P.N.E. (The Wolfblood Prophecies Book 4) (5 page)

‘My name is Silver Lightning,’ came the reply. Another jolt as Jo recognised the proud voice of her father’s uncle. ‘My tribe is Lakota. Our whole nation has suffered from the use of our land for your vile testing. Our crops, milk and livestock have been contaminated and our children sicken. The government and private companies like yours have disregarded and broken treaties, and ridden roughshod over our sovereignty in order to dispose of your nuclear waste
.
And now you and your kind add insult to injury with the Redwing Project and other tests named after my nation. Cherokee. Lacrosse. Seminole…’

Silver Lightning got no further. Armed guards converged on him from all directions and he was dragged from the room.

During the scuffle Jo heard a woman in front of her whispering to her husband. She said, ‘They’re not fit to be parents, those people. What those poor little Injun children need is to be reared with decent, God-fearing white folks, like us.’ Her husband, a thick-set man with a crew-cut, nodded agreement. That was when Jo realised the audience was almost entirely white, mostly men and, in a few cases, their families.

As his parting shot Silver Lightning could be heard shouting, ‘You have betrayed the Earth, and when the Rainbow Warriors rise, you will pay the price!’

Titus was clearly shaken. He tried to make light of the interruption. ‘Moving on from the comedy turn, or should I say Commie turn, I suggest we settle down without more ado and watch the film.’

Jo had already seen parts of similar films at school. After the opening credits, three sub-headings appeared on the screen.

The science of atomic radiation, atomic change and nuclear fission was developed from 1895 to 1945, much of it in the last six of those years. 

Over 1939-45, most development was focused on the atomic bomb. 

From 1945 attention was given to harnessing this energy in a controlled fashion for naval propulsion and for making electricity.

The opening narrative concentrated on physicist Enrico Fermi who discovered the potential of nuclear fission in 1934. Six years later he created the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear reaction and in 1945 the United States carried out its first test of a nuclear bomb in the New Mexico desert.

When they were at college Jo’s parents marched with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in protest against the dangers of nuclear power. She remembered them talking about the atomic bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, when hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians died. Where Paul and Ali saw unnecessary death, destruction and disease, the military strategists of the time, and the makers of the film, saw an early end to the Second World War, saving the lives of countless troops and civilians.

Ali had struggled to be fair. ‘The Americans called for the Japanese to surrender, but their ultimatum was ignored. Some say they dropped leaflets warning the Japanese about the bombing. They certainly did give warning of other bombing raids, but it’s not clear that Hiroshima was leafleted. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed there and Nagasaki – so even if they had had a warning, where were so many people supposed to go? And what could they possibly have done? The nuclear bombs took so many lives – how do we know how many were saved? People are still arguing about that all these years later. In wartime, truth is the first casualty, and propaganda leaves you not knowing what to believe.’

‘Propaganda?’ The word was new to Jo.

‘
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state
,’ answered Ali. ‘At least according to Noam Chomsky.’

‘Who’s he?’ asked Jo, struggling to keep up. Now as well as being in the dark about the word
propaganda
she wondered about
democracy, bludgeon
and
totalitarian
. And Noam Chomsky.

‘An amazing man. A critic of American foreign policy; a linguist; a philosopher; a scientist. Just for starters. He calls himself a traditional anarchist. I studied him when I was at college. He said that intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, and their hidden intentions. He’s worth reading.’

Jo remembered their conversation as she watched the film. The commentary seemed to her to treat killing as a cause for celebration, but a lot of the audience members agreed, cheering whenever another huge explosion sent the mushroom cloud of deadly dust and debris high up into the atmosphere. A few people, like Jo’s grand-parents, did not join in the whooping, but they were out-numbered. The massive fireballs, the radio-active rain, seemed as exciting to this audience as Jo had found playing
Galaxians
in the video arcade. It’s just that
Galaxians
was a game, and nuclear bombing was anything but. 

After the main film, Titus showed some shorter clips. First he showed extracts from
Duck and Cover
, an early Civil Defence cartoon aimed at children. Bert the Turtle was used to demonstrate that crouching under your school desk might protect you in the event of a nuclear explosion. Jo was incredulous, unsure whether the film was hopelessly naïve or a slick public relations exercise cynically designed to reassure and distract people so they didn’t panic. She came down on the side of cynicism.

