A Box of Birds

by Charles Fernyhough

  PART FOUR

  ◉

  The City

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hostage

  ◉

  I’m running, strobed by a broken beam of lamplight. Every breath of this black air burns my lungs. James is behind me, urging me back towards the ladder. After the brilliance of the hotel, seeing is guesswork, fleeting obscurities briefly illuminated, too fast for thought to catch up.

  ‘They didn’t see us.’ His voice echoes nightmarishly around the drive. ‘I got back just in time. I’m pretty sure we’ve got away with it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Their security people. I could see them on the cameras, heading towards the foyer. They weren’t expecting visitors. We’re OK.’

  I pull up, crippled by doubt.

  ‘Yvonne, what’s the matter with you?’

  I feel him taking hold of me, trying to push me on. But the amulet drags me down. I put my fingers to it and its warm density compels me again. The Chinese girl was playing with hers, twisting and pressing on its golden ear. When I did the same, it affected me. I was part of it. I was wired into it. The thought knots me up with fear.

  ‘That woman. Did you know her? Have you ever seen her before?’

  ‘Of course not. Why?’

  I reach back, trying to unclip the amulet, but I can’t make my cold fingers respond.

  ‘What is this thing, James? What have you given me?’

  ‘It’s nothing. I’ve got a friend who makes jewellery. I thought you’d like it.’

  ‘But that girl back there ... She was wearing the same thing.’

  He looks surprised. He didn’t see what I saw hanging around the woman’s neck, and it’s bothering him. I can see him muttering to an invisible adversary. He reaches the fifth phone and rattles the holster furiously. I hear him talking to the old guy, forcing himself to sound calm. He hangs up, looking back along the drive.

  ‘He’s sending the cage for us. Now we have to get back up that ladder.’

  ‘What did you see, James? What was going on back there?’

  ‘Nothing. I saw a load of empty corridors.’

  ‘She told me the other guests were all working. She said they’d cleared the animals away.’

  ‘And now they’ve got some new animals. Chinese migrants, here in the belief that they’re going to get work. That’s almost as bad as doing this stuff on chimps.’

  ‘Almost as bad?’

  ‘Those people made a choice about coming here. The chimps didn’t.’

  He turns away, testing the stability of the ladder. He drags himself onto the first rung and beckons me after. I dither, wondering what it would take to make him listen to me. I could slip away from him now, while he’s not watching, and he might never know what had happened. But I stay where I am. When it comes to the important things, I never can decide. I’m torn in the most obvious ways, between doing a thing and holding back, between saying no with my mouth and yes with every other part of me. I want to tell him what happened back there, and I want to keep it to myself. I’m half a person, ruled by linkages I have no map for. I’m a passenger in my own life, a hostage in a runaway car.

  I watch him driving. It’s been raining steadily ever since the old man dropped us back at the Saxon Kingdom. We hang on the brake-lights of a queue of executive cars, watching lorries do-si-doing on the inside lanes. I could probably have got back to Fulling without him, but then I would never have had a chance to find out what he knows. Even if it risks playing into his hands, I need to keep him close, for now.

  I finger the amulet, conscious of James’ presence in the corner of my eye. I don’t know what’s harder to believe: the idea that he could have knowingly done this to me, or that he could have given me this gift without realising what it was. At least I understand now why I’ve been feeling different since I got out of hospital. The thoughts that weren’t my own. The memories that came unbidden, made me a stranger to my own mind. The birds control this, not me. Whatever I do next, deciding is not part of it. The birds will have their say.

  His phone rings. He tosses it across to me, gesturing for me to answer it. The number isn’t recognised.

  ‘Yvonne?’

  It’s Bridge. I remember her peering at me through the shattered light of the hallway, telling me that everything would be all right. I haven’t spoken to her since she swam into my unconsciousness and seemed to leave something there: an idea, the shell of a terrifying thought.

