Pandora's Brain (9 page)

Ivan stood and looked down at his captives. ‘Come with me, please, David. Matt will stay here, but there will be time for you to say goodbye to him before he leaves the ship. Matt, I will return shortly to explain your task.’

Reluctantly, David stood and followed Ivan towards the door, looking back at his son. As David left the room his arm was taken by a heavy-set man who Matt recognised as the driver who had taken him and Leo to the dinner with Ivan. Something about the man made him shudder.

When the door closed behind them, Matt heard the lock turn again. He was left alone with his thoughts.

For the first few moments he was absorbed by the wonderful fact that his father was alive. It was incredible and magical, and he rejoiced. But inevitably his thoughts moved on quickly to the dangerous situation they were both in. He was afraid – afraid for his father, and also for himself. He experienced a moment of self-doubt and self-pity, asking why this horrible thing had happened to his family. He slumped forwards in his chair with his head in his hands, and for a moment he thought he might cry. Then he sat up and shook his head, cursing himself silently, telling himself he would have to be strong if they were both to get through this.

He stood up and looked around the room, searching for something sharp – something which could be used as a weapon. Perhaps he could turn the tables on Ivan: hold a makeshift knife to his neck and force him to let David and himself off the ship. But even as he stalked the room, hunting for an improvised weapon, he knew it was useless. He opened drawers, looked under the bed and tested the legs of the other furniture to see if they could be detached and used as clubs. There was nothing, and part of him was actually relieved. He didn’t fancy his chances in a fight with the brute who had accompanied his father out of the room just now. He knew that in reality he had to play along with Ivan for the time being and wait for a better opportunity.

He had given up searching and was sitting down on the sofa again, staring at the floor, when the sound of the door unlocking made him look up. He watched with a combination of fear and anger as Ivan sauntered back into the room and sat down opposite him.

Supremely confident that he was fully in control of the situation, Ivan dispensed with preliminaries and jumped straight in to an explanation of what he wanted Matt to do. He described the remaining problems that his team had to solve in order to model the connectome of a human brain, and what he thought Dr Damiano had learned which could help. He talked for an hour, with Matt occasionally asking questions. Matt sucked up the information as if his life depended on it – which of course it did. Several times, Matt caught his attention wandering, and he found himself slipping into self-pity again. Out of Ivan’s sight, he clenched his fist and pressed it into his thigh as hard as he could, commanding himself to find the strength from somewhere to overcome his fears, willing himself to focus on what Ivan was saying.

‘Dr Damiano won’t expect you to be a fully-formed expert in all these areas,’ Ivan said, ‘but he will expect you to have a passing familiarity with them. More importantly, he will also expect you to possess a deep knowledge of something; otherwise he won’t believe you have been a member of our team – however briefly. Fortunately you are a maths student, so we can base your claimed membership of our group on that. Does the phrase ‘data interpolation’ mean anything to you?’

‘Sure,’ Matt said, grudgingly. ‘It means deriving the missing elements in a data set, using straight-line interpolations, or statistical or probabilistic methodologies.’

Ivan clapped his hands together. ‘Perfect!’ he said, either not noticing Matt’s tone, or choosing to ignore it. ‘You are the ideal candidate for this job! OK, so the brain scanning process is imperfect, and it will continue to be imperfect until we have a great deal more experience than we do now. It misses out significant chunks of data, and scrambles others. But we have good error-checking routines, so we know which data sets need repairing or completing.’

‘It sounds a bit like data compression,’ Matt suggested. ‘I’ve done some work on that in the context of video games development.’

‘Good – that’s very helpful. We use data interpolation to generate this missing or scrambled information, but we also use it to speed up the process – to model the connectome with less information. I’ll have my head data guy brief you in more detail on all this. But first, are you hungry? I’m starving. I’ll have some food brought in.’

Matt was thrown by the question. He hadn’t thought about eating, but now Ivan mentioned it, he realised that he was indeed hungry. Ivan phoned his galley and ordered some pasta. It arrived 15 minutes later. Matt ate reluctantly, hating the idea of accepting anything from Ivan, but knowing that he had to keep his strength up if he was to help his father.

As they ate, Ivan talked Matt through the best way to contact Dr Damiano, and the best way to pitch the idea of Matt joining his team. He gave him a cover story to explain why Matt wanted to leave Ivan’s team and join Dr Damiano’s.

‘We have a data centre in Brighton. You can say you worked there.’ Ivan smiled his cold smile as a thought occurred to him. ‘I know . . . why don’t you tell Damiano that you became uncomfortable when a couple of your colleagues disappeared without explanation.’

