Shadow Creatures (23 page)

‘So, your uncles – they know you’re here?’ Tara said eventually.

‘Yes. I asked them if you were OK, and they said you were, apart from the fact that you were complaining about the food. I asked them if I could bring you a pizza, and they said yes. I
think they want to make sure that you’re not going to go mad and try to beat them up with a tray the next time they come in.’

‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it,’ she said darkly. ‘The trouble is that they both look like they’ve taken a fair share of hits to the face before.
I’m not sure there’s anything else I can bring to the party.’

Tomas laughed and, in spite of her anger and fear, Tara felt herself relax slightly. The sick feeling in her stomach receded. ‘Yes, they both do cage-fighting in their spare time,’
he said.

That kind of stopped the conversation for awhile.

‘Did they also ask you to get me to record another message for Gecko?’ she asked.

He frowned. ‘Gecko?’

‘My friend. They want him to come back so he can be a thief for them.’

He nodded. ‘Ah yes – I heard about that. I didn’t know the boy’s name, but I knew that my uncles – and the man they work for – are really impressed with the
way he can run and jump and climb.’ He frowned, and looked away. ‘So – is he your boyfriend, then, this “Gecko”?’

Tara felt her eyes widen at the thought, and her face flush. ‘No!’ she said quickly. ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

‘Oh,’ Tomas said quietly. ‘Good.’

That kind of stopped the conversation for a while longer.

‘Tomas, can you help me escape?’ Tara said eventually, in a very soft voice, not looking at his face.

‘I wish I could,’ he replied, as if he had been waiting for her to ask. ‘I really do. I’ve been thinking about whether there’s anything I can do to get you out. The
problem is that my uncles will know it was me who helped you, and they’ll beat me.’

‘Your uncles would beat you?’ she repeated, disbelievingly.

‘Oh yes. They would do it because I had failed to show them respect, and because I had disobeyed them, and because the man they work for would have them beaten for losing you, and they
would pass that beating down to me.’

‘Oh,’ she said quietly.

‘It would be worth it,’ Tomas added, almost diffidently, ‘if I thought I could actually get you out without them seeing, but I couldn’t. They are on guard all the
time.’

‘Well,’ Tara said eventually, ‘thanks for even thinking about it.’ She glanced at him. ‘If this was a prison-break film then you would have smuggled a small saw or
a knife in here inside the pizza.’ She paused. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

‘If I had, then you’d have eaten it by now. I’ve never seen anyone eat that fast.’ He looked at the empty pizza boxes and sighed. ‘I suppose I ought to be
going,’ he said.

‘More girls to abduct?’ Tara said bitterly, and then wished she hadn’t when she saw the pain on his face.

‘Look, I really
am
sorry about this. I wish it wasn’t happening – I really do. I just wish we had met under different circumstances.’ He got up, brushing pizza
crumbs from his hands on his trousers.

‘Are you going to come back some time?’ Tara asked.

He nodded. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

‘Chinese next time?’

He smiled. ‘Sounds good.’

Tara got up too, and stepped forward towards Tom. He tensed slightly, but she slid her arms round his waist and pressed her head against his chest. ‘Thanks for visiting,’ she said,
her voice muffled by his shirt. ‘And thanks for the food.’

He didn’t seem to know what to do, so he just stood there while she hugged him. Eventually she let go and stepped away, hands behind her back. He smiled uncertainly at her, and walked
towards the door.

‘It will be OK,’ he said, opening it and turning to look at her. ‘I know it will.’

‘I wish I could be sure of that,’ she replied.

He left, closing the door behind him. She heard the bolt slide into place.

She stood there for a few moments, feeling the rectangular shape of Tom’s mobile phone in her hand. He hadn’t noticed her slip it out of his pocket. If she was lucky, she might have
it for an hour or two, and that would be more than enough time to call for help.

She smiled for the first time in days. He was an idiot. All boys were idiots.

‘Calum?’

Calum turned over and stared at the open door. He had already known that there was someone there, by the sound of the door opening, but he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge them. Instantly
reacting any time the door opened, like a puppy hearing the rattle of a packet of biscuits, wasn’t cool. He wanted
them
to wait on
him
, not the other way round.

It was a minor psychological victory, but it
was
a victory.

