Sandpaper Kiss

by Angel Wedge

  Faulkner had experimented on his daughter, that much was clear. But if Lucretia’s words could be trusted, if what Faulkner had told her was true, he wasn’t using her on some mad quest for fame. The letters from Barishkov – clearly more closely linked to this project than anyone else on the Oversight Committee realised – seemed to imply that Lucretia was an integral part of their research. A vaccine was already in production at a facility on the other side of the world when Faulkner took his daughter from the hospital. The whole purpose of this lab was to cure the girl without having to wait for years of government-mandated animal testing. That almost made me doubt my mission; a doctor breaking the rules in a last, desperate attempt to save his daughter’s life was a world away from the mad scientist who would experiment on his own flesh and blood.

  But then I remembered the torment of the animals downstairs, and I knew that whatever the reason it had been started, this work couldn’t be allowed to continue. And even if he wanted to cure his daughter, I had to wonder what had been wrong with her. Had he somehow caused this condition by his experiments on her, like the media said? Or by testing experimental drugs on her mother? Was his determination to cure her at all costs just a guilt trip, or did I have to believe that here was a doting father who would have been able to save a girl’s life if it hadn’t been for the police snapping at his heels the whole way? I didn’t know, but I could at least be sure this was something the world needed to see. There wasn’t enough information to tell me what had really happened, and half of it was filtered through the naïveté of a child’s narrative, but maybe we should at least try to put a human face on the mad scientist the media was presenting us with. If we knew why he’d done these terrible things, to his own family and then to so many animals, then it might be easier to get a better understanding of what could be gained from dissecting his research.

  I was starting to stumble down the path that Paul wanted, and quickly stopped myself. But then I realised that would make me almost as bad as my brother. I said his science had no value because he picked things that would support his existing opinions rather than following the facts, and now I’d considered discarding evidence just because it agreed with him. I resolved right then to think about what I was reporting. If the evidence in front of me said I should change my opinion, then I would.

  I could hear people talking outside the room. I closed the diary softly and pressed my ear against the door to better hear them. As I did, I looked down and was glad to see I’d remembered to lock the door earlier. This room was preserved exactly as it had been when the girl left, so I just had to hope that the security teams wouldn’t think to come in here.

  I couldn’t make out most of the words, but I heard my name. It could have just been a coincidence, but a minute later the other person said it. They knew I was responsible for all the specimens escaping, and that meant I had to leave the facility as soon as possible. If they found me, they’d take away my camera and my phone, and all the pictures I’d taken would be destroyed. Without evidence the mainstream media could follow the government’s requests and paint me as just another crackpot conspiracy theorist. I was the only person capable of showing the public what had really happened here, so I had to make my report as soon as possible.

  My phone still had no signal, though. In the labs, maybe the bulk of the cliff itself was between me and the transmitter in the communications centre. But I was surely high enough in the building now that I should have been within range. It was possible that it had been turned off. They didn’t want me – or anyone else – to be able to get data out of Lucretia Falls until they had contained the current situation. That left me with two options to consider. I could head to the comms room and use their broadcast equipment, which would be a lot easier if I knew how to get to that little tower. It was likely to be guarded too, if their worry was me sending a message. The other choice was to hit the jungle, try to reach Sante Benedicté. I knew I’d have to chance it, regardless of the danger.

  If I could get near the city, I’d have a cell signal even if I was stopped at the gates. That was all I needed, I could call back to the office and send my pictures home. What would happen when I ran into the military forces there was another matter altogether, and I might not even survive to get home. Paul had done some complex manoeuvring to get me in here, but I had no idea where anybody’s loyalties really lay. My first arrival in Sante Benedicté hadn’t gone at all how I might have hoped.

  Chapter 10 — A Long Journey

  Travelling out to this jungle nation had been pretty comfortable, but it probably wasn’t up to the standards Paul had come to expect. He must have been horrified when he was sent out here, and I wondered what deal there had been between him and Senator Carling to make him accept the job.

  The window beside my seat had a visible crack, which made me nervous even though my inner scientist knew it wasn’t at any risk of breaking. These days it was probably reinforced with some kind of plastic film behind the acetate, and even if it blew out there was no serious danger to the plane or its crew. It was a tiny craft, from a range that had been replaced years before in civilised parts of the world, but it was a good deal more comfortable than many I’d been on when visiting the world’s trouble spots.

  This time, I was travelling first class because John was picking up the bill. I’d been sufficiently distracted by Paul’s demands for my help that I’d failed to avoid a meeting with our older brother, who’d asked me to go to the same remote country and report on the same situation, though the slant he wanted me to put on the facts was quite the opposite. In the end, I’d realised the only way I could get any peace was to agree to one of their demands. I had so little time to prepare that it had worked out easier to say ‘yes’ to both.

