Terminator Gene

 

Chapter 1

 

Jemma was at the window again, plucking at the gold ring she wore on a chain around her neck. She looked pale, frightened and old.

‘Irith?’ she began, as she had a dozen times in the past week.

Irith looked up from her PortaBook, which displayed a research article she had been struggling to understand for days. The diagrams were practically illegible. Not for the first time she wished it was a real printed book, as they had in the good old days before sea level rose six metres, flooded half the cities of the world and wrecked the global economy.

‘Yes, Mum?’ Irith said patiently. Jemma had been on edge for months but would not say what was the matter, and that was not like her. She was normally so self-assured, so controlled.

Jemma thrust her forefinger through the ring, which was too big for it, then jerked it out again. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘No thanks. I just had one.’

Her mother went into the kitchen and Irith heard the cupboard door click. She sighed. It was impossible to concentrate with Jemma like this. She touched the bookmark flag and blanked the screen. Laying the PortaBook on the table, Irith went to the window. The afternoon sun streamed through her hair, touching it with golden highlights.

Irith was small, like her mother but more slender. Her pale brown hair had a slight frizz which couldn’t be tamed even when, as now, it was pulled tightly against her head and bound into a plait that ran down the middle of her back. Her eyes were brown, though a paler brown than Jemma’s, her face was oval rather than round, her nose more elegant, her lips fuller. Irith was a striking woman and didn’t know it. Decades of adversity had extinguished consumer culture, while self-absorption was discouraged by her mother.

‘Beauty is like a dead dog by the side of the road,’ Jemma was fond of saying. ‘It attracts nothing but vultures, hyenas and maggots.’

An unmarked van, large, square and dun-coloured, pulled up outside the block of flats, seven floors below. Four people got out, dressed identically. Security! They stepped onto the footpath and looked up. Irith felt an urge to duck out of sight but suppressed it. She was just a student, about to complete her honours year at university. She’d done nothing wrong and had nothing to hide.

‘The kettle’s boiling, mum.’

‘Mmm,’ said Jemma, but didn’t turn it off, which was unprecedented. Her mother was obsessive about waste, which she considered the greatest wickedness of all.

The officers seemed to be staring up at the kitchen window, but that was surely an illusion? The building contained forty-eight flats and they could be going to any of them.

Irith shook herself and turned away. ‘Mum?’

‘Yes, Irith?’

‘There’s a Security van outside. I’ve never –’

Jemma’s mug smashed on the tiles. Irith ran into the kitchen. The kettle was still boiling. She turned it off without thinking. Once the ration had been used, there was no more gas until the next month.

‘Mum? What’s the matter?’

Jemma’s brown eyes widened. ‘He’s come for me. I knew he would,’ she whispered.

‘Mum? Mum?’ Irith gripped Jemma by her slender shoulders.

‘I should have told you. I should have told you.’

Jemma was like a rabbit frozen in the headlights. Irith had never seen her so frightened.

Already Irith could hear the rhythmic thumping of feet on the stairs. The block of flats didn’t have an elevator, which were banned in buildings less than fifteen storeys high, to save energy. The global sea level emergency had flooded hundreds of coastal cities; trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure had to be replaced, five hundred million people resettled. Taxes were sky high and waste was a serious crime.

‘Irith,’ her mother said urgently. ‘I’ve done all I could to prepare you. You’re nothing like I used to be – you’re fit, capable, resourceful –’

‘Mum, please!’

‘This is going to be hard for you. It goes against everything I’ve taught you, but you can’t do anything for me. Promise me that.’

‘I won’t promise any such thing! Just tell me what the matter is.’

‘You can’t beat Security, Irith. You can’t do anything for me.’ Jemma’s hands caught at Irith’s wrists. ‘Please, I’m begging you – promise you’ll keep out of it.’ Her face was cracking at the seams.

Irith went cold inside. Something ghastly was going to happen. ‘If it means that much, I promise.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’ Irith was lying. I’ll get you out of this, Mum. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it. ‘What’s going on?’

Security came thumping down the corridor, the four pairs of footsteps beating as regularly as a metronome.

‘It’s Per Lindstrom …’

Per Lindstrom was President of the Global Congress, not quite a world government since Britain had withdrawn a couple of years ago, but almost. ‘What are you talking about, mum?’

Something hit the front door so hard that it gave way around the lock, sending fragments of metal and reinforced plastic flying across the floor. The door slammed back against the wall. Irith ran into the living room. Four officers stood in the doorway: two men and two women, dressed alike in tight-fitting pants and shirt, a steel-grey colour, and shiny grey boots. The closest woman had a bosom like an opera singer and blue pips on her shoulders. She wasn’t armed. Security didn’t need to be. All of the officers were bigger than Irith and her mother, but most people were.

‘Jemma Hardey?’ said the woman with the pips. She had a big jaw, as round as a melon, and small hard eyes like sapphires stuck in scoops of butter.

Jemma emerged from the kitchen. She looked calm now. ‘I’m Jemma Hardey. How may I help you?’

