THE SCIONEER.
Peter Bouvier.
Chapter 1.
Lek Gorski had waited too long. Twenty years too long to be precise. He pressed his forehead against the cool windowpane of his high-rise flat and tried to recall better times. He thought about Crystal. Where was she tonight? Dancing in The Shangri-La perhaps, or working upstairs in the Swinging Hammocks. The city lights of London beckoned Lek down to the party, but it was already late and the electricurfew sirens would soon break the silence. His room was stifling. For a moment, he considered another hour in the Dynagym on Tooley Street a it had been weeks since he had managed to work up a free day a but he had drunk too much Juniperus already that evening and his head ached. Instead, he drained his gla.s.s and lit a dozen or so candles around the room before lights-out.
This room, which had once been only his place of work, his laboratory, had become over the years his home and sanctuary from the madness of the city streets. Madness which he in part had created. He knew that much. Beatlemania, he thought to himself, I see the evidence every time I step outside. He looked around the room: the clinical equipment and scientific apparatus which had once filled the stainless steel shelves had given way in time to jam-jars, spice racks, knick-knacks, and souvenirs from lonely trips to Paris and Prague he"d rather have forgotten. Still, better times than this. The candle wicks sizzled in the humidity.
When the energy crisis. .h.i.t, a decade ago now, Lek found himself avoiding the dangers of the city after dark by staying later at his desk, and scribbling notes and chemical formulae by candlelight. He maintained, at the time, that buying the zed-bed was unavoidable, but in reality, he was happy to leave behind that rat-hole in the Peckham Projects and his landlord"s extortionate rent.
If money was an issue then, it certainly wasn"t now. Lek Gorski was a man of simple tastes, or at least, he let himself believe he was. Naturally, the company paid for all his work needs a alco, base, extracts, hypos, mice a but they also covered all his personal costs: everything from the candles and gin, to restaurant bills, presents for selected friends on his approved list, and holidays. He even had his own company biorg to drive. For a man who had known poverty as a boy, the idea of a life without financial concern was not to be ignored. He wished now he had walked away then. If only he could turn back time and tell his c.o.c.ky nineteen year old self what he was getting into. Instead, he was trapped: just like one of his own white mice, spinning on the wheel in the small hours.
Lek pushed open the window. The night air was thick and offered no respite from the heat indoors. No surprise for October in London. He thought about throwing his empty gla.s.s down into the great, greasy river below. He wouldn"t see or hear the splash from this height. The notion of throwing himself out of the window flashed across his mind, but his brain summarily dismissed the idea as a solution to an impossible equation. Would anybody see or hear that splash? Would anybody care? Pechev, thought Lek. Only Pechev.
He gingerly made his way to the bathroom, swearing as he barked his shin on a low filing cabinet. He washed his face with cold water, pulled his hands across the stubble on his cheeks and ran his fingers through his mop of dark brown hair. From the rooftops, the sirens sounded. His reflection was sorrowful. I should go to one of those beautox parlours, he thought. I"m too young to look this old. Just then the electricurfew cut in and the room was pitched into darkness.
The howling began instantly.
Chapter 2.
If there was one thing Lek understood, it was drugs. He had been studying the properties and interactions of elements, compounds, acids and alkalis since the day his father had presented him with a second hand chemistry set, nearly 35 years ago. Little had he known back then that his childish experiments a watching sodium fizz through water, and making his own fireworks from strontium - would lead in time to a PhD in biomedicine and another in pharmacology. Doctor Gorski indeed. So when he woke up with a headache throbbing behind his eyes and a mouth that tasted of copper and ash, he knew exactly what he needed to take.
Lek pored through the contents of his extensive medicine cabinet like a barman inventing a new c.o.c.ktail; his long fingers moved across the jars and bottles like a virtuoso. He pressed his own carefully chosen mixture of chemicals into pills and washed down a handful of them with a ginseng espresso, then showered, laser-shaved for the first time in days and squeezed some Optimax into his eyes. After a second espresso, he felt like a new man. Just as well: he had been summoned to a meeting with Pechev and he needed to look his best.
By eight o clock, the sun was already burning through the perma-ash clouds, and the sky had taken on a heavy violet hue. Between songs from the twenty-twenties, the Retro AM weathercast predicted temperatures tipping three hundred Kelvin. Lek picked through his wardrobe for something smart and light; something which wouldn"t show great dark patches of perspiration when the heat and his nerves got the better of him in front of Pechev. He settled on a white linenine short suit without a shirt, and snakeskin flip-flops a simple and cla.s.sic.
