He was human, and yet not human. I knew him by a half a dozen names: homo excellens, a Mod, a par, while to him I was homo sapiens, a subpar, a Mongrel. Where my cells carried 46 chromosomes his had 48; where my genetic code was written with a four-letter alphabet, his was written with six. He was superior to me from the moment of his birth. In every way that science could devise, he was more perfect than any mere Mongrel could ever be. And that was why I and my species had always hated him and all his species, in the same way an intelligent ape might hate a man who despises him.
Chapter 2
The concrete-block pen was probably built to hold five or ten people, but there were at least thirty of us compressed inside. They'd squashed us in like passengers on a five-thirty subway train. Occasionally the metal door opened to admit a new inmate, and every time the cell seemed so crowded I couldn't believe we had room for anyone else.
Above me several ventilator slats and a recess for the light punctured the ceiling. The echoing voices mingled into a dull roar; the sound smothered my thoughts like whispers drowned in static. A fetid stench of urine and filth tainted the air, like the scent that lingers in a public restroom. In the far corner a toilet protruded from the wall, but to use it you'd have to pull your trousers down while being elbowed on all sides - there wasn't any room.
I squeezed through the dense mass of human flesh to a corner of the cell. My fellow prisoners, I noticed, varied widely. A short, squat woman trying to quiet her shrieking baby. A couple of teenagers nearly on top of an old man crying softly to himself. A dark-haired punk chest-to-chest with a drunk mumbling out loud, faces close enough to kiss; a man and woman pressed against each other and holding hands. But their differences aside, in other respects they were alike. They all stank of sweat, their skin was clammy with it. Their faces were haggard with fear. The fear was contagious: it permeated the room, it gripped me by the throat.
At last I reached the corner of the cell. I could lean against the wall there, even if I couldn't sit down. I found myself face to face for a moment with a girl, a brunette. She was short, serious, and visibly pregnant, probably in the second trimester, her eyes glazed with exhaustion.
"Sorry, I think I stepped on your foot," I said. I talked into her ear to make myself heard.
"No, you didn't, it's all right." She slurred her words drunkenly, probably because she was tired, and spoke with the accent that uses f in place of th and skips the letter h in here and how. "There's room."
I wedged myself in against the wall. "How long have you been here?"
"A week," she said listlessly, speaking into my ear so that I could hear her, and her sour breath enveloped me.
"A week - here? in this cell?" I couldn't imagine how anyone could survive a week jammed into this concrete box.
"Nah, they started moving everyone in here this afternoon. I was in another cell until today. I wish they'd just hurry it up and get it over with. How long've you been here?"
"Since half an hour ago," I said. After I'd been arrested I'd been taken to the lockup. They didn't have to search me because they'd walked me through a scanner, and clothes make no difference to the machine's all-seeing electronic eye. They'd relieved me of my wallet, my keys, the box I'd carried and a drop of blood, presumably so they could sequence my DNA and cross-reference me with their databases. I worked at a government fuel plant so my genome and biometrics were already on file. A drop of blood, a strand of hair, a glob of spit would tell them more about me in five minutes than I knew myself. Finally, they'd shoved me in here. I still had no clear idea why I'd been arrested.
"Oh, so you just came. What'd they get you for?" she asked.
"I'm not sure. They picked me up crossing Central London. After dark.” I hadn't dared to ask why. We avoided unnecessary questions, it was one of the rules we all learned to stay alive. Always blend in. Do what you're told. Stay out of the way. If they don't tell you, don't ask.
“Didn't know they'd get you for that. Unless it's that 10-2 curfew, but that's only the West End, I fink.”
“I didn't know either. What'd they get you for?”
"I dunno. I fink it was my boyfriend; he must've narked on me." She said it simply, her voice colourless and flat, as if there were no point in being angry about a fact.
"Your boyfriend?"
"Yeah, I know. The fucking bastard. He said he would if I kept on giving him trouble, but I didn't believe him. He didn't want me and the baby anymore, you see."
"But why didn't you leave him?" I asked.
"Well, I meant to, but this makes it a little more difficult now, doesn't it?" she said. "Besides which, I couldn't've gone back to me mum's place any more than I could've stayed with him, the old bitch."
"What could he've told them?"
"I dunno. Made something up, I expect. Not much I can do about it now." If she'd been imprisoned for a week, she might know more about what our captors would do with us. I knew very little about what befell people who were arrested. I'd heard stories, as we all had, but bullshit is cheap and rumours were too common to be credible. And secretly I'd never really wanted to know. Like everyone else, I usually reassured myself with the same complacent blindness. It may happen to them, but it will never happen to me.
"So what do they do with us?" I asked. “Any idea?”
"I dunno," she said. "They'll let you off pretty easy, I'd think. I mean, you just got caught staying out late. It's not like you had a mobile phone or an intercom or something." The mobile phone networks had all been shut down about the time of the war, but even if you had an intercom or a private radio they'd track you using the signal from your device and haul you in.
"Do you know what they're going to do with you?" I asked.
"I dunno. I think the same thing as everyone else."
"And what's that? I mean, I don't know what they do."
"I know what I've heard," she said.
