Beloved Son

by George Turner

  David seized opportunity to marshal them onward. ‘Pollyanna enjoys her life, we believe. And it is “she” by chromosomal definition. She’s very nervous but laughs and sings a lot. We go down here.’

  On the stairs Parker dropped a pace back to mutter to Arthur, ‘What’s your special talent?’

  Arthur was bland. ‘Sleight of hand. Quickness deceives the eye.’

  That was all that was to be got from him – that and the recollection of the tiny flicker of the head which had slipped Raft’s punch in The Lady’s boudoir.

  The second floor of the basement was more like the concrete galleries of the domicile floors, a similar gridiron of corridors and rooms, but more austere. Only functional items disturbed the walls – videophones, fuse-boxes, cupboards with contents incognitoed by symbols instead of words. Not a sound came from behind the closed doors and David’s voice was an intrusion on the bleak air.

  ‘The suites are soundproofed. We work here with live subjects in many cases and the sounds could often be disturbing.’

  Parker’s young men were openly upset by the implications of this and David became defensive. ‘I don’t know what chimerae you are conjuring, but this is an advanced biological laboratory – the most advanced in history – and the pursuit of knowledge is not like the peaceful construction of a work of art, though the end may be similar.’

  Parker glossed drily, ‘You mean that each perfected specimen is produced at the price of a few tormented monsters.’

  ‘That is a most biased recension of my words. We do not practise deliberate cruelties.’

  Raft said suddenly, ‘Doctor Moreau.’

  Only David took the reference. ‘Not so, Commander. I was given that romance during my indoctrinal training as a warning against falsified aims. Gangoil’s business is to produce beings developed to their ultimate capacities, not meaningless sculptures in flesh.’

  They might have accepted his statement of dedication, however disapprovingly, if Arthur had not tossed in sweet poison. ‘Like Pollyanna – the ultimate brainless message runner. Just try to improve on that!’

  David exploded. ‘Shut your poisonous mouth! Who attached you to this party? Get about your sycophant’s business upstairs!’

  Arthur smiled at Parker, openly inviting patronage. ‘I just thought I might come in handy.’

  It was an offer of some sort and Parker accepted it, on the principle of never refusing an ally. ‘Let him stay.’

  Raft watched the play impassively. The clone-brothers seemed perturbed as if they also wondered what Arthur offered. David calmed rapidly against an opposition he could not contest, conceding sulkily that he supposed he must do as he was told.

  Raft intervened. ‘I don’t think so, Doctor. A trouble-making failed experiment has no place here.’ He addressed Arthur, ‘You! Get back upstairs.’

  ‘You,’ suggested Arthur, ‘get stuffed.’

  Raft swept through the screen of clone-brothers.

  Parker bellowed, ‘Be still!’ and the guns appeared.

  Raft halted with his fist rising.

  Parker laid down the law. ‘No violence. And Arthur stays. Understand that I control this party.’

  David shrugged. Arthur nodded appreciatively. The clone-brothers looked mutinous but so far passive. Raft said very quietly, ‘Your guns persuade, but not for ever. What we have to do, you and I and Ian, needs more than a policeman’s expertise.’ His voice strengthened. ‘You will realise yet that I am Gangoil.’ To Arthur he said, ‘You’ve chosen your master, bitch, but he won’t save you. Let’s get on, Doctor David.’

  Parker mulled over the fact that Arthur, with Raft in motion against him, had not observably tensed in his lounging against the wall.

  David grumbled again that there was little he could actually show on this floor. ‘Unless you are prepared to undergo theatre sterilisation. The floor is divided into self-contained blocks, each entered through a sterilisation chamber. The work is mainly ultra-microscopic probing, micro-surgery by laser and pulse-radiation as well as chemical means, and experimental pathology. There is little to see in the demonstrative sense.’ Nobody spoke or moved; he felt the unspoken accusation of double-talk. ‘Unless you care to inspect the gestation sector. The incubators can be examined through glass without prior sterilisation.’

