John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

I could try again, of course, with another DNA tester, but I don’t think I will. What difference would it make? The search for self is a continuum, what closure can an old man in a coma offer? Of course, I’ve known that forever and chose to ignore it up to now: continuums, you never see them until it’s too late.

–

So Jesus Christ arrives to pick me up at the station in the late Sakagorn’s sky-blue Rolls-Royce, with the deceased lawyer’s driver in livery, of course. It seems that the Asset was already living at Sakagorn’s mansion while the lawyer spent most of his time at a luxury apartment a few miles away. Now the Asset, aka Messiah, treats the mansion, the car, and the driver as his own. I am tight-lipped and cool when I get in the back with him; but he’s the Asset, he’s enhanced, a master of moods. He also speaks Thai perfectly. I want to believe he has been studying it for years; the possibility that he might have become fluent in a month or less is too awful to contemplate. But I remember what Sergeant Lotus Bud said: only a couple of weeks ago the Asset had only basic Thai and they had to communicate in Khmer.

At first I refuse to react to his small talk, but when he makes a pun in Thai that turns the driver to Jell-O (puns are a chronic national weakness: hard men collapse in giggles; we’re not as bad as the Cantonese, but we’re close) I find myself seduced. Why not sit back and enjoy the company of a multiple killer who carves up his long-term workmates to intrigue and charm his elder sibling? After all, he’s Superman. Clearly, he approves of my change of mood.

“You see, my dear, you cannot be angry with me for long. That’s what I always wanted, a blood relation who would forgive my foibles. Even Doc Bride could not foresee that. Do you feel the same way, now we have bonded?”

I decide to check his commitment to our blood brotherhood with a forensic question. “Why did you do them in, Jesus? Exactly, why?”

“Ah! You mean-”

“Goldman and Sakagorn. Surely you haven’t forgotten already?”

“Doctor’s orders. They were about to double-cross the Old Man with a secret deal with China-they were scared the Doc was double-crossing them, so they planned to double-cross him: basic intelligence community stuff. They even tried to buy my compliance-a truckload of dough they offered. How dumb can you get? Couldn’t they figure out that the first programming the Old Man inserted in my brain was loyalty to him? I told him what they were up to and he gave the word. You don’t betray your own creator. I’m not sure he was expecting anything so ornate, though, that was all for you. I have the younger sibling’s need to impress the elder.”

I stare at him. “Killing humans means nothing at all to you, does it? Is that because you do not see us as part of your species?”

He thinks about it. “I do believe you are looking at it the wrong way, dear one. Who on earth gives a damn that Goldman and Sakagorn are dead? My vengeance is just. Their families are much better off now, and Sakagorn’s new young mistress is financially independent-he left her millions in his will. Broaden your view somewhat to include, let’s say, all life on earth, except man. Then broaden it further to include all the life in whatever spiritual spheres you believe in, if any. Then broaden it to include ghosts of the dead, if they exist. Then broaden it to include all the extraterrestrials on all the viable planets in all the cosmos-”

“Yes?”

“So, in none of those areas of research will you find anyone or thing who gives a fuck or a fart for human life. That’s it, you see, the last enhancement is the broadest: humans have no use or importance except insofar as they may one day produce transhumans. There’s no other excuse for their confused and pathetic existence. Fecundity in the production of lab rats aside, there’s nothing humans have that the universe wants. The best they can hope for is a global system presided over by THs who will make the earth run smoothly.” He casts me a glance. “If you don’t agree, name one moral advancement by humanity in the past ten thousand years. The social order and moral code of Stone Age man was far more rigorous and demanding than anything today. Neanderthals would consider a modern human as a psychopathic monkey with gadgets.”

The Asset tells the driver to let us out at the hospital entrance, where everyone stares at the sky-blue limo and the irresistible hunk who gets out. I lead him to the lift that takes us to the head department, which is quiet with dimmed lighting. Jack’s two buddies have already been discharged and it seems they left him there in permanent bliss in accordance with their jungle customs. We stand by the bed of our primogenitor. I have no words for the occasion and neither does the Asset, who stares at the old vet in a state of confusion. I think this could be the first time he’s seen him since childhood and is not prepared for the devastation that time has wrought on that body and face. I think, also, he finds it difficult to imagine that he originates from such stock, for it is as Krom foretold: this Asset has entered a phase of rapid change, his responses are faster, more commanding, more godlike by the day.

“This is the Doc’s gift to me, brother. I asked him to arrange it. Our father will be in a state of bliss now until he dies. Are you pleased with me?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Let’s go,” he says, bored after a few minutes.

Back in the limo he tells the driver to take us to the mansion of the late Lord Sakagorn. Now I realize the meeting with our father has tripped some fuse in him; anything from the soft, mediocre, human zone puzzles and disturbs him. Me, for example, I puzzle and disturb him considerably.

“How was I the other night?” he asks. “Not too military, I hope?”

“At the shooting of the HZ? You were perfect, efficient, brilliant, commanding, responsible with terrific leadership.”

“I was sweating it, I can tell you. It would only have needed one more HZ to beat us. No way we could have coped with two or more, they would have torn us apart. I was seriously intimidated. Did you see the teeth on that thing?” He casts me a regretful look. “I’m being frank here, they’re better than me. Stronger, faster, more ruthless. They could beat me to a pulp with one hand tied behind their backs-naturally that was always the sales line the Russians used with the Chinese.”

“You’ve met HZs socially-the enemy?”

“Sure. It’s not like you think. The transhuman community is…eccentric. Sometimes there are mutant conventions in remote places that I attend along with HZs. It’s quite jolly, the HZs play chess all the time.”

“HZs play chess?”

“They’re fanatics, you can’t keep them away from the board. They allow less than one second per move, the games play at lightning speed, and they can hold an intelligent conversation at the same time, except when they get drunk on vodka and start singing. That can really drive you to suicide, when they try to sing-those barbarians didn’t even try to produce vocal cords capable of basic harmony. Their bodies are unbelievably strong, though-they would have won the contract years ago except that the Chinese learned of a serious flaw. They start to go into decline after about five years-and there’s no way of telling exactly when or how. They tried to convince the Chinese that we had the same problem, that’s why they had one impersonate me like that.”

“What do they do with them after five years?”

“Unclear. Probably Polonium has them shot and they salvage the high-tech parts for recycling.”

I take a couple of beats to process the implications. I guess it won’t be long before artificial organs leave the dead bodies automatically and make their way to the nearest depot. “You were really scared that night?”