Chapter 35
‘Do we really have to go?’
Alec turned slowly, adjusting his silk tie in the mirror, his suit immaculate. ‘One minute you say I’m having a secret affair with Geraldine, the next you refuse to join in when you’re invited. The girl’s eighteen, her parents are giving a special party at the Bath & West, and she particularly wanted you and the children to be there.’ He turned, evidently exasperated. ‘Now what’s wrong with that?’
There wasn’t really anything wrong with it. Geraldine had taken immense pains to make herself appear sympathetic and friendly since the accident on the Tor. She’d offered to spend free time with Janus. She seemed to be prepared to put up with the problems he experienced accommodating to his broken leg, and she’d taken endless trouble to help him adjust to coping with his cast.
Janus, Lisa had noted with interest, had steadfastly refused all overtures of friendship. ‘Don’t like Gerry,’ he’d said to Lisa on virtually every occasion that the girl appeared. ‘Won’t play with Gerry.’ And to the girl herself he’d said: ‘Don’t want you here. Go away.’
In spite of this Geraldine had insisted on playing, or trying to play, games with him. To distract him when the pain was at its worst, she’d explained to Lisa. And Janus had suffered her there when he was in too much discomfort to fight her. The girl had gone even further. She’d volunteered to help him with the exercises the doctors had prescribed to keep the child’s body fit.
Stranger still, it seemed to Lisa that the girl’s interest in Alec had decreased. She talked of several younger men and of a special boyfriend. Nevertheless, Lisa wasn’t fooled into thinking of her as a simple little helper at the school.
Geraldine’s interest in Janus, Lisa had worked out for herself, was to keep tabs on him. In other words, as long as Janus was in a cast, as long as he was known to have that plastic splinter in his leg, he wasn’t a threat to anyone.
Should the situation change, well then that would be different. Flaxton would hear about it right away, and take what action was necessary. They were playing a waiting game. And Lisa took care to ensure they understood that Janus was no longer a danger to them. She went out of her way to discuss everything about Janus’s medical condition with Geraldine, even inviting her to accompany her and Janus to the check-ups at the hospital.
What Lisa didn’t tell anyone, though she was acutely aware of it, was that the only way she could prevent that awful bloating, those first tell-tale signs of imminent cloning, was to keep the child to a strict diet of food produced by means other than organic. It was ironic that she, of all people, should now insist that Janus eat produce grown with artificial fertilisers. Controlled, as Ian Parslow had put it.
A very special set of circumstances had brought Janus about. She was sure she now knew how to contain his terrible attribute, how to stop his ever cloning again. He had a permanent pin in his leg; that solved the tagging problem. All she had to do was control his diet, make sure his energies were fully used. Perhaps Gilmore could be persuaded to prescribe a chemical diuretic to discharge any accumulations of extra fluid.
‘You want us to meet you at the Bath & West at four?’ Lisa brought herself back to the present.
‘Three-thirty, Lisa. The Fitch-Templetons particularly asked me to make sure that you get there on time. They have some special treat planned, and it’s supposed to start at four.’
Alec walked over to his wife, his still-handsome features composed, his still-trim figure impressive in his suit, his still-brown hair reasonably plentiful. A good-looking successful man; the father of her children. He had a presentation box in his hands. So he was giving Geraldine something special; evidently the flame wasn’t entirely quenched.
‘I thought we might give Geraldine a string of amber,’ he said. ‘She really has been splendid about Janus. Perhaps we can persuade Jansy to make the presentation.’ He held the box out to her, smiling.
Lisa opened it. A string of iridescent opals blinked up at her, a matching pair of earrings at the side. These were in a different class from a string of amber. Did Alec think she couldn’t tell the difference?
Opals - known for their mythical powers. Stones of tragedy, of death. Some king of Spain, she remembered, had presented an opal ring to his wife on their wedding-day, and she’d died soon after. Did Alec know that?
‘I think you gave me the wrong box,’ Lisa said coldly, handing it back.
His eyes smiled love at her. ‘This one’s for you. To match your delicate complexion.’ He came towards her, taking the necklace from the presentation box and putting that behind him. He held the milky stones up in his hands. ‘May I?’
‘Oh, Alec.’ She melted; how could she have doubted him? ‘They’re lovely, really beautiful.’
