GeneThrall: Divine Inheritance

GENETHRALL

Divine Inheritance

A Scientific and Supernatural Mystery

IF Godsland

Copyright © 2019 I.F. Godsland

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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For our children’s children’s children

Contents

Author’s Note

PART 1: MANHATTAN INCORPORATED AND THE LAND OF OUR ANCESTORS

PART 2: THE SIDE

PART 3: STRANGE WATERS

Author’s Note

July 2018

When this story first began to be written, in 1985, it was set in a future I tried to portray as futuristic. Now, little more than thirty years on, that future will either never be or is already with us. Back in the 1980s, instant access internet, search engines, self-driving cars, gene editing and speeds of DNA sequencing that could analyse an entire chromosome while you wait could all be consigned to an entirely fictional future – as could the possibility that Manhattan Island might go twelve consecutive days without a single murder. Now, these actualities seem unremarkable. Interestingly, though, albeit with some discrepancies in detail and nomenclature, the story anticipated these developments. So I’ve left dates and terminology as in the original and offer this to any reader in any era as a story set in a future that never was.

One personal acknowledgement is due – many thanks to N.S. for helping to kick-start this tale all those years ago. I would add that the parish of Pwll Rhyfedd is entirely fictional, as are all the characters portrayed.

THE MARSHALL DICTAT:

The making of any inheritable change

in the human genome is absolutely prohibited

James Eli Marshall

Genethics: the Bottom Lines

PART 1:

MANHATTAN INCORPORATED AND THE LAND OF OUR ANCESTORS

Monday 16 November 2054: Manhattan, USA, and Lampeter, Wales

1

He had been teenage gene hacker, disciple of James Eli Marshall, hero of the Citizens’ Biotech movement and entrepreneur for not-for-profit GeneScreen reagents.

And he had progressed to distinguished bioethics expert, leading champion of the Marshall Dictat and occasional consultant to industry.

But right now, Calman Marker was wondering what the hell he was doing.

Would the who’d-have-thought-it Side therapy supply initiative he had negotiated be enough to sustain his free-agent credentials?

Or, in finally contracting himself out full-time to the de Margham Corporation, was he about to be swallowed whole?

At that moment, he shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts: the meeting was drawing to a close and the scavengers would be moving in to tear off any loose flesh left on him. He had to focus on the moment – be ready for anything.

Doctor Marker, these personal convictions you have in favour of the Marshall Dictat would be fine – if they didn’t also happen to accord with de Margham strategy. And now you’re about to take up a full-time contract with the corporation. Isn’t that simply going to make you what you’ve been in danger of becoming all along: a corporate servant supporting the corporate line?

At least he was ready for that one. Listen, it’s not that my convictions support the de Margham Corporation. On the contrary, the corporation supports my convictions. If de Marghams got into bed with the Biotech Commission and started advocating that we make inheritable changes to human DNA, I’d jump straight into the arms of the Genome Protection Society and de Marghams would find itself on the end of some stiff opposition.

He tensed himself for the next question. But the hell with it: there would hardly be a second to slide between the end of the meeting and the first move in his Side therapy supply initiative. Why did his contact have to introduce herself tonight of all nights? Why had Lenny been so insistent that he do what she wanted? He, Marker, was the one making the running, not her. He was the one bearing gifts. This Rose he was going to have to pull all the stops out for should be fitting in around him.

Doctor Marker, having convictions is how you’ve made your living as a bioethics champion these past few years. Like you say, your convictions and the de Margham GeneScreen products sit very comfortably together – you don’t want the Dictat violated and de Margham products make that unnecessary. But, once you’re on the inside, however you talk the talk, it’s going to sound like de Margham policy. Aren’t you of more use to Bryn de Margham if you stay independent?

You’ve answered the question yourself. I can only oppose germ-line engineering because de Marghams markets effective alternatives. That’s one of the reasons I’m joining the corporation right now. I’m first and foremost a scientist and I want to get back to the bench and use my knowledge to ensure those alternatives stay as effective as possible. Anyhow, the House Human Genetics Committee is well enough established now to deal with even the most sophisticated proponents of germ-line engineering. That’s going to be tried at the hearings in two weeks and the Marshall Dictat is going to win through.

That much was true. The House Committee would be very balanced and attentive in the face of the Biotech Commission’s arguments for making inheritable changes to the human genome but, however limited those changes might be, the committee members would be thinking about their majorities. The electors who made up those majorities did not listen to the Biotech Commission mandarins – and they listened still less to the futurists and genetic supremacists whose talk made them feel inferior. Those electors listened instead to a spectrum of opinions that stretched all the way from the most fundamentalist of Southern preachers to balanced and rational Calman Marker. But no matter how broad the span of that spectrum, everyone on it was saying the same thing: don’t mess with Marshall.

But was he really going to be able to use his knowledge to keep the de Margham alternatives up to speed? Or was he simply easing his conscience before the medical-industrial complex took him over body and soul?

He glanced around the packed auditorium. There must have been at least two thousand present, and any number could be watching via the links. He, Calman Marker, could command that attention, and he could do so because when the more extreme elements in the Genome Protection Society started tub-thumping about how even the GeneScreen programme was an affront to the natural order, he was there to say that humanity was part of that natural order and needed to maximise its own survival as best it could. And when the Biotech Commission started complaining about the expenses involved in the GeneScreen programme and how a more permanent solution was needed for humanity’s genetic ills, he was there to say that, whatever that solution might be, it wasn’t going to be germ-line engineering. And, even when the de Margham Corporation extended its grip on the GeneScreen programme by swallowing yet another biotech minnow, he was there to say that monopolies had never been good for health, be it economic or genetic. He was a voice in his own right and people respected him for that.

