Binary

by Stephanie Saulter

  Another white-coat shrugs, waves dismissively. She is Dr Panborn, and she is the only one Dr Owen ever needs to get permission from. Things have been changing since she appeared, around the same time that the last of the other children was covered up and wheeled away.

  ‘I don’t really see the point of that, but go ahead if you want. Satisfy your own curiosity. It does not, however, address the main question.’

  A pause, while they all look at each other. One of the other white-coats, another recent arrival, says, ‘Can we be absolutely certain the batch wasn’t just contaminated? That would be the simplest explanation …’

  The lab supervisor, a man named Clark, sighs and rolls his eyes. ‘We’ve been asking that question for seven years now, and I don’t think we’re going to get any better answers than we’ve got. What I want to know is, contaminated with what, exactly? A few extra alleles of eagle?’

  She already knows what an allele is. Eagle is new. She gets the spelling wrong on the first try, tries again, and the information rolls up on the screen. She blinks in puzzlement at the picture, some strange brown-black creature perched on the high bare branch of a tree, and then bites back a gasp as it launches itself into the air. She watches, mesmerised by the few seconds of vid, and feels the awkward, naked limbs that flop uselessly against her back twitch and stretch and try to imitate the movement.

  She thought she had already found everything the tablet contained on wings. There is a familiar sense of wonder, and anger, at how much remains to be discovered.

  ‘Obviously why it happened isn’t unimportant,’ Dr Panborn says, in a tone that suggests maybe it is. ‘But it’s high time for a shift in emphasis. We’ve been working with the Phoenix genestock in other batches, with and without interspecies splicing, and there’ve been no other aberrations…’

  ‘There have,’ says Dr Owen.

  ‘They haven’t been significant, and they haven’t had the upside. Whatever happened in this specimen didn’t just incorporate a single radical anatomic transformation, it’s carried the mutation throughout the other organs. Systemic complementarity. She’s got feathers getting ready to grow, for God’s sake, she’s got a metabolism that looks like it might actually be efficient enough to power flight. The issue isn’t her specific dysmorphism, it’s the potential. Reverse engineering the wings isn’t so important, I mean what could you ever do with them? But if we can understand how her body has adapted all its systems to support that primary mutation, if we can replicate the totality of that shift… that’s a gold mine.’

  They nod and murmur and glance over at her again, while she taps and swipes at the tablet screen and affects a reassuring placidity. Phoenix, systemic, metabolism, mutation, gold mine. She makes notes, keeping track so she can look them all up later.

  This is turning out to be a good meeting.

  11

  Aryel Morningstar walked through an orchard, and the digital savant Herran walked by her side. In between the neat rows of apples and pears, their spread-eagled, wire-tied branches thick with leaves and swelling fruit, she could see rooftop after rooftop. As they turned from one gravelled path into another the upper landscape of the city surrounded them, broken only by the line of the river to their right. Amidst the drab grey of cooling towers, power plants, and vent stacks, some of the nearby roofs sprouted gardens too. But nowhere was as thoroughly cultivated and gloriously fecund as the flat top of Maryam House, with its troughs of fruit trees, vegetable beds, and tubs full of flowers and herbs. A gorgeous sunset painted the sky shades of lilac and peach and crimson.

  She had brought him up here, out of the familiar confines of his own space, to emphasise what would be required of him if he agreed to go to Bel’Natur. She had more than half expected him to refuse the proposal out of hand, almost hoped he would. Instead he had accepted, it seemed to her too readily.

  ‘You don’t have to do it,’ she repeated. ‘And if I am completely honest, Herran, if I speak to you just as your friend, the truth is maybe you shouldn’t do it.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘It might not be safe.’

  ‘You make safe.’

  She stopped and turned to look directly at him. He stopped in tandem, and after a moment he also turned, with that stiff, ever-so-slightly mechanical motion of his, and stared back at her. He never used to be able to maintain this much eye contact, she remembered, and she thought again of how far he had come, and how much he stood to lose in this venture.

