Zodiac Station

Fifty-one

Emotions erupted I never knew I had. ‘You used our son’s DNA for this?’

It wasn’t the most outlandish thing they’d told me that night. In fact, it made all the sense in the world, a piece that fitted perfectly. None of the rough edges that distinguish a lie. And for all that, it was the hardest thing I was being asked to believe.

She nodded.

‘How?’

‘The cord blood.’

Umbilical-cord blood is rich in stem cells; at birth, you can take a sample and freeze it. We did it for Luke when he was born — Louise insisted, though it cost a thousand pounds we didn’t really have. Imagine if he gets leukaemia, or needs a transplant, and those stem cells are the only thing that can save him, she said. And of course, I agreed. For Luke’s sake.

‘That was for him.’ I felt empty, as if the most precious thing I owned had been snatched from me and dashed to pieces. ‘Not this …’ I didn’t shy away from saying it any more. ‘… this monster.’

I stood. Hurt and anger charged up inside me, years of accumulated friction ready to discharge like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t mind if it killed me. As long as it took her too.

Remember Luke, I told myself. I had to get back to him. For all the menace in the room, the strange unreality, I wasn’t a threat to Pharaoh. He hadn’t broken any laws — there weren’t any on Utgard. If I revealed what he’d done, he’d be hailed as a genius, biology’s Einstein. Or maybe Robert Oppenheimer. As long as I kept calm.

I forced myself to sit, gripping the sides of my chair.

‘So what happens now?’

Pharaoh went to the kitchenette and got a bottle of whisky and a glass from a cupboard. He poured himself a generous measure. Didn’t offer me one.

‘We’re not going to publish in Nature, if that’s what you mean. We won’t make ourselves popular if we announce to the world that seven billion humans have just become obsolete. My company is discreetly patenting some of the more advanced techniques we’ve developed. We’ll feed them into the mainstream gradually, educate public understanding until this process feels as natural, as logical, as giving your kid his shots.’

It was a good spiel. Pharaoh had enough bombast that he almost carried it off — certainly, if I’d been an investor, I’d probably have opened my wallet. But coming from a man as sharp as Pharaoh, it all sounded rather vague. Some of the things he was describing might come to pass, and some might not, but there wasn’t a master plan. He’d done this thing to prove he could. Because he was curious. Because he wanted the power.

‘And me? Do I get pushed down a crevasse too?’

Another tic of irritation. ‘I’ve already told you …’

‘Or will you have your creature do your dirty work?’

‘I’m not a murderer, Thomas. I’m in the business of improving life, not ending it.’

‘What about him? Will you take him to New York, unveil him on Broadway? You’d make the cover of Time, no question.’

‘I think Life would have been more fitting, don’t you? If it was still with us.’ Another chuckle. ‘No. Thomas will stay here. The accelerated development you noticed means he probably only has a few years of life. We’ll observe him, and apply those lessons to the next generation. In that respect, Utgard’s perfect. A quarantine zone with no escape.’

‘And Zodiac? Is he going to pick off the scientists one by one, if he doesn’t like the way they look at him?’ I had to laugh, though it sounded borderline hysterical. ‘Like the fucking Thing.’

This time, I hadn’t heard him coming. The door opened and the creature came back in, dressed to go out in a yellow parka and black ski trousers. For some reason, he had the DAR-X logo sewn on to the sleeve.

‘I told you to go,’ said Pharaoh. The icy voice of a parent who wants you to know his patience has limits.

The creature crossed to the television on the wall and turned it on. You could see his strangeness in every step he took, disproportioned limbs making disproportioned strides.

He’s a machine, I reminded myself. Made of flesh and blood, but still a machine programmed by a computer.

‘What are you doing?’ Pharaoh demanded. His voice had risen, a note of worry puncturing the confidence, and I suddenly realised that the experiment was ongoing. He was making it up as he went along. Two years and four months. I remember when Luke was that age, how little I knew him compared to now.

The screen went white. At first, I didn’t understand what we were seeing. The contrast was so high, almost monochrome, that everything looked alien and unworldly. White-speckled black, with a thick black mass churning at the bottom of the screen, flowing from a jagged white hole. Ice forming?

A shape at the top of the picture caught my eye. I recognised the familiar peaks that loomed over Zodiac. But then—

I was looking at Zodiac. But not as I’d left it, a few hours earlier. The Platform had been blown open. Black smoke poured out of it. The jagged edges I’d taken for a hole in the ice were pieces of metal, broken struts and bits of roof that had been hacked open like a tin can.

I looked at Pharaoh. He looked as confused as me.

‘What—’

‘I don’t …’

He picked up a remote. He must have indexed the video; in a few seconds, he’d jumped to a different scene. The camera slightly straighter, the Platform intact. I could make out a cluster of snowmobiles in the foreground, a few of the huts further back. The time-stamp in the corner of the screen said 21:57.

Pharaoh restarted the video. After a second, two figures came into view from behind the Platform and headed towards the snowmobile park. Too far and indistinct to make out, but they must be me and Greta.

Greta. Even as a few distant pixels, it hurt to see her there. As we reached the snowmobiles, a third figure stood up among them. He’d been there all along, though I hadn’t noticed him. Quam. I watched us chat for a couple of minutes, then Greta and I walked away. Quam went back to fiddling with the snowmobiles. After another few minutes, I saw a blob that must have been the Sno-Cat crawling up the Lucia glacier in the background.

Pharaoh hit the fast-forward button. The Sno-Cat climbed comically fast, up over the top of the glacier and out of sight.

And then it happened. The centre of the screen flared into a white starburst where the explosion overwhelmed the sensor, smoke leaking from its edges. A second later, the whole picture shook as the shock wave reached the camera and knocked it askew. More explosions, more starbursts. Smoking pieces of metal flew in every direction, cartwheeling over the snow. The Platform’s legs buckled, and the whole rear end collapsed in an eruption of flames and smoke.

‘How …?’

Pharaoh rewound the last few seconds and played it again at normal speed. The doomed Platform reassembled itself; the Sno-Cat hurried backwards down the glacier, reversed, and crawled back up and over the top. Quam came out from behind a hut and walked slowly towards the back of the Platform, under the mess windows. I thought of the others, all the Zodiac staff enjoying Thing Night.

Quam fiddled with something, then extended his right arm, pointing at something in the space. The arm looked wrong, too long for his body, but that was because he was holding something. A flare gun.

The camera was too far away to see him pull the trigger. Just the faintest flash, before the Platform exploded and engulfed Quam. It went up so fast, he must have packed oil drums or something underneath.

I rounded on Pharaoh. ‘Is this something to do with you?’

One look at his face quashed that idea. He looked as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

I’m in the business of improving life, not ending it. I turned to the creature. ‘You?’

The creature shook his head. Unlike the rest of us, he seemed immune to what we’d just played back. Wasn’t even looking at the screen, but staring at one of the Hockneys as if thinking about something completely different. Perhaps he couldn’t comprehend tragedy.

‘I don’t care what you’ve done,’ I told Pharaoh. ‘We need to get back there. If there are survivors …’

‘Of course.’ Pharaoh was still staring at the screen, hypnotised by the carnage. Beside him, Louise looked sick. She slipped her hand into his.

‘Let’s go.’