"What's that?"
"You're a funny one. You don't know?"
"You hear all kinds of crap," I said. “I don't know.”
"I suppose they send us to a labour camp or maybe to a government lab. I hope it's a lab. I'd rather be in a lab."
"But they'll experiment on you."
"Well, I mean, you don't have to work and they feed you proper. And maybe they'll put me in a captive breeding program," she said, her face blank as if she were talking about a new job or a line of work. "I wouldn't mind that, I don't fink. I mean, if that's all they want you to do, then it's not so bad, now, is it?"
Was it? I imagined copulating in a cage under scientific scrutiny and for a moment I couldn't think of anything to say. "The government has - captive breeding programs?" I said at last.
"I don't know anything about it; maybe they do. I heard they did. 'Course, I heard it from my boyfriend, and he used to tell all kinds of stories. I dunno if it's true."
It sounded unlikely; they didn't need more of us. A few hours ago I wouldn't have believed it. But crushed against a concrete wall by a mass of human flesh, anything sed plausible. They could make us do what they wanted, couldn't they. We were in their power.
" 'Course," she said into my ear after a moment, "they fink Mongrels are just animals. That's what it is, you know." That was exactly it, I thought. That was what they thought of us. Hatred swelled in me like nausea. The stink of urine and sweat thickened in my nostrils until it was nearly overpowering. I slumped against the wall, feeling sick. Not now, not here, I told myself and struggled inwardly. You can't. There's nowhere to go.
"I was like that at first too," my neighbour said sympathetically. "It takes a while then you get used to it." I nodded. "Good thing is it's real easy to go to sleep, 'coz you've got the wall on one side and somebody's back on the other. What's your name again?"
"Mark. Mark Henshaw. What's yours?"
"Sophie." It took too much effort to make myself heard, and it must have been a strain for her also, because we both fell silent.
Our captors must have realized they'
d over-packed the cell, because after that there were no new arrivals. I dozed and lost track of time. It might have been four or five hours before the crowd finally began to flow towards the door.
"Sophie." She was asleep, leaning against the wall. "We're leaving."
"About fucking time," she said groggily, still only half awake.
"And good luck." I took her hand. A look of surprise crossed her face, followed by a wan, pale smile.
"Good luck to you too."
Outside the cell dull fluorescent bulbs shed a dim glow on a sterile, white-walled corridor. A guard stood to our left with a cattle prod; we didn't wait to be ordered to turn right. At intervals we passed a cell door identical to the one we had just left, all of them apparently empty. I only caught fleeting glimpses, however; we moved at a pace between a walk and a run. No one wanted to be last in line. We didn't know if they might come behind us, and secretly we dreaded the unexpected - a blow to the ribcage, the shock of an electric prod. Twice the corridor intersected another, but at each junction steel doors barred the exits, so we followed the path picked for us, herded by one fear towards another like cattle goaded to the slaughter.
At last the man ahead of me stopped, so suddenly that Sophie stumbled into me. I felt her soft expansive belly against my back and glanced over my shoulder.
"Sorry."
"No, I'm sorry," I said. "You all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just trying to keep up." By peering over the heads in front of me I could see a platform outside the mouth of the corridor, and across it the cattle cars with their metal slats. Around me our mpatient fellow inmates elbowed us mercilessly - even though Sophie was pregnant. I suppose no one really cared. They all wanted to get over with it.
Two uniformed guards stood on either side of the exit, and between them a turnstile like a gate at a tube station barred the way, so that you could only exit when the guards gave you permission. One of them was white-skinned and Caucasian, the other with Chinese or Mongoloid features, but in all other respects they were more alike than any two Mongrels. The Chinese Mod scrutinized me for a moment, his eyes faintly luminous like a cat's. Judging by what I've learned in the years since, I was luckier than I knew; in that moment I narrowly eluded death.
"Go left. To the far train." I crossed the platform to the cattle car. A single fixture lit the interior; in its light I saw an empty pail nestled in each corner. A spigot for a water tap, like the kind in a rabbit-hutch, projected from one of the walls. I made my way through the car, still relatively uncrowded, to the far end. In spite of the uncertain fate that awaited me, I was so tired and irritable I felt relieved to be on board. If nothing else the car was more spacious than the cell.
A moustached, stubble-chinned Indian, so thin his skin seemed like it was stretched to fit his skull, leaned dozing against the wall. He was probably a couple years older than I at most. On his right stood a stolid-faced skinhead, wearing a tank top beneath a short-sleeved shirt, his muscular arms amply tattooed with a macabre collage of skulls, burning crosses, and other cheerful-looking artwork. I took my place between them.
"It's funny, right now everyone wants to stand up against the wall. But once the train starts moving, all the cold air'll rush in through these slats, and everyone'll want to be in the middle of the car," said a middle-aged woman leaning against the wall at right angles to us. She was memorably ugly, stocky with a solid square jaw and steel-blue raptor's eyes. Her bottle-blond hair contrasted awkwardly with her thick dark brows.
"So why aren't you over in the middle?" I asked her.
"I don't mind the cold air," she said. Her windbreaker would probably keep her warm anyway. “It'll be a lot bloody colder where we're going."