Should he really be joining de Marghams? Shouldn’t he be setting up like Mansaur Medical on the far bank of the East River; out in the Side: the last place left where you could be truly independent?

Doctor Marker, you make some pretty strong recommendations about what we should do with our genetic material – you tell us there have to be limits to what we can do for our kids. But isn’t this all just theory on your part? I mean, the way things are for you right now, it isn’t like it’s you that’s going to be personally affected.

It was less than a year since his marriage broke up, so this was about as low as it could go. He managed to keep his reply light, though. I’ll grant you that thirty-six is well into middle age, but I don’t believe I’ll be firing blanks just yet.

Some laughter, but media deep background had been working overtime. Doctor Marker, your education was at a Jesuit school. There’s some who hear in you the priest or monk, observing and judging and placing on others impossible standards of behaviour, yet all the while comfortably distancing yourself from the struggle.

A Jesuit school? Christ, yes – they were Jesuits – two years in Paris, while his parents worked at the trade commission. It was hardly his whole education and mostly it had been the Paris gene hackers he’d been into. But there had been an influence – a strong influence. Listen, he came back, even if I have taken a soft option, I can’t let you place responsibility for that at the door of my teachers. They taught me to question in depth and seek rigorous answers. More than that, they saw themselves as contributing selflessly to a greater plan, set in motion by a being they could approach but who was completely beyond their grasp. I guess I can see some parallels in that with the line I take with DNA, although I couldn’t claim to measure up to their example.

Did he see himself as contributing to a greater plan, set in motion by a being who was completely beyond his grasp? Maybe his teachers had primed him for submission to Bryn de Margham rather than DNA. Not that Bryn had set the de Margham Corporation in motion – that was down to his mother, Maelgwen. But when, no more than a month back, Bryn de Margham had asked Marker to take the de Margham shilling, he had been more than ready to accept. He was gene genius, ethics whiz and failed husband, in other words, edgy, distinguished and with no commitments, except an apartment for two on the Upper East Side for which no amount of consultancy and commissions could pay. Right on cue, Bryn de Margham had stepped in and offered him everything on a plate, including an unconventional Side charity initiative that Marker had made a condition of his signing up. He had been trying ever since to thrust down the feeling that it had all been too easy.

2

Gail Wayland found Professor Thomas, as ever, courteous and considerate – and utterly ruthless in the face of anything other than his own beliefs as to how genealogical research should proceed. He had chosen afternoon tea as the arena in which to assert his domination, teacup thrusting trident-like and saucer swinging dangerously – a net to distract and entangle.

Gail, I really am very sorry to have to say this, I really am, but I can no longer let you waste any more of your time – your valuable time, if I may say – on such schemes. As the Department of Genealogical Studies, our concern is with our origins as people, not as atoms or molecules.

Gail leaned forward in the deep armchair the professor had tried to sink her in. She had to make him see she had something to say.

Now it is something in which I take pride, he steamed on, that any one of our forebears could walk in here and understand immediately what it is we do. How many other academic departments have maintained such a connection with the past? I know they look on our work as hopelessly old-fashioned. But you know, Gail, how little they understand. And you surely recognise how infatuation with technique leads to neglect of the real substance of what is being researched.

Gail lowered her teacup, parted her lips and took a fractional inbreath.

You see, the Professor continued, thrusting her head beneath the surface again, what I have established here, over many, many years is a certain body of knowledge and expertise that does not threaten that vital connection with our forebears. And my yardstick has always been: would our forebears have been able to comprehend the techniques we employ? Of course what we do is old-fashioned; it has to be; it is the essence of how research into genealogies should proceed. Now I cannot allow that to be dulled and troubled by a whole rag-bag of ideas from a totally different discipline. I remember when I first began in this work, before I had the understanding that I do now…

Feeling the waters close irrevocably over her, Gail sank back in the chair. She took a gulp of tea, wishing it was a stiff shot of the cheap whisky she kept a bottle of back at her flat. The professor’s words were increasingly devoid of meaning. All he was doing was putting her in her place and him in his. Like a dog having its misdemeanours explained, she just wanted to wander off and find somewhere wet and interesting. Anyway, they weren’t her ideas; they were Peter Levitsky’s and she was getting to be sick of the whole damned lot of them.

… you see our interest is in people, real people, alive or dead, it doesn’t matter which. But what matters is that they can be seen as characters playing on history’s stage, people you can put a name to, people with family and origins, people you could have got to know. That is what really concerns us here, don’t you agree?

Of course I agree, Gail exclaimed, galvanised by the realisation that old Thomas, seeing her foundering in his armchair, might be thinking she would simply nod her assent and leave with a smile. The work we do grew out of people’s interest in where they came from and who they are. Surely we need to keep that interest alive by finding new ways of carrying out our work. And surely we must take seriously any technique that offers that possibility. Otherwise we become a forgotten anachronism, like monks in the desert.

In desperation, Gail had fatally overstated her case. To become a forgotten anachronism was Professor Thomas’s vision of ultimate success. Behind their high monastery walls, those monks in the desert could dismiss the rest of the world as hopelessly in error and safely consider themselves guardians of the truth. Professor Thomas came back with renewed vigour.