He picked up his battered briefcase of papers, base graft extracts and sample scions and headed out. Before leaving, he lingered in the doorway for a moment, surveying the contents of his sad little laboratory apartment. His eyes fell upon an old framed photograph of his parents, standing outside a holiday cottage on the coast of Norfolk, many years ago. His father: frowning into the sunlight, his square smile like a bright blade. And Lek"s mother, looking wistful as always, clinging to her husband, her dark hair blowing in the breeze. For reasons only his subconscious understood, Lek raised his fingers to his lips and blew them a kiss before closing the door. In the apartment opposite, somebody was playing Chopin on an electric pianola. Lek smiled and made his way downstairs. The lifts didn"t work before nine.
Having decided he would walk to the meeting, rather than take the biorg, which had begun to smell in the heat, Lek stepped out into the underpa.s.s. Two black urchinos were picking fat green lumps from the carpet of moss that covered the concrete.
"You shouldn"t eat that," said Lek, "it"ll make your tummies bad."
"Yeah? What would you know, geek?" said the elder of the two. Lek has seen him around, begging in the Metro, sleeping in the underpa.s.s a a hollow cheeked sprat of a boy, wearing nothing but an oversized "Rabies Bites!" T-shirt, which hung below his knees. A nice kid, in spite of appearances.
"Yeah a what would you know, geeeek?" chorused the second, who was possibly a six, maybe a malnourished seven year old girl in a faded striped bikini.
"Well, I"m a doctor, so I would know... actually". Lek felt himself being drawn to their level.
"Give us some cred then, Doc."
"Pleeease Doc. Spare a bit of change eh?"
Lek was only carrying twenty-cred notes and was unwilling to part with hard cash. "No," he said, "but I"ll treat you two to breakfast, if you want?"
The girl looked wary at first, but the boy a "My name"s Wez!" a bounded over to Lek"s side like an eager puppy and the two fell in behind as Lek Gorski made his unhurried way around the building and up to the river bank.
The sunlight shining on the South Bank hit him like a slap in the face. I should have had those reactalites fitted, he thought, as he raised a hand to shade his eyes and take in the view. It had been over a decade since the Imagine Party has breezed through the elections with their winning "Let It Be" campaign, urging the country to let the Earth "fight back". And the Earth had fought back, with a vengeance: nowhere was the evidence more compelling than here in London. Where there had once been clean lines, clear demarcations between the council"s so-called "green s.p.a.ces" and the concrete and asphalt, now the pavements were cracked with roots and stained yellow with lichen; weeds, three feet tall, grew between each flagstone; gra.s.s verges were havens for wild birds and b.u.t.terflies, and the Royal Parks were nothing more than overgrown jungles. Signs reading "Any unauthorised cutting of vegetation is strictly forbidden. Violators will be prosecuted." were forced away from brickwork by Virginia creeper and wisteria. Huge patches of weed and algae slipped through the fingers of wild verbena, trailing down from the bridges, and wrapped around the mossy hulls of riverboats and ferries. Lek noticed a swollen biorg clinging lifelessly to a mooring rope. The clocks of Big Ben peeped out from underneath a heavy fringe of ivy, and the Eye, long since abandoned as a tourist attraction, was now a breeding ground for herons, which lazily dropped from the heights to pluck fat trout and catfish from the Thames.
The Metro was unreliable at best, and the fetid stench of rotting vegetation, s.h.i.t and vomit emanating from the underground was strong enough to kill a horse, so in spite of the heat, Lek was content to walk, his two companions scurrying behind. He mulled over the possible reasons why Pechev had asked to see him. Sure, all business these days was conducted in person a only a few people were stupid enough to risk their health with a mobile phone - but Pechev normally sent one of his middlemen bulldogs: Vidmar the Scar, or Delia, reeking of garlic, and popping goji berries like his s.e.x-life depended on them. Pechev never came in person, so when the message came through the wire last week, Lek found his chest tightening and his palms sweating at the thought of a meeting with the main man. He wouldn"t kill me in public, Lek reasoned. Besides, he needs me. I know too much. Perhaps I know too much... Lost in his own world, Lek stumbled over a cracked paving stone and came back to his senses. Wez and his sister, Latisha, were beginning to complain about having to walk, and Lek was happy to be drawn out of his morbid thoughts.
"Doc, where we going?"
"Yeah, Doc, where"s you taking us?"
