Birdkill Read online

  There was another maternity clinic, in Toronto. And one in Ohio. More missing mothers deprecated, more necessary measures defended. A moratorium enforced by a scandalised American contingent worried about this all getting out if someone joined the dots.

  Mariam followed the dots right enough. Duprez’ death started to make sense. And Mariam started to feel truly afraid as she wallowed in a multi-dimensional mesh of intrigue and corrupted vested interest that linked the British and American intelligence and military communities with a multibillion-dollar programme of what could only be described as eugenics.

  And the web stretched to Prime Ministers and Presidents. Duprez’ collection of archived emails, in a way that poor Buddy’s poor collection could never hope to aspire to, lassoed the great and glorious into an intrigue that was truly, awesomely, explosive. Mariam’s mobile rang, shocking her into spilling coffee onto the dark wooden floor. She reached for it. ‘Mariam.’

  ‘Kelly. What the fuck did you do to my laptop?’

  ‘Your laptop?’

  ‘Kingsthorpe said you were fixing it. And fix it you certainly did, I can’t sign in.’

  She breathed. ‘I changed your sign-on password. It’s Kelly.’

  ‘How did you do that? What the fuck were you doing with my computer in the first place?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I’ve got time.’

  ‘I don’t. Look, do you want to maybe meet for a discreet coffee tomorrow somewhere?’

  He caught her tone. ‘How about our café?’

  ‘That’d be perfect. Eleven?’

  ‘Eleven. It’s a deal.’

  She remembered Robyn and felt guilty. If she was wrapped up in all this, she was most certainly in danger. She would ask Clive to go down to the Institute with her after the meeting with Kelly. Robyn had to get out.

  She let the mobile drop onto the table and carried on with her deep dive into Tom Parker’s world of Aryan supremacy disguised as military efficiency. Copying, pasting and archiving as best she could, she was chilled by how far and wide the whole thing stretched. And by how the spider in the centre of the web wasn’t Tom Parker at all, but a fat British spy called Jolyon Raynesford. And the man he served.

  Robyn had her new classroom, in truth one of the coach-houses in the stable block. It had been converted sympathetically, a modern room with black beams across the roof, white painted walls and stonework. Low bookshelves lined the walls and the desks were more like workstations.

  It was a refreshing environment compared to the Portakabin, but something had changed and the kids were surly and uncooperative. Even little Jenny, wearing the red jumper she had worn the first day Robyn had spotted her playing with the others in the clearing, wouldn’t meet her eye.

  She had dismissed them early and sat looking at the empty room feeling desperately tired and wanting just to throw in the towel and walk away. She still had her head in her hands when Simon Archer walked in.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Lesson was a disaster. I’m just not sure I’m cut out for this. Maybe Hamilton was right, maybe I should take some time out and make sure my head’s sorted out.’

  He perched on one of the desks, his foot swinging. ‘Come on, that’s a bit drastic. What do you think went wrong?’

  ‘We were talking semiotics last week, I took it back to early influences in defining our character, egos and ids and parental input in defining the signs we accept and use in society. I might as well have brought the devil into the classroom and invited him to eat them all. I thought it would blow over after the weekend, but it clearly hasn’t.’

  Archer frowned. ‘I’ve told you before about the past, haven’t I? Most of the kids had awful relationships with their parents. They weren’t understood, their talents either ignored or actively repressed. They were troublesome, precocious, inquisitive and challenging. For some of them, the Institute is the nearest thing to a stable home life they’ve ever experienced. And you took them back to that.’ He slipped off the table. ‘Come on, they’ll get over it. You’ll need to signal you want to focus on the future and they’ll come around. Let’s get out of here for now and get some fresh air. You look like you need it.’

  She almost blurted that they none of them had parents at all, but manage to give Archer a grateful smile instead. She brushed her hair back over her ear and picked up her handbag. ‘Fine.’

  They walked down the corridor towards reception and the front door. ‘Are you okay after yesterday? You looked like you’d taken a really nasty turn.’