Now, there you have it, Gail. There you have it exactly. You see, people like me who have a few years behind us, we’ve seen fads and fashions come and go, each one hailed as the last word. Those monks in the desert, whom you dismiss so lightly, may, in fact, be guarding something of great value. Gail, you are young – very young, if I may say – but you are also very clever, and you do have a quite unusual feel for the subject. It is entirely understandable that you should want to make your own mark. But what you propose is much too radical. Even if I did think it was worthwhile – which I do not – the fact is that we have no one here who can reliably assess the validity of the techniques you are proposing. We would depend entirely on this Peter Levitsky, who, I have to say, has imposed himself on the valuable work you were beginning, and in a way that seems to be supporting him more than it supports you. I think it is a reflection on your inexperience, Gail, that you have allowed him to do that. And what is it that he does anyway? Molecular genetics – which means that he turns people into some sort of atomic code so those computing machines of his can pronounce on what line of chimpanzees they are most closely related to. Really, Gail, we have never had a place for that kind of thing here and I am not going to find one now.

Professor Thomas was right of course, right that Levitsky had taken her over and right that what most people were interested in was who their great-grandmother’s third cousin, twice-removed was – or whether they were related to royalty. And Peter Levitsky drew little distinction between cousins, royalty or chimpanzees.

Well, she could either laugh or leave.

Carefully placing her cup and saucer on the table, she took her last look around the oak-panelled room of the professor of genealogical studies of this select outpost of the University of Wales. She had loved this room, had even imagined it her own one day – the leather-bound books, the deep wing chairs, the oriental carpet and the leaded windows set in stone – but now she thought bitterly, There’s no future in this.

It was the way he said forebears – so complacent, comfortable and proprietary. Old Thomas’s forebears were people with the same name as you who bolstered your prestige and who you could be proud of. She didn’t want to know about people she could be proud of. She wasn’t proud of her forebears. Her forebears had given her nothing. What she wanted to know about were the Ancestors. It was the Ancestors that sent a shiver through her and raised the hairs on the back of her neck: the Ancestors that were those looming shadows, the inhabitants of ghost houses, the originators of peoples, the beings of a vast and archaic world that lay just beyond the shadow screen of appearances. The Ancestors were the power of ancient families, beings you could lose yourself in, guardians of deep meanings that the trivial let-downs of her own family and Professor Thomas were as nothing to.

Gail rose to her feet, saying as firmly and confidently as she could, Thank you for the tea, Professor Thomas, I have to go now, and she left the room, closing softly the inside door.

But the outside door she slammed hard, slamming it on the whole of her academic career.

3

Chang, bless him, stemmed the scavenger tide with his old point about how, if the GeneScreen programme was allowed to continue, all of humanity would be carrying matching lethal recessives by the year 2500. Could Doctor Marker really condone everyone becoming absolutely dependent on the non-integrating DNA substitution systems that the de Margham Corporation was supplying?

Marker needed to wrap this up fast. Thank you, Doctor Chang. Your projections are based on current models of population dynamics and mutation rates, which are unlikely to hold for the next forty years, never mind the next four hundred. But I think you’re forgetting I’m not opposed in principle to germ-line engineering. What I’m saying is that we are not yet ready for it. I think our priority is to grow up fast and recognise our current success rests on three billion years of evolution, of which we still understand only the tiniest fraction.

The chairman took the cue and moved to close the meeting. But there were still hands raised and, to Marker’s frustration, one more question would be allowed. A young man sitting about ten rows back from the front was being particularly insistent. The chairman motioned him to speak.

Doctor Marker, you oppose any relaxation of the Marshall Dictat because you fear engineering at the level of the germ line would risk humanity being able to recreate itself in its own images. You believe those images will be limited by whatever happen to be the fashionable ideals of the time and you fear that relaxation of the Dictat would leave us open, not to some mad genius creating races of masters or slaves but to a very different danger. You fear that by imposing our transient ideals on the DNA of every cell of our bodies we are in danger of fixing those ideals for all time and becoming a rigid, evolutionary dead end. You are saying our unreadiness to take on germ-line engineering lies in our not being sufficiently free in ourselves. For the time being, we have to let the old track of chance, uncertainty and natural selection take its course. Therein lies our freedom: freedom to be free of ourselves.

In the brief moment before his questioner continued, Marker took in a youth, dark-haired, olive-skinned, probably Hispanic. And this was no scavenger but a hunter, a hunter who was regarding him with a keen, intelligent stare and who had begun his chase by stating Marker’s own position with unprecedented clarity. Placing his hands on the lectern, Marker allowed a guarded, Yes.

You made a revealing statement, the youth continued. "You said we should rely on three billion years of genetic experience rather than our own limited knowledge. So you are advocating submission to a wiser entity – DNA will look after us until we are ready to look after ourselves. But doesn’t that make things sound more comfortable than they really are? You know there’s no wisdom in this DNA of yours. There is simply a self-replicating molecule that exists only because it replicates itself. We have survived as a species and survive as individuals solely because our form and behaviour further the survival and reproduction of this mechanical entity that we presume to call our DNA. There is no meaning in any of this, no purpose, and no freedom. Even our experiences of meaning, purpose and freedom are no more than DNA-dictated tendencies selected to alleviate the terrible prospect of our inevitable death. Even our ability to contemplate that prospect is itself no more than a side-effect of our unique mental powers and the survival value they confer. All that we are and all that we may become is merely the expression of a mechanical inevitability in which we are the passive participants. Doctor Marker, your talk of freedom is paradoxical."

Where the hell had that come from? But Marker was more irritated than intrigued. The paradox being put to him was old and familiar and there were old and familiar responses to it. Anyway, epigenetics made of gene structure a system so wide open there were even acquired characteristics that could be inherited. There were surely any number of freedoms in the picture of human functioning that molecular biology had painted – weren’t there?

