“Many women miscarried. Some saw what they’d been growing for us. In some cases, people in our medical team had been unable to conceal their anguish and the mothers had glimpsed the grotesque combinations they’d given birth to. What’s known nowadays as post-traumatic stress affected the surrogates and many of our staff. Some of the women had counselling for years. A few were driven to insanity. Several took their own lives. We ruined their lives and we ruined ourselves.
“Families sued. Even though compensation was small by modern standards, the financial cost eventually crippled us. The emotional cost almost broke us as a team. We lost staff. As stories leaked out, the share price of the company collapsed. We held a rights issue, raising more money from shareholders to get us past the litigation costs but it wasn’t enough. Eventually all the shareholders’ equity was spent. Maplethorpe, Chapell and I remortgaged our homes, sold all of our assets and took what remained of the company private.”
“You didn’t just fold?”
“No. Because out of the horror and madness, by an incredible stroke of luck, one child emerged perfect. She had the muscular attributes we’d been striving for, but was otherwise almost perfectly normal.”
“Almost?”
“Superior really, but we didn’t understand at the time. We called her Ariadne. No other name fitted as well, Araneae the spider order, DNA, RNA and that Greek association with mazes, labyrinths and golden threads.”
“What happened to her?”
“To begin with, we thought she had a skin complaint. She shed her entire epidermis in sheets of cells almost every day. We treated her with steroids but the shedding continued, although she seemed none the worse. Her skin was just different. The anchoring proteins between the cells were stronger and the cell death more coordinated. We eventually realized that she was molting as she grew, in a similar way to a spider. Except of course, she wasn’t shedding an exoskeleton. The molting intervals grew longer, weeks and even months, and her behavior prior to the molt became more recognizable. A sudden pale and mottled complexion, subdued temperament, raging thirst. Otherwise she was normal, but very strong; able to lift three times her own weight.
“We raised her, educated her, and she became our living research platform. The most intensively studied individual on Earth. No one outside knew about Ariadne. She changed everything. Her DNA was a golden thread that led us from one discovery to another. The knowledge gained from her high-powered muscle system and her epidermal renewal laid the foundation for all of our muscle development and skin rebuilding therapies. She’s still there at Flaxbury.”
“What? In a laboratory?”
“No, of course not. She lives in our community in the research park. She has a full-time team around her to keep her safe and help her live a full life. Not unlike my own staff in a way. She’s sixty-five years old now. It’s important that you see her to understand what we achieved. Christmas will arrange it for you. We’re almost out of time. Take the photographs, the evidence of my misdeeds. See Ariadne so that you can properly appreciate the magnitude of our breakthrough. There’s a lot more to her role in all of this, but you’ll have to hear it from her.
“Promise me you’ll do nothing with any of this until I’ve followed Copernicus to the grave. I’m sure you won’t have to wait long. And consider this. There’s probably no value in discussing any of it in any case. You’ll only be reminding some old people of a buried sorrow.”
“I’ve met one of those old people. By chance on the train to Flaxbury. I understand.”
The professor squeezed my arm in gratitude. “I’ll stay here in the garden until Ivanna comes looking. From that point, I think you’ll have twenty minutes before anyone comes after you. With luck, you’ll be near to the service station by then and able to hitch a ride home safely. Make your way quickly. And go straight to Christmas when you reach London.”
I picked the professor up carefully and put him back into his motorized chair under the oak tree. The lecture was winding down, the professor summing up what he’d told his quiet and attentive audience.
Captain stood next to the professor’s chair, his tail wagging slowly.
I rubbed the dog’s head and patted his neck. Then I gave the professor my car key.
He shook my hand. “Good luck.”
ELEVEN
I hurriedly tied my raincoat in a bundle to the back of the rucksack and swung the load onto my back. At the wooden door in the wall, the huge key turned the well-oiled lock easily.
I stepped out of the garden, pulling the door closed with the key in the lock on the inside. On a grassy path leading directly west between fields of green wheat, I walked briskly. I saw no one as I looked back at the garden wall and the flying saucer, but I felt I was being watched.
The path ended at a wooden stile. I climbed into a field of barley, the bristly seed heads needling my hands as I walked along the edge of the field. The earth was soft at the field border, thick with thistles and perforated with rabbit holes. Soon my boots were heavy with cloying soil and I stumbled as my feet sank into burrow entrances hidden in long grass. I made slow progress.
I asked myself why I was leaving behind a perfectly good car to hitch three hundred miles. Perhaps this was what the professor did for entertainment nowadays; put people in fear of their lives and made them act foolishly.
It occurred to me to just walk back and tell him that I’d decided to risk the coast road instead. At least getting killed that way wouldn’t be so exhausting. He’d even acknowledged our own mania. Feverishly suspicious, he’d said.
But the bug devices showed me something was wrong. And Laura getting paid off added weight to that idea.
If the professor was senile and I wasn’t about to be murdered and he didn’t honor his promise to pay for the car to be collected, it would cost me a few hundred pounds. That would be annoying. But if he was right, I’d be happy to pay money to avoid being crushed on the rocks.
