Chapter 10

I awoke beside Teel and held her tightly in my arms, hands upon her breasts. She turned around to kiss me, taking my head in her hands and pressing our lips firmly together.

"I didn't get the chance to please you properly last night," I said, realising that I'd fallen asleep quite early in the evening. I didn't even recall Nella leaving.

"You were tired."

"It's still early. Do you want to make love?"

Teel giggled and decided that she did. She rolled onto her back and I entered her. We spent ten minutes sighing softly as we rolled relentlessly towards climax. It was not earth-shattering, just incredibly enjoyable. I clung to her long after we'd finished, relishing the warmth of her body against mine. Her vagina gripped me snugly, reluctant to abandon its champion. Eventually, we headed into the bath, helping clean one another up before dressing for breakfast.

Malik had invited Drago to the lab for the culmination of my experiment. In some ways, I wished he hadn't. With a negative result, I would doubtless lose face, even though many others toiled unsuccessfully in their chosen area of research.

I'd arranged a tasty treat to appease Tiger for submitting him to such an indignity, and then hit the switch that would cancel the field and hopefully awaken him. Upon opening the coffin lid, the cat's eyes were closed and the animal made no movement. My heart sank at the prospect of failure as my hand held the titbit in readiness. Just as I thought all was lost, his nose twitched and his tongue slithered out, stealing the food and removing every last trace from my fingers. He purred contentedly and looked up at me.

Drago looked impressed at my achievement, watching as the cat stood up on all paws and arched his back, yawning widely and exposing rows of needle sharp teeth. After risking a quick stroke, I picked him up and put him down on the floor whereupon he rushed over to his water bowl and took a long drink, obviously wondering what all the fuss was about.

"We will of course need to review your work," Drago announced. "I will assign one of my colleagues."

"Perhaps Doctor Petrius?"

"Petrius," Drago corrected. "We take no honorific. Why him as a matter of interest?"

"Sarek mentioned his name to me once."

"Very well, I will speak to Petrius and see if he can spare the time."

"Thank you."

Sarek had once informed me that Petrius was investigating the population's reproductive problems, and I relished the opportunity to question him about his work.

After Drago departed, I tidied up my workbench and checked that Tiger suffered no ill effects from his ordeal. I'd never had a pet other than several goldfish when I was very small. Gathering the cat onto my lap, I spent an hour fussing over him. He rubbed his muzzle against my arm and licked my hand, apparently forgiving me for the ordeal that I'd put him through.

"Would you like to stay, boy?" I asked, thinking that the opportunity was probably far preferable to whatever fate awaited him with the other scientists.

The cat rolled onto his back submissively and purred, making the decision for me. I poured some fine rocks from a filtration column into a large collection tray, hoping that he'd have the sense to realise its purpose. I didn't relish hunting around the lab to collect his droppings, and doubted that Malik would either. An old blanket provided a place for him to sleep, but he seemed perfectly content to perch atop a tall instrument panel, watching from on high whatever was going on around him.

Tiger soon became a permanent feature of the lab, and I'd hunt him down first thing on arrival and afford him a quick stroke. Teel simply adored him, cradling him against her chest whenever she came to visit, making me almost feel jealous of the attention he received.

At night, Teel, and occasionally Nella, kept me company. The times that I enjoyed the most of course, were the rare occasions when both managed to spend the night with me. Whilst I enjoyed our lovemaking immensely, the sight of the two of them snuggled together thrilled me. They would fuss endlessly with one another, eventually working up to a crescendo that would leave them both sighing in ecstasy.

With my initial project a success, I looked around for something else to occupy my time. Shortly after I'd arrived at the citadel, I'd powered up my iPhone, but was dismayed when the battery lasted just a few brief moments before shutting down for lack of charge. Until now, I'd lacked the facility to repair it, but with a well-equipped workshop at my disposal, I threw all my energies into restoring it to operation. I prised off the rear cover and examined the small lithium ion battery.

Citadel scientists had refined fuel cell technology to such an extent that an equivalent sized battery would power the phone for many years, provided the GSM transceiver was disabled. With no cellular networks available, this represented no great loss of functionality. As a side project, I presented Malik with the task of lashing up a crude connection between the iPhone and the information terminal, a job he threw himself into with gusto. Within three days, the phone had a new power source, and an improvised optical interface that allowed the information terminal to browse the phone's file system.

