Unobtainium 1: Kate on a Hot Tin Roof Read online

  ‘That’s if you’re lucky?’

  ‘Some last for weeks as their bodies degrade. Sick, prone to disease. And those are the cumulative effects. Sudden large doses will blind you, sterilise you. Long-term sterility may be a godsend since children born to men exposed for long periods are prone to abnormalities.’

  ‘Then the question,’ Antonia said, her eyes on Kate, ‘is why our young kitten is still alive at all?’

  ‘Fffather make me special,’ Kate repeated.

  ‘I think I’d like to meet your father,’ Antonia replied, her tone dark, ‘but for now I think you can rely on Charles to take care of you.’

  The fanged smile returned. ‘Sharles!’

  ‘Yes. I’ll see to obtaining suitable clothes for a young lady.’ Antonia held up a hand before Charles could even open his mouth. ‘I know. I’ll be sure to have it charged to your account, though what your accountant will think of a bill for a lady’s undergarments I cannot imagine. I’d wager she’s not full grown, so be ready for the bills when you have to have all her clothes handmade.’

  Kate looked between them, blinking. She was eye-to-eye with Charles and Antonia, who were both around five feet nine. David was closer to six feet and the only one in the room taller than the yellow-eyed girl.

  ‘How old is she?’ David asked. ‘Do you know how old you are, Kate?’ That just got a shake of the head.

  ‘Fifteen,’ Antonia said, ‘or sixteen. Certainly no older and not much younger. I’ll see to the clothes. I know several establishments which cater to the taller woman, obviously.’

  David gave a mocking sigh. ‘She costs us a fortune in riding britches. It’s the long legs.’

  Charles gave a shrug. ‘Until I saw young Kate yesterday, I was unaware that women had legs. I thought they moved around on casters.’ His slight smile indicated that he was joking, but Antonia jumped on it anyway.

  ‘We really must find you a wife, Charles. It’s not healthy. A man without a wife is liable to all sorts of wrong habits.’

  Now Charles gave a deep, fake sigh. ‘But all the best ones are taken, my dear Mrs Wooster.’ Well, he was more or less faking.

  Richmond.

  Charles watched as six men manoeuvred the reactor into a shielded case for transport. He frowned at his thought and amended it: four men and two women. It was the women who were doing the heavy lifting while the men handled the more delicate work of latching the case closed. It was a social change which his grandfather, Hunter Hall, had been responsible for thanks to his invention of the Mechman suit. The bulky mechanical frame wrapped around the operator’s body amplifying muscles using the power of stored electricity driving powerful motors. Unfortunately, or fortunately in Charles’s opinion, to make something which was a useful size and contained all the equipment needed left little space for the driver, so women had found an important place in industry, even if that had not resulted in all of the reforms some had hoped for.

  Charles always had a pair of Mechman operators on his hazardous materials disposal teams, always women, of course, even though his father had pushed for the use of small boys for such dangerous work. Charles, however, viewed the women as more level-headed. In fact, generally more so than the adult men they worked with.

  Everyone, including Charles and the Mechman operators, was working in the stifling suits required for protection against radiation. Another of Hunter Hall’s inventions, the suits were layered cloth, lead sheets, and adamantium mesh, doubled up to be sure. But if the women dropped the reactor and the case cracked, the suits might just stop them dying quickly, but that was the best they could hope for.

  ‘We got it, sir.’ The final latch had been locked in place and the team’s supervisor, who was one of the men, was giving his report with an air of relief. Charles was thinking the same thing.

  ‘Very good. As usual, you’ve all done an exemplary job and this one was not easy. Expect a little extra compensation in your pay this week.’

  There was a pleased rumble from the workers as they began wheeling the container out. The Mechman suits were going to be needed again before they got it out of the building. For now, Charles was thankful that he could get out of the heavy suit and start looking around the laboratory. He was hoping to find something which would give more of a clue to Kate’s origins, but if he were honest, he was not hopeful.

