'Thank you for coming!' He held out his arms to them. 'I wanted to talk to you both. I'm not happy with the way things are going.
'Chen, you've abused your position of authority. I am not your rent boy. You've degraded me and you've degraded the whole company. I'm not sleeping with any more of your dirty little celebrities. Screw your stupid job.
'Alexis…' This was harder. He felt his drunkenness rushing back in, his shoulders rounding, his posture collapsing. 'You…you should have…' He felt his face contorting, closed his eyes and fought it. 'I gave up a good career for this. And you did what you promised – you made me a star. So…well done, I guess. But…' The rest of Kester's speech left him. He looked around the room, looked down at his hands, but the words weren't anywhere. They were lost in the mulch of food and drink. 'It's all gone to shit, Alexis!' Kester put his hands out, as if his situation had taken physical form there around them. 'Look at this mess. My friends are all going to lose their jobs, I've been ostracised by the entire scientific community.' He staggered a little and looked round at John. 'Except for John. My reputation is in tatters; I've embarrassed my own mother beyond all belief; I've got fucking stitches in my arse…I mean do I need to go on? This whole thing is a fucking disaster area. Alexis, I'm sorry I wasn't the perfect star you wanted. And Chen, actually I do know what you're thinking, fuck you very much. You've come here to get rid of me. Well don't worry. I'm going to save you the trouble and quit.' He slithered down off the table, strode over to where John lay and started rummaging in his pockets. 'My associate has got the letter right here.' He turned and held the crumpled piece of jam-covered paper out to Chen.
'That would seem rather rash,' Chen said.
Alexis looked at Chen. They were conversing without words. Kester couldn't figure out what they were saying. Alexis raised her eyebrows. Chen responded in kind and shrugged. Alexis cocked her head forward. Chen nodded.
'Kester – in here.' Alexis grabbed Kester by the arm and ushered him into his living quarters. Kester watched her warily as she walked over to the bar. She poured a large scotch.
'Thanks,' Kester slurred.
'This is for me, Kester, you fuckwit,' she said, bringing over a glass of water and handing it to him.
'Oh.'
Alexis looked at Kester long and hard. He struggled to look back at her. Her face was fluttering in front of his eyes like a broken film reel.
'I'm going to try and forget what I just saw,' she said, 'though it might take some doing.'
Kester swallowed. It felt like he had a knot of old boot leather in his gullet.
'And take that fucking thing off your head,' she added, without humour.
Kester had forgotten about his helmet. He reached up and lifted the cloche off his head. He held it in front of him for a moment, then realised it looked like he was clutching a bowler hat and put it down gently on the ground beside him. He could still feel its weight on the crown of his head.
'I thought about what you said.' Alexis turned away from him. 'You were right. And your stupid speech was right too. Yule's going to have your guts for garters but that's not important right now.'
Kester had no idea what was going on. He tried to stay very still. She seemed to be apologising to him, but that was ridiculous. Yes, best to stay still and keep his mouth shut.
'Chen wants to see the screens.'
Nausea. Elation. Nausea again.
'Oh fuck,' Kester stepped to one side and took hold of the bar.
'Kester, she's excited. She's livid that you'd presume to do the research in the first place and the way it came out…perhaps that's my fault…and as for whatever just happened – but forget that. She exploded, but when I told her that everything you said about the screens was true she put all that on hold. I've told her the basics but she wants to see it for herself. We need some good publicity badly, really badly and now, before the show. It may be your fault that we need it, but if you provide the solution as well as the problem this could end well for all of us.'
Kester's heart raced. She wanted to see the screens. He momentarily forgot his predicament and whooped. 'Lex, that's brilliant, but…' An image of his jam-smeared letter popped into his head.
'You know what this means, Kester?'
Kester's mind was going through a mangle. He was quitting. He was disgraced. His mother hated him. His mother was proud of him. He was a prostitute. He was a scientist. He was really, really drunk.
