Peter James: Perfect People

Naomi looked at each of them in turn as they came into the corridor, her heart jumping every time in the desperate hope that it would be Luke and Phoebe. She wondered, darkly, whether the appearance of these children had been stage-managed by Dettore and they had been ordered to look cheery. But despite her anger at the man, she could not convince herself of this. They all looked natural, healthy and happy. It was a strange sensation; there seemed no tension between any of the children, no ragging, no teasing. A surreal harmony.

Dettore stopped by an observation window. Naomi and John joined him and found themselves looking down at a basketball game. Kids playing energetically, a hard but good-natured game.

They moved on, past another window that looked down into a huge indoor swimming-pool complex. In one pool, teenage kids were swimming lengths. In another, they were practising diving. In a third, a game of water polo was in progress.

Then a hundred yards or so on, at the next window, Naomi shot out her hand and gripped John’s.

It was a classroom. Twenty children sat in pairs at double desks, each with their own computer workstation in front of them.

In the third row, seated together, were Luke and Phoebe.

Naomi felt her heart heave, and tears welled in her eyes. They were here! They were alive! Sitting, looking so beautiful in their white jumpsuits, their hair neat, their faces scrubbed, typing, their tiny faces scrunched in concentration one moment, then looking up at their teacher in anticipation the next.

The teacher, a handsome man in his thirties, was on a raised dais, just like any school teacher, but instead of a white board he had a huge electronic screen, on which was a complex-looking algorithm. As they watched, he tapped the screen with a long pointer and the algorithm changed.

Luke raised his hand.

He was asking a question!

Naomi watched, feeling a thrill she just could not explain, and sensed John was experiencing the same.

The teacher said something and the whole class erupted into good-natured laughter, led by Luke. The teacher nodded, turned to the screen. And, to Naomi’s astonishment, made an adjustment to the algorithm with his pointer.

‘You’ve got smart kids,’ Dettore said. ‘We have a lot of very bright kids here, and Luke and Phoebe are right up there towards the top of the scale.’

‘Can we please go down to the classroom, I want to see them now,’ Naomi said.

Dettore looked at his watch. ‘Coming up to break, just a couple of minutes.’

He led them on down the corridor.

‘What is this place?’ John asked again. ‘Who are all these kids? What are you doing here with them, Dr Dettore?’

Without answering, Dettore led them down a flight of stairs and they came out into a huge, bustling, open-plan self-service dining area. Again it was filled with kids all sitting in pairs, beautiful, friendly little people, chatting away.

They followed Dettore out again, along a corridor similar to the one upstairs, then they stopped outside a door. ‘Grade Two classroom,’ he said to John and Naomi.

Moments later the door opened. A boy and a girl walked out, then another, turning right towards the cafeteria, followed a moment later by Luke and Phoebe, all smiles, sharing a joke.

Then they saw their parents and stopped in their tracks.

The laughter vanished instantly from their faces. It was replaced by faint smiles.

Naomi took a step towards them, with her arms out. ‘Darlings! Luke! Phoebe! My darlings!’

They allowed each of their parents to lift them up and cuddle and kiss them, and showed some embarrassed reciprocation. When John and Naomi put them back down, they stood, motionless as waxworks.

The last of the children came out of the classroom, followed by the teacher.

Dettore introduced them. ‘This is Adam Gardner, our senior computing sciences teacher. This is Dr Klaesson and Mrs Klaesson.’

‘Great to meet you!’ He held out his hand. ‘You have awesome children! I’ve had Luke and Phoebe in my class for just one hour, and already they’re teaching me things I don’t know.’ He looked down at the twins and their faces lit up at him in response. Lit up with such passion, John and Naomi were taken aback.

The teacher excused himself and headed off towards the cafeteria. Dettore said, ‘OK, I guess you guys would like some privacy. You’re going into a private room with your parents and you’ll discuss whatever they want to discuss with you. And if at the end of their visit here they decide you are going to go back with them to England, you will go. You hear what I’m saying?’

Neither child responded.

They sat on comfortable sofas in an air-conditioned room with a view out across the campus, chromium shutters partially closed against the sunlight; John and Naomi on one side of the coffee table, Luke and Phoebe on the other, each child sipping a bottle of mineral water through a straw.

John glanced at the clock on the wall and suddenly asked if there was a men’s room and Naomi said she needed a loo, too. Luke and Phoebe led them out into the corridor and directed each of them.

John went through into an immaculately clean toilet. He urinated, then went to the washbasin, and ran the taps to muffle sound. He went over to the window, cracked it open, looked at the sun in the sky and glanced at his watch, which was still on UK time. John had intentionally excused himself at noon and yet his watch said it was 2 a.m. That meant they had travelled ten time zones ahead. He squinted as he stared at the sun and tried to judge its elevation in the sky. The sun was nearly at the zenith. It was not quite a month after the winter solstice, the date when the sun would be at the zenith over the Tropic of Capricorn, twenty-three degrees below the equator. The fact that sun was perfectly poised above him at the highest point in the sky showed they were probably just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Based on the time of his watch and the position of the sun at noon, this placed them just a bit north of the Tropic of Capricorn in the South Pacific. This was not a definitive experiment; they could still be over one thousand miles from the nearest population centre, but it was a start.

Back in the room with their children, Naomi leaned forward and poured milk into her cup on the coffee table. This could not be happening, she thought. John and I can’t be sitting here, having a formal meeting with our children, as if we’re discussing some property deal, or a used car, or a bank loan or something.

Luke, cradling his mineral water between his tiny hands, said, ‘I am really not clear why you are so anxious for us to return to England with you.’

‘Because we’re your parents!’ Naomi said. ‘Children grow up at home with their parents. That’s how life works!’

‘It doesn’t work like that here,’ Phoebe retorted. ‘Only very few kids here have Parent People. Mostly they are original New People.’

‘What’s the difference?’ John asked.

‘Really, Parents, isn’t it obvious?’ Luke said. ‘They’re the kids who aren’t saddled with baggage.’

‘They didn’t have to develop the way we did inside a woman’s womb,’ Phoebe clarified.

Naomi shot a glance at John and saw the shock on his face. After a moment she asked, only partially tongue in cheek, ‘You found that a hardship, did you, darling?’

But there was no hint of humour in Phoebe’s response. ‘It’s a totally archaic and pointless method of reproduction, which subjects children to unacceptable risks. Parent birthing is no way to protect the long-term future of a species.’

John and Naomi were momentarily stunned into silence.

Then Luke’s expression softened a little. ‘Phoebe and I don’t want you to think we aren’t grateful for all you both did. We feel very privileged.’