chapter thirty-four

The Chateau

A scarf of almost black cypress rested, infinitely comforting, behind the long chain of magnolia. Late March had begun to warm the breeze that fluttered the silvery curtains in the French windows opening onto the terrace from Frank’s study. A dining table capable of seating thirty had been commandeered to provide the surface upon which the samples grew in the nutriment. The viscous liquid shivered slightly in the flood of air caused by the opening of the door. Several papers whirled to the carpet, obscuring a Persian courtesan and most of a fig tree. A white hand, fingers heavy with gold and chrysoprase, gathered the pages but did not return them to the desk. The princess took advantage of Frank’s absence providing fresh supplies of his perfumes to the ladies and gentlemen of the capital to examine the progress of his work.

The notes were kept in Norwegian; the headings Katt, Due, Rev, Hare and Rotte easy to interpret due to the accompanying illustrations, obsessively detailed and marked with tiny measurements. The current reality of the subjects was also available for direct inspection in the five tanks, likewise labelled, that occupied the table. The princess dipped her finger into Katt and spun the pale body gently. Hair was developing now and beginning to display the faintest hit of orange. Indeed she had already noticed the word amongst the recent observations on Katt, standing out due to it being identical to the French. Passing the table the princess stepped onto the terrace and unconsciously ran her hand over the pearls, triple strung on silver thread; from neck to breast and below, exactly as her eyes caressed the magnolia on the rising hills.

The animate twins to the samples were kept in cages nestling against the south wall. She sat before the marmalade cat and felt the feline gaze on her face. “Tu m’apporteras une belle fille?” she murmured. The cat purred encouragement. Due, its neighbour, beat its wings upon hearing the voice of the predator. Knowing herself to be compromising scientific principles, the princess opened the cage and took the cat into her arms, rocking it softly, as if it were the beautiful daughter she craved.

“I would be grateful if you would carefully recage the cat, Cleїs.”

She had not heard Frank approach, mounting the steps to the terrace from the orchard. He knelt beside her and held the portcullis as the animal was rather unwillingly returned to its home. Standing, it seemed to her that the removal of the marmalade cat had taken most of the colour out of the world. They were both pale following the winter, and the stone of the terrace was delicately shaded with blanched ash. “Progress, Frank?”

“I will arrive at a singularly important stage of the work this Sunday, Cleїs. If successful I will be able to assure you of the gratification of your desire, and the final stage can begin.” He held her hand for a second, and then walked into the study. With his back to her he opened a drawer and took out a cameo brooch. “In fact your friend the cat is central to the enterprise. Allow me to demonstrate.” The princess sat on a chaise-longue while Frank briskly repaired to the terrace and returned with the cat. “I have been training this animal to respond to a particular stimulus in a way unique to her among all cats. Observe!” He set the cat in the centre of the floor. It surveyed the room and noticed the princess. At this point Frank revealed the cameo, and at once the cat curled itself into a comfortable ball and slept.

“I don’t understand. Why is this sleeping response, although interesting, vital to our enterprise?” asked the princess, stroking the orange fur.

“Because, Cleїs, the physical aspect to creating your daughter is not the main problem I have encountered; rather it is what Marulić terms the psychological dimension that frustrates us. The creation of another self to continue the estate and live by the same values that occupy you requires the reproduction of the souls in addition to the cells.”

“But surely this is impossible, are not all living creatures individuals? Even twins have independent thought.” The princess lifted the cat onto her lap. It shifted slightly in the grey silk but continued to sleep.

“Independent thought indeed, but I believe that certain characteristics of the thoughts of twins show a degree of shared inherited memory. I am working on a method of enabling this in a created daughter. I, and I believe you, want her to share your memories.” Frank placed his hands upon the cat. “May I?” He removed it from her lap and carried it out to the cage. The princess stood and looked into the tank containing Katt. The marmalade colouring was more marked than before; the hair longer, as if the floating body were coming into focus, cohering in the moment; attaining some point after which everything would be utterly changed.

chapter thirty three

Eintritt In Den Wald

Mühsam poured strong coffee into small glasses. He stirred two generous spoons of sugar into one and raised an eyebrow towards Frank, his hand poised, the silver spoon trembling over the sugar pot. Frank wondered at the professional discipline that enabled the doctor to banish the effects of Parkinson’s disease when in theatre. The disease was progressive, so it would not be long before Mühsam would be forced to retire from surgery. Frank wondered what the other man had planned for his declining years as he waved away the offered sugar.

“I intend to write a definitive guide to the flora of the Black Forest,” said Mühsam. “I have a lodge there. And listen to Strauss.”

“I don’t follow you, doctor.”

“We are both intelligent men, Herr Kørner. It is clear that my days as a surgeon are numbered. One day your eyesight will fade, or your cognition will be impaired. You are a young man still, you appear to be in your late thirties; but we all age. How will you confront the inevitable evening of life?”