The iridescent stones curved round her slender neck, showing its delicacy. Her skin, translucent and with the sheen of country life, glowed back the gemstones.
‘Put on the earrings as well,’ Alec suggested.
She placed the teardrops on the lobes of her ears. Soft wavy gold wisped over them.
‘I’ll put my hair up,’ Lisa said, holding the slippery mass behind her. The face in the mirror smiled back at her, the blue eyes dark with sparkle.
‘You look a million,’ Alec murmured into her ear. ‘Sorry I’ve got to go. Geraldine’s necklace is here.’ He held another package out to her. ‘See if you can get Jansy to give it to her for all of us. And don’t forget, three-thirty sharp.’
This time the opals had done their work even before they were presented, Lisa thought sadly. Her little Jiminy was dead already.
‘You and Jeffers in the back, Seb.’
‘It’s my turn to sit in front, Mummy.’
‘It’s easier for Mummy to arrange Jansy’s cast in the front,’ Lisa explained again. ‘It’s coming off soon. Then you can take it in turns, as we used to do.’
The little boy said nothing, but Lisa could feel him think of Jiminy.
‘Here we go, then, Jansy. You hold the present for Gerry, will you? Remember what we practised. When it’s our turn to give her our presents you give her this. From all of us.’
‘No!’ The little boy took the box and threw it hard against the floor of the car. The gold wrapping paper, so carefully arranged, split at a corner.
She saw Jeffrey scramble down to pick up the box, then gently stroke his brother’s hand, holding the box away from him and offering it to her. Could Jeffrey feel his brother’s pain? She took the box and handed it to Seb to hold.
Janus sat unresponsive, stone-faced, staring out of the windscreen. The two boys in the back began to chant numbers.
Lisa strapped the children into their seats. Her heart pit-pattered as she thought of the last time she’d driven them alone. Brean Sands. Her little Jiminy had been with them, then. Sleeping in the back, already showing the signs of the unexpected unheralded illness lurking within him. Why hadn’t she known? Could she have saved him if she hadn’t been so taken up with Janus?
He sat, the child who had at one time been so aggressive, silent and docile. His leg was hurting him, she knew. The break, though mending brilliantly according to the doctors, was giving him constant pain, sapping his strength. He was no longer raucous. He’d become thinner, almost skinny. Had the accident on the Tor been a real accident? Lisa could not stop herself from wondering. There was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Who was the redhead who’d seated Jiminy on the slick blue anorak? That’s why her little boy had slipped to his death that day. Whatever the doctors said, who knew how long he might have lived?
Was he the young man Seb had talked about? What had he been doing there? Had he given James a push? Why would he? Unless, of course, he’d mistaken James for Janus. Was that possible? Was the young man a hired assassin, paid to kill the cloner before the world found out about him, before he could clone again?
Grief had prevented Lisa from thinking properly about the accident, and the grave digging episode which had gone before it. Why had the grave been empty? Not because Multiplier had hastened decomposition, she now realised. It was because someone had removed the corpse and replaced it with loam. As Alec had pointed out there was no dip, no indentation, no slippage of soil; that meant no body had decomposed. Nor was there clay, like the second spit between the other two fruit trees. Alec had dug up only good black earth.
Someone must have removed the body. That could only be someone who worked for Flaxton, someone who realised what was going on, someone who knew how to replace a body with soil. That’s why the fruit tree leaders had been broken; that’s why there were unexpected bits and pieces in the soil. It all made sense now.
‘It’s a Flaxton lorry, Mummy.’
Lisa, distracted, pulled herself together. She had been driving fast, oblivious of what was happening around her. The narrow roads could only safely be navigated by one car at a time. She’d have to pull in at a stopping place to allow the distinctive yellow lorry, with its black Flaxton logo, to pass her.
‘That’s the second one today.’
‘Second what, Seb?’
‘Second yellow one, with the pirate sign.’
‘Pirate sign?’
‘Like the jolly roger, the skull and crossbones.’
Lisa laughed. Seb had been reading the Captain Pugwash books. It was true that the Flaxton logo, a large X supporting a central F, could remind one of pirates of old. Modern ones were not so different, Lisa thought nervously. They all hunted for treasure, and killed if anyone got in their way.