Marker surveyed the auditorium, trying to sense whether to close it off with a throwaway line or go over as briefly as he could some of the old and familiar responses. But all he could detect was a dull silence, broken only by an occasional cough and the sound of people shifting in their seats. Even a throwaway line would be too much. Marker caught the eye of the chairman, who hastily announced that time did not permit a whole new dimension of discussion to be opened up. He was going to have to bring the meeting to a close. Perhaps the questioner might contact Doctor Marker independently.

Marker tensed himself through the closing comments, all attention focused on the exit, determined to avoid anyone who might want to talk to him, questioner or otherwise. As the applause died away, he took off; but after no more than a few steps he felt his arm being taken gently but firmly: Jeff Gleick, Bryn de Margham’s personal assistant.

Doctor Marker, the executive chairman is on the link. He saw it all on monitor.

Christ, de Margham – but why the hell was he so interested? Bryn de Margham knew the arguments as well as anyone; he didn’t need to watch live.

Jeff, I can’t even stop a minute. I have to go right now.

Gleick raised an eyebrow, but smiled. Okay. He liked the meeting and was going to invite you across for a drink. Just make sure you’re there at nine tomorrow morning.

It was Marker’s turn to look surprised. What’s that about?

New developments. If there’s anything you need to know, I’ll message it through.

What new developments? The marriage contract had specified no more than a gradual induction into the corporation with a balance between Marker’s Side therapy supply initiative and some new projects based around his old research interests.

New pathology, Gleick added by way of explanation. So, are you going or aren’t you?

Marker grit his teeth and tore himself away, setting off at a run to recover his city compact from a local charge point. Why the hell should the one thing he needed to find out about hit him right on top of the one thing he couldn’t back off from? So distracted was he that he forgot for the moment that he had said to thousands that he was not opposed in principle to germ-line engineering.

4

Facing the college quadrangle, Gail Wayland leaned back against the cold stones of the outside wall, breathing heavily, hoping the door she had just slammed shut had not been too shaken by the experience.

Am I really prepared to throw away six years work and a chance of a university career in genealogy?

Maybe it was just part of the process: maybe she was simply jumping ship, like academics the world over, following the promise of a more distinguished head of department, the lure of a better endowed laboratory, the attraction of a more prestigious university.

But Peter Levitsky was none of those.

What was he?

Or, more to the point, what had he been?

Young, attractive and exciting, Gail thought ruefully, in complete contrast to Professor Thomas and his Department of Genealogical Studies.

And Levitsky had transmitted an enthusiasm she had been only too willing to be infected by. You’d need years of study just to understand a half of what I’ve been telling you, Gail, he had said at their first meeting, But my techniques are only the beginning. It’s the vast interconnectedness they reveal that really matters. It seems mechanical when I first look at it – just enormous strings of code. But then something gives way and suddenly I’m looking at a living thing, something I am a mere manifestation of, something so rich and intelligent I can only glimpse its periphery. I see a rich substratum that underlies every living thing, a matrix that has dramas and intentions of its own, far beyond anything I could conceive. I see in those codes ways into entirely different lives.

Not everyone might want ways into entirely different lives but Gail Wayland did. To be a different person, unburdened by the experience of her own family, would be a liberation. Her superficially impressive but profoundly feckless father had walked out when she was eight, … needing to feel young again. The worthless floozy he had taken up with had lasted as long as it took her to realise that half his money would be going on maintenance and the other half on drink. After that he had gone steadily downhill, dissolving himself in alcohol and fantasies all the while. As for Gail’s mother, she had spent her few remaining years cursing and complaining about how much more she had been meant for – until, when Gail was eleven, cancer finally set in and carried her off. Some relatives then came out of the woodwork and used Gail to milk maximum benefits out of social security, an arrangement she endured until she was eighteen and could tell them to fuck off. Gail knew that she, too, was meant for more – but she was going to find it and she was going to start by putting as much distance between herself and her immediate past as she possibly could.

All of which, she knew, could have made of genealogy a questionable occupation. But those were her forebears she had been up against. Beyond them, further and further into deep time, there could be anyone. There could be Ancestors. There could even be the rich substratum that Peter Levitsky had hooked her with.

Gail glanced round at the old oak door she had just vented her frustrations on. The door looked as it surely had for the last two hundred years, and surely would for the next two hundred: unscathed, unchanged, simply getting older, like the values and procedures enclosed behind it. Shivering slightly, she thought, If I stayed, I’d become like that old door – incapable of being slammed into life again – just like old Thomas.

Behind that door, he would now be curled up in his lair, shaking his head sorrowfully but inwardly rejoicing at the imminent departure of this difficult young woman with her demands for unwanted change.

Damn the man. How dare he lecture her on genealogy? She had more sense of ancestry in her little finger than he had in the entirety of his academic career. He was simply an ageing male invigorated by her youth: an ageing male who had steadily exerted more and more control until only the bones of her enthusiasm remained – measurable but lifeless reflections of his own ideas.

And as for Peter Levitsky? His measurements had turned out to be every bit as dry. They were part of no rich substratum but mere abstractions that would require mind-numbing attention to detail if anything worthwhile was to come of them. Gail had ended up using his gene codes more as a blunt instrument to beat the department with than as a precision tool with which to resurrect ancestries.

And as for Peter himself, his phrase rich substratum might have hooked her, but it had also blinded her to his repeated use of the first person singular that first time he had expounded his ideas. Young, attractive and exciting he might have been, but she was fast learning how entirely self-obsessed he was.

