The time gene, p.68
The Time Gene, page 68
Darkness engulfed Canute.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Redemption
Geneva, Switzerland, 30th March 2005, 11 pm
Canute barely listened as the newscaster pronounced the day’s headlines. He had more important viewing ahead. She was highly compulsive, far more gripping than The West Wing or House of Cards. This next instalment promised to be the best yet. Canute brushed aside his own mawkishness. He was hardly the type to turn dewy-eyed over the union of two star-crossed lovers. But everyone loved a happy ending, didn’t they?
The doorbell rang, a resonant peal. She never missed a party.
Backless, slashed and cut-down low. Snakeskin. Venomous as ever. She knew how to wear black. He slicked back his hair and laughed. When would she learn that she was wasting her time? She’d be wrinkled and leaning on a stick before long. He had no need of the ephemeral, he craved only the eternal. And now it had fallen into his lap, like the gold coins of legend. Besides, he was spoken for.
“Bad for your reputation, a pure young girl calling on a man at this hour,” he chided.
“I make a point of killing my lovers before 9pm,” retorted Krystal Kaczynski.
Canute bowed. “Your dark aura paralyses the mind faster than dark matter.”
She tossed her golden hair, thrust a champagne glass into his hands, cast off her Jimmy Choos, and slinked into a seat. “When’s the watch party?”
An enigmatic grin spread across his face as he poured her champagne. “It’s been bubbling away for almost ten years. But now, it’s hotting up.” With a smirk, he grasped the remote. “I take a peek maybe once a week. Never less than once a fortnight. But occasionally I tune in 24/7. Days and weeks pass, when I do not go out. It is as well for my toned physique that I have a private gym. Some days I worry I’m worse than those plebeians who binge-watch Frasier.”
Krystal emptied her glass in one swig, and held it out in the tips of her manicured fingers. With a back-flip, Siegfried refilled it, and pressed ‘play’ with the other hand.
A red light flashed in the corner of the screen. LIVE. The picture was fuzzy. The scene was murky, as if viewed through dark waters. Music could be heard, a hellish, piercing din, and the loud clatter of plates and crockery. There ensued a wretched and self-pitying lament: “Give a girl a bit o’ joy before there’s none left to live for.”
Angry shouts followed, with cries of reproach. Dancers flitted by, in sombre gaiety, drooping and corpse-like in the grim half-light. And then a loud bang! “If you’ve busted it, I’ll kill you!” Then everything went dark.
Krystal rolled her eyes. “Bet any money you didn’t invent this software. Who’d you rip off this time?”
“Kappa,” Canute mumbled. “Not that he’d remember,” he added with a smirk. “It’s not even that amazing. You just inject the nanocam alongside the Erebos. The Erebos acts on the subject’s brain immediately, whilst the nanocam binds to the subject’s retina, feeding back live images you can play on any old TV.”
A muffled voice rose from the TV speakers. “Don’t you worry – I’ll have the lights switched back on in a jiffy!” And then, a sobbing sound, keen and desperate. Followed by a gentler voice, soothing and warm: “This is where we make our exit, babe...”
Canute beamed widely, and stretched out his hand to shield Krystal’s eyes. “Methinks this next part is censored.”
She smacked him aside indignantly. “Bet you watch them together all the time in private.”
Canute paused the TV. His lips twitched. “Not I. I have nothing if not utmost moral rectitude. Yet I have watched her life long and hard. In the beginning, of course, it was through the lens of the tachyophone. I was her “Watchman”. I was with her at all the key moments in her life. When she saved her brother from plunging to his death. When she stopped a massive car-smash (only because I moved out of the way the second time). When she brought her wastrel father back from the dead. I was there. I helped her through it all. And she felt me. She knew I’d marked her as mine.”
Krystal’s mouth twisted. “How did you take her?”
Canute beamed at the recollection. “Oh, that was child’s play. She must have been about fifteen. She fell in with a gang of louts. They’d stolen some laptops from a backstreet hovel, and were making their getaway. They were running like wolves. Unwittingly she crashed into me. My aging hippy rocker disguise fooled her. I injected her, and have enjoyed an all-inclusive backstage pass ever since.” But, amid Canute’s triumphalism was a mote of frustration and disappointment.
