Peter James: Perfect People

The machine beeped and the display flashed that another minute had passed. He was working out even harder on this ship than he did at home. Pushing himself into some kind of super-fit shape. Aware of his true reason for doing this, but having difficulty in admitting it to himself.

I want my kid to be proud of me. I want him to have a fit man for a dad, not some wheezing old fart.

It was totally deserted down here on G Deck, deep in the bowels of the ship.

His sole companion was his own reflection jigging up and down on all four mirrored walls, a reflection of a tall, slim man in a white T-shirt, blue running shorts, trainers. A tall, slim man with a tired, strained face and bags like black smudges beneath his eyes.

Young men see visions, old men dream dreams.

The damned line was going round and round in his head, in tune to the pounding of his feet, like a mantra. I may have come here as a man with a vision, he thought. But now I feel more like a priest who is starting to question his faith.

But if we do tone Luke right down, throwing away this chance to make him something really special, will I live to regret it? Will I end up as an old man dreaming of what might have been, if only I’d had the courage?

Naomi’s Diary

If you haven’t been through this you have no idea of the pain. This injection the nurse gives me every morning to boost my egg production feels like a spike being hammered into my thigh bone. I tried again to get Yvonne to talk about the other patients here, but she instantly clams up, as if she’s scared to open her mouth.

John is being wonderful, very loving and putting no pressure at all on me. In fact, in terms of the openness between us, this is the best it has ever been since before poor Halley came along. I hug him in the nights, desperately wanting to make love to him, but that’s forbidden – we were banned from making love for two weeks before we came here – and we’re not going to be able to for weeks after, either. That’s hard. We need that closeness.

I’m finding this place stranger by the day. The atmosphere on this ship is truly weird – we walk around, and there’s not a soul apart from the occasional cleaner polishing a handrail. Where the hell is everyone? Are all the other patients so shy? How many are here? I’d love to talk to someone else, to one other couple, compare notes.

Four hundred thousand dollars! I think about all that money. Are we being selfish spending it on our unborn child? Should we have given it away to help children in need, or people in need, or medical research, rather than squandering it on bringing one new person into the world?

It’s moments like this when I want to pray for guidance. But I gave up on God when he took Halley, and told him so.

How are you, Halley, darling? Are you OK? You’re the one who should really give us the guidance, you were such a smart kid. The smartest kid I ever knew.

It’s thinking about you that keeps me here. I’m thinking about your face when that needle goes in and I’m biting my handkerchief. All that suffering you went through. We want to have a son again now, one who will be smart enough, maybe, to do some real good in this world.

Luke.

We hope Luke’s going to make great new scientific discoveries, we hope he will be smart enough to make some kind of a real difference. So that in the future, no child is ever going to have to die the way you died.

Today we dealt with the Housekeeping genes. Funny description! The Housekeeping group relate to things like the efficiency of each cell to replicate its DNA or synthesize proteins. Nothing too much to worry about there. Luke should heal faster and better from any injuries, which has to be a good thing.

But the cleverest work Dr Dettore is doing in this group is with adrenaline responses. He pointed out just how badly evolution has kept pace with modern life: adrenaline kicks in when we get nervous, giving us a boost of energy to help us run from an assailant. Fine in the days when a sabre-toothed tiger would appear in the mouth of your cave, he explained. But you definitely do not want to be breaking out in a sweat and shaking in a confrontation with the tax collector, or with anyone else in our modern world – you want to remain calm, feel relaxed, keeping your brain as clear as possible.

In other words, stay cool. That is an option I’m tempted by, because it makes so much sense. But we haven’t agreed to it, not yet anyhow, because we’re both worried about tinkering with such an important part of Luke’s body’s defence mechanism.

I’m already thinking of him as Luke now. At least that’s one thing we’re both agreed on. But now there’s another issue – something that’s really disturbing.

‘Compassion,’ John said.

Naomi, deep in thought, seated on a bench on the Promenade Deck writing her daily diary entry by hand into her iPhone, remained silent.

‘Compassion,’ John repeated, as if thinking out loud. ‘ Compassion. How do you define it – how does anyone?’

They’d discussed the genes relating to compassion for over an hour in this morning’s session with Dr Dettore and now, during their free time until the afternoon session, John and Naomi continued toying with the subject.

As the ship headed south the weather was improving noticeably. The air felt gloriously warm to Naomi, and the sea was the flattest she had seen so far. They would be alongside the quay in Havana, Cuba, at seven this evening, but Dettore did not want them to go ashore. It was a fuelling and provisioning stop only. It was crucial over the next month for Naomi to be as healthy as possible; there was no sense risking picking up a bug in a cab or a shop or a bar, he had already told them.

John stood up. ‘Let’s walk a little, darling, stretch our legs. The nurse said exercise would help ease the pain for you.’

‘I’ll try.’ She slipped her phone into her handbag and stood up. ‘What do you think Dettore meant that our child would grow up faster than ordinary children?’

‘I guess he’s implying because of the extra intelligence he’ll have.’

‘I don’t think we should guess anything, John. We need to be sure about everything. He talked about accelerated growth and maturity. We don’t want him being so different to other kids that he doesn’t have friends.’

‘We’ll review everything before we finalize anything.’

‘I’m going through those documents with a fine-tooth comb.’

With the breeze on their faces. they walked along the teak decking, past a muster station and an orange lifebelt printed with the ship’s name. Naomi was limping, her leg aching badly from this morning’s injection. She felt low today, and very vulnerable. Slipping her hand into John’s, into his strong, reassuring grip, made her feel a little better. She squeezed and felt him squeeze back.

They walked past a row of portholes and she peered at each of them in turn, trying to see in. But the glass was mirrored like every other porthole on the ship, and all she could see was her own reflection, her pale face, her hair tangled by the wind.

‘This secrecy thing is really getting to me,’ she said.

‘I guess if we were in any clinic on land, there’d be a lot of privacy. Also – it just feels as if it ought to be different because it’s a ship.’

‘I suppose. I just think it would be interesting to meet one or two of the other couples and compare notes.’

‘It’s a very private thing. Maybe other people don’t want to talk – perhaps we’d find it difficult to talk, too, if we did meet anyone.’

So far the only people they’d met on the ship, other than Dettore, were a doctor called Tom Leu, a pleasant, good-looking Chinese-American in his mid-thirties, whom Dettore had introduced as his senior medical assistant; the nurse, Yvonne; their chambermaid; and a handful of Filipino staff.