  ‘I’ll do everything I can,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll have to get some help. You’ll need Callan, I think, as well as Eli. But they’ll have to agree to it.’

  ‘Bel’Natur say no?’

  ‘I’m not worried about that part. I think Bel’Natur will agree to whatever we ask if it means you’ll help them. They want you very badly.’

  Herran looked away, his scarred face expressionless as always, his pale eyes taking in the roofscape around them.

  ‘Make pay.’

  ‘Yes, it is a way of making them pay. But don’t do this just for that, Herran. Do it if you want to, not because you think you should.’

  ‘Should. Also want.’

  ‘Why, Herran? Why do you want to?’

  ‘My brain,’ he said, and was silent for so long that if she had known him less well she would have thought that the entirety of his answer. But she could see the shifting of his eyes as he searched for a way to explain.

  ‘Learn my brain,’ he said finally. ‘Talking code to people, people to code. No one else can do. Not even Rhys.’

  She waited.

  ‘Bel’Natur learning,’ he went on. ‘Make others talk code too. Build interface, maybe they talk like me. See like me. Think like me. A little bit. Maybe they understand.’ He rubbed a hand through his glowing curls, and knocked the heel of his palm roughly against his temple one, two, three times. There was a metronomic rhythm to it. It was something she’d seen him do before, when he was struggling to express a desire or a concept just beyond the language capacity with which he’d been left. Despair washed through her, a tide of recognition and heartache for the loneliness he was unable even to name. Her vision blurred.

  ‘Oh Herran,’ she whispered. ‘My sweet Herran. That’s not what they have in mind at all.’

  ‘I know. I know not same as me, Aryel. But maybe a little bit same.’ He cocked his head and looked at her quizzically, then reached out, astonishingly, to touch her face. ‘Why tears?’

  She took his hand gently, pressed her lips to it, and brushed at her eyes. When she spoke again her voice was rough, but steady. ‘Because sometimes I think about the choices that are left to us, my friend, and it makes me very sad.’ She let go of his hand. ‘Are you sure?’

  He nodded. Standing, especially out here in the open, the rocking seemed less pronounced. ‘Sure.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  *

  When she explained it to him the next morning, Eli was shocked.

  ‘Aryel. Why would you trust her? Ever?’

  ‘The only thing about her that I trust is her instinct for self-preservation. She has everything to lose and nothing to gain here. If she harms Herran, or exposes him, she’ll take away the only reason I have not to see her thrown into a cell next to Carrington.’

  ‘Isn’t that where she should be?’

  She stared at him, then rustled her wings and looked away, towards the narrow ribbon of windows that let in the morning sunshine and a view of the Squats. She had asked him up to her flat, a cavernous space that took up almost all of the top two storeys of Maryam House, to relate the details of her meeting with Zavcka Klist. Perched on stools in the kitchen, they were more than halfway up the double-height walls that had been created when most of the floor in between was knocked through. From here it was no more than a single long stride to the slender safety rail that prevented the unwinged from falling off what remained of the upper level, and plunging twelve feet down to land on the floor below. The entire apartment was laid out lik
e this, a cavity in which a concealed flyer could stretch, with the living and sleeping spaces arranged as a series of inward-projecting balconies and rooms around the perimeter. She could get from one to another with a couple of beats; visitors had to make do with the narrow walkways that had been left along the edges.

  Now she pulled her eyes back from the strip of sky outside the windows, sipped from a mug of tea and grimaced. ‘Should she, Eli? Really?’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘The price is too high.’ He dropped his chin into his hands and rubbed at his temples. ‘And you say Herran wants to do it?’

  ‘He does.’ She explained why.

  ‘So he’s hoping they’ll actually replicate the way his brain works? Using infotech alone?’

  ‘Something like that. She wants the same thing of course, but not for the same reasons.’

  ‘I didn’t realise Herran felt so isolated. I mean that he’s bothered by it. He always seems so … contained.’

