14 The Nursery

"Not now!" I growled at the child tugging on the hem of my business robes. His lower lip trembled slightly, as he toddled across the room to where Tasha was sitting on the story-mat, a cluster of infants climbing across her, their faces buried in her blond locks.

A solid mass thudded into my shoulders, sharp claws slicing through the thin, synthetic material and pressing painfully against the skin - one of the nursery's cats I realised. I reached over my shoulder, clutched it around the midriff, and tugged sharply, feeling my robe rising off my shoulders as the stupid mutt kept its claws embedded. I tugged again, and this time it came free, howling with surprise, or perhaps anger, as I dropped it to the floor. It hurtled away across the garishly coloured carpet, protected by a few dozen harsh, tiny stares, then threw itself under a cluster of stacked chairs and tables. Immediately, a knot of tiny figures formed around the cluster, bending down and poking their heads into the various gaps to call for him to come out.

Another child detached himself from a group by the comp-tutor and walked steadily over to me, eventually stopping about a metre in front of me. He tipped his tiny face back, and fixed me with a piercing glare.

"You hurt Smokie, Mr Henderson!"

The chief nurse-mother, who was accompanying us on the tour, bustled over and bent down in front of him. "Mr Henderson didn't hurt Smokie - he was just taking Smokie off his back." She straightened up, and put on her school teacher voice. "Now if you all just get away from the tables, I'm sure Smokie will come out!"

To be honest, I think Smokie had decided to cut his losses and stay under the tables for the rest of the day. The middle-aged nurse mother glanced at me embarrassed. "I'm terribly sorry about that Mr Henderson, I'll have a talk to him when you've gone."

I waved my hand dismissively. "It's okay Citizen, there's no problem. I'm just not much of a cat man." From behind me came the faint sound of my executive assistant stifling a snigger. I stepped to the boy and dropped to one knee.

"What's your name?"

"Barnaby-3SG53Y-03!" he replied brightly, his pale blue eyes never leaving my face. The nurse-mother bent down and whispered in my ear. "His assertiveness rating is near to the limit, but he's a bright little chap..." Her voice trailed away worried.

"Don't worry," I reassured her, "we'll find a niche for him somewhere."

She flashed the boy a motherly smile. "Off you go Barney." He scampered away, the broad smile on his face causing the codes across his chubby cheeks to warp into an arc. I strolled across to Tasha, stepping carefully as I did so to avoid the toys scattered across the room.

She was still sitting on the mat, surrounded by a mass of curious, exited children, all making exploratory prods at her gently rounded stomach. She looked up, happily.

"I was just trying to explain to them, but I don't think they completely understand." She reached down and pulled a small toddler onto her hip, ruffling his hair as she did so.

"We ought to be going," I suggested.

"Do we have to," she lilted disappointedly, "it seems like we only just got here."

"Yeah, I know. But you ought to take it easy, and I ought to do some work. Anyway, we can come back again in a few days."

"Can you give a moment?" she asked, her face gazing up at me hopefully.

"Sure." She turned her attention back to the children and started to make her goodbyes, planting affectionate kisses on dozens of tiny cheeks. I marched back to the nurse-mother, who was now deep in a conference with her coder assistants and some of the older children.

"Is everything okay Mr Henderson?"

"Everything seems to be in order," I informed her, gazing as I did so around the chaotic, child-strewn room.

She looked over at Tasha, still lifting infants from her lap. "And your... erm..." A look of unintended horror oozed onto her face as she searched desperately for a way out of the sentence. "...Your friend seems to have enjoyed yourself."

"Yes."

The chime of my assistant's mini-phone sounded behind me. "Jarvis," he muttered into the mouthpiece, then listened for a few seconds for the message. "There's someone to see you," he announced, looking straight at me, "says he's a friend of yours."

"Did he give a name?"

He lifted the phone back to his face and whispered briefly into it. "No. He said it would be a surprise. He's at the main lobby - shall I have someone bring him up? Or shall I send him to your office?"

I took a lazy glance in Tasha's direction, seeing that she was at most, fifty percent of the way through her farewells. "Send him here."

He'd been right, it was a surprise. The face may have altered, and the clothes certainly had, but the arrogance in his walk as he strolled through the door and across the nursery was unmistakable.

Crazy Horse.

"Nice place!" he grunted. "Very impressive." He took a long, searching gaze around the large, multi-levelled room, taking in the bright, colourful murals that covered every wall, the mobiles turning endlessly above, the neat, coloured cots that lined the open upper level, and the happy, playful children that covered every surface.