“It is not an issue I have ever thought about,” Frank lied. He visualised his developing twin body; the ridge covered in permafrost that loomed over the entrance to the cavern, the black pool of nutriment, the white empty body, the silence. This was his insurance against the evening of life, but he needed to win the approval of Mühsam and his superiors if he were to gain the freedom to leave the prison camp and make his way to Svalbard.

“I have rather been considering my task here. I believe I can develop a method of influencing the development of individuals in the womb that will have the effect you require.”

Mühsam took a loud suck of coffee. “You will be able to eliminate mental and sexual degeneracy? This is exactly what we desire. I have a list of a dozen respectable parents; eminent party members, who are keenly, even desperately, waiting for this to be possible.”

Frank tapped the rim of his glass, as if struggling with some inner turmoil. “Certain mental defects are already visible to me when I examine a cell. In this respect however, I must point out that there are very many forms of idiocy. I doubt that I will be able to offer an infallible screening process. The creator may always find new ways of corrupting the perfection of his subjects.”

“I understand,” Mühsam stood and selected a 78rpm record from a shelf. “You are familiar with the Alpine Symphony, I presume?”

“A brilliant sound picture of the region,” replied Frank with some enthusiasm. “I am interested in cold landscapes, and enjoy the music they inspire in fine composers.” Mühsam wound the gramophone vigorously and settled the stylus into the black groove. Frank listened to the tinny orchestra for what he judged to be a respectable length of time. “I think that the case of sexual degeneracy will be far simpler; it is a single defect, but I need to carry out some research; some comparative research.”

“What do you require? I am sure we can requisition whatever is necessary.” Mühsam closed his eyes and turned his face towards the ceiling, shaking slightly as if the music were a breeze and he an Alpine Spruce.

“Subjects. I need to take samples from many homosexuals and non-homosexuals in order to make detailed comparisons of structures in the cells.”

Mühsam opened his eyes, shook off the music and smiled. “We have many homosexuals to hand, already imprisoned. Surely we can begin with those for your subjects?”

“You are no doubt aware that incarceration can lead quite normal men to commit acts amongst one another that they would find abhorrent in other circumstances. For my research to be truly scientific I need to be absolutely sure that my subjects are wholly decadent by inclination from infancy.”

“You make an excellent point Herr Kørner. How do you propose to guarantee scientific rigour in this respect?” Frank took a pack of cigarettes from his pockets and offered one to the doctor. He did not want to appear to be too rapid in making his next comment. Both men inhaled the rich tobacco, and frank picked some specks of it from his lips before uttering the decisive sentence.

“You are aware that I have a strong grounding in deviant psychology. I propose that we infiltrate the disgusting underworld of these people in order to identify completely authentic subjects. It will be an extremely unpleasant task.”

The doctor lifted the stylus from the record. He had turned it in his trembling hands but did not replace it on the turntable. “You know those…those devils nearly destroyed my reputation at the institute. I cannot afford to be compromised with regard to this issue again. You are the expert here. I suggest that you infiltrate their world, report to me, and I will arrange for them to be swiftly…. harvested, as you might say.”

Frank felt the cold air of Svalbard dissolving in his veins and at the same time his penis began to swell with the promise of the mission. He sat quickly to hide the physical response. “May we have more Strauss? This will not be easy.” Mühsam could never imagine the lascivious couplings that filled Frank’s thoughts as he once again allowed the Alpine breeze to overwhelm his fragile form.

chapter thirty-two

Drawings of Shoes

“See a shoe and pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck,” struck Frank as being an absolutely infantile caption for the beautiful drawings of footwear that he was considering in the Bodely Gallery. Here he found crass consumerism and delight in form engaged in a mutually debasing act of desperate onanism. At least he was aware of the uses to which he was putting his bio-chemical artistry. He took a long draught of the fizzing champagne offered by the gallery and noted the pale image of the artist himself distorted in the base of the fluted glass as it emptied. Warhol was propping himself against a fire extinguisher and opening a pack of Luckies, his eyes down, avoiding contact. Frank felt the urge to talk to him, misanthrope to misanthrope, but then realised he had nothing to say.

“Isn’t this hot, hot, hot?” Spong tapped Frank on the ass and went directly to Warhol, offering him a Chesterfield. Frank watched the cigarette being accepted, Spong providing the light. He wondered what they were talking about and then dismissed the subject as he turned his attention to another image. Warhol was, like himself, a hot property amongst the ultra wealthy of New York, and it was hardly a duty to enjoy the graphic delights presented in the gallery.

Frank had purged all thoughts other than those of line, colour and composition when he felt another pinch on his left buttock. “He wants to film me! He has a film project; you could be in it too. Why don’t you chat to him?” Frank wanted to turn and put his father’s impossibly sharp rock probe through Spong’s chest, but instead smiled. “I might well do that. How’s Jack?”

“Jack is Jack. This is the new thing! Who cars about pictures of the flag any more? Shoes are the new flags, consumers are the modern Medicis. Wealthy or not; although we prefer wealthy of course,” said Spong, and he pinched Frank’s ass again. Frank took a deep breath and blew the carbon dioxide out upon his fingernails. Spong’s end would be slow, painful and humiliating.