I pressed on. Flies flew up from the grass into my face. The smell of the sea gave way to the fragrance of cool earth, meadow flowers and cereal crops.
At the end of the field I forced my way through a small gap in a hedgerow into a green pasture. The hawthorn hedge scratched across my face. Perspiration added to the stings as I wiped away a thin line of blood on my cheek. Sheep grazed on the thick grass. I worked my way straight across the field, into the woodland on the other side.
Finally out of sight of the saucer, I felt more comfortable. In the cool shade I followed narrow passages and animal runs, working my way around fallen trees, brambles and marshy ground.
On the other side of the woodland strip I emerged onto moorland of purple heather and meadows cropped short by sheep. I made faster progress, heading west in a straight line, keeping the sun to my left. There were no sounds other than birds, sheep and the rasping of insects.
I ran down an embankment, across a dirt road and then labored uphill to the next ridge. Hot from exertion, I took off my jacket and tied it against my raincoat.
I pressed on for another thirty minutes, through heather and across grass, up over the pale limestone ridges and then down hills, jumping over small streams, waving clouds of midges away from my face.
As I reached the higher ground I thought I heard something over the birdsong and plaintive sheep baaing. Crouching low beside broken limestone slabs and heather, I scanned the horizon behind me.
Dogs barked in the far distance and motorcycle engines buzzed like wasps. Indistinctly, in the haze over a mile away to the south-east, I saw movement. Brown and white dogs, difficult to see at first against the brown-green moorland. Five or six animals. Four motorcycles, red, yellow, white and black were easier to see, rolling slowly behind the dog-pack. They were all heading north. I guessed that eventually the dogs would meet my trail and turn west to follow my scent. The easterly wind was helping me.
I stayed low and crossed the ridge quickly. On the other side I broke into a jog. The ground was level now, a short pla
teau of grass and rocky outcrops, bracken and heather. My mouth was dry but I didn’t stop.
The one thought on my mind was the road to Scarborough and the service station. It was nowhere in sight. I pulled the professor’s map from my pocket and looked at it as I ran. The sun was still on my left. I’d get a better view of the surroundings when I reached the far edge of the plateau.
While I ran, I made rough calculations to work out how much time I had left. I guessed the dogs would meet my trail in about ten minutes. Then a further ten minutes to reach the ridge where I’d stopped to see them. If the riders spotted me from there, they’d get to me in five minutes or less.
I sprinted for the edge of the plateau. I needed to get off the exposed flat ground. I got to the edge and scrambled down a short escarpment. No sound other than the moorland animals. In front of me, grassland sloped down to a strip of woodland. Through the gaps on the far side of the trees, I could see the road half a mile away. I ran headlong.
Halfway to the woodland I heard the dogs. They were barking continuously, excitedly. I looked over my shoulder but saw nothing. I could hear the motorcycles. The intermittent rasping and buzzing had given way to a constant mechanical howl. They knew my direction and it must’ve been obvious where I was heading. I ran.
With three hundred yards between me and the woodland I suddenly heard the bikes clearly. I turned.
They crested the escarpment and stopped. I could see the riders’ rifles clearly against the blue sky. One rider was already crouched in the grass. The dogs, barking excitedly and strident, ran in a tight pack down the slope toward me.
I sprinted for the trees. At two hundred yards I knew the shots would be coming. I dodged right. My heart was pounding like it would burst. Sweat ran into my eyes. I dodged left. Something fizzed past my head. I heard the crack of the rifle. I dodged right again. One hundred yards. My foot landed in a rabbit hole and I fell. As I went down, I felt a shove from my rucksack. Then three rifle cracks sounded in quick succession.
A far-off child’s voice in my head said, Count the seconds Zavvy. You’re good at counting.
I stayed down and counted. The dogs were near now. Eighty yards to the trees. I could do it in ten or eleven seconds. If I stayed down they’d assume I was hit, stop shooting and get on their bikes. I guessed I might have ten seconds before the dogs would be close enough to stop me reaching the trees. I continued counting. Eight. Nine. A bike engine started. I got up and sprinted for the trees as fast as I could.
I looked back, wild-eyed with fear. Terror created clarity. A momentary glance imprinted every detail of the scene on my mind. The dogs were about a hundred yards behind me. All four bikes were screaming down the slope. The helmeted riders had rifles slung over their backs. Blue exhaust smoke trailed behind them. I saw white cumulus clouds hung in the bright azure sky; the gray rock at the top of the slope; tiny wild flowers in the long grass; bright-orange butterflies flying up; the brown and white hounds charging toward me, saliva trailing from their pink gums, fur clumped with dampness, legs muddied, tails high.
At the edge of the woodland I plunged through the hazel and brambles, leaped over a fallen tree, slipped and fell in the marshy ground and was on my feet again immediately, running headlong through nettles, bracken and saplings, thin branches flailing my face.
Through the trees in front and to my right, I could see buildings. I saw trucks moving. I could hear the traffic. Among the trees the motorcycles buzzed, stopped, buzzed and howled, and then stopped again.
The dogs were very close. At any second I expected to feel the pack biting at my legs to try and bring me down. I picked up a fallen tree branch as I ran. Thick in the middle, the branch tapered to a heavy splintered spike at one end and a broken-off rod the diameter of a broom handle at the other.
