Don't Call Me Kitten! (7 page)

“There is no
we Sergei, get that in your head.” She muttered as she followed him
into Eduard’s office.

The man behind
the desk looked up from some papers, eying her, as ever,
appraisingly. “You had a phone call last night. Care to tell me all
about it?”

As if he
didn’t already at least have the number of the guy that called. If
not more. “Just some guy about my sister. She’s got a new job.”

“Why bother
calling you? Surely your sister would tell you soon enough?”

There was
suspicion in Petrov’s voice but nothing that indicated he knew the
content of the conversation. Here was hoping that Andrew, as he
liked to be called, had had the sense to encrypt the line. “He was
just checking on a few details before she starts. They noticed she
had trust issues and cared enough to enquire into her
background.”

“Now why would
a government official care about your sister’s health? I
wonder.”

Ah, so he’d
had tracked the number. “You know what any country gets like about
foreigners. If you weren’t born and educated in their country
you’re always considered a slight risk, at least until you’ve been
there twenty years of so. They probably just wanted to make sure
she didn’t have any mental health issues that might affect her
job.”

“Hmm.” Petrov
didn’t sound entirely convinced that was the all of it. “So there’d
be no connection between that call and the fact that we were just
offered a lucrative wheat shipment this morning at a price we would
be unlikely to refuse?”

Helena had no
trouble giving him a blank look. She had totally no idea. “I don’t
see the connection.”

“The
connection appears to be you. They had one strange extra condition
attached to the deal.”

“Which was?”
Honestly she had no idea but the beginnings of a faint hope were
starting to stir within her.

“We were to
release one Helena Ivanova from all her debts and to ensure no harm
comes to her while arrangements are made to get her out of the
country.”

The big
question was had he accepted the deal. She fought to keep calm.
“And...?

“I’m
considering it. What intrigues me though is what makes you so
valuable to them?

“You know what
I do Mr Petrov. When I’m not working for you I working in a very
narrow field of science. Unless you need the precise set of
knowledge about genetics contained in my head I’m worth
nothing.”

Petrov sat
back in his chair for a moment, staring at her, saying absolutely
nothing. You could literally have heard a pin drop. Even the
micro-fairies that tended Petrov’s african violet had paused in
their business, curious. Ever so slowly he steepled his fingers. It
was one of those annoying mannerisms that told you when he was
about to come to a decision. “Very well. The wheat is more valuable
to us on the markets than anything I’ll ever earn from you. They
can have your genetics knowledge for all the good it will do them.
It’ll be years before anything of use will come out of that field
of science. It’s too new.”

For once
Helena succeeded in not rolling her eyes. Luck was with her today.
No point to push it. It would not help her cause to enlighten him
to the fact that they were already on the cusp of the next great
technological revolution. The likes of which had not been seen
since the invention of the computer chip and would likely not be
seen again until commercial nanotechnology exploded onto the scene.
Genetics would be used to show the unity of mankind and its
relationship to all life on the planet. Many of the world’s
nastiest diseases like Huntington’s disease as well as a few just
plain annoying ones like rheumatoid arthritis had the potential to
be eradicated. At the very least new medicines would be tailored to
individual needs with greater effectiveness and less chance of side
effects. More controversially parents might be able to pick embryos
with their best mix of genes, if the law allowed. Whether it would
lead to humankind’s biggest leap in evolution or lead to an
evolutionary dead end, the jury was out. She was drawn from her
reverie by the fact that Petrov was still staring at her
thoughtfully.

“Now last
night. What possessed you to let two non-members into the club
Helena.”

She’d known
this was coming. She did her best not to sound defensive. “They
didn’t see anything and it was more money in your coffers.”

“It was
but...”

“If I might be
so bold Mr Petrov.” To interrupt and voice any idea to this man was
indeed bold. “You are missing out on a major money making
opportunity. Since that book came out there are all sorts of people
looking to spice up their sex lives. They need a safe place to
learn.”

“The Red Thorn
is not a safe place.”

“No it
isn’t”

“What do you
suggest?”

“A new place.
Call it the New Thorn. No hard core stuff. No prostitutes. Just a
club where they can safely play, meet up with others of their kind
and learn techniques. Do a background check on them before you
allow them a provisional membership. The club will probably be
enough for most but for the few who want more you can invite them
to transfer their membership to the Red Thorn. It will increase
your membership base. With the right branding and marketing it
could even lead to a chain of franchises.”

Petrov’s eyes
visibly lightened. You could nearly see the green dollar signs
flashing in them. “Would you be willing to spend your weekends
working up a proposal for this until you go. When you’re not at the
park talking to the trees that is.”

So he had her
watched at the park all these years. No matter, there was nothing
they would’ve seen. She chose, wisely, to ignore the jibe. “I’d be
happy to Mr Petrov.”

“Do this well
and I may think of giving you a retirement bonus. Was there
anything you heard at the club over the weekend?”

“Only that the
politsiya have a bunch of unsolved murders down in the south east
sector of the city. All the victims had sabre injuries.”

“Ah yes.” His
expression showed he wasn’t exactly amused. “The damned cossack
vigilantes are trying to take over our protection rackets down
there.”

Eduard watched
her leave then picked up the phone. Something didn't jell. Someone
somewhere thought that Helena was more important than she seemed.
He was acutely aware than his position in the Mafia food change was
only as secure as his worth to those above him. He couldn't afford
a stuff up. If the woman proved to be of value and he had let her
go...well, it never hurt to check.

