(2013) Looks Could Kill

by David Ellis

  “You mentioned MI5. Do you all work for them?” asked Emma.

  “I’m a full-time officer,” explained Fred. “Jemma and Tim are agents and Professor Cuthbertson is a consultant who advises us on medical matters.”

  “And where did Daniel fit into all of this?” asked Emma.

  “Daniel was also an agent,” said Fred. “Sometimes our agents are chosen because they have particular access to information – like Jemma and Tim through their travels as opera singers – and sometimes because of their skills. Daniel was a remarkably adept therapist with a particularly well developed ability at empathy which proved invaluable when we needed to obtain information from more recalcitrant subjects.”

  “So my appointment with him was planned, was it?” asked Emma.

  “Indeed. It was felt by all of us that you were biting off more than you could chew. Unfortunately, we didn’t factor in that Daniel might decide to go off piste and fall in love with you. Nor did we anticipate that he might develop cancer and leave you with a complicated inheritance on his death.”

  “We also didn’t know that Daniel’s father had been independently pursuing a similar interest in people with unusual abilities, which probably stems from the Armstrong clan’s belief in the droch-shùil,” said Tim. “And he also has the backing of Armstrong Industries and the US Department of Defense.”

  “And so for you to become romantically entangled with his son, and then for his son to equip you with the means to take your ability into the mainstream, has put him in the situation of having to intervene,” said Fred. “And that means either stopping you or using you.”

  “Christ, this really is wheels within wheels,” said Emma.

  “Which takes us back to what I was saying at the beginning: that you really are at risk, and possibly of being kidnapped,” said Professor Cuthbertson.

  “So what we propose is that you stay here for a few days until we can make your house more secure and put some protection in place,” said Fred. “And while you’re here, we’d also like to find out a bit more about your ability – if you’re in agreement, of course.”

  “Do I have any choice?” asked Emma.

  “Actually, you do,” said Fred. If you tell us you want to return home now, we’ll arrange a car to take you back, but you need to understand that we can’t be responsible for what happens next. And given your advanced stage of pregnancy, we’d hate to see you becoming the victim of some devious intervention from Armstrong Industries and the US Department of Defense.”

  “Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound,” said Emma with a sigh.

  “I suggest we adjourn now for the night and I’ll take you to your room,” said Fred. “Tomorrow I’ll show you around this facility and let you know what we’ve got planned for the next few days.”

  “Goodnight, Emma,” said Jemma, Tim and Professor Cuthbertson, and their screens went blank.

  Fred led Emma out of the conference room and down the corridor to a room that was like a suite in a five star hotel. She was impressed.

  “Emma, I’m really sorry for all the subterfuge,” said Fred, “but I do think this is the best option at the moment. You’ll find everything you need here including clothes in your size and toiletries. The housekeeper will bring you breakfast at 9, if that’s alright with you.”

  “Yes, that’s fine, Fred,” said Emma. “I suppose I should thank you for saving me from a fate worse than death.”

  “Your thanks are gratefully received,” said Fred. “Goodnight, Emma.” He closed the door behind him.

  Emma checked the wardrobe and was surprised to see a range of clothes in her size and suitable for her stage of pregnancy plus a variety of fairly fashionable shoes. The contents of the bathroom were similarly exact, including a supply of contact lenses in the right prescription. She considered having a hot, lingering bath but decided to go to bed immediately. And as soon as her head touched the pillow, she fell into a deep sleep.

  August 2005, the following morning

  Emma woke just before 9:00 a.m. and she was surprised how relaxed she felt. She half-wondered whether some psychotropic drug had been squirted through the air vents while she was asleep. There was a knock on the door and the housekeeper came in bearing an appetising looking breakfast tray.

  “Good morning, Dr Jones, I’m Betty the housekeeper. Would you like your breakfast in bed or at the table?”

  “Good to meet you, Betty,” said Emma. “I think I’ll have it at the table. My tummy tends to get in the way these days.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Betty. “Due in October, is it?”

  “Gosh, you are well informed. Is there anything you don’t know about me?” asked Emma.

  “I doubt it,” said Betty with a chuckle. She arranged the breakfast on the table and took away the tray. “Oh, Fred asked me to tell you that he’ll collect you at 10 to show you around.”

  “Thanks very much, Betty,” said Emma, making her way to the table and sniffing the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee.

  Replete, bathed and dressed, Emma felt ready to start the day and was actually looking forward to the next instalment of her unexpected stay in the countryside. A knock on the door announced Fred’s arrival.

  “I hope you slept well,” said Fred.

  “Surprisingly well, actually. It must have been all the excitement of last night,” said Emma. “Tell me, Fred, who else has been involved in my, er, development?”

  “Well, Georgina Brown for one, and then there was your former secretary who left you Daniel’s card. And probably many more,” said Fred.

  “Gosh, I had no idea that MI5 had the ability to be so involved in a single person’s life,” said Emma.

  “Well, they aren’t usually,” said Fred, “but you’re far from being a usual person.”

  “I’m not sure whether I should feel flattered or violated,” replied Emma.