“So why the long face?”
Canute pressed a different button on the remote, and the footage began to rewind. Canute continued winding back until a vision of white immersed the screen. “Her mother’s veil…horrible eighties kitsch.”
“I, Roxanne, take you, Liam to be my husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honour you all the days of my life...”
Canute’s face sank as the nausea rose to his head. He wrung his hair through his hands.
“She’s not yours,” said Krystal slowly.
Tears of despair pooled in his eyes. Such was his despondency that he let Krystal cradle his head. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“Didn’t you use enough Erebos?”
“She had far more than the normal dose,” Canute affirmed. “I feared I’d given her a lethal. But the Erebos just didn’t take. It did initially…but its effects should be irreversible. The initial binding can be slow, but the patient’s brain is putty within days. But somehow she repelled me…she could not, of course, expel me altogether. But she held me at bay like a fortress.”
Krystal’s brow lined. “Did any of the 24 resist?”
“Not at all,” Canute said, wringing his hands. “Within a year of the Sarajevo incident, I had twenty-four Bondsmen - twenty-four Avatars, Alpha to Omega, all bound to me until their biological death. Very useful. But the Anchor? She was the jewel in the crowl, the pièce de résistance.” A tidal wave of longing almost unbalanced Canute. “Her time gene – in its unmutated, aboriginal perfection, was to have been mine to wield – combined with my own, it would have conferred upon me and our descendents absolute dominion over space and time.” Canute’s body twisted with regret. “And yet, she fought me as no mortal has ever been able to fight me. To this day, I cannot ReDeem her.”
Krystal looked disquieted. “Any theories as to why?”
Canute’s face darkened, his features burning together like charred metals. “No. Yes – not really.” He wrung his hands in frustration. “Erebos is normally fullproof. It melts brain tissues, turns them to spaghetti. That’s why ten of my eleven colleagues died of brain haemorrhages when we worked together on the Sarajevo meteorite, whilst the eleventh remained catatonic.” He heaved a nostalgic sigh. “My beloved friends. I could have saved them. I had only to go back. So why did I let them die? My dearest comrades, I loved them as brothers. Not an hour passes that I do not regret my failure to intervene. But this option did not avail itself – because, in my firebrand youth, I overtrusted them – enough to reveal a little too much. They knew I’d been injecting more people with Erebos. They had been with me since the heady days of Mount Caroline Livermore, where we trialled the drug we made from it - ReDemptin.
“They were fainthearts - cowards - got cold feet when the FBI shut us down. When we were on the verge of curing some of the world’s most violent and depraved criminals. Murderers, machete-wielders, cannibals, schizophrenics - we could have cured them all. ReDeemed them. Not that they were ignorant of Erebos’ potential. They knew that Erebos, when bound to a DNA sample from a donor, instead of destroying the patient’s brain, renders the latter entirely and irrevocally subservient to the donor. Evil, psychotic patients injected with ReDemptin bound to the DNA of an upstanding citizen such as myself can be entirely subdued. If it takes correctly, Erebos effectively confers upon the donor a second self in another body, which the donor can control as easily as his own. There is no limit to the number of Bondsmen a man can procure in this way – one can have hundreds of Avatars hiding in plain sight.”
Canute beamed. “Yes, infinitely marvellous, isn’t it? But, to my lasting chagrin, my dearest friends did not understand the expediency of further exploiting Erebos. That the multiplication of a mind like mine could end all death, wars, famine. My worthy Sarajevo colleagues were not ready to embrace mankind’s next frontier. And so, a sacrifice had to be made.”
Canute scratched his head. “Why, then, did the Erebos not work properly on Roxanne? None of the others resisted me…from the moment I injected them, they were more mine than my own eyes. But she? At first it appeared I’d won for myself an avenging angel. But even when she was throwing people down stairs and burning down houses she was not completely mine. The more time passes, the more she resists me. She has been slipping away from me these past four years.
