Sequela (2 page)

The second man on the panel looked up and leaned forward. Byron – the name returned to Kester. But Byron what? It was something that fitted with his appearance – Tall, Long, Haggard? He didn't look as if he was wearing, but Kester had noticed him scratching himself under the table from time to time. He had an oddly diseased look about him too. Perhaps it was his lean frame, or the fact that every few minutes he would raise a hand and whisk it around his head as if warding off flies or wafting incense. He slumped back in his chair, his lascivious smile fading as he realised that Kester's arms were bare.

'I may not be wearing anything today,' Kester said, smiling what he hoped was a reassuring smile, 'but I have brought a little something with me.' He rolled his sleeves up further, then clasped his hands tightly in front of him to steady their shaking. 'You can't see it on me because I have my nanoscreen set to suppress but not eliminate the infection. This keeps it present at a level which is useful for our purposes today but prevents it from presenting fully – like I said, I don't wear.' This was it. Kester swallowed and then looked up at Farrell. 'It doesn't present for a good thirteen hours, but I'm happy to share it with you.'

'Your balls are showing, young man,' Byron said, casting a glance at Mrs Farrell, his smile returning.

Kester's hands jerked in the direction of his flies. Diverting them at the last minute to his pockets, he laughed, too loud.

 The two gentlemen had seen what they needed and left. Kester managed to shake each of their hands without visible recoil. Back at the window, he tried not to listen to their mumbling as they took leave of Mrs Farrell, talking about the timings of the following interview.

He stepped toes to the glass and looked down. There were few buildings on the edge of the City that were a single piece like this one. Kester knew a couple of people who worked in construction and they were always moaning about how hard it was to get permission to demolish the older buildings. Stratification was often the cheapest and quickest option. The V building was iconic because of its singularity and its prodigious height, not to mention the cantilever glass shelf that jutted out of the back of the building overlooking the Green Belt and the conurbation beyond. Kester had seen it in umpteen pop videos. He toyed with the feeling of vertigo as he looked down. Shifting his weight forward, he let patterns emerge in the movements of the dots below, people, all uniform at this distance. The glass was spotless, near absent, and the air-con created the illusion of a breeze; he felt at any moment he might fall.

'Well, now.'

Kester jumped. Farrell was right behind him. He turned to face her and she put an arm out on either side, hands against the window.

'Shall we pick a spot?'

He was an insect trapped within glass, against glass.        

'I meant a description.' Kester glanced side to side for an escape route. 'When I said I could share it with you I meant I could show you my concept notes.'

'No you didn't.'

'I've got my notes here – if I can just get my Book.' Kester slid his back down the glass, ducked out from underneath her arm and dashed over to his bag. Picking it up he sat back down and put it on his lap, beginning to rummage in self defence.

'Did I get rid of the others for nothing? Why not show me properly? Or would you prefer I call one of them back? No problem. Who's it to be?'

Kester fumbled his Book out of his bag.

'No, thank you, I don't –'

'You don't go both ways? I suppose you think that's alternative do you? Not religious are you?'

Kester looked down at his Book and pressed his thumb to the base panel to switch it on. In the bright light its transparent body was made solid by smears and fingerprints. He ignored Farrell's jibes.

Taking his Book in one hand and wiping it on his trouser leg, he continued, 'I don't think it's a good idea. It takes more than half a day to present and much longer to reach full virulence and you don't want to be waiting around to make a decision. You don't want to expose yourself to something not knowing what it will look like. I could have anything.'

'Come on, Doctor Lowe, this is the '80s. I have a nanoscreen like everyone else.'

Kester felt himself shrink. She said
Doctor Lowe
as if she were a lawyer; the opposition's lawyer.

'Call me Kester.'

'Kester,' she said his name with a kick, violently. She smiled at it as if it were quaint, a nickname. She stalked around the desk and perched on its front edge, directly in front of him.

'With all respect, your nanoscreen can't recognise this virus unless I give you the uploads.'

'Which you will. Which you wouldn't travel without.' Mrs Farrell stared at Kester until he looked away. 'These make you uncomfortable,' she said with a patronising smile, indicating the sores on her neck, and then untied her vanilla hair so that it flowed down over her shoulders, covering them.

Kester clasped his hands and glanced down at his Book. The base part of his brain was taking over. She was older than him, probably knew a few tricks. This was so wrong.

'You'd better not be one of these types who comes in boasting and has nothing to deliver.'

'No, I've just put it on this morning, it's new. But like I said, it won't present on me.'

'We've got other people crying out for this position.' Farrell smirked.

Distracted by his Book again, Kester was caught off-guard. 'I know – but I'm the best. Wait until you see…' He realised that his hands had stopped shaking.

'Oh, finally a bit of real confidence.' Mrs Farrell pulled off her cravat and pinched open the first few buttons of her shirt.

'I don't want to boast.'

'I want you to boast. You're supposed to be boasting – this is an interview. Everyone boasts and most people lie. You're not lying to me are you?' She loosened the tie at the top of her culottes.

'No, I swear, I've done private trials.'

'Private trials!' She giggled at the lewd connotations like a girl, and then turned serious. 'You're not screwing with me?'

'No.'