  She circled a meditative finger around the rim of the cup. Her voice was thoughtful, distant. ‘I think that most people want to know there is someone else, somewhere in the world, who they can relate to. Who knows who they are, who understands their fears and joys and challenges. Uniqueness is tough, Eli. I think Herran’s become a bit frustrated by how slow we all are, and the daft things we find to be interested in.’

  He sipped from his own mug and swallowed, watching her closely. ‘You must feel like that too.’

  She smiled. ‘What, slow and daft?’

  ‘That no one really understands what it’s like to be you.’

  ‘That is self-evidently true.’ Her eyes were back on the windows. ‘But at least my isolation isn’t mental. And you learn to live with being an aberration, especially when you know how much worse your life could have been.’

  ‘Oh, for the love of— Aryel, you are not an aberration.’ He stared at her in consternation. ‘Unexpected, I might accept.’

  Perfect, he wanted to say, and found it frighteningly close to the tip of his tongue. He bit it back.

  She glanced over at him briefly, and looked away at the windows again. All trace of the smile had disappeared.

  ‘Aren’t I? You sound very sure.’

  ‘I’m completely sure. And I can’t believe you actually think that.’

  For a long moment she stared at a spot somewhere in the unanchored midpoint of the vast room, lost in thought, or memory. Then she seemed to recover herself, straightening up with her usual brisk energy, putting the empty mug down and meeting his eyes. He felt – as he always did – a momentary faltering, a lightning flash of self-doubt that assailed him every time he tried to hold that sky-blue gaze.

  ‘They thought that. I never forget that I am not what they were trying for, Eli.’ Just the slightest edge had come into her voice. ‘I was an accident. There were casualties.’

  He put his own cup aside, carefully. This was more than she had ever been prepared to say before, and he felt an almost scholarly sense of obligation to push at the door she had cracked open.

  ‘What sort of casualties?’

  ‘My batch siblings. Others.’

  Even one success from a small batch was something most gemtechs would have celebrated, back in the days of radical modification. But she said they had regarded her as an unintended outcome, a fluke.

  ‘What were they trying for?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Something a lot more dangerous than I turned out to be.’

  ‘Is that even possible?’ he asked, managing a smile, although the bitter note in her voice was unsettling. He surprised himself with the faint echo of it he heard in his own tone.

  ‘Oh yes.’ She arched an eyebrow at him, forgoing the modesty of a denial. ‘I think we’re all very fortunate that they failed.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Ambitious proponents of progress. Clever creators of life. Titans of industry. The usual.’ The words dropped like stones into the well of the room, with a bitten-off finality that he recognised.

  ‘Aryel.’ He shook his head, gave up. ‘Are you ever going to tell me where you came from?’

  ‘I hope not.’ She sighed. ‘So. Herran. Will you help?’ And just like that, her voice was back to normal. He blinked in astonishment, and she smiled. It was like the sun coming out.

  ‘Of course. Exactly what do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to be his guardian there. You speak their language, you’ll understand what it is they’re trying to do, if it’s unsafe or unacceptable. I’m going to ask Callan to be part of the team as well – Herran will need him for communication, especially at the beginning, and Callan will help him feel safe. But he won’t be able to assess the bigger picture the way you can, and you’re someone they have to respect. Zavcka already knows she can’t bully you.’

  He turned this over. ‘Callan is highly empathic and very bright, and if he thinks that Herran – or himself for that matter – is being treated improperly he’ll pull the plug without hesitation. You don’t need us both to protect Herran. You’re after something else.’ He looked at her expectantly, and she chuckled.

  ‘I am. Although given Callan’s own history I wouldn’t have wanted him to go in alone with Herran anyway. It’s why I’ve asked you first.’ She pulled the clasp from her hair and fiddled with it, frowning.

  ‘The culture change within Bel’Natur that Zavcka talked about. I need to know if it’s genuine, or just the usual corporate PR bullshit.’

  ‘I thought you were sure it wasn’t real.’

  ‘I assumed so from her speech, knowing her as we do. But now, having gone there and seen her without an audience, I’m less certain.’

