Peter James - Perfect People

John smiled, but he looked sad, bewildered. ‘Luke frightened me this afternoon. I mean that seriously, he frightened me, it was like – I wasn’t playing against a child – or anything human. It was just like playing against a machine. It actually got to a stage where I felt there wasn’t any point in playing any more, because it was no fun.’

She sipped some wine. ‘Maybe we should consider putting him in a chess tournament, see what happens if he’s given a real challenge?’

‘And have him hit all the headlines? A three-year-old chess prodigy is going to be national news, hon. It would flag him loud and clear up to the Disciples. We can’t do that. What we are going to have to think very seriously about is special schooling.’

‘Do they have schools for machines?’ she said, only partly in jest.

John put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. ‘What are they going to be like in ten years’ time, do you think?’

‘Ten years? What about in another three years? They’re like miniature adults already. What do you think they’re doing up there now in their room? Just hanging around until we go to bed, so they can start surfing the net all night? Designing new rocket-propulsion systems? Re-drafting the British Constitution?’

She ate the last of her omelette. ‘Are you going to call Dr Michaelides in the morning? And tell her about the guinea pigs? I’d like to know her thoughts.’

He nodded and stood up. ‘Going to my den.’

‘Do you have to work tonight? You look tired.’

‘The book proofs – they have to be back in the States by the end of next week.’

*

Upstairs in his den, John opened up the web browser of his own computer. Then he began to look back at the history, starting with the day before the children had been given their own computer, then going back over the past months.

There were pages and pages of sites he had never visited himself. Again, as he had found on the children’s computer, scores of visits to maths, physics and other science sites. There were visits to history sites, anthropological sites, geological, geographical. It was endless.

Nothing frivolous. His little three-year-olds hadn’t used their internet surfing skills to do anything as dull as log on to kids’ websites or chatrooms. It was just as if they were on one continuous quest, or hunger, for knowledge.

Three months back he came across the chess sites. Luke, or Luke and Phoebe together, had visited dozens of sites, ranging from learning the basic game to advanced strategies.

Then he knelt and switched on the children’s computer on the floor. It began booting up, then the password request came up. He entered the new password he had typed in this

morning, to stop the kids having access to it while it was confiscated. The message came up: PASSWORD NOT VALID – RETRY.

He had deliberately put in a hard password, one that would be impossible to crack by chance. Maybe he’d made a mistake typing it just now? He tried again. b*223* amp;65 amp;*

PASSWORD NOT VALID – RETRY.

He’d written it down on a slip of paper, which he had put in his back trouser pocket, and dug it out, to check. It was correct. He typed it in again.

PASSWORD NOT VALID – RETRY.

Shaking his head in disbelief, he tried one more time, with the same result. And now he was pretty sure what had happened.

The children, or one of them, at any rate, must have been in here and somehow cracked his password. Then changed it to a new one.

The room was small, the window panes so rotted and waterlogged that the paint barely still stuck to the wood, and the putty was crumbling. The glass shook in the wind. The sky was grey, flecked with rain, and the sea beyond the promenade railing a heaving, ominous slurry.

There was a single bed, a television he had never watched, a table, a washbasin, a mirror, a couple of chairs, and his Bible. His crucifix hung on the wall in place of a print of Constable’s Haywain, which he had taken down and placed on top of the wardrobe.

Every morning he rose in this small, cold room, in this foreign city, said his prayers, then opened his laptop and logged on to the internet in anticipation. But so far, he had been disappointed. Every day he watched the flow of data in disgust. Effluent pouring into his mailbox. Every morning he was presented with fresh opportunities to make his fortune, to make the acquaintance of ladies who wished to lure him to their pages. He noticed them, oh yes, and they made him angry, and they made him sad and they made him glad.

Glad that soon he would be going away from all this, abandoning it to its own putrefaction. Soon he would be in the arms of Lara, and they would make children, make them their own way, God’s way, not the Devil’s Spawn’s way.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honour your father and mother – which is the first commandment – with a promise – that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Ephesians 6: 1-3.

He should not have this possession, for it was a sinful object, but he could not be without it. It was all he had of her. Lara had given it to him the morning they had parted. A small colour photograph of her standing in a simple summer dress, on the deck of the Californian ranch house where they had met. She was smiling, her long black hair tumbling over her bare shoulders, over her skin that was like silk. It was more than three years ago, but he could still remember the scents of her body, every smell, every touch, every word, promise, every caress of her breath against his face. I will wait for you, Timon, my darling angel, I will wait for you until the end of time.

Soon, Lara, God willing, soon!

Seated at the wooden table, beneath the miserly warmth of the single bar heater on the wall, he looked down the list of new emails, sifting through the filth, and suddenly, today, Monday morning, he felt a beat of excitement as he read the email that came with no signature and from an address he did not recognize.

He turned rivers into a desert, flowing springs into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a salt waste, because of the wickedness of those who lived there. He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs; there he brought the hungry to live and they prepared the foundations of a city where they could settle. They sowed seeds and planted vineyards that yielded a beautiful harvest; he blessed them, and their numbers greatly increased, and he did not let their herds diminish. Psalm 107.

It was the message for which he had been waiting six lonely weeks. It was the call for him to do his duty and then, finally, to come home!

He logged off, his heart soaring. Thinking hard and quickly. There was a lot to be done, so much, but he was prepared, it would not take long.

He ate breakfast downstairs at a table on his own, saying a silent grace, avoiding eye contact and conversation with other guests. As he ate, he ran through his mental shopping list. Some of the items he had obtained already, by mail order, via the internet. He had been taught of the need to buy everything separately, in separate shops, in separate towns. Being a foreigner, he would be remembered more easily than a native English person. He would stick out. An American in Sussex, in January. A curiosity.

But he would be gone long before it mattered.

At midday on Tuesday morning, Dr Sheila Michaelides sat at her pine desk in her consulting room. She looked distinctly frosty.

Through the window behind the psychologist, Naomi watched rain falling on the lush green walled garden. She could see a thrush on the grass, digging with its beak, tugging out a reluctant worm.