Perfect People

84

John followed Naomi inside, went straight to the box room, unplugged the children’s computer and picked it up. He remembered when he had been naughty as a child, his father used to confiscate his bicycle, his most treasured possession. That used to hurt a lot, depriving him of his mobility, effectively confining him. Maybe taking away the computer might have an impact on Luke and Phoebe. They needed, desperately, to find something that would.

He set the computer down on the floor of his den, then plugged it in and booted it up, curious to see what else the children had downloaded from the net.

The command came up: ENTER PASSWORD

You’ve set a password, you little sods! he thought, with reluctant admiration.

He was about to go and find them and demand the password, but then he had another thought. He knelt back down and, concentrating hard, tapped a series of letters on the keyboard. ebohpkul

But the message came up: PASSWORD NOT VALID – RETRY.

After thinking for some moments, John reversed the order of their names. eklebohp

Seconds after he hit the return, he was in. Yes! He grinned triumphantly. They were using their secret language, joining their names together, reversing them and omitting every fourth letter.

Then he stopped smiling. Terrific. I’m all excited because I managed not to be outsmarted by my three-year-old children.

He went to the internet settings, which should have been blank. But as he had half expected, they weren’t. There was a MobileMe account in Luke’s name and a Hotmail account in Phoebe’s name. They had set themselves up with free email accounts!

A while ago, a very, very short while ago, he would have been incredulous; but not any more. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Some moments he wished desperately this was all some dream, and that he’d wake up and find that he and Naomi had normal, happy kids who crawled into their bed on Sunday mornings, and didn’t sit in front of the television set hooked on programmes about halogen gas, and didn’t murder their pets.

Other moments he tried to think positively, and put his mind to the awesome possibilities that lay open to Luke and Phoebe. Whatever tinkering Dettore had done, their hunger for knowledge and their skills were incredible. Maybe they just needed a firmer hand, firmer guidance, better understanding? He and Naomi needed urgently to get their heads around exactly how bright the children were, and learn to see it as a positive rather than a negative.

He double-clicked on the web browser and while he waited for it to open, he tried to cast his mind back to his own childhood, to remember if there had been some point at which he had understood it was bad to kill things. Surely it had been his conscience that made him know? The guilt over killing that sparrow that he still carried in some small way to this day. You didn’t need to teach children that killing was bad. Any normal child would instinctively know.

Wouldn’t they?

He opened the site history, to look at all the web pages Luke and Phoebe had been to. And now he became really incredulous. It had been just twenty-four hours since they had been given the computer, yet there were pages and pages full of records of websites they had visited. All of them educational, mostly science sites, some geared at kids, some at teenagers, some very advanced. Medicine, biology, physics, mathematics, chemistry, biochemistry and, interspersed, a raft of anthropological, history and biographical sites.

As he knelt, totally absorbed in his task, he was unaware of two solemn little faces watching him from the doorway.

Basic Biology. The Laws of Entropy. Formations of Nucleoid Proteins. Advanced Logic. Calculus. He felt a cold, creeping sensation down his spine as he scrolled on down the list. It wasn’t possible! There was no way three-year-old children could be reading some of this stuff – in fact, any of this stuff.

He was interrupted by Naomi calling from downstairs that breakfast was ready.

He set a new password, to prevent them from sneaking in here and using the computer. Then he realized he was still in his damp, sweaty tracksuit. Quickly peeling it off, he went into the shower. A few minutes later, as he hurried downstairs, changed into a roll-neck jumper, jeans and his battered old leather yachting slip-ons – his comfort shoes – he was still very deep in thought.

The rest of his family were already seated at the oak refectory table, which was laden with cereal packs, bowls of fruit salad, muesli, yoghurts, a basket of brioches and another of toast, and a heaped platter of fried eggs, bacon, sausages and tomatoes. Luke was pouring out Rice Krispies, managing the large pack with great precision. Phoebe, like a little madam, was spooning chocolate yoghurt from a pot.

John kissed his mother-in-law good morning, then Harriet, who was engrossed in the weekend Financial Times. ‘How did you sleep?’ he said, taking his seat.

His mother-in-law was dressed rather formally, in a two-piece, as if she was about to go to church. John had noticed over the years that she always dressed smartly on Sunday, a throwback to her strict, religious upbringing. In her timid voice, she said, ‘Well, thank you. Like a log. I always sleep so well here.’

Harriet, in a chunky fisherman’s sweater, black hair unbrushed, looked up from the paper and tapped at the page with her finger. ‘Do you ever read Arnie Wilson’s column? He’s the best ski writer – quite a funny piece about carver skis.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ John said. He smiled absently and helped himself to some fruit salad, watching Luke spoon an obscene amount of sugar over his cereal.

‘I think that’s enough sugar, darling,’ Naomi said.

Ignoring her, Luke dug the spoon into the bowl.

Irritated, Naomi snatched the bowl away from him. ‘I said enough!’

Luke gave her an insolent stare. There was an awkward silence.

‘Did you sleep well, Luke and Phoebe, darlings?’ his mother-in-law asked.

Both of the twins ignored her.

‘Answer Granny,’ Naomi said, pouring milk onto Luke’s cereal.

Phoebe licked her spoon clean, then, holding it up in front of her as if inspecting it, said, ‘Sleeping is silly.’

Luke chewed a mouthful of cereal, then said, ‘I don’t sleep.’

‘Really?’ his grandmother said. ‘You don’t sleep?’

He spooned more Rice Krispies into his mouth and chewed slowly, and for a moment the crunching of the cereal was the only sound in the room.

John and Naomi exchanged a glance. John was signalling, Hey, at least they’re talking, this is a breakthrough, this is progress! Some kind of progress, anyhow…

Harriet turned the page. ‘Why don’t you sleep, Luke?’

‘Coz only dead things sleep,’ he said.

This time John avoided catching Naomi’s eye. He forked a slice of mango and ate it without tasting it, his eyes now on Harriet, watching her reaction.

‘I slept last night,’ Harriet said. ‘But I don’t think I’m dead!’

‘I slept, too,’ Luke’s grandmother said. ‘But that doesn’t make me dead, darling, does it?’

Luke dug his spoon into his cereal, then said nonchalantly, ‘You will be soon, Granny.’