Gail felt her back against the weathered stonework of the college’s inner fastness, her anger at old Thomas giving way to a kind of relief. In some ways, she was glad he would be so ready to relinquish his hold. But Peter was less straightforward. She was involved with him in ways that she was not with the department. Perhaps on discovering she no longer had a well-endowed academic department to back up his ideas, Peter would lose all interest.

But she wasn’t even sure she wanted him to. Maybe once she was out on her own he might start treating her as more of a friend and less of a research minion and bedmate. With a long outbreath, Gail gazed up into the sky. Ancestors, she thought, forget the rest – just think about the Ancestors.

5

Marker parked his compact in the shelter of the underpass beneath the Brooklyn Bridge approach. Steam clouds from the vents mingled with the vapour of his breath. A cold, driving rain had set in and the wind coiling into the recesses beneath the bridge whipped plastic and paper across the sidewalks. From the bridge above came the deep thunder of heavy traffic. It was astonishing the old structure could stand it, even though this one evening was now all it had to endure each week.

Turning into the stairwell, still rank-smelling despite forty years of cleaning, Marker took the steps two at a time, finally emerging onto the central walkway, into the full force of the rain, and into a fairground in Hell.

Spray glittered, lights strobed, music thundered and machinery roared. The conference hall he had left less than thirty minutes before might have been from another life. Here, it was Monday night and the Salvage Circus was coming to town: the Side dealers were making their run on the Manhattan Disposal pick-up points where week-old screens and domestic robots would be overvalued, handed out for free and written off against tax as the island’s flagship concession to charity.

Marker clutched at his coat lapels with one hand and his small briefcase with the other, defenceless against the drenching spray. Below him, the circus was a dragon rolling and roaring out of the Side into the brilliant illumination of the Brooklyn Bridge arc lights. And each truck was a single scale in the beast’s hide, each shining with its tracery of fibre optics in which the operators had picked out titles emblazoned in superhero script: The Centauri Parasites, Hell’s Salvage Squad, The Resurrection Men.

In the wild night, the Salvage Circus looked its finest, a deliberate affront to Manhattan’s law and order, the Side’s most potent statement to the island it flanked: We are wild and free and we take from you. The decaying bridge was only opened to traffic on circus nights, and then only for the salvagers, who were thus spared the indignity of being gassed by their ancient diesel rigs in the Midtown Tunnel – the one other link between Manhattan and its flanking swathe of anarchy. Square-jawed Mansec guards would be stationed at each intersection to ensure the circus kept to its assigned route.

Marker made it to the small checkpoint where the ironwork began, and automatic doors slid open to usher him in, and slid shut to enclose him.

Standing in the sudden quiet, under the fluorescent glare, water in his shoes and trickling down his neck, he had never felt less like bluffing anyone. Fifteen years back, he would have been fine with it. Fifteen years back, he had been tracking down rogue gene hackers who thought that engineering pathogens to kill people they disagreed with was the way to establish Heaven on Earth, or whatever. Neutralising them before they did any damage had been essential for preserving the freedoms of the Citizens’ Biotech movement. That work had been exciting, necessary and successful. This, he was less sure about.

He waited for the inner door to open, listening to a faint hum, watching the video eyes watching him. He was on display again. But here he was a complete unknown, and the eyes were inspecting him for potential danger.

After about thirty seconds, the inner door finally slid to one side. Marker stepped up to the pedestrian barrier, holding tight to his briefcase, dripping patiently. The cause of the delay seemed to be a wagon held in the check-pen below. The rig was new enough to have been stolen and there was no decoration. It looked to Marker as if someone wasn’t playing the game. All the duty guards were there, eyes fixed on the cab.

Marker leaned against the barrier, eyeing the Mansec logos all about – an outline of Manhattan Island surrounded by a ring of fire. Two nights before, Lenny had said, Don’t worry about it, man. You can meet in fancy restaurants and be real charity people when the preliminaries are over. Like I keep telling you, these are Side natives you’re dealing with now. You need to start out meeting them halfway. If she wants to see you on the bridge, you see her on the bridge. Anyhow, it’s romantic; it’s what you Manhattan people do. It’s people trying to come the other way the guards strip-search and take to pieces, people with drugs or diseases. If it’s that kind of shit you’re carrying, they’ll be only too glad to let you do some export. You just give them a hundred in cash, that’s all – standard fee. But try and get one of the regulars. You don’t want some new kid victimising you or overcharging.

Marker watched the regulars milling about the penned rig. He heard the door of the small office behind him open, turned and saw approaching a clean young man with fair hair, blue eyes and some spots on the left side of his chin. The youth looked at Marker with the presumed authority of someone who has been given his position.

I want to meet someone out on the bridge, Marker said, giving the man what he hoped would be a look of appeal as he handed over the little ID folder with its blank card and neatly folded hundred dollar bill. The featureless card was a request rather than a cover: he could be identified in seconds by the personal transmitter that anyone wishing to move freely in Manhattan was obliged to carry. He watched his folder being opened and felt the check in the officer’s manner. Hell – a regular would have slipped the bill out in a single easy movement.

Then there was urgent shouting from the pen. The officer looked up and the hand on the hundred closed convulsively. Marker just glimpsed the barrel of an old-fashioned automatic waving frantically from the cab window. He dropped to the deck, shouting to the suddenly vacuous face above him, Get down. Two shots hammered out in the confined space of the checkpoint as the rig’s engine shrieked at sudden full power. The vehicle lurched forward, but something in the flanking pillars of the pen came to life. There were two soft hisses and the screen crazed. Then the deck lifted the sixty-ton rig clear into the air, where it hung like a picked-up child, drive wheels screaming helplessly.

