Countdown to Extinction
Page 27
Hagan knew that the Primitives would come as soon as their milk supply lessened, but he was not concerned. The barrier he had created around the dome would keep out them out. They could not stop him now.
He had plucked information from June about the experiments to clone animals and had spent months perfecting the technique. It was not difficult. He had harvested eggs from the Primitive women in the vault, removed the nucleus, replaced it with one from his own cells and implanted it back into one of the women where it divided and grew. He kept them in a coma until it was time to give birth. As soon as the baby was born, he put the women back in the vault, to be used another time. The offspring of this process were exact copies of his own DNA, superior to his son Zorino in every way.
“There’s another barrier. We can’t get past,” Richard said. “It’s like that time with the horses. We couldn’t get near to Michael’s farm.”
“I can destroy it,” Baestel said, pointing his finger and reminding Gerald of the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo.
Back in the vault, the system alerted Hagan to the fact that a hole had appeared in the barrier. Baestel’s face stared out at him from the monitor.
As he repaired the hole, another one appeared. This continued until it became obvious that Baestel was gaining ground. Soon, he had made a hole large enough to walk through.
Hagan created a barrier nearer the dome which Baestel also destroyed. Soon he would be at the dome.
As the final barrier disintegrated, Baestel plunged forward, kicked down the door to the dome and the two men came face to face.
Baestel pounced forward, but Gerald put out his arm and held him back.
“We don’t need any more violence,” Gerald said. “We just want to know why Hagan needed so much milk,”
“That is my concern,” Hagan said.
“Not when you are taking it away from us.”
“Humans can survive without milk.”
“Upstairs,” Baestel said, bursting free of the restraints, jumping over Hagan and appearing at the top of the stairs.
Gerald and Richard followed him, expecting to find some new horror, but at the top, there was an empty room. Baestel was looking fixedly at a point in the middle of the space.
“Can you see something?” Gerald asked.
Like the invisible ink books Gerald had played with as a child, an image gradually appeared out of the emptiness, a few vague shadows which became more solid until he could see the cots. More and more came into focus, until he could see hundreds of them, packed tightly together. In each cot were two tiny babies.
Hagan was behind him, focussing Baestel as if he was driving invisible knives into his brain. Perhaps he was!
“What have you done? Where are the mothers?” Gerald cried, his heart sinking.
“There are no mothers,” Baestel said.
“You know about this?”
“He’s killed them.”
Gerald held onto the side of a cot as his knees gave way beneath him.
“Who are these babies? Your people are infertile.”
Hagan remained staring at Baestel, not speaking. A silent battle seemed to be taking place.
“He cloned them using a Primitive.”
Gerald saw it was true. The tiny babies all looked exactly like Hagan.
His fingers slipped from the side of the cot and he clutched his head.
“He has made himself an army,” Baestel said. “When they are adults, they will march on the town and kill all of you.”
Gerald looked at Hagan. “It’s not true, is it? The Leaders did not tell you to make clones, did they?”
“I could not allow you to breed at will and bring your children up in your ways. The Leaders prohibited it.”
Gerald’s face paled. “But you told us the Leaders wanted us to be free. They brought us out to start a new race.”
“The Leaders decreed that you were to be separated from the offspring at birth. You were to be destroyed once you could no longer breed.”
Gerald’s face crumpled. “Why tell us now? We were happy. It would have been better if you’d never told us.” Before he had finished speaking, he had already realised the answer. Hagan was engaged in a mighty battle with Baestel. Lying to them would divert some of his energy.
“I think Bernard is telling the truth,” Richard said. “Look at the babies. They are miniature Hagans. We must destroy them before they destroy us.”
“You go, I’ll deal with this,” Baestel said. “Him or me, a fight to the death.”
“We can’t leave you on your own with him.”
“I am better on my own. You are in the way.”
Gerald knew it was true. He made his way downstairs, Richard at his heels. At the bottom, a living Venus de Milo held out a bundle. “My name is Helkos. Hagan wants you to have this.”
“She pushed it into his arms. “I don’t want anything from him,” Gerald said.
“Go, a pod awaits outside.”
June ran down the main street to towards the pod. “Have you got him? I’ve remembered everything.”
Her joy at being reunited with her son was overshadowed by a loud explosion coming from the direction of Hagan’s dome. A mushroom cloud rose in the air.
A crowd formed, all wanting to know what had happened. The destruction of hundreds of cloned babies and was something Gerald would never share with them.
Emma was running towards him with Aurora and Diana in her arms. “Thank goodness you’re safe!”
He held his family tightly. He could not have faced the future if anything had happened to them.
“Did you all get back?” Emma asked, wiping tears from her eyes.
“Richard came back with me, but Bernard was still there when we left.” They had a great deal to thank Bernard for. It might all have been so different.
“Did you find out why Hagan needed all that milk?”
“It was a mistake, a system error.”
“Let’s go and see if we can find Bernard.”
They stood at top of a hill, the countryside spread out before them. Where the dome had been, there were only green fields.
“It’s another illusion. Do you think the dome’s still there?” Emma asked.
Gerald thought of the hundreds of babies and Hagan’s plan to create an army. “I hope not,” he said.
When they got back, a crowd had gathered at the entrance to the dome to watch Pete erecting a carving of the town motto: Freedom, Happiness, Resurrection.