"The Mash-Up on Southwark Street. I have to meet a man there at ten. We"re early, but they won"t let you in without something on your feet, so when we get there, you sit outside, and I"ll have the waitress bring something out. What would you like?"
"I"d like an alfalfa-sprout slice!"
"I want a soya Danish and ginseng-juice!"
Lek smiled, in spite of himself: six year olds drinking ginseng.... what was the world coming to?
Mash-Up was a Dutch chain of hash-bars which had cornered the Europa market, nonchalantly beating back compet.i.tion from Skunkhouse, Mary Jane"s Coffee-Shop, and a host of other American franchises, with its laid back att.i.tude to marketing and customer service. Still, n.o.body could complain about the quality of their product, and the ubiquity of their logo a a heavy-lidded pothead called Shrug, sucking on a giant joint and smiling woozily a was testament to Mash-Up"s popularity.
There was a thick fug inside the Southwark Street bar, but only a few customers, all smoking hookah pipes and mini-bongs and reading the free broadsheets. Lek ordered a chai latte with a hash-brownie to help calm his nerves. It felt good to throw Pechev"s money around, so he asked the waitress to give the two urchinos outside whatever they wanted. Lek noticed a raw mobile-phone lesion as she curled her hair behind her ear. Some people will never learn, he thought, as he sank into a bearskin sofa, under a giant spider-plant, and gave the kids a thumbs-up through the window. Wez rolled his eyes, but managed to look happy at least.
Within moments Lek felt all his troubles drifting away into nothingness. The world seemed brighter and easier, and he turned and shared a moment of camaraderie with his fellow customers, nodding and smiling at them as if nothing mattered. Retro AM was playing "The Golden Hour" and Lek remembered the tunes from his adolescence, back in the twenty-teens. He was steeped in nostalgia and grinning like a schoolboy, when Lyubomir Pechev strode in through the double doors.
Chapter 3.
Pechev didn"t look like a gangster. If anything, he looked like a priest. He was a tall man, with thinning dark hair and a full greying beard. His reactalite eyes, adjusting to the dimness in the bar, were naturally pale blue. Whatever the weather, he always dressed in a black suit, faded at the elbows, and he affected Napoleon"s gesture of holding his right hand between the b.u.t.tons of his jacket, possibly because he considered himself a great leader of men, but more probably because he was short a finger. The history of that missing middle digit was the source of much gossip and speculation between members of the company. Some said a rival gang had lopped it off when Pechev had welched on a gambling debt. Others claimed he had taken it off himself to prove his nerve as he moved up the ranks of the cartel. Lek Gorski knew the truth however, for he had been drunk and stoned when he first met the kingpin. When the moment came for them to shake hands, Lek had blurted out, "You"ve only got four fingers!"
and Pechev, unfl.u.s.tered and somewhat amused, had explained in hushed tones that he had lost the finger as a boy when he trapped it between two metal sheets of a playground slide in his home town of St. Petersburg.
"h.e.l.lo Doctor," said Pechev, with a glimmer of humour in his eyes as he extended his hand now.
Lek hated to be called "Doctor", since he considered himself and his work an insult to the profession. He smiled wanly, and felt the soothing effects of the marijuana instantly ebbing away. "h.e.l.lo Mr Pechev. How are you?"
"I"m very well Gorski, very well, thank you. Would you like another drink? I"m having one," he said, gesturing for the waitress.
"No thank you, sir."
"Please Gorski, call me Lyubomir a I think we"ve known each other long enough.... um, tea, please, Miss. No milk.... How long have we known each other Gorski?"
"Nearly twenty years now... Mr Pechev."
"That"s right. Lennon and McCartney! That"s right," said Pechev, stroking his beard. "Twenty years. I forget you"re so young. My, my. How times have changed.... Look around you, Doctor. Can you even remember what this place was like twenty years ago, before the end of technology, before this... ridiculous horticultural revolution? Can you?"
"Yes sir. Those were the days.... as they say". Lek realised the effects of the weed hadn"t completely worn off and he was talking nonsense. He took off his gla.s.ses and cleaned them with a Shrug napkin.
"What would you say was the turning point for us?"
"Excuse me, Mr Pechev?"
"What happened to mankind, Gorski? What was the turning point for mankind?" he said, focusing his pale eyes on Lek.
"Well, sir, the turning point, um, the end of technology.... well, the faked moon landings, I suppose, ah, then the NASA trials, the Hadron Collider Disaster, internet ebola, the death of social networking... you name it..."