Frank watched Warhol leave with Spong, but not before he had an invitation to the filming session. After meeting Spong in Central Park he had conceived of a terrible vengeance, and he now had forty eight hours to perfect it. He could no longer take in the drawings; his mouth was dry and his fingers shook, crumpling the cigarette before letting it fall into the ash tray. He ignored several of his most illustrious female clients as he made his way to the street and had no recollection of the short walk to his Manhattan apartment.

Focussing the microscope brought calm. Now he was operating on a biological scale; a chemical scale, hearing the same internal clock that had begun to tick in the cavern some eighty-eight years earlier. He looked at the cells, his own cells which he had placed in the nutriment a few days earlier and noted how they had already multiplied at an astonishing rate. The power of the nutriment to foster life and promote growth was always remarkable, but this time he was not interested in progressing life; that was a gift he had reserved always for himself. Right now he was interested in inhibiting the power of the nutriment, and he had a virus which he hoped would stop the inexorable vitality it contained, and leave cells open to any of the millions of pathogens which fill the natural world. He carefully introduced the virus to the culture; saw it large dark and initially spherical amongst his rapidly replicating cells. Quite soon, although he had no idea how much time had passed, he noticed filaments joining the healthy cells to the larger dark mass. He left his laboratory and went out onto the balcony, where New York had achieved a brief impression of peace before dawn.

From somewhere came a cry; female, and the rattle of sheet metal. He looked for the moon, and found instead the full yellow circle of a clock on a nearby office-block. He let the night absorb him and imagined several million human actors frozen in whatever small screams their existences at that moment, required. He lifted his gaze to the stars and found them few and distant and infinitely cold.

chapter thirty-one

The Cavern

Oscar Kørner clattered his instrument case onto the stone floor inside the kitchen door and sloughed his massive overcoat, depositing a dense cloud of ice particles upon the same surface. Mother and son turned their attentions from their respective activities; Sylvia to be gathered into a huge embrace and Frank to be summoned to the congress in front of the stove.

“I have made a discovery; an important discovery, I think,” announced Kørner, kissing his wife generously and ruffling his son’s already thinning hair. He plucked the ladle from Sylvia’s hand, dipped into the pot and sucked up a rich mouthful of herring broth, steam and oxygen. “I will expound further over this splendid meal. Come, Frank, prepare the table for us.” Frank, excited by the promised revelations, quickly gathered his sketch book and the mathematical devices he had been using to construct a chart of the heavens. He laid three hide mats and the antique silver and mother-of-pearl cutlery whilst his father opened a bottle of Paulliac and poured it into two heavy crystal goblets with which he had been presented in the days when he still enjoyed the esteem of the Royal Norwegian Academy of Science.

Frank watched his reflection disappear in the concave soup-spoon as it reached the distance of its focal length from his eyes, the age-spotted silver then fogging with condensation before cutting into the oleaginous orange liquid. Oscar, noticing his son’s downcast gaze, lifted the eight year old chin in his warm hand. “Here, you should not be deprived of this glorious French sunshine,” Paulliac swirled into Frank’s simple tumbler of water. “We share this wine, and we share this great discovery. I have chanced upon a cavern; possibly a system of vast caverns, not far to the South-West. Following a necessarily brief inspection of the exposed strata and the very many fossils, I believe it to be extraordinarily old, and uniquely unaffected by millions of years of changing terrestrial conditions.” He stood and poked one of his hand drawn maps of the island with a dripping shard of unleavened bread “Here is our Garden of Eden, and tomorrow, at first light, we go to examine God’s earliest handiwork!”

Frank was puzzled: his father was a vociferous atheist; this talk of God astonished him. Oscar divined his son’s confusion and nudged the pagan Sylvia, who ignored most of the Norwegian spoken in the house as a matter of course. “I jest, of course; God, his garden and his shaming of women are all nonsense. Tomorrow we will begin to use scientific instruments and method to reveal the reality of our Genesis.” He laughed loudly at his joke and Frank picked up a kerchief to stifle his nasal response. The wine had compromised both the taste and temperature of his water. He soon retired and made highly detailed drawings of imagined prehistoric creatures by candlelight as his parents finished the wine and then vigorously copulated before snoring and silence stilled the cabin.

It was not even first light when Frank found himself woken, fed with porridge and strong coffee and smothered with a malodorous hide robe. Oscar pulled a light sled into the confusing darkness, allowing Frank to ride on it when his eyes, unable to discern a reliable path, caused him to stumble and twist his ankle. Reluctant dawn revealed a vast incline, jagged with the snow carrying the same grey iridescence as the antique nacre of last night’s cutlery. As Oscar dragged the sled towards the rise the sun defined his long shadow, pointing towards a dark heart in the land that refused to surrender to the day. This turned out to be the entrance to the cavern.