  ‘Yes. I had a quiet evening, slept early.’

  He held the door open for her. The air outside was clear after the classroom fug and she breathed in deeply. Archer turned to her. ‘Look, I’ve got a couple of books on classroom management for gifted kids. They’ve been invaluable to me, maybe you’d like to borrow them. I’m not saying you need them, just that it’d give you some solutions to focus on rather than worrying about how things are going badly.’

  ‘Sure. That’d be good. Thanks.’

  ‘They’re in my study. Come along, I’ll throw in a cup of decent coffee.’

  They walked past the pool and gym towards the reception building, bird sound in the woodland surrounding the car park. Archer was reaching for the door handle when a deafening clangour broke out, a siren so loud she dropped her handbag, clapping her hands to her ears and screwing up her face.

  ‘Burglar alarm!’ Archer shouted. A strobe lamp flashed, transforming the reception area into a disorientating nightmare. Archer dived in, wrenching open a cabinet on the wall and punching a code into the keypad. The wailing and pulsating flashes continued. Robyn started to feel sick. Archer pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket, twisting one into the panel. He swore, but Robyn could only see his lips moving. Even with her hands over her ears, the noise pained her. Archer ran down the corridor and she followed him automatically. Hamilton’s study door was thrown open and he stood framed in the dim background. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘Alarm.’ Mouthed Robyn as she passed him. Archer had thrown open a door under the stairs and was busy inside a grey cabinet Robyn guessed was the fuse box. The peace was so sudden it staggered her. She leaned against the wall, her heart beating a tattoo in her chest. She wondered the punishing sensory overload hadn’t triggered another fit in her.

  As if she suffered from fits. She quailed at her own adaptability.

  Archer emerged from under the stairs. ‘Wow. That was certainly effective. I’ll have to call the cops. Hang on a second.’

  She followed him back up the corridor. ‘Cops?’

  ‘Alarm’s linked to the police station in town. They’ll get an alert if it goes off and one if it loses power.’ He picked up the reception telephone and dialled a number scrawled on a card pasted onto the wall.

  ‘Couldn’t a burglar just call them?’

  He grinned at her. ‘You have to have a PIN number.’ Into the handset he intoned ‘Hamilton Institute’ and then pressed a four-digit combination. Which was, Robyn noted, 2541. He hung up.

  Two breathless security guards tumbled through the door. Hamilton was still standing in his doorway. ‘Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?’

  Archer wandered over to join them. ‘The alarm went off, Lawrence. I’ve had to disable it.’

  Robyn caught a glimpse of the screen behind reception that displayed the security camera images. It was blank. She noticed a printed email in the ‘in’ tray, subject New ID Card For Ipshita Mehra. An insane idea hit her and she snatched at it. Sure enough, an ID card was pinned to it. She folded it and slipped it into her pocket. She stepped away from the desk thinking of any distraction to throw at Archer. The guards were doubled up catching their breath back. Robyn regarded them disdainfully. ‘They’re not terribly fit are they?

  Archer followed her gaze. ‘Not terribly. Let’s hope they can fix this thing.’

  ‘What happened?’ The guard who had turned Robyn back from
the Institute gates straightened up.

  ‘The alarm’s up the Suwannee. You’ll need to fix it.’

  The guard shook his head. ‘I’ll have to call head office for an engineer.’

  ‘Well bloody well get on with it, man.’ Hamilton barked. His study door slammed behind him.

  ‘I’m not sure he’s in the best of moods,’ Robyn noted.

  ‘Come on. Coffee. We can leave these guys to fix that system. Where’s your bag?’

  ‘Oh, I dropped it outside when the noise started. Hang on.’

  Robyn pushed open the door and reached down for her bag. It was full of snakes, a Gordian knot of shiny smooth bodies sliding over each other. She lifted the bag, straightening up and searching for the small figure she knew she’d find, standing and staring at her.

