by Jane Killick
He was telling the truth. Michael would have perceived if it was a lie. “Did you destroy it all?” he asked. “Everything you had done in Russia?”
“As much of it as I could. There was a certain dissatisfaction among the Russians about the perceiver serum. They wanted it to be perfect, they didn’t understand that biochemical science takes time, that it is about refining your results, about learning from your failures. So I played into their hands and ended that trial claiming that it was unsuccessful. No one seemed to notice that I destroyed my research, apart from a few vials of the serum which I believe got into the hands of one of the Russian generals. The rest of it, without me, was bound to collapse. The Russians liked the idea of creating a whole generation of perceiver children like Brian Ransom had done in Britain, but they had little appetite for waiting for those children to be born and grow up. It is my understanding that, after I had been smuggled out of the country, that line of research was moth-balled.”
“Is this the thing that Sian Jones was going to expose?” said Pauline. “That Britain is carrying out research into perceivers? Doesn’t seem something worth killing for.”
“It depends what the research is,” said Otis. “Why don’t you ask him what the research is.”
Michael looked around the lab. “Well?” he asked Lucas.
“When I told the Russians that the serum trial was unsuccessful, it was a lie,” said Lucas. “When I came back to England, I was able to combine the work I was doing in Russia with the research Brian Ransom had done in the UK and tweak the formula. We were able to develop a serum which targets only the part of the genetic code which turns ordinary people into perceivers, and not the part of the brain that turns people mad. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to manufacture, as the basis of the chemical is extracted from a living perceiver. That’s when we decided to synthesise it using a rapidly growing species of moss which was developed in the pharmaceutical industry to grow substances for use in medicines. It makes the moss turn red for some reason.”
Michael looked around the lab again. The red moss growing in the window boxes took on a new significance. “You’re growing stuff which can turn norms into perceivers?”
“It has to be extracted and concentrated to have any great effect,” said Lucas. “The stuff we’ve spliced into the moss will only give people a tiny sense of what it is like to be a perceiver. A sort of perceiver-lite, if you will. Once extracted and concentrated, it forms a new serum which we believe is safe enough to be injected by intelligence agents out in the field and strong enough for them to easily and effectively perceive the minds of their targets.”
“That’s it?” said Pauline. “A new way to turn norms into perceivers? I don’t believe it. That’s not worth killing someone over.”
She bolted forward and grabbed Lucas by the lapels of his lab coat. He was not a small man by any means, but her frustration was such that she lifted him up off the stool. “What are you not telling us?” she screamed. She widened her eyes and pushed in hard with her perception.
Lucas cried out. Half with the pain she was causing inside of his mind, half with the fear of what she was going to do.
“Pauline, stop!” Michael pulled at her arm, but she wrenched it from him.
Two years since the death of Alex and all that hurt was pouring out of her, into the probing of Lucas’s mind.
Then it stopped. Pauline withdrew in shock. She stood there, her eyes still wide, but her perception closed down. “He wasn’t hiding what he was working on,” she said, almost to herself. “He was hiding who he was working with.”
She pulled at the security pass around his neck so hard that the cord broke, and she turned and ran.
“Pauline!” Michael called after her.
She ran out of the lab and back into the corridor. Michael was steps behind as she slammed her palms on the double doors that led into the stairwell. The doors were still swinging on their hinges as Michael got there, just in time to see her slam her palms on the second set of double doors.
He entered a corridor which was the mirror image of the one they had just left. Windows looking into the car park were on his right. A single security door was on his left. Pauline touched Lucas’s pass to the black box. The red light turned to green, the bolts of the door clicked to their unlocked position and she pushed it open.
Michael followed to see Pauline had stopped just inside the door of the mirror image lab. More red moss grew in window boxes along the back. More benches ran in rows down the length of the lab with more scientific equipment laid out along them.
Sitting at one of the benches was a man. There were microscopic images of the moss displayed on a computer screen in front of him. He was about the same age as Lucas, with a full head of grey hair and a neatly trimmed beard.
When he turned to look at Michael, it only served to confirm his identity. Michael had already perceived who it was.
It was Brian Ransom. His father.
Twenty-Six
Michael looked at his father.
His father looked at him.
Pauline watched them both.
They perceived each other.
Disbelief, understanding, hatred and love mixed themselves together like brightly coloured paints stirred into a brown, muddy emotional soup.
“Michael,” said Ransom, eventually. “How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t,” said Michael. “You’re supposed to be in jail.”
“I’m on day release.” Ransom lifted the leg of his trousers to reveal an electronic tag strapped to his ankle.
“Why did they let you out?”
“They needed someone to work with Doctor Lucas,” said Ransom. “Someone who knew about perceivers, someone who could interpret the old research we did to create the vitamin pills.”
“I thought that research was destroyed,” said Pauline.
“Apparently, not all of it,” said Ransom. “When parts of my company were split up and sold, some of it ended up here at Clairone Labs.”
