A Second Chance at Eden (19 page)

I went to the window wall behind her, and shut the louvre blinds. Silver-grey light cast dusky shadows across the office.

What are you doing?
Corrine asked.

Eden, can you perceive the inside of this office?

It is difficult, Chief Parfitt. I see the silhouette of someone standing behind the blinds, that is all.

Thank you.
‘What about hearing? Can you hear what’s being said in here?’

The question was met with mental silence.

Corrine was giving me a speculative look.

I backed away from the window. ‘There’s a question I’ve wanted to ask you. I don’t know if I’m being paranoid, or if I’m misunderstanding affinity, but I’d value your opinion on this.’

‘Go on.’

‘You told me that the children share their thoughts quite openly. So that set me to thinking, is it possible for the servitor chimps to develop a communal intelligence?’

‘Is it . . . ?’ Corrine trailed off in shock, then gave a nervous little laugh. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Very. I was thinking of an insect hive mind. Individually the chimps are always subsentient, but what if all those minds are linked up by affinity and act in tandem? That’s a lot of brain power, Corrine. Could it happen?’

She was still staring at me, thunderstruck. ‘I . . . I don’t know. No. No, I’m sure that couldn’t happen.’ She was trying to sound forceful, as if her own conviction would make it certain. ‘Intelligence doesn’t work like that. There are several marques of hypercube computers which have far more processing power than the human brain, yet they don’t achieve sentience when you switch them on. You can run Turing AI programs in them, but that’s basically just clever response software.’

‘But these are living brains. Quantum wire processors can’t have original thoughts, inspiration and intuition; but flesh and blood can. And it’s only brain size which is the barrier to achieving full sentience. Doesn’t affinity provide the chimps with a perfect method of breaking that barrier? And worse, a secret method.’

‘Jesus.’ She shook her head in consternation. ‘Harvey, I can’t think of a rational argument to refute it, not straight off the top of my head. But I just can’t bring myself to believe it. Let me go through it logically. If the chimps developed intelligence, then why not tell us?’

‘Because we’d stop them.’

‘You are paranoid. Why would we put a stop to it?’

‘Because they are servitors. If we acknowledge their intelligence they stop working for us and start competing against us.’

‘What’s so terrible about that? And even if the current generation were to stop performing the habitat’s manual labour, people like Penny would just design new ones incapable of reaching . . . Oh shit, you think they killed her.’

‘She created them; a race born into slavery.’

‘No. I said people
like
her. Penny didn’t create them; Pacific Nugene has nothing to do with the servitors. Bringing them to Eden was all Wing-Tsit Chong’s idea. It’s the Soyana Company which supplies JSKP with servitors, they clone the chimps up here, along with all the other affinity capable servitor creatures. Soyana and Chong are responsible for them living in servitude, not Penny.’

‘Oh. I should check my facts more thoroughly. Sorry.’

‘Hell, Harvey, you frightened me. Don’t do things like that.’

I managed a weak smile. ‘See, people would be afraid if the chimps developed intelligence. There’s a healthy xenophobic streak running through all of us.’

‘No, you don’t. That wasn’t xenophobia. Shock, maybe. Once the initial surprise wore off, people would welcome another sentient species. And only someone with a nasty suspicious mind like yours would immediately assume that the chimps would resort to vengeance and murder. You judge too much by your own standards, Harvey.’

‘Probably.’

‘You know you’re completely shattering my illusions about policemen. I thought you were all humourless and unimaginative. God, sentient chimps!’

‘It’s my job to explore every avenue of possibility.’

‘I take it this means you don’t have a human suspect yet?’

‘I have a lot of people hotly protesting their innocence. Although the way everyone keeps claiming they overlooked Penny Maowkavitz’s infamous Attitude because of who she was is beginning to ring hollow. Several individuals had some quite serious altercations with her.’

Corrine’s face brightened in anticipation. ‘Like who?’

‘Now, Doctor, the medical profession has its confidentiality; we humble police have our sub judice.’

‘You mean you don’t have a clue.’

‘Correct.’

*

I wasn’t back in the house thirty seconds when the twins cornered me.

‘We need you to authorize our implants,’ Nicolette said. She held up a hospital administration bubble cube. Her face was guileless and expectant. Nathaniel wasn’t much different.