The officer rose shakily and looked Marker in the eye. You didn’t see that. We hoped we’d never have to use it. How long will you be?

About half an hour.

Okay, mind the boards, and check with me when you come back.

Marker walked out into the unknown, wondering why the hell this Rose wanted to discuss the bride price in such a ridiculous place. Had Bryn de Margham seen what his latest recruit’s charity initiative would require, would he have greeted it with such equanimity? The bridge was for salvagers and desperate lovers, not business people.

6

Ancestors, Gail Wayland repeated to herself, forget the rest – just think of the Ancestors.

Feeling the college’s old stones under her feet and against her back, she breathed in deeply the cool, autumnal air, fancying she could taste the salt edge picked up from the shores of Cardigan Bay twenty miles to the west. The sky had been washed clear by rain during the afternoon and the luminous, pale blue of the western horizon rendered the college’s renovated stonework a spectral white. Out under the sky’s great arc the buildings looked haunted, as if they were a ruin she had come upon thousands of miles from anywhere. She felt a shiver pass through her. The world seemed suddenly crystalline, as if her awareness might pass right through it, all the way out into the great wheel of stars that was beginning to appear in the indigo depths above her.

Another shiver began but, instead of passing through, it settled deep inside her. Slightly unnerved but also welcoming the sense of returning vitality, Gail let the shiver intensify.

Think of the Ancestors. Think of the curve of the world upon which I stand that is the horizon beneath which the dead live. Think of ancient megaliths on empty, windswept downs, portals between this world and the next. Think of the time I slept under the stars, lying against a tumulus that had been the last resting place of some warrior from three thousand years before.

She had done that one summer when she was an undergraduate and well into her history degree. A part of her had told her she was being daft walking the Ridgeway on her own, sleeping rough. Another part had been scared stiff. But the part that won out was the part that had felt a sense of coming home as she trod the ancient track, the part of her that had let her fall asleep next to that ancient burial mound, feeling as if rocked by the turning of the world. And it was the part of her that was now welcoming that intensifying shiver, welcoming it to the point at which she felt a sudden, electrical tremor run right through her.

My God, what the hell was that? Gail exclaimed under her breath, suddenly recalled to the present. She held herself still for some moments, hardly daring to breathe. Then, tentatively, she allowed herself a shallow inbreath, then another, deeper, and another, until she found herself panting hard. Gradually, her sense of shock eased, allowing her to relax and check for anything amiss. There was nothing. The tremor had passed, perhaps earthed into the flagstones beneath her feet or dissipated into the clear light that was spread across the western horizon. Anyway, whatever the hell it was, it had left her feeling unusually awake, and a very long way from Prof. Thomas.

Gail marched out under the college’s squat entrance tower, making for the vehicle park and her battered, ex-army transit. But, as she drew closer to the parking area, the thought of being cooped up in the cramped interior of her transit became insufferable; she couldn’t bear to be enclosed even for the few minutes it would take to get to her flat. She thrust the key back into her pocket and set off on foot. The walk across town would take no more than twenty minutes. She could pick the vehicle up next morning, along with the remains of her last six years work.

Still wet after rain, the pavements of Lampeter reflected the twilight glow as if made of glass. The streets appeared even emptier than usual and the afterglow was intensifying rather than fading. The cold illumination made of the housefronts stage scenery for a ghost town. Like the old college, they seemed entirely isolated, as if they might dissolve at any moment into the limitless twilight.

The passing of the rain had brought behind it a strengthening westerly, now gusting hard enough to sound in the trees; a whisper, growing to a swish and a roar. Wide open to the moment, Gail felt the air chill on her face. She looked up at the autumn stars, brilliant in the evening sky. They seemed to be conspiring to dissolve her accustomed boundaries, working loose habitual constraints, drawing her further and further away from the limiting concerns that had overwhelmed her so shortly before. The sense of liberation was intoxicating, better even than a stiff shot of the whisky she kept back at her flat. Gail walked faster, breathing in great gulps of the chilly, moist air, all connections with past and future for the moment entirely suspended.

In what might have been no time or an age, she found herself putting her thumb to the door panel of the old house whose upper floor she rented. Uncomfortably back in her usual world, she ascended the worn stairs and pushed open the door onto the room she used as a bedsit: the one other room – the original bedroom – was now her study. Otherwise, there was a tiny shower cubicle and a converted cupboard that served as a kitchen. The minimal scattering of furniture that made the place liveable was well beyond second-hand and the threadbare carpet had simply been abandoned by the previous occupant. This was all her academic stipend had allowed and seeing it after her heightened state was like a smack in the face.

Gail looked around, taking it all in. It was like being woken from a lucid dream. How could she possibly have endured such surroundings for so many years? Why hadn’t she gone mad or hung herself? How, in these desperately dispiriting circumstances, had she avoided going down with some terminal illness?

Perhaps she had saved her life by slamming that old oak door on the professor. At least, now, she could try for work that would bring in a decent salary, even if it meant offering herself up as job fodder to the South Wales node of the Solar Net that straddled Neath and Port Talbot. And, if that was what she would have to do, she would at least be able to move to somewhere habitable. Her mother, for all her disappointments, had still managed to commit to life sufficiently to take out death insurance and name Gail as her beneficiary. With the proceeds, Gail had been able to buy and furnish a tiny but comfortable cottage at Resolfen, just north of Neath, a mere six miles from the epicentre of the Solar Net.

Gail, I can’t understand how you can bear to be near that thing, Peter Levitsky had said when she first told him of her cottage and how close it was to the Net. It’ll turn the whole area into a factory. The Net’s going to make a complete mess of the place. Sell the cottage, for God’s sake. You’ll get a hell of a price for it now.

