Regeneration

by Stephanie Saulter

  “Boss,” he said, “good. I was just coming to find you.”

  “Anything new?”

  “Nothing from the search teams. Fischer’s still silent, but the others are singing like the proverbial. It looks like his instructions to them were timed to capitalize on specific incidents: the turbine sabotage, the Estuary Preservation petition, the TideFair, the first stage of the illness when it was thought to be contagious, the second stage, when it was identified as a toxin, and so on. They all maintain he never told them that he knew what was going to happen next, but they’re all pretty certain he did.”

  “Great: informed conjecture from a bunch of two-bit criminals.” She sighed. “I believe them, but I don’t know if a jury will feel the same way. Do we have anything useful on him at all?”

  “No. Well . . . no.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t see how it could be useful—it’s curious more than anything. It’s just that he’s got a very tenuous link with a very old case of ours.”

  “Which one?”

  “Zavcka Klist and the genestock theft—remember that whole crazy business from eight years ago?” Achebe saw her expression change, misunderstood, and grinned. “I know: our first. At least we don’t have Rhys Morgan trying to get himself killed this time.”

  Sharon worked to keep her voice steady. “So what’s Fischer’s connection?”

  “He doesn’t have one, at least, not with the case. But you know this weird cult that’s sprung up since then? Those idiots who think Klist knows the secret to immortality? The ones who think she deserves all kinds of exemptions on account of it?” He shook his head at the foolishness of some humans. “It looks like he’s a member.”

  20

  Eli Walker gazed steadily into the tiny round aperture of a vidcam as he spoke his name. The security panel was discreetly set into the side wall of the grandly pillared entrance to the townhouse. Glancing back from the porch as he waited to be acknowledged, he thought that the building, like the elegant square within which it stood, must be at least three hundred years old. The heavy paneled wooden door with its round brass knob stood at the top of four broad granite steps that led up from the flagstoned pavement; across the street, a matching ribbon of pavement fronted an ornate wrought-iron fence, behind which trees as ancient and tall as the six-story townhouses were shedding their leaves in silent red and brown drifts. Beneath the trees he glimpsed patches of lawn between evergreen shrubs, winding gravel paths punctuated by slatted wooden benches, a central fountain, and the spiky tendrils of a rose garden. Were it not for the state-of-the-art entry panel and modern vehicles parked on the street he could almost have imagined that he’d stepped into a vid documentary from the pre-Syndrome era, or even before, into a sepia-tinted still from the dawn of photography, when horse-drawn carriages conveyed their wealthy owners along this very street and up to this very door.

  A chime sounded from the panel and the blue rectangle of the scanner was softly illuminated as a polite male voice instructed Eli to confirm his identity. He rested the fingertips of his right hand inside the blue border; the light brightened, flashed, and the door unlocked with an almost imperceptible thunk.

  “Take the elevator up to the fifth floor, please, Dr. Walker,” said the voice, and Eli pushed the door open and stepped through into a hallway with an ornate staircase, an unmanned reception desk and a small elevator at the rear. Though it was no more than an empty entrance hall in which no one would ever spend more than a few seconds, there was none of the scruffiness or air of benign neglect that often clung to such places; every surface was bright and gleaming, the floors were spotless, the potted plants were as jungle-fresh as if they had just been delivered. He had spent years of his life in apartments that were considerably less inviting.

  The elevator opened to reveal an equally well-appointed hallway on the top floor, with light flooding in through a window that faced onto the square. There was no grand staircase this time; instead a closed door presumably led to an enclosed stairwell. On the opposite wall another door was opening as he approached.

  “Good morning, Dr. Walker.” The man was in late middle age, bald save for a fuzz of gray hair across the back of his skull, and neatly dressed in the kind of sober, dark, nondescript garments that made Eli immediately think uniform, although they were of the best quality and there was no insignia of any kind. “I am Marcus. Please come in.”