Introducing the next clip Titus said, ‘This is the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes - Minnesota - a Dakota name meaning
sky-tinted water
. The scientists are spraying zinc cadmium sulphide to discover dispersal patterns of air-borne toxic substances. As the compound is fluorescent, it can easily be seen.’

There was an interruption from the audience. ‘Are you saying the authorities allow a poisonous compound to be sprayed on American towns?’ The speaker was Lethe and Ali’s father.

Titus laughed in a patronising way. ‘Delighted to hear from you, Doctor Lake. Rest assured, Zachary, there is no evidence to suggest that zinc cadmium sulphide is in any way dangerous.’

‘Has there been any research?’ demanded Doctor Lake.

‘I am sure there has,’ replied Titus smoothly. ‘I will ask my personal assistant to present any relevant documents to you.’

‘I doubt any will be found. Do me the courtesy of believing me when I say that zinc cadmium sulphide is highly toxic. One more question. Do the people living in these places know what is being done? That they are being used as guinea-pigs?’

‘You unpatriotic Limey son-of a bitch!’ roared the thick-set man in front of Jo.

Doctor Lake laughed. ‘As a Limey, I can hardly be accused of being unpatriotic to your country,’ he observed mildly. ‘And my mother was a woman of impeccable character.’

‘Don’t try to be smart with me, you Commie pinko degenerate! Coming over here, a guest of our fine country, looking down your nose at us with your snooty Brit sneers.’

‘You misunderstand me, sir. Like you, I believe this is a fine country. But I also happen to think the population has a right to know what is going on.’

‘Not when it comes to national security it doesn’t,’ countered the speaker. He was a man in his mid-forties, with a military bearing. His face was red with anger.

‘Gentlemen,’ interrupted Titus, ‘let us agree that this wonderful land of opportunity and freedom leads the world in the pursuit of liberty, and end on a lighter note. This snippet of film, an unofficial souvenir of Operation Plumbob, has not been shown in public before today. It never fails to make me laugh. Needless to say, it is completely off the record and you never saw it!’

The lights dimmed and the screen was filled with hundreds and hundreds of pigs. Jo was confused.
Is this about the Bay of Pigs?
she thought.
But that hasn’t happened yet!

A voice-over talked about the latest recruits, ready and willing to serve. The hand-held camera panned in on half a dozen pigs. To the great amusement of most of the audience, some of the pigs were wearing clothes – some had summer frocks; others wore jackets; others were in hazard suits, not unlike the ones the audience members were wearing. There was a close-up of a pig in a flowery dress. ‘She won’t win a beauty contest,’ declared the narrator, ‘but she will bring home the bacon when it comes to valuable information about the effects of blast and flying debris!’

Realising what was coming, Jo watched in horror as the pigs were loaded up and taken to the centre of the test site.

‘This little piggy came to Plumbob,’ giggled the speaker as the detonation took place and the dust cloud rose above the Nevada desert ‘and this little piggy went BOOM.’

Jo noticed that well over half the audience was laughing fit to bust, roughly a quarter looked ill at ease, and the rest like her, were visibly shocked and distressed.

Titus, ever the showman, was aware that some of his audience were feeling deeply uncomfortable. ‘Allow me to reassure you that the vast majority of the pigs survived,’ he said.

‘With eighty per cent burns survival would hardly be worthy of the name,’ said Jo’s grandfather drily.

‘If you think that’s bad,’ chimed in a cultured English voice, ‘then what about Walter Libby’s
Operation Sunshine
?’

‘Alas, Professor Jamieson, despite the fascinating nature of your enquiry, we are out of time,’ said Titus decisively.

Professor Jamieson! Jo stared in surprise at the younger Matthew as he started to protest at the curtailment of his question. She smiled to herself as she noted how handsome he had been. She studied the striking, tawny-haired woman at his side, with their two boisterous small boys. A great wave of sadness came over Jo as she realised that she was looking at the family Matthew had lost so tragically.

