Chapter 1

"Drink it"

Those more innocent times seem impossibly remote now that they have gone for ever. It astonishes me to reflect that it was actually less than a year ago that a sudden loud knocking heralded the unexpected late-night appearance of a policeman on my doorstep. This is an event that would terrify me if it happened today, but in those days I was still the epitome (errors and omissions excepted) of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-England respectabilty. My conscience was entirely clear, at least as regards the law, and my reaction was one not of fear but rather of puzzlement and curiosity, overlaid by a strong sense of relief that at last something had intervened to ease the unbearable strain that had been building up all evening.

It was not that my wife and I had been arguing. A blazing row would have been far preferable to the unrelenting silent glare that expressed her anger and disappointment more eloquently than words ever could. She was standing behind me as I opened the front door, but I could still sense her hostile gaze boring into the back of my skull as I asked the policeman what the trouble was.

"Mr James Walker?" he inquired. "Are you the nephew of Dr Albert Walker, of, er —" He consulted his notebook and read out my uncle's home address.

I confirmed my identity and asked again how I could help. To tell the truth, I rather expected to be told that some unfortunate young woman had found my uncle's unwanted attentions so oppressive that she had succeeded in having him arrested.

"Well, sir," said the policeman gravely, "I'm afraid I have some bad news. Your uncle is in hospital after a road accident. He's in a very bad way. He's asking for you, sir," he concluded, gesturing to the waiting police car.

I hurriedly collected my coat and other essentials and asked my wife whether she wanted to accompany me.

"I'd really rather not," she replied frostily. "Your Uncle Albert always gives me the creeps. I'm sorry he's been hurt, but he's always been a terrible old lech."

This was a common and understandable female reaction to Uncle Albert. Though now approaching seventy, he had always had an eye — a bloodshot, leering eye — for what he called "young ladies", by which he usually meant pneumatic women between, say, eighteen and twenty-four. His contempt for the social graces meant that any woman with the ill luck to attract his attention could hardly fail to be aware of the lascivious stare that followed her around; while his age, shabby attire, straggly white hair, bad teeth, and indifferent personal hygiene, to say nothing of his foul temper and complete lack of decorum, guaranteed that his interest would not be reciprocated.

"Well, I know what you mean," I agreed. "All right, I'll ring you from the hospital."

The policeman, probably unsure whether my lack of reaction indicated indifference or profound grief, kept silent as we drove through the dark north London streets. I was glad, for the silence allowed me to reflect on this news. How did I feel?

Uncle Albert had been part of my life for as far back as I could remember. It was not that my memories of him were exactly fond ones, since the role of benevolent and kindly uncle was alien to him, and even when I was a small child he had been short-tempered and dismissive at our infrequent meetings. Although I was now rapidly approaching fifty, nothing much had changed over the intervening decades. He regarded me (along with most of the rest of the human race) with an indifferent disdain he could not be bothered to conceal, while his furious energy and restless intelligence, undimmed by advancing years, caused me to think of him as more like some untamable force of nature than a blood relative.

As the years went by he had become increasingly isolated and bitter. Despite his age, he still worked all the hours God sent in the research laboratory of a famous biotechnology company. He had told me, a few years before, about the company's half-hearted efforts to get him to retire. His bosses had soon backed down in the face of his hints about possible great discoveries on the horizon, interspersed with veiled threats to spill their secrets to the competition. I suspect they were not all that sorry to see him stay on, since for all his secretiveness, irascibility, and eccentricity he was undeniably one of the world's leading geneticists and biochemists and the company raked in millions from many products he had developed.

And another thing: he never went after them for a share of the proceeds. Being his only close relative, I deplored this self-denial as much as the company must have appreciated it. But on the one and only occasion I had ventured to suggest that he ought to hold out for more of the action, my reward had been a furious tirade in which he accused me of sordid personal financial motives (of course he was quite right) and gave me very firmly to understand that all he wanted, from the company and everyone else, was to be left alone to do his own work in his own way.

My reverie was interrupted by our arrival at the hospital. The policeman hurried me through to intensive care, where a white-coated doctor greeted me.

The doctor did not beat about the bush. "Mr Walker," he told me solemnly, "your uncle is very badly hurt. To be honest, I'm surprised he's lasted this long. He's refused to be sedated and he's been demanding to see you. Please go in, but prepare yourself for a shock."

It was indeed a shock. However little there was in the way of family affection between my uncle and me, I was deeply moved to see a man of such brilliance and energy laid low like this. His head was heavily bandaged and he was covered in sensors and drips and surrounded by all the flashing, bleeping paraphernalia of modern medicine. He was so still that I thought at first he was unconscious or even dead but an eye opened as he heard the door and he fixed me with a stare in which all his seething energy was somehow focused.

"Where have you been?" he gasped. "I must talk to you."

"Uncle, I came as soon as I heard. Don't try to talk; you must let them treat you."

"Rubbish! These quacks can't do anything for me. I'll be dead by morning; I know it. And all my life's work will be for nothing, unless you do as I tell you, you lucky little bastard. Will you do it?"

I had been accustomed since childhood to name-calling from Uncle Albert, but I did not see what "lucky" had to do with it. And I was loth to make such an open-ended promise even to a dying uncle. "Uh... I..."

"Swear! You must swear to me, you bastard!"

To the obvious alarm of the medical staff, his body convulsed in pain as he wheezed out these words; and then, as I still hesitated, came a word I had never heard from him before. "Swear to me... please... !"

Everyone in the room — the doctors and nurses, and most of all Uncle Albert himself — was looking at me. Long moments passed. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall; it seemed unnaturally loud and slow.

"Please..." he gasped again.

A dying man was begging me. What else could I say? "Uncle, I swear. I'll do what you want."

He seemed to relax. After a long pause, with his only free hand he feebly gestured for me to come closer. I leant over him. He drew a painful breath.

"Free Universal Carnal Knowledge", he whispered.

"What? I don't understand."

He made another weak gesture at the medical staff. "Get rid of these charlatans."

I motioned them to leave. Hesitantly, they complied.

When we were alone, he gasped out again, "Free Universal Carnal Knowledge".

I sensed the urgency in his voice. There was something he was desperate to tell me, and he knew he had very little time to say it. I still had no idea what the old man meant, but the significance of the initials had not escaped me; a very Uncle Albert-like joke. "Yes, Uncle, but what does it mean?"

And in a low faint voice, gasping for air, but marshalling his thoughts in a way that showed that within his shattered body his mind was still intact, he told me.

He explained that he had been working secretly for nearly forty years on a new product for which he had devised the working title F.U.C.K... No one else knew anything about it, not even the name. The company had a nebulous idea that he was trying to come up with something to enhance sexual potency, a kind of super-Viagra, but they had no real expectation that anything would come of it. Uncle Albert had been doing the most crucial work secretly at home, working every weekend and far into the night using rare and expensive chemicals and natural and synthetic hormones that he had ordered at work and smuggled out. He had drawn on all his knowledge of genetics, neurology, and biochemistry and now his work was finished.