  ‘She tried to blackmail you!’

  Aryel looked up at him, amused. ‘And I blackmailed her right back. Look, I’m not suggesting that she personally is any less unscrupulous than she ever was. But the way she went about it, the assurances she gave around Herran even when she still thought she could force the issue, didn’t seem condescending or false. She didn’t like having to deal with me, but she did so as though I were an equal with whom she had to do business. And the place did not feel like an old-school gemtech. The staff were mostly young, and the vibe I got from them was what you’d expect from a modern, progressive company. That haughtiness you usually get with the gemtechs, even when they think they’re being polite? Well she still has it, although you could tell she was trying to tone it down, and I reckon her security director is a made-over enforcer. But the rest of them weren’t anything like that. She’s brought in a whole new set. A whole new mindset.’

  ‘That,’ said Eli slowly, ‘is interesting. Carrington carried the can for the Gabriel affair, so why would she have bothered to force through that kind of transformation? She didn’t need to.’

  ‘I wonder if she didn’t look at the situation and decide she did need to. First of all to give herself some cover against Carrington’s accusations, but also because she’s clear-headed enough to know the company has to adapt if it’s going to survive. Look at Gempro and Modicomm and the others, still struggling to come to terms with the Declaration. Bel’Natur is streets ahead, and that’s down to her. Whether she likes it or not, she gets that gem suffrage isn’t going to be reversed. She gets that the market in human gemtech isn’t coming back. And the old attitudes aren’t just wrong these days, they’re commercially damaging – because as long as they keep on believing that gems really ought to be products, they’re not going to be able to turn us into customers. And yet. What was human gemtech originally for?’

  Eli got it. ‘Making healthy babies. Which is not a problem for norms any more, but for gems …’

  ‘Exactly. You know about Mikal and Sharon’s situation, and they’re not alone. Procreation is the next big thing that gems are going to have to grapple with. It’s not just an ethical debate with the Reversionists, it’s a real live existential problem. But we don’t know yet if we can stomach the gemtech solution. We need someone we can
trust to help us figure that out.’

  ‘You mean me? Aryel, that goes well beyond my area of competence.’

  ‘No it doesn’t. It’s no bigger than the questions you’ve already asked, and answered. It isn’t just about what’s moral, but what’s feasible. Whether the gemtechs, or a gemtech, are starting to turn into the kind of organisation we could actually stand to work with. Herran being at Bel’Natur gives us access, leverage, and a test case.’

  ‘You want me to assess the shift in the corporate culture of Bel’Natur.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What makes you think I’ll find out enough just from going along with Herran?’

  ‘Because you being allowed to poke around and talk to people and discover what you need to is going to be part of the price.’

  He sucked his breath in sharply, as the full extent of what she was proposing unfolded before him. ‘She’ll hate that.’

  ‘Yes she will. But she’ll do it, because she’ll hate the alternative more.’

  Eli nodded, acknowledging the point, accepting the mission, and aware once again of being subtly, gently manipulated. She had given him many reasons to say yes and none to say no; and no basis whatsoever for the latent sense of unease that coiled at the back of his brain. There was no reason, none at all, to think there was more to this task than he was being told. The implications he could see were quite enough to take his breath away. They had the potential to remake the world. And yet he felt he stood on the edge of a precipice, and could see only a little way down.

  12

  The director of the genestock archive was convincingly baffled. ‘But we haven’t had a security breach,’ he said again. ‘How can you be here to investigate something that hasn’t happened?’

  ‘If our investigation confirms it hasn’t then we’ll be out of your way just as quickly as we can, Dr Chang. But it has been reported to the police that quarantined genestock has disappeared from within this facility. I sincerely hope that proves not to be the case, but I’m sorry to say that we cannot simply take your word for it.’

  One of the other two men in the room shifted and made a sound in his throat. He stood to the side of Chang, facing Sharon and the detective she’d conscripted from data forensics, and was already proving to be a pain in the arse.