Now Lethe and Ali’s mother was on her feet. ‘I believe the use of still-born babies in Walter Libby’s research, testing levels of Strontium 90, without the permission of their parents, is unethical.’

‘Your concern does you credit, Mrs Lake,’ smiled Titus. The smile was somewhat strained.

‘Doctor Lake,’ corrected Jo’s grandmother.

‘My apologies, Rosemary. I forget how you modern career women are giving us men a run for our money! Of course your work on infertility is well-known here.’

Jo noticed how smoothly Titus fended off the awkward question. ‘When I saw you on the guest list it crossed my mind that you might be interested in the work we are doing in another part of our operation.’ He thought for a moment. ‘May I suggest an alteration to the programme after lunch? In return for a slightly less leisurely lunch, I can offer a short tour of the
Abraham and Sarah Project
before our demonstration of the Borax-III reactor at work!’

With that he led the way to the cafeteria. Jo tagged along, trying to emulate Smokey’s ability to blend into the background.

Chapter Six -
The Laboratory

Jo was surprised how hungry she was. She was careful to not draw attention to herself in case anyone realised she was not on the guest list, although so far only the guard and Lethe had appeared to register her presence and neither had shown more than a fleeting interest. Even so she kept her head down and tucked into her lunch, maintaining a low profile. This had the added advantage of reducing conversation and the risk that she might come face to face with the Lake family and Matthew. She felt instinctively that is was best to keep her distance from them.

The food was delicious. She had clam chowder as a starter. She had enjoyed the thick seafood stew during her recent visit to America with the Morning Glory Choir. She smiled as she remembered hearing someone say, ‘Please pass the frosted meatloaf,’ and realised that the frosting referred to a coating of mashed potato!

She piled on a large helping of buttered vegetables and a broccoli and mushroom casserole which tasted familiar. She was thinking about that when her neighbour said, ‘Betty Crocker never lets you down!’ and Jo smiled, remembering the kitchen back home, and its well-thumbed copy of
Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book
, which Ali said had belonged to her mother.
Who knows
, thought Jo
. It might have been bought on this trip to America!

By the time Jo had polished off her lime chiffon pie the hastily convened tour was ready to move along. Jo kept clear of the group that included her family and Matthew. She stayed well to the back of the queue waiting to board the bus to the laboratory.

Jo had not realised how huge the complex was, and how many separate divisions Titus presided over. As the bus travelled towards the main entrance, Jo noticed signs to different parts of the organisation - one section was titled
Climate Research
, another
Transatlantic Communications
, another
Cold Fusion
.

During the journey Jo took the opportunity to study Ali, who was engrossed in a book.
How wonderful
, she thought,
to see Mum when she was my age! I would love to talk with her, but that might be too weird.

Unlike Lethe, Ali seemed calm and contented. Not for the first time, Jo observed that a powerful glamour surrounded Lethe. The twins were well-nigh identical, but somehow Lethe had a dramatic beauty whereas Ali was quietly pretty. In her heart of hearts Jo would have liked to take after her aunt, but she was fairly certain she favoured her mother.
And a good thing too
, she told herself sternly, if not entirely convincingly.

When they finally arrived there was a delay – the unscheduled tour caught the security guard on the hop, and there was confusion as to the location of the keys to the laboratory.
Dad could easily find them,
thought Jo,
remembering her father’s ability to locate things that were lost. Thinking of Paul, she thought how amazing it would be if he were part of the group as well; had perhaps come with his uncle; but it was just fantasy. Paul had not met his Native American family until he was an adult. Not only that, none of the boys were as handsome as him.

As they stood waiting Jo could hear Matthew talking to Rosemary Lake.

‘Interesting family names,’ he observed quietly. ’Rosemary for remembrance; Lethe after the river of oblivion and Alithea meaning truth. Unless I am very much mistaken, dear lady, you are a Mistress of Memory and the twins have inherited your talents.’

Doctor Lake laughed. ‘In the presence of a master of the art, Professor Jamieson, I would not expect to go unrecognised.’

Matthew inclined his head in acknowledgement. A question occurred to him. ‘You have a twin?’ he asked.