“The patient’s brain should succumb entirely to the donor’s within days. Before Omicron died, I had him examined, and independent cerebral activity was zero. So I concluded at first that she must be some sort of mutant. Despite her low birth and savage parents, she has almost boundless intelligence. Yet all my subjects were intelligent. No – it’s something else.” Canute turned towards the television screen and glared as an insipid youth placed a ring on a tender finger. “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship…”
Canute banged on the off switch. And he turned to Krystal, his temper seething. “And it’s got something to do with him.”
Krystal laughed incredulously. “That milksop boy?”
Canute leaned against the sofa, his voice exuding a mixture of fury and awe. “Oh yes. But for him she would have fallen. He re-taught her something else…something I couldn’t fight.” His voice trailed off, an eerie quiet engulfing him.
Krystal faltered a little. “But he was part of the plan, wasn’t he?”
Siegfried wrung his hands in frustration. “Of course! I planned the marriage; planted it in her head - thus, I’d procure two stooges for the price of one. He was the perfect choice - the way he dangled round her neck, cow-towed to her every whim - I didn’t need Erebos to ReDeem that muppet. And yet, he resurrected in her that all that the Erebos ought to have long buried. The love the Greeks call Agape. That pure, selfless adoration of another being. That is something that seems on occasions to counteract the Erebos, at least at current dosage. Which is dangerous...utterly terrifying to me.” Canute issued a deep sigh. “But I cannot risk a lethal, especially not with one as precious as she. Erebos interactions with DNA are not reversible…the League uses the remnant of the Sarajevo sample in very small doses as a tracker. Once it’s in the body, you can’t go back. Well…you can. But the Erebos remains in your body, even if you time-travel. It’s one of dark matter’s weirdest properties.”
Krystal curled her neck around his shoulder. Her bleach-smelling hair brushed against his cheek. He felt her burn him. “Poor Siegi. How frustrating not to be able to destroy her.” She caressed his back greedily, and she caressed her words even more.
He uncoiled from her brusquely. “At first I was frustrated, yes,” he admitted. “But, on reflection, her resistance was more blessing than curse.”
Scowling, Krystal swept over him and gripped his arm. “What! But you must ReDeem her, Siegfried. A small booster should do the trick.”
“I cannot, Krystal! It would be an abomination.” he murmured, “She has a lucidity such as I have never seen…”
A petulant rage seized Krystal. “I didn’t think her such a budding Einstein myself,” she snarled. “She’s a common little tart.” Suddenly she quietened. She gripped the lapels of his jacket, arched back her swan-like neck. “Please, Siegfried,” she said, emotion welling in her whirlpool eyes. “Don’t do it for me…do it for yourself,” she murmured. “You think a girl so enslaved to agape love will dance to your dark tunes? She’ll be a thorn in your side.” She began stroking his chest. He crushed her hands without remorse, but she persisted. “I won’t abandon you to your folly, Siegfried!” she hissed. “What about all the amazing plans we hatched together – the Immortal Cosmos, the posthuman utopia? You’d just throw that to the dogs for some perverse fancy for your little lab rat? No, Siegfried. You will ReDeem her!”
But Canute brushed her aside as though she’d been an irksome caterpillar crawling up his arm, “No, Krystal. You lack the subtlety to comprehend the urgency of the universe we are destined to create together. And though I care for you, my little spoilt kitten, I cannot jeopardise the Immortal Cosmos.” She clutched at him, but he scraped her off like lichen. Then, a mote of tenderness seized him and he stroked her brow. “You are part of the old order, Krystal. Humans are stupid. Simian savages barely evolved beyond eating their own dung. It was only a matter of time before a new, far more exquisite, species would evolve...an omnipotent, omniscient species, of boundless intelligence and unstoppable power. Roxanne and I are genitors of a new breed of supermen – of Übermenschen, as we say. We are the Genitors of Time – the new Adam and Eve.”
