“No more interviews, today.” She spoke from the heart. Just the thought of having to take in any more information made her dizzy. First the trio and then Alan were more than enough. “In fact, I need to get back to Jack’s house to work on my article. Do you know the taxi company’s number?”
“I’ll drive you.”
“I wasn’t hinting.”
“It’s okay.” Keanu had relaxed, his surprise at Jack’s attitude fading. “I was only supposed to work the morning today, so I’m free to leave. I’ll drop you off on my way home.”
“Thanks for the lift.” She shut the car door and waited for Keanu to drive off. He was a nice man, companionable, friendly, but not pushy. They had driven in silence, perhaps both needing a break from their professional habits of sympathetic listening.
At the back of Jack’s house, newly weeded garden beds showed that someone—the unseen George?—had been there, but Charley was alone now. She dug through her bag for the key Jack had given her. She could smell freshly watered earth and see where a row of capsicum seedlings had been planted, surrounded by marigolds.
She smiled with simple enjoyment of the peace. She’d chosen discretion over valor and hadn’t tried to see him before accepting Keanu’s ride home. Instead, she left a message regarding her whereabouts with the nurse receptionist—who looked frazzled to the point of tears, and had Charley’s silent sympathy, which she’d expressed by digging into her bag to supply a contraband chocolate.
Now Charley felt something of the freedom of a child let out from school detention. The troubles of the day slid—not into proportion, they were too big for that to provide any comfort—but into a sense of being comprehensible. She felt her missing hand tingle, and froze with the keys in her hand and the bag tucked under her arm. It had been a long time—two years—since she’d felt like this. She was alone but not lonely because there was a story to be written. This wasn’t about hiding in her work. It was about loving it.
Charley had almost forgotten the feeling, but the buzz was back. Passion. Her fingers itched with the need to transfer the story of sensory bio-enhancement and the QNA to paper. Mentally, she waved good-bye to the article outlined on her laptop. Oh, she’d finish it, honoring her commitment and earning the promised big money for an exclusive story on Jack and his bio-enhancement technology, but the real story was much more than a medical breakthrough.
This was a story about what it meant to be human, and how technology was challenging, but never destroying, that reality. There were ethical considerations, economic and social ones. There was the personal impact. The space program had put people on the moon, but the changes here at New Hope and Jabberwocky would open new territory within the human mind.
“Wow.” She swatted absently at a fly and just missed scraping her nose with the keys. “Dumb fly.” Didn’t it know it was still winter?
She hurried into the house and powered up her laptop. Excitement and energy fed a feeling of exuberant clarity of thought. With all her professional instincts buzzing, she enjoyed a sense of elation that she hardly dared to acknowledge for fear it would vanish.
Ideas poured onto the screen. So many questions, including philosophical questions about the impact of extended sensory perception on individuals and on society, and the contentious question of how to gain official and societal acceptance of an emergent intelligence, the QNA.
She only stopped typing, speculating and humming, when she heard the slam of the back door. Jack! She saved her files and closed the laptop. She wanted to share with him her new enthusiasm and new plans, and there were questions she had for him, too. New questions that reflected her deeper, personal interest in his work with the QNA.
She found him in the kitchen, pouring a glass of bourbon.
He held the bottle up in silent invitation.
“No, thanks.”
He swallowed a mouthful, then topped up his glass before slumping back against a counter.
Charley studied him a moment. She’d forgotten Alan’s confession. A difficult day had deepened the lines on Jack’s face, dragged down his shoulders and left his glasses sitting crooked on his nose. Now wasn’t a good time to share her thoughts with him.
She resisted the temptation to straighten his glasses, and turned her attention to the question of dinner. They hadn’t had time to grocery shop, so dinner would be hit and miss. She found eggs in the fridge and decided to make scrambled eggs on toast. A couple of tomatoes, lurking in the crisper of the fridge, could be grilled.