The dynamite that had opened the cavern had thrown large, piano shaped chunks of rock into the inner space, and these formed convenient irregular steps that led them into the profound, almost eternal waiting within. Frank’s father set torches around the chamber, revealing in jagged excerpts the enormous dimensions of the place, and the clear strata which articulated the walls and the mineral millennia there recorded. While Oscar used his hard metal tubes and hammer to extract samples of rock, Frank wandered with his own hand-held torch to an area where the roof swept down, almost, but not quite, fusing with the floor. He got down on his hands and knees and felt a cool breath in the narrow aperture. He pushed the torch through and then, wriggling on his stomach, ripping the robe and a fair portion of his back and buttocks, followed it into the mysterious ancient lung.

His torch revealed a sandy ledge, a thin crescent that he was unable to reliably attribute to instantaneous light or lugubrious geology. Before and slightly below him was a motionless body of liquid. He held the torch over it and perceived no depth, merely his and the light’s reflections in an implacable black mirror. He remembered his eight years, all of those he retained being in the cabin. Now he sensed the future, and it was interesting, and it was long, and this black fluid space was his true home; a home to which he would return for more than a century.

chapter thirty

The Hit Men

The café was closed to the public. This pleased Frank, firstly because Tuesday was normally very slow, and secondly because tonight a record company had hired the venue to celebrate the completion of an important project. Unfortunately most of those attending were vegetarians or even vegans; and Frank had gone to great lengths to impress upon his staff, Wibz particularly, that their dietary requirements were to be fully met. Only a few of the guests would be dining on human flesh this evening.

There was something else that excited Frank about this booking: he had made his reputation on providing a decadent dining experience for the so-called ‘Yuppies’ of the financial sector of the city, but he felt nothing for their trite materialism. Musicians offered an opportunity for him to let his few hairs down, and these were reputed to be some fairly exotic musicians indeed. He retired to his apartment to consider the fashion in which he would greet his guests.

After showering he stood before the mirrored wall and lifted his ponytail above his head. He teased the strands as he dried them and knotted several together. As they fell back to his scalp he was taken by the twisting forms and decided to fix them; defying gravity. He mixed a paste of lacquer and sand, scented it with Hermes, and began to sculpt. Seven was a good number, a prime number, and coincidentally the number of men he had killed at Los Cardales. It was also the sum of the complementary dots on his die; the one that contained the bone gas, so he gathered his few hairs into seven wiry clumps and arranged them into snaking lines over, and then falling around his head. He considered his image in the glass: he possessed, as ever, the body of a thirty six year old, his torso hairless, all extremities slightly elongated, including the part that was, as it were, redundant. The asymmetry of the tresses crowned it well, but he needed to strengthen the statement. He opened a tray and surveyed his father’s specimens: fragments of minerals, shells, bones belonging to various undiscovered species of sea creatures. He threaded some of these onto the hair, pausing to tint some with food colouring. This was much better, he was reminded of, and probably inspired by, the paintings made by Helen and Morris in New York in 1960.

He was experiencing nostalgia, but it was a strong, invigorating nostalgia. He selected a 12 inch record and placed it on the Linn turntable. ‘The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra’ suited the occasion perfectly, and the opening track was choreographed by his dressing in dark blue suede shoes, tight black slacks and a perfect white linen shirt. To create the appropriate atonality he chose a heavy ring given to him by the princess in 1896. He injected 10 ml of nutriment and drank a small glass of Janneau. When the girl knocked at the door to announce the arrival of the first guests he was more than ready for the night ahead.

The record company representative was a disappointment: too young and obviously nervous about his charges. His eyes shifted rapidly over the historic details of the restaurant as he spoke.

“The artists are arriving now; there are twenty; musicians, some partners and technical people. There may be some friends dropping by later, but it’s a buffet scenario I believe, so will that be OK?”

“I think you will find the cafe can accommodate whatever you require. Anything else?” Frank wanted to get the formalities over as quickly as possible, but was delighted by what came next.

“Some of the musicians like to smoke. Is that OK?”

“This is not a no-smoking restaurant, Mr...” Frank looked for a name tag and found one pinned upside-down to the cheap T shirt “Foxton.”

“Call me Andy. No I don’t mean smoke; I mean smoke. They are musicians after all.”

Frank put his arm around the young man’s shoulders. “Of course they can smoke, and drop acid or whatever else musicians do. They can even sing if they want to.” He gently spun the young man around so he could survey the whole of the establishment. “ Mi casa, tu casa, as they say. If you pay for my café you pay for anything you like.”

“That’s great, just great, Mr Corner” Foxton stepped back to the door and opened it slightly. “They just wanted me to clear that up, so let me introduce Daevid, Gilli and Mark; the album is called Hit Men....”

“But we’re not hit men, either in the criminal or musical sense. Thanks for letting us use your place, Frank” Daevid was nearing sixty years of age, with long hair and dressed in the manner of the early 70s. There was an other-worldly aura around him, and Frank sensed a long history of, if not exactly decadence, then perhaps exploration.

“That’s an unusual accent,” he replied. “I hear some French, some English, some Australian.”

“That’s about right. Australian once; it was a long time ago. But eternally coming from the planet...”

