Alchemist

  Doctors Crowe and Seligman were standing inside the porch, shoulder to shoulder, completely blocking it.

  She spun round in terror, looking to Rorke for help. His face was a mask of cold, white fury. A second later she realized his anger was directed not at the two men, but at herself.

  ‘You snivelling, filthy, trouble-making little bitch! How dare you behave the way you have?’

  She felt a sharp prick in her thigh, like a wasp sting. She had time to notice that Rorke’s face suddenly looked oddly distorted, as if it was melting. Then her legs started to buckle.

  123

  Conor crawled the rented Ford up Euston Road towards the Bendix Building. He sat in a cocoon of numbed grief.

  Dead. His mother was dead.

  His ears rang with the echo of her words on the night before he had left Washington. Think again while you still have the chance.

  If he’d heeded her, Bendix Schere would have gone on, unchecked. And he would not have met Monty.

  But his mother would still be alive.

  And where the hell was Monty? In that bastard Crowe’s clutches?

  He could see the windowless monolith of the Bendix Building rising ahead to the right, and with it rose all the hatred he had been harbouring for twenty-six years.

  He swung the car into the Bendix lot, pulled up at the security gate and handed his pass through the window.

  The guard peered at the windscreen. ‘Where’s the tag?’

  ‘Tag?’

  ‘Your parking ID tag. Can’t bring an unauthorized car in.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Conor exploded. ‘This is a rental – my car’s in dock.’

  The guard closed the window, sat back behind his desk and picked up a mug of coffee. In front of Conor, instead of the customary green light, a red light flashed accompanied by words on a screen: ENTRY REFUSED. REVERSE AT ONCE. YOU ARE TRESPASSING.

  Conor had to reverse back into the main road, and park on a meter around the corner. As he walked back he noticed the tail of a black Mercedes disappearing up the ramp of the car park that Monty had told him was owned by the company.

  The automatic doors slid open and he walked into the white marble atrium and up to the security desk, which was manned by just one guard, a black man in his fifties. Conor almost mistook him for Winston Smith, Monty’s friend.

  ‘Hi. I need to contact Dr Crowe urgently. I guess he’s not in, right?’

  The guard’s voice was neutral, neither pleasant nor hostile. ‘Sometimes come in Saturday mornings but I ain’t seen him today.’

  Conor continued awkwardly. ‘Look this is something that can’t wait – do you have an emergency number for him? I’m one of his patent attorneys.’

  ‘Got identification?’

  Conor showed him his card.

  The guard nodded and with some reluctance said: ‘Got a couple of numbers I can try. Ain’t going to be too pleased to be disturbed at the weekend.’

  ‘It’s an emergency.’

  The American was unshaven, his eyes were bloodshot and his clothes were dishevelled. The guard looked at him and wondered if he’d been drinking. Mr Conor Molloy. That rang a bell. A definite ding-dong. He glanced down at his computer workstation and was about to tap the name in, when to his shock, he saw it was already up on the screen.

  He swallowed and gave the American a nervous smile. Of course! The name had been up there all day. Mr Conor Molloy. He smiled again, in a way that he hoped was reassuring, then, trying to look as nonchalant as possible, he rang the number of Major Gunn’s mobile phone.

  124

  There was an eerie stillness inside the Mercedes, which was accentuated by the artificial darkness from the black windows. The rich smell of leather filled Monty’s nostrils, as the car glided silently through the London traffic.

  Sandwiched on the back seat between Crowe and Seligman, her body felt set in cement. For a time she must have been asleep or unconscious, she realized, but she was awake again now, and confused. They were driving up Park Lane. Came here last night, she thought, and tried to remember why. They drove around Marble Arch. Of course. They were heading down to the Marylebone Road, then the Euston Road.

  Her fear returned, quietly but insistently, like the scrabbling of tiny paws of a creature trapped inside her chest. The traffic and the buildings and people slid past the windows, a sinister, unfamiliar London dark as a nuclear winter.

  Need to wave, she thought. Need to shout, to attract someone’s attention. But no one could see or hear her in here.