  I hand the phone to James. He clamps it to his ear, gripping it with his chin, and listens. I suppose I should have said something to Bridge, thanked her for getting me to hospital, but the irony would probably have killed me. Should I take the phone back from him now, corral her mermaid attention and force her to explain what they did to me in the hallway? But James looks as though he were hearing bad news. He needs to mind the road; for once, he can’t avert his eyes. I wish I’d offered to drive for him. Let him fight his own fight, without the distractions of traffic.

  He lowers the phone, weighing it in one hand. I get the impression that Bridge has just hung up on him.

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘She says we need to talk.’

  ‘Is she still jealous?’

  ‘It’s gone beyond that, Yvonne. She’s angry. They all are. I’ll drop you back at the forest and then I’ll get over there.’

  The rain gets heavier. I’ve managed to change my clothes and the worst of the dressings, but still I’m cold and shaken. The wound on my scalp is fizzing. The suspension on this old hydrogen-cell conversion makes my Santana a memory of luxury.

  ‘Did Bridge call the ambulance?’

  ‘Yes. I told you. She went with you to the hospital.’

  ‘And what happened before that? While I was lying there?’

  ‘Nothing happened. Why?’

  I could tell him. I could explain that I’ve worked out what this amulet means. But I want to find out what he knows.

  ‘Can you take this thing off me?’ I tug on the figurine with my still-numb fingers, feeling the chain cut into my neck. ‘I’m sick of it.’

  ‘You know what? So am I.’

  He thuds his hand on the wheel helplessly. He’s eyeing the junction signs, calculating how much further we have to go. I fix my eyes on the smoky fringes of the forest, forcing my imagination on to the scene that lies beyond. The bright, clinical order of the Forest Campus. The shocked hush that will confront me at the Institute. I don’t how this plan came to me, and I probably never will. I’m the hostage in this scenario. I’m the decided, not the decider. But I know where I’m going. I’m going back to my lab, right now, to try to explain all this to Gillian. A train of lorries peels away in the slow lane, and the skyline of the medieval city reels into view. Then James says:

  ‘Well, I guess we’re going to find out how ruthless these people really are.’

  A cold weight falls through me. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Tonight. Bridge just told me. Seems there’s going to be a bit of a confrontation. I want you to see it.’

  ‘Who’s going to be the winner?’

  ‘We are. You and me.’

  ‘What about David?’

  ‘I’ll worry about David later. I’ll talk to him. I’ll have to.’

  His face is still flushed from the phone call. Whatever Bridge has just said to him, it’s put the fear of God into him. He told me, that afternoon on the moors, that he and the others had had a falling-out. A frank exchange, he called it, in that deafening euphemism. Bridge, Grandstand, Level Ten: they were losing their focus, branching out into places where they shouldn’t be going. They asked him to do something that he didn’t want to do. And now there’s going to be a showdown, and we’re going to find out whose side James is really on. I know he’s lying about David, like he’s been lying to me from the moment he walked into my lab. The trouble is, I prefer the lie to the alternative. Which is that David Overstrand is not as far away as James has been making out, and finding
Gareth might mean finding him as well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Scan

  ◉

  The mouse feels almost weightless. He has died in a shrug, eyes shut in a final gesture of relinquishment, his feet clawed into little bony burrs. I could hang him from my top like a brooch, my own version of the Conscience green ribbon, telling the world A vivisectionist lives here. A vivisectionist who doesn’t use a knife, perhaps, but guilty all the same. The fact is, I didn’t need to tamper with their brains when I was wreaking such spectacular havoc with their DNA. This little guy had his fate decided before he even made it to embryo. He was programmed to fail, and he’s followed his genetic instructions to the letter. I count four dead bodies in all. A luckier transgenic is scurrying around his maisonette in a perfect wall-hugging rectangle, as baffled by his suffering as I am.