"And what was the turning point for us, Gorski? For you and I?" Pechev leaned back in his chair. "Let me tell you a it was the 2012 Olympics in this city. This very city!" Pechev exclaimed, rapping the table with his knuckles to emphasise his point.
"Yes sir, the Spiro Dimitriadis affair...."
In 2010, while the rest of the scientific world was still looking to put a man on Mars, find cures for AIDS and cancer, discover a clean renewable energy source, a group of biochemists working in a tiny lab in Thessaloniki, Greece made a breakthrough of gigantic proportions in genetic science. Simply put, they managed to isolate the single gene, the single sc.r.a.p of DNA which defined a species. They had worked primarily with rats a fast brown sewer rats and their lazy lab-raised white counterparts. They killed many of them in the process, but once the science was perfected, the biochemists saw the true potential of their work, not for the advancement of science and medicine, nor for the good of mankind, but for their own financial gain.
Within weeks, the scientists had sc.r.a.ped together the funding needed to extract the DNA of a local breeder"s thoroughbred racehorse. In a process which they called "grafting" the team managed to splice this simple strand of DNA with that of a humble lab rat. Pegasus a whose name later made it into the history books a lived the greatest seventeen hours of his tiny rodent life, endlessly running around his mazes like a stallion, and copulating ferociously with his female counterparts, before the grafted DNA strand finally broke down and he returned contentedly to his former state.
By May 2011, after a series of successful clinical trials, the biochemists had contacted a young Olympic hopeful from Crete, a hundred metre sprinter named Spiro Dimitriadis, and convinced him to throw away his budding sporting career in favour of a life of notoriety and the promise of seeing his name forever written in the annals of history and legend, albeit juxtaposed against the name of Pegasus the rat.
The science of grafting was unknown until Spiro Dimitriadis broke the 9 second barrier in London. Within days, however, it was everywhere: the hot ticket, the new black, and Spiro, snorting and sweating after the race, was its poster-child. While the Olympic Committee publicly condemned his actions and those of the biochemists, who together had plumbed new depths of dishonesty and brought the sporting world once again into disrepute, the scientific world saw only the bright new lights of wondrous opportunity. New drugs!
Lek Gorski was a boy of twelve when he watched Spiro race to victory. By the time he was 17 and precociously sailing through his final biomedicine exams at the University of Krakow, grafting had progressed, although there was still so much scope for development. Lek"s career path was already laid out.
After graduating, he was offered a research position at the University of Leipzig, where he dedicated his time to perfecting new grafting techniques. Scientists across the world had managed over the years to extract the vital DNA cells from virtually any creature on the planet, but they found they could not graft across the cla.s.ses of the animal kingdom. Hence, they were able to bestow crocodilian speed and strength on other reptiles; grant fresh-water bream the ability to survive in the sea, like salt-water mackerel, for fixed periods of time, and so on, but beyond a species" cla.s.s it was impossible. They were unable to create a canary that could swim, for example, or graft a snake"s venomous bite on to a domestic cat"s DNA. Reptile to reptile, fish to fish, mollusc to mollusc but no further. It seemed to be the limit of nature"s law. Mammalian extracts were the easiest of all to obtain and to work with, given the relative size of the subjects, primarily, but furthermore because their cells seemed to lend themselves to the grafting process, as though they had been built with the capacity to adapt to other species" cells.
The human world went crazy over the new drugs. The pharmaceutical giants had pioneered the first "scion" medicines, as they became known, offering men and women leonine bravery from the boardroom to the battlefield, workhorse power throughout the working week, and the chance to feel like a tiger in the bedroom once again.
But Lek felt his hands were tied. He saw the qualities of the wider animal kingdom a the perseverance of migrating salmon, the work ethic and organisation of colonies of ants and bees, the elegance and beauty of Amazonian birds of paradise - as a personal affront, and a great wasted opportunity for humankind. The young Lek Gorski relished a challenge, and so resolved to crack the code.
His idea was simple, but the work itself was painstaking. He broke down the DNA extracts into their component parts a specific proteins and amino acids a then, over three years, set about creating his own synthetic replicas, all configured so that they could fit together with one other. His very own set of the building blocks of life. With them, he was able to blend DNA with DNA, species with species, regardless of cla.s.s, and create bespoke drug combinations for all manner of medical complaints or recreational whims. He alone held the key to the design of his replica blocks, or "bases", as he preferred to call them a simple and cheap to produce - and the knowledge to create a million customised synthetic DNA grafts from them. Overnight he became the father of scion medicine. By the morning, the sharks were circling....