  “Probably a bit of both, I would imagine,” said Fred. “Now let me show you around. This corridor is one of a number leading off the hall to video conference rooms and residential quarters for our guests. There’s also a canteen with excellent food. The first floor has the lab space which is where it all gets more interesting.”

  “So, what exactly is this place, apart from being a five star hotel?” asked Emma.

  “Well, officially it’s the ‘Department of Special Research and Investigation’, but we usually call it ‘The Manor’”, said Fred. “Let’s go upstairs; there are a few people I’d like you to meet.”

  The two of them walked through the hall and up a grand, well-trodden staircase. Portraits of the manor house’s former occupants lined the stairs, which added to Emma’s unnerving feeling of being watched wherever she went. She shivered despite the temperature being in the mid-20s. They reached the top of the stairs and Fred produced a swipe card to open a security door which led into a brightly-lit, air-conditioned corridor that seemed out of keeping with the rest of the house.

  “Is that to stop people from getting in or getting out?” asked Emma.

  “Oh, definitely the former,” said Fred. “What we do here is sensitive but no-one is a prisoner.”

  Fred looked through the glass door into a room on the left and then turned to Emma. “You might find this interesting,” he said. “The subject in the room is a young man called Pablo. He’s rather high on the autistic spectrum, with poor empathy and speech skills, but he has an interesting ability with our furry friends. We call him Dr Dolittle.”

  Emma and Fred entered the room after he’d swiped the door. Emma saw a thin young man with black hair covering most of his face and an unusual silver patch at the nape of his neck. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor and facing six cats and dogs of various sizes and breeds lined up ten feet away. All of them were sitting on their haunches and seemed to be looking intently at Pablo. From time to time, Pablo seemed to direct his gaze at a particular animal and make a series of strange guttural squeaks. The animal would then get up and walk forwards until i
t was a few feet away from him. He’d then make another noise and the animal calmly walked back to its original position and sat down again. The spectacle reminded Emma of a line-up of soldiers being commanded by a sergeant major. It then occurred to her exactly why MI5 were interested in this young man’s ability; her mind boggled at the thought of cats and dogs really at war.

  “Extraordinary,” said Emma. “How does he do it?”

  “Well, it’s complicated,” said Fred. On one level, he seems to be using his gaze to engage the animals and then hold their attention. Contrary to what is often thought, cats and dogs don’t have particularly better vision than humans apart from being able to see in the dark, but both species use gaze in their social interactions, for instance in a cat fight or when dogs are establishing dominance. Pablo’s pupils are unusually dark which may have a commanding effect on the animals. The noises he makes are interesting. We’ve analysed them and it seems that he makes a distinct noise for each animal and then follows this with a non-specific command which is the equivalent of “come forward”, “go back”, or whatever. But if we play recordings of the noises without Pablo’s presence, they don’t respond; so his gaze, and possibly some other aspect of his presence, is crucial. We’re wondering whether pheromones might be involved.”

  “And if he commanded them to attack, would they?” asked Emma.

  “A good question,” said Fred. “Let’s see, shall we?” He motioned to a technician who brought out a large teddy bear which he placed in the middle of the floor about three feet from Pablo. He went over to Pablo and muttered something in his ear. “And I think we should retreat behind this screen just in case.” Emma and Fred moved out of the danger zone.

  This time, Pablo seemed to start by staring at each animal in turn and then issued a spine-chilling noise which sounded like ‘croak’ with all the consonants squashed together. The animals’ response was immediate and they lunged at the stuffed toy in a mass of biting and scratching jaws and limbs. After a few seconds, Pablo uttered another sound and they stopped as suddenly as they started and returned to their original seated positions without showing the slightest indication of their frenzied attack. The teddy bear looked as if it had been attacked by a shoal of piranhas.

  “Phew!” exclaimed Emma, “that was just about the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yes, most impressive,” said Fred. “Thank you, Pablo.” The two of them walked out of the room. Emma looked back through the door and saw Pablo gazing impassively at the animals.

  “I think it’s Pablo who really frightens me,” said Emma.

  “I’ll tell you his full story one of these days, but it doesn’t make easy listening,” said Fred.

  They walked down the corridor until they came to a door with the symbol ‘Ψ’ on it.

  “Any idea what that represents, Emma?” asked Fred.

  “It’s the Greek letter ‘Psi’,” she replied, “sometimes used by psychologists and psychiatrists and also by those who believe in parapsychology.”

  “You’re obviously a doubter which is a healthy starting point,” said Fred. “Most of it is undoubtedly bogus, but we think that what some call ‘psi energy’ may be produced in certain situations. The work we’re doing here is to recreate highly stressful situations that we believe are a prerequisite for a fight or flight response that then triggers the release of psi energy as a sort of telepathic SOS message. We think the ability was lost when man developed language. So our test subjects so far have been those who can’t speak. We’ve been particularly impressed by the subject in the room at the moment, a girl called Sonia. She lost her speech when her parents were killed in a car crash five years ago. Perhaps you’d like to meet her?”

  “I don’t see why not,” replied Emma.

  Another swiped door opened and Emma found herself in a much less clinical environment than Pablo’s strange world. A slender, blonde girl looked up from the book she was reading and smiled at them.

