What happens to us when we die?
Oblivion. Or so believes Dr Miles Fleming, a brilliant, young neuroscientist who has developed a device capable of reading human brainwaves. But when his own brother contacts him after being certified dead for six whole minutes, Fleming wonders if he’s got it all wrong.
His search for the truth uncovers a terrifying religious conspiracy to stage the most ambitious experiment the world has ever seen – to prove beyond doubt the existence of a heaven or a hell. As the world awaits the final judgement, Fleming must confront his own demons to save not only his own soul but that of all humanity.
THE LUCIFER CODE pits the faith of religion against the certainty of science in a heartstopping thriller which explores our deepest fears.
As ever, my greatest debt of gratitude is to my wife, Jenny. She, more than anyone else, helped bring Lucifer to light. Her inventive research and creative ideas were invaluable in developing characters and plotting story lines.
In our research the following books proved particularly valuable: The Quantum Self by Danah Sohar (Flamingo 1991), Q is for Quantum by John Gribbin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1998), Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakener (Pan 1990) and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I am extremely grateful to everyone at Transworld Publishers for their warm encouragement and continued support, especially my excellent editor Bill Scott-Kerr.
Major thanks are due to my friend and agent Patrick Walsh, and film agent Sam North.
I also thank the following for their help in researching the book: Commander Jerry Plant of the Royal Navy, Giles Palmer for his ideas on quantum physics and Pete Tyler for his insights on theology and the Catholic Church. Any mistakes are mine alone.
Finally, I should like to thank both my parents for their tireless enthusiasm and support. Outside the peerless Transworld sales force, they are the best sales team an author could wish for.
The VenTec Foundation. Alaska.
Twenty-nine years later
Being unable to blink was the worst sensation. That, and the chill fear in her guts from knowing she was going to die.
When she awoke to find herself immobile on the laboratory couch, head shaved and eyes pegged open, Mother Giovanna Bellini knew what fate awaited her. Not only had she witnessed a hundred similar experiments but she had also contributed to them, administering the last rites to the subjects. Unlike her, however, they had been terminally ill. The imminence of their deaths and the act of dying had made them indispensable to the project.
Surely the scientists couldn’t be responsible for this. Over the last nine months she had worked with them, helped them in what she thought was God’s work. The Red Pope himself had appointed her to perform the last rites, explaining that she was contributing to a great and sacred mission. ‘Don’t question the scientists, Mother Giovanna, for they, like you, wear the scarlet crucifix of the Church of the Soul Truth on their chests.’
But it had been impossible to remain silent. She had been faithful to the Holy Father since he was a senior cardinal in the Vatican, choosing to follow him when he left to found his own ministry. Now, having been entrusted with this most sacred responsibility, how could she betray that trust by saying nothing?
Stinging liquid was dropped into each eye but she couldn’t recoil.
Dear God! Help me!
She willed the words from her lips but no sound came. Even her screams were silent. Her body had been switched off by the paralysing drug, which the blonde woman in the white bodysuit and reflective eye-protectors had injected into her veins.
At the outset, it was understood that Mother Giovanna would leave the laboratory immediately after administering the last rites to each experimental subject, but recently she had lingered outside the tinted glazed doors, curious to observe how they pinpointed the crucial moment of death. After witnessing the final stages of the last three experiments she had felt compelled to contact Sister Constance, her oldest, most trusted friend, and seek her advice. Sister Constance had promised to respect her confidence and encouraged her to go direct to the Holy Father and tell him that the scientists weren’t waiting for the patients to die, but killing them.
How did they know she had betrayed them? And how did they dare do this to her, knowing she had the Red Pope’s protection?
Even as her upper body was raised and the hollow transparent sphere lowered over her head, she strained to see a flash of red in her peripheral vision – the tell-tale scarlet robes that would signal the arrival of Monsignor Diageo or perhaps the Red Pope himself. But as the glass sphere was sealed round her neck she saw no such sign of salvation.
It was made up of different textured layers and the refracted light shining through them had a cold beauty, like moonlight on a dark desolate lake, and brought her no comfort. The blonde scientist raised the front section of the sphere as if it were an astronaut’s visor. Contact lenses, large enough to cover the exposed eyeballs, were inserted in Mother Giovanna’s eyes, scratching her corneas. Then a foil tab was stuck with gel to her right temple, making her shaven scalp itch.
Worse than the discomfort, though, was the knowledge that she had unwittingly stood by while others had suffered the same fate. She had been told they were all volunteers who felt nothing before the end, but now she knew that wasn’t true. This frightened her more than anything else; she had sinned and needed absolution before she died.
As fear bled into despair she wanted to weep but no tears came.
Where are you, Holy Father? she screamed silently. Why won’t you save me?
‘The countdown’s starting soon,’ the blonde woman announced calmly.
Mother Giovanna’s heart, one of the few muscles to defy the paralysing drug, pounded in her chest. She panicked, not because she was going to die but because she had not been absolved of her sins.
Forgive me, Lord, and have mercy on my soul. The transparent visor was replaced over her face. Then an odourless gas entered the sphere, bathing the departing world in a green aura. She heard the countdown start and knew that death awaited.
