The Scioneer (2 page)

Within moments
Lek felt all his troubles drifting away into nothingness. The world
seemed brighter and easier, and he turned and shared a moment of
camaraderie with his fellow customers, nodding and smiling at them
as if nothing mattered. Retro AM was playing ‘The Golden Hour’ and
Lek remembered the tunes from his adolescence, back in the
twenty-teens. He was steeped in nostalgia and grinning like a
schoolboy, when Lyubomir Pechev strode in through the double
doors.

Chapter 3

Pechev
didn’t look like a gangster. If anything, he looked like a priest.
He was a tall man, with thinning dark hair and a full greying
beard. His reactalite eyes, adjusting to the dimness in the bar,
were naturally pale blue. Whatever the weather, he always dressed
in a black suit,
faded
at the elbows, and he affected Napoleon’s gesture of holding his
right hand between the buttons of his jacket, possibly because he
considered himself a great leader of men, but more probably because
he was short a finger. The history of that missing middle digit was
the source of much gossip and speculation between members of the
company. Some said a rival gang had lopped it off when Pechev had
welched on a gambling debt. Others claimed he had taken it off
himself to prove his nerve as he moved up the ranks of the cartel.
Lek Gorski knew the truth however, for he had been drunk and stoned
when he first met the kingpin. When the moment came for them to
shake hands, Lek had blurted out,

‘You’ve only
got four fingers!’

and
Pechev, unflustered and somewhat amused, had explained in hushed
tones that he had lost the finger as a boy when he trapped it
between two metal sheets of a playground slide in his home town of
St. Petersburg.

‘Hello
Doctor,’ said Pechev, with a glimmer of humour in his eyes as he
extended his hand now.

Lek hated
to be called ‘Doctor’, since he considered himself and his work an
insult to the profession. He
smiled wanly, and felt the soothing effects of the
marijuana instantly ebbing away. ‘Hello Mr Pechev. How are
you?’

‘I’m very
well Gorski, very well, thank you. Would you like another drink?
I’m having one,’ he said, gesturing for the waitress.

‘No thank
you, s
ir.’

‘Please
Gorski, call me Lyubomir – I think we’ve known each other long
enough.... um, tea, please, Miss. No milk.... How long
have
we known each other
Gorski?’

‘Nearly twenty
years now... Mr Pechev.’

‘That’s
right. Lennon and McCartney! That’s right,’ said Pechev, stroking
his beard. ‘Twenty years. I forget you’re so young. My, my. How
times have changed…. Look around you, Doctor. Can you even remember
what this place was like twenty years ago, before the end of
technology, before this... ridiculous horticultural revolution? Can
you?’

‘Yes
s
ir. Those were the
days.... as they say’. Lek realised the effects of the weed hadn’t
completely worn off and he was talking nonsense. He took off his
glasses and cleaned them with a Shrug napkin.

‘What would you
say was the turning point for us?’

‘Excuse
me, Mr Pechev?’

‘What happened
to mankind, Gorski? What was the turning point for mankind?’ he
said, focusing his pale eyes on Lek.

‘Well,
s
ir, the turning point,
um, the end of technology.... well, the faked moon landings, I
suppose, ah, then the NASA trials, the Hadron Collider Disaster,
internet ebola, the death of social networking... you name
it...’

‘And what
was the turning point for us, Gorski? For you and I?’ Pechev leaned
back in his chair. ‘Let me tell you – it was the 2012 Olympics in
this city. This very city!’ Pechev exclaimed, rapping the table
with his knuckles to emphasise his point.

‘Yes
s
ir, the Spiro
Dimitriadis affair....’

In 2010,
while the rest of the scientific world was still looking to put a
man on Mars, find cures for AIDS and cancer, discover a clean
renewable energy source, a group of biochemists working in a tiny
lab in Thessaloniki, Greece made a breakthrough of gigantic
proportions in genetic science. Simply put, they managed to isolate
the single gene, the single scrap of DNA which defined a species.
They had worked primarily with rats – fast brown sewer rats and
their lazy lab-raised white counterparts. They killed many of them
in the process, but once the science was perfected, the biochemists
saw the true potential of their work, not for the advancement of
science and medicine, nor for the good of mankind, but for their
own financial gain.

