Ken MacLeod - Intrusion

It began as another routine day in the dry lab, except that Brian made them all laugh by reading out what the Daily Mail thought of the previous day’s demos: the huge loss to the economy, the waste of police time, the outrageous misuse of public money and resources for party-political propaganda, and the shocking demagogy of what some MPs and even ministers had proclaimed from shaky platforms.

Geena duly added this to her notes – it was one of the few scraps of directly political comment she’d observed here – wrote a little more of her thesis draft, and turned to her slow, painstaking investigation of the Morrison family’s genomes. There was plenty of software for running comparisons, but all of it assumed you knew what was significant, and Geena didn’t. Apart from some of the more common disease-linked loci, she had to look up everything as she went along. Right now she was looking at the RHO gene on chromosome 3, where Hugh Morrison and his son Nick shared a small mutation, and she had no idea of its significance. Her searches weren’t turning up anything: evidently it hadn’t been investigated or documented. This was in itself odd, in that rhodopsin mutations were associated with a number of well-known pathologies of the retina.

The medical records for the man and his son showed no problems with vision. Geena felt a small surge of excitement. This might be something new, or at least unusual. Maybe now would be the time to ask one of the guys to run her a predictive sim of the gene’s functioning. The easiest to approach, and the one least likely to ask questions, would be Joe Goonwardeene, the shy Sri Lankan. He was working on his own at the moment, not elbow-deep in the VR rig at the table.

At that point Geena’s eyes brimmed with tears. She turned away into the corner, dabbing with a tissue. She felt desperately guilty about Joe. Nearly as guilty as she felt about Maya, and she was going to have to face that soon. She should have faced it ages ago, the very first day, just as she had with Ahmed. But it was different with Ahmed. He was a man of the world. A made man. Ahmed could take it. He had resources. He had connections. He had nothing to worry about.

She took a deep breath, saved her work, stood up, grabbed her jacket and walked over to Joe. She cleared her throat. Joe lowered his glasses, flexed his hands and peered at her over the top rims.

‘Yes?’

‘Uh, Joe, could you possibly… take a break for a few minutes? There’s something I’d like to ask you about and I don’t want to disturb the others.’

Joe glanced at Brian, who hadn’t been too absorbed to notice. Brian nodded to him, and gave Geena a sly, questioning glance.

‘Just some background stuff,’ Geena said. She shrugged one shoulder. ‘Maybe a bit personal. We can go outside.’

Brian waved. ‘Go, go.’

Outside, on Dawley Road, Geena struck out to the right, towards the bridge over the railway. The usual traffic mumbled past. The pavement was dusty as usual, scuffed, and, most importantly, deserted. Apart from the old man sitting in a deckchair in the tiny front garden of one of the row of houses, who glared across the road at them as if their footsteps disturbed his peace. Geena had seen him do this before. He wasn’t sunbathing. He was waiting for the aliens. So the rumour went.

‘Well, Geena,’ said Joe after a silence of fifty yards, ‘what is it?’

Geena glanced at him sideways. Eye to eye, a rare thing for her.

‘Uh, Joe,’ she said, ‘I have a confession to make. A few weeks ago I was stopped by the police and, uh, questioned.’

Joe looked straight ahead. ‘You named me.’

‘I’m afraid I did,’ Geena admitted.

‘What did you say?’

‘The first thing that came into my head, of course. You can guess.’

‘Tamil Tigers?’

‘That’s the one,’ Geena said.

Joe’s light laughter pealed.

‘You have no imagination, Geena. Neither have I.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I have confessed the same myself,’ said Joe. ‘Several times. It seems to satisfy them.’

They walked up the curving slope to the bridge over the railway and looked down for a while at the tracks.

‘Hmm,’ said Geena. ‘Well, I wanted to say I’m sorry, that’s all.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ said Joe. Another sideways glance. ‘Was there something else? I notice you seem to be doing some… technical work.’

‘Well, yes actually,’ said Geena. ‘I would like you to run a predictive sim on a gene. Unofficially, of course.’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ said Joe. ‘About six – would that suit you?’

It wouldn’t suit Geena at all, but she supposed she’d better agree.

‘Perfect!’ she said. ‘Brilliant! Thank you so much!’

They walked back to the works entrance. At the gate, Geena hesitated.

‘Tell the guys I’m taking the rest of the day off,’ she said. ‘Library work, you know?’

‘Very good,’ said Joe. ‘Study is vital!’ He said it so enthusiastically that she half-expected him to repeat it as a shout, with his fist clenched to the sky.

‘Thanks,’ she said, with a wan smile. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

‘Six sharp,’ said Joe.

‘I’ll be there,’ said Geena. ‘See you then.’

She turned around and walked quickly away, down the long canyon of Blyth Road to the high street.

‘You’ve left this a bit late ,’ said Maya, when Geena had finished.

‘I know, I know!’ Geena cried, almost sobbing. ‘I’m so sorry, Maya.’

Maya, on the other side of her desk in a tiny office in the Advice Centre that smelled faintly and (to Geena) foully of illicit smokes, looked at her with sympathetic puzzlement.

‘But it’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s not too late. We’re not talking statute of limitations here. You turned down the trauma counselling, OK, not good, and you signed the chit, but we can wangle a way round that. Lemme think about this for a minute…’

She gazed off into the distance and drummed her fingers on the desk, as if typing – which, for all Geena knew, she was.

‘What?’ said Geena.

Maya gave her a look. ‘You want me to put in a complaint, yes?’

‘Oh no!’ said Geena. ‘No, no. I don’t want any fuss.’

Maya’s smooth brow creased. ‘So why are you telling me all this?’

‘You’re not upset?’

‘I’m upset for you, all right,’ said Maya. ‘Good grief, it sounds horrible.’

‘No, I meant upset with me.’

‘What for?’

‘Maya, I betrayed you. I’m so, so sorry.’

Maya’s expression changed. She jumped up, came around the desk and hugged Geena.

‘Oh, you silly girl,’ she said.

She stepped back and sat on the edge of the desk.

‘Look, Geena,’ she said. ‘These guys you rushed past in the waiting room, yeah? The ones skulking around the side of the building for a smoke, too? Half the fuckers have shopped me for something. Terrorist sympathies? Hah! They’ve fingered me for a lot worse than that. Drug dealing. Corruption. Running prostitution rings. Molesting their children. Plausible stuff, you know? Then they come crying to me. “Oooh, Miss Maya, I do terrible thing, how can you for give me?”’

Maya’s derisive mimicry shocked Geena almost as much as what she was saying.

‘Half?’ she said, struggling to keep up.

Maya waved a languid hand, like a classic film actress trailing a digitally deleted cigarette.

‘I exaggerate, dahling. Call it ten per cent.’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘Fuck. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t make fun of it. I’m not making fun of it. It’s just… oh, fuck.’

And then she was sliding down and forward, and it was Geena’s shoulder being cried on.