  I give up on trying to count the survivors and cross the corridor to the lab. Here, the evidence of my neglect shows in a sort of exaggerated stillness, as in a busy house suddenly abandoned, things sealed off for weeks in silence and eddyless air. The new infrared motion tracker, bought with the remnants of our grant money in January, stands blind and useless next to the drained water maze. I’m not sure that even Gillian has been in here. The bin has been emptied, and a few weeks of mail, journals, late essays and stuff stand piled up on my desk. I tear the plastic off last week’s Nature and glance at the job ads. The thought of having to find something else to do is a low-level terror, lurking around the corners of my gut, ready to spring. If I lose this, I’m fucked. This is all I know how to do.

  ‘How’s the patient?’

  I didn’t hear her come in.

  ‘You look in better shape than you did when I last saw you. How are those wounds healing up?’

  I peel back the dressing on my arm and show her the fierce smear of Pyronox. But the damage to my scalp interests her more. She’s a couple of inches taller than I am, and she has no trouble lifting herself on tiptoe to inspect the wound on the right-hand side of my skull. The dressing is a pad of soft plastic, taped to a small circle of skin where my hair has been cut away. Above it, closer to the crown, are two tender bumps like scabbed insect bites. The pain there is different, the placing uneasily regular. Gillian looks as though she wants to touch them, but she stops herself.

  ‘Thanks for the flowers,’ I say.

  She shakes her head, dismissing it.

  ‘This mystery package you had. Has anyone claimed responsibility?’

  ‘I don’t know. How do they do that?’

  ‘They send you a badly-spelled death threat. My laundry room is plastered with them.’

  ‘Nothing’s come,’ I say. ‘But then I haven’t been home...’

  She starts unpacking the helmet. It took a twenty-minute phone call to convince her that I was serious, but now she’s all busy efficiency.

  ‘And it was this James fellow who took you to hospital? You’re still together with him?’

  I recognise the aluminium casing of the headcoil, the grey visor, the tail of cables hanging down. The moment becomes transparent, and I can see this other reality behind it, swelling to fill it. Gareth in his nun’s costume, sitting in that same chair, convinced that he could see his own thoughts. James, hiding his avoidant eyes behind his Flintstone mask. The amulet commands my gaze from the corner of the desk, safely distant from whatever it is that it’s controlling. I can trust this memory. It is mine.

  ‘I was staying at his house. I don’t imagine he was expecting an animal rights attack. One of his friends found me. I woke up in the Royal Infirmary.’

  ‘They didn’t scan you there?’

  ‘Why should they? They wouldn’t even have thought of it. They’d have found it as far-fetched as you did.’

  ‘OK, let’s get this thing going. Find out whether that bomb shook anything loose.’

  ‘Don’t I need an MRI? A big magnet, high res?’

  ‘We’re not going to find an MRI tech on a Saturday. Anyway, we don’t need an MRI. If there’s anything there, we’ll see it with this.’

  I take the helmet from her and put it on. It’s heavy, and the still-new padding scratches my cheeks. There’s a smell of acetone. I push the visor up and notice that Gillian has dimmed the lights and blinded the windows. The projectors spark up, and I can see the clenched gloves of two cortical hemispheres taking shape in the air between us.

  ‘Like you said, we’re not getting good resolution with this. It’s going to be hit and miss. What worries me is where they could have put it. They’ll have entered the brain through that wound on your scalp. That’s how they could do this without attracting any attention at the hospital. Those little bumps are from the fiducials. Positioning devices, fixed by tiny screws to your skull. They’ll have used a stereotactic column, and they were probably also scanning you as they went in. If they were heading for where I think they were heading, there are going to be some pretty important homeostatic pathways running close by. I’m praying that these jokers have been careful.’

  I can hardly process her words. ‘Could they really have gone into my skull while I was lying there in the hallway?’

  ‘It was reckless. This is not open-brain surgery, but it’s a serious procedure. Implants for deep brain stimulation tend to go in when the patient is conscious. That way you know straightaway whether you’re straying. You keep the patient talking, see if there’s anything weird going on. Your patient isn’t feeling anything, of course: no pain receptors up there. You just watch for whether they start talking Japanese or breathing too fast. It’s a valuable safety check.’

