by Peter James
‘If they want to go with us? What do you mean by that?’ demanded John. ‘You’ve kidnapped them – and God knows what your agenda is. If they want to go home with us? What kind of arrogance is that? We’re their damned parents!’
Dettore walked back to his desk and picked up a thick document. ‘Did you never read properly the contract you signed on board the Serendipity Rose – either of you?’
John felt a sudden sick, empty sensation deep inside him.
Dettore handed it to him. ‘It has both your signatures on it, and you have initialled every page.’
There was a moment of silence. Then Dr Dettore went on, ‘Just so that you both understand, Luke and Phoebe were taken into safe custody at their own request. You may of course see them, and spend as much time with them as you like. But I think in your own interests you should first take a look at clause twenty-six, paragraph nine, subsection four of this agreement. You will find it on page thirty-seven.’
John laid the document on the table, and turned to page thirty-seven. He and Naomi both read down, found paragraph nine, which was in tiny print, then subsection four, which was microscopic. It read:
Birth parents agree at a time in the future to be determined by the child or children to cede all rights to parental responsibility, should the children so expressly wish, to Dr Dettore, and Dr Dettore shall have the absolute right to adopt said children. In any dispute the wish of the children shall be final and absolute.
At the top and at the bottom of the page were John and Naomi’s initials, boldly written in blue ink.
She was silent for a moment, then said, ‘This can’t be legal. It cannot be binding. They’re three years old! How can a three-year-old have the right to decide its parents? This is rubbish! There isn’t a court in the world where this would stand up.’
‘Let me make something very clear to you guys,’ Dettore said, sitting down opposite them. ‘I didn’t go to the trouble of bringing you here in order to show you a clause in a contract you signed four years ago. I want you to understand that your children have not been coerced or abducted or kidnapped, but are here by legal right, that’s all.’
‘Legal right—’
He raised a hand to silence Naomi in mid-sentence. ‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘I want to make something important very clear to you. If you want to take your children home, I’m not going to stop you. They’re your kids. I don’t care what agreement we have between us – I’m not a monster, regardless of what the press may have called me over the years. If you insist on taking them home with you, not only are you free to do so, but you’ll have my private aircraft at your disposal. Is that clear?’
‘Presumably there’s a but?’ John said.
‘No, there isn’t.’
‘Nothing about this makes any sense,’ Naomi said. ‘We’ve been living a nightmare since Friday morning.’
Dettore looked at her for some moments before replying. ‘Only since Friday, Naomi? Are you sure it’s only since then?’
She stared, bleakly, back at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I think you understand.’
123
They travelled two stops on the monorail.
‘What is this place?’ John asked Dettore. ‘Is it some kind of government research campus? And this tube train thing? You don’t exactly seem to have traffic congestion above ground.’
‘I’ll explain it all later on,’ he replied.
They stepped onto a platform, then walked over to an elevator. A boy and a girl, who looked to be in their late teens, both tall and beautiful, dressed in dark blue jumpsuits, exited.
‘Good morning, Brandon, morning, Courtney.’
‘Good morning, Dr Dettore,’ each of them said warmly, as if they were greeting a good friend. They spoke in American accents, like everyone else here, so far.
‘I have Parent People visiting today,’ Dettore said, smiling at John and Naomi.
‘Welcome, Parent People!’ Brandon said,
‘We hope you have a great visit, Parent People!’ Courtney said.
In the elevator, Naomi quizzed Dettore. ‘Parent People?’
‘Folks like you and John,’ he replied.
The doors opened and they followed Dettore out into a wide corridor with a dark grey carpet and pale grey paint. Along one wall were glass observation windows, and along the opposite one were flat-screen televisions, the displays of which changed every few seconds with differing mathematical formulae.
Several children walked past them, their ages ranging from around three, he guessed, to their late teens. They were all in pairs, always a boy and a girl, all dressed in jumpsuits and plimsolls. All beautiful-looking. All were chatting animatedly to each other as they walked, each of them greeting Dr Dettore cheerily, and it was clear he knew all their names.
Naomi looked at each of them in turn as they came into the corridor, her heart jumping every time in the desperate hope that it would be Luke and Phoebe. She wondered, darkly, whether the appearance of these children had been stage-managed by Dettore and they had been ordered to look cheery. But despite her anger at the man, she could not convince herself of this. They all looked natural, healthy and happy. It was a strange sensation; there seemed no tension between any of the children, no ragging, no teasing. A surreal harmony.
Dettore stopped by an observation window. Naomi and John joined him and found themselves looking down at a basketball game. Kids playing energetically, a hard but good-natured game.
They moved on, past another window that looked down into a huge indoor swimming-pool complex. In one pool, teenage kids were swimming lengths. In another, they were practising diving. In a third, a game of water polo was in progress.
Then a hundred yards or so on, at the next window, Naomi shot out her hand and gripped John’s.
It was a classroom. Twenty children sat in pairs at double desks, each with their own computer workstation in front of them.
In the third row, seated together, were Luke and Phoebe.