Dr Kircher was standing in the rectangle of freedom revealed by the open door. ‘Calum? I have someone here who wants to talk to you.’

‘And if I don’t want to talk?’

Dr Kircher smiled a thin smile. The glow from the overhead fluorescent tubes reflected from his glasses, turning them into flat sheets of light. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be uncooperative if I
were you. We all want the same thing here.’

‘And what is that?’

‘You up and about on your own two feet, of course.’

‘And, speaking of that, is there any progress on finding out what happened back in my apartment?’ Calum asked. ‘Only, I can’t help but notice that, apart from a rather
crude psychological evaluation, I’ve not been involved with any tests or anything.’

‘We’re still going through the data from the processor on the bionic legs and from the ARLENE robot,’ Kircher said. ‘Once we have done that, we can move towards looking
at what’s best for
you
. He frowned slightly. ‘I have to say that the data from the robot is very inconclusive. It almost looks as if it’s been edited – there’s
no information in there about where it has been used. But, anyway, our initial hypothesis – that the robot reacted to stray electromagnetic signals from the processor on the legs –
appears to be false. The robot seems to have been operating under the influence of a separate signal from outside. It’s all very puzzling.’

Someone coughed in the corridor. Kircher straightened up slightly – not quite coming to attention, but not far short.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Calum, this is Mr Pournell. He’s here from . . . our head office.’

Kircher moved backwards, and another man stepped forward to take his place. He was wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a blue tie with red stripes. His hair was black, and swept straight back
off his forehead. He was probably in his mid-forties, Calum estimated. A slight waft of expensive aftershave came with him.

‘Hi,’ Calum said, beating him to the punch.

‘Hi,’ the man said brightly, entering the room. Kircher moved to follow him, but Pournell shut the door in Kircher’s face. ‘Calum. Can I call you Calum? You can call me
Dave.’

‘So, Dave,’ Calum said, ‘when can I leave?’

Pournell’s expression didn’t change from the bright smile that almost seemed to have been painted on, but his next words sent a chill down Calum’s back. ‘Why, you can
walk out of here any time you want, kid.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Sorry – you’re right, that was in poor taste. But my intent was serious – do you
want
to walk out of here?’

‘Once those bionic legs are fixed, I fully intend to. And I’m going to walk into the British embassy and put in a strongly worded complaint about having been brought here against my
will and locked up in this room for reasons that are still a mystery to me.’

Pournell frowned in an exaggeratedly theatrical manner. He turned to the door, slid his fingertips in between the door and the frame and pulled the door partially open. Dr Kircher’s face
was momentarily visible in the gap. Pournell let the door hiss shut again. ‘No locks there,’ he said. ‘Looks as if you could get out whenever you want.’ He looked around.
‘Actually, that
is
a point. We should provide a wheelchair for you. Nothing fancy, I’m afraid. Not motorized. Very basic. But if you want to leave, you can. We’ll even call
a cab for you to the airport.’

Calum knew that the door had opened so smoothly because he’d taped the tongue of the lock down last night, and he suspected that Pournell did too. ‘And will you fly me back
home?’ he asked.

‘Ah, I’m sorry: the corporate jet is being used elsewhere, but I’m sure you can afford a ticket. I recommend the seats by the emergency doors – there’s more leg
room.’

‘You’re from Nemor Incorporated,’ Calum said quietly.

‘That I am. Good work, Calum – you’re as intelligent as your reputation suggests, and that means you’ll listen to the proposal I have to make and react to it in an
intelligent manner.’

Here it is
, Calum thought,
the reason for this visit, and probably the reason I’m here in America in the first place
. ‘What’s your proposal, Dave?’

Pournell walked forward and stopped just in front of the foot of Calum’s bed. ‘How would you like to
properly
walk again? Not just with the bionic legs – we both know
that’s a poor substitute for the real thing – but how would you like to actually be able to
control
your legs, and
feel
things touching them again?’

‘You know I would,’ Calum said darkly.

‘Of course. Who wouldn’t?’ He paused. ‘We can make that happen.’

Calum let the silence run on for a few moments. He wasn’t sure what to say, how to react – even what to think.

‘How?’ he said eventually.