  Parker holstered his gun. ‘We’ll see those. We want to observe results rather than methods.’

  Arthur said, ‘So here comes one.’

  From far down the corridor a woman approached. They assumed a woman because of the long brown hair and sarong-like garment, but became less certain. The bare torso did not carry the heavy breasts which would have matched the sturdy body and the outline appeared muscular rather than rounded.

  From speaking distance the figure acknowledged Doctor David in a flat contralto, moved through the group without paying attention to them beyond a swift notice of Raft and disappeared into one of the experimental blocks.

  David returned the greeting, calling her Mary, settling gender if not wholly the question of sex. She was a Raft, no doubt of it, a twin sister Raft carved from the family block but muddled in the differentiation. Her breasts were little more developed than a man’s and her muscles far more so than a woman’s; she carried the essential layers of fat tissue for her sex, but the distribution was erratic; her shoulders were too broad and her hips too stiffly articulated. That she wore makeup, and too much of it, was an aggressive error; the defiant need to be taken for a woman was a failed plea.

  Parker asked harshly, ‘Another dead end?’ and David crackled in defence, ‘Can’t you set aside emotional judgement? There’s no result without trial and no trial without error.’

  ‘I feel the world can do without the results I’ve seen. I begin to suspect that your work features a touch of art for art’s sake.’

  ‘That would make us sadists – animals.’

  ‘You have a point. It would. And you have been secluded from humanity long enough to fall from the norm.’

  Raft asked, ‘Why don’t you shut up, copper? You haven’t much morality to cheer about.’

  Parker prodded immediately. ‘You quarrelled with Heathcote over the direction of his work. Now you see where the direction led, do you want to defend it?’

  If he thought to put Raft in an impossible position, he failed. The starman said simply, ‘I am Gangoil; I will decide finally what stays and what stops.’

  The immense assumption frightened David into grey-faced fear for his lifetime of dedication, but the clone-brothers snapped little head-jerks of assent.

  Arthur made conversation. ‘However, there are compensations, and Daddy of All the Ages mightn’t have to do too much deciding.’

  The clone-brothers drew concerted breathy hisses and seemed about to close in on him, but Raft stopped them with a gesture. His authority seemed absolute. They halted with marionette precision.

  ‘There’s no need for anyone to die.’ Raft turned his head to Parker. ‘Yet.’

  Arthur had not moved. He said, ‘The lady, forgive the word, who just passed, is genetically sterile. As am I and as are my brothers. And as are most of the pretties we are about to inspect. Be assured, Commander, that no little brood of Pollyannas or Marys will scuttle around the playgrounds of tomorrow.’

  David would have interrupted if Raft had not cut him off. ‘Go on, bitch. Your spite may show a dividend.’

  Arthur inclined his head in gracious insult. ‘Biology is not my dish of slops but you can’t infest Gangoil without getting a splash here and there, and local scandal says it’s all tied up with gene relationships. Traits aren’t simple, like one gene, one characteristic. It happens sometimes – I think eye colour is determined by a single gene – but most are the result of interaction of groups of genes, which in turn have effect on the operations of other groups. Very complicated, you see; far too much for a simple soul like me. That’s why the projects are worked out on computers, and even then the programmer can’t foresee all his long-rang
e effects because he doesn’t know what questions to ask until he sees the answers. So round and round it goes and most of what our tame zoo is demonstrating is what can’t be done, while the commonest outcome of complex gene manipulation is an inability to reproduce. Not art for art’s sake, Mister Parker, so much as manipulation for desperation’s sake. They keep on mixing and hope something nice will float to the top.’

  Raft looked at David. ‘Well?’

  David, between fear and rage, ground out an answer. ‘The biological information is over-simplified but basically correct. The commentary is a disgraceful attempt to create dissension.’

  ‘Successful one, too,’ Parker said. ‘Arthur, what is your dead-end trait?’

  Surprisingly, Arthur turned sulky. ‘Seven of us were cloned for isolation of homosexual influences. I suppose you could call that a success.’

