Sandpaper Kiss

by Angel Wedge

  A lot of people in this industry would have been delighted to get an interview with Reverend Jenner. He was a high profile celebrity, the moral compass of thousands of devout followers who could parrot every one of his diatribes. He’d forged his own belief structure out of the best bits from the doctrine of a dozen major churches, and so become the voice of faith and ethical guidance to so many people who considered themselves Christians even though his TV show was as close as they ever came to a church. Since he’d started a high profile campaign for the church to retake its rightful place in deciding the law, the major news stations would have given anything for an interview. The man was popular, famous, and influential – but also notoriously bad at showing up for any event that didn’t further his cause. His press coverage was nearly always him giving a speech, and the opportunity to actually ask the Reverend questions would be a godsend to any struggling journo.

  He was also a sneaky, manipulative jerk whose PR strategy seemed to be heavily focused around making sure nobody ever found out the truth about his delinquent childhood. There were so many secrets that would surely have earned him an eternal place in hell if his own brimstone and damnation preaching was to be believed. But for all his flaws, and all the things he’d done in the past, he was still my brother. I wasn’t quite sure yet if that was enough reason to meet him or not. Maybe by the time I got home I’d have reached a decision.

  “We need to talk,” that was the problem. It was a message that always spelled trouble. From my parents, or from Paul after they were gone, those four words always meant they’d discovered some misdemeanour. Even if I hadn’t done anything wrong, it always made me worry that there was some mistake I hadn’t even noticed. From John it was different. When I was a kid, if he’d said “We need to talk” it almost certainly meant he wanted to borrow my pocket money for just a drop more booze. As I grew into my teens, he’d stopped hiding bottles around the house as he started to experiment with drugs. Then he’d asked for money less often, because his new habit was less likely to be anything I could afford. After he left home, I heard he’d gotten all the addictions out of his system and taken a hit of God instead. I was almost certain that meant he didn’t touch drugs or booze any more, though with John I knew I’d never be sure.

  But still, “We need to talk” was a pronouncement of doom. When I was younger I’d never bothered to hide from John when I did something wrong. He’d always done far worse, and he didn’t care about anyone else’s misdemeanours. Then he’d got all pious, and he forgave his own past transgressions, but “we need to talk” started to mean a sermon on how I should follow his path. He hadn’t tried that in a while though, so maybe now those words had another meaning. I’d only had this job for a few months, and already he’d be calling on me when he wanted a sympathetic voice in the liberal media. I didn’t know for sure, but I was almost certain that was what he had in mind by the time I arrived, hair bedraggled and with clothes soaked in sweat, at Heathrow.

  When you saw Reverend Jenner, you’d see a serene grin that practically radiated inner peace, and eyes that occasionally flashed with hellfire when he saw injustice being done. But when I looked at those eyes, I saw the echoes of my crazy oldest brother bucking to get off the rails, pushing the limits to find out just how much he could get away with. I remembered the joyful grin that made his eyes sparkle, and the way he’d convinced me to go along with some outrageous scheme. He was after political power just as much as Paul now, except he promised redemption and truth instead of technological growth and a stable economy. And despite all we’d been through together, maybe because of it, I could never imagine him being responsible with that kind of authority.

  I was off the plane and walking into the massive terminal building when I finally realised that thought was as good as a decision. I didn’t trust John despite the family connection, so I should avoid meeting with him. I’d go by a different route from London. Maybe I’d just lounge around town for a few days and get immersed in the culture. I wasn’t usually too much into the conscious style of the British club scene, but it would have been very different from the Laos nightlife and I knew I’d appreciate the change. By the time John’s minders got wind of my change of schedule, it would be too late to reschedule their impromptu meeting. He could find somebody else to do his dirty work this time.

  It didn’t quite happen like that, because as soon as I stepped through the gate at Heathrow I saw a beanpole figure striding towards me. His face was all too familiar, the bone structure so similar to my own, though maybe a little more delicate. He had the unnaturally brilliant green eyes that had been passed down through our family for generations, though somehow I’d managed to miss out on that part of the Jenner legacy. Where Paul differed from me most, though, was the attention he paid to his appearance, as well as that of his aides. Slicked back hair gleamed bronze under the neon lights, probably set by a professional stylist an hour before the meeting. To me a sharp suit was just a suit, but for him it was no doubt a unique creation of some designer or label that he was holding up as a pillar of all-American values this month. He called out to me, though I couldn’t hear him over the crowds in the terminal building, and as he waved me over he flashed his trademark dazzling smile for the benefit of any cameras that happened to catch him in this unguarded moment.

  As he got closer, showing off an exaggerated charm that I was pretty sure wasn’t for my benefit, I scanned the room for any exit where I could pretend I hadn’t seen him. John was the one who’d gone from crazy to power-hungry, but Paul had grown up in his shadow and turned to the power of politics and manipulation to get what he wanted. They both needed to be in control, but Paul had been that way for as long as I could remember, and was so convinced that he was right that he couldn’t tolerate any disagreement. I didn’t want to talk to him either, even to see why he was here.

