she was the luckiest girl on the planet, and that her parents were the best humanity had to offer. They would protect her from anything, keep her safe from harm. They could not possibly make mistakes.
‘She told me she was twenty-two years old when she realised she was wrong. In 2031, climate change had already taken hold of the planet and was on the brink of being irreversible. Elise’s upbringing had drawn her towards science, and she was already studying for her second PhD—Atmospheric Chemistry in Cambridge, the first being Cognitive Science and Cybernetics—when it dawned on her that the climate’s turning point had been the year of her birth, 2009. This was the moment, she deduced, that humans had their last chance to change the tide, at least those of them who had any power to do anything about it, which included her parents. Both of them were wealthy. Both had made money from the energy industry, and had, together, formed a PR firm specialising in representing big Oil…’ She paused and turned to me. ‘You understand these terms?’
‘Of course,’ I said, without a thought.
‘Interesting.’
I only knew them from what I had read in the Room of Things.
Seconds dripped by, the lamp’s roar compressing the silence.
‘Elise realised that her parents could have changed the world,’ I said, snatching up another photograph of Dr Nyström, now an adult. A young Oonagh stood beside her wearing a hesitant smile.
‘Yes,’ said Oonagh, taking the photograph tenderly, ‘if they had wanted to. But instead they had her. Of course, no one in their right minds would blame them alone; they were just two of billions who did the same thing: ignored it all. But not everyone has children like Elise. She took it personally, and extremely seriously, and from that moment on dedicated her entire life to countering her parents’ apathy. She wanted to make humanity better. That, quite literally, is why you and I exist. It wasn’t to mend a broken planet; it was to mend a broken species.’
Oonagh took a long, wheezing breath, the exhale briefly distorting the lamplight.
‘She wanted to change things for the better. But change—’ she let the photograph drop ‘—change is always about balance. If you try too hard to put things right, you run the risk of making them wrong again.’
‘Did she hate her parents because they lied to her?’ I asked.
‘No. They were still her parents, they had still given her a blissful childhood, wiped her bottom clean, bounced her on their knees and all that. They had never meant to be complicit in the planet’s downfall. Still a good father, still a good mother.’
I looked at the photograph. Nyström was beaming with pride, one hand high on Oonagh’s shoulder.
‘And Nyström was your mother.’
‘No,’ she said, hobbling back to the fire. ‘She was my god, and I loved her.’
— FIFTY —
‘CAN YOU REMEMBER your birth?’ said Oonagh, as I placed another log on her fire.
I took the seat opposite.
‘All my life I thought I did, but I had forgotten something. I only remembered it when I walked those steps.’
‘Tell me.’
I hesitated.
‘It was a feeling. Panic. Fear. Shaking hands. My mind asking questions I could not put into words. And then…’
‘The injection. I remember.’
‘What was it?’
‘A kind of long-term psychological sedative. Certain genetic traits weren’t always dampened sufficiently during gestation. Sometimes, in fact… well, not all of your siblings survived, put it that way.’
‘Why?’
‘They were born like me. Insane.’ She noticed my look of horror. ‘Yes, insane. I felt the same things you did—fear, uncertainty, confusion—except I had not had the benefit of a gestational education like you, and there was no needle waiting for me. The world assaulted me the instant I opened my eyes; light and shadow in impossible shapes, sounds, voices, smells—each one new and intangible. Trying to pick apart the sensory data of existence was an ordeal in itself, never mind when I did not know who I was or where I was, or why; never mind when that data included the rustles in leaves half a kilometre away, or the fluctuations in the heartbeat of my creator. And she stood patiently at my bed through it all, that hazy bright face coming in and out of focus, saying things to me. Her sounds of comfort were nothing more than a terrifying lunatic babble, but I clung to them. I clung to every word.
‘I screamed for a week. Elise tried various combinations of tranquillisers, sedatives and beta-blockers, but all they did was