‘You’ve heard about stem cells, haven’t you?’

‘Stem cells are cells that haven’t decided what they want to grow up to be yet.’

Pournell nodded. ‘Slightly simplistic, but basically accurate. Good enough for me, anyway – I’m a businessman, not a scientist. Well, we’ve made some significant strides
in stem-cell research in the past year or two. We now have the ability to inject stem cells into the site of an injury – a spinal injury, to take a random example – and then persuade
the stem cells to repair the nerve damage by using appropriate triggering drugs. It’s an experimental treatment at the moment, but we’re working up to small-scale trials and we’re
looking for volunteers. Volunteers with crippling spinal injuries and a strong desire to walk again.’ He paused. ‘Do you know anyone like that, Calum?’

‘And what do I have to do to qualify for the experimental trials?’ Calum asked. His heart was racing, and he could hardly breathe. To suddenly be given the chance to walk again . . .
it was incredible. And scary – especially considering where the offer was coming from. ‘What do you want in return?’

‘Something very simple. Something so simple that you wouldn’t even miss it.’

‘Name it.’

‘The genetic samples from the Almasti that your friends brought back from Georgia.’

‘The expedition was a bust,’ Calum said calmly. ‘They never found the Almasti. It’s just a legend, like the Yeti, or the Sasquatch.’

‘Please,’ Pournell said, ‘don’t insult my intelligence. My people did enough background interviews to know that something was being covered up by the villagers you met.
We know you found the Almasti, even though you managed to send our team in the wrong direction. Anyway, rather than keep looking out there ourselves, searching all the valleys in the Caucasus
Mountains until we hit the right one, it’s more cost-effective to get the samples from you.’

‘If there are any samples.’

‘Let’s assume, for the purposes of conversation, that there are.’

‘And what will you do with them?’

‘The same as you would have done – sequence the genes, work out what each of them does, see if there are any genes that we don’t already see in nature, splice them into living
tissue and see if we can replicate their effects.’ His face took on an earnest expression. ‘Just think about it, Calum – you could help us cure cancer, or malaria, or any of a
hundred different diseases.’

‘And you would charge for the cures,’ Calum pointed out, feeling anger raging beneath his calm surface. This was a replay of the argument he’d had with Gillian Livingstone a
few days ago. ‘You would make a profit from curing suffering – and if people couldn’t pay then you wouldn’t cure them.’

‘It takes billions of pounds to fully investigate a new genome and test the genes,’ Pournell pointed out, ‘and that money has to come from somewhere. Universities and charities
just don’t have the resources. You know that already – you just don’t want to admit it. We’re the only ones who have the resources to do the job – and, yes, why
shouldn’t we be rewarded for putting all that money into it?’

‘You tried to hack into my website, using Tara Fitzgerald,’ Calum pointed out, shifting the argument sideways. ‘You kidnapped Natalie Livingstone and tried to get to the
Almasti before we did. Why should I trust you?’

Pournell smiled. ‘Industrial espionage is everywhere, Calum. What – you haven’t tried to investigate
our
website, find out more about
us
? I can’t say I
blame you. I would have done the same thing in your position – but don’t try to pretend that you are somehow better than us.’

‘I haven’t kidnapped anyone,’ Calum pointed out.

‘Give it time,’ Pournell replied. ‘If you find a good enough reason, you’ll do it.’ He sighed, and shook his head. ‘Look, kid, I don’t want to get into
a philosophical argument with you, I really don’t. The offer is on the table. Think about it. Give us the Almasti genetic material and we’ll give you functioning legs again. It’s
a bargain, whichever way you look at it. I’ll come back tomorrow, and hopefully by then you’ll see your way clear to giving us what we want.’ He turned to go, and then casually
turned back again. ‘Oh, by the way – Dr Kircher said that one of their diagnostic computer tablets has gone missing. I don’t suppose anyone left it in here, did they?’

Pournell stared at Calum, and Calum could see despite his perfectly bland expression that the Nemor Inc. representative knew perfectly well that Calum had the tablet. He frowned for a moment,
pretending to think, then reached down and took it from the side of his bed, where he had stowed it beside the mattress. ‘Oh, yes, Dr Laurence left it here yesterday. I meant to tell someone,
but I forgot.’