  David cut in waspishly, ‘Each of them was also subjected to other forms of genetic engineering, without success. This one was an attempt to improve on Commander Raft’s abnormally fast reflexes. A failed attempt. Arthur has never forgiven us for his not being a superman.’

  Raft said speculatively. ‘I think he’s as fast as I am.’

  Arthur’s reaction was a tossed head and a snapped, ‘Faster.’

  Raft grinned. ‘All right, dearie, have it your way.’ The grin was not fashioned for amusement.

  Parker fancied a satisfied glint in Arthur’s eye, but by now he was fancying innumerable peculiarities, including a feeling that the display of sulks had been a diversion permitting a less than total answer to his question.

  They followed David to the gestation sector.

  Parker expected a chamber of horrors; an anticipatory relish admitted the touch of the ghoul in all men. The reality was close to prosaic. What he saw was a bank of humidicribs behind plate glass, each crib holding a small form. Closer examination showed that not all were so small as would normally need the protection of the crib and in some the aged faces made it difficult to guess the relative state of development.

  ‘What is the percentage of successful manipulation?’

  David blinked. ‘I have never considered it in quantitative terms. Very small, of course. Thousands of pathological studies to determine a desired structure – perhaps hundreds of gestations to achieve it – and then no certainty of a viable structure. The number of satisfactory results is small. But the aim is only a single end product, is it not?’

  ‘A final descendant?’ David’s face wrote largely that his thinking did not proceed along so narrow a line as Raft’s question. ‘An ultimate child of my line?’

  Parker intervened. ‘We take that for granted, Commander.’ Raft, after a second’s thought, let it be so. Parker pursued, ‘There must be a great number of successful manipulations at large in Gangoil.’

  ‘Not so many. To most of them life would be a burden; even for science we cannot be totally inhumane.’

  Parker thought of Pollyanna and considered the meanings of ‘burden’ and ‘inhumane’. ‘And the – er – non-viable?’

  ‘Euthanasia, naturally.’

  The idea was not controversial in Parker’s world but he knew enough history to look for a reaction from Raft. There was none; Raft was interested only in himself as Progenitor Apparent. He suppressed a question about the nature of some part of Gangoil’s protein supplies, not wishing to risk revolted stomachs in his policemen. Instead he asked, ‘What sort of improvements are you aiming at?’

  ‘The usual dreams of men – longevity, an improved immunological system, control of reflexes, increased muscular efficiency, self-replacement in brain cells and others, regrowth of injured members and so on. The ultimate body should be virtually immortal, with total control of its autonomic system and even of cellular structures, but we are a long way from that. It will not be arrived at in my time.’

  ‘And all this is inherent in human genes?’

  ‘We don’t know. We think so. The combinations produced by the computers indicate extreme probability.’

  Parker found himself resenting Gangoil most powerfully. A marvellous future seen from far away – but no room for us in it. Change, even enormous change, he could face; that was what he and Campion conspired to bring about, but like any man he wanted miracles that would fit within his grasp, not outright destruction of his universe by an unimaginable other, however godlike.

  Angrily he said, ‘We aren’t interested in beginnings. Let’s move on to the major work.’ Raft nodded. ‘Let us see the final product.’

  ‘Another floor down,’ David said stiffly, resenting the cheap-tour attitude to decades of achievement.

  As they descended some old association cast up a phrase in Parker’s mind – ‘nether hell’.

  7

  ‘Results!’ David tried a pallid jocularity over his cringing to Raft. ‘You might call this our warehouse display room.’

  Arthur chirruped, ‘Any buyers for tomorrow’s pretties?’ and for once caught no attention.

  The area was smaller than the upper concrete caverns, with no more than a sixth of their floorspace. By the staircase a single white-clad figure sat at a console, a broad spread of dials and controls and miniature TV screens; he turned his head to see who entered and turned it away, satisfied.

  New faces, Parker thought, should be an excitement in an ingrown community; but perhaps ‘ingrown’ was a pivotal word, and with a psychic shiver he acknowledged the deadening outcome of an unrelenting conditioning in self-sufficiency.