He watched her, frowning, breaking his silence as she started whisking the eggs. “I think you should go back to Sydney.”
“Now?” A silly question as she played for time. Egg dripped from the whisk.
“Tomorrow. You can catch a small plane up to Perth, then fly back to Sydney.”
“Why, Jack? Why now?”
He stared into his bourbon glass. “The situation’s more complicated than I thought.”
No kidding. Aloud, she asked. “Did Alan talk to you?”
“Did he tell you?” Jack shot at her, then shook his head. “No, he wouldn’t.”
“About Michael’s bio-enhancement? Yes, he told me. We also talked about the QNA this afternoon.” She added carefully. “About how they communicate.”
Jack didn’t seem to hear. “Can you book your own plane ticket?”
“Of course.” But she wouldn’t. She’d tell him later that she wasn’t going, or that if she did go, she would be back, and the reasons for her rebellion—starting with QNA sentience and communication. “Did you and Alan decide anything?”
“He offered me his resignation, and I accepted it.”
She concentrated on whisking the eggs, though the mixture was already frothy. “Will he be okay?”
“What else was I meant to do? His wife died here. Do you think Alan wants to stay?”
“I hadn’t thought.” She’d been thinking only that Alan had lost everything, not that he might want to give up everything and move somewhere else to forget. It was what she’d done.
“I have.” Jack drained his glass. It hit the counter just short of a slam. “I want you to leave.”
Jack ate quickly since he economized on talking to the point of monosyllables, and moved to tidy the kitchen.
“Leave the clean up to me,” Charley said. “I don’t feel like working, tonight.”
“Thanks.” He didn’t look at her as he left the room.
Abruptly, she stood and started scraping plates. Whatever he’d learned that afternoon he was no longer warning her to be careful. He wanted her gone. Arguably, that ought to worry her, but she was more concerned, and selfishly surprised, to discover that what really worried her was how much she missed his conversation and having him focus on her.
She washed the few dishes by hand, then stood and studied her own face reflected ghost fashion in the window. Too thin with a slash of a mouth that spoke of frustration. And any face, viewed in a window reflection, looked spectral. She stared through her reflection to the garden. The moon was just shy of full, lighting the garden into inviting shadow and mystery. She wiped her hand dry, pulled on the jacket she’d shed while cooking, and went out into the night.
The sweet night scent of honeysuckle greeted her. In the temperate climate, the creeper had two or three clusters of flowers even during winter. Underlying its sweetness was the spicy scent of thyme and fainter still, the scent of the Australian bush; a blend of earth and eucalyptus and slightly smelly acacia bushes.
A moth blundered past, drawn to the light of the kitchen window. Charley heard the flutter of its wings as it hit the unyielding glass and tried to fly through it. She glanced up at the other lit window, Jack’s study. He wasn’t in the mood to listen to her story of the QNA—and she, being wiser than the moth, wouldn’t batter herself against his disbelief.
“Tonight, he’d probably have me locked up for my own safety.” She strolled into the vegetable patch and broke off a pea pod, shelling it awkwardly. She ti
pped the loose peas into her mouth, relishing their freshness.
QNA sentience did sound like a mad woman’s theory, but Alan had experienced it, too. Jack needed to hear about it before Alan left.
She chewed the sugary peas and cast aside the pod. Jack had chosen a perfect place for a regeneration center—a place with a wonderful climate and fresh food, with a relaxed approach to life—and now it was the unpeaceful center of world-changing events.
The irony had to be appreciated. She picked a second pea pod and concentrated on shelling it. A meter away a spider spun a new web in the moonlight. Standing in the shadows, she watched, fascinated by the tiny creature’s industry. Half-forgotten knowledge from a television documentary came back to her. Orb spiders created new webs each night. Their hope sprang new every night.
The sound of a car engine, quiet though it was, broke the silence. It stopped, and four car doors slammed.