Rosemary Lake shook her head regretfully. ‘I did, but she died
in utero
.’ Jo was shaken.
Like my twin!
she thought. At that moment Rosemary Lake looked directly at Jo, almost as if she had heard Jo’s thinking. Quickly Jo shielded, and Rosemary, frowning slightly, turned back to continue talking to Matthew. ‘I’m a chimera,’ she said, ‘I absorbed the DNA of my unborn twin.’ Wordlessly Matthew turned back his cuff and showed her the faint whorls on his wrist. ‘Blaschko lines,’ she said slowly. ‘Well, well. We have a lot in common, Professor Jamieson.’

‘Your daughters will need strong guidance,’ Matthew observed. ‘I have a suggestion which I hope you will consider. As well as offering an excellent, conventional education, my university has special facilities for research into harnessing and nurturing abilities such as theirs. It will be an honour, when the time comes, to help them realise their full potential.’

‘You will have one willing pupil, and one reluctant scholar,’ smiled Rosemary. ‘You might live to regret your kind offer!’

During the delay Lethe was fractious and bored, and set out to provoke Ali. Jo tuned into some spiteful, childish taunts. ‘I’m Daddy’s favourite,’ sneered Lethe. ‘You’re too boring – always got your head in a book.’

Ali pointedly turned her back and carried on reading. Swift as a rattlesnake, Lethe struck. ‘Don’t you dare ignore me,’ she hissed, and she snatched the book and threw it high into the air just as the queue started to move into the laboratory.

The book landed at Jo’s feet. She automatically bent to pick it up. A chill ran through her when she recognised an old, cloth-bound edition with gold lettering. Herman Melville’s
Moby Dick – The Whale
. The same book that Lethe had given to Jo’s father when they were young.

Jo remembered Lethe reminding Paul of the gift.

‘Your father and I once shared a passion, Jo, for Herman Melville’s books. Especially The Whale.’ Her voice was light, but there was darkness behind her words. ‘Do you still have that first edition I bought you, Paul?

It wasn’t hers to give!
was Jo’s first indignant thought. Then she remembered how uncomfortable her father had been at Lethe’s insinuation that they shared a passion for more than reading. Jo was well aware that his discomfort came about because, however hard Paul tried to resist, part of him was still beguiled by Lethe.

Ali was desperately trying to see where the book had landed, but everyone was milling about as they took their seats, and then silence fell and her chance to find it was gone.

Jo slipped the book under her overalls, wondering how to get it back to Ali after the tour, but even as she was thinking that, another idea began to grow. Her mother and father had quarrelled about Lethe.

‘Lethe has an arrow in you yet, Paul Lakota, and you know it well.’

Paul picked up his cue, glad to hide behind words half-remembered from his college days. ‘Ali, I may think of her softly from time to time, but I will cut off my hand before I reach for her again.’

As she thought of the mayhem and misery Lethe had caused her family, Jo’s idea crystallised. Perhaps if the book disappeared, things would be different! Without a mutual interest, maybe the attraction between Lethe and Paul would just fizzle out.

In a split second, the decision was made. Jo would not be giving the book back to Ali.

She tried to concentrate on what Titus was saying but something was concerning her. She had a very powerful sense that Sebastian was close by, but he was nowhere to be seen. Jo wished he would show himself. She wanted to go back to her parents and without him she did not know how.

Meanwhile Titus was in full flow. ‘I am sure you all know the Biblical story of Abraham, known as the father of many nations, and his wife Sarah. Abraham and Sarah were very old when a visitor told them they would conceive a son. Sarah laughed, incredulous, and the visitor reminded her that nothing is too difficult for God. Later she laughed again, this time for joy, declaring, ‘God hath made me to laugh. Everyone that heareth will laugh with me.’ And here at
The Abraham and Sarah Project
we want childless couples to laugh with joy when, against all the odds, they too conceive a child.’

Titus warmed to his subject. ‘In the 1600s, women who were childless were treated with suspicion. They needed to prove their piety. For centuries, infertility was seen as the woman’s problem. Most men were assumed to be fertile. Even as recently as the 1800s, barren women were still being accused of unbalanced living. Apparently irregularity, excessive or luxurious living upsets the bodily constitution. Of women, that is. We men, of course, are made of sterner stuff and can easily accommodate luxury, excess and irregularity. Well, that’s my excuse.’