Together, they worked up a story that sounded plausible to Matt and compelling to Ivan.

‘My data guy will be here in a moment, and then I will leave you,’ said Ivan when they were finished. ‘I’ll arrange for you to have a little time alone with your father before you are taken back home. I won’t be seeing you again until next time you are on board. I hope that will be soon, Matt. Once again, I do apologise for the way you were brought here, and the conditions which I must impose on you. I hope that one day – one day soon – you will come to see that I had no alternative, and you will agree that I am charting the right course – for all our sakes.’

Matt wanted to plead with Ivan to let him and his father go. He also wanted to lunge at him and rip out his throat. With considerable effort, he suppressed both urges and remained silent.

*

Matt knew nothing of his journey home: he was unconscious throughout. He woke up to find himself lying on the back seat of a car, parked a few streets away from his house. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. The drug was gentle, although powerful, and the fog in his mind lifted quickly. This time there was no moment of uncertainty about where he was. The second he was awake he remembered where he had been, and the terrible situation he was in.

He had seen no more of the ship than on his outward journey, and he had no idea how far it was from land. He looked at his watch: it was 2.30 in the afternoon. They had left the restaurant at 10.30 pm, and he guessed that he had been awake on board the ship for around six hours. So the journeys to and from the boat could have taken anything up to ten hours, depending how long he had been unconscious at either end.

There was an opaque screen between him and the driver, but the driver must have heard him moving about because he heard the click of the door being unlocked. He got out and walked away from the car. He looked back in order to memorise the number plate, although he knew it was probably pointless. The car was an anonymous Japanese model apart from darkened windows. The driver was wearing a cap, and looking down, so Matt couldn’t see his face. He guessed it was the same man who had driven him and Leo to Brighton, and whom he had seen on the boat. He thought about going back to the car to check, but he decided that was pointless too, and might be dangerous. He didn’t really want to see that man’s face again.

His feet dragging and his head bowed, he walked slowly to his street, into his house, and into a terrible parody of his normal life.

The text to his mother had obviously been convincing enough. She greeted him with indulgent reproval and asked if he had had a pleasant evening. He told her he had, but that he was feeling tired, and was going to lie down. The enormity of the secret he bore made him weak and weary: he couldn’t look into his mother’s eyes – he needed to be alone. He batted away his mother’s follow-up question about food as he walked towards the stairs, saying that he just needed to sleep.

Inside his room with the door closed and locked, he sat on his bed and breathed out a huge sigh. He sat for a long time with his head between his hands, close to tears. Finally, with another deep breath, he picked up his phone and looked at it nervously for several seconds, embroidering his story with a couple of extra details to make it more realistic before calling Carl.

‘Hi. Um, I need to ask you a big favour,’ he began. ‘I bumped into Adrian in the shop last night. He was on his way to see a band in Brighton, and suggested that I come along. So I did. What? Oh, Blurred Colours. You heard of them? Yeah, pretty good, actually. Really impressive drummer. Anyway, we went back to Adrian’s afterwards and got a little high. Well . . . um, very high, actually. Totally smashed, in fact. Had to crash there overnight. I don’t want mum to worry, so I told her I spent the night drinking with you. Do you mind?’

Matt had no doubt that Carl would help him out: he was confident about that. But he hated lying to his friend, not least because he had a very good nose for bullshit. Matt was also concerned that Carl would feel slighted – excluded from a good night out – and might therefore feel inclined to ask some awkward questions. Carl and Matt had experimented with drugs several times during their later school years – usually together. They had never tried what they thought of as hardcore drugs, and they had never injected anything. No illicit drug had ever threatened to replace alcohol – and beer in particular – as their favourite intoxicant. But illegal drugs held a particular fascination, simply because they were illegal and relatively expensive, and therefore only intermittently available. Several of their most memorable evenings had been fuelled by joints or pills, as well as quite a few evenings of which they had no memory whatsoever.

Adrian was a mutual friend who had featured in many of these evenings: his access to intriguing chemicals had made them possible. That access had also given him a particular status within the school hierarchy. He was outside the mainstream, and no contender for the upper levels of the pecking order which were occupied by the most athletically gifted, the most assiduously fashionable, and above all by the most attractive of his contemporaries. He did not threaten them, and they accorded him a sidelong respect. He acquired a small following of his own, consisting of some of the more creative people in his year as well as a handful of the off-beat and the ill-at-ease. He neither cultivated this following nor sought to deter it. He was very much his own man, and he saw and appreciated this same quality in Carl and Matt.