  ‘But...because I was unconscious, they could have screwed up badly?’

  ‘They could have done. The fact that you’re still here suggests that they didn’t.’

  She moves around the hologram, studying it like a sculpture.

  ‘So someone knew what they were doing?’

  ‘Thankfully, yes. In the right hands, this is a half-hour operation. For Sansom, that’s the appeal. They can sell this technology as only minimally invasive. People will be having it done in their lunch hours. That’s why Sansom want the mapping data, so that their techs can be putting these things in blindfold. The good news, though, is that it will take only slightly longer than half an hour to reverse it. You’ll be back to your old unenhanced self in no time.’

  I feel a swell of panic. They did this for a reason, whoever it was. There’s an order to this. A logic that needs following through.

  ‘We’re not going to find a technician to do that today, are we?’

  My voice breaks up. Gillian pushes out a little squeezed-lip smile of solidarity. I can’t help liking her, for all the bullshit, for all the mannered Leichhardt High sassiness. I’m glad she’s on my side.

  ‘Before we get you booked in for that, let’s see if you’ve really got this thing inside you. Until we actually see something, we’re still guessing.’

  She plays with the remote, rotating the image and zooming in. The lines of circuitry are pale blue. My cortex is a cavernous space, a tunnel lit by tiny lights. It’s as I imagined it, the last time we sat in the presence of this thing, those few short weeks ago. The brisk efficiency of life-or-death routines, but no shape to those connections, no focus that could correspond to a soul. If I weren’t so terrified by what might show up here, I’d be disappointed that my own nervous system looked so dull.

  ‘This is a structural image,’ she says. ‘We need a functional one. We need to see your brain actually working.’

  She types some commands into my terminal. The shimmering cerebrum explodes into colour. I see a throb of activity, reaching from way back in the visual cortex right up to the frontal lobes, a self gathering itself, the exquisitely complex matrices of the Lorenzo Circuit swirling into action. The connections come alive. The past takes shape. I’m remembering.

  ‘Now where is this widget you thought was controlling it?’

  I point to the amulet on the desk next to her. She picks it
up and inspects it, shakes it at her ear.

  ‘I’d say this was a remote control device. The power supply for the electrodes is inside you. They’ve probably buried a small pulse generator under your collarbone. Hence that delicate little wound on your neck. The doctors probably thought it was caused by the bomb. The actual wires run subcutaneously.’

  ‘OK.’ My voice is thin. I put my hand up to touch the cut, tracing its familiar shape with a new buzz of horror.

  ‘You can thank Mateus for that particular scientific breakthrough.’

  I give a cynical laugh. ‘He’s a bastard, but he didn’t do this.’

  ‘He gave the world the Pereira Effect, though. And his old employers have made dramatic use of it. Their research is about stimulating memory. These implants give them a new way of doing this. Spreading an electrical charge across different areas of the brain, and so triggering the crucial parts of the mechanism.’

  ‘And that woman I saw in the mines...She was testing out the technology.’

  Gillian moves away from the desk and approaches the ghost brain.

  ‘Exactly. If what you told me on the phone is true, Sansom created the problem before they solved it. The idea was to model Alzheimer’s in healthy individuals. That was what the amyloid suspension was for. I’m guessing that they didn’t want to use real dementia patients — too many other problems, mainly associated with ageing, which could confound the results. So they found some healthy “volunteers”. Migrants looking for help with their asylum applications. People who could be relied on not to understand the consent forms. Sansom made them comfortable and started feeding them this amyloid smoothie. Tangled their brains up with plaques, just like what happens in the real dementia. Next, they used the implants to try to stimulate their subjects’ circuits again. Sansom want a therapy for dementia. Grandma’s magical box of memories. That’s what this is really about.’