Most of the men in the audience laughed heartily at Titus’s joke. Jo noticed, however, that several of the women looked rather tight-lipped.

‘On a serious note,’ Titus continued, ‘new discoveries and surgical instruments shifted attention to anatomical causes of infertility such as defects in the uterus and cervix. And in 1850 Marion Sims developed the Sims speculum, and with it, was able to widen the aperture of the cervix. He believed that blockages prevented fertilisation. He shocked his colleagues by experimenting with artificial insemination. Despite these advances, there was still a wide-spread belief among doctors that a woman's personal misbehaviour caused most cases of infertility.’

Titus paused and chuckled. ‘All you young ladies troubling your pretty little heads with thoughts of women’s rights, beware! In 1873 Harvard’s Edward Clark warned that heavy mental activity in the teenage years could wreck a girl’s reproductive system. He said.
The results are monstrous brains and puny bodies ... If the reproductive machinery is not manufactured then, it will not be later... The brain cannot take more than its share without injury to other organs.
Don’t say you weren’t warned!’

Jo found herself wondering exactly when second-wave feminism had begun in America. Judging by the expressions on the faces of some of the women in the audience, it wouldn’t be long in coming.

‘Then, to balance the scales, in the late 1800s a New York physician, Emil Noeggerath, argued that sterility is caused by gonorrhoea and men with the disease infect their wives.’

Some of the men in the audience looked distinctly uneasy at this turn of events, as did a couple of the women. Some wives stared straight ahead, carefully making their faces blank.

‘
As an interesting aside, family size was shrinking dramatically with increased knowledge of contraception and in 1910 President Theodore Roosevelt and other eugenicists warned that ‘wilful sterility’ on the part of white, middle class Americans was unpatriotic, leading to ‘race suicide.’ However, our concern here is with those unable to conceive, not those choosing to limit the number of children they have. In 1921 a test for blocked fallopian tubes, a major cause of female infertility, was developed. And in 1934 twin daughters were born from donor insemination.Research is moving quickly now – just over ten years ag
o
John Rock reported the first fertilisation of human eggs in a laboratory and now public demand for fertility treatment far outpaces our capacity. The Abraham and Sarah project builds on Rock’s work. We confidently expect our first test-tube baby any day now!’

Jo smiled to herself – she could have told him it would be another twenty years or more before the first test-tube baby would be born. She remembered watching the story on the television news back home.

The thought of home almost made Jo gasp out loud; the longing was so acute. Jo knew that strong emotions made it possible for others to read her thoughts, despite her shielding. She did not want to draw any attention to herself, so made a huge effort to calm her mind and concentrate on what Titus was saying.

Titus invited the group to visit the laboratory he called
The Nursery.
As they filed in, tightly packed around a workbench, Jo noticed that Lethe’s customary air of boredom had been replaced with genuine interest. She engaged Titus in animated conversation, asking intelligent questions. Clearly the subject fascinated her.

Titus was enchanted and teased Lethe. ’Aren’t you afraid of developing a monstrous brain and a puny body with all this thinking, little lady?’

Lethe laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s at all likely to happen,’ she purred. ‘Do you?’ Jo realised with a shock that Lethe was flirting with Titus.
But he’s ancient!
she thought, appalled.
And she’s my age!

Still chuckling, and obviously flattered, Titus pointed out the test-tubes and Petri dishes used to contain the egg and sperm. ‘The term
In Vitro Fertilisation
or IVF, comes from the use of glass containers -
in vitro
being the Latin term for
in glass
. The embryos we create are incubated for eighteen hours and fertilisation will have occurred when there are pronuclei and six to eight cells.’

‘Then what happens?’ demanded Lethe.

‘We are looking at ways to put the fertilised egg back into the mother so the embryo can continue to develop naturally.’

‘How many babies have been born that way?’

Titus looked downcast. ‘So far, we have had no successes. But it will happen. Of that I am confident.’