“Gong!” the others all joined in for this word and burst into satisfied laughter. Frank was amused by a joke he didn’t understand and accompanied them to the buffet. Gilli took in the huge variety of vegetarian dishes and the adjacent sumptuous bar.

“I think we’re going to enjoy this,” she said, picking up a golden samosa.

Much later the air was heavy with cannabis smoke and the tables heavy with wine bottles. Frank found himself dancing, erratically propped between Daevid and Gilli as their friend Kevin sang his anthem dedicated to Frank’s footwear. “I walked into this bar and the man refused,He said ‘We don’t serve strangers in blue suede shoes....”. Frank was happier than he had been for at least twenty years. The song ended and they all chorused “Thank you very much,” each one meaning it in their own way, but none more totally than Frank.

chapter twenty nine

Star Wars

At an extreme point on the perimeter of Logan Airport there were still a few flowers flicked by the breeze at the foot of the monument that commemorated World Airlines flight 30. The pilot had heroically steered the plane manually off the runway when it had overshot the iced strip, and guided it into Hudson Bay to avoid a catastrophic encounter with the light pier. All had survived bar a father and son. The memorial seemed to be unsure whether it was mourning the two lost lives or celebrating the skill of the brave pilot. Frank turned away from the cutting April wind and waited for the limousine to collect him. Nearly three years of a clandestine relationship with the United States government had made the Iglesias organisation enormously wealthy, and Frank had an important role in that relationship that had brought him considerable financial reward. Of course he was not paying for the limousine, or indeed the private jet that had carried him here from Brasilia; that was provided by the Americans through the company that disguised the real nature of their business: Driscoll Biochem.

The Cadillac Fleetwood paused, rather than stopped, a few feet from him and the door was thrust open from the inside. He was to have a fellow passenger. Frank fingered the titanium chain that connected his case to an armed bracelet at his wrist. He did not welcome having to share his journey to the factory, and any departure from the normal arrangements set the nerves of a person at his level, in his business, on edge. He slid into the car and discovered Michael Driscoll himself shuffling his overweight frame across the sumptuous leather to make room for him.

“Sorry to surprise you, Mr Kørner, but I need to brief you before we reach the facility.” Driscoll was sweating, despite the air conditioning and the low temperature outside. “The President could be about to make some changes in his priorities; some changes that could have a negative impact on our current projections.”

“Is this something to do with the assassination attempt? I thought that was nothing to do with the global issues. Surely he hasn’t changed his views on the Communist threat?” Frank was speaking the language of the political press, but he had already detected the real problem. His career had been built on exploiting human greed and having unique technology; if something had changed it was certainly not the American appetite for narcotics or the President’s hatred of Communism: it had to be technology.

“I’ll be brief; there are two factors that concern us,” Driscoll caught Frank’s glance towards the driver. “It’s OK, we can speak openly here; probably only here. Those factors are the Lady President and some changes in budgets.”

“I know the United States is supposed to be democratic on several levels, but how can Nancy be a problem?”

“She sees our business as having a cost in terms of health care, productivity, that kind of thing. She doesn’t like the way teenagers are shaping up,” Driscoll tapped a Cohiba from its metal tube. “She wants them to ‘Just Say No’. Jesus!”

“Americans habitually say no and then indulge to the maximum. Look at prohibition. What’s the problem? I might think you were over reacting.”

“I agree. Normally official attempts to squeeze us can be engineered to take out the amateurs and give us an even larger slice of the pie; but this time it’s different.” The rich smoke filled the cab, reminding Frank of the first time he had met Iglesias. He craved a glass; no, a bottle of Vega Sicilia. His profound enjoyment of the memory of the warm wine was dissipated by Driscoll’s edginess and the offered coffee. Now he was going to hear about the technology.

“The President is ordering massive, really massive increases in NASA’s budget. He thinks he has some way to beat the Commie’s using satellites. He wants to go to war on the big scale and win. I tell you Frank, my wife is expecting, and I’m not going to let my kids grow up here. London, Paris, Berlin; there all going to be targets too. I don’t trust any defence in a shooting war. NATO is fucked. I’m sending her back home to Ireland; if Europe is trashed I’ll get them to New Zealand.”

“I’m happy you have contingency plans, but why are we having this conversation here? What about our business?”

“Our business is big; very big. If Reagan wants to make a show of cracking down on the trade, and doesn’t need to worry about how those chips fall, he’ll hang Iglesias out to dry, and we could; no would, hang with him.”

Frank studied his fingernails. He somehow felt that their inexorable growth represented his own immortality, and at this moment he realised that he was being offered a way to escape another death and create an even grander future. He visualised his embryo, infused with the nutriment in the cavern in Edgeøya, and already knew whose cerebral fluid would facilitate the next stage. Driscoll put his hand on Frank’s shoulder and a pile of Cohiba ash scattered over the perfect material of his suit. “I know that you made Los Cardales happen. Now I need you to get rid of Iglesias before he takes us with him.”

chapter twenty eight

Devonshire Rd

The public library afforded Frank the opportunity of internet access. That is, the local authority described it as an opportunity; he regarded it as a buoyancy aid in the ebbing waters of his life. He no longer had an appetite for research: where he had once carved through the oceans of knowledge like a shark, to extend the soggy metaphor, he now foundered, aimlessly waiting to desiccate, fragment and die like a jelly. Incapable of dedicating his attention to any one thing for more than a minute he followed random links that generally had a tenuous connection to one or other of his earlier lives. He did this for most of the hours the library was open to the public, his earphones providing him the programmes of NRK 1 or BBC Radio 3.

