Sequela (11 page)

'Yes.'

'Are you still in touch?'

'The Hospital still uses V's testing centre, if that's what you mean, but you know they're not keen on me shouting it around.'

'I'm thinking specifically of your friend Gerald who runs the centre.' For a second, Blotch worried that he had got the name wrong. He took his Book from his ear quickly and flicked a document icon from the side-menu towards the table-top.

'Oh yes?'

'I don't know if you've heard the news but he doesn't run the centre any more. He's had rather a nice promotion.' Blotch wiped the grimy table display with his sleeve and cast his eyes over the mail. Gerald, yes. He could barely make it out. The display looked like it had been used as a chopping board.

'Yes, I heard.' Lady sounded hesitant. 'Perhaps I could put in a congratulatory call, but it might seem a little odd, since his new department is technically going into competition with me. And I doubt he'll be able to give you any information if that's what you're looking for. It would be helpful to know what it is you're looking for.'

'I'm looking for…' Blotch hesitated. He wasn't exactly sure himself what it was he wanted. 'Eyes on the inside, I suppose. We don't like the idea of these "designer viruses" any more than you do. It just seems prudent to keep an eye on things, don't you think?'

'Hm.' Lady's answer gave little away. 'Let me speak to him and get back to you. Could be a week or more. He's a busy man. He'll be even busier now.'

Kester undid his tie for the third time. It was never going to look good enough because it would never be a good enough tie to wear to V. However, he thought it was a bit mad to go and spend a load of money on a new outfit when there had been talk of a corporate tailor.

As he flipped the tie back over his head to start again, there was a metallic spang and he found himself standing in the dark. Cursing, Kester left the bathroom and paced around his small flat in an attempt to find some kind of reflective surface. He had thought he would stay in his Lambeth flat when he started at V, rather than live-in like most of the V staff, but over the last few days all the little niggles that he had learned to ignore had started to get to him again: the lack of any natural light source in the bathroom, the noise of next door's boiler kicking in at five every morning, the slight cant of the living room floor, the missing skirting board in the hall. He was preparing himself to say goodbye to the place, nitpicking as he might with a lover when he saw the breakup on the horizon.

Stooping in front of his watermarked chrome kettle, he flattened out the two uneven ends of his tie. How would the morning go? He thought himself in through the revolving doors of the V office.  At the reception desk he would say
Hi. My name is Doctor Kester Lowe. Alexis Farrell is expecting me. She said to report to her for my induction
. He would say it in a confident tone, without stumbling over his words or having to check his Book for the details. The receptionist would say
Doctor Lowe – of course! Please, this way.
Nice and straightforward. That bit couldn't go wrong.

Flicking and tucking his tie into a fat knot, he continued the day in his head. Mrs Farrell would be looking over some important documents when he arrived. People would be fussing round her like cleaner wrasse. The receptionist would show him into her office and leave, bowing as she backed out of the doorway. The attendant employees would look up and then buzz out of the room, heads down, leaving just the two of them.
Hello
, he would say.

Where to go from 'hello' was the hard part. She would make some lewd comment. Or would she be different now that he was an employee? With people he knew already he would idly
practise
conversations in his head before he met them, but then he knew the sorts of things they might have to say to him. Perhaps she would make some comment about John's performance in the bar.
Oh, him,
he'd reply, then follow it with a lie about John – John wouldn't mind.
He's just a guy from the department. He sometimes just tags along. He can't handle his drink. He's bipolar.
Maybe slightly fewer lies about John.
I see,
she'd reply. Then she'd hit her Book and mist up the windows that looked onto the rest of the floor. All the employees outside would give him daggers through the opacifying glass.
Time for your induction
.

There was a beep. His Book. After pacing around for a bit, Kester spied it, sitting camouflaged on the edge of his smoked glass coffee table. The transparent body of the Book was a brilliant innovation – just looking through it gave you an AR view of everything you pointed it at – but Kester always forgot to set it to solid when he put it down and it would disappear into its surroundings effortlessly. Word was there was an upgrade coming that would make it change automatically when you put it down, but it hadn't
materialised
yet. He should have got the one with the red fingerplate and topline. As he picked it up the round button in the centre of the fingerplate recognised his thumbprint and unlocked. A good luck message from Betta.