  They were driving along Euston Road now, past Euston Station. The Bendix Building rose up on their right, but instead of moving into the right-hand lane the Mercedes moved over to the left and began to slow. It turned into a wide road lined on both sides with high-rise office buildings, accelerated briefly, then swung sharp left into the entrance of the multi-storey car park.

  She stared in terror at the orange and black sign on the wall: LRG CAR PARKS. Then at the bold red sign by the lowered barrier that was now rising: FULL. CONTRACT PARKING ONLY.

  The Mercedes rose up the steep, curving concrete ramp; she heard the wheels rattle over a loose drain; saw the attendants’ booth ahead, recognized an unsmiling face inside it. In front of a second barrier the chauffeur reached out, pushed a card into the pod beside him.

  The car park was far larger than she had imagined; most of the bays were empty. Of course. It was Saturday. The Mercedes made a sharp right then stopped beside a bank of lifts.

  The chauffeur opened Crowe’s door and held it for him. Seligman indicated for her to follow him, and she slid across the seat, her body heavy and leaden.

  Crowe slid a card into a grill in front of the lifts and keyed in a sequence of numbers on a touch pad. Immediately one of the doors slid open and he waited for Monty to step in, then followed her with Seligman. They sank rapidly downwards then stopped. The door opened to reveal a grey marble lobby presided over by two uniformed security guards behind a console.

  Barely acknowledging them, Crowe walked to a heavy metal door, pushed in his smart-card and keyed in his pin number. The door slid open on to a long, empty, brightly lit corridor.

  She followed Crowe, too groggy to do anything but obey.

  You snivelling, filthy, trouble-making little bitch!

  Those words weren’t an act; they came from the heart. The mistake was hers; she had again gone against Conor’s advice. But still she could not totally believe it of Sir Neil Rorke; surely not him, too?

  She glanced at Seligman, who was walking along at her elbow. Behind him the corridor was empty. A camera winked silently. Escape was one option: she could make a dash for the lift; but she wouldn’t have enough time, not unless she knocked Seligman and Crowe out – and with what? The only weapon she had was her soft leather bag that she was clutching tightly. And besides, she thought suddenly, they might be taking her to her father, or to Conor.

  They might also, she knew, be taking her somewhere to kill her.

  They passed a row of vending machines then several laboratories, most with their doors shut. The walls were bare of notice boards and warning posters, which added to the sinister anonymity of the place.

  They reached another metal door at the end of the corridor. Crowe again inserted his card and keyed in his pin number, and opened it on to a concrete stairwell that disappeared into blackness. ‘Just one flight. We might as well walk.’

  It was icy-cold, and dimly lit. Monty peered around her into the gloom and frowned. The stairs led down only, not up.

  ‘The fire escape interconnects only the basement floors, Miss Bannerman,’ Crowe said, answering her unspoken question. His voice echoed slightly. ‘No fire could spread from here to the upstairs floors: there are nine metres of concrete separating us.’

  ‘So how would people get out in a fire?’

  ‘The entire area is covered with a halon gas system. Any fire would be extinguished instantly.’

  Monty stared at him. Halon gas extinguishers
smothered the fire by releasing an inert gas, forcing out the oxygen. They were highly efficient – but lethal: an effective system would remove all the oxygen in a room in seconds, asphyxiating anyone present.

  ‘Isn’t that dangerous for your staff, Dr Crowe?’

  ‘It concentrates their minds.’ He gave her a thin smile, then walked on down the stairs.

  On the floor below, Monty followed Crowe into a small anteroom. A security guard with dark rings beneath his eyes and blotchy, discoloured skin stood behind a small console and a bank of television monitors. Crowe strode past him, through a locked steel door and along a wide corridor that reeked of disinfectant. She began to notice another, familiar stench that always made her uncomfortable. Damp animal hair and straw. They had come into the animal house.

  She followed Crowe into a dim, cavernous room lit by ultraviolet lights. The smell of animals was much stronger here. A console of monitors and computer equipment ran down the centre and glass-fronted cages lined both sides of the room floor to ceiling.

  They walked past cages of dogs, monkeys and rodents, many of them wired up to monitoring equipment, then Crowe stopped by a window and beckoned to her.

