‘She didn’t suspect anything?’
Peter grinned. ‘Of course not. Anyway, I am bored and frustrated.’ He raised an eyebrow at Pip, but Pip didn’t smile; instead, he regarded Peter cautiously.
‘Peter, are you sure you want to do this? Really sure?’
Peter rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘But you say you’re frustrated?’
Peter sighed. He’d learnt long ago that Pip absorbed and analysed every word and gesture, intuited every emotion. Peter knew that this was how Pip held sway over people, but it was still annoying sometimes. ‘Frustrated because the Authorities moved us to a hideous box house in the suburbs. Frustrated because they watch our every move and I still haven’t taken Anna to the countryside because I can’t get a permit to travel. Frustrated because there’re old people everywhere and they stare at us like we don’t belong here. That’s all. I won’t let it get in the way. I promise.’
Pip regarded Peter thoughtfully, then he stood up and walked calmly around to the back of his chair. ‘You mustn’t let your emotions get the better of you. There is a great deal to be angry about, but anger doesn’t change things.’
‘I know. Action changes things.’
‘Action, but also strength of will, Peter.’
Peter nodded seriously. ‘I know. I’m strong, Pip. Come on, I’ve proved that, haven’t I?’
‘Of course you have,’ Pip said, his voice warmer suddenly. ‘Peter, you have proved yourself a thousand times. But you’re going to be on your own, with the whole weight of Pincent Pharma’s machine against you, and I need to know that you’re prepared. You must realise that this isn’t just a job, Peter. It’s a battle. A battle of nature and science, good and evil. People get seduced by Longevity, and your grandfather will do everything in his power to win you over. You have to go into this with your eyes open.’
‘My eyes are open,’ Peter said, his eyes shining. ‘I hate Richard Pincent. I hate everything he stands for. Longevity is responsible for everything bad in my life. Anna’s life, too. I want to destroy it as much as you do.’
‘I know you do.’ Pip sat down again, and his eyes softened. ‘And how is Anna? Is she OK with what you’re doing?’
At the mention of Anna’s name, Peter felt a warm glow surround him. ‘She’s fine. And she’s as keen as I am to fight Longevity. You know that.’
‘Of course I do,’ Pip smiled. ‘Well then, on Monday morning you will report at Pincent Pharma as your grandfather requested.’
‘As Richard Pincent told me,’ Peter interrupted, his voice low.
‘As Richard Pincent told you,’ Pip corrected himself.
‘And then what do I do?’ Peter asked excitedly. ‘Do I blow it up? Do I smash the machinery?’
Pip raised an eyebrow, his eyes twinkling. ‘You keep a low profile and you take note of everything. And you learn, Peter.’
‘That’s it?’ Peter’s face fell slightly.
‘That’s a great deal,’ Pip said. Then he leant closer. ‘Peter, we have people in many places – in every Authorities department, in Longevity distribution companies, in prisons. But we’ve never had anyone at the heart of Pincent Pharma. No one with access to the information we need. Your eyes and ears are going to be your tools, Peter. Through you we can get to God himself.’
‘God doesn’t exist,’ Peter said in a low voice. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Pip agreed. ‘But your grandfather is doing his best to become the most fearsome deity that the world has ever known. A deity that feeds on nothing but power and greed. A deity that must be stopped, for all our sakes.’
‘So I just look and learn,’ Peter said. ‘OK. But is there anything I’m looking for? Anything specific? Do you need the formula of the drugs?’
‘So we can make more?’ Pip smiled and Peter felt himself go red. Pip’s face turned more serious. ‘I’m sorry, Peter, I shouldn’t have laughed. It was a good question. So no, it isn’t the formula we want. We want to . . .’ His voice trailed off, as though he didn’t want to finish the sentence.
‘Want to what?’ Peter demanded.
‘The source of some of the new drugs coming out of Pincent Pharma,’ Pip said thoughtfully. ‘We’re not sure what it is. We have our suspicions, but . . .’
‘But what?’