Tate Modern. Bankside, London.
Thirty-eight minutes earlier
The mellow sunlight of a mild October afternoon had transformed the Thames to molten gold. The black limousine driving past the Millennium Bridge was a standard Mercedes, except for the heavily tinted windows and custom-built seals that allowed no ultraviolet light into the vehicle. Sitting in the rear seat, Bradley Soames glanced to his left at St Paul’s Cathedral, its magnificent dome inspired by St Peter’s in Rome. Looking right, directly across the river, a more modern cathedral loomed into view – a cathedral to technology. This angular brick edifice, with a high square chimney in place of a bell-tower, had once been a power station. It now housed the largest modern art museum in the world.
Soames caught his reflection in the heavily tinted glass. He disliked his appearance: the blue eyes and wavy hair, which was the colour and consistency of gold wire, didn’t trouble him, but his skin, a pale freckled mosaic of scar tissue, made him turn away. ‘Walt, I know most of the press will be in the presentation by now but I still want to use the side entrance,’ he said.
‘As you wish, Dr Soames,’ replied his assistant, from the front passenger seat. Walter Tripp, an elegant, balding black man with round rimless glasses, was dressed in formal dark suit, white shirt and blood-red silk tie. ‘The gallery director’s arranged the viewing room above the hall as you asked, but there’s no UV screening over any of the entrances.’
‘No problem, I’ll cover up.’ Checking his watch, Soames noted that Amber would be starting her presentation in the turbine hall. His own appearance at the launch wasn’t scheduled for over an hour but he wanted to observe her and confirm his suspicions.
As the car turned right over Southwark Bridge, he rolled down the cuffs of his lined black jacket until they formed gloves into which he pushed his hands. He grimaced as the fabric caught on the still raw scar on his left hand, where the most recent melanoma had been cut out. He sealed the gloves with Velcro strips to ensure that no skin was exposed then raised the hood and secured it over his head. He put on an oversized pair of tinted spectacles to protect the top half of his face, and attached to the hood a flap that hung over his chest so that it concealed the lower half like a yashmak. When the car pulled up his skin was protected from the autumn sunlight.
Soames stepped out of the car and looked up at the windowless cliff of unbroken red brick that formed the south side of the building before he followed Tripp to the side door. To his left, by the main entrance, he could see banners hanging from flagpoles, announcing the title of the exhibition: ‘The Shape of Light’. The sponsorship of this exhibition and a multimillion-pound donation to the gallery had allowed Optrix to take over the turbine hall for today’s European press launch of the Lucifer soft-screen.
Two gallery officials recognized Soames from his protective clothing and ushered him through the cavernous main lobby, past the throng of visitors milling around the glass-walled restaurant and the gift shop, and through the crowds waiting to go up to the upper galleries. They got into a lift, and went to a room on the fifth of eight levels. The temporary room had been partitioned off from one of the large galleries and overlooked the vast turbine hall below. It was laid out as he had requested, with a view of the proceedings below, an optical computer with access to the Optical Internet, and a small refrigerator of Coca-Cola.
After the officials had left, Tripp retrieved a pen-sized ultraviolet detector from his jacket and, once he was satisfied that the room was safe, nodded to Soames, who removed his outer wear and focused his attention on the hall below.
It was a breathtaking sight. It was almost a hundred and fifty feet high and two hundred feet long. In place of pillars, iron girders formed a skeletal grid against grey walls and a vault of iron beams supported the soaring flat roof. Black horizontal blinds covered the spine of skylights running down the centre of the roof, and other natural light sources had been similarly screened. A white banner emblazoned with the Optrix Optoelectronics logo and the corporate tagline ‘Let There Be Light’ stretched across one end of the hall. Beneath it a raised presentation dais faced a two-hundred-strong audience of journalists, customers and opinion-formers, in regimented rows interrupted only by five luminous sculptures towering thirty feet above them. Commissioned by Optrix from the celebrated artist Jenny Knowles, they glowed in the low light as if pulsing with life. In varying abstract shapes, including a double helix, a stunning interpretation of the Milky Way, and an iridescent twenty-foot-high sculpture of a water molecule, each piece appeared solid although it was no more substantial than light. Soames, however, knew the greater truth behind it: he understood that light was as much a collection of subatomic particles, photons, as it was an abstract wave.
This duality was embodied in the sixth exhibit, a massive installation that dominated the other half of the hall. It featured two flat parallel partitions seemingly suspended in space, each at least ten feet high and twenty feet wide. The first was white, punctured by two vertical slits. The second was black glass like a television screen. Facing the white partition was a laser cannon, its beam directed at the slits and passing through them to hit the black screen beyond. But instead of creating two vertical lines of light, it produced a zebra pattern of regularly spaced stripes similar to a barcode.
Every few minutes, seemingly at random, the striped pattern on the black screen would fade and the beam from the laser gun would break up into pulses, like pellets of light. Each single pulse appeared to pass simultaneously through both slits, and as it hit the black detector screen it left its glowing mark on the glass. But instead of forming clusters of light in line with each of the slits these marks gradually re-created the stripes across the width of the screen, as if each perfectly choreographed pulse of light knew its exact place in the pattern.