  The remainder of the space was taken up by another of Gangoil’s constructions in utilitarian geometry. Three rows, each of nine waist-high, squat cabinets, stretched the length of the room, emphasising the soulless perspective; each was about eight feet square, drearily white-enamelled and surmounted by a flattened glass dome like a carapace.

  ‘Slow met chambers!’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ David’s voice pitched high in his effort to please. ‘You would recognise them, of course, Commander.’ He gabbled with awful brightness, ‘What better way to preserve an experimental model during periods of assessment and consideration?’

  The man’s terror was becoming excessive; something he had counted on to please, he was no longer sure of. And how right he might be, Parker thought, hugging the one piece of truly murderous information Lindley had given him.

  Raft bent over the nearest chamber, examining the meters and button controls set flush in the casing. ‘Changes. Improvements?’

  ‘Extensions of function,’ David chattered. ‘Control of growth rates, stimulation of specific factors, alteration of relationships between metabolic functions. The possibilities are endless. Some quite brilliant biologists and electronic engineers have collaborated on improvement over Doctor Heathcote’s initial design.’

  ‘There was no Heathcote design.’

  ‘No, Commander?’

  ‘There was a Heathcote conception and a Raft design.’ It could be true, Parker decided, but probably was not; Raft had moved into the foggy drifts of megalomania, prepared to assume any aggrandising claim. ‘Heathcote was no genius. He was a headpiece, a pivot, competent and lucky in the men working with and under him. Without me there would have been no slow met, no star voyage and hence no Gangoil. Do you understand now how I am Gangoil?’

  It was so smooth, so matter of fact, so much obvious truth; no wonder insanity could pass so many boundaries of fantasy before it was recognised.

  ‘But Heathcote is dead and his effete replacement can be got rid of.’

  The clone-brothers spoke together, dissenting violently, subsiding at last into a single voice. ‘You are clone-father but John is the begetter. By clone he remains John, as we are you.’

  Raft answered them patiently. ‘You are mine – you are not me. The dummy John is not John. Get rid of fancies.’

  David pleaded across his fears, ‘But the work, the work! The memory transference!’

  ‘That? A virtual immortality. The work can be transferred to the Raft strain.’ H
e bent over the chamber, dismissing a subject completed. ‘What’s this?’

  Parker did not much care what it was; his attention was on the patently unhappy clone-brothers. Raft was isolating himself from them satisfactorily and soon they might be leaderless. How to set about leading them? However, he crowded with the rest.

  It was a male body, faintly clouded in the yellowish fluid, relaxed and blank, reminding of sleep and reminding of death while its condition was neither. The Raft resemblance was oblique; features seemed about to become Raft’s or to have just failed to become. It was young, possibly in its early twenties and bigger boned than its many times removed clone-father; it was fleshless and tight-skinned to a skeletal degree yet without signs of malnutrition. Its peculiar musculature was large, anchored to every part of the over-massive bone structure available to it, but long and upraised and strangely angular in effect.

  ‘So far a failure,’ David said, ‘but perhaps not eventually so. One of our computer patterning groups conceived the possibility of producing a more efficient muscle, a better heat engine, and this is the latest result. We have to be most careful with it; the thing is appalling strong. It has perhaps three times your strength, Commander.’

  Raft’s eyes glazed and Parker’s scalp prickled. Did the fool dream of memory-transfer, of his essential self grafted to this machine of flesh?

  The fool was not utterly fallen between realities. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘The effects are ephemeral – titanic effort for a matter of seconds, then collapse. And the heart needs redesigning to absorb the strains. Work is proceeding on that. But the difficulties multiply; success brings new problems. This one has a convulsive symptom; it tends to break its own bones at peak effort.’

  ‘Continue that line, Doctor.’

  ‘It is dangerous because it is not very intelligent. Gene patterning is still more art than science, but we are learning the basic groupings and in natural phenomena there is always a key syndrome leading to a formula.’