Pip sighed. ‘Peter, something tells me there’re things going on inside the walls of Pincent Pharma, bad things behind the clean, professional facade. But whatever they are, they’re well hidden.’
‘What sort of bad things?’ Peter asked.
‘That,’ Pip said, smiling again, ‘is what you’ll need to find out.’ He stood up suddenly, his muscles tautening visibly as he moved. ‘I’ll be in touch, Peter.’
Peter nodded, stood up and turned to leave. Then he stopped. ‘We are going to do it, aren’t we?’ he said softly. ‘We are going to win?’
Pip put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. ‘Eventually, Peter. But I imagine there will be a few battles first.’
Peter looked up at him for a few seconds, then took a deep breath. ‘You can count on me, Pip. I’ll find out what’s going on.’
‘Good,’ Pip said, his voice matter-of-fact now. He pulled out a file and handed it to Peter. ‘Take this. Read it. Absorb it. Then get rid of it. And Peter?’
‘What?’
‘Good luck. Take care. And take care of Anna and Ben, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
Peter left the room, making his way back along the corridor, past the gruff guard, through the passageway to the shop, then out into the road. He walked back along Old Compton Street, down towards Piccadilly, then jumped on a tram heading north towards Tottenham Court Road and, after that, another one heading south again. Eventually, he arrived at Waterloo Station to get his train home. Keep them guessing, he thought to himself. If the Authorities were watching him, and he was pretty sure they were, then he wanted at least to make their job more difficult.
He got off the train at Surbiton and looked around in disdain. A few months ago, he and Anna had been living in Bloomsbury, in the house that Anna’s parents had lived happily in for years. It had been a lovely house – big and rambling, sunny and warm, a place as different from Grange Hall as it was possible to be. But soon after he and Anna became Legal, the letters started to arrive, then the official visitors, all saying the same thing: that the house was too big for them, that they would be better off in a ‘more efficient space’. They’d resisted, at first – after all, the house was theirs, inherited from Anna’s parents. But gradually, the visits had become more regular, the letters more threatening, until even Pip had shrugged sadly and told them that the move was probably inevitable, unless they wanted to antagonise the Authorities, that this fight was probably one that wasn’t worth fighting. And so they had been moved to a box in the suburbs, where two shopping centres had replaced the high street, and the residents saw them as intruders.
Of course, the Authorities hadn’t publicised his and Anna’s escape to freedom; they didn’t want people knowing that they’d outwitted the Catchers, that they’d got out of a Surplus Hall alive. Nor had the Authorities said much about the death of Anna’s parents, or the murder of Peter’s father. They’d done their best to brush the stories under the carpet, to lose them in a mass of red tape. But stories like that didn’t die very easily. Word had got out, newspapers had printed photographs of him and Anna with headlines questioning the effectiveness of the Catchers, asking whether the ‘Life for a Life’ policy should be revisited. No one wanted any additional burdens on the world’s meagre resources and that was all he and Anna represented to most people. So neighbours avoided them, shop assistants regarded them warily and passers-by either stared at them curiously or pretended they didn’t exist. Not that Peter cared. He knew he had as much right to be there as anyone else. More right.
Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he walked through the Amenities Park, where various outdoors exercise classes seemed to take place at e
very hour of the day. There were people running, jogging, touching their toes, stretching their muscles – a grand exhibition of strength, of energy, of life. Or, rather, fear of dying, Peter thought cynically.
It wasn’t just death that people feared, either; it was ageing, decay. Legs and arms could be replaced; key organs could be regrown. But those little lines around the mouth, that lethargy in the morning that started to last all day, the feeling of having seen it all before – these were things that had to be fought. Peter had read all about it in The New Times and the lifestyle supplement of Staying Young, usually whilst waiting for appointments with his assimilation counsellor. The scientists had done their bit, the journalists would write; it was up to individuals to maximise the potential of Longevity – to live their lives to the full, to maintain a youthful energy and enthusiasm.