‘Come with us, please.’

Jemma nodded. ‘I’ll just get my bag.’

‘Stay where you are.’ The officer snapped her fingers and the other woman marched into Jemma’s small bedroom. The two men unpacked some sort of scanning device that was connected to a wrist computer by a long cable. The taller fellow, prematurely white and with a scar that ran from his upper lip to his nose, put it on and walked around the room, passing stubby sensors back and forth. The nuggetty one searched the cupboards, expertly.

‘Mum?’ said Irith. Why wouldn’t she say anything?

‘They’re taking me away,’ said Jemma. She showed no expression at all, though her hands squirmed in her pockets. ‘For something that happened a long time ago.’

‘No talking,’ snapped the female officer, spinning on one heel and striding towards Irith. Her bosom must have been encased in steel, for it was as unyielding as scaffolding. ‘You are Irith Hardey?’

‘Yes,’ said Irith.

‘You have completed your course of study?’

‘I still have to defend my honours thesis. Next Wednesday.’ Six days away.

‘You may shelter here until that is done. Then you have one day to remove your possessions.’ The officer used the word like an oath. She looked around the room, wrinkling her nose.

‘But this is my flat!’ cried Jemma. ‘I own it outright.’

The officer was inexorable. ‘Everything you own is forfeit. Your daughter will be allocated appropriate dormitory accommodation once her course is completed.’

‘A dormitory!’ cried Irith. ‘But I’ve never …’ An intensely private person, the idea of sleeping in a cramped, airless room with dozens of other women, all talking about her and her mother, was unendurable.

‘You’ve had a privileged existence,’ sneered the officer. ‘That’s all very well if you can pay for it, but things are different, now you’re destitute.’

She took pleasure in saying it, which was characteristic of officials. Australia was not poor, and the sun still shone, but the good cheer had gone out of the country. The better off were envied, those who were poorer, despised. It had not always been that way. Before the seas rose, before the Global Congress stifled all initiative, made progress a sin and every human pleasure a crime, her country had been a cheerful, outward-looking place. Now it seethed with bitterness, envy and malice.

Destitute. Irith felt sick. ‘You can’t do this. We know our rights.’

‘The warrant is signed by the President of the Global Congress, in Geneva –’

Per Lindstrom again. ‘Why?’ said Irith.

‘You do not have the right to ask.’ The officer went on, ‘…and countersigned by the Minister for Home Affairs.’ She recited from a portable reader. ‘Detention without trial and confiscation of property are legitimate measures under Section 118 (c) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, where there is a genuine threat to national or global security.’

‘How can my mother be a threat to global security?’ Irith screeched. She forced herself in front of the officer. The tall man took her from behind, pushed her to the floor and put his knee into her back.

‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ said the bosomy officer, ‘and if you don’t desist you will also be charged.’

‘I won’t –’ Irith began, her cheek squashed against the floor. Jemma shook her head. Irith broke off.

The man with the scanner went into Irith’s bedroom. It felt like a violation, not that he’d find anything there. She didn’t have a lot of possessions. Few people did. Even if they had the money, the shops were empty.

They allowed Irith to get up and she watched while her home was scanned, walls, floor and ceiling. They plugged into her PortaBook and copied everything on it, went through her e-books and her drawers with the same sneering efficiency.

Finally the other woman hurried through Jemma’s bedroom door carrying a canvas bag. ‘Come, Jemma Hardey.’ She jerked her by the arm.

Jemma broke free, ran three steps and threw her arms around her daughter. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have told you.’ She hugged Irith tightly. One hand slipped inside the collar of Irith’s shirt and something fell down her back, then the two guards tore Jemma off her. Irith did not dare to move until they’d gone, in case the piece of paper fell out. She followed them down the steps, watching, frozen inside, as they took her mother away.

 

Irith couldn’t have told how long she stood there, staring after the van in the empty street. Eventually she realised that people were walking around her, keeping well away, as if the passing contact could taint them too.

Water dribbled down her forehead. It was raining. Wiping her face with her sleeve, she ran up the seven flights of stairs. Her mother had taught her to be fit and resourceful; to always look for a way out. Irith had done training in self-defence, excelled in the rifle club, been on many self-reliance and survival courses. She had to do something.

Irith wasn’t out of breath when she reached the top. She was used to climbing stairs. The gloomy hall was lit by a single dim tube. Picking up the scattered pieces of the lock, she absently sorted them into the recycling bins and propped the door closed with a kitchen chair.

Going into her room, she stood by the window, fingering the scratches on the glass. Each birthday since she’d turned five, Irith and Jemma had measured the sea’s rise by sighting from a particular point in the doorway. A series of scratches on the window glass showed where sea level had reached on that date. It was a link to her father, Ryn, who had died just after she was born. He had been a scientist studying the melting of the Antarctic ice sheets, and had inspired her own interest in science. Irith loved the sea, and often wondered why she was studying genome engineering instead.

Jemma had taken her to the beach once, when she was little, but no one went any more. All the beaches were submerged. It would take centuries for new ones to form.

