The Arx (30 page)

The next morning, Carson grabbed his axe and shuffled toward the back door. He was almost out of wood for his stove. The old man could barely walk let alone chop firewood.

Frank followed him outside. “Let me do that,” he said, reaching for the axe.

“I can look after myself,” Carson said.

“You can help,” Frank said. “I’ll chop, you stack.”

There was a pile of bucked logs nearby waiting to be split. Frank hadn’t swung an axe in years. Carson sat on the back porch and howled with laughter as Frank sweat, cursed, and barely missed chopping off his right toe, but after twenty minutes or so he started to get the hang of it. He split the wood, while Carson piled it in a covered area beside the shack.

As he chopped, Frank filled Carson in on what Ricky had told him about the ‘Arx’. How as a teenager the Matriarch had come to understand that she was different, not only from her parents but from everyone else around her. How she’d divined the nature of her differences, deduced that there must be others like herself, and set about finding them.

The small group she brought together formed the first ‘Stronghold’, Genesis, where Ricky grew up. Genesis formed the nerve-center for all the others. The group called themselves the Arx – Latin for stronghold. The first three Strongholds were all in Vancouver, simply because the Matriarch was born there, and Kaffir Pharma, so crucial to their survival, was headquartered there. Now there were Strongholds throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

It was vital that the deformities, as the ‘Monkeys’ would have labeled them, that produced the Arx not be linked to Olmerol. Therefore, no affected child could be allowed to remain in the Monkey world beyond the age of a few years. A sophisticated tracking system located the children, who were then either kidnapped and assigned to a Stronghold or, if necessary, eliminated. The system wasn’t perfect – errors occurred, but the few deformities detected by the Monkeys were assumed to be random.

Mentally and physically superior to all but a tiny fraction of the rest of humanity, unburdened by scruples of any kind, and driven by a compulsion to preserve and grow what they considered their ‘species’, the Arx easily vaulted to positions of authority. They accumulated vast wealth, and infiltrated all the important institutions relating to maternity and childbirth.

Carson sat on a nearby stump, shaking his head slowly as he listened.

Frank also explained the circumstances of Ricky’s birth, and how he’d lived in a closet for more than seven years.

“So how did you come to know Ricky?” Frank asked.

Carson smiled. “Remember I said how researchers at Kaffir disappeared and were replaced by ‘Carla Clones’?”

Frank nodded as he hauled another log on the chopping block.

“I worked with them every day,” Carson said, “but I never really got to know any of them – with one exception. A girl named Miriam Leander. She was about the third or fourth ‘clone’ to join the team. She replaced a woman who left mysteriously and was never heard from again.

Carson lit up a smoke and continued. “Miriam had the same drive and intense focus as the others, but there was something unusual about her. She had a spark of genuine warmth that I’d never seen before. We actually developed something approaching a friendship.

“She’d been at Kaffir for about three years when she called me at home one evening out of the blue. It was such an incredible breach of clone behaviour I knew it must be something pretty earth-shattering. She wanted me to help her deliver a package in secret. She wouldn’t tell me what it was. I was to meet her at night at a location in Point Grey, and drive her where she wanted to go.

“By then I knew enough about the clones to guess that our little outing would be dangerous. I don’t know why I agreed. Maybe some part of me suspected she was getting a raw deal and felt sorry for her. I drove to the spot and waited in the car with the lights off.

“She came out of nowhere and knocked on the passenger window – scared the shit out of me. When I saw what the ‘package’ was, I knew I had a reason to be scared. She was carrying a child. The kid looked sick or deformed. I didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t say a word except to direct me to the nearest hospital. We cased the place and waited until nobody was around, then she carried him to one of the doors and laid him there. The poor little guy was in such pathetic shape he couldn’t run after her.

“I couldn’t believe she’d just leave him like that. I tried to talk to her, but she said there was no other way. I drove her back to the same spot in Point Grey and she disappeared into the night.

“She never said another word about it, and not long after that she left the team and disappeared like so many others. She was the only clone that I’d ever seen removed like that. I never saw her again.

“That’s when I got really scared. What we’d done was illegal and immoral, but that wasn’t what worried me. My gut told me that if the other clones ever got wind of it I’d be up shit creek. If they knew about her… That’s when I started planning my own ‘disappearance’.”

Frank shook his head in disbelief.

“Luckily, I’d been talking about a canoe trip with some buddies of mine for a long time,” Carson continued, “so it didn’t seem out of place. I felt bad for the other guys on the trip. There was no way I could tell them. I was lucky the clones bought it. They don’t miss much.”

“But you went to see Ricky a couple of years ago,” Frank said.

“I got really sick and I had to go to town,” Carson said. “That’s when I got the cancer diagnosis. I did some research and found out where Ricky ended up. I guess I was hoping to find he was being well looked after – you know, to let myself off the hook for abandoning him back then.”

Frank told Carson Ricky’s explanation of the experiments and his birth. “You know,” he continued, “according to Ricky, the drug trials like they did with his mother might be obsolete.”

Carson sat up in his chair. “What?”

“He says they were experimenting with in-vitro fertilization.”

“Christ,” Carson said. “They can introduce the deformity at the cellular level?”

“They couldn’t when he was living there, but now…”

“So they’d no longer need the rest of humanity…”

“They’d still need eggs and sperm from normal humans. But they probably control God-knows-how-many egg and sperm banks. They’d be able to pick and choose from tens of thousands.”

Carson stared at the floor.

“Kaffir are about to release a new version of Olmerol,” Frank said. “You know anything about that?”

Carson twitched and looked at him. “Where did you hear that?”

