Disharmony (37 page)

On his twenty-third lap of the twenty-metre swimming pool, Jake Grey decided that he was definitely not going to enrol in his PhD this year. Nor maybe the next.

For the next five laps, he tried to figure out how the hell he was going to explain this to his uncle.

His decision had nothing to do with the fact that he’d only just completed his Masters degree in Neuroinformatics. He wasn’t the slightest bit fatigued by all the study. The program at the Institute of Technology in Zurich had been great, and his dissertation concentrating upon the development of a computational model to map human emotions was fascinating.

And even though his uncle would assume it was all because of George, that wasn’t it either. Sure, he was sick of having that big ape following him everywhere around campus, but he knew that the university would never have allowed him to board there if he hadn’t been chaperoned. Even with his uncle guaranteeing that George would be constantly by his side, it had been difficult to persuade the Dean that he was emotionally mature enough at age eleven
to begin his first degree at the university. Now, at age fourteen, he and the Dean were firm friends, and he could probably have convinced him over a chess game that he no longer needed a bodyguard.

The Dean was another person who would not take this news well. Dean Bachmann would definitely feel the loss of their weekly game over dinner in his private dining room, but Jake was under no pretence that what he would miss more was the funding and study grants that Jake’s research attracted.

As he climbed out of the pool after his fiftieth lap, he felt more certain than ever about his decision. He towel-dried his dark-blond hair, and slicked his too-long fringe back out of his blue eyes.

He was beginning to conclude that formal academia was just too one-dimensional and constrained. When he’d put the very basics of his idea for his next project to two of his professors, they’d laughed. When they’d realised he was serious, they’d wasted the next hour of his life trying to tell him how unattainable his plans were. During their three thousand and eighty-eight words, he’d counted the term ‘impossible’ seventeen times.

And that was the very hour when this ridiculous notion arose. That Jake Grey would not enrol in his doctoral studies upon immediately attaining his Masters was unthinkable. He’d completed primary school by age seven, high school at ten, and had his undergraduate degree in neuroscience under his belt by twelve-and-a-half.

But when he’d begun unwittingly counting the number of words his professors spoke, he knew that he was bored. It happened whenever his mind was under-stimulated –
it would just begin recording things of its own accord: the licence plate of every car in a carpark, the number of acorns on a tree, the chapters of the book he was speed-reading.

He climbed onto the ancient sandstone wall behind the pool and stared down the wooded hillside out to Lake Geneva. Even though this view was permanently etched into his brain, he never tired of looking at it. Today, in the middle of summer, the lake, bordered by the Swiss Alps, was a seamless, shimmering mirror, its blue brilliance reflecting endlessly the flawless, cloudless sky.

Suddenly starving, he headed back up to the house.

In his uncle’s family for six hundred years, the house could be best described as a mansion, although with its multiple sandstone wings and turreted roofs and spires, many people mistook it for a castle. Some tourist websites, promoting the region, took advantage of this and advertised it as such, but Jake stuck to the literal definition of a castle. He’d traced the building’s history and it had never been used by royalty, nor had it served for protection of the realm.

But he never forgot how lucky he was to call it home. If his uncle hadn’t taken him in when his parents had died in a car accident, who knew where he’d be right now. Maybe in an orphanage. His uncle wouldn’t speak to him of his brother, Jake’s father, telling him only that his parents had had a brief relationship before they’d both been killed in the collision.

He stepped into the ultramodern kitchen and leaned into the huge stainless steel fridge. As great as the house was, he kinda wished his uncle hadn’t ordered the multi-million-dollar refurbishment of the interior. He’d loved the stone walls, the intricate moulded cornices, the original, sweeping ballroom. But when his uncle had dug into the hillside to
create his three-level underground laboratory, he’d hired a decorator and ordered the builders to completely gut the place. Jake had come home during semester break to what felt like an entirely new house.

Except for his room. After weeks of pleading, his uncle had agreed to leave Jake’s room just as it was. Jake didn’t know what he would have done if he hadn’t been able to persuade him. His room was his muse – the place where most of his ideas came to him. It was his heart, his home. When he was away during semester he pined for it as though for a pet, a best friend, a sibling.

‘May I assist you, Master Jake?’

Adelheid appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, a crystal goblet in one hand, a polishing cloth in the other. Adelheid was something else Jake missed like crazy when he was away. He kicked the fridge door closed with his foot, balancing jars, a plate, and storage containers. He dumped them all onto a vast steel benchtop and rushed over to her. Taller than Adelheid for the first time, he gripped her around her slim, aproned waist and twirled her around like a ballerina in a jewellery box.

She slapped him across his bare shoulder, hard enough for the sound to echo off the shiny surfaces and to leave a crimson mark.

He grinned.

She frowned fearsomely, steel-grey hair scraped back from her face and imprisoned in a bun. But when she bustled by him into the kitchen, he glimpsed the tiniest upward tilt to her full lips. As usual, all of Adelheid’s attempts to appear formidable were undermined by the ageless beauty of her face.

She carefully placed the goblet up against a wall. Adelheid was another non-fan of the mega-renovation. She treasured the heirlooms now buried in glossy, handle-free cupboards, and whenever the Master was away she found them all and tended to them just as she always had.

‘Sandwich?’ said Jake. ‘I’m making one. Roast beef.’

‘Please, allow me,’ she said, moving towards the Tupperware. ‘And you know I’m a vegetarian.’