  She could see that it was an incubator; inside lay a tiny inert form, intubated and on a ventilator, electrodes taped to its shaven head and cannula lines from neck, wrist and groin; a catheter ran from its tiny penis. The creature’s eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. A hairless monkey, Monty thought at first, then, as she looked closer, she realized with shock and revulsion that it was a human baby boy.

  She stepped back, reeling. ‘What – are you –?’

  ‘Impressive, don’t you think?’ Crowe said.

  ‘It’s human!’

  With a broad sweep of his arm he gestured at the walls of incubators. ‘These are all human, Miss Bannerman.’

  Monty approached the windows cautiously. Floor to ceiling, racked six deep on either side of the room, were rows and rows of babies, naked and identically wired. She stared goggle-eyed at Crowe, then Seligman. ‘Are these clones? Is that what you’re doing here?’ Her voice came out as a whisper.

  ‘Not exactly, Miss Bannerman,’ Seligman said smoothly. ‘These have all been reared in vitro.’ He smiled. ‘There’s no need to be so shocked. They are only technically human beings, after all.’

  ‘Technically?’

  ‘They’re brain dead, kept on life support. We deal with that at birth. None of them will ever experience human consciousness; they’re no different from a vegetable – or perhaps something of a lower order – such as a sea anemone.’

  She pressed her face against a window, her insides heaving with silent fury, then turned back, barely able to control herself. ‘You can’t do this,’ she managed. ‘You don’t have – the – right.’

  Crowe’s tongue flicked momentarily between his thin, ruby lips. ‘We get dangerously precious ideas about rights and humanity, Miss Bannerman. We have to adapt for our needs. If we don’t, we become extinct.’

  She thought, suddenly, of the Bendix Schere television commercial in which Sir Neil Rorke was pictured in an African village hugging the little children, ‘BENDIX SCHERE – THE WORLD’S MOST CARING COMPANY.’

  She looked at another baby. ‘Who works here, Dr Crowe? What kind of staff do you have here? Do they just accept this?’

  ‘Some are very well paid, Miss Bannerman. And some are not in a position to leave.’

  She turned back to him. ‘What do you mean?’

  He smiled. ‘You cannot always buy loyalty in staff. Sometimes you have to create it.’

  ‘Create?’ Then it dawned on her. Winston Smith. They hadn’t been experimenting on the man at all. They had simply turned him into a terrified, medication-dependent slave. Like the rest of the security staff here, doubtless.

  ‘You seem to be distressed, Miss Bannerman. I think we should continue our tour. Perhaps you will find our aquarium more – ah – to your taste.’

  They took the lift down one floor. Somehow she was going to get out of here. There had to be someone more powerful than Rorke and these men who could see what was going on and tear the company to pieces. She closed her eyes, praying that her father and Conor were all right. Conor had a plan. But his mother had been part of that plan.

  To her surprise, as they stepped out into a dingy corridor, there was no security guard evident, just a closed-circuit camera.

  A short way down the corridor was a door with a small glass porthole and thick rubber flanges. Crowe inserted his card, keyed in his number and the door swung open with a hiss. They went through into a cramped airlock chamber. As the door closed behind them, Crowe said, ‘You live in the countryside – I presume you are interested in wildlife, Miss Bannerman?’

  ‘Wildlife?’

  ‘Mother Nature? Our great provider?’ He pushed open the second door into almost total darkness; a blast of foul-smelling, damp, warm air engulfed them. It carried the smell of stagnant water and pondweed.

  Monty followed Crowe on to a slatted metal grid that stretched ahead of them and to either side, the size of a football pitch. Banks of infra-red lights hung from the ceiling, pumping out a weak glow and an intense heat. She looked down and saw inky water, then pinpricks of reflected light. Light reflecting from the eyes of hundreds of invisible creatures below them.

  Something jumped right beside her and she shrieked, stepped backwards on to Seligman’s feet.

  It jumped again. Then again, straight at her.

  ‘Get it away!’ she shouted, stumbling backwards, pushing the doctor out of the way.

  It jumped again, bounced off her chest, fell to the floor. Then again, something cold and slimy brushing her hand.

