Perfect People

by Peter James

  Then the consultant turned and walked from his line of vision. ‘I’m afraid I’m due back in theatre. I’ll pop by later on this evening and see how Naomi’s doing.’

  John heard the door close.

  ‘You’re not the first person to have passed out,’ Lisa said.

  ‘It was the brutality – I – I couldn’t believe—’

  ‘At least your wife is all right, and the babies are fine. That’s the main thing, isn’t it?’ the young nurse said.

  John took a long while to answer. He was thinking about how, up to this point, none of this had seemed totally real. Of course Naomi had been suffering for months, but all the time the babies had been inside her, he could imagine they might wake up one morning and find her bump had gone, that it was all a misdiagnosis, just a phantom pregnancy, that was all.

  Now, through his aching brain, the true reality of it all was finally dawning. The irreversibility. They had brought two human beings into the world whose genes might have been tampered with by Dettore in ways they had not wanted, and there was not a thing they could do about it, except pray that they were going to be fine.

  He looked back at the cheery young nurse and, in answer to her question, nodded uncertainly.

  38

  His head throbbing, John stared through the glass, watching Luke and Phoebe asleep on their backs, swathed in white bedding and intubated. They were even smaller than he’d imagined, more wrinkled, more pink, with tiny little hands like starfish.

  More beautiful.

  Utterly, utterly, incredible!

  He was choked, close to tears with emotion as he watched these tiny people, these miniature copies of Naomi and himself, encased in clear Perspex, dwarfed by the high-tech equipment all around them.

  Even in their scrunched-up faces he could see the likenesses. There were distinctive characteristics of Naomi in Luke. And he could see himself in Phoebe. Logically, it ought to be the other way around, he thought, but it didn’t matter; there was only one thing that was important, and it was plain to see it in their faces:

  Absolute confirmation that their worst fears were unfounded. These were their children, his and Naomi’s, without question.

  He closed his eyes in relief. For months this had been his biggest fear. Naomi’s, too, despite all he had said to try to reassure her.

  Now they faced another worry – just what other mistakes might Dettore have made? Or what other deliberate alterations had he done to their genes that he had not told them about?

  But at least they were healthy! Strong. Remarkably robust, the obstetrician had said.

  His thoughts went back to Halley, to the awesome sense of responsibility he had felt when Halley had been born, and all the hopes he’d held for his son, long before he knew anything of the time bomb inside him. He felt even more responsibility for these two, now, bringing them into the world knowing the risks he and Naomi faced. Just hoping and praying Dettore hadn’t messed up with the one gene that mattered.

  Phoebe, eyes shut, raised her starfish hand a little, opened out her fingers, then closed them again. Moments later, Luke did the same. Almost as if they were waving at him, acknowledging him.

  Hi Dad! Hi Dad!

  He smiled. ‘Welcome to the world, Luke and Phoebe, my little darlings. You’re our future, your mum’s and mine. We’re going to love you more than any parents ever loved any child,’ he whispered.

  Once more, in their sleep, first Phoebe then Luke’s little hands raised a few inches, opened out their fingers and closed them again.

  John went back to Naomi’s room, to sit with her until she was sufficiently awake to be wheeled up to see them herself.

  39

  Mountain air is different to any other kind of air that you can find on this planet. Mountain air doesn’t have all that shit that you have to breathe in.

  Down below it is just one big sewer, my friend, and I’m not just talking about the air.

  Hasn’t always been that way, of course. And one day it’s going to be all back to how it was. You’ll be able to walk the streets of cities and smell flowers.

  Seriously, when was the last time you smelled flowers in a city?

  Maybe in a park, but only if the park was big and the flowers had a strong enough scent. And to have a strong enough scent they’d probably been genetically modified.

  We can’t keep our hands off anything, can we? I tell you something, you walk in one of those supermarket places, they’ve got berries the size of apples, apples the size of melons, and those tomatoes, you know the ones I mean, those like big, mutant things – they have pig genes in them, to give them their colour, to keep them riper longer, but you don’t see that on the label.

  I tell you, my friend, you step down off this mountain and you walk in the sewers of the valleys and plains, you’re stepping into a world you think you might know, but you don’t, trust me, you do not know any of it. Like, get this – there’s a big burger chain, a national chain and they’re mixing polyester into the bread in their buns – to make them puff out. They’re making you eat polyester and all the time you are thinking, hey, bread that looks this good must be doing me good!

  That’s how cynical scientists are, my friend.

  You know what science is really about? Scientists pretend it is about knowledge, but the truth is that it is partially about power and about death, but mostly it is about vanity and greed. People don’t invent things for the greater good. They invent them to satisfy their egos.

  Everyone is being seduced by science. All the world leaders. They’re hoping science will find a cure for AIDS, forgetting science caused it in the first place. Scientists cured bubonic plague and smallpox, but what did that do for the human race? Overpopulation.

  The Lord has his own way of dealing with overpopulation. He had the balance of nature just fine, until scientists came along and messed it all up.

  And think about this, my friend, next time you take a walk down there in the sewers and feel your lungs getting all choked up. Who is responsible? God or scientists?