  He stood aside as Eli entered, then silently closed the door behind him and just as silently took his coat and hung it in a closet in the hall. Eli surveyed the rich, polished wood of the floors and furniture, the bowl of fresh roses that gently scented the air, the paintings—not vidart, but genuine acrylics and watercolors and oils—hanging on the walls and tried to think if he had ever before been anywhere that evoked so clearly the tastes of a different era. The place lacked the self-consciousness of an interactive museum diorama or the self-importance of eminent old university chambers he had known, or the impersonality of either. Nor did it have their sense of sacrosanct antiquity, for the modern world lived here too: in the earset Marcus wore, and the outline of a tablet in the slide-pocket of his shirt; in the photosensitive glass of the tall windows and the baskets of engineered aerial plants that reduced humidity and cleansed the air; in the small screens of the household-management system discreetly tucked away here and there, and the large one for stream-feeds that he glimpsed mounted on the wall of a luxurious sitting room as he was ushered past it and into Zavcka Klist’s study.

  She was seated in an upright chair upholstered in quilted leather. He suspected it had been made for her, so perfectly did it conform to the lines of her tall frame. In front of the chair was an elegant console of engineered wood with an angled reading screen, a separate input panel for more comfortable note-taking, and a dock for her tablet. There were a few other leather-covered chairs, a couple of small tables, and several strategically placed reading lights. The narrow window had a view into the thinning canopy of the trees across the street.

  But what struck him most forcefully was not the vista, nor the expensive furniture: it was the shelves of printed books that lined the walls.

  He knew at a glance that they were neither replicas nor some carefully contrived selection put together for appearance’s sake; there was too much variety in their sizes and colors and bindings, and many had the cracked spines of volumes that have been read and reread. Nor were they in temperature-controlled cases, as they would have been if their monetary value were the collector’s highest priority. They just sat on the packed shelves, in rows and in stacks, obviously there to be touched and taken down on a whim. It was a bibliophile’s fantasy.

  Tearing his eyes away, Eli focused on his host.

  She had not bothered with the pretense of ignoring him when he was shown in, as she might have done in the old days; she had looked up from the screen at once, though she did not immediately move. For a moment she merely regarded him, chin propped on her bridged fingers, elbows on the console; then she pushed the unit aside, sliding it away noiselessly, and rose to her feet. She was wearing a crisp white shirt with an upright, open collar, and for the barest of moments, as her hands dropped and he caught sight of her throat, he thought that a snake was coiled around her neck.

  “Dr. Walker.”

  “Ms. Klist.” She had not offered her hand, and he did not extend his.

  “I see you appreciate my library.”

  “It’s impressive,” he said. “It’s rare to see this many bound books outside of a museum or university.”

  “I imagine so—I’ve had these a very long time. Most were new when I bought them, or when they were given to me.” She nodded to Marcus, still waiting silently by the door, and he bowed slightly and disappeared, leaving it slightly ajar. She turned to contemplate the shelves herself, her arms folded across her chest. Eli knew from experience that the key to maintaining a sense of equilibrium with Zavcka Klist was not to be intimidated by her haughtiness; he decided to tr
eat the gesture as an invitation instead of a snub and he moved to stand next to her and surveyed the shelves himself, thinking that this was oddly both like and unlike the Zavcka he remembered, or the altered woman that Aryel had described. She had never pretended friendliness toward him any more than she was doing now, but neither had she ever before been conversational, or offered an insight into her own pleasures and influences. He had never known what she cared for, beside herself. Perhaps there was less to hide now, he thought, although it did not follow that she would be less fierce in the defense of what secrets remained.

  Still, the initial moves were, if not warm, not openly hostile either. And when a subject this enigmatic provided an opportunity, one did not pass it up.

  “Given to you,” he repeated. “By your father?”