'Well…' Kester stopped almost before he had begun. No. He didn't know what it meant.
'Chen's gone for the deal. No more pimping.' She came towards him and curled her hands around his triceps. 'And if this doesn't mend your reputation with the scientific community…'
Kester laughed. The laugh hung in the air, a wisp of relief. Alexis smiled in return. Kester took in her poise, her angles, her eyes and the mind he saw projected through them, sure as a branding iron. She was beautiful. She could save him.
'Thank you. Thank you so much,' Kester said. He broke out of her hold and hugged her hard, held on as if it would all fall apart again if he let go.
'Kester,' she said, as he clung to her, 'you feel…heavy…just how much have you had to drink?'
He stepped back in as controlled a fashion as he could and thought about it for a second or two. Her exact question had left him already, but the jist of it was still within reach so he answered as best he could.
'Yes,' he said, 'but a few hours ago and I'm feeling much better now.'
'Okay…' she said slowly, walking to the coffee machine. 'I think you should get in the shower. Now.'
'I'm sorry, I was angry,' Kester said. He was a teenager who had trashed the house. 'I just needed to let loose for a few hours, that's all. The speech was a mistake.' He gave her a sheepish look that he hoped would prove endearing and removed his labcoat ineptly. He still needed to explain. Everything was muddled. 'I thought it was all over. I failed everyone. I needed to, I don't know. I thought it was all over…um…I got you a present.'
'Kester – just get in the shower.'
By the time Kester got out of the shower, the cleanup team was leaving. John was tucked up neatly in Kester's bed and Chen had gone.
'Are you ready?' Alexis asked.
Kester shook his head and picked up the coffee she had poured for him. He walked into his office and looked around. On his desk, beside a small smear of gravy that had been missed, sat his degree certificate, framed. Beside it lay his Book, a picture message from his mother sitting open – the dog sporting a pair of signed Kester Lowe knickers. Over the back of his chair hung a freshly laundered labcoat. Through the door he could just see the top of his best friend's head, tousled hair sticking out from under the duvet.
He flicked an icon on his Book and a stream of data covered the wall behind him. His torsos. They had been left to themselves. He surveyed the data, squinting against his encroaching headache and the possibility of bad news. Gradually, he admitted a smile to his lips. He took a deep breath and examined his state: legs functioning again, still drunk, but steadily sobering up. His mind felt hyperclear, his body light. Better now than with a hangover. Alexis appeared in the doorway.
'Yes,' Kester said. 'I think I'm ready.'
Alexis led the way through the lab. Kester cast out some embarrassed smiles as he passed the rows of workbenches and was repaid with friendly giggles and a couple of winks. Chen had just exited the lifts and was walking towards the isolation suites. Kester overtook Alexis and rushed to meet Chen with a hearty handshake. He ignored what had gone before, as coached by Alexis.
'Talk me through it, Doctor Lowe,' Chen said as they entered the suite. 'This had better be as good as she says it is.' Kester saw her shoot a warning glance at Alexis. 'I still have your letter.'
'It is,' Kester said as they stood in the decontamination lock. 'This is just a precaution,' he added. 'Cross-infection wouldn't really be a problem.'
They entered the suite. The torsos were laid out in two rows of five in th
e middle of the room, each in a transparent life-support box. Kester walked over to the work bench at the side of the room and called up a large display on the wall above it. It was divided into eleven sections – two rows of five boxes across the top, one monitoring each torso, and a main summary below.
'Meet the Baldwins.' Kester waved a hand across the torsos. 'They've been wearing my new screen for more than two months now and none of them have shown any signs of damage from infection. If you tap the log icon at the bottom of the screen you can see the viruses I've tested with. I've done airborne, blood borne, water borne; I've done mucal membrane infection, wound infection, ingestion, you name it.' As he spoke, Chen walked round the boxes, regarding each of the torsos, as if she could somehow judge the screens' effectiveness by simply looking at them. 'And now we're onto new viruses.'