Irith sat on the bed, staring through the open door. This little flat, just two small bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room and a tiny kitchen, had been home for her entire life. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Now she had been robbed of it too.

Jemma and Ryn had been involved, in a very minor way, in the events that had led to the formation of the Global Congress twenty-one years ago. It was not quite a world government, for all the President tried to make it so. Nationalism was a stubborn beast and couldn’t be subdued so easily. Some countries followed the Congress line more closely than others, and none more closely than Australia.

Her father’s death had been tied up in those events too, and the death last year of his lunatic ex-friend, the environmental terrorist Hercus Barges. Why had Jemma been arrested? It was hard to imagine her mother doing anything wrong, so it most be something from the past.

Irith untucked her shirt and pulled the note out. It was scrawled on a fragment of coarse paper, the kind that had once been used for newspaper. Irith had looked through old newspapers in the archives of the university, so she knew what they looked like. There were no printed newspapers these days. Her mother subscribed to the Herald on the net.

The writing was blurred but Irith could still read it. Call Levi Seth.

She knew the name. He was an old friend of Jemma’s, notable in itself, for her mother had few friends. Jemma had been to see him several times in the past year. Irith had wondered if they were having a secret love affair.

Going to the screen in the corner, she sat at the keyboard. Her hands stopped just above the keys. Security could be monitoring everything she said, everything that passed across the net. But she had to know. Irith clicked past the Seven Obscenities that appeared whenever anyone, anywhere in the Congress-controlled world, used the net. They were an odd lot.

 

PROCREATION WITHOUT A PERMIT

CONSUMING MORE THAN YOU REQUIRE

WASTING ENERGY

DAMAGE TO THE ENVIRONMENT

FAILURE TO COMPLETE ALLOTTED DUTIES

WILFULLY HARMING ANIMALS

DISOBEYING A LAWFUL INSTRUCTION

 

And the Fifteen Virtues, ABSTINENCE, OBEDIENCE, SELF-CONTROL, DILIGENCE, AUSTERITY, DEDICATION …

The New Morality, and nowhere was the change greater than in regard to sex. It was officially regarded as an evil, even where a couple had a procreation permit. Abstinence was the greatest virtue of all. Irith had never been out with a man and was quite naïve about the matter though she was, like her mother, of a passionate nature.

The Virtues shrank to small reminders in the top right of the screen, then the screen went out. Electricity rationing. It was 1:30. The power would not come back on until 6 p.m.

Snatching her bag, he hurried out and caught the light rail to the university. In the library Irith logged on with a supposedly untraceable cashcard and searched the online directory for Levi Seth. He answered at once – a middle-aged, bald man with heavy-rimmed glasses. He looked to be Indian or Pakistani. Indian, she judged, by the name.

‘Hello?’ he said.

She pressed the image button so he could see her face. ‘My name is Irith Hardey –’

‘Stay there!’ The screen went blank and the dial tone sounded, followed by a series of clicks.

Was he a friend or an enemy? There was no way to tell. Opening her reader, she paged through the final version of her thesis. The oral examination could be brutal and she had to be prepared for any question.

It proved impossible to concentrate. What did they want Jemma for? Security had been tight ever since the terrorism catastrophes early in the new millennium, and it had become noticeably tighter in the years Irith had been at university. She didn’t understand why. According to NetNews, the world was a peaceful place since the Congress took over. People’s minds were fully occupied by the struggle for survival.

Irith knew of people being taken away by Security. Everyone did. But she had never heard of their property being confiscated under the Anti-Terrorism Act. It made her realise just how alone she was, and how helpless. She had friends at the university but they were just kids. They wouldn’t know what to do either.

She searched for recent footage of the Congress President, but discovered surprisingly little. Lindstrom rarely appeared in public and the few netcasts he had made were brief and carefully managed. She found only one in the past six months.

Lindstrom was a very tall man, long in the legs and short in the body, with a gritty, compelling voice and an intense look in the eye. He had a strange walk – head, shoulders and torso sloping back like the tower at Pisa, arms swinging, legs snapping. In the interview, he was hectoring the interviewer about an ecological collapse in Central Asia. Lindstrom swayed from side to side then abruptly sat down. His fingers moved constantly while he talked and his foot jerked this way and that, but he was eerily calm.

The interviewer, unwisely, persisted in her line of questioning. ‘It’s just a small area, only a few species threatened. I don’t see the problem –’

He sprang up again. ‘You don’t see at all. Humanity is the problem!’ he roared, pointing a long finger that shook in his sudden rage. ‘To much humanity, too greedy, too –’ His larynx bobbed up and down and he seemed to be having difficulty swallowing. ‘Too selfish and too stupid. You’re fired. Now get out!’

With that he stalked out, moving in an uncoordinated manner, leaving the young interviewer staring after him, corpse-faced.

So that’s what we’re dealing with, Irith thought, staring at the blank screen. That’s the man who’s taken Mum. And he’s the most powerful man on Earth.