Perfect People

86

John was smarting over his total annihilation at chess by his son.

Naomi said, ‘This is what you wanted, John, isn’t it? All this hot-housing you did in those months after they were born? Those hours you spent up in their room, endlessly playing them all that New Age music, all that talking to them and that tactile stuff. You wanted them to be smart, well, you’ve got what you wanted.’

It was Sunday evening and they were alone in the kitchen. Naomi’s mother, suffering a migraine, had excused herself and gone to bed early. On Sunday evenings John always made supper, mostly something light and simple, which they would eat off trays on their laps in front of the television. Tonight he was making mushroom omelettes and a Greek salad.

‘Not like this,’ he said. ‘I never intended this.’

‘You laughed at my objections at the time. Now you’re miffed because Luke beat you at chess.’

Noticing the box of guinea-pig food was on the floor, she picked it up and put it away in a cupboard.

‘Naomi, he’s three years old, for God’s sake! A lot of kids aren’t even potty trained at three! And he didn’t just beat me. He wiped the floor with me. And the speed at which he made his moves – that was awesome.’

‘A few years ago when those Rubik’s Cube things were popular, adults had big problems doing them, but small children could do them in minutes. I remember someone saying it was because no one had told them it was impossible! Do children have an aptitude for puzzles that they lose when they grow older? Chess is a kind of puzzle, at one level, right?’

Standing over the pan, he concentrated for some moments on closing up the omelette. Normally he loved the smell of grilling mushrooms, but tonight his stomach was knotted with anxiety, and he had no appetite. ‘Part of it is that kids at that age think about things less, they intellectualize about them less, they just get on and do it.’

‘Maybe the same applies to chess? Nobody told Luke it was impossible to beat you, so he did, do you think? You told me you beat your grandfather when you were seven, and he was some kind of a chess master, wasn’t he?’

‘I beat him once,’ John said. ‘And that was after months of playing him. And-’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe he deliberately let me win that one time.’

He cut the omelette in two with the spatula, scooped each of the halves onto plates, removed the pan from the heat, and pulled down the hob lid of the Aga. ‘All set.’

They carried their trays into the living room; John went to the kitchen and returned with two glasses of Shiraz, then they sat in silence in front of the TV while they ate. Antiques Roadshow was on, the volume low.

‘You do make the best omelettes ever,’ Naomi said, suddenly sounding cheerier. Then she added, ‘Maybe we should take the kids out more. Dr Michaelides might be right, that we’re confining them in too much of a childhood world. They enjoyed the zoo.’

‘Yep, they picked up a real love of animals from it, didn’t they?’ John retorted.

Naomi ate for some moments in silence.

‘I’m sorry, hon,’ John said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

Naomi shrugged. They watched a meek, bearded man standing in front of a tray of Victorian surgical instruments.

‘Maybe we should take them to a post-mortem,’ John said. ‘I’m sure they’d find that lot more fun than Mr Pineapple Head. Or take them to a dissection room at a medical college department of anatomy.’

‘You’re being silly.’

‘I don’t think so – that’s the problem, they might really enjoy that. I think they want to see adult things.’

‘So, you work at one of the techiest places in Britain. Why don’t you take them on a tour of Morley Park? Show them the particle accelerator, show them the cold fusion lab.’

John put his tray on the floor.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m not hungry. I can’t eat, I feel really – I don’t know – I just wonder how we’re going to cope; where we go from here.’

He stared at the television for some moments. A little old lady in a velvet hat was being told the value of a small marquetry box.

‘This is a most exquisite piece of Tunbridge Ware,’ the tweedy expert said. ‘What do you know of its history?’

‘Have you ever noticed,’ Naomi said, ‘on this programme they make a big deal about an object’s history – and its provenance? Imagine if we were on this show – what would we be able to say about Luke and Phoebe’s provenance?’

‘I think it’s more likely they’d be presenting us on the show as antiques,’ he said. ‘Relics of an extinct species. Early twenty-first-century Homo sapiens. One beautiful female, English, in mint condition. And one rather tired Swede, atrophied brain, in need of some restoration. But with a big dick. ’

Naomi giggled. Then she turned and kissed him on the cheek. ‘We will cope, we’ll find a way. We’ll make good people of them, because we are good people. You’re a good man. This whole nature-nurture thing – we will have to find ways to steer and influence them.’

John smiled, but he looked sad, bewildered. ‘Luke frightened me this afternoon. I mean that seriously, he frightened me, it was like – I wasn’t playing against a child – or anything human. It was just like playing against a machine. It actually got to a stage where I felt there wasn’t any point in playing any more, because it was no fun.’

She sipped some wine. ‘Maybe we should consider putting him in a chess tournament, see what happens if he’s given a real challenge?’

‘And have him hit all the headlines? A three-year-old chess prodigy is going to be national news, hon. It would flag him loud and clear up to the Disciples. We can’t do that. What we are going to have to think very seriously about is special schooling.’

‘Do they have schools for machines?’ she said, only partly in jest.

John put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. ‘What are they going to be like in ten years’ time, do you think?’

‘Ten years? What about in another three years? They’re like miniature adults already. What do you think they’re doing up there now in their room? Just hanging around until we go to bed, so they can start surfing the net all night? Designing new rocket-propulsion systems? Re-drafting the British Constitution?’

She ate the last of her omelette. ‘Are you going to call Dr Michaelides in the morning? And tell her about the guinea pigs? I’d like to know her thoughts.’

He nodded and stood up. ‘Going to my den.’

‘Do you have to work tonight? You look tired.’

‘The book proofs – they have to be back in the States by the end of next week.’

*

Upstairs in his den, John opened up the web browser of his own computer. Then he began to look back at the history, starting with the day before the children had been given their own computer, then going back over the past months.

There were pages and pages of sites he had never visited himself. Again, as he had found on the children’s computer, scores of visits to maths, physics and other science sites. There were visits to history sites, anthropological sites, geological, geographical. It was endless.

Nothing frivolous. His little three-year-olds hadn’t used their internet surfing skills to do anything as dull as log on to kids’ websites or chatrooms. It was just as if they were on one continuous quest, or hunger, for knowledge.

Three months back he came across the chess sites. Luke, or Luke and Phoebe together, had visited dozens of sites, ranging from learning the basic game to advanced strategies.

Then he knelt and switched on the children’s computer on the floor. It began booting up, then the password request came up. He entered the new password he had typed in this

morning, to stop the kids having access to it while it was confiscated. The message came up: PASSWORD NOT VALID – RETRY.

He had deliberately put in a hard password, one that would be impossible to crack by chance. Maybe he’d made a mistake typing it just now? He tried again. b*223* amp;65 amp;*

PASSWORD NOT VALID – RETRY.

He’d written it down on a slip of paper, which he had put in his back trouser pocket, and dug it out, to check. It was correct. He typed it in again.

PASSWORD NOT VALID – RETRY.

Shaking his head in disbelief, he tried one more time, with the same result. And now he was pretty sure what had happened.

The children, or one of them, at any rate, must have been in here and somehow cracked his password. Then changed it to a new one.