But Gail liked Resolfen and she liked her cottage and she knew the Net and its consequences were as much a part of the history of the area as any prehistoric stones, Christian monastic foundations, Norman castles or even relics left behind by the great industrial barons of only a few hundred years before. Human history came and went but the roots were always there beneath whatever thin and transient crust the dictates of power or wealth laid down. It was people like Peter and Prof. Thomas who wanted to keep things looking the way they imagined they had always been.

Determinedly, Gail turned her back on her dilapidated bedsit and stepped into her study. The room contained five shelves of books, an embroidered wall hanging, a good link screen – one of the leftovers from the last department upgrade – and wall pegs with three Japanese silk gowns hanging from them. Gail tore off her work clothes and enveloped herself in the deep blue gown that had a sinuous golden dragon snaking down its back. She reached across her desk and threw open the room’s one window. It framed a new moon and a single star in the west. The wind caught at the curtains, carrying into the room the cold evening air. Glancing at the link terminal screen, she saw a message alert: the header said, Levitsky. Deliberately, she turned away, pulled across a chair and sat down to stare out into the vast night sky.

7

The bride price had been Lenny’s phrase, pronounced some weeks back over a beer in Sopranos, the Side club where he and Marker met from time to time. Lenny had been talking about healthcare in the Side.

Lenny, Marker interjected, are you telling me that the Side clinics are having to pay list price for minimum therapeutic regimes, and even then they can only afford North African?

Lenny looked out from under the rim of his fedora, That’s about it, Cal. Federal aid is based on what’s left after the debts have been serviced – quotas not need, and there’s so much fucking need out here the quotas get eaten up before anyone comes even close to getting cured.

The tottering federal structure of the United States still exerted some care over its citizens but a century of anti-government, anti-taxation, anti-communal responsibility had eroded its powers to the point where nationhood could seem more of an idealist’s dream than a functioning reality. The Side was one among many urban areas that barely acknowledged any kind of jurisdiction, never mind federal, although that was less from an assertion of freedom and self-interest than from the failures and rejects of global capitalism having holed up there with nothing to lose.

But those minimum regimes, Marker protested. De Margham stock six month’s past expiry would be better than that.

Lenny raised the brim of his fedora about a millimetre – his signal for a forceful statement. So why can’t de Marghams just hand the shit over six months past expiry?

Because if the media got to hear of it they’d go crazy. Can’t you imagine the headlines? ...‘de Marghams offloads its waste onto the Side poor – Salvage Circus operators move in on GeneScreen leftovers – crumbs from the table of the rich’.

I can imagine the headlines – but are you telling me, Cal, the shit just gets junked?

Sure it does.

Each stared into his beer, contemplating the craziness of a world in which quality medicines needed less than a mile away from the headquarters of the corporation that made them were thrown away simply because Drugs Administration had to insist on standards stringent enough to cover any criticism. Starvation could have been cured long before if food that was a week past its shelf-life could have been magicked into the bellies of the hungry, and this was no more than a matter of carrying a box over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Marker looked up and scanned the rapt faces of the customers taking in the ice-cool jazz Sopranos had playing that evening. Maybe a hundred yards away someone was dying for want of medicines the enterprise he was about to join had carefully incinerated that day.

Listen, Lenny, I’m in as strong a position as I can be right now. I’ll make it a condition of my contract that Bryn de Margham lets me handle a marginal expiry stock charity initiative. Can you help me? I’ll carry the damn stuff over myself if I have to.

Lenny leaned back in his chair and stared at Marker. He pushed the brim of his fedora up a little further and said, Are you sure about this, Cal?

Marker felt as if the floor had suddenly become unstable. Sure, I’m sure. And I’ll make it a further condition that de Marghams lets me make whatever arrangements I like with the clinics.

Lenny pushed up the brim of his fedora still further. Let’s get this straight, Cal. What you’re proposing is some kind of bride price. You’ll let yourself get hitched to Bryn de Margham providing he gives you a free hand in charity initiatives with the Side clinics. I can’t see him being overly comfortable about that.

If he wants me, he’ll have no choice. Anyway, he’s a master of turning things to his advantage. In taking me on, de Marghams gets a level of ethical credibility it could never find elsewhere. Any attempt by corporation people to support the Side charity clinics would be seen as at best a public relations exercise and at worst a sales initiative. But with myself managing the connection, people’ll see there’s someone on the inside who has the clinics’ interests at heart.

If Bryn de Margham had any reservations, he gave away nothing when Marker presented his plan, except to say, Cal, just make sure it isn’t that Lenny Jacks playing on your heart strings. I don’t want him selling off all our marginal expiry stock to some Side pusher.

Lenny had something of a reputation, not all of it undeserved. But he called Marker three days later to say, Cal, I’ve checked it out with someone you could work with, someone who isn’t going to sell off the shit behind your back. But she wants to talk first and it’s got to be November 16th – evening. You can make it after the meeting if you head straight out.

But I can’t do that, Lenny. I’ve no idea what’s going to come up afterwards.

Tell whatever comes up afterwards that you’ve got another appointment. You’re secure enough, even if it’s Bryn de Margham asking you out for a drink.

And the meeting would have to be out on the Brooklyn Bridge.

For all I know, she’s a romantic. Listen, Cal, you’re dealing direct with Side natives now, not putting the case to your own kind of people. For all I know she’s got something she wants to tell you that won’t tolerate the usual channels. It’s a Salvage Circus night. Maybe she wants some cover.

But there’s other circus nights coming up. Given more time I’ll be able to get more material.