The exhibit amused Soames. He never tired of exploring and witnessing the anomalies of the quantum world, where particles smaller than an atom defied the physical laws laid down by Newton for the so-called real world.
A hushed murmur ran through the audience below as the ambient lighting dimmed and the sculptures vanished. Only the sixth exhibit was still visible, its single pulses of light continuing to form their magical pattern on the black screen. Seconds later, ethereal music echoed through the cavernous space and one by one each sculpture reappeared.
‘Welcome to the light age,’ he heard Dr Amber Grant say, from her position on the raised dais at the end of the hall, as the ambient light gradually returned. ‘Today, we at Optrix wish to celebrate with you the mystery of light and demonstrate our mastery of it.’ She indicated the laser cannon exhibit. ‘First the mystery. Imagine the following set-up: two parallel walls, one in front of the other. You make a vertical slit in the first wall and shine a continuous beam of light at it. What do you see?’
She smiled. ‘Simple. A single white vertical line on the second wall caused by the light shining through the slit in the first. Now put two slits in the first wall and shine a light at it. What happens now?’ Amber pointed at the exhibit. ‘You don’t see two vertical lines on the second wall as you might expect, but a stripy pattern of light and shade. This effect is the result of light waves spreading out from each of the two slits and interfering with each other like ripples on a pond. This famous double-slit experiment, originally conducted over two hundred years ago, proves beyond a shadow of doubt that light travels as a wave.’
Amber allowed a silence to hang in the air. ‘Then in 1906 Einstein discovered that light wasn’t just a wave but also a collection of subatomic quantum particles – what we now call photons. Einstein’s original description has become the generic term for the strange subatomic world in which everything from an atom downwards can exist as both an abstract wave and a substantial particle. But even this duality is not the real mystery of the quantum world.’
She pointed at the exhibit, which had resumed sending out pulses of light. ‘The sculpture behind you re-creates a modern version of the double-slit experiment. In this experiment a series of single light photons are emitted from a source. But instead of passing through one or other of the holes to form a pool of light on the second wall, each photon somehow travels through both slits simultaneously and interferes with itself. As it passes through the slits it gradually forms the zebra-striped wave interference pattern on the detector screen on the second wall, as if it consciously knows its individual place and is choreographed to behave like a wave.
‘However, when the experiment is set up with two particle detectors on the other side of each slit we find that each photon behaves as a single particle. Like a pebble, it follows a definite path through one slit and strikes only one particle detector.
‘These actual experiments indicate that photons are conscious. They behave differently depending on how they’re observed. And what’s even more strange, they appear to be telepathic and clairvoyant too. They know whether to behave like a particle or a wave before they go through the slits. Each photon seems to know how the experiment has been set up and can predict which state it’s expected to be.’
She paused. ‘So much for the mystery. What about the mastery? We at Optrix pride ourselves on knowing better than most how quantum physics works and have been able to exploit its duality to harness the power of light, which, as we all know, is the ideal medium for computing and communication. Its information-carrying band-width is colossal: a single burst of laser light can transmit the entire contents of every library in the world in a second. It can be split into as many different wavelengths as there are colours in the rainbow, making it ideal for parallel processing. And, of course, it’s fast – there’s nothing faster.
‘It’s been eight years since Optrix launched the first optical computer and transformed the world. If you cast your mind back to the opening years of this millennium, silicon was becoming obsolete as the physical limits of processing power were reached. Even Intel had to concede that Moore’s famous law, which claimed processing speeds doubled every eighteen months, was impossible to sustain.
‘So when the first optical computer – the Lucifer One – was launched, all the rules were broken. There was no longer a need for a silicon-based processor chip and RAM and a hard disk, because the Lucifer used subatomic light photons to do all these things – to process, memorize and store data. A quartz motherboard of optical circuits allied to a sphere containing processor cells of captured light photons created a computer with the processing speed of the fastest thing in the universe. Light. Optrix turned Moore’s law into an anachronism overnight.’
Amber paused and walked across the stage. From his vantage-point Soames found it hard to see her in any detail, but he heard her amplified voice and could tell from the hush that she held the attention of the audience. It had been her charisma as well as her mind that had drawn him to her. That she was physically striking had been largely irrelevant. Her talents, however, would pale into insignificance if his suspicions about her were proven tonight.
Soames looked at Walter Tripp, who was powering up the optical computer and entering the code for the foundation’s Data Security Provider, accessing live video of the experiment four and a half thousand miles away. On the delayed photon screen, which gave a three-dimensional texture to the images, Soames could see the glass sphere being placed over the subject’s head. He shifted his attention back to Amber Grant. Confirmation would soon be at hand.
‘As chief executive officer of Optrix Industries,’ he heard her say, ‘I want to remind you of how far we’ve come in eight years, how far we’ve entered the light age. I often think that although our logo is “Let There Be Light” it should be “Pushing Back the Darkness” because that’s what we’re consistently trying to do. In case you’ve forgotten the leap we’ve made, the Lucifer can perform a calculation ten to the power thirty-eight times faster than an old electronic Pentium IV computer. In other words, in less than a second, the Lucifer can do a calculation it would take an old IBM ThinkPad the age of the universe to complete.