“It was in the papers. It’s supposed to come out in a few weeks. Any idea what would be in it?”

“There’s no way for anyone from the outside to know,” Carson said. “But I can make a good guess. The new version probably has no side-effects. If they’ve perfected the in-vitro thing, they don’t need the drug anymore. It becomes a liability.”

“So they must have done it,” Frank said.

“It would be like some kind of a Holy Grail for them,” Carson said. “Kidnapping children is extremely dangerous. One of their top priorities would be not to have to do it anymore.”

Carson sat shaking his head. “I always figured the authorities could just shut down production of Olmerol and that would be the end of it. If what you say is true, the Savants could go underground and reproduce in secret. There’d be nothing we could do to stop them…”

Frank locked eyes with him. “Ricky said their goal was to replace humans on earth…”

Frank realized that he’d stumbled on one of the few places where he could hide from Carson’s ‘Savants’. They’d trace his movements and find him eventually, but at least out here he had a little breathing room. He felt sorry for the old man, dying alone and friendless in the wilderness. He asked if he could stay a few more days, and Carson agreed.

In addition to chopping the wood, he fixed a leak in the roof, and repaired one of the rotting steps up to the front door. At the same time he continued to pump his host for all he knew about the Savants.

“This Matriarch Ricky talks about,” Frank said as they sat on the bluff where they’d talked the first day. “Do you think he’s referring to Carla De Leon?”

“I don’t know,” Carson said, “She’s the first one I ever knew about; that doesn’t mean there weren’t any before her.”

He took a drag on his cigarette. Frank glanced at it.

“Hell, what do I care?” Carson said, holding up the cigarette and laughing. His laugh, as usual, degenerated into a rasping cough. He finally got control of himself. “The one good thing about my diagnosis is that I can smoke as much as I want without guilt.”

He blew a perfect smoke ring. “My problems are over,” he said. “You’re the one that should be worried. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I wouldn’t give you a snowball’s chance in Hell of coming out of all this alive. They’ll catch up with you eventually – if you have any illusions about that, put them away.”

Frank’s body stiffened. “They were chasing me just before I came out here,” he said.

“You got away from them twice?” Carson stared at him wide-eyed. “You’re my new hero!”

“It was dumb luck, I think,” Frank said. “I jumped down into this abandoned city lot, full of stinking water and rats. One of them was right behind me but he wouldn’t follow.”

“Somebody up there’s looking out for you,” Carson laughed. “Remember, the deformities affect both intelligence
and
behaviour. The Savants have some pretty big psychological issues. For the most part they’re brilliant at hiding them, but they’re there.

“One of the most common is OCD – obsessive compulsive disorder. You’ve heard of it?”

“Yeah, sure – people that wash their hands every five minutes and stuff like that.”

“That’s right. OCD is far more common in the Savants than in the general public. In fact I think it’s pretty much universal. I know all the ones I worked with had it, though they went to a lot of trouble to hide it.

“One of their big compulsions is cleanliness. They have an irrational fear of dirt and germs. I think the intensity varies. Sounds like you lucked out and got one that was an extreme case. It’s a pretty major weakness, but I wouldn’t count on it working every time.”

Carson took a drag on his cigarette. “While we’re on that point, let me give you some advice. There may come a time when you have to fight one or more of them.”

Frank swallowed hard.

“All things being equal,” Carson continued, “unless you’re the second coming of Bruce Lee, you’re gonna lose. Not only are they extraordinary mental specimens, most of them are extraordinary physical specimens as well.”

He turned to Frank. “You need an edge. You need more than an edge – you need a chainsaw.

“You can use their OCD against them. Sometimes they have to do things in a certain order. Sometimes they’ll only approach you from one side. Sometimes, like your guy, they’re petrified of dirt and germs.”

Carson stubbed out his cigarette. He flicked the butt out over the cliff and watched it float to the ground.

“Recognizing those flaws could give you a big advantage, but you’re not going to have much time to figure out what they are. If you have any chance of winning against them, that will be it.”

Frank nodded. If that was his only hope, was there any point even trying?

Carson turned back to him. “If you ever have to tangle with them, hang back. Stay out of their way long enough to figure out what their weakness is. For God’s sake don’t make a move against them until you’re sure you’ve got it, or you’re a dead man.”

“You seem to have an incredible depth of knowledge about these Savants,” Frank said, “but you say you only met them at work, and you never really got to know them.”

Carson gazed wistfully at a sailboat passing far below. He didn’t speak for almost a minute.

Finally he said, “When you first showed up here you said you were investigating the disappearance of some children.”

Frank looked up, surprised. “Yeah. That’s how all this started. I dug up some evidence that babies were being kidnapped, and maybe murdered.”

“Did you ever come across a case where a child went missing while his mother was picnicking beside a river?”

“Sure,” Frank said. “The body was never found. That was one I actually worked on when I was still on the job.”

Carson turned to him with the saddest of smiles. “Well that one was me.”

A Confession

Frank’s mouth dropped open.

“I had to understand,” Carson said. “I had to know what made the Savants tick. It sort of fell into my lap. I’d just moved into this cabin. I almost never went to Vancouver – too dangerous. But I got really sick; I thought I was going to die. I was wrong – that time,” he smiled sadly. “It was appendicitis, but they didn’t want to treat it on Galiano. I had to go to the mainland.

“The receptionist at the doctor I went to had to bring her toddler into work. It was one of those emergency situations where no-one was available to look after him. When I looked into the kid’s eyes I knew right away. At that age they haven’t yet learned to act like us. Nobody else would have noticed, but I’d seen enough Savants to know.