"How do you know where we're going?"
She furrowed her brows. "Just look at the kind of people they put on the other train car and the kind of people they put on this one. It's the work camp for us."
"Ah. I see. And the other train car goes to a lab."
"That's my guess." I''d meant to save a spot for Sophie but I didn't see her among the stream of prisoners flowing into our car. Perhaps Sophie had her wish after all, and the morning would find her safely caged like a squeaking lab rat waiting for the technician to come.
“I'm just glad I'm out of that cell,” I said. “I didn't know how much longer I was going to last in there.”
"Yeah. They should really have more cells. I was trying t see what they were keeping the others for but we were all going so fast I couldn't see.”
“What they were using the others for?”
“Yeah. You saw all those empty cells we passed, right? Well, they're keeping those for something,” she said. A new thought occurred to me and I shuddered. “What's your name?" the stocky lady asked.
"Mark. And yours?" I didn't extend my hand because I didn't want to reach past the skinhead.
"Shelley. What did they get you for?"
"Don't know. Think I broke curfew," I said.
"But they don't enforce that. Unless you're near their buildings or something.”
I shrugged. "I was trying to take a shortcut.”
"That's a long shortcut," she said wryly, "it'll lose you a couple years if you're lucky."
"Yeah, I know. Didn't know it was illegal."
“Technically they can pick you up if you're east of Whitechapel and west of Chelsea after dark. I've never heard of them enforcing that, not for the last five years anyway, but they can do it.”
“Technically.” I hadn't known that; as she said, one of those rules they rarely enforced. “Technically they can do anything they want.” The unanswered questions jabbed at me like splinters stuck in my mind. What was Becky thinking? How soon would they release me? “What'd they get you for?” I asked Shelley.
She hesitated a moment. "I suppose it doesn't make any difference who knows now. Terrorism. We were going to blow up a government fuel plant but they found all our supplies."
Organized resistance to homo excellens had ended with the war. The few ragtag bands that survived fought on alone, like sparks scattered by a dying fire and stamped out one by one. Lacking conventional weapons, they plotted sabotage, hit-and-run strikes or bomb attacks, efforts the Mods lumped together as “terrorism”. I assumed that Shelley and her group were just one more of these ill-organized holdouts struggling to deny reality.
Which just goes to show how wrong you can be.
"A group of you? They didn't shoot any of you?" I asked.
"I don't know what happened to the others,” Shelley said. “They might have. It was more than a month ago.”
"You've been here more than a month?"
"They've moved me to a different cell three times now. I think they only deport people once a month.”
“I didn't know that. I was just arrested last nightess I turned up just in time to catch the train,” I said for a joke.
The thug broke into the conversation. "How were you going to blow up one of their plants?"
"What was your name again?" Shelley asked him.
"Jason."
"Jason. It was a synthetic fuel plant, so they've got these large underground tanks," Shelley said. "We were going to put chemical bombs around the tanks. We had it rigged so we could set them off by remote control, then we could've blown the whole place sky-high."
Jason shook his head. "Then it turns out they're watching you the whole fucking time. What'd you want to do that for anyway?" He was right about that. Time and time again, the Mods squelched incipient rebellions with intimidating ease - probably because they were watching us anyway. They deployed cockroach-sized biorobots that scuttled through chinks and eavesdropped on conversations, surveillance monitors that tracked faces and biometrics; for all we knew, they monitored us by other means more subtle still.
Shelley scowled. "What do you mean what did we want to do that for? They get half their fuel for Greater London from that one plant. Blow it up and you cripple their flights.”
"For a week or so. Unt
il they got it repaired," I said. "What do you do after that?"
"So you're saying we should just give up them and let them get away with whatever they want?" she said.
"No, I'm not saying that." Blowing up a fuel plant seemed unbelievably senseless, like taunting a crack commando team with a slingshot. I tried to explain. "I don't like the Mods more than anyone else. I'm not a Heavenward or something. It's been nice these last few years - I've had a Mongrel supervisor at the plant where I work, so I didn't have to deal directly with them. But I'm just saying, I mean, I work at a government fuel plant. I scrub off algae filters for the collectors. I can tell you right now, virtually everyone working in my plant by daylight is a Mongrel. You wouldn't kill that many Mods blowing up a fuel plant. You'd just kill lots of Mongrels.”
“Mongrels?” Shelley spat. “That's what they call us. That's the name they invented. We're the real humans. They're the new species. How can you let them brainwash you like that?”
“All right. Mirks if you like,” I said in an undertone. Mirk was an insulting acronym(Mutant Inbred Rich Kids) that dated back to the 21st century, when human genetic enhancement was in its infancy and still controversial. The Mods considered it a vicious slur – similar to the way our ancestors regarded the word nigger – and it was as much as your life was worth to call them Mirks within earshot. “But all I'm saying is this. If you'd blown up a fuel plant you'd have killed some Mongrels, humans, whatever. Some of us.”
"No, not if you blew it up at the right time you wouldn't.”
“So let's say you did,” I persisted. “I still don't see what you'd do after you blew up the plant. What difference does it make?”
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