Fathers have very little defence against their children, especially when they expect you to be a combination knight hero and Santa Claus.

I glanced nervously at the kitchen, where I could hear Jocelyn moving about. ‘I said, next week,’ I told Nicolette in a low voice. ‘This is too soon.’

‘You had one,’ Nathaniel said.

‘I had to have one, it’s my job.’

‘We need them,’ Nicolette insisted. ‘For school, for talking with our friends. We’ll be ostracized again if we’re not affinity-capable. Is that what you want?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘It’s Mum, isn’t it?’ she asked, sorrowfully.

‘No. Your mother and I both agree on this.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Nathaniel blurted hotly. ‘We didn’t want to come here. OK, we were wrong. Bringing us to Eden was the greatest thing you’ve ever done for us. People live here, really live, not like in the arcologies. Now we want to belong, we want to be a part of what’s going on here, and you won’t let us. Well, just what do you want us to do, Dad? What do you want from us?’

‘I simply want you to take a little time to think it through, that’s all.’

‘What’s to think? Affinity isn’t a drug, we’re not dropping out of school, the Pope’s an idiot. So why can’t we have the symbiont implants? Just give us one logical reason.’

‘Because I don’t know if we’re staying here,’ I bellowed. ‘I don’t know if we’re going to be
allowed
to stay here. Got that?’

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d raised my voice to them – years ago, if I ever had.

They both shrank back. The shame from watching them do that was excruciating. My own kids, fearful. Christ.

Nathaniel rallied first, his expression hardening. ‘I’m not leaving Eden,’ he snapped. ‘You can’t make me. I’ll divorce you if I have to. But I’m staying.’ He very deliberately put his bubble cube down on a small table, then turned round and stalked off to his room.

‘Oh, Daddy,’ Nicolette said. It was a rebuke that was almost unbearable.

‘I did ask you to wait. Was one week so diffcult?’

‘I know,’ she said forlornly. ‘But there’s a girl; Nat met her at the water sports centre.’

‘Great. Just great.’

‘She’s lovely, Dad. Really pretty, and she’s older than him. Sixteen.’

‘Pension age.’

‘Don’t you see? She doesn’t mind that he’s a few months younger, that he’s not as sophisticated as she is, she still likes him. That never happened to him before. It couldn’t happen to him, not back on Earth.’

Sex, the one subject every parent dreads. I could see Corrine’s face, leering knowingly. Eden teenagers use affinity to experiment. Thoroughly.

I must have groaned, because Nicolette was resting her hand on my arm, concern sculpted into her features.

‘Dad, are you all right?’

‘Bad day at the office, dear. And what about you? Is there a boy at the sports centre?’

Her smile became all sheepish and demure. ‘Some of them are quite nice, yes. No one special, not yet.’

‘Don’t worry, they won’t leave you alone.’

She blushed, and looked at her feet. ‘Will you speak to Mum about the symbionts? Please, Dad?’

‘I’ll speak to her.’

Nicolette stood on tiptoes, and kissed me. ‘Thanks, Dad.

And don’t worry about Nat, his hormones are surging, that’s all. Time of the month.’ She put her bubble cube on the table next to Nathaniel’s, and skipped off down the hall to her room.

Why is it that children, the most perfect gift we can ever be given, can hurt more than any physical pain?

I picked the two bubble cubes up and weighed them in my palm. Sex. Oh, Christ.

When I turned round, Jocelyn was standing in the kitchen doorway. ‘Did you hear all that?’

Her lips quirked in sympathy. ‘Poor Harvey. Yes, I heard.’

‘Divorced by my own son. I wonder if he’ll expect alimony?’

‘I think you could do with a drink.’

‘Do we have any?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank Christ for that.’

I flopped down in the lounge’s big mock-leather settee, and Jocelyn poured me a glass of white wine. The patio doors were open wide, letting in a balmy breeze which set the big potted angel-trumpet plants swaying.

‘Now just relax,’ Jocelyn said, and fixed me with a stern look. ‘I’ll get you something to eat later.’

I tasted the wine – sweet but pleasant. Shrugged out of my uniform jacket, and undid my shirt collar. Another sip of the wine.