There was water in Michael’s eyes. Water that felt like acid burning its way through his sight and turning his vision to mush. “Doctor Lucas?” he said. The pain of the acid was affecting his voice and causing his mouth to tremble as he spoke. “Doctor Lucas who had you kidnapped by two mind-controlled thugs in the middle of the street? Doctor Lucas who had you chained to a radiator and made you piss in a bucket? Doctor Lucas who experimented on perceivers and didn’t care who he hurt in the process?”
Michael turned away from his father. He was disgusted. What made it worse was how his father sat there and talked so calmly about it as if it were nothing.
Otis came rushing through the door. “What the hell’s going on?”
Behind him, walking awkwardly after his beating, was Doctor Lucas. “I’m sorry Brian, I couldn’t stop them.”
Ransom couldn’t help but see Lucas’s injuries and the bloodied handkerchief in his hand. “Saul, what happened? Are you all right?”
The scientist opened his mouth to answer, but Michael’s anger wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. He swore, if he still had Norm the Norm’s sidearm with him, he would have shot Lucas through the head there and then and been done with it. “Oh yes, let’s all feel sorry for Doctor Lucas!” he yelled, swirling around and glaring at every single person in the room like it was all their fault. “Poor Doctor Lucas who has hurt – how many people?”
“Michael, calm down,” said Ransom. “I can explain.”
“Honestly, Dad, I don’t think you can.”
Michael walked out into the corridor. He was going to stand there where there were fewer emotions flying around to think about what he was going to do next. But when he stepped outside, he knew it wasn’t far enough away. He turned to the double doors and ran.
He ran out into the stairwell and down every step, thumping his feet down on them as if to punish them. Without thinking, he went back the way they had come in and found himself in the corridor whic
h led to the fire door. He didn’t hesitate for a moment and kept running until he was nearly there, then he lifted both hands and pushed down hard so the door had no choice but to open. It swung wide – probably sending a little notice to the computer belonging to the woman with the stealthy flat shoes – and let him out into the open.
A cold wind blew in the shade of the building, but Michael didn’t care. He welcomed the winter air chafing at his skin and the way it took the heat away from his cheeks.
He walked around to the front of the building. He thought about getting back in the car, but that would be swapping one claustrophobic inside space for another – and, besides, Otis still had the keys. So when he got to the front entrance he just stopped. There was a little doorstep there – more like a kerb, really – and he sat down.
Was that the big story that Sian Jones was working on? That Brian Ransom, the man who was jailed for using his research to make perceivers, was being let out of jail to do new research into how to make more perceivers? It was big enough to make the headlines. But big enough to kill for?
And what did it have to do with Peter Wauluds? Perhaps it had nothing to do with the MP. Perhaps she had found out that he was a perceiver and was going to expose him, and her research into him was no more complicated than that.
Pauline came and joined him.
She sat on the kerb and pulled his arm until his hand came out of his pocket and then she clasped her fingers around his. It did more to warm him than the faltering winter sun that was beginning to sink behind the industrial buildings on the other side of the car park.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
She squeezed his hand tighter.
“I might as well give up now,” said Michael. “Call Pankhurst, tell his men to come get me and submit to the cure.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Katya was right. This whole crazy quest, ringing up Otis, getting his father to let us in the fire door and all the rest, it was never going to save me.”
Pauline said nothing. Instead, he felt her perception nudge at the edge of his filters. He let her in because he had nothing to hide. They had all seen his shame on display in the lab with the father who had done everything to betray him.
Just to have her mind there felt nice. It was like the touch of her hand, but more intimate. There were no other minds around, the people who worked at Clairone were safely inside the building, so he didn’t even have to block anyone else out. They just sat there, letting their thoughts intertwine and their emotions combine, until there was no difference between them.
Until another presence entered their perception and they pulled up their blocks. It was Brian Ransom. He wasn’t as strong as them, but he could perceive their surface thoughts. Thoughts that they didn’t want him to perceive.
“Excuse me, Pauline,” he said. “I would like a word with my son.”
She looked up at him as he stood beside her. Michael kept staring out ahead.
Is it okay? Pauline asked Michael with her thoughts.
Yeah, it’s okay, he replied.
Pauline stood up from the kerb. “Where are the others?” she asked.
“Still in the lab,” said Ransom. “A man called Doctor Smith – his real name, apparently – is in there. Lucas is showing him our moss.”
“See you later, Michael,” said Pauline and she left.
Ransom sat down next to Michael. He tried to perceive him, but Michael blocked him out.
The sun sank further behind the buildings.
“They came to me in prison,” Ransom said. “They told me, the Russians had developed a serum that could turn normal people into perceivers. But it was only temporary and with a terrible side effect that turned the users mad if they had too many injections. They said it wasn’t perfect, but it could be improved with more research and they were worried the Russians would develop a drug that would turn their secret agents into the perfect spies. If the Russians had it, then pretty soon the Chinese might have it, the Japanese would have it. It would be like the nuclear arms race all over again.
