Skyfall (2 page)

Lari's parents were the perfect example of the system in action. They'd lived in the same dome as kids, grown up alongside one another, and both came from scientific families. And as long as they followed the correct genetic protocols to prevent inbreeding, they were free to reproduce themselves – one male, one female. It was a common story.

Lari was the uncommon part.

In the lobby of the east tower, Lari waited a couple of seconds for the lift, then as the doors slid aside he stepped into its bright interior.

‘Mann, level ten.'

The lift whispered upwards.

All four res towers were built directly onto the clearcrete outer wall of the dome, the blue-filtered expanse forming a curved floor-to-ceiling window along one entire side of the apartment, looking east to where Port North Central filled the skyline below. It was the best apartment in one of the best domes in the city, but Lari barely ever noticed the view. Somehow, after the living, glittering, dusty vista outside, the light within the dome was never quite right. Always too blue, too clean, too artificial. Even at night, when the autotint went completely clear and the domes and stalks were lit out to the horizon – one of the more spectacular sights on the planet, his father always said – even then, Lari found little or no fascination looking at the world through thirty centimetres of clearcrete. His mother had been exactly the same.

‘Look at it, Lari,' she'd told him on that first morning she'd taken him outside for sunrise. ‘Look at how clear it is, how … real. Can you taste the air? That's real air. Outside air.' She'd breathed in deeply and Lari, imitating, did the same.

‘You remember this, okay, Lari? Remember this place, remember this morning. Promise me you'll remember.'

‘I will.'

‘Good boy. Because things are happening out there – out here, I should say, that are so big and exciting we can't even begin to imagine what a different place this world is going to be.'

‘What things?'

She smiled down at him.

‘Impossible things. You'll see one day soon, I promise. And you're going to be such an important part of them, too.'

She fell silent then and for a long time they'd stood, mother and son, watching together the gradual creep of daylight across the skycity, until finally her wristband began to chime.

‘We have to go in now, Lari.'

‘Okay.'

Taking his hand again, she'd led him back to the hatchway, then crouched to his level.

‘Lari, darling?'

‘Yes, Mum?'

‘This has to be our special place, okay? Just for you and me. You can't tell your father or brother about it, because then it won't be just for us, all right?'

Lari nodded.

Eyna Mann leaned forward and kissed her son's forehead.

Lari stood before the enormous window wall of the main room of their apartment, staring out at the city, and traced his fingertips lightly across his forehead. Even now, after all these years, if he closed his eyes and concentrated he could still feel the faint, dry imprint of that kiss. That morning his mother had marked him as hers and even after she'd vanished, just a year or so later, that claim still lingered. It was why he kept returning to that balcony, time after time.

Shaking his head, Lari turned away and went into the kitchen.

His father wasn't up yet. Strange. His protein allowance still sat in the dispenser beside Lari's and his caf cup hadn't been touched. Lari looked at the time: just a few minutes to first shift. His father should have been on his way in to DGAP by now.

‘Weird.'

Lari grabbed his own allowance and tore the wrapper from it, dropping it into the reclaimer as he made his way back out into the living area.

‘Dad?'

His voice echoed off the hard surfaces of the apartment.

‘Dad? You awake?'

Dernan Mann's bedroom door slid aside and Lari stared in. Apart from the rectangle of light thrown in through the open door, the room was dark, the light block still engaged. Lari pressed his finger to the pad beside the door and clean, filtered light flooded inside.

The room was empty, bedclothes flung aside and his father's sleeping robe spilled in a crumpled heap where it had been dropped. The untidiness was almost as out of character as his father's unexplained absence.

‘Weird.'

His father's white DGAP coat was missing from the wardrobe. He'd gone in to work, then. Early. And without caf.

Lari left the room. Dernan Mann's behaviour, or anything else to do with DGAP, for that matter, had long ago ceased to interest him.

In his own room, Lari flicked his terminal into life and chewed his protein bar as he waited for the machine to read his wristband and authenticate his logon. The hard paste tasted even worse than usual.

‘They must have lowered the production standard again,' he muttered, grimacing.

The newswebs were full of the usual city stuff. Scrolling quickly through the major pages, a story on one of the sidebars caught his eye:

Mann Dismisses Rumours of DGAP End-Date
as ‘Terrorist Propaganda'
Port City, Central

Speculation continues in the middle and upper levels of the city as to the possibility of a final shutdown date for the Darklands Genetic Adaptation Program. While sources close to the City Prelate deny that increasing pressure is being brought to bear to bring to a close one of the longest scientific experiments in recorded history, rumours continue to circulate among middle-level management that DGAP is indeed being slowly ‘wound up'.

‘There's no denying it,' said one source, a DGAP field agent who wishes to remain anonymous. ‘Over the last few years, there's been a gradual scaling down of everything in the organisation – budgets, new investigations, reallocation of personnel away from field duties and into administration. It makes sense, when you think about it. The Subjects are all but extinct, and therefore so is the danger of the evolutionary pollution that they present. Without the subjects, there's really no point in the city continuing to fund such a massive, unwieldy bureaucracy as DGAP'

The head of DGAP's Research and Investigative Science Division, Doctor Dernan Mann, dismissed the continuing talk of an end-date for the experiment as ‘preposterous'.