Pechev smiled widely. "Enough chit-chat, as they say. How"s business, Gorski?"
"We"ve had some trouble from one of our base suppliers, sir: late shipments, disputes over price and the like. Nothing our men can"t handle. Vidmar"s man tells me that there"s still a rush on Dolphine a it"s been the drug of choice for the day-clubbers throughout the summer. All the same, I put together a cheaper scion for the dealers to push onto the market a it"s nothing like as good as pure dolphin, of course, but it"s close enough. Raucous head-banging show-off, meets safety in numbers crowd-mentality, with a touch of living on the edge madness. It"s... nice."
"Nice? You"ve tried it?" Pechev sounded surprised.
"No. The mice seem to enjoy it though."
"My father always told me never to trust a skinny chef," he said with a wicked smile. "What did you use?"
"c.o.c.katoo-lemming-herring."
"Still mixing in plenty of golden Labrador undertones, I trust. We want to keep our customers coming back, don"t we?"
"Yes, the cutter knows what he"s doing, of course. How is Barry these days? Still having the nightmares?"
"Oh yes. Always the nightmares," Pechev shrugged, "Good work Gorski. Just remember that if the product is only half as good, we"ll still sell double, and what"s more, we"ll sell it at the same price. Keep the creds rolling in, good Doctor. What else have you got for me?" Pechev asked.
"Everything else is taking care of itself. As usual, the dealers tell me we"re turning over large supplies of Equinox and Tigranol. Tiburon a the new shark-scion a is selling well. The original extracts were hard to come by, as you can imagine. We lost a diver off the coast of Cornwall. But still, we"ve been putting up big numbers at the New Old Bailey. The prosecutors seem to be favouring it over Cobrax.
"You"re holding something back. Tell me." Pechev"s voice was like steel.
"I have some concerns, about the gangs, Mr Pechev."
"Have they stopped buying our product?"
"No sir, quite the opposite. I can"t make enough. Lupinex and Hyenarc. If anything, the gangs are buying more and more on a weekly basis."
"The customer is always right, Gorski. You should only be concerned when they stop purchasing the goods."
"I know, but I"m worried we"re fuelling a... a war, sir."
"Not our problem" said Pechev, with an arrogant shrug. "What"s wrong Gorski? You seem unhappy."
"No sir, just, I was reading about it in the paper. The police can"t seem to cope. It seems as if they"ve left the gangs to destroy themselves, but innocent people are getting killed too, and I was just beginning to wonder....
"What are you saying Doctor?"
"I"m saying... nothing Mr Pechev. Nothing," sighed Lek, realising her was talking to the wrong man.
"Look at this city Doctor." he said, waving vaguely at the world outside The Mash-Up. Lek noticed Wez and Latisha staring in at them both. "One of the greatest cities on the planet. We"re giving its people what they want. Isn"t that something to be applauded? We"re providing a service. And we"re doing a d.a.m.n fine job of it. They know the risks, these people. They"ve heard the warnings. They"re aware of the side-effects. But, I do understand. I... empathise," he said, his face showing absolutely no trace of empathy. "You"re too sentimental Doctor. You"re all... bedside manner and no stiff upper lip. Isn"t that what they call it? Listen to me, I have a favour to ask you, and when it"s done, why don"t you have a little trip away? Visit... where was it again? Krakow?"
"Yes, Krakow. I might."
"Do that. So I think we"re done here? Before you go though, this little favour of mine," Pechev said, reaching under his seat and producing an old-fashioned doctor"s bag. "I picked this out especially for you. Do you like it?" Pechev drained his cup. "We run a tight ship here, Gorski. Unfortunately, we"ve lost a couple of members of the team in recent weeks, so we all need to pull together. This here," said Pechev, tapping the bag but never taking his eyes from Lek, "is one hundred thousand cred. It needs to be delivered to Delia at the South Bank Lion by midday today. He has to pay off a debt."
Lek felt his pulse quickening. "Of course." he croaked, "Is this the reason you wanted to see me, Mr Pechev?"
"No, no. I felt we needed a catch up, you and I. And since we were meeting, I thought you wouldn"t mind extending me this service."
"Of course. Midday at the South Bank Lion. No problem, sir."
"I need people I can rely on, Gorski." Pechev smiled, c.o.c.king his head to one side. "And I told you, call me Lyubomir." Abruptly, he stood up, peeled a twenty cred note from his cashclip and laid it on the table. He put his four-fingered hand on Lek"s shoulder momentarily, and then left.