‘The Lucifer design is already a classic. The translucent cube, which contains a glass sphere of photon light particles interacting with memory and processor cells and rests on a motherboard of optical fibre, is a familiar sight in homes and offices around the world. Over ninety per cent of the world’s computers, home and commercial, are now optical, produced either by Optrix or our licensees. And the Internet is entirely optical – wireless signals and optical fibres now unite the world at the speed of light. Indeed, many people refer to the Internet as the Optinet.’
Here Amber’s tone changed, from triumphant to humble. ‘Despite being the public face of Optrix, and credited as the co-inventor of the optical computer, I’m painfully aware that most of the real breakthroughs, the real insights into some of the quantum anomalies of the Lucifer, came from my mentor and the chairman of Optrix Optoelectronics. Bradley Soames is the true genius behind the Lucifer and you’ll be delighted to know he’s agreed to make a rare public appearance and talk to you later this afternoon.’
Ignoring the buzz of excitement that rose from the audience, Soames glanced at the computer beside Tripp, saw the electrode being attached to the subject’s temple. It was close now and, assuming that his suspicions were well founded, Amber would be exposed to the press and the public when it happened. This would make it easier to persuade her to do what was necessary.
‘Now to the future,’ Amber said, as a low, rhythmic beat filled the hall and the ambient lighting dimmed again, leaving the giant light sculptures pulsing to the music. ‘Since the launch of the Lucifer, Optrix have developed new and better ways to exploit the technology. And today’s launch is no exception. The Lucifer soft-screen offers a radical new way to present data. Let me show you.’
The tempo of the background music increased and Soames watched her move towards a table at the back of the stage and tap a touch-sensitive control pad beside a translucent glowing cube. A blue rectangular screen bearing the Lucifer logo appeared behind her. It started at no more than a foot high but grew until it was over ten feet high and twelve feet wide. Like the sculptures, it looked solid and opaque but it, too, was formed of light particles.
The screen image changed and the Lucifer logo was replaced by a real-time moving image of Amber. It was as if a vast eight-foot twin stood behind her own five-and-a-half-foot frame, ghosting her every move. The definition was stunning. Her olive skin and thick black hair looked luminous on the screen, and her green eyes were incandescent. She smiled, showing even white teeth, and as her huge alter-ego walked across the stage her Chanel suit shimmered.
‘This soft-screen technology literally pushes back the darkness and, within reason, can be whatever size you want it to be,’ she said. ‘As visible in direct light as conventional LCD and LED displays, it is backward compatible so can be used with all Lucifer models. The display area can be enlarged like now for presentations, or minimized for laptops or personal use.’ The screen image shrank down to postage-stamp size then grew again to its full magnificence. ‘And, of course, it’s portable,’ said Amber, her huge luminous image smiling at the audience. She laughed. ‘You could say it’s the lightest screen in the world.’
The audience laughed with her and clapped; some even stood to applaud, and Soames was swept up in their enthusiasm. Then he heard Tripp clear his throat and say, ‘Almost time, sir.’
Keeping an eye on Amber, he glanced back at the small computer screen beside Tripp. The subject’s visor had been sealed and the green caesium and flavion gas was filling the sphere. The scientist in the white bodysuit and eye-protectors held a control pad in one hand. The screen shifted to close-up, focusing on the subject’s face within the glass sphere.
Then it happened.
The electrode sparked on the subject’s temple. Instantly an even brighter spark – seemingly from the subject’s eyes – lit up the gas-filled sphere like a brilliant bulb, before hitting a dark glass oblong embedded in the visor and leaving a stripy wave interference pattern similar to the exhibit in the hall below. It disappeared, lingering momentarily in the sphere’s outer layer of optical fibre, glowing like a halo, before it vanished into the ether.
The experiment wasn’t interesting in itself: Soames had witnessed a hundred identical experiments over the last nine months and didn’t care unduly about today’s result. The subject, Mother Giovanna Bellini, was dead, and he doubted the trial had succeeded. What interested him more was its possible connection with what was happening now below him in the turbine hall where the giant on-screen image of Amber Grant was clutching her head and reeling.
At the exact instant the spark had appeared in Mother Giovanna’s head-sphere, marking her point of death, Amber Grant had stumbled forward in pain, reaching for her left temple. She was now on her knees and members of the audience were rushing forward to help.
Not taking his eyes off Amber, Soames reached for his cellphone and dialled a number in Cambridge. Someone picked up on the third ring. Soames wasted no time. ‘Put me through to the director, please.’
‘Dr Knight’s in a meeting—’
‘Tell her Bradley Soames wants to talk to her. Now’
In seconds she was on the phone. ‘Virginia,’ he said, ‘it’s urgent. The scientist at your clinic I earmarked funds for—’
‘Miles Fleming?’
‘Yes, he’s got to examine Amber Grant – immediately.’