‘DGAP continues to amass and analyse data relating to the ongoing genetic stability of the human race,' he recently told a conference at the DGAP headquarters in Port North Central. ‘The Darklands program has always had the dual functions of containment as well as social and biological study, and these will remain vital areas of scientific interest long after the population of actual field subjects has atrophied beyond statistical significance. To say otherwise is simply to give voice to propaganda circulated by underworld shifties whose ignorance is rivalled only by their stupidity.

‘I would suggest, in fact, that in many ways the role of DGAP has never been more critical. We should remember that of the twelve global darklands Zones created over a thousand years ago in the aftermath of the Pacific Circle disaster, the Antipodean Darklands, of which we are the custodians, is the sole remaining inhabited one. This puts DGAP in the unique position of measuring and assessing the very rate and change of evolution itself. No other scientific body in history has ever had such an opportunity, to say nothing of the vital knowledge that even the few remaining subjects might reveal about the human genome, about which we are still making new discoveries.'

DGAP was formed in the mid twenty-first century in the aftermath of the Pacific Circle disaster as a response to the increasing concerns about …

Lari punched a couple of keys and his terminal flickered back into standby mode. Leaning back in his chair, he sighed. Pity. He'd hoped the reporter might have known something more than the usual pile of accusations and denials that got flung around whenever DGAP was allowed to be publicly discussed. But there was nothing in that article Lari couldn't have written himself.

Perhaps I should try and get a placement in newswebbing.
The thought brought a smile to his face. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd listened to his father and Janil bemoaning the increasing sterility and apathy of the subjects and the futility of the whole project. Between his father and his brother, Lari probably had enough inside information on DGAP to have the whole organisation shut down completely. Public opinion was always fairly heated where DGAP was concerned, especially lately.

But it wouldn't do any good. He knew that too. No point having a story to tell if there wasn't any way to get it out there, and the Prelature wouldn't be allowing any exposes on DGAP to reach the nets in the near future.

And it's not like Dad'll let me, anyway.
Lari knew he was already a large enough stain on the family's reputation, and even though Dernan Mann hadn't exactly been rushing to get Lari into DGAP, he knew there was no way his father would add to the gossip by placing his youngest son outside the family field.

The com buzzed and his terminal flickered back into life.

‘Kes! What's up?'

On the display, his friend shrugged. ‘You know, the usual.'

‘You get a placement?'

‘Nope. What about you?'

‘I'm considering newswebbing.'

Kes shook her head. ‘Like your father's gonna allow that. I can't believe he hasn't pulled you into DGAP yet.'

‘He says there's nothing for me to do there, and there's no point placing me until there's a position.'

‘And you're happy with that?'

‘Not much I can do about it. You know how it is. Besides, I'm not unhappy with the way things are.'

‘I bet. You know you'll have to get yourself placed soon, don't you. The city won't let you just hang around being unproductive forever.'

‘I guess. But nobody seems worried at the moment. Anyway, what about you?'

‘What about me?'

‘You've been waiting as long as I have.'

‘That's different, and you know it.'

‘I don't see why.'

"Cause unlike you, my family field is clearly well below my potential. The city's not going to put me into reclamation like Mum and Dad, but they don't want a mixed-use kid like me getting under the noses of all you upper-level types either. What if I scrambled like your brother and got promoted above kids like you? I've gotta wait until they find somewhere suitable for me. You, on the other hand, have a well-established family field, and the brains to work in it, so you've got no excuse.'

‘Except laziness.' Lari grinned at her.

‘Except that,' Kes agreed. ‘Speaking of newswebbing, have you checked out this morning's item?'

‘You mean the DGAP “story”?'

‘Yeah. What's the deal?'

‘Kes.' Lari sighed. ‘You read the piece. You know it's just the same old stuff they churn out every few weeks.'

‘On the nets, yeah, but what does your dad
really
say?'

‘Why do you get so hung up on this? Every time DGAP is mentioned on the nets, you quiz me on whether there's some kind of conspiracy going on.'

‘Well? Is there?'

‘Don't be an idiot.'

Kes changed the subject, like she always did when Lari irritated her.

‘Are you up for a bit of fun?'

‘That depends on what exactly you mean by “fun”. The last time you suggested “fun” I ended up getting barred from the rec dome for a month.'

‘That was an accident. Anyway, I got barred too.'

‘You're a nightmare.' Lari shook his head. ‘What have you got in mind?'

‘I can't tell you over the com, you'll have to see for yourself. Wanna meet up?'

‘Your dome or mine?'

‘You come here. It's a pain visiting you.'

‘You hate it, don't you?'

‘I hate that you can walk into my dome any time you feel like it, but I need clearance to visit yours. Doesn't mean I hate you, though.'

‘It's just a security measure, Kes. A lot of important people live in 3327, and with the underworld …'

‘Let's not get into this again, Lari. Just get over here and meet me in the ref.'

She cut the com without giving him a chance to respond.

Lari changed into his city clothes. Kes was his best friend – his only friend if it came to that – but she got awfully hung up on stuff and sometimes it was just too easy to stir her up. Still, she was fun to hang out with, especially at the moment when he had nothing better to do. Lari knew it was just a matter of time until the city lost patience with him and he was finally forced into DGAP with his father and brother, but he was determined to put that moment off for as long as possible.

There had to be some compensations for being Dernan Mann's copygen, after all.

Falling.

In her dreams, she is falling into a cold, white world.