So it’s back to governing now for Malmot and preparations for the next fake general election. And if Bactrian’s body needs to turn up sometime, well, it’s safe in refrigerated storage.
The Stemset building sits squat on the cliffside. The Devil’s own breezeblock; it sucks the life and colour out of its surroundings; a karmic black hole, leaching in the positive and spitting out the negative in fantastic new forms of mangled depravity. There are trees, bushes and general vegetation, but like nothing you’ve seen this side of a nightmare. What should be green is grey, stunted, twisted. And dripping with fat: human tallow renders on the electric fence. We still have science, you see, and its bloody by-products spill from skips, as blackened chimneys flare off the souls of incinerated test specimens.
It wasn’t always so. The Stemset building – or Ethicare Well-Being Trust Centre as it was then known – started its life as a psychiatric hospital. Never one to let stupidity hinder policy, the then Home Secretary decided that the best thing to do with the cripplingly shy, the hyper sensitive and the over anxious members of society, would be to lock them up with shit-slinging window-lickers, psychopathic killers and corpse-mutilating, necrophiliac rapists. The idea being, of course, that this would put them in an environment where they would feel safe and their issues could be resolved quickly and efficiently. Part-private funding and a substantial one-off payment for each patient was nothing to do with it. And it certainly wasn’t a plot to camouflage health service inefficiency by locking the evidence out of site.
Ethicare was also noted for its curious security, the high fence with the wide gap on the cliff’s edge labelled, “Jump here to be free of torment”. And with no doorlocks to stop them, many did and probably were. Unofficial communications between ministers made veiled references to “the successful implementation of a cruel-to-be-kind stratagem”. But throwing aside rumours of conspiracy, malpractice or simply extreme gallows humour, no one could deny that the suicides were televised and that bets were taken on which patients would jump next. I’m told a doctor won fifty pounds on my father’s death.
When asked about the matter in the commons, the Home Secretary replied: “Sometimes, I stand up too fast and it makes my brain all hurty,” and was quickly consigned to the facility he’d created.
But time marches on regardless. Large sums of money change hands and the last of the patients make the great leap, buttering the cliff with body parts. Ethicare Well-Being Trust Centre becomes Stemset Life Technologies, part of a rapidly expanding research corporation. They add electricity to the razorwire fences, sling in some halogen lighting and a couple of watchtowers and fix up a charming sign reading: “If you’ve seen this, you’re already dead. By appointment to His Majesty, King William.”
Business thrives. Anthrax sales are down due to the popularity of home brewing, but government subsidies and a nice little sideline in cryogenics ensure a healthy return for the unethical investor. And here come our investors…
The guard on the main gate is surly and the stench of non-viable embryos in the incinerator further proof, if any were needed, that Stemset may be one of the many entrances to the underworld.
“Call me C,” says a disguised Ceesal warmly as they approach the huge, reinforced doors.
“Believe me, that’s the letter that springs to mind,” Malmot answers bluntly. “You’re to behave yourself today. Understand?”
It’s unlikely Ceesal does. He’s drunk. One more drink and he’ll be quadrupedal. Malmot’s mood is sour, bordering on explosive. His new mouthpiece is an inarticulate inebriate; a liability unfit for public display; a one-way ticket to ridicule.
“Why are we here?” he asks. “Am I being annoying?” he adds.
“We are here,” Malmot replies, “to operate on your deformities. I’m thinking, we probably can’t make you any smarter but we might be able to find some kind of electrical implant that shocks you whenever you behave like an arse. You don’t mind us putting things inside your skull do you?”
“Not at all! Plenty of room in there!” Ceesal laughs.
“Just as well,” says Malmot, “because the alternative is a little more…” he turns away “… a little more fatal.”
The charming receptionist with the dead seagull eyes and too much makeup introduces them to – or rather points at – Doctor Holubec, a swarthy Eastern European with a handshake of respectful pressure. But his courteous smile hangs beneath a blank, blue gaze. It’s a look that speaks of war crimes and a first family lost to a mass grave. Whatever he loved is long gone. He prefers scientific experiments to people now. They only die within set parameters.
The foyer has a barbaric efficiency to it; a Cold War atomic bunker vibe that no amount of smiling photographs can quash. I’m not big on family portraits and torn and tearstained images of long-dead children are seldom ‘jaunty’, no matter what a grieving parent might tell you.
It’s mistrust at first sight for Malmot and Holubec; combative eye contact and a conversational tone that veers from professional to the downright hostile and back. Meanwhile, the idiot Ceesal emits methane and Holubec makes a mental note to inject him with something unpleasant before the day’s out.
Malmot looks up. Something strikes him strange: a model railway track – suspended roughly a foot and a half below ceiling level and disappearing into the ventilation shafts either side of the foyer. Ceesal just stares, his eyes wide with childish wonderment as a miniature Wild West steam train peeps in above his head, towing six little wagons full of human fingers. He turns, open mouthed, to Holubec.
“Waste not want not, yes?” says the doctor. The receptionist, called Michelle, shrugs.
“Oh, yeh!” comes an inexplicably excited voice from the depths of the ventilation system. Holubec shudders.
“You will be signing the visitor’s book,” he says, producing a massive, dust-encrusted, leather-bound tome full of blank pages.
“I think not,” says Malmot, shaking his head. “Hush hush, you know,” he adds, tapping his nose.
“I said, you will be signing the visitor’s book!” Holubec repeats.
“And I said…” starts Malmot.
“You are illiterate?” Holubec interrupts.
“Why, er, no. No, I’m not.”
“Then why do you not sign your name? If you wish, you may put down an ‘X’ and I will write in the time and date for you.”
“I am not illiterate.”
“What about your idiot friend? Can he write his language?”
“I’ve seen him draw a pig in a top hat.”
“Then you will sign and he will draw his animal with its headgear. I have crayons. Then you may proceed into the facility. Not before.”
Malmot reluctantly snatches a pen and gouges something angular into the pristine white page.
“I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with.”
“You are right,” Holubec answers. “But you do not offer me money so I will not engage the emotion of caring. I will show you round, answer your stupid questions, but that is all. Offer me financial assistance, however, and I will be your finest friend. I will call you Sir. I will give you tea and I will not point out the extent of your ignorance.”