It was the case that the library emptied rapidly on Thursday afternoon, due to the arrival of Social Welfare payments which were quickly spent in the budget supermarkets, pubs and bookmakers shops that proliferated in this shabby patch of South-East London. Frank felt the lack of human activity about him as a calmness, an umbilical peace that took him back to Edgeøya, and so he began to read about snow; specifically the conditions that dictated the formation of the hexagonal molecular lattices of individual flakes. He was familiar with it all of course, and thought how little the physics had developed from his father’s discoveries. Just as Frank had never shared his work with the scientific mainstream, his father had kept his work to himself. The rejection of his lifestyle, and particularly his choice of wife, by the Norwegian hierarchy had cost the world dear both in terms of the scientific progress which father and son had made and in the malignity of Frank’s mercenary use of his own developments.

Modern research into snow crystal formation was hampered by the impurities now universally found in the water molecules. The snow in Edgeøya had been untainted by the waste products of the modern world. It was only now that scientists were discovering the modifications to growth that could be achieved with electricity. Frank remembered his father documenting the same thing by use of magnets and his own phenomenal microscopes in the late 1860s. For a moment he felt a twinge of excitement as he read that crystal growth was of fundamental interest to nanotechnology: in the past this would have been the beginning of another episode of personal enrichment at the expense of some egocentric and probably criminal entrepreneur, but now there was no point. He was waiting to die.

The shuffling of the librarian alerted him to the imminent closure of the library. He disconnected in the middle of a string quartet by Klaus Egge and made his way to a tobacconist where he purchased a pack of Senior Service cigarettes, and then made his way along Devonshire Road towards his dismal bed-sit. His stained charity shop raincoat flicked in the unseasonably drizzly breeze, and he again found the relentless rise in the road difficult to manage. He stopped by the bright red post box and opened the pack of Seniors, lit one and deposited the match and cellophane into the letter slit. This was a Victorian post box; probably as old as himself. He considered the box, noticed the corrosion, over-painted in dozens of scarlet tones. The sharply cut lines of the angles and the letters VR gradually being absorbed into the organic flow of red.

It occurred to him that there was a further similarity between himself and this box: they were equally redundant, 21^st Century dinosaurs. These days hardly anybody wrote letters, the post was reserved for bills, and these would soon be all delivered by e-mail. It would not be long before this box was removed to a scrap yard or a local museum, just as had been the fate of the telephone boxes outside the library. He was likewise heading to a scrapheap, albeit one that the rest of humanity accepted as a natural end. Frank had gone beyond that; he had transcended mortality; until Kay had smashed him.

Well, it was too late to do anything about that now. Even his recent attempt at revenge had failed. There was no time to grow another Frank, even if he could get back to the cavern in Edgeøya that housed the nutriment. He could keep his organs together with small doses for a few years, but he knew enough about medicine to know that even a year was a generous estimate of the time he had left. He dropped the Senior into the box and, hoping it would incinerate the contents, continued the difficult trudge to the bed-sit.

The sound of an ersatz tango informed him that the landlady was rehearsing with her ballroom partner. He recoiled at the music and the thought of their debilitated guilty couplings, silently climbing the stairs. To his astonishment he found a letter tucked into the crack between his door and the frame. He snatched it, crushing it in his fist, and entered the room. He sat on the creaking bed and smoothed out the envelope. The stamp was Irish. He smelt the paper and recognised Kay. He tore it open and found a voucher for a seaweed bath in Ballybunion. He had no idea what it meant, but it was not a joke.

chapter twenty seven

75a Great Britain Street

They passed through the shop with the aid of the weak gas-light filtered in from the street. O’Connell led the way past the counter and he gave a triple tap at the door behind it. Frank heard the stairs beyond creak under the feet of whoever descended, and then the quiet breathy question: “Who is without?”

“Professor O’Connell. I have brought the friend of whom we spoke.”

The door was opened and Clarke appeared; a spectral shadow against the rusty wallpaper. “The others are in attendance above. You were not followed?”

“No, the Constabulary believe that our friend is a dangerous lunatic and accompanied us to the adjacent Magdalane Asylum. I can assure you they have no intelligence as to our purpose,” replied O’Connell as they made their way up the narrow flight of stairs. They entered a room dominated by a large mahogany dining table. The committee were seated around it, studying a large Dublin street map. Clarke sat down and pushed a plug of orange tobacco into his pipe. A younger man stood and offered the newcomers chairs. Frank was impressed by his intelligent eyes under a firm brow.

