The Twilight of Briareus - Richard Cowper by The Twighlight of Briareus EDG (v1 html)

Author:The Twighlight of Briareus EDG (v1, html) [EDG, The Twighlight of Briareus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: EBook Design Group Digital Edition
Published: 2012-01-01T15:54:10.562000+00:00

Marcelle did call on Professor McHarty. She told me about it the day she got back, at the annual staff/student party which always took place on the last Saturday in June. “It was odd,” she said. “Have you heard from him lately?”

“Not a word. I didn’t even get an acknowledgement to the letter I wrote to tell him you were coming. I thought maybe he was abroad.”

She frowned. “I think he’s scared.”

It seemed such an unlikely word to use in conjunction with the Angus McHarty I remembered that I almost wondered if I’d heard correctly. “What on earth makes you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t mean he was frightened on his own account,” she said, “but on mine—on ours. He wanted to know if we’d been approached.”

“Approached? Who by?”

“Someone—or something—he called ‘International Security.’ Have you heard of them?”

I shook my head.

“Well, apparently they’re compiling some kind of register of all Zeta mutants.”

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “Did he say why?”

“It’s to do with a new line of fertility research. Something they’ve discovered in America. They plant electrodes in the temporal lobes of the brain—what he called the ’interpretative cortex.’”

“So?”

“He wasn’t terribly specific—I got the idea that it’s all very much top security at present and that he’d only got wind of it through private contacts—but it seems that some of them—some of the Zetas that is—haven’t taken it too well.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve become… well, ill.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded. “Mentally deranged, he said.”

“Good God!”

“He didn’t go into a lot of detail.”

“But if that’s true, surely they’re not going on with it, are they?”

“Well, that’s just it. Apparently they are.”

“But why, in God’s name?”

Marcelle glanced round to make sure she couldn’t be overheard then put her lips close to my ear. “It seems that some of them have become pregnant.”

“What!”

“That’s what he told me, anyway.”

I felt as though my insides were being squeezed in a fist of ice. “You mean they’re prepared to make them mad just so they can… ? I don’t believe it!”.

Marcelle shrugged.

“But that’s inhuman!” I protested. “Diabolical! No one would let them do it!”

“No?”

“And besides, if they had done it—had broken the sterility, I mean—we’d be bound to have heard about it by now.”

“Would we? Even if the mothers were all mad?”

I shuddered. “But how could they have got them to agree?”

“I suppose they would have ways of persuading you,” she said thoughtfully.

“Not here,” I said. “In some countries, maybe, but not here.”

“I’m not so sure,” she said. “But do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“That they wouldn’t need so much persuading anyway.”

“What on earth makes you say that?”

“I’ve met quite a few of them in the last year. They aren’t all like you, you know. Still, I’ll have.to warn them. He made me promise. Do you want to come along?”

“You bet I do.”

“Tomorrow evening then.”

As soon as I got home I put through a phone call to Leicester Hall and asked to speak to McHarty. There was a pause, followed by a few odd electrical hiccups, then a voice said: “You’re through.

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