'And that works how?' Chen asked.
'OK,' Kester took a breath. 'The screen itself is biological, yes? I don't know how much Lex has told you. It's built by a set of viruses and the only pieces of hard nanotech I've kept in there are nanotransmitters, which we need for obvious reasons. Its real power is that it can talk to the body and vice versa; its components are built by the body's own cells and this allows each to recognise the other's immunological responses and act in tandem, multiplying the effect. No messy implant to provide the raw materials. No immunosuppressant drugs.
'The first virus is programmed, if you like, with the structure of the screen. It gets the host tissue to build the screen bed. You might be aware that in the Stark Wellbury screen, the nanotech particles create the screen bed themselves. Of course it can't be coated with its diamond cloak until after it's assembled, so it effectively introduces visible foreign tissue, which is just the start of the problems the body has with it. Our screen is built in-house by the host body – problem solved.
'The second virus infects the newly engineered tissue, providing a set of factory cells – viruses are perfect factories but they normally make copies of themselves. Some of the factory cells make what I'm calling "cruisers" and "bruisers" – cells that identify and chomp on baddies respectively. Some of them make antibodies. These factory cells…' Kester fast-forwarded past some detail in his head '…will make copies of whatever we send them the blueprints for.
'You could think of it as the virus being on pause until we send it a set of blueprints. Once it receives its blueprints, it operates like a normal virus – reproduces until the cell bursts, sending the new viruses or in this case, antibodies out into the bloodstream. As you've probably realised, this means that the tissue needs a perpetually regenerating set of factory viruses. That bit was tricky.'
'OK,' Chen waved her hand. 'I think I can trust you on the details. How are they responding to the new viruses?'
'Exactly as planned. The cruisers and bruisers act like super-components of the existing immune system. When an antigen is identified, the body starts to produce antibodies using both its own processes and the new tools we've given it. The transmitter sends details of everything that is produced back to the central database, which includes the new blueprints in the next upload transmission. I've used a different set of new viruses on each torso and then cross-infected them to see how well it works. And the transmitters also pick up blueprints from other screen users in the local population, preparing the host for any likely infection that's doing the rounds, which is fucking amazing by the way.' Kester checked himself. Be sober. Be sober.
'And how well does it work?'
'It works well. Very well. There are two torsos you'll be particularly interested in.' Kester led Chen to the two boxes at the back of the room. 'These guys – Daniel and William. William has an old Stark screen and Daniel has no immune system.' Chen walked around the boxes as Kester explained. 'We successfully shut William's old screen down, using a variant of our old friend Trojan12 incidentally, and there has been no interference. And with Daniel, the screen was able to produce enough antibodies without the support of the immune system to protect it as completely as the old screen.'
Chen had stopped circling and was leaning against a workbench at the side of the room, a pensive smile on her face.
'Doctor Lowe. You have been busy.'
'In my own time – my own time. And remember, Alexis and I brought this to you.'
Chen stared at Kester for a moment, then looked away to the side, breathed in and nodded.
'I'm going to make this easy for you, Kester.' She looked back at him. 'Alexis has told me what you want. If this wasn't so big, I'd be furious. And as for recent events – well, this has been a hard week for all of us. I think some mutual forgiveness may be in order.' She nodded again, as if satisfied that this part of the issue was dealt with. 'Is it feasible to test this in-house like Alexis suggested? We don't need to worry about Farmer any more, not now this is out, and I'm willing to do some rearranging if he looks like causing trouble. Having said that, if we could keep the testing in-house for phase one that would be ideal – speed things up.'
'Absolutely. We've more than enough staff to do feasible trials, although we might need some externals to make sure the demographic representation is right.'
'And how long is this going to take? As long as a drugs trial?'
'Nowhere near. A year, 18 months maybe.'