"Wasn't like this in my day," he muttered darkly, words that only I understood.

The head nurse-mother circled to his arm. "Would you me to give you a quick tour, citizen? Since your a friend of Mr Henderson."

"No. I think I've seen enough." He turned to her, and forced a smile onto his face. "But thanks for your kind offer, citizen."

"If that's all then?" she asked.

I nodded, and she walked away to the nearest group of children. "Joe!" I called, turning to my assistant.

"Mr Henderson?"

"You can get back to the office. I might be a couple of hours."

He nodded, and made for the door, allowing me to turn my scrutiny back to Crazy Horse. I motioned him to follow me on a slow walk around the room, not wanting the encounter to look too forced. "New face?" I queried, attempting to sound offhand.

"Yeah," he replied, equally casually. He lifted a finger, and ran it along one of his smooth, unmarked cheeks. "You like it?"

"Not bad. I didn't know that was possible?"

"Anything's possible Citizen. If you know the right people."

"And you do?"

"I think so."

He had to, I thought to myself, if they could remove codes. After all, they weren't just tattoos, they were constructed from skin pigmentation, caused by a sequence written into the DNA.

"This new face of yours. Isn't it just a little..."

"Illegal?"

"Yeah, I think that's the word I was looking for."

A shark's smile rippled across his lips. "But citizen, surely you know. All the best things in life are illegal. That's why they make laws."

"So you're a citizen now?"

"That's what the ID card says." We smiled in unison at a quartet of finger-painters, and continued along the room.

"I hear that you're become the Chief Exec of this lot?"

I nodded. "It isn't exactly a secret."

"And I also hear that BioMagic's doing pretty well too?" I nodded again. He looked past me at a wall-board containing a montage of artistic efforts from the children, then smiled slightly. "Of course, the destruction of a quarter of the stock at the Centre must have helped, yeah? Didn't the price of coders double overnight?"

"Yeah," I admitted, "we have had a lot of sales to the government. But then every bio agency has."

"But it was handy wasn't it?"

"So what if it was?"

"No reason."

I spun round if front of him, physically preventing him from moving forward. "Why are you here?"

"To set a few things straight."

"Such as?"

He ignored me, instead reaching down and scooping up a tiny, scampering child into his arms. The little girl smiled, trustingly, at him. "What's your name then?" he asked her, his voice chilling in its lack of emotion.

"Rachel-538D3H-05," she sung sweetly. I looked on in horror as his hand played over her neck.

"Rachel," he repeated, stroking her dark hair, "that's a pretty name. Do you know what my name is?"

"No," she said, wide-eyed, "what is it?"

"Richard," he told her softly, before bringing his gaze to bear on me, "Richard Owens."

"Rich-ard... Ow-ens," she parroted, then slipped off his knee, and ran to join her group-mates.

"Nice name," I said, with a just a trace of sarcasm.

"It's a name," he shrugged.

"Better that your old one?"

A snarl forced his teeth apart. "F42PX7-93 wasn't a name, it was a label."

"So now it's gone."

"It never was," he breathed.

"What?"

"One of the loose ends. You never saw me in Oxford. It never happened. F42PX7-93 died shortly after escape."

"You're saying that the fact that I saw you, before..." I lightly brushed along my cheekbone. "You're saying that is a loose end you wish to tie up?"

He dropped his forearm onto my shoulder. "No. I'm saying that you are a loose end."

"Is that a threat?"

"If you want it to be." He turned and looked down the length of the room. "Nice looking girl."

"Who?"

"The pregnant blond," he growled angrily, turning back to face me. "I could have that baby ripped out of her before the day's out. She wouldn't look so nice then."

A cold feeling of doom clamped around me, so tightly I could barely breathe. "You wouldn't," I stated, remembering the report in Sapphire's database. Should be regarded as psychotic and highly dangerous.

"Of course not!" he pointed out, smiling. "I have people to do that stuff now." He looked back at her, watching her playing a game with some of the children. "Pretty girl, I can see why you bought her. Wouldn't mind her myself."

I pushed his arm off my shoulder. "You're throwing a lot of threats around - citizen! There are limits to what you can achieve."

The madness flared fully within his steely eyes. "I'm with IntSec citizen! I can achieve anything. Do anything. To anyone."

"You're with IntSec?"