  Sure enough, there he was. She held his eye, her chin up, and plunged her hand into the writhing mass. They were cool to the touch, rubbery. The shock of their reality hit her a second before the pain of the bite. She snatched her hand back, a pair of glittering eyes fixed on her, its fangs buried deep in the back of her hand and blood welling up around the scaly jaws clamped on her. Its body whipped. She dropped the bag and shrieked.

  Archer had her shoulders in his hands, was shaking her. ‘Robyn! Robyn! What’s wrong?’

  Her bag lay on the ground, spilling its contents. The screen of her mobile was cracked. Her hand was untouched. And Martin was nowhere to be seen.

  Robyn patted Archer’s arm. ‘It’s nothing, I just got a shock. Can we get that coffee please?’

  FIFTEEN

  Into The Darkness

  It was two o’clock in the morning and Robyn stood in her bedroom wearing black jeans and a black sweater. She had bought both in town that afternoon after her second class, which went as badly as the first. Her coffee with Archer earlier had been awkward, as well. All in all not a great day. She had been flustered by the incident with her handbag and Archer had been puzzled by her shock at what was clearly nothing at all.

  She had spent all day planning for this. The security system was down and likely to remain so until at least tomorrow. This was her chance to take a look at the mysterious Institute and she had decided she had to take it. There was no shining path forward for her, she had nothing to lose except perhaps the last vestiges of her sanity.

  This was the only thing she could think of doing other than fleeing and she needed Mariam’s strength for that. They had talked at length that afternoon, Mariam unwilling to talk about anything to do with the Institute on an open line but promising to make all clear when she came down the next day. She had sounded shifty and afraid, kept saying she couldn’t talk on the phone. Robyn had told her of her plan to get into the Institute and Mariam had told her not to do it. It was too dangerous.

  Which just made Robyn all the more determined to go through with her plan.

  She had googled the name and there were a lot of Ipshita Mehra’s out there, but only one was a specialist in cognitive science with a Master’s from Cambridge, four years’ work at MIT in the department of cellular and molecular neuroscience and a Doctorate from the University of Tübingen. Image search matched the photo on the ID. Smart lady, thought Robyn, flicking the ID card between her thumb and forefinger.

  She pulled on the pair of gloves she’d bought. They were fine black calf leather and expensive, all she could find in town. She opened the catch on the window and pushed it out, sliding over onto the fire escape below. She pushed it back as flush to the frame as she could, then padded down the metal stairs. Rounding the building, she slipped through the shadows and behind the school building. She headed into the woodland, finding the wall into the Institute. She paced herself, ran at it and jumped, clamped her hands onto the top to heave herself up. She felt a muscle straining and the rough surface scratching the costly leather.

  She lay on top of the wall looking along its shadowed path into the deep gloom. She lowered herself down the other side and struck out into the woodland towards what she thought was the researcher’s accommodation block.

  A motion sensor kicked in and she found herself bathed in floodlight. She dived for the shadow of the woodland, a rhododendron giving her the cover she needed. She let her hair down onto her face and peered out, expecting to see a guard, but nothing moved. By the time her heart had slowed, the light blinked out. She moved cautiously along the margin of the wood. The back of the building had no sensor and she slipped across the grass to hide in its shadow.

  Robyn had no interest in either the researchers’ living quarters or the kids’ block nearby. It was the domes she had come to see. She slid along the shadowed wall to the corner and broke across the open ground between the block and the trees beyond. She moved doubled up, reaching the far woodland. Secure in its shadow, she followed its curve around towards the domes, the kids’ accommodation block obscuring the staff quarters now. The three obsidian mounds reflected the febrile crescent moon on their jet glass.

  Robyn’s shadow detached itself from the wood, a faint shape on the dark sward. She made it to the first dome, pausing to catch her breath. She hugged the glass, her face darkly reflected. She slipped into the square doorway set into the dome and swiped Ipshita Mehra’s ID card against the little chrome panel of the card reader. The door slid back and Robyn hesitated at the threshold.

  She stepped into the dome.