Charley looked away from the spider. Visitors for Jack. She stepped further into the shadows of the garden. She could reasonably, and on the grounds of politeness, stay out here.
Except that she couldn’t.
“Charley?”
She recognized Aaron’s voice. His enhanced sense of smell had found her. She sighed, and abandoned the vegetable garden and peace.
The trio was present, and they’d brought Michael with them—or he’d brought them. He stood to the side of the group, equal height with Ted, but less muscular. All four turned to look in Charley’s direction.
She was astonished, after Nicola’s comments about Michael bugging Jabberwocky, to see them together. Given the general trend of events, curiosity tugged. What else could have gone wrong? “Is Jack expecting you?”
“No,” Jack said grimly from the back door.
“No,” Nicola agreed. “But we wanted to talk to you.” She was still looking at Charley.
“Again?” Jack asked, not hiding his anger.
“We heard something that changes the situation,” Nicola said. “Look, can we go inside?”
Jack stepped back from the doorway.
They all trooped in, Michael ushering Charley in front of him. But this time, unlike their first meeting in Jack’s office, he didn’t touch her.
Charley glanced towards the kitchen, and then, to Jack’s expression. She closed her lips firmly against her automatic offer of tea or coffee. Who did she think she was—the hostess?
They sat at the kitchen table overlooking the garden. Charley sat where she’d sat to eat, with her back to the kitchen counter.
Jack sat opposite her.
Michael sat at the foot of the table, converting it by force of personality to the head of the table. His back was to the dark garden.
They were all reflected, dimly, in the window.
“We’ll get our confessions out of the way first,” Michael said. “The three musketeers here, and I, separately, have bugged your office and home, Jack.” He waited for an indignant response, that didn’t come.
“Go on.”
Charley wondered if Jack had known of this invasion of privacy, or if this was an additional abuse of his trust.
Michael said steadily. “This afternoon, we overheard Alan confessing his operation on me.”
“Unconscionable.” Jack scowled at him.
“It was my decision and responsibility.” Michael leaned back in his chair, apparently reassured rather than disturbed by Jack’s anger. “Alan didn’t want to do it, but I put the pressure on through Lillian.”
Charley looked around the table.
The trio had clearly eavesdropped on Alan’s confession, too. There was curiosity and reservation on their faces about Michael’s actions, but no surprise.
“I offered money,” he continued, apparently determined to make a full confession—of this action which had already been exposed. “A suggestion of a more prestigious job for Alan once my need for QNA ceased. Not that Alan wanted the job, but Lillian liked the idea of social standing in a wider world.”
“You’re a puppet-master.” Nicola frowned her disapproval. She would have said more, but Michael interrupted.
“Someone has to be. Nothing’s achieved by sitting around, waiting.”
Jack’s glasses slid all the way down his nose, and when he caught them, Charley saw that the claws on his left hand were extended. He was mad.
“The reason we’re here,” Aaron intervened, possibly feeling that explanations that mingled with justifications were lacking the proper spirit of penitence that would move them forward. Or maybe Aaron was simply more interested in the new subject. “We overheard Charley say something tonight at dinner.” He looked expectantly at Charley, who looked blankly back. “That QNA communicate.”
“Oh.” Charley blushed. Jack hadn’t picked her up on the statement. What else had the trio and Michael heard in their eavesdropping?
Everyone turned to look at her.
Jack’s face darkened with anger. He stood jerkily, shoving his chair into the table and pacing to the sink, gripping it. “Eavesdropping in my home, in my private life. And at the clinic…did you listen to confidential client conversations?”
The trio studied their hands, the ceiling, out the window.
“Yes,” Michael said baldly. “But you can kill us later. Charley, what have you experienced?”
It wasn’t how she’d thought to introduce the matter of QNA sentience to Jack. She searched his expression. “Alan didn’t mention anything?”
Jack shook his head.
So did Aaron. It was disconcerting to be reminded anew of the trio’s eavesdropping.