‘Uh uh,’ he said, moving in close to her. He knew that would do it. He was right; she stepped away from the bench.

Adelheid hated to be touched. That made him inexpressibly sad, because he remembered when he still wore nappies and she would smother his face in kisses and squeeze and hold him close every chance she got.

Jake knew that these memories really shouldn’t exist. Science told him that he
couldn’t
have these memories – that until the age of at least three he should have no verbal-pictorial recall of what had happened to him. The brain was simply not sufficiently developed to store such data. But Jake remembered many things, some seen from between the bars of his cot, and every one of his memories featuring Adelheid was well-worn and treasured.

As soon as he’d learned to walk and talk, however, the hugs had ceased. He missed them still; their absence was like a constant, faint toothache.

‘Let me make
you
a sandwich,’ he said. ‘It’s lunchtime.’

‘That’s my job,’ she growled.

‘I don’t care,’ he said.

Jake knew that Adelheid’s work in this house was more important to her than anything in the world, but he wanted to do something for her, for once.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ll make us both one.’

‘I’m busy. I don’t have time to stop.’

‘But I’m going to be using a knife,’ he said. ‘And what if I break something, like that glass you just left there?’

‘I could move it,’ she said, hands on hips.

‘Or you could sit down,’ he said, ‘and let me make you a sandwich. Don’t you like me any more?’

He sensed that she wanted to smack him again, but instead she climbed up onto a leather-and-steel bar stool.

‘I hate these chairs,’ she said.

‘I hear you,’ he responded.

He kept the grin from his face, watching her restraining herself from taking over while he made the sandwiches. Then he headed up to his room.

After walking through the clean lines and glittering glamour of the rest of the home, he smiled when he reached his doorway. It could not have been any more at odds with the rest of the house. A wide wooden arch inlaid with intricate carvings of leaves, berries and curlicues surrounded the heavy wooden door. He turned the handle and entered the tallest turret of the mansion – his bedroom and study.

He locked the door behind him.

Books and science journals lined the curved walls, squatted in corners in perilous towers and covered most surfaces of his sprawling desk. Six PCs took up the rest of the space, their cords and wires snaking across the mosaic-tiled floor. An arched window behind the desk overlooked the slate tiles of the rooftop and down to Lake Geneva.

He took his lunch to the back of the room and climbed the spiral staircase. He shoved his laptop aside and dropped down onto his bed. As he munched his sandwich, he stared
absently at the view through another arched window, and thought about the note.

Even though he had every word – and even the shape of every letter – memorised, he reached behind him and felt around with his fingers until he found it, wedged into one of the curved nooks in the carved bedhead. He bent his legs and smoothed the paper out on his knee.

He wondered why the note was written in English and not German or Italian. Jake was fluent in six languages, including all of these, but English was not commonly used by the Swiss. He read the brief message again.

You are being watched. An enemy has learned of your emotion-synthesis model and seeks to use it for weaponry. I have further information about this and about the distillation of emotions 3, 7 and 9. Meet me on Saturday night, Level 4, in the campus library, 8.30 p.m. If anyone is with you, you’ll never hear from me again.

He slapped the note down on the bed. Since it had been delivered two days ago in an envelope with his academic transcript, he’d been trying to figure out who had sent it. One of the professors? How did the writer even know about his labelling system for the emotions? He’d never published it. Emotions three, seven and nine: fear, envy and shame. And who else out there could have realised the application of his research for weaponry?

He’d already decided that he would be at the library tonight. He just hadn’t completely figured out how he was going to get off the property without George finding out. But with his uncle away on a lecture tour, it was perfect timing …

A muffled crash sounded from downstairs in his study.

Jake sprang from the bed, praying that he hadn’t lost the order of the books stacked next to the fireplace. All of them were opened to the pages he was up to.

He bolted down the stairs, two at a time, and scanned the room, confused. Everything looked just as it had a few moments ago.

And then the noise sounded again. It was coming from –

Jake had never really believed that a person could actually faint from shock. But when the door to the storage cupboard under his desk swung open and a girl crawled out, the blood left his head in a rush and he saw stars.

When his vision cleared, two boys stood next to her, the shorter of the two leaning heavily on the other.

He would have cried out, but he’d forgotten how to do that.

‘Jake Grey?’ said the taller boy, the front of his shirt covered in blood.

Jake took a seat, right there on the tiles.

Sending love, luck and many thanks to Jeanmarie Morosin for opening the portal.

Thank you so much, Jane Godwin and Katrina Lehman. How it is possible to have two such adorable bosses, I’ll never know. May we have every editing meeting atop a skyscraper at dusk.

Many thanks to Marina Messiha for the amazing cover art and design of this book. And thanks to everyone at Penguin for your help and support. I’ve collected psychological profiles for each of you, and find you all, if not sane, at least thoroughly delightful.

A massive thank you to my family and friends, who love me in spite of my invisibility. Whether we’re together or not, you’re always in my heart. A special thank you to the real Zac, Kirra, Luke, Jake and Samantha. I’ve spent almost every waking moment thinking of you while writing about your adventures. I love you and all my other nieces and nephews – you’re all in a book if you look hard enough. Don’t fight!

Thank you my darling mum for everything, ever, including finally reading one of my novels! I know, I know … the others are too scary. My dad would have loved them. I miss him too.

And my Joshua. Thank you can never be enough. Our lives and minds run through every page of this book.

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