'Not yet.' Her mood flicked again into aggressive flirtation. The front of her culottes slid down, revealing a flat creamy stomach. Along the seam of each leg, running up from the corners of her Hollywood to the top of her hips, was the shadow of a line of sores, together making a proud V, a deliberate exaggeration of her shape. 'I'm a company girl.' She nodded at her naked groin.

Kester was burning up despite himself. He forced himself to look her in the eye and left his chair. As he stood, the cityscape rose back into view, its tilt making him feel as if he was falling towards her. With her hair down, Mrs Farrell's face was softer. She batted her eyelids like a cartoon and held out one hand towards him.

 'Come closer. You won't see them,' she said. She flicked the crumpled front panel of her culottes down over the edge of the desk, exposing herself completely.

Kester felt his focus narrowing, his mind shutting out all other concerns. He walked forward and felt her hand slide round behind his neck, pulling him faster towards her. The city swelled up, breaking against the skyline. Kester's body was in conflict: sinking stomach, rising erection. This was so wrong. She pulled his head forward and down until her lips were at his ear and his eyes looking straight down the front of her shirt. Wrong in such a teenage way.

'It doesn't bother you,' Kester mumbled into her hoisted-up bosom, 'mixing business with pleasure?'

'At V, business
is
pleasure.'

Kester let out a strangled laugh and lumped his hands to her waist as she grappled with his trousers.

'Damn these old-fashioned flies.' They had ruined her
practised
routine. She laughed as she undid his belt and fumbled with his button and zip. 'You protecting something special behind this fortress?'

'I hope so.' Kester lifted his head. Committed now to a cause, if not the one he'd walked through the door for, he kissed her hard on the lips.

'Oh.' Farrell started back as if he had broken some unspoken rule of interview, and then recomposed herself. 'Bold.' She laughed, slid his trousers down over his hips and yanked him in close. 'We need to get you down to our corporate tailor for something a little more easy-access.' Reaching down, she found what she was looking for, found she'd had the usual effect and smiled. She wriggled forward, sliding her other hand to the base of his back, kissing him in return as she lined herself up professionally. 'Much more easy access.' She smiled like a predator.

'That's if I get – oah!' Kester's mouth left him as their hips clattered together.  The interview had all been foreplay to her.

'If you get the job,' she finished his sentence, hooking her sinewy legs up behind his back and constricting around him.

-o-

Kester had had sex before, but not under interview conditions.

'That's just it, Mum. There isn't much to share.' It rather cut down on how straight he could be with his mother. 'I think I impressed her – impressed them I mean – but you never know with these things, do you?'

There was rain coming from somewhere. Kester quickened his pace – he was almost at the Bloom. The bulging glass structure would provide temporary shelter from the rain. As he drew closer, his eye was drawn by the dark rocket at its centre; what used to be the Gherkin was now its kernel, a building within a building, completely visible only from one angle, as if the Bloom was a great glass fruit with a segment cut out.

'You know how well you've performed, Kester.' His Mum always voiced a belief in him that went way beyond reason.

'I suppose…'

He paused at the edge of the Bloom's North entrance and gazed down the promenade of shops and bars that curled away round the ground floor.

'And you will have done well. You always do.'

Kester's Book beeped, registering the ad he'd stopped beside.
ALL NEW LADYSQUEAL AT THE BLOOM 55!
Finally, the Pigs were catering to women. Below the tagline on his Book's display popped up a list of eight viruses that were loaded for sale. Some were classics and some were new, commissions for which the exclusivity contracts had lapsed.

'Nobody does well all the time, Mum.'

Kester looked up at the full size ad. A businesswoman rodeo-riding a mechanical pig. The smell of rubber filled Kester's nostrils, an olfactory memory bursting open like a nasty liqueur sweet.

'You
do, Kester. Don't talk yourself down.'

Kester made a noise. He was back in the branch of the Pigs he had visited as a teen tourist, green from his life outside London: close pink rubber walls, a grubby plasma screen above a hole in the wall, a stack of rubber blocks to stand on, worn grab-handles.

His mother took his silence as the need for more encouragement. 'You're the best at what you do, Kester.'

When he'd visited the Pigs there had been nothing to catch; it was just a quick release for the oversexed and the undesirable, for gentlemen who tired of the palm. Kester snorted to expunge the smell from his nostrils. He had only done it for a dare.

'I said, you're the best at what you do.'

'Mum, I'm not the best – I'm good, but you know. You never know who you're up against.' Kester had a little smile to himself. Mrs Farrell would have liked that one.

'You, Kester, are creative – you always have been – and I'll bet that's what they see in you.'

Kester laughed at the idea that creativity might have anything to do with his success or otherwise. It had been more a case of the classic quickie – pretty functional. Then again, it had been popping up in his brain like a forgotten set of keys ever since. Popping in and out. A sudden flush and he got all muddled; he could hear Farrell's hair, smell her hands. He looked back up at the rodeo-riding executive, then walked on.

'You're not just one of these lab people,' his mum said. 'You've got it all going on up there.'

'Lab people?'

'Like those folk of yours at the Institute.'

'Those are my friends! They're good people.'

'They're good lab people.'

'Oh come on, Mum, apart from Dee you've only met them two or three times.'

'That's right and I thought they were perfectly nice lab people.'