Or they could bow out gracefully and leave youth to the young, Peter thought. They could take a long hard look at themselves – at their endless, boring lives – and ask whether death might not be such a bad idea after all. People might think they had learnt to delay the inevitable, but underneath the veneer of Longevity, if they were honest about it, they would see that the rot had still set in. Like an apple that looks fresh but reveals maggots inside, people could not ignore for ever the fact that they were all past their sell-by date.
He turned on to his street, the ugly and monotonous row of identical houses. And yet, as he approached Number 16, he still felt the familiar feeling of a weight being lifted, a sense of a gap in the clouds that seemed to dog his every move. It was home. Not the bricks and mortar – the house was, in Peter’s opinion, a monstrosity, a soulless building with small, oppressive rooms and low ceilings; but what lived within it meant everything to him. As he approached the house, he could see Anna through the window, sitting on the sofa reading, knees bent under her.
Before his key had entered the lock, he heard her jump up and come running to the door. She pulled it open and smiled up at him.
‘You’re home!’ The smile was short-lived; immediately it was replaced by a frown. ‘And you’re late. You said you’d be home an hour ago.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that . . .’ His eyes were shining, but he kept his voice low out of habit; the Underground had swept the house for bugs but Pip had admitted that they couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure the house was secure. ‘Is Ben asleep?’
He kissed Anna gently on her nose, which she wrinkled.
‘Dead to the world,’ she confirmed. ‘So?’
Peter walked into the sitting room, flopping down on the same sofa Anna had been on just a few moments before. He could feel her warmth on the cushions. Before he’d met Anna, he’d thought he’d known what love was, thought he’d understood about friendship, romance, all of it, but he hadn’t – not at all. Until he’d held Anna in his arms, until he’d let her see his soul, until he’d heard her cry gently when he made love to her for the first time, he’d known nothing. And now, sometimes, when it was just the two of them, when he smelt her hair, caught her eye, he felt as though he knew all there was to know about everything, as though they knew the secret of life. A secret far more powerful than Longevity, far more long-lasting.
‘So what?’ he teased.
Anna pretended to punch him. ‘How did it go?’ she mouthed silently, taking his hand, her eyes alert.
‘It was fine,’ he whispered. Then, winking, he pulled himself off the sofa, wandered into the kitchen and flicked on the kettle. An electronic voice immediately piped up: ‘How much hot water do you really need? Remember, less water, less waste.’
‘Fine?’ Anna whispered, following him. ‘What does that mean? You are so annoying sometimes.’
‘Me or the kettle?’
‘You’re both as bad as each other,’ Anna replied out loud, raising her eyebrows.
Peter grabbed her, pulled her in towards him and kissed her. ‘It was fine,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘She bought the story, hook, line and sinker. And then I saw Pip and everything’s set.’
Anna smiled, her expression at once excited and apprehensive. Then she pulled away, took out two mugs and put tea bags in them. ‘So you must be looking forward to starting at Pincent Pharma on Monday,’ she said out loud. She was still smiling, but Peter could see a hint of tension in her eyes, of worry.
‘Certainly am,’ he confirmed. Then he grabbed her again, this time more playfully. ‘And by Tuesday, I’ll have been fired and I’ll have to get a job as an aerobics instructor,’ he whispered.
‘No, you won’t! You can’t. You’ve got to destroy it, Peter, you’ve got to,’ Anna whispered back, pulling away and looking at him wide-eyed, evidently not entirely sure whether he was joking or not. Which was perfectly understandable; Peter wasn’t sure either.
Chapter Two
Pincent Pharma occupied a prime position in southwest London, on the river. The building had existed for years in various guises – as a power plant, as an art gallery – before Pincent Pharma Inc convinced the town planners and the Authorities that Longevity drugs required a London production centre. Within months, building work had begun and soon the large, dark landmark had been transformed into a huge white church of Longevity. Inside its walls, hundreds of the best minds were devoted to researching, creating, producing, improving and preaching the benefits of the small white pills that had enabled humans to achieve the ultimate goal – never-ending life.