“Padraic Pearse,” he introduced himself, “you are Mr Kørner, I believe. I wonder if you might address us on the subject of your weapon.” Frank had considered this interview for a number of days and had already decided upon his policy. He realised that their revolutionary zeal would make them want to believe whatever he said, but he was going to tell them nothing but the truth. He even had a sample contained within a die in his pocket. He had previously arranged with O’Connell that an anonymous madman could be made available should they require a demonstration. As it turned out Connolly, Ceannt and Griffiths favoured a demonstration in order to be sure about the military reliability of the gas, but the others, led by Pearse thought the sacrifice of an innocent unwarranted.

It was nearly eleven o’clock before they returned to O’Connell’s apartment in the asylum. They had proceeded from the tobacconist’s shop in silence, but as O’Connell shut the door against the groans and mutterings of the patients a broad smile suffused his features. “Splendid work Mr Kørner; you have given us the heart and the advantage to bring forward the day of liberation. I am now sure that it will happen within days, possibly soon after Easter. Have you sufficient quantities of the gas to hand?”

“Did I not assure the committee of that very fact?” Frank despised the Professor for his naivety. He managed a polite smile of complicity to mask his rapid recalculation: he might not return to Galway before it was time for O’Connell to die. He did not welcome having to prepare the foam without his instruments; however this asylum was a type of hospital, perhaps he could find something that could serve his purpose. “I find the prospect of contributing to your just cause very stimulating and I fear I shall not sleep. May we inspect the facilities here to settle my thoughts?”

“Now? It nears midnight.”

“I’m sure you are equally excited by the outcome of this evening’s meeting, and I know you are an expert in this field of medicine,” Frank hoped that flattery would encourage the professor to accede to his request. O’Connell’s hand hovered over the whisky bottle and then fell to his side.

“You are correct, it would help me sleep. Let’s go, there is an excellent collection of special tools and some fine samples of trepanned skulls.” Frank was delighted; the oaf was going to introduce him to the means by which his brain would be soon liquefied. The moment could not come soon enough.

Chapter Twenty Six

T4

White expressionless faces, black uniforms, gleaming Schmeisser MP-40 submachine guns, slips of scarlet on arm-bands formed a flat abstraction which Frank actively composed in order to distance himself from the terror threatening to coalesce from the air in his lungs. Herr Handkerchief paused before a mahogany door, the heavy wood made heavier by a sheet of black iron that was bolted to it, covering most of the surface. A rectangle slid aside in the matt area, revealing for a moment an intense synthetic light within. A figure intervened and then Herr Handkerchief stepped away as the door opened.

The room was an operating theatre, furnished with the latest medical technology. The intense illumination was produced by two large banks of lights suspended over a pair of tables. Both tables were occupied by male patients, one of whom was receiving the attentions of a surgeon; working on him with the aid of a nurse of indeterminate gender.

“Just one moment, Herr Kørner,” said the surgeon as he deposited something pink and bloody into a metal tray held by his assistant. He turned and peeled away the mask covering the lower half of his face. “These, Herr Kørner, are degenerate testicles. To be precise they are homosexual testicles. Our friend on the operating platform is an abomination to the Lord, of course, but he is in all other respects pure Aryan. The Fuhrer has decreed that he be given a chance for redemption; therefore I am grafting a pair of heterosexual testicles to his body. It has been shown by my research at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft that such a procedure will remove the hormones that cause this vile perversion. Our friend will be able to play his proper role in the triumph of the Master-race. There will need to be psychiatric work to help him overcome the self-disgust he will feel; but in all life is good for him. The Fuhrer has offered him a second chance.”

“I was under the impression that the Institute was recently closed, Doctor...?”

“Mühsam, Professor Mühsam. It was closed; in fact Hiller, the administrator, is an enforced guest of this very camp. It was found that those in charge of the Institute were promoting vile practices. Their library of so-called ‘scientific research’ has been burnt. The director has fled the country. I have been entrusted by the Fuhrer himself to carry forward the good work that was done there.”

Frank glanced at the contents of the tray and felt his scrotum tighten around his own degenerate testicles. The professor’s ideas about hormones were absurd, but given the fact that Frank was surrounded by miles of barbed wire and dozens of armed guards he felt it wise to appear to take him seriously. “I am impressed; but I wonder why you have summoned me here. My work takes place at a molecular level.”

“I am aware of this, and I will explain; but you will excuse me if I attend to my presently incomplete patient.”

“Of course.” Frank stood back as Mühsam moved to the other table. With terrifying speed and a precision that was impressive he removed the donor testicles and tied the vas deferens. He neglected to close the scrotum, instead quickly moving back to the recipient and carefully grafting the testicles using minute stitching. Equally fine needlework closed the scrotum and the nurse was entrusted with managing his resuscitation and removal to a recovery ward.