A galvanized steel fence of upright spike rails came into view. The motorcycles were silent, leaving just an oily exhaust on the breeze to pollute the earthy woodland humus.
I heard the men shouting to the dogs.
As I reached the edge of the fence I steadied myself against a white birch. A shot hit the trunk just above my hand. Bark and wood splinters sprayed my face. Another shot hit my rucksack, twisting me around. I fell into the bracken. I was up in an instant and plunged forward past the end of the fence and behind a parked truck. A bullet ricocheted off the back doors of the truck, whining into the wood. Another shot hit one of the truck’s tires with a dull thud and a loud hiss, the vehicle slowly settling lower.
I sprinted down the line of parked vehicles, reached a single-story brick building, and kept going until I got to the far corner. Dodging around the corner I collapsed against the wall, gasping for breath.
I was facing the access road for the service station. Beyond it, traffic growled in a steady stream along the broad main highway. Vehicles rolled sedately in from the highway along the access road to the service station pumps.
I got up after a few seconds, steadying myself against the rough orange brick of the building. Moving along the wall, I looked in at the first window. It was the full height of the building. I saw a café about a quarter full.
A family of four sat just a yard away from me on the other side of the glass, eating a late breakfast. The teenage girl looked at my desperate disheveled form and nudged her father next to her. They looked at me, open-mouthed. He muttered something to her and they both looked away.
I moved on to the corner, crouching and looking behind me. I wondered if the hunters would just walk out and shoot me in full view of the people in the café, and then ride away into the woods. Perhaps everyone would look away long enough for there to be no witnesses.
At the all-glass corner of the café I looked left across the front of the building to the woods. Trucks were parked beside the café up to the fence at the woodland. The metal fencing separating the service station from the wood was obscured by a wooden enclosure for the property’s refuse dumpsters, a fence-mounted billboard advertising the station’s car wash, and then the car wash itself in a brick structure about one and a half stories high. But there were gaps; a yard or two of fencing where the gunmen might’ve been crouching right at that moment, waiting for me to emerge.
Directly in front of me was the service station’s main building and beyond that, the self-service fuel pumps, covered by a high, flat canopy.
Customers who had filled up were leaving the building and returning to their vehicles.
If I could get to the door, I’d be able to speak to people on their way out and find someone willing to give me a lift out of there.
I had to cross about ten yards to reach the main building. I could cover ten yards in about two long seconds. Or I could move to the other side of the access road, wait for a vehicle to come in from the highway, and cross the gap, shielded by the vehicle as it drove up the access road.
Four gunmen, ten yards, two seconds. I imagined them all lying down, fingers on triggers, waiting for me to cross the short space like a duck in a fairground shooting gallery. I’d never avoid all four. But if I crossed the access road I might be visible to a gunman in a position further along in the woods. One of them must be back there. That meant three waiting in the shooting gallery. Another might be busy holding the dogs. The dogs would be keen to stay on my trail. Holding them back must be taking some effort. Two snipers.
And then I heard buzzing as a small, black, four-rotor drone came over the roof of the café and hovered above me, its camera underneath swiveling around to look at my upturned face.
One flying the drone. One gunman. Better odds.
I ran to the main building.
A crack sounded from the woods and a bullet fizzed behind me. The drone followed.
A large semi-truck roared up the access road beside the service station building.
The drone, tilting away from the truck, flew almost directly above me, now under the canopy roof.
I looked down at my hands. I was still carrying the branch to fight off the dogs. I threw
the branch at the drone, striking it with a hard knock which momentarily turned it over.
The buzzing machine dropped down almost to the ground before righting itself.
I grabbed at the drone as it surged upward, grasping one of the short legs under the rotors. Turning it over, I smashed it to the concrete, stamping my boots on the camera and the rotors. It twitched like a live thing. I kept stamping until the camera came off.
Crouching at the glass corner of the building, I looked across the lanes of fuel pumps.
After the car wash, there was uninterrupted fencing for a hundred yards with woodland branches and bracken poking through. I guessed that all four of the gunmen would move there now.
The truck that had deflected the drone parked at the pumps furthest away, at the side nearest the road. On the other side of the pump, another truck looked unattended. The other vehicles at the pumps were a camper van and a car with a family’s vacation baggage piled high on the roof. More cars came in and stopped at vacant pumps.
The service station’s main building was a convenience store with an all-glass frontage. In front of the store, a display of garden furniture, barbecue charcoal, racks of bedding plants and a stand of newspapers shielded me from being seen by anyone in the woods. A narrow carousel of postcards inside the store at the all-glass corner, partially hid me from being seen by people inside.
I could see a family coming to the front door. A small girl jumped along beside her father, eyes fixed on the bags of candy he carried. An older boy strolled behind them, head down, opening a candy bar. In the car with the baggage, a woman sat in the front passenger seat. I couldn’t imagine them saying “yes” to a stranger asking for a ride. They’d consider it a risk. It would be crowded. And it would require a long negotiation while the marksmen took aim. They passed through the door without noticing me.