“I’m more evolved than you’ll ever be.” Krystal’s lithe form leapt onto his shoulders, but he batted her aside. She crumpled onto the floor. She struck her head and lay writhing, her eyes defocused. A frisson echoed in Siegfried’s voice, somewhere between sardonic humour and panic.
“Have I killed you?”
“You wish...”
Canute emitted a deep sigh. He patted her head as she rubbed the sore spot with her manicured hand. “Ah, my Krystal, you are more agile than a lynx, more graceful than a swan, more winsome than a white doe...but only those of us who hold the Time Gene will inherit the cosmos. Roxanne and I will be Adam and Eve, except that neither serpent nor god shall condemn us. The reign of the Time Genitors will have no end. We will dissolve time. No longer will it march blindly on in an inexorable line. It will be ever circular, an interminable loop, ever evolving, ever improving, closing in on the perfection that will make heaven on earth.”
Krystal giggled. “As modest as ever!”
“As always I think only of others. I intend to abolish death. Mankind (perchance more so womankind) will be eternally grateful. No more geriatric diseases. No more wrinkles. No more withering and decay. We and our descendants will be the pantheon of a new Mount Olympus. Except that prayers to us will actually work. Who can undo the accident at work that took your sight? Who can bring back your dead baby? Who can cure terminal cancer? No-one, but the Time Genitors.”
Krystal uncoiled herself from the carpet, blood leaking from a gash above her left eyebrow. “Descendants? You do not mean you intend to marry that little whore?”
Canute laughed throatily. “Indeed I must, my dear. Sacrifices must be made, and I can ride the storm of her lowly origins.”
Krystal snorted. “That I concede...but why let the little tart keep her own mind? She’s a dangerous caldera, she could break the world if she erupts. Why won’t you cage her, still her? You could still use her to proliferate her genes. Wouldn’t making her your avatar, a second vessel for your own intellect...afford you a far greater supremacy?” A narcotic venom laced her voice as she massaged his shoulders.
He shook her off again, this time more gently. “It might. But to do so would be to kill the albatross. Only she can properly wield her own time gene. Think of it! It is a tool of unprecedented power. And it is a curious phenomenon. Others possess the exact same mutation, but none have exploited it as she has. I cannot risk annihilating that talent, Krystal. That I will promise her.” He paused, excitement pulsing in his veins. “Not, of course, that I will hesitate to break that promise.”
A malevolent grin spread to the corners of Krystal’s mouth. “When?”
“Why, if she should subvert my will. I will take care of her as long as she submits to me. But no longer. For within a few years of our union, we will almost certainly have offspring that are more powerful than either of us. They too will have to be contained. But she will be superfluous. The first time she even whispers a rebellion I will inject her again. And her brain will be as pliable to me as the blancmange they served Dirk and me in halls at university. Does that satisfy?”
A warm glow bloomed on Krystal’s cheeks. “Come, let me pour you some more champagne.”
Roxanne lay sobbing on the soaking wet floor, a complete wreck. Today was supposed to be the day she’d remember forever. Not a punch-up in a booze-sloshed shack that made Wild West saloon bars look like a Beatrix Potter tea-party. But someone scooped her up, and a pair of strong arms carried her towards the exit. She felt as though she were flying, wrapped safely in the plumage of an eagle. “This is where we make our exit, babe,” Liam whispered.
Liam tripped over his father’s legs and only just managed to hold onto Roxanne. Raoul was sprawled on the floor trying to change a fuse using only the light from his mobile. “Jiffy...jiffy...I’ll have the lights on in a jiffy. Not to...worry!!” Raoul slurred.
“This is the worst weddin’ ever!” screeched Mamie from no-one knew where.
“Baloney!” Raoul retorted. “It’ll be remembered when Posh an’ Becks are long forgotten.”
“Liam...” Roxy murmured as the door swung open, and the starlit night floodlit their faces.
“Yeah, Rock?”
“Hair-raisin’ night it’s been! Absolutely hair-raisin’!” Raoul yelped.
“We’ll get married again some day. An’ have a proper wedding.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do we get divorced first?”
“Don’t be an ass. No. We renew our vows. A-list celebs do it all the time.”