Naomi felt her heart heave, and tears welled in her eyes. They were here! They were alive! Sitting, looking so beautiful in their white jumpsuits, their hair neat, their faces scrubbed, typing, their tiny faces scrunched in concentration one moment, then looking up at their teacher in anticipation the next.
The teacher, a handsome man in his thirties, was on a raised dais, just like any school teacher, but instead of a white board he had a huge electronic screen, on which was a complex-looking algorithm. As they watched, he tapped the screen with a long pointer and the algorithm changed.
Luke raised his hand.
He was asking a question!
Naomi watched, feeling a thrill she just could not explain, and sensed John was experiencing the same.
The teacher said something and the whole class erupted into good-natured laughter, led by Luke. The teacher nodded, turned to the screen. And, to Naomi’s astonishment, made an adjustment to the algorithm with his pointer.
‘You’ve got smart kids,’ Dettore said. ‘We have a lot of very bright kids here, and Luke and Phoebe are right up there towards the top of the scale.’
‘Can we please go down to the classroom, I want to see them now,’ Naomi said.
Dettore looked at his watch. ‘Coming up to break, just a couple of minutes.’
He led them on down the corridor.
‘What is this place?’ John asked again. ‘Who are all these kids? What are you doing here with them, Dr Dettore?’
Without answering, Dettore led them down a flight of stairs and they came out into a huge, bustling, open-plan self-service dining area. Again it was filled with kids all sitting in pairs, beautiful, friendly little people, chatting away.
They followed Dettore out again, along a corridor similar to the one upstairs, then they stopped outside a door. ‘Grade Two classroom,’ he said to John and Naomi.
Moments later the door opened. A boy and a girl walked out, then another, turning right towards the cafete
ria, followed a moment later by Luke and Phoebe, all smiles, sharing a joke.
Then they saw their parents and stopped in their tracks.
The laughter vanished instantly from their faces. It was replaced by faint smiles.
Naomi took a step towards them, with her arms out. ‘Darlings! Luke! Phoebe! My darlings!’
They allowed each of their parents to lift them up and cuddle and kiss them, and showed some embarrassed reciprocation. When John and Naomi put them back down, they stood, motionless as waxworks.
The last of the children came out of the classroom, followed by the teacher.
Dettore introduced them. ‘This is Adam Gardner, our senior computing sciences teacher. This is Dr Klaesson and Mrs Klaesson.’
‘Great to meet you!’ He held out his hand. ‘You have awesome children! I’ve had Luke and Phoebe in my class for just one hour, and already they’re teaching me things I don’t know.’ He looked down at the twins and their faces lit up at him in response. Lit up with such passion, John and Naomi were taken aback.
The teacher excused himself and headed off towards the cafeteria. Dettore said, ‘OK, I guess you guys would like some privacy. You’re going into a private room with your parents and you’ll discuss whatever they want to discuss with you. And if at the end of their visit here they decide you are going to go back with them to England, you will go. You hear what I’m saying?’
Neither child responded.
124
They sat on comfortable sofas in an air-conditioned room with a view out across the campus, chromium shutters partially closed against the sunlight; John and Naomi on one side of the coffee table, Luke and Phoebe on the other, each child sipping a bottle of mineral water through a straw.
John glanced at the clock on the wall and suddenly asked if there was a men’s room and Naomi said she needed a loo, too. Luke and Phoebe led them out into the corridor and directed each of them.
John went through into an immaculately clean toilet. He urinated, then went to the washbasin, and ran the taps to muffle sound. He went over to the window, cracked it open, looked at the sun in the sky and glanced at his watch, which was still on UK time. John had intentionally excused himself at noon and yet his watch said it was 2 a.m. That meant they had travelled ten time zones ahead. He squinted as he stared at the sun and tried to judge its elevation in the sky. The sun was nearly at the zenith. It was not quite a month after the winter solstice, the date when the sun would be at the zenith over the Tropic of Capricorn, twenty-three degrees below the equator. The fact that sun was perfectly poised above him at the highest point in the sky showed they were probably just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Based on the time of his watch and the position of the sun at noon, this placed them just a bit north of the Tropic of Capricorn in the South Pacific. This was not a definitive experiment; they could still be over one thousand miles from the nearest population centre, but it was a start.
Back in the room with their children, Naomi leaned forward and poured milk into her cup on the coffee table. This could not be happening, she thought. John and I can’t be sitting here, having a formal meeting with our children, as if we’re discussing some property deal, or a used car, or a bank loan or something.
Luke, cradling his mineral water between his tiny hands, said, ‘I am really not clear why you are so anxious for us to return to England with you.’
‘Because we’re your parents!’ Naomi said. ‘Children grow up at home with their parents. That’s how life works!’
‘It doesn’t work like that here,’ Phoebe retorted. ‘Only very few kids here have Parent People. Mostly they are original New People.’
‘What’s the difference?’ John asked.
‘Really, Parents, isn’t it obvious?’ Luke said. ‘They’re the kids who aren’t saddled with baggage.’