  The equipment was telling him some things; indeed, it was suggesting a level of maniacal genius which Charles almost respected. Almost.

  The cables he had seen on first entering and taken for electrical conduits were actually somehow able to contain and direct radiation from the reactor. They worked if he shone his light down them. He had never seen anything like it and was sure that such a device could have enormous practical application. But what it had been used for was to direct a radiation source from one place to strike a contained human body from multiple angles.

  Not just men or women, however. There was a box set in one corner of the room which had several of the radiation guides attached to it. There was nothing in the box now, and it could have been there for experiments on small animals, but something about it suggested another purpose. It finally hit him that the box was almost certainly airtight so animals were an unlikely target. What was it the man had been working with?

  The most disturbing things in the building were in the cellars, in rooms beside the cell Kate had been kept in. Charles did his best to turn his emotions off as he walked through, cataloguing and checking. If he let himself feel, he was likely to do a poor job, and he wanted very much to do a good job. Kate deserved his best work.

  The surgical instruments, most of them very much in need of a good cleaning and apparently largely there for autopsy, were one thing. There were some distinctly oddly shaped frames, often with leather restraints. Charles stood examining one of them for several minutes, trying to work out what experiment might have been performed on it. When he finally concluded that it was meant for a particularly invasive ‘experiment’ upon a restrained woman, he had to leave the building for several minutes.

  Franklin was standing outside, a cigarette clutched between his fingers. Somehow Charles felt a little better seeing that the inspector’s hands were shaking.

  ‘Has any headway been made in the search for this mad man, Inspector?’

  ‘We obtained a description, sir. It’s been put out to every port and every station we could get it to. No one has seen him yet, but we’re still hopeful.’

  Charles nodded. ‘When you find him, I wish to talk to him.’

  ‘You’ll pardon my presumption, sir, but talking to him doesn’t seem to be what you have in mind.’

  ‘I will indeed pardon your assertion, Inspector. Right at this moment, I have a need to do considerable violence to the man, but I believe I will have regained my objectivity sufficiently not to shoot him on sight. Just to be sure I’ll have myself disarmed before I encounter him. I hope this admission does not make you think less of me.’

  Franklin took a drag on his cigarette, his hand still shaking. ‘Frankly, sir, I’d have thought less of you if you’d felt any other way.’

  Knightsbridge, 15th April.

  Charles worked his way through the mathematics carefully, knowing that the result would almost certainly be the same as the first two times he had done the calculation. He was doing it again, while trying to control his breathing, because the first time had given him enough of a shock that he was doubting his abilities.

  He was running a second mass spectrometer sample as well, in case the first had been in error. There was the possibility of contamination. Yes, there was, even if he had done all the preparatory work himself and was sure that there had not, in fact, been anything there to contaminate the samples from the box he had found in the lab. The samples were small, but he had confidence in his equipment.

  And the numbers from the calculation came out the same as before. The substance had an atomic mass of two hundred and sixty-two. He looked over at the spectrometer, s
eeing the line on the display which told him he had got the same result as before.

  ‘That,’ he said to the empty room, ‘is impossible.’

  Unobtainium-262 was found in microscopic quantities in the mines at Ullapool. There was an ounce in the vaults at Rhidorroch, two at the Royal Society. That was the world’s entire supply as far as anyone knew, but somehow this man had obtained some. No one knew what, if any, properties it had, but it was known to be stable, or sufficiently stable that any decay had never been detected.

  His train of thought was interrupted by a knock on the laboratory door.

  ‘Come.’