He lifted his hands slowly to his face, laying a forefinger on each cheekbone, then swept them outward with a flourish as though wiping his former codes away. "Who did you think could do this, Citizen? Who would dare to do it?" He smiled insanely. "Who'd have the style?"

"IntSec..."

"Who else?"

"And they recruited you?"

"Apparently I had just the right blend, of strength, intelligence and lack of moral qualms to make an ideal agent. All it needed was a little elocution, and a dash of skills. And besides, your little journey resulted in half their field operatives being wiped out."

"You know about that?"

"I know a lot of things."

"So what happened to the others - Doc, Princess, Einstein..?"

"Princess... she went back to mummy and daddy - apparently it was just a phase she was going through! Einstein - he wondered off one day and got lost. Probably dead by now. And Doc? Far as I know, he's still in Oxford.

"You're an evil cunt!" I muttered.

"You ought to know why - if you've remembered what you've learnt."

"What was it that I'm supposed to have learnt?"

"You took a journey to the other side. You saw what has to be done to give you this life. Everyone knows what has to be done. Every single citizen. They all know. If you told them the truth, they'd insist they hadn't known. But they know. Somewhere in their minds, or in their hearts, is the truth. Somewhere dark, hidden, tucked away out of sight, out of mind, somewhere they can forget. But they know what goes on. They know what happens. And they know how many people have to suffer, so that they, the privileged citizens, can have their utopia."

I glanced slowly across at him. "And your point?"

"You knew, you always knew. But knowledge can be ignored, pushed away, discarded. People know what they what they want to know, whatever's suitable for them to know. And the coders..?" A grim and silent chuckle interrupted his speech for a second. "...Well that's definitely not suitable. The coders are treated like shit - and the citizens know that, in their hearts at least. But they can't allow themselves to know that, mustn't allow themselves to know that. Because if they did, their lives, these cities - they're gone. Their happiness is built on the misery of others, so to protect that happiness, they will never allow themselves to know of that misery."

"So? What's this to do with me?"

"Because you were like the rest of them. You knew the truth. But when you made your little quest, you saw the truth. If you know something, you can tell yourself that you don't. But if you've seen it - it's always there. You'll think it's gone. And then one day - when you close your eyes, or when you'll falling asleep... There they are, the memories of what you saw!"

He was right. I said nothing, confirmed nothing. But he was right. When I closed my eyes, they were there. The girl in the fighting pit, the old coder at the shooting range, Dana... and the baby.

"And at that time, when you saw the truth - did you try to hide it?"

I shrugged.

"When you saw what you saw, did you think it was wrong?"

"And if I did?"

"Let's say that you did. You thought you were a dead man walking didn't you?"

I said nothing.

"I knew, it was in your eyes, in every move you made. You knew you had no future - so you had no need to hide from the truth. So you could say to yourself: This is wrong, this is terrible. Why not? After all, you were history! You saw what was happening, and you admitted the truth! Are you going to try and deny that?"

"No," I stated unemotionally.

"But now," he added, almost snarling, "You made it! You rode with death, and made it through. You have a future, and the happiness and the utopia could be yours. So where's your truth gone? Have you pushed it away? Sacrificed it - so that you can have all of this?" He waved an arm around the nursery.

"I remember what I learnt," I told him, glancing across at him. "Is that why you came here? To say hi, show me your new face, threaten to rip my girl apart, and generally abuse me for taking the easy way out?"

"That's about it," he admitted with a shrug.

"And if I keep quiet about you, you'll do the same for me?"

He nodded. "For the moment."

"What are you suggesting?"

"IntSec has certain long term aims..." He turned and continued walking along the wall, stopping by the small window that overlooked the deep atrium at the heart of BioMagic's complex.

"I though that was all history?"

"History?" he sneered, "never. IntSec's like a starfish - you can cut the arms off, but they'll just grow back. No, we might have to lay low for a while, but when it counts, we're still the ones in charge."

"And the Knights?"

"We can take them... we will take them. And BioMagic could be a part of that."

"What?"

"You have certain skills that could be useful to us."

"What's in this for you?" I accused. "What's your angle?"

"I thought that was bloody obvious! I was created as a slave, and now I'm a citizen - with more power than I've ever dreamed of."

"So is that it? Your codes have gone, so now it's okay? What about the lecture you just gave me? What about all the bitterness you used to have, about what society did to you, the way in which society fucks people up?

"It wasn't the way society fucks people up, that I had a problem with." He paused, gazing out over the intoxicating beauty of the plant-covered atrium. "I just wanted to be one of the people doing the fucking."

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