The Girl With All the Gifts(14)
They’re in the lab, Caldwell’s workshop of filthy creation, which Justineau doesn’t often visit. She’s only here now because Caldwell summoned her. This base and this mission may both be under military jurisdiction, but Caldwell is still her boss, and when that call comes, she has to answer. Has to leave the classroom and visit the torture chamber.
Brains in jars. Tissue cultures in which recognisably human limbs and organs spawn lumpy cloudscapes of grey fungal matter. A hand and forearm–child-sized, of course–flayed and opened, the flesh pinned back and slivers of yellow plastic inserted to prise apart muscle and leave interior structures open to examination. The room is cluttered and claustrophobic, the blinds always drawn down to keep the outside world at a clinically optimum distance. The light–pure white, unforgivingly intense–comes from fluorescent tubes that lie flush with the ceiling.
Caldwell is preparing microscope slides, using a razor blade to take slivers of tissue from what looks like a tongue.
Justineau doesn’t flinch. She takes care to look at everything that’s there, because she’s a part of this process. Pretending not to see would, she believes, take her past some point of no return, past the event horizon of hypocrisy into a black hole of solipsism.
Christ, she might turn into Caroline Caldwell.
Who almost got to be part of the great big save-the-human-race think tank, back in the early days of what came to be called the Breakdown. A couple of dozen scientists, secret mission, secret government training–the biggest deal in a rapidly shrinking world. Many were called, and few were chosen. Caldwell was one of the ones at the front of the line when the doors closed in her face. Does that still sting, all these years later? Is that what drove her crazy?
It was so long ago now that Justineau has forgotten most of the details. Three years after the first wave of infections, when the freefalling societies of the developed world hit what they mistakenly thought was bottom. In the UK the numbers of infected appeared briefly to have stabilised, and a hundred initiatives were discussed. Beacon was going to find the cure, reclaim the cities, and restore a much-longed-for status quo.
In that strange false dawn, two mobile labs were commissioned. They weren’t built from scratch–there wasn’t time enough for that. Instead they were jury-rigged quickly and elegantly by refitting two vehicles already owned by the London Natural History Museum.
Intended to house travelling exhibitions, Charles Darwin and Rosalind Franklin–Charlie and Rosie–now became huge roving research stations. Each was the length of an articulated truck, and almost twice as wide. Each was fitted with state-of-the-art biology and organic chemistry labs, together with berths for a crew of six researchers, four guards and two drivers. They also benefited from a range of refurbishments approved by the Department of Defence, including the fitting of caterpillar treads, inch-thick external armour and both forward-and rear-mounted field guns and flame-throwers.
The great green hopes, as they were called, were unveiled with as much fanfare as could be mustered. Politicians hoping to be the heroes of the coming human renaissance made speeches over them and broke champagne bottles off their bows. They were launched with tears and prayers and poems and exordiums.
Into oblivion.
Things fell apart really quickly after that–the respite was just a chaos artefact, created by powerful forces momentarily cancelling each other out. The infection was still spreading, and global capitalism was still tearing itself apart–like the two giants eating each other in the Dalí painting called Autumn Cannibalism. No amount of expertly choreographed PR could prevail, in the end, against Armageddon. It strolled over the barricades and took its pleasure.
Nobody ever saw those hand-picked geniuses again. They’re left with the second division, the substitutes’ bench, the runners-up. Only Caroline Caldwell can save us now! God f*cking help us.
“You didn’t bring me here to be objective,” Justineau reminds her superior, and she’s surprised that her voice sounds almost level. “You brought me in because you wanted psychological evaluations to supplement the raw physical data you get from your own research. If I’m objective, I’m worthless to you. I thought my engaging with the children’s thought processes was the whole point.”
Caldwell makes a non-committal gesture, purses her lips. She wears lipstick every day, despite its scarcity, and she wears it to good effect; puts up an optimal front to the world. In an age of rust, she comes up stainless steel.
“Engaging?” she says. “Engaging is fine, Helen. I’m talking about something beyond that.” She nods towards a stack of papers on one of the work surfaces, in among the Petri dishes and stacked slide boxes. “That top sheet, there. That’s a routine file copy of a request you made to Beacon. You wanted them to impose a moratorium on physical testing of the subjects.”
Justineau has no answer, apart from the obvious one. “I asked you to send me home,” she says. “On seven separate occasions. You refused.”
“You were brought here to do a job. The job still remains to be done. I choose to hold you to your contract.”
“Well, then you get the whole deal,” Justineau says. “If I was back in Beacon, maybe I could look the other way. If you keep me here, you have to put up with minor inconveniences like me having a conscience.”
Caldwell’s lips narrow down to a single ruled line. She reaches out and touches the handle of her razor, moves it so that it’s parallel with the edge of the table. “No,” she says. “I really don’t. I define the programme, and your part in it. And that part is still a necessary one, which is why I’m taking the time to talk to you now. I’m concerned, Helen. You seem to have made a fundamental error of judgement, and unless you can step away from it, it will taint all your observations of the subjects. You’ll be worse than useless.”