  “Some were gifts from my father—this one, and that. Most of those up there.” She touched the top corner of one volume, lifted out another and handed it to him, indicated a row of similarly bound books on a top shelf. “This one was a keepsake from my tutor.” She passed him another hardback volume. “There were so few students then, because of the Syndrome, and consequently many subjects were taught one-on-one, or not at all. And this”—she bent and pulled out a badly battered paperback—“was from one of my college classmates. I was supposed to return it, but she got ill and so—” She shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  Eli studied the books in his hands. From her father she had received (Un)Natural Selection: Beyond Evolution, from her tutor An Incomplete Education, and from her long-dead friend, The Time Traveler’s Wife. There was, he thought, a world of meaning in those titles, as well as in her decision to show them to him. He doubted they had been selected randomly.

  A sound at the door made him look up. Marcus was bearing a tray, which he placed on one of the low tables set between plush leather chairs. He straightened up with an inquiring expression.

  “Thank you, Marcus.” Zavcka glanced at another book she had half pulled out, shoved it back into place, and strode past Eli. “I take it you still prefer coffee, Dr. Walker?”

  “I do, thank you.” He wondered how she had known that—he had never before had coffee, or indeed, anything much besides harsh words with Zavcka Klist. But back then she would have made it her business to gather as many details as possible about the likes and dislikes of the people whom she expected to manipulate, blackmail, or negotiate with. Some of those details would be petty and some less so; she would have forgotten none of them. This was, he assumed, a reminder that, however far she might have fallen, she still possessed a great deal of information and a modicum of power.

  “Please, have a seat.” She gestured to the armchair opposite as, with confirmation that nothing else was needed, Marcus departed silently, this time closing the door behind him. Zavcka busied herself pouring. They made a companionable picture, Eli thought, sitting across from each other, chatting about books with the sleek stainless-steel coffee service between them. It occurred to him that she might be constructing the scenario for Marcus’s benefit, although he could not imagine what domestic intrigue might underlie such a stratagem.

  He sipped, savoring the rich, bitter warmth of the coffee; he’d’ve been willing to bet it was neither tank-grown nor tent-reared but imported from lush tropical mountains halfway around the world.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” he said after a moment. “I was pleasantly surprised.”

  “Did Aryel tell you I was going to say no?”

  “She didn’t get the impression you were inclined to say yes.”

  Zavcka looked slightly, cynically amused. “I wasn’t when she mentioned it, or when I first received the request. I thought you and I had seen quite enough of each other. But the abstract you attached was interesting; I found that I kept returning to it. So much of what happened . . . People today have no idea what things were actually like. And it’s not as though I could write about it.” She waved a languid hand at the absurdity of the idea.

  “You could, if you wanted to.”

  “Not if I wanted to be taken seriously. And I’m not allowed noms de plume, at least for the foreseeable future.” She held the cup between the tips of her fingers and sipped delicately, frowning. “That’s beside the point, really. No amount of time is going to turn me into a writer, or an academic, so unless I talk to someone like you, everything I know will remain inside my head.” She shook it, as though irritated by the baggage there. “I’ve had a lot of requests for interviews over the years, Dr. Walker. Most were from two-bit charlatans happy to write endless treatises on what I’m supposed to know or think or have done. I refused to speak to any of them then and I’m certainly not going to be speaking to them now.”

  “They’d be stunned if they knew you were speaking to me.”

  Again that hint of wry amusement. “I hope so. With any luck it’ll shut them up.” She looked him straight in the face. “I want to be absolutely clear on this: the research you’re doing isn’t about me, correct? You are interested only in my perspective as a witness. Do I have that right?”

  “You do.”

  “Good. I’ve witnessed a great deal and I can tell it to you, because you and I have a history that means no one will assume either fear or favor. You have an unimpeachable reputation, and I have a lot of time on my hands.”

  “I understand.”