On the other hand, from their personal experience of the improbable, the trio were most likely to believe her experience of the QNA, and judging by Michael’s presence with them here, he wasn’t far behind.
Charley capitulated. “Alan and I talked about the QNA this afternoon. I guess not bugging Alan’s house was an oversight.” The small verbal jab earned a wink from Aaron and a surprised grin from Nicola. “Alan called the QNA a hive intelligence.” Everyone leaned forward, their body language willing her to continue. “Hasn’t anyone else felt anything odd in the QNA lab?”
Jack returned to the table, staring at her as he obviously processed her unwilling sentences with his own observations. “You felt something on your first visit to the lab? You went white and dizzy.”
“It was a shock. Something I could ignore, though. It was clearer the next time.”
“What was clearer?” Nicola sat on the edge of her seat.
Aaron stretched out a hand and pulled her back unceremoniously. “Let Charley tell the story her way.”
“If she’d hurry up.”
Charley was in no mood to be bullied. “It’s hard to explain. And hard to know what’s the QNA and what’s just me.”
“Tell us everything,” Michael said.
She stared at him. “Haven’t you felt anything weird in the QNA lab?” She wanted Alan to be here as an ally, someone who’d shared the experience and could help her describe something so outside previous human experience.
They all shook their heads.
She sat back, rubbing the stump of her arm. She realized abruptly that she was the only one in the room physically unaltered by QNA. The only “normal” person in the room. For an instant, the sense of isolation pressed down to the point of panic.
“It’s okay, Charley,” Aaron said.
She glanced at him, shocked and fiercely angry that he’d invaded her privacy, smelt her fear. I’m being irrational, she told herself. But she wasn’t. This was hard. Revolution was hard.
Unexpectedly, Ted smiled. “Look at us. Remember who we are. What we are. We have every reason to believe any weirdness. There are more things under heaven and earth,” he quoted vaguely. It was a reminder that he, too, knew what it was to perceive creatures unknown to everyone else.
Charley struggled for an answering smile, and gave it up. Ted’s mystic eyes didn’t bolster her confidence. It was as if a little part of
him no longer lived in this world.
How dangerous were the changes they were meddling with?
But the more information Jack had—and he was the only one she trusted—the better he could respond.
“Okay, but remember, this is only my experience. The QNA uses our memories to communicate with us, so mainly what it communicates is emotion. It can be confronting. Alan believes the QNA is still maturing.”
“Alan.” Michael’s tone made it obvious that he was reminding himself that there was a better, more informed and professional, source of information.
“He has enough to cope with,” Charley said, sharply.
“Then this puzzle will take his mind off his grief.” Michael stayed relaxed in his chair
Nicola joined the incipient fight. “You really are a cold blooded bastard.”
Jack ignored her, frowning at Michael. “Why are you so interested in the QNA? The emergence of a collective intelligence, if this is what the QNA are, is hardly a defense proposition.”
“You forget the internet. Some people hypothesize that an intelligent entity could be created from that flow of information.”
Nicola snorted her opinion of the theory. “There are crazies everywhere, but you’re not one of them. Jack’s right. Michael, why are you interested in the QNA?”
“I could return the question.”
“Intellectual curiosity,” Aaron said blandly, amusement lurking in his eyes.
This time it was Michael who snorted.
“If we’re talking about a collective intelligence, a swarm intelligence.” Ted ignored the others’ squabble. “I wonder what population density was necessary for its emergence? Was there a point of critical mass? And are individual QNA part of the swarm when they’re on our bodies?”
Nicola’s face screwed into an ick grimace.
Jack, meanwhile, regarded Michael with narrow-eyed speculation. “Did the bio-enhancement work for you?”
Michael’s mouth tightened. “It didn’t work.”
But Alan had described it as a limited success. Charley frowned at Michael. “What was the enhancement?” How far would he tell the truth?
Beyond Regeneration Page 14