James Goss - Almost Perfect
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- Название:Almost Perfect
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- Год:2008
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:5 / 5. Голосов: 1
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Almost Perfect: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
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The girls all start to sing along to the music. Ianto thinks, ‘I may be undercover, but no. There are some things I cannot do.’ So, after a wan smile, he leaves them to sing about their umbrella.
The cold night air really, really clears his head. He takes a walk around, heading down a flight of stairs and into a long corridor. It’s quite an old ship and there’s a lot of it that’s like his childhood – full of browns and oranges and formica. There are lots of narrow passages. It’s an old Norwegian ferry, and so there are signs scattered around in English, Norwegian (he guesses) and Welsh. Apart from the bar staff, the crew are spookily absent, so there’s no one to go up to and ask, ‘Excuse me, have you seen any alien technology?’
He passes a few doors marked ‘Staff Only’. But they’re not locked, and just lead to boring corridors without even lino. The ship is lurching alarmingly, and Ianto is finally feeling a bit sick. He can sense the sweat pricking under his clothes. He makes his way to a railing and breathes, breathes, breathes.
He’s got a night on the boat, a day in Dublin, and then a trip back. What if it’s all like this? It’s oddly like an airport departure lounge at sea. Completely anonymous, faceless, the perfect cover. Everyone’s a stranger, everyone’s nobody.
He passes a sign advertising events on the ship. It is, gloriously, an old-fashioned velveteen board onto which little gold block letters have been pinned haphazardly. It tells him that there’ll be some poker in a function room. It mentions that there’s a small private party for someone’s wedding. It welcomes a car dealership who are on a trip. And it says that the cinema, in addition to screening some films from last year, will be showing a ‘health presentation’ in an hour’s time.
‘Health presentation?’ Bingo.
Back in the bar, appearing normal, Ianto sits down next to Lucky Debbie. She’s singing merrily away, and pats him on the arm. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ she says. ‘Kerry really likes you.’ She laughs, her breath rich with alcopop. She digs him in the arm. ‘You can get a snog, cheer you up. Cure the seasick!’
‘Can I?’ Ianto says, trying to sound enthusiastic. Kerry appears to be asleep at the table, slumped face down in a cake, the tinsel from her angel wings hanging loose in the breeze.
‘Yeah – when she wakes up. Bless ’er. I’m having a great night. Are you?’
‘Yes. Yes I am, thank you.’ Actually, yes, I am. Hmm.
‘Why are you on the boat? Business trip? A lonely travelling salesman?’
Ianto shakes his head. ‘No. Like I said – I’m a secret agent.’ Lucky Debbie barks with laughter and clinks his glass. ‘You’re full of it. Bless, what are you like?’
‘Well…’ Ianto demurs. ‘I did see that there’s a seminar on health in the cinema in a bit.’
Debbie makes an exaggerated yawn. ‘Right. And any minute now we’ve got a stripper booked if Kerry’s organised it right. What’d you rather see? A film about vitamins, or an oiled stranger stirring your pint with his tackle?’
Ianto considers. ‘Well, when you put it like that, I’d better just pop along and watch my vitamin film.’
Debbie laughs and nudges him on the shoulder. ‘Stay a bit more, eh? Who knows – Kerry may come round for a bit. Just one more pineapple juice. Stay…’
Ianto checks his watch.
Ianto walks into the cinema as the ship lurches quite alarmingly. He clutches at an old flip-down chair. He manages not to spill any popcorn as he sits down. He suspects that, just slightly, he might appear drunk and harmless. Or, as his auntie used to say, ‘tiddly’. Good.
He sneaks a look around himself. There are a clutch of people in the cinema, which has thin carpets thick with chewing gum and a pervasive, cabbagey smell of popcorn. There is an old couple in a corner. They have brought notepads. There is a bored-looking girl in the second row.
A single man, very thin and quite yellow, is sat on his own, coughing slightly. A little away from him is a bald, fat, middleaged man listening to an iPod and laughing a bit too loudly.
Projected onto the screen are a series of slides advertising amenities on board, special offers at the bar, and a range of interesting snacks available. Music is playing (the theme from Van Der Valk , on pan-pipes). There is an atmosphere of comfortable anticipation. He notices the old couple keep squeezing each other’s hands and bickering quietly. They remind him of his parents – perfectly content in each other’s company, passing the days in a series of complicated little arguments and score-settlings. The old lady reaches over and adjusts her husband’s shirt collar. She looks like the kind of woman ready to pounce on grandchildren with spittle and a tissue at the slightest hint of a stain. Ianto decides he likes them. What treatment are they here for?
He decides the thin, yellow man is dying – probably of about five different things. Perhaps the oldies were just becoming forgetful, or hoping to keep rowing for a few more years. Perhaps the bored girl had just wandered in. The bald, fat man might be looking to lose weight and gain hair. Who knew?
But what about himself? Ianto tries to think of something important he could be in need of curing. Perhaps he could just claim curiosity.
Van Der Valk fades away and the slide of the Balti Buffet chunks off. There is a blue screen, a fizzing, and then, of all wonders, an old VHS tape projects into life. The picture crackles, crackles, wobbles and then slow tracking snow drifts down the screen. With an abrupt final crackle, the feature starts. For a brief instant, Ianto is in darkness and about to see Indiana Jones with his father sat on his right, a small bucket of popcorn balanced between them and an orange ice lolly melting stickily over his knuckles.
The picture goes white, and a reassuring logo of cupped hands rising up around a globe appears. Synthesised music swells out, a tune of energy and warmth that sounds just like (and yet, for copyright reasons completely unlike) the theme from Top Gear .
A smooth voice pours over shots that track across an empty hospital ward, a crowded waiting room, and then through a garden where people of all ages walk in the sun. The tone is warm, upbeat and strident.
‘Welcome to Hope. We’ve got used to living in an age of miracles. Where the cure for everything is just around the corner. But what if you can’t wait until tomorrow? Well, we’re here to tell you about how we can offer you the medicine of tomorrow today. This is not a trial. This is not a placebo. This is real hope, a real cure – the stuff of dreams. What we are offering on this boat is not legal, but it is moral. We refuse to keep back a cure that works. This is not alternative therapy, homeopathy, or moonshine – this is the real thing. We’ve worked on a genetic therapy that offers real, rapid repairs of your DNA…’
At this point the screen moves from sunsets and a hopeful woman boiling a kettle while staring wistfully out of her kitchen window to exciting computer graphics of spinning molecules and then some science stuff of cells dividing. Ianto frowns, and sneaks a glance around the cinema. He was right – someone’s come in. Standing at the back of the room are a man and a woman. Both of them startlingly good looking. They exude health, prosperity and well-being. Their arms are linked and they stand watching the screen with rapt, smiling attention. Ianto recognises the woman from the newspaper article. He immediately decides they are involved. The woman catches his glance and smiles at him. Ianto does what he always does when a beautiful woman smiles at him across a room. He blushes and looks away and feels about fourteen.
‘… Our swift, non-invasive procedure is over in minutes, has no side effects, and the difference can be felt at once. We offer this treatment here on the Hope Boat as it is illegal in Britain. Rejected by the NHS as impossible to test and too expensive, we are only too happy to offer it here, in international waters. Simply sign up after this seminar, and a visit will be made to your cabin in the morning. Then, you can relax and enjoy a day’s sightseeing on the Emerald Isle, followed by a revolutionary cure on the voyage back to Cardiff. It’s that easy. And this treatment can work on all sorts of genetic ailments – from simple male-pattern baldness all the way through to cancer. We can make you better. No,’ a warm smile in the voice, ‘we will make you better.’
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