  Harroway entered and gave a short nod. ‘Sir, Inspector Franklin called.’ Harroway was not just Charles’s manservant, and Charles had tried to persuade the man that a little less formality was allowed these days, but Harroway only allowed his gentlemanly demeanour to slide a little while assisting in the lab. They were currently in the laboratory, but there was no assistance being undertaken. At forty-two Harroway was several years Charles’s senior, but he was a good man, an excellent housekeeper, and he knew how to use a pistol should someone attempt entry to the house for nefarious ends. He also had all his hair and teeth, and was quite fit and moderately handsome in an aging way. And he was always immaculately dressed, as was Charles, largely thanks to Harroway.

  ‘News on Kate’s… sire? I refuse to refer to that mad man as her father.’

  ‘Indeed, sir. Mister Alfred Cooper was apprehended this morning, in Portsmouth. The inspector suggested that you visit Scotland Yard tomorrow.’

  Charles began deactivating the spectrometer. ‘I believe I shall. Today I need to go to the Royal Society to check on the store of Unobtainium. This Cooper appears to have obtained some two-six-two.’

  Harroway also had that most amazing of English servant qualities: an inability to be surprised. Or at least to express it; his words suggested the news was as alarming to him as it was to his employer. ‘My understanding was that that particular isotope was as rare as rain in a desert, sir.’

  ‘I believe then that we will be required to issue a storm warning for the Sahara.’

  New Scotland Yard, Westminster, 16th April.

  Alfred Cooper was, according to Franklin, a man of some means, though not quite of the gentlemanly upbringing that Charles had had. That made his appearance now all the more surprising and displeasing.

  He was not tall, perhaps five feet and six inches, thin to the point of minor malnutrition, and bald. The hair loss, Charles fervently hoped, was likely the result of accumulated radiation damage from his experiments. He sat hunched over the interview room’s table, but his face, heavily lined and with watery, grey eyes, was still visible. He looked sickly. There was every possibility that he would not make it to trial.

  ‘Unobtainium,’ Charles said as he entered the room. Cooper looked up, surprise flickering across his face. ‘You managed to lay your hands on some quantity of a heavier isotope of it. Atomic weight two hundred and sixty-two. There are just under three ounces in the entire world, all accounted for. Where did you get it and what did you do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Cooper rasped.

  Charles peered at him for a second and tried an alternative tack. ‘Come now, I’ve been through your laboratory. Some of the work there is genius. The light guide pipes, for example. The box with several radiation feeds was used to bombard the two-six-two…’ He saw Cooper’s face shift, a slight smile. ‘No, not for that, but you were bombarding something in that box with Unobtainium radiation.’

  ‘I don’t know–’

  ‘What I’m talking about? You appear to be as poor a liar as you are a father, sir.’

  ‘What did you do with Kate? They won’t tell me. What happened to her?’

  ‘She’s safe, but you pose the very question I would ask of you. What did happen to Kate? What did you do to her? Where is her mother?’

  ‘Dead. Died giving birth. She needs me. She’ll die–’

  ‘You kept her locked in a cellar, in the dark! You’ve been exposing her to radiation! The last thing we’re going to do is return her to you.’

  ‘She’ll turn on you.’ Cooper looked up again, his eyes hard. ‘She’s an animal. Little more than one. She can barely speak.’

  ‘She knows more language than you realise, sir. Perhaps if you had treated her more like a human she would know more. She reacts well to kindness. I believe she has never had any from you.’

  ‘I show her kindness!’ There was at least some animation in the man. ‘I brought her into this world. I gave her the best start any woman could have. She is the future, Doctor Barstow-Hall, Fellow of the Royal bloody Society. She is special!’

  ‘So she keeps telling us. “Father make me special.” How did you make her special, Mister Cooper?’

  Cooper lowered his head to the table. ‘You already know the answer to that, Doctor.’

  Frowning, Charles turned away. He was quite sure that he would get no more from the man. Perhaps Franklin could, but for now there was thinking to be done. Apparently he had all the facts, and now there was just the process of putting them together.

  Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

  ‘I must say, Doctor,’ Doctor Wilberforce said as he placed a pair of X-ray negatives onto the light box, ‘when you asked for X-rays, I was unsure what purpose you had in mind.’