Frank considered the anonymous donor and Mühsam seemed to sense his thought. “A mental defective and of impure race. You are probably aware that this camp has a hygienic function. We harvest that which has value before... before disposing of the body. We are men of science and need not concern ourselves with these matters of house-keeping.” The surgeon leant against a shelf that carried an array of surgical saws. “That last case neatly demonstrates the manner in which we believe you can assist us, Herr Kørner. That young man’s parents are very good people; active in the party and the father has an important position in munitions. Even such exemplary Germans can unfortunately produce a diseased child. Obviously the Aryan race is much less prone to such mutations as others, but sometimes imperfections develop.

“Herr Kørner, we want you to screen the cells of good Germans who fear they may conceive defective children; screen the cells and eliminate the cause of such imperfections. We are primarily concerned with male homosexuality and mental defects. Female homosexuality does not exist, of course. I could make this work attractive to you by stressing the quality of the tools you will be given and the accommodation we will provide here, but we do not require your agreement. The work will commence immediately.”

They left the theatre. The guards no longer trained their guns on him as he passed by, but that made him no less a prisoner. He would have to work on his own liberation as well as Aryan cells. Cologne could have been a mistake.

Chapter Twenty Five

Central Park

Fifth Avenue was throbbing like an artery in cardio-vascular crisis at his back. Frank lit a Lucky and inhaled the smoke with the cool September air, pumped fresh from the 843 acres of Central Park. It was nine in the evening and he needed to be alone and dark and very, very quiet. New York had made him comfortably wealthy, but the Vogue reception had demanded a level of indulgence to the vacuous lives of his patrons that had been more than he could stomach.

He thought about Charles Ives, who had composed a sound picture of this spot more than sixty years earlier and smiled as he remembered that the composer had likewise lived a double life: to his neighbours he had been a successful insurance agent, whilst privately creating some of the most revolutionary music of the period. Frank’s hidden life, or lives were far more radical. It was acceptable to devise perfumes, frequent artists’ lofts and jazz cellars; even indulge in narcotics and have a discrete relationship with a celebrated male artist. Many of the elderly socialites at the Vogue reception made a point of surrounding themselves with homosexual creatives, to use the jargon. They would not be able to comprehend the scope of Frank’s involvements, the brilliance of his real work, the scale of his vengeance and the profundity of his present emptiness. He ground the cigarette into the gravel of the path and set out into the black horizon of grassland.

Once in the void he let the pulse of Ives’ music still the frantic pace of his thoughts. The drunken teenagers, the nervy dealers and their desperate clients barely troubled his perception of a black base of earth tinted green and its indigo equivalent above. He stopped by a bench which offered a point of rest between the competing and massive presences of earth and sky. He lit another Lucky and as he let the smoke go murmured a few notes from Ives.

“He married a girl called Harmony: Harmony Twitchell actually.”

His isolation violated, Frank looked in vain for the source of the comment. A man in his early thirties was standing among a cluster of trees growing alongside the bench. Two things irritated him: that he had failed to notice the other man and that whoever it was imagined he did not know the name of Ives’ wife. He was, however, fascinated by the instant recognition of the composer from a few muted notes.

“You must be a musician?”

The man stepped forward. Frank registered glasses and conventional straw-coloured hair. “It’s a hobby. I’m a painter; trying to be a painter. I’ve met you before.”

“You have?”

“Yes, at Jack’s studio. A couple of times actually. You probably didn’t notice me.” Frank was privately astonished: he hadn’t noticed this man before, he had really taken his eye off the ball, because this meeting could not be coincidental: something important was happening, and he didn’t know where it was coming from or going to.

“Sorry, I couldn’t recognise you in the dark: of course I remember you, but I have to confess that I’ve forgotten your name...”

“Spong, Bennett Spong. I’m from Connecticut. Danbury; the same place as Ives. When I was a kid I’d listen to ‘Central Park In The Dark’ and imagine all this.” He stood before Frank and searched his jacket pockets for something which he failed to find. “Well; I didn’t listen directly. I read the score: it was better than listening on those terrible 78 phonograms. Abstract music.” He rummaged in his trouser pockets and found his cigarettes. “Silent but full of sound.”

“Light?” Frank sparked and illuminated Spong’s youthful grin. He sucked the flame into his Chesterfield.

“You’re in the groove, Jackson! That’s why I’m a painter. Sound field and colour field.” Spong chuckled and coughed out nicotine but Frank was freezing inside. He remembered the first time he had met Jack, at a New Yorker interview session. That phrase, stolen from a musical comedy film had been a special code between Jack and his then lover. He had never understood why Jack, so warm and so cool had suddenly cut him off after more than a year of an intense relationship that had been everything his senses, ravaged by Europe, had desired. Now he knew everything.

“You seem... perturbed,” said Spong, suddenly noticing Frank’s introversion. He glanced into the surrounding night and nodded towards an inky clump of trees. He drew on his cigarette and illuminated for a second lips that contrived the innocence of youth. “I could take your mind off it.”

Frank let the words hang long enough for the aspiring painter to feel uncomfortable, he coughed. “I mean I thought...”

“Then I would be really screwing myself,” whispered Frank.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Another time, but soon,” said Frank, appearing to shake off his cares. “We’ll get together soon, I promise.” He slapped Spong on the back and turned back to face the city. It was time to move on.