I fished about in the jacket for my PNC wafer, and accessed the JSKP’s personnel file on Hoi Yin, or Chong’s bimbo, as Caldarola had called her. I’d been curious about that ever since.

Surprisingly, my authority code rating was only just sufficient to retrieve her file from the company memory core; its security classification was actually higher than Fasholé Nocord’s. And there I was thinking my troubles couldn’t possibly get any worse.

*

My fourth day started with a re-run of the third. I drove myself out to Wing-Tsit Chong’s lakeside retreat. Eden confirmed Hoi Yin was there, what it neglected to mention was what she was doing.

I parked beside the lonely pagoda and stepped down out of the jeep. The wind chimes made a delicate silver tinkling in the stillness. Chong was nowhere to be seen. Hoi Yin was swimming in the lake, right out in the middle where she was cutting through the dark water with a powerful crawl stroke.

I would like to talk with you,
I told her.
Now, please.

There was no reply, but she performed a neat flip, legs appearing briefly above the surface, and headed back towards the shore. I saw a dark-purple towel lying on the grass, and walked over to it.

Hoi Yin stood up just before she reached the fringe of water lilies, and started wading ashore. She wasn’t wearing a swimming costume. Her hair flowed down her back like a slippery diaphanous cloak.

There’s an old story which did the rounds while I was at the Hendon Police College: when Moses came down from the mount carrying the tablets of stone he said, ‘First the good news, I managed to get Him down to ten commandments. The bad news is, He wouldn’t budge on adultery.’

Looking at Hoi Yin as she rose up before me like some elemental naiad, I knew how the waiting crowd must have felt. Men have killed for women far less beautiful than her.

She reached the edge of the lake and I handed her the towel.

Does nakedness bother you, Chief Parfitt? You seem a little tense.
She pulled her mass of hair forwards over her shoulder, and began towelling it vigorously.

Depends on the context. But then you’d know all that. Quite the expert, in fact.

She stopped drying her hair, and gave me a chary glance.

You have accessed my file.

Yes. My authority code gave me entry, but there aren’t many people in Eden who could view it.

You believe I am at fault for not informing you what it contained?

Bloody hell, Hoi Yin, you know you’re at fault. Christ Almighty, Penny Maowkavitz designed you for Soyana, using her own ovum as a genetic base. She altered her DNA to give you your looks, and improve your metabolism, and increase your intelligence. It was almost a case of parthenogenesis; genetically speaking, she’s somewhere between your mother and your twin. And you think that wasn’t important enough to tell me? Get real!

It was not a relationship she chose to acknowledge.

Yeah. I’ll bet. Quite a shock for her, I imagine, finding you up here with Chong. She ignored nearly all of Calfornia’s biotechnology ethics regulations to work on that contract; and indenture is pretty dodgy legal ground even in Soyana’s own arcology. Your file says you were created exclusively as a geisha for all those middle-aged executives, that’s why you were given Helen of Troy’s beauty. Maowkavitz considered you an interesting organism, nothing more. You were a job that paid well, and twenty-eight years ago Pacific Nugene needed that money quite badly. Everything which came later, her success and fortune, was all founded on the money which came from selling you right at the start, you and Christ knows how many other sisters like you. Then you came back to haunt her.

Hoi Yin wrapped the towel around her waist, and tied a knot at the side, just above her right hip. Droplets of water were still glistening across her torso and breasts. Oh yes, I noticed. Christ, she was magnificent. And completely composed, as if we were discussing some kind of financial report on the newscable. Emotionally divorced from life.

I did not haunt Penny Maowkavitz. I made precisely one attempt to discuss my origin with her. As soon as I told her who and what I was, she refused to speak to me. A situation I found quite acceptable.

I don’t doubt it. Your mother, your creator, the woman who breathed life into you so that you could be condemned to an existence of sexual slavery. Then when you do meet, she rejects you utterly. And yet she made you more intelligent than herself, compounding her crime. Even when you were young you must have been smart enough to know how much more you could be, a knowledge which would grow the whole time you were with Soyana, all those years gnawing at you. I don’t think I could conceive of a situation more likely to breed resentment than that. It wouldn’t even be resentment at the end, just loathing and dire obsession.