  It was a busy room, with people bustling everywhere in all kinds of moods and fashions. I wasn’t staff here and I wasn’t getting back on the plane now, so I had to walk roughly towards Paul’s insincere smile. Behind him were four men who were very clearly not together, pointedly paying no attention to each other while they all kept their gaze darting between me and my brother. They wore identical suits that wouldn’t look out of place on business travellers, except for jackets that had a slightly unusual cut to make it easier to conceal a shoulder holster. Expertly tailored, though one guy’s jacket was open enough that I could see the guns weren’t in evidence today. They probably couldn’t get the permits to carry them on British soil at such short notice. They had identical dark glasses, too. Probably some high tech material that hid their eyes from the world without impairing their vision under relatively low light indoors. I didn’t see the earpieces, so their scientists must have made those more discreet.

  Everything about these four – no, six, there were two more on the far side of the crowd – was so nondescript that you wouldn’t be able to pick them out in a crowd. I could only pick them out because nobody else in the crowd was making anything like as much effort to be unmemorable. Put together, every detail screamed secret service. Maybe my brother had managed to make even more powerful enemies in my absence, or maybe he’d just grown used to having a bodyguard around him.

  “Mark!” he called, showing a trace of an accent now. He travelled a lot, but he sounded almost Australian now, but flatter and without the nasal quality. I couldn’t tell if he’d spent a month or two in some obscure country to pick that up, or if his voice coaches had calculated the accent that would provoke maximum trust from the maximum number of voters. “It’s so good to see you again, what are the chances of that?”

  He reached out with both arms as if to offer a manly hug, and I automatically prepared myself for his crushing embrace. But at the last minute the gesture turned into a firm handshake. Maybe some focus group had decided that hugging was too gay for a man who might one day be running the country? Right now, I wished his think-tanks would have told him that involving
me in his overwrought schemes wasn’t a good idea. He should have known without asking that I’d say no, we were both scientists in college and we’d got the same training about looking at the evidence. But rather than uniting us, the scientific method was just an example of why I could never really trust either of my brothers.

  It’s easy enough, you look at the evidence and it tells you what the right answer is. Paul used it differently; he’d pick a result that benefited him, the laws he wanted to pass or the company who could pay him most, and then he’d go looking for evidence that supported it. Anything that told him he was in the wrong was simply swept under the rug or paid to disappear.

  Nothing annoyed me more than my brothers’ mad dive into politics. I knew that in a way, I was reacting to that by becoming a crusading journalist, biting at the corrupt system that supported me. Does that make me a politico too? I hope not.

  “Hi Paul,” I gave a fake smile, he must have known I wouldn’t be pleased to see him, “Listen, I got another flight to catch, so–”

  “Mark, Mark! Don’t worry about that,” he didn’t falter, but led me towards the executive lounge without releasing my hand. He babbled something about taking a few minutes to catch up with family. As we sat down and a couple of suited minions brought cups of cola, I could only see one real upside to this situation: At least it took me away from whatever John was going to ask for.

  * * *

  I’d heard bits and pieces of what was going on at Lucretia Falls already. It was a big event in world news, and with the world becoming more connected even the most remote parts of Laos weren’t far behind the current news. I only knew what I’d overheard discussed in the towns, though, because it seemed counterproductive to keep on reading news from elsewhere while I was actually on a job. I’d heard bits about it before I set off there, but from what Paul told me the situation had only grown more volatile while I was away.

  It was a long time since I’d first seen Doctor Faulkner’s face on the news, and I probably wouldn’t have remembered the story if I hadn’t known a little more than most people when it first broke. But a few months before our meeting in London, the missing Dr Faulkner had reappeared, along with a team of other scientists, many of whom had similar reputations in their home countries. The faces that stood out from the crowd included Dr Igor Barishkov, who the papers claimed had a price on his head if he ever returned to the Baltic States, disgraced European geneticists Petrov and Dorolev, and vocal eugenics proponent Dr Bruce Maxwell.

  Paul showed me newspaper clippings and recorded broadcasts to explain that this mismatched group had been conducting research at a secret lab in the middle of a tiny jungle nation too small for most governments to care about. Illegal research, carrying out terrifying experiments on the indigenous fauna, and if some rumours were to be believed, on the tribal peoples of the area as well. There was no clear story of what exactly they were researching, and mostly the media were content to let people believe whatever nightmares their own imaginations could conjure up. But the world was safe again, because police had stormed the lab and taken control, ending the terrible travesty against nature. People should have been throwing a parade for the heroes who’d done their duty on the day, even if Faulkner himself had died in an unavoidable gun battle.

  The story stunk, I could see that even when I was seeing the identical coverage from all the major channels. That was one more reason to ignore the news while I was working: because I knew all they’d allow to be published would be a manufactured story that had almost no connection to the truth. In this case Paul might be a better source of information, though I had no doubt that when he brought me up to date he’d put his own slant on all the facts in order to get my support.