‘But that might not be—’
‘There’s no time to argue. Amber needs urgent help. I’ll double the funding we discussed for Fleming’s NeuroTranslator. She’ll be arriving in the next two hours.’
Three minutes later, assisted by Tripp and members of the Optrix staff, Soames was in the hall, standing over Amber who was curled up in the foetal position. Speaking into the microphone, he addressed the crowd: ‘Would everyone please move from the hall into the lobby. I’ll continue the presentation personally when you return.’
When he was satisfied that the Optrix staff and gallery officials were shepherding the audience away from the stage, he bent down to Amber’s rigid form. Lifting her head, he forced two analgesic tablets down her throat and gave her a sip of water. ‘Amber, it’s me. I’ve arranged for you to see someone who’s going to figure out these migraines. Don’t pretend it’s no big deal any more.’
He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.
He couldn’t remain silent. He had to ask. He had to know. ‘The pain in the same place as before?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, her pale face contorted in agony.
‘Where?’ he demanded. ‘Point.’
Her hand was shaking as she raised it to indicate the area of pain. But she wasn’t touching her head – she was pointing to a position in thin air at least three inches from her left temple.
Barley Hall Research Clinic.
Cambridge, England
It was moments like this that restored Miles Fleming’s belief in the possible, which had been sorely tested over the last eleven months. He turned to the young man sitting beside him. ‘The arm okay, Paul?’
Adjusting the blue latticework Thinking Cap on his head, Paul stared at the anatomically correct figure on the upper half of the split computer screen in front of him. ‘Fine, Doc. No pain at all.’
‘No trace twinges?’
Paul grinned. ‘Nothing.’
‘Okay let’s see you move it again. Try raising it above your head.’
Watching the on-screen figure lift its right arm, Fleming checked the horizontal lines spiking furiously on the lower half of the screen. ‘Excellent, Paul. Your brainwaves are looking strong. You’ve got the Alphas under good control now. Lower the arm. Great.’ He turned to his research patient, who was frowning with concentration as he willed his thoughts to control the arm on screen. The twenty-six-year-old wore a Nike sweatshirt and faded jeans. His right sleeve hung empty from his shoulder.
Four years ago Paul had lost his arm in a factory accident and until he had come to Barley Hall he had been tormented by severe pain in his absent limb. In Fleming’s experience many amputees suffered phantom pain. It emanated from the brain, which had a virtual 3D map of the body in its neural net and often continued to send signals to a limb long after it had been amputated. In Paul’s case the NeuroTranslator had helped identify the brainwaves sending pain signals to his missing limb, enabling Fleming to suppress them. He had responded so well to the treatment that a month ago Fleming had decided to extend it beyond stopping the pain signals to boosting the control signals.
‘Okay, so you’re pretty good on screen.’ Fleming turned to the latex mannequin in the corner. ‘How about handling Brian?’
Paul grinned. ‘No problem.’
‘Pretty confident, huh? Let’s see you do the egg test then.’
‘The what?’
Fleming stood up and went over to the body surrogate. ‘Brian’ was sexless, but otherwise every prosthetic muscle and joint beneath its latex skin replicated those of the average human body. Fleming retrieved a box from the pocket of his crumpled white coat, opened it and removed an egg packed in cotton wool. He moved to the small table beside the mannequin, placed the egg on one end of the polished wooden surface and the box on the other. Both were within reach of Brian’s right hand.
He walked to the other side of the high-ceilinged Victorian room, and stopped at the glass window separating the Think Tank from the observation room. He bent to the workstation, and made some adjustments to the keypad by the translucent cube. ‘Right, you’re connected to Brian. Ignore the rest of its body. Just focus on the right arm. Lift the egg and put it back in the box.’
‘From here?’ said Paul, who was ten feet from the egg.
‘Just think about moving your missing arm. Like you did with the figure on screen.’
Paul grimaced in concentration.
‘Don’t try so hard. Imagine that Brian’s arm is your arm.’
At that moment the mannequin’s right arm bent at the elbow and the hand shot forward, almost hitting the egg.
‘Careful. Take your time.’
Slowly the hand opened, moved closer to the egg and gripped it. Paul flashed Fleming a grin.
‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ said Fleming. ‘That’s the easy part, though. Now you’ve got to lift it and put it into the box. Pay attention to the feedback sensors in the fingertips.’
The mannequin’s hand raised and moved towards the box. Then it closed suddenly and crushed the shell, dripping yolk and white on to the polished wood.
Fleming laughed and patted Paul on the shoulder. ‘Harder than it is on screen, isn’t it? Good first effort, though.’
There was a knock at the door and Staff Nurse Frankie Pinner poked her head into the room. An attractive thirty-year-old with dark hair and a wide smile, she was the senior nurse among Fleming’s team of doctors, scientists and nurses who helped run his research section in the east wing of Barley Hall. ‘Dr Fleming, it’s four o’clock. You wanted to check the ward.’
Fleming glanced at his watch. ‘Thanks, Frankie. Could you stay and help Paul finish his exercises?’ He turned back to Paul. ‘Keep practising,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve mastered Brian you’ll be ready for your own arm.’