Chen snorted as if this was nothing and then smiled. 'I think you have yourself a deal, young man.'
Kester looked over at Alexis, then back at Chen.
'Really?' he asked, like a child given permission to draw on the walls.
'Really. You'll want this in writing. Come by my office this afternoon.'
Kester couldn't conceal a nervy twitch. To go by someone's office at V so often implied more than it expressed.
'No funny business. You have my word.'
'Thank you.'
'And this is to remain top secret, you understand?'
'I'll treat it as if it's still my private work. You have my word.'
'One other thing,' Chen added. 'I've set up an appointment for you with our counsellor and put a freeze on your alcohol account.'
'Right,' Kester said. 'Fair enough.'
-o-
The week was accelerating. It was all unreal. Kester had believed it would all stop, that none of this would happen. Instead, V had acknowledged his research and had put out a statement telling the world that they were developing a rival nanoscreen to Stark Wellbury's: a screen that would be affordable and available to everyone; a screen that would work with the body, not against it. The rumours in the press were that Kester would make an announcement about it at the show – an official announcement this time – perhaps even do a presentation. While Chen hadn't asked him to prepare anything he was sure that the rumours had originated from V itself. It had to be a teaser to keep the show on track. Of course there was the embarrassment of the post-binge interviews, but Kester suspected that these were easier for him than for Chen, who had to appear with him as the reformed, philanthropic face of VDV.
On a high, Kester had agreed to go through with the remaining pre-show appointments under strict condition that the clients were briefed on appropriate behaviours and the consequences of overstepping the boundaries. To the public it must look like things were continuing smoothly.
The remaining appointments were at the Vspa in the top of the PlayPen. They seemed less of a big deal armed with the knowledge that this really was a one-off and that his screens would soon be in production. Kester was almost looking forward to them.
The Vspa was a blissful retreat after the sensory overload of the palace and the raucous confusion of Pera Pera's phantasmagorical stage show.
The walls, with their City view, were whited out so that all the clients could see was the sky. The large circular bed was set up in the centre of the main space along with a freestanding hot tub to one side. Round the sides of the room a sauna, a steam room, a wet room and a play room had been set up. The play room had walls which could be misted or coloured out. It had a soft floor and was deck
ed out with cushions and furs. A discreet toy cabinet was nestled in the corner and the curved side of the room housed a large display on a default setting of open log fire. Finally, there was a treatment room which could be used by the clients before, during or after their appointment with Kester.
It was unimaginative in a way and Kester had his doubts about it being set up the same way for each client – wouldn't they all want a different experience? But his concerns were unfounded. Each client brought with them their own experiences and preferences, their own fantasies and fetishes. Each made it their own.
On Tuesday, with Basil Black Junior, the room became a log cabin in the wilderness. Kester, still hung over, was thankful for this. Black touched him as if they were the only two humans for thousands of miles and the feeling of isolation suited Kester. It was the first time he had experienced full sex with a man and the fantasy of this romance at the ends of the earth helped him to relax, allowed him to be taken in, wooed and brought around to the idea.
On Wednesday, with Tamsin Holloway, a creature of limited imagination, the room had remained a spa where her naughty masseur took advantage of her in every conceivable way.
Thursday was a confusing day. Kester spent it with the anonymous wife of a reclusive American billionaire who called herself simply 'Joan'. Her fantasies were unfocused, as if she wanted everything at once. Kester felt he was running around after her, a naked clown, always one step behind her desires. He was glad for Gaunt's 'medicine'. However, he was repaid fully for his efforts when, towards the end of the appointment, they spent half an hour worshipping each others' feet with caresses and kisses until he finally felt for the first time that day that he wanted and was able to please her.
When Kester finally got back to his apartment, he was completely spent. He was relieved to find that Alexis was still in her office, working on the last-minute arrangements for the following night. It was past midnight when she finally appeared. Kester woke when she slipped into bed beside him. He flicked his bedside light on.
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