Within
weeks, the scientists had scraped together the funding needed to
extract the DNA of a local breeder’s thoroughbred racehorse. In a
process which they called ‘grafting’ the team managed to splice
this simple strand of DNA with that of a humble lab rat. Pegasus –
whose name later made it into the history books – lived the
greatest seventeen hours of his tiny rodent life, endlessly running
around his mazes like a stallion, and copulating ferociously with
his female counterparts, before the grafted DNA strand finally
broke down and he returned contentedly to his former
state.

By May
2011, after a series of successful clinical trials, the biochemists
had contacted a young Olympic hopeful from Crete, a hundred metre
sprinter named Spiro Dimitriadis, and convinced him to throw away
his budding sporting career in favour of a life of notoriety and
the promise of seeing his name forever written in the annals of
history and legend, albeit juxtaposed against the name of Pegasus
the rat.

The
science of grafting was unknown until Spiro Dimitriadis broke the 9
second barrier in London. Within days, however, it was everywhere:
the hot ticket, the new black, and Spiro, snorting and sweating
after the race, was its poster-child. While the Olympic Committee
publicly condemned his actions and those of the biochemists, who
together had plumbed new depths of dishonesty and brought the
sporting world once again into disrepute, the scientific world saw
only the bright new lights of wondrous opportunity. New
drugs!

Lek
Gorski was a boy of twelve when he watched Spiro race to victory.
By the time he was 17 and precociously sailing through his final
biomedicine exams at the University of Krakow, grafting had
progressed, although there was still so much scope for development.
Lek’s career path was already laid out.

After
graduating, he was offered a research position at the University of
Leipzig, where he dedicated his time to perfecting new grafting
techniques. Scientists across the world had managed over the years
to extract the vital DNA cells from virtually any creature on the
planet, but they found they could not graft
across
the classes of the animal kingdom. Hence, they
were able to bestow crocodilian speed and strength on other
reptiles; grant fresh-water bream the ability to survive in the
sea, like salt-water mackerel, for fixed periods of time, and so
on, but beyond a species’ class it was impossible. They were unable
to create a canary that could swim, for example, or graft a snake’s
venomous bite on to a domestic cat’s DNA. Reptile to reptile, fish
to fish, mollusc to mollusc but no further. It seemed to be the
limit of nature’s law. Mammalian extracts were the easiest of all
to obtain and to work with, given the relative size of the
subjects, primarily, but furthermore because their cells seemed to
lend themselves to the grafting process, as though they had been
built with the capacity to adapt to other species’
cells.

The human world
went crazy over the new drugs. The pharmaceutical giants had
pioneered the first ‘scion’ medicines, as they became known,
offering men and women leonine bravery from the boardroom to the
battlefield, workhorse power throughout the working week, and the
chance to feel like a tiger in the bedroom once again.

But Lek
felt his hands were tied. He saw the qualities of the wider animal
kingdom – the perseverance of migrating salmon, the work ethic and
organisation of colonies of ants and bees, the elegance and beauty
of Amazonian birds of paradise - as a personal affront, and a great
wasted opportunity for humankind. The young Lek Gorski relished a
challenge, and so resolved to crack the code.

His idea
was simple, but the work itself was painstaking. He broke down the
DNA extracts into their component parts – specific proteins and
amino acids – then, over three years, set about creating his own
synthetic replicas, all configured so that they could fit together
with one other. His very own set of the building blocks of life.
With them, he was able to blend DNA with DNA, species with species,
regardless of class, and create bespoke drug combinations for all
manner of medical complaints or recreational whims. He alone held
the key to the design of his replica blocks, or ‘bases’, as he
preferred to call them – simple and cheap to produce - and the
knowledge to create a million customised synthetic DNA grafts from
them. Overnight he became the father of scion medicine. By the
morning, the sharks were circling....

Pechev
smiled widely. ‘Enough chit-chat, as they say. How’s business,
Gorski?’