He left the Think Tank, turned right into the east-wing corridor and pushed open the first pair of swing doors on the left.
The Barley Hall research ward was an imposing oak-panelled hall with tall lancet windows overlooking the ornamental lake and landscaped lawns to the rear of the clinic. It had been converted from what had been a gymnasium in the Victorian manor’s days as a boys’ boarding-school. The ward was composed of six roomy private cubicles surrounding an open central area with chairs and a television. It accommodated patients who had to sleep over during clinical trials. Most stayed a few nights before returning either to their homes or to one of the larger specialist hospitals, such as the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire.
Through the half-open screen doors of the first occupied cubicle he could see a girl lying asleep in bed. A nurse was standing over her. ‘How is she?’ he whispered. A year ago, two months after her sixteenth birthday, her boyfriend had taken her for a ride on his motorbike. He had walked away from the crash with bruises, but her spine had snapped at the base, paralysing her from the waist down. Yesterday, Fleming’s team had inserted electrical implants in her lower spine and legs. With the NeuroTranslator, he hoped that her brain would be able to bypass the damaged spinal cord and control her legs directly.
The nurse looked up. ‘She’s doing fine, Dr Fleming. Should be ready in a few days’ time for her first stint in the Think Tank.’
The adjacent cubicle was Paul’s, and the doors to the next two were closed. Fleming opened each a crack to look at his charges. Both occupants were also asleep. He checked their monitors and left them undisturbed before moving on to the fifth cubicle. As he approached this one his usual detached professionalism wavered.
Fleming was only thirty-six but he had become hardened to suffering because he’d seen so much. He knew better than most how a charmed life could be destroyed in an instant. In his career he had come to understand one thing: suffering was arbitrary, and there was no point putting your faith in gods to protect you from it.
For all his fatalism, however, he still found it hard to accept the harsh reality of what had befallen the occupant of cubicle five eleven months ago. It reinforced his conviction that permanence couldn’t be guaranteed. His family and friends, particularly ex-girlfriends, often accused him of wanting change for change’s sake, but that wasn’t true.
He had once been in love when he was at Cambridge, and had been prepared to devote his life to her. But she’d married a lecturer twenty years her senior. Fleming’s heart had been broken, but he’d survived. Since then he had enjoyed a number of relationships, although none had yet rekindled in him the spark of true passion. More than one girlfriend had left him because he couldn’t commit to marriage. Every time it became serious he shied away. Change was adventure. Change – even bad change – offered possibility, and striving for the possible, regardless of the odds, was his token antidote to suffering.
Most of the patients on this ward, along with the many others he had seen over the last few years, had been told by a doctor that their condition was hopeless, that any form of recovery or positive change was impossible. And he hated that. Particularly when it came to the occupant of cubicle five.
‘Miles!’
Virginia Knight was standing in the doorway of the ward. The American director of Barley Hall was in her fifties but looked younger. Tall and slender, she was elegant in her classic navy suit, her fair hair cut short and feathered in a style that softened the angular lines of her long, intelligent face. She took off her glasses and smiled at him. ‘Can I see you for a moment in my office? It’s kind of urgent.’
Fleming glanced at cubicle five. It could wait. The patient wasn’t going anywhere.
The director’s office
Located in the central section of the Victorian mansion, the office was a grand room with ornate cornices, foot-high skirting boards and a splendid bay window overlooking the front driveway and manicured lawns.
Miles Fleming crossed his arms and sat back on the large chesterfield that the insomniac director often used at night. ‘Virginia, you’re not being serious! Since when was a migraine urgent?’
Virginia Knight rose from her desk and moved to her Italian coffee machine. She made two espressos and handed one to Fleming. ‘It’s important, Miles,’ she said. ‘Trust me.’
Fleming shook his head. ‘But I need the Think Tank and the NeuroTranslator tonight. Paul’s in there now, and Rob needs to be prepped for his communication trial tomorrow. The research schedule’s overloaded as it is. After the success with Jake we’re getting huge interest in the NeuroTranslator. We’ve already got a mile-long queue of research patients and I can’t let anyone jump to the front and push the programme back – particularly someone with a headache, for Christ’s sake.’
Virginia Knight sighed. ‘Miles, you’re forgetting that both Jake and Rob jumped to the front of the line.’
‘That was different. You can’t compare their cases with this.’
‘It was different for you – that’s why I never challenged my predecessor’s decision to turn a blind eye to your priority-shuffling – but according to the Barley Hall Trustees’ strict research protocol, the rules were bent. All I’m saying is that, as director of Barley Hall, I’ve got to do what’s best for the clinic and you’ve got to make time for this patient. Tonight.’
Miles Fleming sipped his coffee. He had nothing against Virginia Knight, but she wasn’t the reason why he had come to Barley Hall eight years ago after a Cambridge medical degree and Ph.D. in neurology from Harvard. Unlike Knight, who was a doctor turned administrator, her predecessor had been a pure researcher, a true scientist. The great, and now sadly late, Professor Henry Trier had been one of Fleming’s professors at Cambridge. And when Trier had taken over the Neurological Trust – a research council set up by private business, Cambridge University and the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville – Fleming had leapt at the chance to join him.