‘They didn’t have to develop the way we did inside a woman’s womb,’ Phoebe clarified.
Naomi shot a glance at John and saw the shock on his face. After a moment she asked, only partially tongue in cheek, ‘You found that a hardship, did you, darling?’
But there was no hint of humour in Phoebe’s response. ‘It’s a totally archaic and pointless method of reproduction, which subjects children to unacceptable risks. Parent birthing is no way to protect the long-term future of a species.’
John and Naomi were momentarily stunned into silence.
Then Luke’s expression softened a little. ‘Phoebe and I don’t want you to think we aren’t grateful for all you both did. We feel very privileged.’
Sensing a thaw, Naomi said, ‘And we’re very proud of you both, enormously proud.’ Turning to John, she said, ‘Aren’t we, darling?’
‘Hugely!’ John said. ‘Look, I think you both understand that you are way smarter than other kids back home, but you’ve kept it concealed from us. Now that we know, we can help you realize your potential. There are some terrific specialist schools you can go to – we have a list—’
Phoebe, eyes raised, interrupted him. ‘This is what everyone here who’s descended from Parent People has to deal with.’
‘Your expectations of us may be high, Parents,’ Luke said. ‘But I’m not here to serve your expectations, nor is my sister.’
John and Naomi stared back, trying to absorb what they were saying.
Then Luke continued. ‘I’ve been assessing the world, and frankly, it doesn’t work very well. There need to be a lot of changes, totally new mindsets applied to the problems, and a new paradigm for the future worked out, otherwise there isn’t going to be any future.’
‘Any future?’ John echoed. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You couldn’t even protect us from the Disciples – we had to ask for help externally.’
‘Can you explain that, darlings?’ Naomi said, her voice sounding brittle. ‘Can you tell us what happened?’
‘I think there are more important issues we should be discussing,’ Phoebe said, imperiously. ‘You need to understand the fundamentals of where we are coming from.’
Naomi glanced at John. They seemed to have matured years, mentally, in the past few days. She was finding it very hard to accept that her children were capable of talking in such a very adult way. To accept anything here. She felt she was in the middle of a bad dream.
‘Tell us what you believe those fundamentals are?’ John asked.
‘Well,’ Phoebe said, ‘to start with, we know you made genetic choices about us, because you wanted us to be better than other kids. You wanted us to become perfect people.’ She gave her parents a challenging stare.
‘Your mother and I—’ John started, but Naomi interrupted him.
‘Listen, you two,’ she said. ‘You need to understand our reasons. After we lost your brother, Halley, your father and I wanted to ensure nothing like that was ever going to happen to you. We wanted you to be as healthy and as free from the spectre of diseases as possible. Was that so wrong?’
‘No, quite reasonable,’ Luke said. ‘So what’s your problem?’
‘Our problem?’ Naomi said after some moments. ‘Our problem is that we want you to come home with us.’
‘Why exactly do you want us to come home with you?’ Phoebe asked.
‘Because—’ Naomi floundered for a second. ‘Because we love you.’
‘Although you have very advanced intellects,’ John interjected, ‘you are still small children. You need the love and guidance that parents can give you – that we – your mother and I – really want to give you.’
‘You know what you Parent People are?’ Luke said. ‘You’re just one more generation in an unbroken chain going back thousands of years, of humans who have made a muck of the world. Homo sapiens!’ he sneered. ‘Sapiens means wise. Your species isn’t wise, under your stewardship the world is out of control. You’ve created nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction that any no-brainer with a gripe can go and buy, somewhere in the world. Your scientists claimed to have proven that God does not exist
, but you allow your planet to be ravaged by religious fanatics. You are destroying the ecosystem because you cannot agree on a united ecology plan. You print more information every week than any human being can read in a lifetime. And you want to give us guidance? I think that’s pretty damned breathtakingly arrogant.’
‘Other animals don’t cling on to their young,’ Phoebe said. ‘They let their offspring go as soon as they can fly, or swim, or hunt for food. Why are you so desperate to cling to us and hold us back? You’ve had a big chunk of your lives, but Luke and I have barely started. Unless we can make fast and dramatic changes, there is no future on this planet for anyone. Go home. Go back to your obsolete ways and leave us New People to sort out the future.’
John tried hard to keep calm, to show them they were capable of understanding. ‘And how do you plan to sort out the future? What exactly will you do?’
Phoebe’s tone suddenly became more pleasant. She smiled at her parents. ‘There really isn’t any point in trying to explain it to you. This is not something you or any Parent People could understand. I’m not trying to sound patronizing or anything like that. It’s just a fact.’
‘Kids,’ John said, ‘the people who were trying to kill you have all been arrested by the authorities. It’s safe to come home now. We can keep you safe. If you want to make a difference to the world, which you have clearly shown you are capable of doing, you should come out of isolation. We’ll give you all the support you need to achieve this.’
Phoebe replied, ‘Luke and I need to talk about this. Please leave us alone for a while.’
Dettore, who had quietly entered the room without them noticing, said, ‘John and Naomi, let’s go take a walk.’