Lisa began to pull out of the passing space, then saw that there was a large herd of cows advancing towards her. She looked at the clock: nearly three. She’d be late. She’d forgotten to allow for afternoon milking; normally she wouldn’t be out on the moor at this time. Mark Ditcheat’s herd, being humped - hunted, the locals called it - back to the farm for milking.
The road was narrow, but Lisa decided not to back to the passing place. The cows could quite easily go by, one or two at a time. She watched them lazily, as they began to walk past her, their dumb silent faces looking indifferently through her windscreen. They were large animals. One bumped the car as the big herd lumbered past. A few minutes after three. She might just make it in time if she speeded up as soon as the cows thinned.
She turned from looking at the two children in the back and saw one cow heave against the Volvo as another bulled on to her back. The placid herd was beginning to lurch and move more rapidly. Lisa could see, across the many black and white backs still to come, the yellow of a large lorry pushing them towards her.
The cows pressed closer, surrounding her, crashing both sides, trampling the verges of the rhyne on one side, the road on the other. The mooing sounds of peaceful milch cows turned to lowing, crescendoing into the beat of hoof against tarmac and stones.
‘It’s another yellow one!’ Seb said excitedly. ‘That’s three!’
The driver of the yellow lorry was hooting his horn, banging the side of his lorry with a stick. The animals were threatening to stampede. Where was Mark Ditcheat? He was supposed to have one person at the back, one at the front, to guide his herd. None of the local farmers ever did that, but Lisa could not remember a time when there was no one at all to guide the animals.
A sudden splintering crack. Lisa, horrified, thought her windscreen had been hit, then saw it was her wing mirror. A stone, presumably, kicked up by a hoof, had shattered a star of glass splinters, jagged, spiked. Lisa saw images of cows reflected a hundredfold. She pressed the control to turn the mirror round; the mechanism was intact. Suddenly Lisa caught sight of Janus in it - a myriad Januses, tight-lipped, staring ahead.
A vision of a new world came to her. Not the sad repetitive contained Brave New World Huxley had foreseen, but something infinitely more terrifying – uncontrolled cloning. An exploding world, volcanic. Insects reproducing at exponential rates, invading cities, even bodies. Plants devouring the earth, smothering buildings. Large animals with no space to move. Even humans spurting out clones, great groups of stereotypes, their defects accelerating with each cloning. A horror spreading out its tentacles over the whole planet.
She could see that killing on a world-wide scale would be the only defence. Squads of exterminators would waste all life within their path; troops of cloner hunters, armed with guns. The final solution. Lisa turned the mirror back to the present.
The Volvo rocked from side to side as Lisa gripped the wheel. Would the frightened animals actually capsize the car and butt them into the rhyne?
‘They’re pushing us, Mummy!’ Seb was pounding his little fists against the window behind the driver’s seat. Lisa began to sound her horn, the loud Volvo horn she used to alert her way out of her drive.
The cows, driven between the lorry and herself, became confused. Some turned back on themselves, others began to shy away from her.
‘Ho, ho, ho!’ Janus began to shout, and Jeffrey immediately joined in with him. Seb amplified the cry, and the animals, surprised, steered clearer.
She’d have to take the cow by the horns, Lisa told herself grimly. She and her children would drive through. Once more a feeling of oppression, of forces arraigned to harm her, took hold of her.
Was someone really out to get her children, to kill the remaining triplets? Even though they were now completely harmless?
Lisa jerked the car into gear, blared her horn and began to nose through the milling animals. She could see the yellow lorry parked in the next passing place, the driver shaking his fist at her. She didn’t look at his face, kept her eyes ahead. Sweating now, furious herself, she poked the tank like Volvo through the tail end of the herd and accelerated away as fast as she was able.
‘They tried to knock us over,’ Seb said angrily. ‘He shouldn’t have been hooting at them like that.’
Lisa’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. Those Flaxton drivers were getting out of hand. This time she had the evidence - the shattered mirror to show her husband. She’d tell them all about it at Geraldine’s party. Never mind that it was a special occasion. Fitch-Templeton was, after all, now also a director of the firm. And the rest of them would be there. If they really needed Alec, wanted him to sort things out for them in Glasgow, they’d have to humour her. Pass the word to their drivers to behave. It was time to put an end to this nonsense.