  Paul wanted me to go to the Lucretia Falls facility because he wanted to use my reputation to spread his own story. John wanted my help because he thought Paul might help me get a pass to get through the lab security, and he didn’t know anyone else who had a way in. It was hard to choose between them when I was pretty sure neither of them would like the story I planned to write. In the end, I had accepted John’s cash to get down there. First class on a plane like this meant a tiny folding table I could spread out my files on, and more attentive attendants to bring food and drink during a last-minute study session. Then once the flight was booked, I’d gone to Paul’s office and said I wanted to get into the lab. I explained I wouldn’t be writing the story he wanted, but couched it in terms where he could assume it was just a perfunctory declaration of media independence if he really wanted to believe I was on his side. Clearly I couldn’t go as both a reporter and his representative, that wouldn’t look good. So he got an ally on the Ethical Technology subcommittee to put my name on the list, at the same time granting me a free pass to publish without his veto.

  I wondered if either of them really trusted me as much as they seemed to. Maybe they thought I would be loyal to family, or maybe they were convinced I’d agree with their side of the debate once I’d actually seen what was going on out there. Maybe they were just playing me, and there were schemes behind the scenes that I wasn’t even aware of. I couldn’t fight that, but I could do my best to ensure the truth came out for the sake of all the animals.

  So I had three different folders of documents to look at during the flight. The first one out of my bag was the official visitor information pack, a set of carefully constructed press releases detailing exactly what the Lucretia Falls Oversight Committee wanted me to report. I knew what to expect, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul had managed to slip in some secret instructions. Maybe something he actually wanted me to follow, or maybe something he thought might influence my report in less direct ways. It was always hard to tell with him, so I put that folder to one side for now and reached for the next.

  This one I’d started compiling myself, then asked Bernice and Ted to help me out when it became clear that a week wasn’t long enough for the level of research I neede
d. The folder contained just about everything the mainstream media would have missed. Reports from older newspapers, carefully cross-referenced by the denizens of obscure websites and even usenet discussion groups. It was all the information that was out there about Lucretia Falls, including old statements that had since been changed or retracted, as well as what a vast number of people around the world thought about the situation. Despite the references to alien landing sites, and experiments to recreate dinosaurs or turn the governments of the world into lizardmen, it was probably the most accurate of the three sets of information. While I couldn’t rely on it to contain facts, I would be sure that most of the articles were written by people who really believed what they were saying. It would tell me what the public thought was going on, and that could be a lot more useful than just knowing what either group of politicians or their spin doctors wanted me to think. That folder too, I set to one side. I needed to know what people suspected, however crazy, in case I could find any evidence that would support those theories. So that one would be the last one to go through again, making sure all the rumours were fresh in my mind after we changed planes at Oimbawa.

  The final file was a gleaming royal blue, and the folder coated with some kind of faux leather binding to give the impression of an old book. It matched the large format Bible in John’s office, even the title embossed on the front in the same gilt type. I suspected that somewhere in his suite of luxury offices he had a special printer for making these things. It was easy to imagine that handing me documents in this form was symbolic of something, that he thought it might add a little to his reputation. I expected this one to be about as accurate as the Oversight Committee’s folder, but supporting a different perspective and laced through with references to God and Hell, as a reminder that John’s church is the sole arbiter of moral certainty for so many people.

  Although he’d paid for my trip, I considered this briefing the least important of the three. Paul might have some influence to get me pulled out of the facility if he found out I’d done something that didn’t suit his plans, and obviously the truth was the highest priority. I was already outside John’s influence, but I needed to at least understand what his people thought was important.

  It was pretty much the same situation I’d gathered from the news. An American scientist, disgraced and unemployed since his firing from a major pharmaceutical company, had travelled out into the jungle and recruited, among others, a Baltic psychopath who had a price on his head after furnishing a terrorist group with biological weapons. I’d have to check up on that at some point, because it separated Dr Barishkov from the group of scientists to be an important figure in his own right. I couldn’t believe the UN would have kept him alive in that case, though. I made a note and slipped it into the file, reminding me to check what the man’s convictions were actually for as soon as I had an Internet connection again.

  The scientists had set up a secret lab in the middle of the rainforest, where nobody would think to look for them. They’d carried out illegal research there, and the lab had been shut down by a coalition of world governments. The church didn’t seem to care that this had been a unilateral coalition that other governments were pressured into voicing support for the Americans after the fact, or that nobody was quite clear whether the tiny nations the lab was in actually had laws against animal testing of whatever the new drugs were. They didn’t even care that the precise nature of the research was being kept closely under wraps by the United Nations.