  “Sonia, I’d like you to meet Emma,” said Fred. “She joined us last night.”

  Emma put out her hand to greet Sonia, but just before they touched she was suddenly aware that the word ‘baby’ had entered her mind, although it was really more like the word in capital letters, as if it was being shouted in an e-mail. Sonia was looking down at her bump and smiling.

  “Gosh, that was you, was it?” asked Emma.

  “YES!” came the reply inside her head.

  “I can see that you’ve hit it off,” said Fred. “You’re obviously very receptive to Sonia’s psi energy which isn’t surprising given your empathic abilities. When Sonia first started here, psi release needed extreme cold or heat to trigger it, but now she can will it in a normal, non-stressful situation. However, it’s still limited to single words which people usually experience as more of a feeling than real speech. I’m sure she’d enjoy spending more time with you.”

  The message “LIKE!” inside her head confirmed that. Sonia and Emma exchanged smiles and shook hands although the latter etiquette clearly wasn’t necessary.

  “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got in the next room, Fred,” said Emma.

  “Actually, it’s your turn, Emma,” said Fred. “And I’d like you to meet someone who’s particularly interested in your ability.” He swiped the door to another room.

  “This is our eye lab and the wizard in charge is Dr Petros Kyriakides. He’ll explain all this equipment and the tests he has in mind.”

  A handsome bearded man came across the lab to greet them, holding out his hands as if to crush them in a bear hug. He kissed Fred on the lips before turning to shake hands with Emma.

  “So, is this the amazing Dr Jones my husband has told me so much about?”

  “Husband?” asked Emma, surprised and amused by the unlikely pairing.

  “Er, yes,” said Fred, going rather red. “Petros and I had our civil partnership ceremony a few months ago. I’ve told him to be more discrete but you know what Greek men are like.”

  Dr Kyriakides laughed.

  “I think I’m going to like your husband,” said Emma.

  “Excellent, excellent,” said Dr Kyriakides. “Fred, I suggest you go off to do some paperwork or whatever MI5 officers get up to when they’re not disturbing beautiful ladies in the middle of the night.”

  “Okay, dearest, I’ll be back in an hour,” said Fred. “Take good care of Emma; she’s a special lady.” He left the room.

  “Now, Emma, let me explain the equipment we have here,” said Petros. Over here we’ve got the Ocular Coherence Tomograph which generates a 3D image of the macula, which is the central part of the retina. Next to it, there’s the Heidelberg Retinal Tomograph which uses a laser to scan the posterior segment of the eye and is particular useful for examining the optic nerve. Finally, there’s a high resolution camera for intraocular angiography so that we can get a detailed picture of retinal blood flow.”

  “It sounds as if you’re expecting to find something unusual,” said Emma.

  “Possibly,” said Petros. “I certainly have some ideas about your ability which I’d like to explore. And I’ll need to give you a small injection of fluorescein so that we can do the angiography.”

  “That’s the dye, isn’t it?” said Emma.

  “Yes, it’s completely harmless but fluoresces in response to particular wavelengths,” said Petros. “First, I need to take some images of your fundus. If you could sit on this stool and put your chin on the rest, I’ll start the camera.”

  Emma put her chin in place and stared straight ahead into the camera. She was aware of various noises and things moving in front of her.

  “That’s curious,” said Petros. “Without the dye, we wouldn’t normally expect to pick up any signals apart from a bit of autofluorescence, but in your case, the camera is picking up a bright spot right in the centre of your retina at a wavelength of about 200 nanometres, which is outside the normal visible range. It’s almost as if you’ve got a solid-state laser in th
e centre of your retina. Let’s try adding the dye.”

  Petros inserted a butterfly needle into the back of Emma’s left hand and injected a small amount of the fluorescein.

  “Okay, now I’ll take a few more images,” he said.

  Emma saw flashes of blue light.

  “Well, as expected, I’m seeing the dye fluorescing at 490 nanometres, but I’m still seeing the 200 nanometres spot and if anything it’s even more intense. And the image I’m getting of the blood vessels isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before,” said Petros. “Let’s move over to the OCT machine.”

  As before, Emma put her chin on a rest and stared into the machine looking at a small green square. Petros examined each eye in turn. Once he’d completed the scans, he turned a monitor screen so that Emma could see the results.

  “There’s clearly nothing wrong with your eyes in any traditional diagnostic sense, so no signs of macular degeneration or anything like that,” Petros said. On the contrary, what the OCT is picking up is markedly enhanced blood flow to some structure in the centre of your retina where cones would normally be found.”

  At that point, Fred returned. “Have you found anything?”

  “Yes, it’s been most, er, illuminating,” said Petros animatedly. “Emma has an anatomical structure in the centre of her retina that’s actually generating a wavelength just outside the visible spectrum. It’s really quite extraordinary. The nearest thing the structure resembles is the photophore found in marine animals like some cephalopods, but to find such a thing in a mammal is quite unbelievable.”

  “So, Petros, do you think this is the explanation for the evil eye?” asked Emma.

  “I think you’ve hit the nail on the head”, said Petros.