“Yeah,” he grunted. “Creepy, isn’t it?”
Now we were approaching a high-density enclave of luxury offices, apartments and shops on the estuary side, north of the river. This was where I lived with my father and other rich people. Johnny sat up and took notice now. He’d never been here before. As we approached the security gates, Dominic triggered the infra-red signal and let us in, watched by a battery of CCTV cameras. I breathed a sigh of relief even though I knew it was completely irrational. I was really no safer on this side than on the other. If I had been, I would obviously never have got ill.
I felt faint. It was time for my medication and I didn’t have any more with me. I couldn’t wait to get to the fridge, smooth the I-So-L8 cream over my burning skin and feel its magic working into my chromosomes. “Correcting fluid” Papa called it. We parked in the multi-storey and took the lift to the 30th.
All the way sensors scanned our irises—except for Johnny who didn’t have any. I wondered what the machines thought about that.
“Listen, I think it’s better not to let Sim know that Johnny wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Hybrids,” said Cheri as we walked up the corridor to the apartment door.
“Why?” asked Johnny.
“Because he might not want you under his roof if he knew, of course!”
“You mean he’d have heard about it?” asked Johnny.
“Of course!”
The door opened and Cheri took Johnny into the living room while I rushed to the fridge. Soon my soreness began to wear off and I felt more normal.
“So this is where you live.” Johnny was standing by the window looking at the incredible view. The lights of London spread out like an inversion of a starry night, a spangled carpet of white and orange dots already joined into constellations by streetlights. The moving lights of traffic were like UFOs journeying between galaxies. Through it all, a big black snake lying bloated and growing by the year—the river, which would one day swallow half the city.
“Not bad,” he said. “I bet it costs more to live here in a year than most people earn in a lifetime.”
“You bet it does,” growled a familiar voice. I turned around to see Papa enter from the hallway and throw his briefcase on to a chair. Evidently he had just arrived from the office. I ran to him and buried my head in his chest. I needed to feel closer to him ever since Maman had disappeared.
“You’ve been gone a long time, Papa,” I murmured. I felt his pepper-and-salt bristle tickle my cheek, but perhaps he didn’t like the suggestion that he was neglecting me because he got up to fix himself a drink.
“Somebody has to do the work. And this place doesn’t pay for itself.” He looked tired, his Oriental skin paler than usual.
“Any news?” I asked hopefully, as I had every day since she’d gone, though I could tell the answer from his face.
He shook his head. “No, darling. Not yet.”
“Hello, Sim,” said Cheri to draw attention to herself.
“Ah, it’s the bleeding-heart liberal. Good evening.” He prepared a gin and tonic. “What brings you here? Have you found your sister? And who is this boy?” He turned to face Johnny. “I take it he’s registered?”
He started to inspect Johnny as if he were an exhibit in a museum and I began to feel irritated. Ever since Maman disappeared he’d begun to drink more and I didn’t like it. It seemed to bring out the worst in him.
“You don’t need to worry about breaking the law,” said Cheri. The government had recently made it illegal for anyone to host a Grey on their property. “He’s mine.”
Johnny had generated a smiley face. I already knew him well enough to understand that this meant he was being polite.
“Computer type,” Papa said, peering closely at the transition points. “Never seen one quite as advanced as this.”
Immediately the smiley face changed to a frowny one. “It’s all right,” spoke his impersonal, electronic voice. “You don’t have to be polite with me. After all, I’m no longer human.”
“So sorry,” said Papa. “Just that in my line of work…” and his voice trailed off.
“That’s right, make a complete fool of yourself,” said my aunt. “This is Johnny. Your daughter brought him to Sally House.”
“Hm,” Papa smiled. “Can you roll up your sleeve?” He inspected the surface of Johnny’s arm where parts of the keyboard protruded. “Very interesting. Multiple interfaces. Unusual specimen.”
Curiously, Johnny didn’t seem to mind this scrutiny.
Papa stood back. “OK. How do you eat and breathe, Johnny?”
Stiffly, Johnny showed him the feed bottle and tubes that entered his throat and oesophagus. At the moment the bottle was half full of coffee.
“I should explain, Johnny,” said Cheri. “Sim Chu is in charge of media relations and marketing at Mu-Tech, the biotech corporation. He therefore has a professional interest in your condition.”
“I know,” said Johnny and addressed him directly. “It’s your job to come up with promotional campaigns for products like Stabil-O-Gene, Gene-U-Like and I-So—L8, isn’t it?”
“Correct,” said Papa, with a hint of pride in his voice.
“…all those quack snake oils with horrendous side-effects. You play on the fear of normal people of catching the disease, exploiting their paranoia to make money for your shareholders.” Johnny’s artificial voice delivered this in a level, matter-of-fact way. I watched Papa carefully. He didn’t blink for a moment.
“Well, it’s a very real fear,” he smiled benignly. “Isn’t everyone afraid? Of course. Especially because nobody knows how the virus is transmitted. I know the drugs we have aren’t so good yet. When we understand the cause we’ll have a better chance to come up with the cure. Until then I’m afraid these drugs are the best we can do.”
“There’s a rumour companies like yours came up with the disease in the first place and let it loose on the population just so you could sell them the medicines.” Johnny wasn’t pulling any punches.
“I’m aware of this rumour,” said Papa, sitting down and making himself comfortable. “But it is not true. You are very young, Johnny, and don’t have much experience yet, therefore it is understandable you might believe such conspiracy theories. And yet do you think I would continue to work for this company if it had really done that, when two members of my own family are suffering from the disease?”
Johnny sat down as well, on a long white sofa opposite my father. “I said it got out of hand. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, or the genes out of the lab, you have no control over what’ll happen. I bet nobody ever meant it to get to this stage.”
“No, that’s not so. Johnny, you’ve had a hard time in your short life. And you are looking for someone to blame. But it’s not me or my company. I hope in time, as a friend of my daughter’s, you will come to see Mu-Tech as part of the solution not part of the problem.”
I went to sit next to Papa on the arm of his chair and let him put his arm around my waist. We both stared across the room at Johnny. Now Sim was stroking my wrist where it turned into the mobile phone. “You know I’d give my right arm today if my daughter could get her hand back and I could get my wife back.”
“Which brings me to the reason why he’s here, Papa,” I said.
“Oh yes, darling?” He looked at me expectantly.
“Johnny, you see, is a computer head. In more senses than one.