  He started by parroting what I’d already heard from the news, though with a hidden promise of more information. By the time he got down to the meat of the story, the terminal’s executive lounge was practically deserted. In fact, there was nobody there at all except for me, my brother, and a half dozen of his security minions. The guy bringing our drinks gave him a subtle nod, and then he seemed to accept he was free to tell me the truth. I wish I’d thought ahead enough to have a recording device on me, or even to have turned my phone on, but I hadn’t had any idea this was coming until I saw him.

  The police hadn’t been police. They’d been military; marines to be precise. Some people in the government had been given reason to believe that Barishkov’s research might have had military potential if continued, so had completely ignored normal channels and called in favours from people in other parts of the administration in the hope of being heroes. To the marines, it had seemed reasonable to send troops into a foreign country to seize control of whatever this guy was researching. And that was where the official press statements veered wildly away from the truth: the objective had never been just to shut the lab down. The suspects were all world class scientists, especially biologists, and it was reasonable to believe that between them they might have discovered something truly groundbreaking. But in the wake of the raid, while the media was lauding our military heroes, the negotiating tables at the United Nations had grown more and more hostile. American forces were accused of invading another nation, and one that could never have posed a threat to them.

  One US senator had conceded that they had no business sending police into another country to deal with matters that country had no law against. Then he’d ended his career by saying that was why he’d sent soldiers instead. As well as making an enemy of delegates from the three countries that the Lucretia Falls complex might have been in, he had cut off his support from the Marine Corps as well. There was no record of the exact words he’d used – the only reporter who had any recordings had absent-mindedly misplaced the tape when distracted by a briefcase full of money – but I gathered that there were some situations in which confusing soldiers and marines, or members of the other armed forces, could be considered ignorant or insulting. Even while the situation with the UN was still delicate, there had been a feeding frenzy at home as others raced to take over the disgraced senator’s political assets and bargaining chips.

  Over the last month, the facility at Lucretia Falls had become quite a hot potato. There were several governments trying to claim restitution for the American invasion, all claiming that their maps placed the site clearly within their borders. Along with the Americans and other supposedly disinterested nations, they all wanted access to any useful information the lab’s files might yield. Nobody, though, wanted responsibility for closing down the experiments and the inevitable public outrage. Every possibility could be seen as political suicide for one reason or another, and nobody wanted their head on the chopping block. In the end, a special international task force had been set up to manage the lab until the United Nations could properly decide what was to be done with all the specimens.

  The best that all those management geniuses and spin-doctors could come up with was a committee so that no one person or nation had to take responsibility for their decisions. They called it the Lucretia Falls Oversight Committee, and as Paul told the story I quickly read between the lines to realise it was set up to fail. Whatever they did with the unnatural creatures at that lab, there would be vast numbers of normal people baying for blood. Kill the freaks? That’s wasting research that could save millions of lives, and would no doubt outrage the animal rights front as well. Study them further? That’s validating Faulkner and encouraging others to repeat his crimes. Sooner or later, the truth would come out and everyone on the committee would be a scapegoat for their respective governments. The sacrifice of a few jobs would absolve all the involved governments of blame, so they could go on with their primary duty of robbing the taxpayers blind. The unfortunates assigned to this posting were, therefore, mostly diplomats or scientists chosen on the basis of having annoyed their superiors in some way, rather than any experience relevant to dealing with lifeforms that nobody had ever heard of a month earlier. The whole situation was a train wreck,
and everybody could see that there was another train going full bore at the debris; however it went down, the best outcome possible was a dramatic explosion.

  Among all the alleged experts, there were a small number who had been at Lucretia Falls already. They knew the place, and spoke the language well enough to deal with the locals who worked there. They were mostly scientists who had their own reasons for wanting to work in obscurity, whose research had little to do with Faulkner’s travesty. There was exactly one person on the list who had any knowledge of the monstrous creatures being held in that lab or the techniques that had gone into creating them, and his appointment surprised me more than anything else. Doctor Igor Barishkov was now on the chair of committee, having had his sentence commuted in exchange for helping the United Nations team to clean up a situation he had helped to create. It was justified because he was the world’s leading expert, and the only man capable of doing the job, several draft press releases said. I would have been willing to bet that his previous offences hadn’t been mentioned in anything that had gone out to the public. It seemed that even after reporting from some of the darkest situations in modern history, I still wasn’t cynical enough when it came to predicting the machinations of my own country’s elected representatives.

  The lab was still running, and Barishkov was in charge. It was still to be seen whether he was concerned with completing the jobs he’d been tasked with, or would sell the research results to private concerns at the first opportunity. The United Nations Science, Education, and Culture Organisation – at least according to Paul’s allies on the committee – were pretty confident that the inhuman experiments had been stopped, that wasn’t just a story for the press. But the lab couldn’t be shut down completely because someone had to keep the specimens alive until the UN decided what to do with them, and someone had to keep the lab from being attacked by the area’s savage tribesmen. Killing Faulkner hadn’t changed much out there, and it was clear that Paul wished they’d never even discovered it. The only thing that the attack had changed was putting many more people’s careers on the line ready for when the truth came out.