Illegal drugs played a much less important role at the universities that Carl and Matt went on to – at least in the circles they moved in. When they went up to Oxford and Cambridge respectively, they found their new contemporaries determined to be as social as possible, to explore the lively minds they were surrounded by, rather than dial down their consciousness, or haze into a dreamlike state. Alcohol was the social lubricant of choice, with cocaine making occasional appearances. During the holidays they both saw less of Adrian than before.

Nevertheless, Matt was worried about offending Carl, especially with so much resting on his friend’s willingness to provide an effective alibi. He had debated whether to ease into the conversation, skirting around the need to keep his mother in the dark about his drug-induced stupor until after some introductory chat. But he realised that the bigger danger was that Carl would pick up on the stress in Matt’s voice, and would insist on being told what was wrong. Matt was smart enough to know that the more he talked, the more likely he was to make a verbal mis-step and give Carl a clue about his awful predicament. So he kept the phone call
as short as he could, accepting the other risk of appearing abrupt and inconsiderate. This was why he was calling Carl rather than Alice: with Alice he wouldn’t know when to stop talking. With Carl, he could always blame
it on his hangover later on.

If there was a later on.

Carl did not disappoint. Without needing to be told, he seemed to understand that Matt was not inclined to chat.

‘Sure. No problem. Call me when your head is back on straight.’

‘Thanks Carl. I owe you.’

It was done. Matt lay on his back and breathed deeply. He stared at the ceiling for several minutes. That had not been an easy call, but it was peanuts compared to the next one he had to make. He gathered his wits and dialled the number that Ivan had given him.

‘Von Neumann Industries. How may I help you?’

‘Could I speak to Dr Damiano, please?’

‘Who may I say is calling?’

‘My name is Matt Metcalfe. He doesn’t know me, but please tell him that I have just finished working for Ivan Kripke.’

‘Hold on a moment; I’ll transfer you to his assistant.’

Matt muttered urgent incantations to himself, which
was as close as he was ever likely to get to praying.

‘This is Dr Damiano’s office. Can I help you?’

‘Yes, I’d like to speak to Dr Damiano, please. I recently finished working for Ivan Kripke, and I have some information that I think Dr Damiano would be interested in.’

‘Please hold. I’ll see if he is available.’

‘Thank you.’

More incantations. They worked.

‘This is Vic Damiano. Who am I speaking to?’

Matt was shocked by the effect Vic’s voice had on him. It sounded warm and friendly, giving the impression that its owner was more given to laughter than to harsh words. There was a guarded tone as well, naturally, but the overall impression was so different from Ivan’s clinical ruthlessness that Matt was almost moved to tears. He pinched himself.

‘Hello Dr Damiano. My name is Matt. I’m a maths student at Cambridge and I’ve been doing some work for Ivan Kripke. I don’t really want to discuss this over the phone, but I have learned some things which I found disturbing, and I would like to share them with you.’

‘I see.’ A pause. ‘How did you come to be working with Ivan? Please excuse me for being blunt, but I wouldn’t have thought Ivan had many undergraduates working for him.’

‘You’re right. My dad was doing some work in brain scanning which Ivan was interested in. He died – my father, that is – and I’ve decided I want to follow in his footsteps, so I contacted Ivan, and . . . well, one thing led to another.’

‘Interesting. Well, what are these things you want to share with me?’

‘I’d really rather not talk about that over the phone. Could we meet?’

‘Well,’ Dr Damiano paused again, and Matt muttered silent incantations again. ‘This is very unorthodox, but given the circumstances, I suppose we could; yes. Where are you?’

Matt took a deep breath, desperate to keep the elation out of his voice.

‘In Sussex. Not far from London.’

‘That’s handy. I’ll be in London tomorrow. I have the use of an office inside the US Embassy. It’s at Grosvenor Square, a short walk south from Bond Street tube station. Could you meet me there tomorrow at 11 am? Tell one of the impressively solid military gentlemen at the entrance that you’ve come to meet me. You’d better arrive a half-hour early to allow for the security procedures: they’re very thorough.’

‘Great. I’ll see you then.’

‘OK then,’ Dr Damiano said, still not sounding convinced that this was a great idea. ‘What’s your mobile number, in case I get delayed?’

As he terminated the call, Matt punched the air, strode around his room in two tight circles, and threw himself on his bed and buried his head in his pillow. His relief at having secured the meeting with Vic dissolved quickly into a toxic cocktail of anger and anxiety. He knew that he would get no sleep that night.