  ‘Ribbettt … ribbbettt … ribbbetttttt …’

  It jumped again, thudded against her skirt as if angered by her intrusion.

  She flapped it away, windmilling her arms. ‘No, uggg – no!’

  It jumped up, struck her face, wet, rough, slimy skin. She batted it away frantically with her hand. ‘Help me!’ she screamed. ‘Please help me!’

  Crowe turned. He ducked down sharply, snatched out both his hands then lifted them slowly up in front of her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter, Miss Bannerman?’

  She stared, transfixed, at the shiny creature he was clutching between his fingers, its legs flexing, its mouth opening and closing, its hooded eyes blinking.

  Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom, and she could see Crowe’s prize more distinctly every second. A shudder rippled through her: it was the size of a cat.

  ‘You don’t like frogs at all, do you, Miss Bannerman?’ Crowe’s teeth glinted. ‘I wonder why not? This little chap is such a good friend to us. In twenty years’ time he will provide one of Bendix Schere’s most profitable drugs.’ He held the frog out towards her and she cowered back, pressing against the chamber door.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please, don’t.’ All around she could hear the hollow moans, croaks, occasional splashes.

  Crowe inched the frog towards her. ‘This creature is a miracle of Mother Nature, Miss Bannerman. She is one of the rarest creatures in the world. Rheobatrachus silus – the Gastric Brooding Frog. We have the largest hatchery in the world here, right in this room – over four thousand of them – and we’re building a new one this very minute near Slough, where we’ll breed one hundred thousand.’

  He moved the frog closer as he spoke, savouring her terror. ‘The human stomach is a wonderful thing, is it not? Think what it digests: starches, minerals, all kinds of proteins. Have you ever wondered why it is that our acidic juices don’t eat away our own stomachs? An interesting question, wouldn’t you agree, Miss Bannerman?’

  She stared in silence.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you. The stomach walls are made up of unique cells that are impervious to ammonia and carbon dioxide. These cells are all that stand between us and a painful death from auto-digestion. Clever, isn’t it? Which brings me to our little friend here.’ He s
troked the frog tenderly. ‘Most living creatures either lay eggs or bring up their young in their wombs. Not this lady. She brings up her babies in her stomach. So how do they survive? Why are they not digested by her gastric acids?’

  Monty swallowed, perspiration streaming down her body.

  ‘You see,’ Crowe continued, ‘she releases a substance that inhibits acid secretion immediately after the eggs are ingested, and this persists throughout brooding. We have identified the human genes responsible for producing the cells that are impervious to ammonia and carbon dioxide. With your father’s help, we plan to introduce the genes into the foetus through Maternox. When the babies grow up and reach puberty, the hormonal change in their bodies will activate the genes and they will cease producing these cells and start digesting their own stomach linings. Without corrective medication for the rest of their lives, they will die painful deaths.’

  ‘And – and – y-y-you are going to m-manufacture the treatment using these frogs,’ she stammered.

  Crowe lifted the frog away from her face. ‘Correct, Miss Bannerman,’ he said with a look of profound pleasure on his face. ‘Absolutely correct! The ailment will be diagnosed by doctors as a new kind of stomach ulcer, brought on by the stresses of modern living.’ He smiled again. ‘We already have our drug designed and waiting, but we shan’t even file the parents for another twenty years, just around the time when the ailment will first start to appear.’

  He stroked the frog’s forehead again, as if it was a prized pet. ‘Did you know, Miss Bannerman, that the frog and the human being share one very similar organ?’

  Monty said nothing.

  ‘The eye. You did not know that the frog and the human eye are very similar? We believe that if a human being had his – or her – eyes replaced with those of a frog, they would still be able to see very adequately. And, of course, vice versa.’

  Crowe looked down at the frog and then suddenly stared very pointedly at Monty. ‘I expect you are wondering why Dr Seligman has come along with us. Let me explain. Although he is now our Director of Research and Development, Dr Seligman trained originally in Switzerland as an eye surgeon. He has carried out a great deal of research into the human eye and he believes genetic engineering may eventually enable many forms of blindness to be cured. Of course, this requires much lab work, does it not, Dr Seligman?’