  ‘Particularly since I said that any part of the body would do?’ Charles replied.

  ‘Indeed. But then I saw this.’ He turned on the light.

  ‘Forgive me, Doctor. I am not a medical man, but I have seen an X-ray before. Are they not normally clearer?’

  ‘They are. We checked the development and the machine. There is nothing wrong with these pictures.’

  The images showed a forearm and a shin. The bones were there, though they appeared whiter than Charles would have expected, and they were overlaid with a cloudy mass which seemed to belong to Kate’s flesh and almost obscured the bone beneath. He frowned, looking closer.

  ‘These striations on the bone…?’

  ‘They also appear to be real. The technician suggested that, for some reason, your young charge has unusually dense flesh and bones. You see how white they are in the image. This… web of lines around them is denser still.’

  Charles took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘The man is insane,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Doctor?’

  ‘I believe that Kate has had more than simple mistreatment. I will require a sample of her blood before I state firmly what my beliefs are. I can assist in its procurement.’

  ‘If you would. She was unhappy about the X-ray until we said that you had asked for it. She seems quite taken with you.’

  ‘I believe, Doctor Wilberforce, that she has had no one to show her a kindness of any kind her entire life. Kindness is such a simple thing to give and it can gain us so much, including the trust of a girl who knows nothing of it.’

  ‘A philosopher as well as a scientist, Doctor Barstow-Hall?’

  ‘When one’s family has given the world wonder, and horror, one develops many a theory on the nature of the human condition, Doctor.’

  Knightsbridge, 17th April.

  The mass spectrometer’s fans were whirring again. Charles was as sure about the results this time as he had been the last, but he was hoping against hope that he was wrong.

  The signal, when it displayed, was significantly more complex than the last time. He noted down peaks on the graph, taking care and double-checking every figure before he moved on to the calculations. Some of the spikes corresponded to elements he knew: iron, carbon, oxygen. Exactly what one would expect from a sample of blood. The last peak was small, but definitely there and he knew before he started working through the numbers that it was the same as the sample from the box.

  ‘My God, he’s impregnated her entire body with the stuff. It’s… impossible.’ He slumped into his chair and s
tared at the numbers, trying to make them come out differently by sheer force of will.

  The knock on the door made him start and his shout of ‘Come!’ may have been a little louder than intended. ‘Harroway, what is it? I’ve just discovered something most disturbing about Kate and–’

  ‘This is about Kate, sir. The hospital called. She’s sick.’

  ‘You have no idea how true that is.’

  Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

  ‘She said nothing,’ Wilberforce said, ‘but the nurse thought she looked uncomfortable when she brought breakfast this morning. By mid-afternoon she was obviously in some discomfort, if not pain, but she continued to profess to being well.’

  Charles looked across the room to where Kate lay in her bed. The girl looked paler but not in a great degree of pain, yet. ‘Cooper, the man who claims to be her father, has somehow laced her body with Unobtainium. That is what caused the clouding on your X-rays, Doctor. It must have somehow seeped into every cell in her body, saturated her bones. It’s in her blood.’

  Wilberforce had the good grace to at least appear speechless. Given the way his jaw worked for a second, perhaps he genuinely was. ‘Is that even possible?’

  ‘I am a scientist, Doctor. While I would have said no until today, I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes. I’ll speak with her and then see if I can construct some mechanism to remove it, though…’

  ‘I realise that this sounds very much like a platitude, but if anyone can do it, you can.’

  ‘I thank you for your confidence, Doctor.’ Charles left him, walking over to the side of the bed.

  Kate’s smile was as bright as ever. ‘Sharles! I… hope I am not… Uh… You are a busy man.’

  ‘You hope you’re not interrupting my work?’ Charles suggested. Kate looked puzzled for a second and then nodded. ‘My dear, all my attention is directed to your health at this moment.’