Eight months ago Trier had had a fatal heart-attack and Knight, who already held numerous executive and non-executive directorships, was appointed his successor. Fleming understood why she had been chosen: she excelled at management, publicity and fundraising, but he worried sometimes that she put commercial concerns above patients and research.
‘Setting aside the issue of line-jumping,’ she said, reaching for a magazine on her desk, ‘let me explain the benefits of seeing Dr Amber Grant tonight.’ She passed the magazine to him. ‘First of all, you do realize who she is?’
‘Sure, I’ve heard of her.’ And that’s what concerned him. Amber Grant was rich and celebrated, and in Knight’s view that made her especially worthy of treatment. The magazine was Time and the front cover featured the airbrushed picture of Bradley Soames that appeared in every publication, and next to him the strikingly beautiful face of his business partner, Amber Grant. Beneath their picture was the line ‘Turning the Spotlight on the Light Wizards’.
Fleming flicked through the magazine. On page six he found an interview with Amber Grant, timed no doubt to coincide with the much-hyped launch of the Lucifer soft-screen. Fleming’s own NeuroTranslator was based on the Lucifer optical computer and dependent on the technology that Grant and Soames had developed. Despite his annoyance, Fleming was intrigued, and more so when he turned to a profile of the enigmatic and reclusive Bradley Soames – the man many regarded as the genius behind Optrix.
‘Go ahead,’ said Knight. ‘Read it.’
Fleming skimmed the article. Much of it regurgitated the now famous legend of the man, but he was still fascinated by some sections – particularly the one on Soames’s early years:
Bradley Soames suffers from xeroderma pigmentosum, commonly called XP; a syndrome caused by a mutant gene that means even the shortest exposure to the weakest sunlight causes skin cancers. Born into the wealthy Soames oil dynasty – during a full solar eclipse, so the story goes – many psychologists have wondered how Soames might have developed if he hadn’t been so cursed.
He would certainly have been less eccentric but it is doubtful that he would have become so phenomenally successful. It goes beyond irony that this brilliant young man who has lived all his life at the mercy of light should be the one to cage its power and harness its speed.
From his early childhood, confined indoors to protect him from ultraviolet rays, Soames was obsessed with light photons, the subatomic quantum particles of electromagnetic radiation that made up the very thing that imprisoned him. Focusing his intellect on light, he was convinced by the age of thirteen that photons could be harnessed to process, store and transmit data.
At sixteen Soames outgrew even the most gifted private tutors his parents hired to teach him at home, so he attended Cal Tech in Pasadena, one of the leading technical colleges in the world, graduating with top honours two days prior to his eighteenth birthday – younger then than most students applying for the course. But he hadn’t enrolled to pass exams: he was looking for a partner. He was seeking someone of sufficiently high intellect to understand his concepts and someone with the requisite drive, social skills and character to do what he couldn’t do – go out into the light and help realize his dream. That person was to be a Ph.D. student researching particle physics: Amber Grant.
Many people, including Amber Grant, had thought of developing an optical computer, but their designs had relied solely on optical fibres, which, even had they worked, would have involved a dragon’s nest of wires. Soames’s approach was different: he proposed using sound to create the strong electrical field necessary to keep electron-hole pairs apart long enough to trap light and the data stored within it before sending it on its way again.
Soames’s vision and Amber Grant’s dedication, plus a host of relatively minor modifications, each in itself worthy of a Ph.D., led to the invention eight years ago of the world’s first practical optical computer. It made Optrix Industries, based in San Francisco, one of the fastest growing companies the world has ever seen.
In addition to his role at Optrix, Bradley Soames increasingly spends time at his private technology innovation facility in Alaska: the VenTec Foundation . . .
‘The point is,’ said Knight, when Fleming looked up, ‘Soames wants to make a multimillion-dollar donation to your research.’ She smiled. ‘You know I’m always talking about the Christopher Reeve effect? Well, you can’t deny that stem-cell regeneration of the damaged spinal cord is seen as the Holy Grail of neurological research, which makes it so much easier to get funding for Bobby Chan’s genetic-engineering team in the west wing.’
Fleming allowed himself a wry smile. ‘Whereas my work in the east wing is still seen as a mechanical Band-Aid and not a real solution – even though, realistically, Bobby’s team won’t get any practical results for decades.’
Knight laughed. ‘Well, that perception’s changing fast. Your breakthrough with Jake is making waves. ‘And we’ve gotta capitalize on it. Bradley Soames is interested in the NeuroTranslator and he’s willing to commit serious money to developing it.’
Fleming knew this already: six months ago Soames had approached him indirectly, wanting him to transfer to VenTec. ‘And in return for serious funding I have to examine his precious colleague with the NeuroTranslator? Apart from collapsing with a migraine, what’s really wrong with her?’
Knight tapped a manila folder on her desk. ‘That’s another reason you should see her. She’s a researcher’s dream. Her medical history’s fascinating and, as a neurologist, you could learn a lot from her. Don’t fight this one, Miles, you’re on to a winner. She’s only putting back your schedule by a day or so – a minor inconvenience in light of all the benefits she’s going to bring.’