  Just remember the words of St Paul to Timothy. ‘Guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from Godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.’

  Here endeth the 17th Tract of the 4th Level of the Law of the Disciples of the Third Millennium.

  In a room in a house that was as spartan as a monk’s cell, high up on a mountain in the Rockies, thirty miles north of Denver, the young Disciple, working out his forty days of solitude, seated on a simple wooden stool in front of a computer, was learning each Tract by rote. He was repeating the words that had arrived in an email an hour ago, and that would shortly be erased, over and over in his head.

  Everything had to be remembered. Nothing was ever to be retained in writing. Rule Four.

  His name was Timon Cort. His hair was shaven to ginger stubble. He wore a fresh white T-shirt, grey chinos, sandals and oval glasses. Twice a day he ran the two-mile dirt track to the bottom of the private mountain and back up again without stopping. A further two hours a day he spent working out on the exercises he had been given to strengthen his body. The rest of the time he divided, as he had been instructed, between learning, reading the Bible, prayer and sleep.

  He was blissfully happy.

  For the first time in twenty-nine years, his life had meaning. He was needed. He had a purpose.

  When he came down from the mountain at the end of his initiation, he would be entrusted with a Great Rite. If he carried this out successfully, he would then become a full Disciple. He would be married to Lara, a woman beyond his dreams, with her long dark hair and skin like warm silk, with whom he had spent one night before coming up this mountain, one night that in part sustained him throughout his solitude, and in part tormented him. Sometimes, instead of prayer, he counted the days to the next time he might see her. And always, afterwards, he prayed for forgiveness.

&nbs
p; The Great Rite, then the eternal love of God expressed through Lara. You had to understand what it felt like to be wanted and loved, after a lifetime of people telling you that you were no good. A lifetime of being passed over by your father because your brother was so much smarter, so much better at baseball and football and life in general. By your mother, because you hadn’t taken any of the career paths she dreamed of for you. Because you got caught stealing some no-big-deal bits and pieces from a drugstore. Because you got six months suspended for dealing cannabis.

  Passed over by your classmates, who thought you were weird, because you were too short, too physically weak, and that you never had anything to say that was worth listening to. By your teachers, who never thought you amounted to anything, and who turned you into a stammering wreck whenever you tried to show them that you were not as dumb as they thought.

  That was all changed now. The Disciples loved him. Jesus loved him. Lara loved him.

  All he had to do was learn the Forty Tracts. Then come down from the mountain and perform the Grand Rite of Passage – a killing in the name of the Lord of some of Satan’s progeny. A name that would be given to him. It could be a single child, or an entire family. Or maybe even several families.

  And he would have done something towards making the world a better place.

  And God would give him Lara as a reward. And they would live for the rest of their lives in the right hand of God. And dwell in God’s house ever after.

  40

  Naomi’s Diary

  John swears Phoebe looks like him and Luke looks like me. Well, I’m sorry, I don’t see that at all. At five weeks old all I see is Fat Face and Thin Face. Mr Grumpy and Miss Calm. Mr Noisy and Miss Quiet.

  Now I’m beginning to think of all the things we should have asked Dr Dettore to do. Like some gene that would make a baby sleep twenty-four hours a day until it becomes an adult. And never need food.

  I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve climbed a mountain every day since Luke and Phoebe came home, four weeks ago. I haven’t even had time for a bath! Seriously! I grab a shower when John is around, and that’s about it. I’m spending all my time washing faces, feeding them, changing nappies, loading and unloading the washing machine, ironing clothes. And just to add to the fun, Luke got colic when he arrived home and screamed hour after hour for a week.

  I wept with joy when we first drove them home from the hospital. I remember that same feeling when the nurse handed Halley to us and we suddenly realized he was our baby! Ours alone. It’s an incredible feeling.

  Mum is staying and that is a help (at times, anyway), and Harriet stayed a couple of days and was a big help, too. Otherwise there seems to have been a stream of visitors. Nice to see them all, but it just creates even more work. It seems everyone is fascinated by the idea of twins, as if they’re some kind of freaks.

  John’s mother is coming over from Sweden next week to see her grandchildren. She’s a nice lady but with her deteriorating eyesight she’s going to be more work for me, rather than any help. She can’t be left alone in a strange house for one minute. But she’s so excited about seeing her grandchildren, bless her!

  Our finances, already at a low ebb, are being drained further. Two of everything. I wish I could contribute, but there’s no way I could think about a job at this moment. I just stagger from feed to feed. And they are growing at an incredible rate. The paediatrician is surprised, but he says it’s a good sign.

  Definitely beginning to regret our decision to live in such an isolated place. I’d like to see something other than sheep and birds, and trees bending in the wind. I feel peaceful for a while after visitors have left, but then I start to long for John to arrive home.

  It’s OK for him, he spends all day out in the real world, talking to colleagues, having lunch with them, then comes home to his recreational toys, to his little babies and his little wifey.

  One of them’s crying now. Which means the other will be crying, too, in a minute. Feed and change. Feed and change. My nipples hurt like hell. I’m some kind of a milk cow. A servant to them. I don’t remember Halley ever being this demanding.