  He was not sure that he did, although she sounded sincere. The notion of a Zavcka with no agenda, merely looking to while away the long, lonely days reminiscing, was too preposterous to entertain; there must be a scheme afoot, and he was not naïve enough to imagine himself exempt from it. Maybe she hoped her confidences would lure him into letting slip something about the fate of the child she had created and then lost? Perhaps this was part of whatever Byzantine strategy lay behind the recent financial fluctuations Aryel had noted at Bel’Natur—or maybe it stretched even further than that.

  It wasn’t clear to him or Aryel how volatility in the company she had once led and still had huge shareholdings in could benefit Zavcka, unless she had some plan to destabilize it now and capitalize on the chaos later. Whether, or by what means, she might be behind a conspiracy against Thames Tidal Power was even more obscure, and as they talked, Eli became ever more dubious of that possibility. But he constantly reminded himself not to be lulled by her apparent quiescence: they did not operate on the same timescale as Zavcka Klist, and if he had ever been inclined to forget that fact, the brief tour through her century-old book collection was a sharp reminder. She had been alive for a hundred and twenty-six years already and might live centuries longer. She could wait lifetimes for a single stratagem to bear fruit.

  At least he knew where he stood with her. Even if she lied, he would learn something.

  They talked for more than an hour, and when Eli went over his notes later, he realized that he didn’t think she had lied—or at least, not much. Her memory was prodigious, and while she revealed almost nothing about her personal life, there was enough anecdotal detail of people, places, and events to lend credence to the recollections she did share. He’d quickly fallen into the rhythm of the interview, discovering to his surprise that Zavcka Klist was possessed of a sly wit and an acid-tinged sense of humor.

  “If I didn’t know who she was,” he said to Aryel later, “if I hadn’t witnessed for myself some of the things she’d done, I think I might almost have ended up liking her.”

  “It’s one of Zavcka’s tragedies,” Aryel replied. “She is so almost likable. It wouldn’t have taken much: a handful of different decisions when she was younger; a mother who lived; a father who loved but didn’t worship her; friends to call her out on her arrogance.” A chill breeze gusted, scattering leaves and sending stray wisps of dark hair across her face. She shook her head and blew at the strands to clear them, hands too full of fruit to brush them away. The raised vegetable beds in the roof garden on the top of Maryam House were almost barren this late in the year, but the espaliered and cordoned fruit trees had not
yet dropped the last of their bounty. Eli carefully placed his handfuls of pears into the basket at their feet, reached out and tucked the unruly tendrils behind Aryel’s ear and relieved her of the remaining apples.

  “I hate to say this, but so much about her makes me think of Eve. The expressions on her face when she’s telling a story, the way she commandeers a line of inquiry. I wish I didn’t, but—” He shrugged helplessly.

  “I felt the same when I saw her. Did she ask?”

  “About Eve? Not yet. I reckon that’ll be for the next visit.”

  It had been possibly the most astonishing moment of the interview: the discovery that Zavcka Klist was willing—keen, even—to repeat it. “Believe it or not, I have another meeting,” she’d said almost sheepishly, when Marcus had tapped on the door to tell her that Mr. Crawford had arrived. “Old habit. I must remember to ration my visitors.”

  “There’s a great deal more I’d like to ask you, if you don’t mind me coming back sometime.”

  “I don’t mind. Let me know when you want to come.” She’d shrugged, sardonic. “I’ll be here.”

  They walked out to the hall together, where she bid him a crisp farewell and took delivery of a man of around Eli’s age, although his clothes and grooming pegged him as some sort of executive rather than an itinerant professor. There was a peculiar disparity between the almost obsequious diffidence with which he greeted Zavcka and the naked curiosity in the look he threw back at Eli as she led him toward the study. Were it not for that odd moment of discordance, the man would have been entirely unmemorable; as it was, Eli’s own curiosity was aroused.

  “Mr. Crawford?” he murmured as Marcus showed him to the door. He half expected the servant not to reply, and there was indeed a moment’s pause before he did.

  “Dhahab Investments,” Marcus murmured back. “An adviser to Ms. Klist.” He held the door open for Eli. “Good afternoon, Dr. Walker.”