Despite Fleming’s reservations he was interested. ‘Benefits?’
‘She’s unique,’ said Knight. ‘I’ll release her full medical records to you online, but these topline notes give an idea of what I’m talking about.’
Reluctantly Fleming picked up the folder. Virginia Knight was an accomplished manipulator and he was wary of her. Glancing again at the beautiful woman on the cover of Time, he said, ‘I still don’t see why she should take priority over my other patients. She’s not an amputee, is she?’
Virginia Knight leant back in her chair and a broad smile crossed her face. ‘Not exactly’ she said, as Fleming opened the folder at the first X-ray and gasped. ‘Not exactly.’
Barley Hall. 5 p.m.
By the time Amber Grant’s ambulance arrived at Barley Hall from London it was dark. The crippling migraine had subsided but, as always, she still felt weak. The headaches came without warning and she was resigned to that. However, this last attack had angered her. She had collapsed during an important presentation and the sense of failure lingered. Her work was one of the most important things in her life and she had let herself and everyone else down – in front of the goddamn media. She would miss the key dinner tonight too, and the round of publicity and business meetings planned for tomorrow morning before her return flight to San Francisco. Despite the pain she had wanted to return to the turbine hall and continue, but Bradley Soames had insisted she come here. Regardless of what the specialists might say, Amber was determined to catch her flight home tomorrow to see her sick mother, Gillian.
As they drove through the impressive gates of Barley Hall, she peered out across verdant lawns. Even in the gathering dusk and with the onset of winter everything looked more lush than it did in California, and she couldn’t help contrasting the Victorian mansion with the featureless American hospitals and clinics she had attended as a child.
Until nine months ago those clinics had been a bad memory. But recently, at the mercy of the increasingly crippling migraines, she had been reacquainted with clinics, doctors and tests. In the last six months she had undergone every test possible, including PET, CAT and MRI scans, but they had revealed nothing to explain her condition. When Soames had escorted her personally from the turbine hall to the ambulance, she had been sceptical about seeing yet another ‘specialist’. He, though, had insisted that she see Dr Miles Fleming.
‘Amber, you’ve always nagged me about the damage done to my skin as a child before I got diagnosed with XP. Every two months you stop me firing my dermatologist and insist I take her advice to have another goddamn melanoma or two cut out of me before they kill me. And you know what? You’re probably the only person in the whole world I listen to. So now I want you to listen to me. Get your headaches checked out properly. This guy Miles Fleming is smart. His NeuroTranslator is the best application of the optical computer there is – and that includes the new generation of gene sequencers.’ Soames regarded most people as fools and the rest as mediocre, so for him to rate the thirty-six-year-old Englishman so positively was high praise indeed.
The orderlies offered her a wheelchair, but she walked into the elegant reception hall. She hated being regarded as an invalid. Although she spent most of her life working in laboratories she prided herself on keeping fit with early-morning swims in the Optrix pool. Inside, she was greeted by a nurse holding a clipboard.
‘Good evening, Dr Grant. I’m Staff Nurse Frankie Pinner. Are you okay to walk? Need anything for the pain?’
‘I’m good for now, thanks.’
‘In that case, would you mind sitting down in the lounge area while I get Dr Fleming? If you need anything, just let Reception know.’
In a corner of the large hall was a row of back-to-back divans. Amber sat down and retrieved her mobile communicator from her jacket pocket. The device, no larger than a cellphone, opened into two halves: one contained a touch-sensitive control pad, the other a set of numerical keys. She pressed a button on the control pad and a display screen rose from the centre hinge. Just as she was about to check her e-mail and phone messages she heard a sharp intake of breath behind her and a hushed: ‘Wow.’
Turning, she saw a small boy leaning over the divan behind hers, peering over her shoulder. He had spiky fair hair, an open, expressive face, and huge grey eyes that gazed at the state-of-the-art soft-screen of her communicator. A woman, too old to be his mother, sat beside him reading a magazine.
‘Is that yours?’ he asked, resting a small hand on her shoulder and wriggling up the back of his seat for a better look.
She smiled at him. ‘Yup.’
‘I haven’t seen one like that before.’
‘It’s new.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘I made it.’ She corrected herself. ‘Rather, my company made it.’
The boy looked at her hard and then asked, seriously, ‘Are you a genius?’
Another laugh. ‘No.’
‘My uncle’s a genius,’ he said matter-of-factly
‘Oh, I’m impressed. What’s your name?’
‘Jake.’
‘Hi, Jake, I’m Amber.’
He flashed her a wide smile. ‘What can it do?’ he asked.
‘Lots of things. Make calls, send e-mails, do computing stuff, check the weather forecast, sports results . . .’
‘Can it play games?’
‘You betcha.’
‘Can it give football scores?’
‘Sure,’ she said, racking her brains. Sport was a black hole as far as she was concerned. Back home she followed the Forty Niners American football team but only because Optrix sponsored them. ‘Who are you a fan of?’
‘Man U, of course,’ he said, as if only a fool would support any other team. ‘I love football.’
‘I bet you’re pretty good at it too.’