‘We’ve
had some trouble from one of our base suppliers, sir: late
shipments, disputes over price and the like. Nothing our men can’t
handle. Vidmar’s man tells me that there’s still a rush on Dolphine
– it’s been the drug of choice for the day-clubbers throughout the
summer. All the same, I put together a cheaper scion for the
dealers to push onto the market – it’s nothing like as good as pure
dolphin, of course, but it’s close enough. Raucous head-banging
show-off, meets safety in numbers crowd-mentality, with a touch of
living on the edge madness. It’s... nice.’

‘Nice? You’ve
tried it?’ Pechev sounded surprised.

‘No. The mice
seem to enjoy it though.’

‘My
father always told me never to trust a skinny chef,’ he said with a
wicked smile. ‘What did you use?’

‘Cockatoo-lemming-herring.
’

‘Still
mixing in plenty of golden Labrador undertones, I trust. We want to
keep our customers coming back, don’t we?’

‘Yes, the
cutter knows what he’s doing, of course. How is Barry these days?
Still having the nightmares?’

‘Oh yes.
Always the nightmares,’ Pechev shrugged, ‘Good work Gorski. Just
remember that if the product is only half as good, we’ll still sell
double, and what’s more, we’ll sell it at the same price. Keep the
creds rolling in, good Doctor. What else have you got for me?’
Pechev asked.

‘Everything else is taking care of itself. As usual, the
dealers tell me we’re turning over large supplies of Equinox and
Tigranol. Tiburon – the new shark-scion – is selling well. The
original extracts were hard to come by, as you can imagine. We lost
a diver off the coast of Cornwall. But still, we’ve been putting up
big numbers at the New Old Bailey. The prosecutors seem to be
favouring it over Cobrax.

‘You’re
holding something back. Tell me.’ Pechev’s voice was like
steel.

‘I have
some concerns, about the gangs, Mr Pechev.’

‘Have they
stopped buying our product?’

‘No sir,
quite the opposite. I can’t make enough. Lupinex and Hyenarc. If
anything, the gangs are buying more and more on a weekly
basis.’

‘The
customer is always right, Gorski. You should only be concerned when
they
stop
purchasing
the goods.’

‘I know, but
I’m worried we’re fuelling a... a war, sir.’

‘Not our
problem’ said Pechev, with an arrogant shrug. ‘What’s wrong Gorski?
You seem unhappy.’

‘No sir,
just, I was reading about it in the paper. The police can’t seem to
cope. It seems as if they’ve left the gangs to destroy themselves,
but innocent people are getting killed too, and I was just
beginning to wonder....

‘What are you
saying Doctor?’

‘I’m
saying… nothing Mr Pechev. Nothing,’ sighed Lek, realising her was
talking to the wrong man.

‘Look at
this city Doctor.’ he said, waving vaguely at the world outside The
Mash-Up. Lek noticed Wez and Latisha staring in at them both. ‘One
of the greatest cities on the planet. We’re giving its people what
they want. Isn’t that something to be applauded? We’re providing a
service. And we’re doing a damn fine job of it. They know the
risks, these people. They’ve heard the warnings. They’re aware of
the side-effects. But, I do understand. I...
empathise
,’ he said, his face showing absolutely no
trace of empathy. ‘You’re too sentimental Doctor. You’re all…
bedside manner and no stiff upper lip. Isn’t that what they call
it? Listen to me, I have a favour to ask you, and when it’s done,
why don’t you have a little trip away? Visit... where was it again?
Krakow?’

‘Yes, Krakow. I
might.’

‘Do that.
So I think we’re done here? Before you go though, this little
favour of mine,’ Pechev said, reaching under his seat and producing
an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. ‘I picked this out especially for
you. Do you like it?’ Pechev drained his cup. ‘We run a tight ship
here, Gorski. Unfortunately, we’ve lost a couple of members of the
team in recent weeks, so we all need to pull together. This here,’
said Pechev, tapping the bag but never taking his eyes from Lek,
‘is one hundred thousand cred. It needs to be delivered to Delić at
the South Bank Lion by midday today. He has to pay off a
debt.’