Perfect People

125

Outside, in the blinding sunlight and searing midday heat, in air perfumed by hibiscus and bougainvillea, John and Naomi followed Dr Dettore along a green-painted path through the vast, silent campus. Dettore pointed out and named each of the buildings they passed, but they barely took anything in.

Both of them were traumatized from their meeting with Luke and Phoebe. John squinted at his surroundings, wishing he had his sunglasses and lighter clothes. He felt sticky, grungy and unwashed, and his growth of stubble itched. But right now none of this was important. Nothing mattered except answers to all the questions he and Naomi wanted to put to Dettore. Answers that until today they had both despaired of ever getting.

And, even more importantly, finding some way to reach into their children’s hearts and persuade them to come home. Which would involve putting Dettore’s word to the test, to see if he really would allow them to do this.

The silence was spooky. It was like being in a ghost city. Or being back on the cruise ship, he thought. ‘Why do you have all this camouflage on the buildings – and this green paint on the runway and the paths, Dr Dettore?’ he asked. ‘Why do you want to be invisible?’

‘What are you scared of, Dr Dettore?’ Naomi asked.

Dettore strode on, taking easy, confident strides, like a lion who knows he has no predator. The king of the jungle, king of this island, invincible. John loathed him more with every passing second. He loathed the man’s conceit, loathed him for the way he had deceived Naomi and himself, for destroying their lives, for taking their children. And yet despite all this, the scientist in John could not help being awed by aspects of the man.

Dettore stopped and opened his arms expansively at their surroundings. ‘Let me tell you the point. Do you remember the Inquisitions in France, Italy and Spain, which terrorized free-thinking people for five centuries in the Middle Ages? Do you remember an Italian scientist called Galileo – a professor of mathematics at Pisa? He improved the telescope to the point where he was the first human to see Jupiter? In 1632, he published a book backing up Copernicus’s theory that the earth rotated around the sun, rather than the reverse. The Inquisition made him recant this absurd theory – or be put to death.’

Neither John nor Naomi said anything.

‘Just like Hitler and Stalin, the Inquisition was indiscriminate. It put to death the intelligentsia along with the proletariat. Yet somehow, the Inquisition got away with it, because it was all done in the name of God. Religion gave it a cachet, and a legitimacy.’ Dettore paused, looking hard at John and Naomi for some moments. ‘You wonder why we need to be in hiding here – the reason is simple. Sooner or later a bunch of religious crazies with ideas that have not moved on since the dark ages would have hunted me down and killed me. If not the Disciples of the Third Millennium, then another group.’

‘And you wonder why?’ John said. ‘You’re using child labour and genetic engineering and it surprises you that people are against you?’

Dettore pointed up at the sky. ‘There are satellites up there, photographing every inch of our planet, every hour, John and Naomi. American, Russian, Chinese and other nations, also. They’re looking for anything out of the norm, new structures, people in places that were once unoccupied. Everything gets logged, examined, questioned.’

‘Is that why your entire transportation system is underground?’ John asked.

‘Of course. We’re invisible here and we intend to remain that way until it is no longer necessary.’

‘Which will be when?’ said Naomi.

‘When the world is ready.’

‘For what?’ she demanded.

‘For the kind of wisdom and humanity we’re developing here. None of the kids here will grow up to be the kind of man who will put a bomb full of nails in a crowded London pub. Or Semtex in a car in a street market full of women and children. Do you both want to allow this mayhem of so-called civilization to go on and on and on, for ever? The world has lurched from the clutches of one fanatic or despot to another. Nero, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Hirohito, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, Bin Laden, Mugabe. Where is it going to end? In some big party with balloons and crackers and everyone shaking hands and saying, Look, OK, guys, sorry, we’ve had a lousy few thousand years, let’s all be friends now so our kids can have a nice future? I don’t think so.’

‘Who’s financing all this, Dr Dettore?’ John asked, unmoved.

Without slowing his pace, he answered, ‘Concerned people. Philanthropists around the globe who don’t want to see civilization fall back into the hands of religious fanaticism and despots, the way it was in the dark ages. Who want to secure a future for humankind based on solid science.’

‘I want to know something,’ Naomi said. ‘Why, when we came to you wanting a boy, did you deceive us and give us twins?’

Dettore stopped and faced them. ‘Because you would never have understood. Simple as that.’

‘Understood what?’ John said.

He looked at each of them in turn. ‘Your child would have been lonely without someone to share his superior intellect with. He would have felt like a freak among other kids. By having two, they were able to bond and see the world clearly, in perspective.’

‘Don’t you think that should have been our decision?’ Naomi said.

‘I didn’t feel you were ready to understand,’ he replied.

John felt his anger rising. ‘That is an incredibly arrogant thing to say.’

Dettore shrugged. ‘The truth is often hard to accept.’

‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. We agreed – you, Naomi and I – a list of enhancements for our child. How much more did you add that you never told us about?’

‘Important things that I felt you were overlooking.’

‘And what the hell gave you the right to do that?’ Naomi said, her voice rising.

‘Let’s go back to my office,’ Dettore said. ‘You look hot and uncomfortable. You guys need a shower and a change of clothes, and some food and some rest. You’ve had a long journey and you’re tired. Let’s get you freshened up and rested, and we’ll talk more.’

‘I don’t need to freshen up,’ Naomi said. ‘I don’t want to rest. I want to get on a plane back home with my children. That’s all I need. Don’t tell me what I need.’

Dettore’s expression hardened. ‘There are a load of smart people here, Naomi. All of us with one common interest: the future of the human species.’ He turned to John, then Naomi again, to include both of them. ‘We have three Nobel Prize-winning scientists and eight McArthur Award-winners here. And twenty-eight scientists who have been put forward for Nobel Prizes. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to think I’m just a lone charlatan working in the dark here, or some kind of lone crazy voice in the scientific wilderness.’

‘You’re entitled to whatever vision you want, Dr Dettore,’ Naomi said. ‘But you are not entitled to abduct children and turn them against their parents.’

‘Then, for the moment, we’ll have to agree to disagree.’ He smiled, and walked on.

John followed him, angry at Dettore, angry at himself for feeling so damned helpless and useless here, his brain churning. Then he heard a thud.

He looked up. For an instant he thought part of the back of Dettore’s head had been blown off; something fell away from it, taking a chunk of hair and skin with it. A lump of rock, he realized, turning for an instant in horror to Naomi, who was standing, her arms outstretched, with an expression of grim satisfaction on her face.

Then he turned back to Dettore, who sagged onto his knees, almost in slow motion, then fell headlong forward and lay still. For an instant the exposed patch on his head looked pale grey, like cracked slate, then blood rapidly began covering it over and spreading into the hair beyond.