Kester thought of Delilah. It had been over a week. Betta had been acting the go-between, but it had all been one way. Dee had met all of Kester's apologies with silence. Betta said she was waiting for him to turn down the job, but he had no idea why he would, or why she would think that he would.

Kester's eye wandered automatically to the picture of him and Dee that sat gathering dust on top of the fridge. He remembered the day it was taken – his eleventh birthday, a Friday in the summer holidays. That morning his parents had been deep in excited conversation when he came downstairs. The kitchen smelled of his Dad's aftershave and burnt toast. On the television they were claiming that the threat of AIDS was over and on some channels that all disease was beaten for good. Someone had invented a nano-device that built itself inside the sufferer's body and protected them from disease, taking over the functions of their broken immune system.

When Kester had finally managed to get his parents' attention, his Dad had jumped in and explained to him what the immune system was. On the television there were arguments raging. Some people seemed to be against the device for some reason and others were saying that scientists had bettered the design of the human body. Kester couldn't follow the arguments, but he remembered thinking that it must be very important because neither of his parents had said
happy birthday
to him. Dee had beaten them to it, bursting in the back door, arms outstretched, chanting
I am the birthdaybot. I have come to install your nanoscreener. Surrender your guts.

-o-

It was strange being back at the V building. It was only a week and a half since his interview but everything looked different to Kester. He stood looking up at the building, recalling what he had felt: a sickness, nausea, the feeling that he was about to try and fool someone. Why he should have felt this way he had no idea. He had been designing viruses for eight years now, had a PhD out of which had come several extremely well received and now commonly cited papers and articles, had produced viruses for the MoD, the Home Office and large private clients home and abroad, but faced with this new audience he felt like a fraud, despite having the notes on his Book to back it all up.

It had been sunny, he remembered, sunnier than today. The steel structure of the building was exposed. It wore its skeleton on the outside. Above the front entrance sat the point of a gigantic V, whose arms were thrown tall to the top corners of the building. It had been incorporated into the structure and housed the mechanism for the mechanical window cleaners that swept round the building just before dawn. Beauty and functionality went hand-in-hand. Well, reflected Kester, a certain sort of modern beauty. Used to the mothball streets around the Institute, this still looked like the future to him. He recalled noticing how the V-shape was tapered to vanishing point at the top ends to exaggerate the ridiculous height of the building. The sky had been blue and flat. Fine backlit balloon skin stretched tight over the top of the city.

Today it felt stormy. The sky was again blue, but Kester knew it could change in a matter of minutes. He stood before the giant V and looked up. With clouds skittering past fast on the wind, it looked like the immense building was sliding sideways, bending in the breeze. Kester felt suddenly giddy and looked straight ahead. Trying his best to breathe evenly, he walked in a superhumanly straight line to the single revolving door that gave access to the ground floor. As he stepped into the doors he was aware of the enormous V that branched above him. He felt a sudden spike on the top of his skull, a fear that the V might drop suddenly and split him like an anatomical model right down the middle, revealing everything.

The ground floor of V was a real show-off piece of engineering. It was walled entirely in glass, all the way round. The only opaque surfaces were the eight elevator tubes clustered like thick power cables in the centre of the floor. From the outside they appeared to hold up the building. The floor was highly-shined stone so seamless that Kester wondered if the place was built on one huge polished rock. There was nothing there except the reception desk, space, the odd piece of art. Kester made an appreciative face as he walked past a long swoosh of metal close to the reception desk and tilted his head to show that he was considering the piece.

At the front desk, Kester said, 'Hi,' exactly as planned. 'My name's Kester Lowe. Alexis Farrell's expecting me. She said –'

'What time is your meeting?' asked the receptionist with a clinical smile.