Peter knew nothing about architecture, but he could feel the building’s power, its arrogance, its secrecy, as he walked around its boundaries. He was shivering, and not just because of the cold winter wind that froze his face. This was the place where Longevity drugs were made. This was the place he despised, that he’d always despised. And today he was going inside.
The building gave little away from the outside. Painted white, with Pincent Pharma emblazoned across its gates, the laboratory had small windows with mirrored glass, ensuring that anyone peering in to spy on the workings of the employees within would be met only by a reflection of their own squinting eyes and curious expression. Around the building was a high wall, impenetrable except for several large gates, one of which allowed pedestrians through and either side of which was stationed a security guard in a toughened glass and steel booth, along with an identi-card scanner which automatically opened and closed the gate.
Foreign terrorists fighting for cheap Longevity drugs in their own countries had tried several times to bomb Pincent Pharma; the laboratory was, though, apparently indestructible. Bomb-proof, fire-proof, flood-proof, damage-proof – he’d read about it in the file Pip had given him. Longevity production was considered more important even than farming, which itself was a high priority for the Authorities. Comfort, Health, Wealth and Learning were the stated aims of the Authorities – these things were what mattered to people, what resonated with them. The only thing that mattered was to keep everyone alive and happy. What didn’t matter was people like him and Anna. New people. New life. Like Noah’s Ark, the Authorities had pulled up the gangplank many years before and set sail defiantly, not caring what they might be leaving behind, or to what horrific world they might be sailing.
And now, he was going to be working inside this place. Peter, who had approached the building from its back in order to size it up before formally presenting himself to Richard Pincent, suppressed a slight shudder at the thought as he walked around the perimeter wall. Along it, posters gleamed in new glass casings, the Pincent Pharma logo clearly visible across the top of each of them, navy on white, the final ‘a’ in Pharma given a little tail that suggested a friendly smile.
As he approached the gate, Peter steeled himself. Steadily, he walked towards it.
The guard appeared not to see him, looked past him, as though his existence was of no importance at all.
‘I’m Peter,’ Peter said, looking him right in the eye. ‘Peter . . .’
‘Peter Pincent?’ the guard asked lazily. He was thin, wiry; a scar just above his left eye suggested that h
e had seen action.
Peter frowned. He hated his surname. Loathed it.
He nodded.
The security guard looked him up and down, unaware that Peter was also scrutinising him. The guard was about a hundred and forty, Peter guessed.
‘You’ll need to fill in a few forms,’ the man said, handing Peter a clipboard then leaning against the wall of his booth. There was a little smirk on his lips, as though he was playing with Peter, as though he was party to some joke. Peter’s eyes narrowed. He hated authority figures, people who thought that a uniform and a job title gave them the right to order people around, to order him around.
Irritated, Peter began to scrawl his name, address, date of birth and purpose of visit on the forms he’d been given; the guard appeared to enjoy his awkward attempts to lean on the flimsy board behind them.
‘You were in one of those Surplus Halls, weren’t you?’ It was a statement as much as a question, a way to show Peter that he had no secrets.
Peter nodded tightly. ‘That’s right.’
The security guard’s lips crept upwards into a sneer. ‘Lucky, aren’t you?’ he said, not waiting for an answer. ‘And now you’re coming to make Longevity drugs. Interesting career move.’
Peter took a deep breath and handed the form back to the guard. ‘Now, where should I go?’
The guard folded his arms and looked Peter up and down again. Then he shrugged.
‘You don’t have a security pass, do you? Can’t go through without a security pass.’
‘And where do I get a security pass?’
‘Reception.’
‘And I can’t get to reception –’
‘Without a security pass. It’s a tricky one.’ The guard’s eyes glinted slightly. Peter gave him a sarcastic smile.
‘So it looks like I’m going to be spending the day right here, then,’ he said. ‘Now, do you think I should sit on that patch of gravel just there, or over on the concrete?’
The guard didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he opened the gate. ‘You know,’ he muttered, ‘only the best get to work here. People have to pass exams, wait years for a vacancy. Not everyone can just waltz in. You might want to watch yourself in there.’