is cruel, Miss Lovell. Do you know that the embryos of sand tiger sharks kill and eat their siblings in utero? It’s the epitome of survival of the fittest. You can’t fight evolution.’

  ‘Children may be the only gifts a poor family has.’

The doctor laughs.

  ‘Ah, now you’re being sentimental. What about the burden those ‘gifts’ cause the family, and the country? The planet? What about those children who have to be brought up in dire circumstances? They fall through the cracks. Before we started implementing The Program the situation was reaching breaking point. Hundreds of babies being born every day and South Africa’s education system was broken.

  ‘Do you know what a broken education system does? It puts people on the street. Criminals. Beggars. Infants were being hired for the day by professional street beggars to garner more sympathy from drivers. There were newborns for sale, advertised in the online classifieds! Other babies were lost on crowded beaches never to be claimed, left in dumpsters, or worse.

‘In May, 2013, I was having a personal crisis. Wondering if my work would ever make a real difference. In that month two abandoned babies were found: one wrapped in a plastic bag, burnt. The other was stuck in a sewage pipe – his mother had tried to flush him down the toilet. A healthy newborn! And you talk to me of barbarians. The bottom line was that children were too easy to come by, often unwanted, abused, neglected. The Trinity vowed to take a stand against their suffering. It was – is – incredibly personal. We all have our own stories. Christopher Walden was brutally sodomised – raped – by his priest at a church camp. He managed to escape to a nearby house and use their telephone to call his parents. You know what they did? Told him to stop making up stories and go back to camp. Then they called the priest and told him where he was.’

The doctor walks over to Mouton.

  ‘Mouton,’ he says, now with compassion in his voice. ‘Show them your arm.’

For the first time, Mouton is hesitant to obey orders.

  ‘Show them,’ says the doctor. ‘Help them to understand the work we are doing here.’

Mouton sets his jaw and lifts the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the entire burn scar. It travels from his wrist to his armpit. A swirling motif of shining vandalism.

  ‘That’s not one burn. It’s not from a once-off childhood accident. Marius’s father used to hold his arm over a flame for punishment every time he cried, because “Men Don’t Cry”. A candle, the gas stove, a cigarette lighter, whatever was handy at the time. It started on his first birthday.’

Mouton pulls his sleeve back down. Shirks his shirt into place.

  ‘My scars aren’t so obvious,’ says Van der Heever, ‘my father preferred the crunch of breaking bones. That, and psychological abuse. Once, my dog, the only friend I had, followed a farmworker home. My father was furious. That night I put out extra food out for him, for when he came home. The next morning, when he returned, galloping and barking and happy to see us all, my father shot him in the head. The dog had been disloyal, he said. It was to teach me the value of loyalty. I was six years old.’

He takes a breath, lifts his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose.

  ‘I’m sure you can’t imagine that now. It was before your time. Babies were seen as … expendable. Too many to go around, and most born to undeserving parents. Abuse was inevitable. Unchecked procreation was a scourge on our society. I knew when I heard that story about the baby being flushed down the toilet … I knew then that my work was vital.’

Shirt, couch, couch, jacket, hair. Blue, brown, brown, grey, yellow.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he asks, ‘what we planned so long ago, what we have been working towards, is finally starting to come to fruition. Peace and Purity. By tamping off the birth rate we have solved a host of societal ills. There are no more abandoned babies. Schools now have enough books and tablets and teachers and space for their learners, and children are looked after and cherished. Fewer uneducated people means less unemployment, less crime, less social grants. More tax money to invest in the future of the country. Better infrastructure, better schooling, better healthcare.’

Blue, brown, brown, grey, yellow,
thinks Kirsten
. 49981.
It’s the code, she realises: the code to get out.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he says again, this time more urgently, pride like fever in his face. ‘We did it! We are responsible for the ultimate bloodless revolution!’

NEXT STOP:

CYBORGS

37

Johannesburg, 2021

Keke stirs on the couch, but settles down again. Van der Heever is tireless.

  ‘If you put your emotions aside for just a moment and look at the results -- morally and ethically speaking, it’s accepted that the welfare of the many should take precedence over the welfare of the few, and as such, sacrifices needed to be made. We were not, contrary to what you may think, barbarous about it, as many eugenicists have been before us … unwitting patients waking up, in pain, only to realise that their uteri had been removed. Our solution was much more humane. Cleaner. In fact, we believe that once it becomes clear what has happened here, other countries will follow suit, and soon we’ll have a global population that is both under control and more efficient.’