  Most of the media had reported animal experiments, but there was no more detail than that. John’s report was just as vague. Were they using genetic engineering to create unnatural animals? Or were they torturing normal creatures with tests to change them? Some reports even said they were conducting human experiments, using local tribes who had no connection with the outside world. I couldn’t believe that, and none of the serious news channels seemed to have run with it as a possibility. There were a few people out there who wanted to believe that it was all about Faulkner fleeing the country after he’d killed his wife and daughter, and the experiments weren’t such a big deal. That one I discarded out of hand, because if the situation was all about crimes the man had committed in the United States, then there wouldn’t be any need for the media circus around his lab; it would have been emptied out and demolished when the troops first arrived.

  The big debate now was still on how the specimens in the lab should be treated. The file said Faulkner and Barishkov had been incarcerated. If they believed that, I immediately knew that John had been honest about not having any of his people on-site. Now the lab was run by an entirely new team sent in by the UN. Their duty was to keep the place in some kind of order until a decision could be made. Virtually every member of the public worldwide was agreed that creatures tormented through years of experimentation shouldn’t be subjected to more of the same, regardless of their origins. Some thought that the poor creatures should be allowed to live out their natural lifespans in peace, and the lab wound down once they were all gone. That was to position of most mainstream religious organisations, but the main problem with their solution was the cost. Nobody was sure who would pay for the number of people necessary to supervise that. Would it be Faulkner’s estate, or the local governments, or the American military who had brought the situation out into the open?

  Others wanted to see the unnatural creatures killed, though John’s writers did their best to play down this argument. The public called them The Hellfire Brigade, preachers saying that these animals hadn’t been created by God and didn’t have souls, so they should be destroyed immediately. Their view was also supported by some politicians, regardless of religion, who didn’t see a few hundred animals as being worth the vast cost of keeping the facility running. They had a sizeable number of supporters, but in the eyes of everyone else they were the most extreme of the various interest groups. As strange as it might seem, though, I found myself forced to agree with them.

  I didn’t hate the things created by that lab. But even before I got there, I was sure about what I’d find. As well as oppressed people, I’d visited any number of labs to uncover and report illegal and inhumane experiments. They’d been tortured so much, I doubted any of the creatures could return to a normal life. Hybrids of two species would have physiology so far from anything natural, they must be in constant pain even without the experiments. The only thing I could feel for them was pity, and a disgust I tried my hardest to suppress. For creatures whose very existence was torture, then the only ethical action would be to allow them to die in peace. It was a terrible situation, but I couldn’t see any other acceptable way out of it.

  John’s church disagreed. They professed the sanctity of all life; that as living creatures, even genetic engineering experiments had a right to live for as long as they could. Sometimes I wished that some of the people spouting those things could see the conditions that lab animals were forced to live in; the damage that they’d have to endure for the rest of their lives. I couldn’t believe anyone could be so cruel that they’d force an animal to live on like that just because of some religious precept.

  John’s followers put a whole lot of stock in the philosophy of “Right to Life”. Even if it’s an artificial creature, even if it’s something that should never have existed, even if life is nothing but torture, they think keeping things alive is the greatest good. I couldn’t quite see that myself.

  John’s platform was incredibly popular, though. Unlike most of the other protesters who wanted the creatures to live, he had offered a solution to cover the financial costs. I could see the governments would go for that, especially if it looked like the public was going to find out what was going on at the facility. Maybe that meant my eldest brother really did want me to find the truth. If I reported a humanitarian disaster, tortured animals and all the public backlash that would cause, the world governments would jump at any chance to hand the hot potato to someone else.

  The file was mostly fi
lled with biblical quotes, and photos of orphaned pets that probably would benefit from a good home to recover. I doubted I’d find much of that in the jungle. They really didn’t have that much detail on what was out there to base their campaign on. There was also a slim leaflet detailing the church’s proposal to keep the base running, which I read through three times before I spotted the details missing between the lines. The facility would be converted to a multi-purpose faith-supported outreach centre. It would be both a safe haven for the poor, abused animals, a hospital for the local people (as the lab equipment was presumed to include a good deal of medical gear), and a staging post of missionaries setting out for those tiny nations. It would be funded by John’s church, which meant it was almost a free ride for the bureaucrats if the swell of public opinion came down in favour of keeping the animals alive.

  John had inserted personal notes, too. If it didn’t interfere with my quest to report the animals’ plight, he would be very grateful if I could supply him with some notes on the types and condition of equipment currently installed at the facility, specifically anything that would be of use to a working hospital. Of course, without getting someone in there, he would have a big grey area in his proposed budget. I was the logical choice for three reasons: I was a scientist, so presumably able to evaluate the equipment better than most journalists; I had a reputation of being an honest crusader who only cared about the truth, so if I was caught poking around they’d never figure out what John was after; and my brother knew that in reality, I was only so focused on the truth when it came to vulnerable people and animals. I had no emotional investment in reporting fraud if the only loser was some faceless corporation’s bottom line.