“Except that we, Britain, would not have it,” Ransom continued. “Britain had effectively had two leading researchers in the field of perception and both of them had been prevented from carrying out their work in this country. One was Doctor Lucas, who defected to Russia under the lure of more money and resources. The second was me, who they put on trial and threw in a jail cell. If Britain was to maintain a presence on the world stage, they told me, then we needed to resurrect our research. That meant getting me out of jail, getting Lucas to come back home and getting us to work together.”
“So you accepted?” said Michael. It was not so much a question as an accusation.
“I welcomed the opportunity to get out of prison, I don’t deny it. Even though they take me back to my cell and lock me up again at night. But I also welcomed the chance to resume my research into perception. I had screwed up with the vitamin pills, I knew that I had. But I also knew if I could take Doctor Lucas’s perceiver serum and perfect it, then children like you wouldn’t have to be co-opted into any Perceiver Corps. People who wanted to be spies or soldiers or special agents, would be the ones turning themselves into perceivers, and they would be doing it willingly.”
“Doctor Lucas offered you the chance to work with him when he had us both imprisoned in Russia and you turned him down, do you remember that?” said Michael. “You said you had a vision for peace, that if everyone could perceive each other, then hatred and misunderstanding would be things of the past. But all that happened was that normal people came to hate perceivers and no matter how much we tried to explain that we’re not evil mind readers, it made no difference. That’s why you told Doctor Lucas to go to hell back then, even if it meant coming back to Britain and going to jail.”
“That was different,” said Ransom.
“Was it? I was proud of you then. I’m not proud of you now.”
“If you could only understand what we’re doing here—”
Michael got up from his position on the kerb and raised his arms in frustration. “No, I don’t understand, Dad! You’re turning perceivers into a weapon. Once Pankhurst has got his wish and cured us all, that’s what perception will be: a weapon to inject into soldiers to help them defeat the enemy in a war. Not the bringer of peace like you thought it was going to be all those years ago.”
A ringing sound emerged from Michael’s pocket. It was his phone.
He retrieved it and was going to turn it off, but the screen said it was Mary Ransom calling.
“It’s my mother,” said Michael. “Your wife. Do you want to tell her what you’ve been up to when she thought you were safely locked away in jail?”
Michael held out the phone to Ransom. Ransom turned his head away. “Don’t tell her, please.”
“So you are ashamed at what you’re doing?” said Michael.
It was a rhetorical question which he didn’t give his father time to answer as he accepted the call.
Mary sounded flustered. The police had been to the house, she said, looking for him. She had told them she didn’t know where he was and managed to get rid of them. But, with all the stress in the house, Katya went into labour. Because Otis had taken the car, she had to call an ambulance.
Michael thanked her, said he would deal with it, and hung up.
“I have to go,” Michael told his father. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t feel like going back into the lab. Not today,” said Ransom. “I’ll probably just sit here until the van comes to take me back to prison. What other choice do I have?”
“There’s always a choice, Dad,” said Michael. “There’s always a choice.”
Twenty-Seven
Otis drove them to Wycombe Hospital, which was the nearest maternity hospital to Mary’s house in Beaconsfield and where the ambulance had taken Katya. They said their goodbyes and Otis left to take the car back to Mary and then t
o make his way home to the woman he called his wife and their child.
The last time Michael had come to a hospital, he had experienced a man’s death. The memory of it existed in the smell of the chemical they used to clean the floors and wash the bedclothes. It clung to the uniforms of the nurses as they moved from patient to patient. It was in the floral pattern of the curtains used to partition each bed and in the anxious faces of the relatives who sat waiting for news.
That was what he saw. But what he sensed with his perception was entirely the opposite. The people who sat waiting, the staff who attended the patients and even the patients themselves were happy. There was an optimism about them, a feeling of hope and expectation. Because the maternity ward was about life, not death.
In among all the happy, but anxious minds was one that Michael recognised. Looking beyond the movement of busy nurses around the nurses’ station, was the familiar black suit of Agent Cooper. He was standing by a collection of chairs meant for relatives, and speaking into his mobile phone; too engrossed to notice Michael and Pauline approaching.
Pauline touched Michael’s arm to bring him to a stop in the middle of the corridor. A doctor in a hurry had to dodge to get round them.
“What’s he doing here?” she said.
“I called him,” said Michael.
“You did what?”
Katya’s baby was conceived as part of the Russian perceiver programme, he told her with his thoughts, not wanting any norms to overhear.
“I don’t see how that matters,” said Pauline out loud.
“He has a legitimate interest,” said Michael. “Anyway, Katya is a single mother in a foreign country, she needs some sort of support and I don’t think – given the circumstances – that we are the ones who can offer that to her.”
It did little to alleviate her suspicions and Michael felt Pauline’s perception reach out to his mind. He instinctively resisted. “What are you not telling me?” she said.