After spending
some time in the park talking to her fairy mentor Eadaoin about
everything that had happened Helena returned home to catch up on
her email. She was stunned to see an encrypted email message from
Jnarn in Japan, the very scientist she'd soon be working with. As
she read his email and carefully perused the attached data her
excitement grew. Heart pounding she read over the data again. Could
it really be that the equivalent of a genetic full stop, and extra
'stop' codon in an innocuous strand of DNA had kept human lives
artificially short. How the hell had that occurred? Usually
mutations that weren't beneficial to the species remained rare or
soon died out. This had to have affected the whole of the human
race almost simultaneously. A pandemic perhaps? Jnarn was wondering
if there was some way to reverse it.

Helena
wondered if Jnarn had any idea what the deactivated part of the
strand did. It might have other functions, not just the obvious
creation of a protein vital to maintaining the length of telomeres.
Telomeres had long fascinated those interested in aging processes.
They were a tiny part in each and every cell of the human body. A
bit seemed to drop off the end of them every time a cell divided.
It was like a built in use-by-date for any human, limiting them to
at best 120 years and only then in optimal conditions. But if
humans had been meant to live longer what else might be in the
deactivated DNA? What else did it do? That was the question. Or
maybe not. Maybe the real question was what genetic code had the
strategically placed full stop, a stop codon, wiped out? A codon
was the equivalent of a genetic word, always three letters long.
Three letters from an alphabet of only four possible characters.
But there were twenty different proteins those three letters could
code.

She fired up a
computer software program she'd written herself for just for
looking at this kind of stuff and started analyzing the possible
combinations. Tracking back to the non-coding sequence that
preceded the strand she began the long process of analyzing the
bits that might have originally acted as enhancers or repressors,
regulating the the instructions the DNA contained. There had to be
a hint in there somewhere. It was a process that could conceivably
take years but by some fluke. About 3am with her eyes begging to
close, she found it. Eureka! Excitedly she sent an encrypted email
back to Japan before dragging herself to bed, for what little
remained of the night.

In a secret
bunker, North Korea...

Mr S. Sauron,
Sakla to those who dared, fidgeted restlessly. He shouldn't have
been worrying. His vast global financial interests were thriving.
The economic malaise of the last few years seemed to be over, for
the moment. The general masses weren’t consuming as much, weren’t
travelling as much but they were still eating and aging. His vast
investments in agri-chemicals, hospitals and medical products were
giving greater returns than he could have hoped. With a bit of
leaning on he’d soon have more governments giving up the heinous
idea of providing anything free to their citizens he’d make even
more profit. What did citizen’s think, that they had provided the
money in the first place or something. His companies employed them,
it was his money he loaned to them so they could buy his products.
Yet he couldn’t quite stop all the loonies who were opting to get
off-the-grid and drop out of the system altogether. He thought he’d
stopped that little problem back in the sixties. There was progress
to in privatising the world’s water supplies and prison systems.
Hmm! He might have to find a few more things to make illegal so he
could fill those prisons to capacity. Maybe he could make getting
off-the-grid illegal.

His current
host's body was wearing out but he'd replace it for something
better soon. He doubted the man whose aura he inhabited would
survive his departure, the man's identity long ago being subsumed
beneath his own. With what little remained of the body's connection
to its original soul he doubted it would survive more than a few
days past his departure. No loss there. Yet...worry gnawed at him.
The Malakim had been busy freeing their long lost friends. They'd
been busy too, developing alliances within the Australian law
enforcement, military and security organisations. Somewhere they
had stashed the spaceship they'd captured from the Din when their
pitiful rebellion had first started. They'd evicted all his
contacts from the town, apart from two Din who'd had the audacity
to defect to their side to save their skins. Any agents he sent to
infiltrate the town were swiftly detected. He still hadn’t worked
out how. He'd tried burning them out during the middle of last
summer's heat wave only to have them use that same captured
spaceship to water bomb the fire. Troops he'd sent to engage them
when they went to rescue the Malakim in the Himalayas had fled.
Gibbering idiots the lot of them. The soldiers had spoken of the
earth opening beneath their tank, strange mists rising from the
ground and beings who magically appeared behind them. The Malakim
were proving troublesome. There were only a few of them but that
was more than his comfort level allowed. Right now they were
focused on freeing the rest of their friends but what happened
after they completed that task? He knew the answer. They'd be
coming after the Din.

He glanced
nervously at the calendar on the wall, as if it was a ticking time
bomb on his global empire. Only trouble was he didn't know how long
was left on the count down. The Malakim had tried 100,000 years ago
to stop his kind reaching this planet. He'd beaten them then he'd
beat them now. Feeling better he looked over at the armor plated
door that barricaded his office. A low pitched alarm and flashing
light on the security panel notifying him that someone wished to
enter. Calling up the security camera he quickly identified the man
but wasn't going to let him in that easy. “Put your eye to the
camera.” He ordered over the intercom. The computer verified the
man's ID so Sakla grudgingly pressed the release lock on the door.
The new security procedures did little to reassure him that his
place on the planet was permanent.

A bland
looking expressionless man entered carrying a notepad. Sakla
smirked to himself. He knew that ploy. The man was trying to look
busy. Perhaps they'd recruited him from the higher echelons of
government. “What is it Smith?”

“Sir, we've
intercepted an encrypted email from the female subject the Russian
mob notified us about.”

“And... what
did it say? I haven't got all day.”

“Sir?” Smith
voice took on a pained tone. “It's encrypted.”

“I know that,
that's what you just said. I'd assumed you'd cracked it. Do you at
least know who it was to?”

Smith sucked
his breath in. The boss wasn't going to like this. “That Malakim in
Japan, the one that goes by the weird name of Jnarn.”

“Shit! And you
got nothing else out of the message.”

“Only the
subject heading.”

Sakla glared
at the man meaningfully. “Your life is ticking away Smith. What did
it say?”

“Just some
ancient Greek word. Eureka!”

Fuck, damn
those geneticists. “It means they've found it.”