Cal, are you going to do this or aren’t you?

Peering out into the darkness, Marker headed onto the decaying planks of the Brooklyn Bridge walkway still wondering what was waiting for him at the other end. His only consolation was that while Lenny might be a cowboy in business he was rock steady when it came to matters of the heart, and both their hearts were now in this charity initiative. It had been Lenny who had talked Marker round to some kind of reality after his marriage folded. So Marker knew that whatever was at the far end of the bridge was going to be on his side, even if he might have to endure some uncomfortable truths in dealing with it.

8

Eventually, Gail realised that her deepening chill was not only from bone weariness but also the open window. She reluctantly withdrew her gaze from the night sky, closed the window, drew the curtains and turned on the lights. The message alert from Peter Levitsky flashed accusingly. She collected a glass and her bottle of whisky from the next room, poured herself a generous shot and returned to her desk. Replay message, she conceded.

Peter’s pale, fine-featured face appeared on the screen, Let me guess, Gail: he turned you down, yes? The screen cut and Gail wondered for a moment what he was talking about. Christ, yes, Prof. Thomas, afternoon tea. It seemed like an age ago. She made to call Levitsky’s number, surprised by his cheerful-sounding assumption.

Then she hesitated. The tone of his message was too bright by far. Peter could be just looking for an opportunity to be right, but more likely he’d thought of something else to do. He could shift his enthusiasms by the moment, using words like action and high ground and cutting edge when concrete detail gave out. She called his number. If he was out, she’d leave a message saying, Let me guess, Peter – you’ve thought of something else, yes?

But Levitsky’s face appeared, live.

Yes, he did, Gail announced.

In token of his powers of connection, Levitsky didn’t hesitate. Never mind, Gail; I’ve been expecting it for some time. I’m glad it’s finally resolved. Are you going to resign or knuckle under?

Resign.

Wonderful, I knew you had it in you.

So, if he’d been expecting it, why hadn’t he said so?

I’m just not sure what I’m going to do now, Gail ventured. I’ll move down to Resolfen and I might be able to get some PA work in Neath for the time being – on the Solar Net or one of the factories. But, whatever I do, I won’t be able to put up any money for the project.

Don’t worry – we’ll be a lot freer without those established academics to keep happy. My ideas have moved on and there’s no way they would have accepted what we really need to do, even if they had taken up the original plan.

The original plan had been for them to do what Peter called a fully powered validation of his Begatting program, which they would do by making accurate, DNA-based predictions about relatedness between people to distances not attempted before. Gail would select the families and take samples – only some cells from a toothbrush wiped around the inside of the mouth were needed. Peter would analyse the DNA sequences from each sample and predict whether a pair of samples was from brother and sister, or from second cousins ten times removed – instead of the five times that most genetic genealogy firms were offering. Gail would tell him whether he was right or not. It had been a straightforward proposition, easily acceptable to the academic authorities. But she had spent a year trying to persuade her colleagues and now Peter was telling her there had been something else he’d wanted to do all along.

She said, What do we really need to do?

If he noticed the edge in her voice, Levitsky showed no sign of it. Listen, Gail, now we’re independent I’d like to try something less conventional. I want to take a look at unconscious motivation directed from the genetic level. He paused expectantly.

I don’t know what you mean.

This time he felt the edge. Are you okay, Gail?

I’m just very tired, Peter. The professor beat me up and this is all a bit sudden. Why didn’t you tell me you were on another track? I’ve been working like crazy to promote your ideas and now you tell me you wanted to do something different all along?

I’m sorry, Gail, but you know how it is: if you start talking when your plans are only half-formed, other people pick up on them – you know – funded academics just looking for something to do with their money.

He had just said that there was no way such people would have taken his ideas seriously, but Gail let it pass. She was tired, and maybe Peter had some money of his own for these new ideas, money that he could pay her with.

So, what’s it’s about, Peter? Though not sharp, Gail still tried to sound lukewarm.

Undeterred, Levitsky went on. You know that an extraordinary amount of behaviour will only make sense if you look at it from the point of view of genetic structure – if you recognise that the main consideration is the multiplication and perpetuation of the genes. It’s not survival that matters – survival of the fittest is only an approximation. It’s survival of the genes that counts. This is what I want to move into. We need to take a very simple and distinct event that expresses human motivation. I’ll tell you the obvious one: pairing of men and women to have children. Tremendously strong motivations involved there. But what is it really brings them together? People can be destroyed by the strength of the feelings involved. They’ll do crazy things. To say they’re simply looking for someone who has a good chance of passing on their genes – physical attractiveness and all that – that’s totally inadequate. Try telling that to Romeo and Juliet. No, I believe that in every pairing there’s some deeper intelligence at work and it’s at the level of genetic structure we’ll find it – structures that are not connected by lineage but which may show up other more exciting correspondences. What do you think Gail?

Typical, Gail thought – study human relationships rather than get serious about them. She looked into the screen and over Levitsky’s shoulder to the piles of unfinished projects still littering the shelves. His office looked much as it had when she first visited him: the piles of papers; the disposable plastic cups, still with their dregs of cold tea, coffee or soup. Rain was probably still darkening the Birmingham streets outside. But at that first visit Peter had spoken of the rich substratum his codes could reveal and she had heard in those words a revelation. Now, in the face of Peter’s latest flight of ideas, Gail felt only frustration.

But what other options did she have? She tried to sound encouraging when she replied, "I’ve no idea what you’re talking about Peter. But let’s give it a try. I’m just not sure where the money’s going to come from. I need to find a way of paying my own bills – PA work on the Solar Net – something