  The lighting came on slowly, its dawning filling her with the dread of discovery. Logic told her the glass must be opaque, else they would have lit the whole area up every Thursday night. She gazed around her, the space dominated by a central mezzanine circle balanced on a single pillar, a door set into it. The dome seemed huge compared to its size from the outside. Either side of her were two curved walls, a little above head-height. She strode into the centre, the two long curves were repeated in front of her, quartering the huge space. There were openings by the glass to her left and right. She veered to her right, the long white curved walls pressing in on her, curling to form entrances. She turned into the space behind the wall. It looked like a large, white operating theatre, there were five padded white couches on trolleys, each with a stacked trolley of instruments topped with a screen parked by it. A set of instruments hung on each trolley. Complex lighting systems extended from the curved wall, convex discs of metal with LED arrays set into them at the end of the armatures.

  She backed away into the opposite entrance. Here there was a set of some ten padded white and chrome armchairs with screens in front of them. The buckles on the soft leather straps on the arms of the chairs and again down at their feet glittered.

  Disoriented by the strangeness of it all, Robyn sidled back into the central area under the mezzanine disc. She pressed the lift button with her gloved finger and it pinged softly. The door slid apart and she walked into the brushed stainless steel interior. The panel on the lift wall had five buttons, M, 0, -1, -2 and -3. So the dome was three stories deep underground.

  She pressed M and waited as the lift briefly rose and settled, the doors sliding open with a soft hiss. Robyn stepped out, taken aback by the sense of enormous space around her, the jet hexagons of the dome’s glass glittering in the glare of the lighting, the four curved areas below her visible from above as she paced the railing around the mezzanine to look down on the two areas she had wandered into, the other two similarly laid out with couches and sofas. There were desks up here, white units moulded smoothly into the floor bearing slim Apple notebooks opened with dead screens. She tapped a touchpad and was rewarded with a request for a password. She tried 1254 and achieved ‘access denied’.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice echoed in the dome’s vast space. Robyn recoiled from the railing and ran into the lift. She hit -3 and prayed she’d pass the 0 level before the voice realised the lift was on the move and tried to stop it. It dropped, the panel displaying 0 and then -1. Her heart was like a pump action gun in her chest, blap blap blap.

  -2 slid past, a glimpse of vertical tanks of some sort through the li
ft’s glass doors. It opened at -3 and the lighting came on, the darkness giving way to a vast open space lit from all angles by a soft glow cast by the featureless walls, floor and ceiling. She cast around for something to keep the doors jammed open, but the huge room was like the inside of a crucible, glittering ceramic white and featureless. It must stretch below all three domes, this common space. It was warm down here. She pulled off her sneakers and placed them between the two sliding doors. The doors banged to and recoiled. The sneakers bounced but stayed where they were. There would be only so many repetitions before they slid out of place and let the lift rise again. She had to hope for another exit. She ran out into the white vastness in her stockinged feet, a feeling of liberation filling her as she struck out into the white expanse. Shapes flickered into being around her. It was some sort of simulation room, she tried to focus on the actual dimensions of the room but the projected images were becoming stronger and the smooth whiteness around her was assuming forms she was finding it harder to distinguish from reality. Sound began to rise up from around her, disorientating as she fled across the flickering whiteness.

  The shadows began to harden, seemed to form concrete walls and partitioned spaces, rooms within the room. The surfaces coruscated madly, a distressed planking became unfinished concrete, splashed and patched. She held her hands out against it and found substance jarring her. Sobbing for breath, she played along the wall with her palms against the smooth white surface that insisted on appearing to be canvas, oilcloth, the textures started to rub against her fingertips; marble, granite, coal. The dust assaulted her nostrils.

  A button. She focused on it like a drunk, owlish and disbelieving. She pressed it, her gloved fingers smeared with coal dust, black on black. The lift doors opened. She dived in, hitting the back wall painfully with her shoulder. She jabbed at the panel by the door, hitting the 0 button. She waited as her stomach lifted, her tattered mind on the edge of rebellion.