48

Carl May sent for Jacko, Petie, Elwood, Dougie and Haggie.

‘Tell me about the clones,’ he said. It was Thursday evening.

Carl May looked at his watch as he spoke, unusually conscious of the tyranny of time. So much to do, and so few years to do it in! The skin on his right calf itched; his circulation was bad. Would Bethany return of her own free will, and by five thirty, as she had promised, or would she have to be fetched? The hands of the watch blurred: the most expensive watch in the world, sleek, unobtrusive, infallible, but still the hands blurred. It was bitter. The fault lay in his eyes. They had tears in them. He wanted Bethany to return to him of her own free will. If she had to be fetched, he would feel discouraged and end up removing her from his scale of reference: that is to say from the material and current world. She would not die, or only so far as friends and relatives were concerned, and up to a point herself – though what that death experience was, who was to say? No, she would merely be put off to some other time, as Joanna’s gardener had been. A pity for the genes of that particular talent, greenfingers, to be lost to the human race. The experience of Garden Developments plc was this, that – forget science, nutrients, temperature, humidity, and so forth – plants simply grew better in the care of certain individuals than in others. Greenfingers. He thought perhaps Bethany had pink fingers. See what happened to his circulation when she went away. He had been happier, calmer, of course, when married to Joanna. White fingers. But white fingers betrayed, strayed. If Bethany did not return, if Bethany removed herself from Carl May and the world – for were not the world and Carl May the same thing? – then perhaps one of the younger versions of Joanna May would do: white fingers he himself had made tolerable by tingeing them with youthful pink: redipping the faded stuff in stronger dye.

But Jacko was delivering the report on the clones. He was dyslexic. He held folders but spoke from memory. They were in Carl’s penthouse office suite at the top of Britnuc’s tower. Carl May sat in his architectural chair, and tried to find it comfortable. He thought for the first time that it was a young man’s chair: it was uncushioned: it demanded resilient young flesh for its proper occupancy. The Barbers of the Bath did not sit, however, no matter how resilient their flesh. Their layered trousers were too bulky, or the chairs too narrow, to make it possible. He stared at Jacko’s trousers: a ragged hole in dusty black cotton gave way to ripped green wool tartan, which showed slit red satin beneath, and that was patched and pinned. Three of them smoked: ash fell unnoticed on their clothes and on the pale floor. He would be glad when he was finished with them. He would not use a rock group again: they were easy to buy, easy to bribe, so unnecessarily cynical were they about the ways of the world – citing ‘everyone does it’ as cause and justification of their actions when of course the truth was everyone did not do it – and they were certainly stylish, but he felt more at ease with professional villains, who could make a proper distinction between criminal and ordinary citizenship, and stood their toddlers in a corner if they swore.

Jacko recited the qualities and lifestyles of the clones, rather as a nervous waiter recites a memorized menu, babbling a little, eyes to heaven. Carl May was accustomed to nervous waiters.

Carl May looked at his watch. He still could not make sense of it. Haggie took out his Victorian pocket timepiece ‘Five thirty-five, sir,’ Haggie said, rounding to the nearest figure, as people always used to, in the old world. Carl May was surprised that the lad could tell the time from a handed watch. So many of the younger generation could not. In the four Magnox stations under Britnuc’s control, all clocks had of necessity been converted to digital display, at considerable expense. A wave of despair made Carl May catch his breath. All to no avail, all efforts on behalf of the human race; how could science hold back this tide of stupidity, flesh and blood rioting, breeding uncontrollably, surplus upon surplus, so excess a quantity that quality went out the window, more and more and more, this plague of unthinking, all-feeling humans, no better than a plague of locusts, chattering, devouring, destructive, monstrous. To no avail, this latest heaven-sent breakthrough of the geneticists: the happenstance in nature of a dehydrating fungus, so that henceforth the nuclei of mammals could be treated and transferred unharmed, the building blocks complete. And not just transferred, but multiplied a million times in the E.Coli vats, so the shuffling of DNA, the improvement of physique and personality, could now be done at will. Jacko, Dougie, Haggie, Elwood, Petie. What could you do to them? Require the skill, refine the spirit, make good not bad. Too late, too late! Too many now. The random creations of nature would overwhelm the desires and designs of thinking man. Five thirty-six.

Carl tried to listen to Jacko’s report. For the hors d’oeuvre, Alice, light and astringent (but too much lemon). For the fish, Julie, tentative and delicate (but a little stale, a little flat, too long out of the water). For the entrée, Gina, full-blooded but overcooked. Jane, a delectable dessert except salt not sugar had been put in the topping.

Faithful, monogamous? The Barbers of the Bath allowed themselves sounds of derision, close-harmonied snorts. Promiscuous at best, lesbians at worst. Carl May said perhaps it was because they had never met the right man, and the four young men shuffled their great Doc Martens eighteen-hole boots and looked uneasy: they had not expected words for the defence spoken by the prosecutor. They had understood their task to be to report adversely.

‘So what’s the message, sir? What’s the next step?’ Jacko asked.

Gina and Jane, meat and dessert. Too rich and indigestible. He had an old man’s gut, it had to be faced. Those two would have to go. Alice and Julie would replace Bethany, one or the other. Which would he choose? Hors d’oeuvre or fish? One too lemony, one a little stale. Why not both together? They’d consent. They’d do as he asked, as Joanna always had. They’d love him, as Joanna had. Of course they would: they were Joanna. When he multiplied her he had not so much tried to multiply perfection – that was a tale for Holly – he had done it to multiply her love for him, Joanna May’s love for Carl May, multiply it fourfold: to make up for what he’d never had: Carl May, the bitch’s son. But love was strong, when it came to it: you couldn’t stand too much of it: Joanna had been more than enough. It took Bethany, a sorbet between courses, tasted, relished, to restore a jaded palate, a tired appetite. Alice and Julie it would be. Five thirty-seven.

He tried to speak. His voice shook: he stopped.

‘Instructions, sir?’ asked Jacko. They sang the word, in inefficient close harmony. Inst-instr-instruct-instruction-instructions. He wished they wouldn’t. His leg began to itch badly. There was a whining and whuffling in the air: it was the snuffling harmony of a bitch and her litter of pups. He’d lived amongst the excrement and the noisy, messy warmth of the litter and got quite fond of it. The need to love, for a child, is stronger than the need to be loved. When he was hungry, he’d sucked from her. But that had been when he was very small: he’d been told that: he didn’t know if it was true. Five thirty-eight.

‘Oh yes, instructions,’ said Carl May. His voice came back, and his will. He told them Jane and Gina would have to go. Julie and Alice would be fetched. Their ten eighteen-hole Doc Martens boots marched out, blurred by a flurry of dangling fabrics.