  I’m sounding hacked off. Well, I am hacked off. Having twins isn’t twice as hard as having one baby, it’s ten times as hard.

  41

  Her voice startled him, cutting through the New Age music of a harp across breaking waves that wafted through the room.

  ‘What is it you are looking at, John? What are you trying to see?’

  He pressed the shutter then turned to Naomi. ‘Phoebe’s now very definitely a miniature copy of you!’

  ‘That’s not answering my question,’ she replied tartly.

  He looked away awkwardly, staring around the room. It was pretty and cheery; the high, beamed ceiling and west-facing dormer window made it feel light and airy, even on a gloomy morning like this. They had decorated it themselves, with candy-striped curtains, and a jungle frieze running around the walls.

  It was Saturday morning. John had cancelled his regular tennis game with Carson Dicks because he had seen how exhausted Naomi was, and wanted to give her as much help this weekend as he could. Unlike Naomi, her mother was not very domesticated. She could barely cook, and most appliances remained enigmas to her.

  She still lived a genteel life, and occupied herself working in an art gallery in Bath specializing in local, but obscure, water-colourists.

  There were times when Anne Walters was extremely focused, but there were as many days when she seemed to be in a world of her own.

  Lowering his camera, he put an arm around Naomi and hugged her. Through the soft wool of her jumper he could feel her ribs. She’d lost a lot of weight in recent months.

  Outside, trees and shrubs keeled over in the strong March wind, and pellets of rain rattled against the roof. Heat from the radiator shimmered against the window. He hugged her even harder, protectively, watching Luke and Phoebe sleeping in their fluffy bedclothes in their cots just a few feet apart. He smiled, bleary-eyed, down at their innocent faces, at their almost impossibly tiny hands. Luke made a tiny cooing sound. Moments later it was echoed by Phoebe.

  The room had a sweet, milky smell that he’d come to adore. The scents of baby powder, freshly laundered clothes, bedding, nappies and another wonderful smell that permeated everything, which seemed to come from their skin. The smells of his children.

  The health visitor was really pleased at the weight they were putting on and with how they were doing generally. They were great babies, she told John and Naomi, beautiful, healthy, bonny.

  So far.

  So far.

  And that one fear hung like a cloud stretching out to the horizon of his life. How long before they could be sure their kids were really fine and healthy? Before whatever Dettore had done or had failed to do showed up in them? What hidden time bombs were they carrying?

  Sure, he knew, all parents had fears about their babies. Many of them the same kinds of fears he was having. But none of them had done what he and Naomi had.

  Above him, a fairground carousel mobile hung from a beam, each of the animals swaying very slightly in the draught. Strung across each cot were threaded taffeta rattles, and in several of the books he had read it said that by one month old, each baby should have learned to get sounds from it. So far, they hadn’t shown any signs of interest. Not that that meant anything, he knew, nothing to worry about at all. Not yet, at any rate.

  ‘Are you looking for some sign?’ Naomi asked, her voice sour. ‘Are you waiting for a mark to appear on their foreheads like some kind of designer label, telling the world these are not just ordinary babies?’

  He tried to kiss her but she pulled away. ‘Darling, I like to be up here with them as much as I can. I love just looking at them, talking to them, like it says in the books, the same stuff we did with Halley. Putting on music for them, playing with them when they wake, and helping you feed them, changing their nappies. I absolutely love being with them, really I do!’

  ‘
I asked my mother if she ever talked to me when I was asleep in my cot,’ Naomi said. ‘She didn’t; nor did she play me any music. But somehow I survived. Guess I was the one that got away.’

  Phoebe stirred, then Luke. Luke held out his tiny hand. John touched it with a finger and moments later Luke’s own tiny fingers curled around it, gripping it for several seconds. It was one of the most amazing sensations John had ever felt in his life.

  ‘See that?’ he whispered to Naomi.

  She smiled, and nodded

  Luke continued to hold his finger for several seconds, before releasing it. Then John leaned down and stroked each of their faces, one with each hand. ‘Daddy and Mummy are with you,’ he said. ‘How are you doing, little angels?’

  Phoebe opened her eyes suddenly, and in the same instant, Luke opened his. It was uncanny, he thought, how they always seemed to open them at the same time. Both of them were watching him.

  ‘Hallo, Luke. Hallo, Phoebe. Hallo, darling angels,’ he said, shifting his position, encouraging them, as both sets of eyes tracked him. He saw the curl of a smile on both their lips and smiled back. Then he leaned forward and pinged the taffeta cord of Luke’s rattle. Both pairs of eyes remained fixed on him, but they stopped smiling.

  He pinged Phoebe’s rattle, hoping to encourage her to reach up and touch it herself. But like her brother, she lay still, just observing him. Then after a few moments, as if they had grown bored, both babies closed their eyes in unison.

  Naomi turned and walked back out of the room. John followed her, gently pulling the door to behind him, and leaving it slightly ajar.

  As his footsteps retreated down the stairs, the eyes of both babies opened in unison. Just a brief flicker, then they closed again.