'Meeting?' The unexpected question flustered Kester. 'No – I'm sorry – I'm not here for a meeting.' As he fumbled in his bag for his Book the receptionist started to look nervous. 'It's my first day. Mrs Farrell said I should see her for my induction.'

Kester pressed his thumb to his Book and sought out the acceptance note with the instructions to come to reception.

'Let me see.' The receptionist studied the message with a frown. There was an odd metallic sound to her voice. Kester couldn't tell if it was her or the acoustics of the reception. She had tawny hair that was nearly the same
colour
as her tanned skin. She was a mannequin that hadn't been painted yet. She glanced down at Kester's jacket and failed to prevent her eyebrow from rising. So he was well-dressed enough to be a client but not to be an employee? Kester could feel the
colour
rising in his face.

'That should be sufficient, sir. A representative from V Division V will be down shortly to escort you to your department. Please take a seat.'

The receptionist indicated the bank of shiny metal behind them. The one Kester had assumed was a piece of art. Was this a test, perhaps? As he walked closer to the cantilever wave, he saw a slightly dulled patch in the shape of a pair of buttocks, the signature of the last person to sit there. If it was a test, he wouldn't be the first to fail. He chose an alternative dip in the wave and sat, straight-backed, wondering if he should get his Book out and load something impressive-looking to read. No. Someone was bound to appear before the jacket ad changed and they'd see what he'd been reading last – a gun firing, blood seeping down the cover, gold lettering too big to hide with his fingers.

As the minutes passed, Kester's mind started to wander. What would happen, he wondered, if whatever was holding the bottom floor together gave? Would the whole building just shunt down a floor and stop there? He imagined the thousands of workers on the floors above bracing themselves suddenly with bent knees and outstretched arms, and then standing up straight and continuing what they had been doing. Would a building be able to take that? No, the glass would break. He replayed the scene in his head. This time, everyone stopped and braced as the glass exploded outwards from the windows; then they stood up straight again and continued what they were doing.

Kester looked around the vast room again, his eyes lingering on the back wall. Slowly, it dawned on him that it wasn't clear glass at all. Of course it wasn't. The whole building backed onto the City perimeter, so if it had been glass he would be looking at a car park, grass, or the back wall of a train stop, not a square full of people going about their business. So how could it look so convincingly like the world continued beyond it? Just a big holoscreen? He was itching to go and look. And that must be what was holding the building up – the wall. He felt a little more comfortable. But was that any way to support a building, he wondered, just down one side? What if something fabulous happened in the square below and everyone rushed to the front windows…

'Doctor Lowe, sir.'

Kester had heard the footsteps but had been away in a dream, half listening for lift doors, but not for footsteps. He stood up to greet the stocky young man who had come to fetch him. The man had an open face and slicked back hair, giving a charmingly old-fashioned appearance. He looked to be about the same age as Kester, perhaps a few years older.

'I'm Gerald.' The man introduced himself with a vigorous handshake.

'Kester Lowe,' Kester said. Then he laughed and added, 'But you already know that.'

To his relief Gerald laughed too. Some people's laughs disappointed Kester to the gut; Gerald's was a little piece of truth that lit up his eyes.

'I've just moved from viral screening,' Gerald said, eyes still sparkling. 'I'll be your head technician. Mrs Farrell sends her apologies. She wasn't able to greet you herself, but she said she will come down to the lab later to see that you've settled in properly.'

It was an odd feeling: disappointment and relief swirling together, mingling like currents of hot and cold water to become something tamer.

'That's great. I'm dying to see the lab.'

'In that case, sir, follow me this way!' Gerald strode towards the lifts.

'Please, call me Kester.'

The doors breathed open and they stepped inside. Kester hadn't noticed the extraordinary quietness of the doors at the interview, but then that day his ears had been filled with the constant
woomf
of his heartbeat.

'You know Farrell really wants us to get ahead of the game on this one,' Gerald said, 'so it's great that you could be involved from the start.'

Gerald's informal
demeanour
was helping Kester to relax. He realised that he had been holding his shoulders tight up towards the sky. It was a relief when he relaxed the muscles and let his arms hang softly.