Nella and Teel appeared, just as I was in the middle of displaying a slide show of pictures taken by its internal camera. There were perhaps a dozen pictures of Julia, and an equivalent number of Jenny; several were rather explicit in content. Teel laughed at one taken surreptitiously when Jenny was in the shower, her hand nestled between her thighs. I remembered that I'd caught her pleasuring herself, and had been unable to resist capturing it for posterity. She'd chased me around her flat for ten minutes, trying desperately to destroy the evidence, but eventually agreed to let me keep it.

By far, the most images featured Angela. There were pictures of her standing in front of a massive pile of gift-wrapped presents on Christmas Day, blowing out the candles on her cake during her fifth birthday party, and dozens more taken at Studland beach during the May bank holiday, when we'd taken her to Dorset. The two of us had spent three hours building an enormous sandcastle, a superb feat of engineering that we admired afterwards, before abandoning it to its fate with the incoming tide. Julia had spent the entire afternoon engrossed in a trashy romance novel on her Kindle, much to my disgust and the disappointment of Angela, who was desperate to involve her in our construction project.

I navigated to the video folder but nothing happened when I activated the icon.

"Malik!" I shouted.

Teel exchanged a significant look with the youngster as he responded to his summons.

"You have to press here and here," he explained. "This activates the interpretation of something called Quicktime. It was far too much effort to fully integrate it into the terminal's software."

Angela appeared on the display, dressed in her ballet costume. "Look at me, Daddy," she exclaimed, pirouetting about the front room.

"Aw, she's beautiful," Teel sighed, glancing in my direction.

Tears were streaming down my cheeks. "I'm sorry," Teel added sadly. "I didn't think."

"It's okay," I sniffed, unable to contain my emotions when it came to my long lost daughter.

I watched the clip to its conclusion, and then started playing extracts from my music collection. They all covered their ears when the screeching steel guitar solo from Pink Floyd's 'Shine on you Crazy Diamond' blared out of the terminal. Malik nodded appreciatively to a few tracks from Oasis, whilst the girls favoured the brooding melancholy of Fiona Apple, and the lush vocals and piano of Tori Amos.

"At least I've got something decent to listen to now," I announced as I disconnected the phone and slipped it into the pocket of my robe.

A week after Drago's visit, Petrius arrived at the lab. Like Drago, I remembered him from my appearances before the High Council, and recalled his probing questions during my initial interview.

I showed him the equipment, and then presented him with the detailed record that I'd maintained throughout every stage of the procedure. The man was middle-aged and slightly portly, his hair already starting to recede. He stood upright and stiff, full of self-importance and made light of my achievements. He personified everything that I hated about the scientific establishment: stuffy and overtly opposed to new ideas, other than his own.

"I believe you are looking at the reproductive problems?" I probed.

"That is one of my projects," he replied cagily.

"What appears to be the main issue?"

"It's highly complex," he explained condescendingly, "a genetic mutation that occurred hundreds of years ago; one that is highly resistant to manipulation."

I made a few token suggestions, but he rejected them immediately as unworkable. There was little doubt that science had advanced, but the basic principles remained unaltered, and his outright dismissal frustrated me. His arrogant attitude left me with the impression that it was hubris rather than any lack of merit to my ideas that featured mainly in his thinking.

"We have explored every available avenue," he stated pompously. "Fortunately, the gene bank provides a much superior method of guiding our evolution. Even if we solved the problem, there are many arguments that suggest that the status quo remains a far more preferable proposition."

"You would deny people the right to control their own destiny?"

"Our numbers remain stable. To correct this issue could produce an unprecedented population explosion, certainly beyond the citadel's capacity to cope."

"There's unlimited space beyond the citadel. It sounds more likely that you're not really looking for a solution at all."

"The point is moot. There is no remedy, so we do the best we can. The current situation has persisted for generations and sometimes what works well should not be tampered with, not without a compelling reason."

Drago, and two others that I'd not seen before, came rushing into the room, interrupting our exchange.

"Petrius, there's been an accident," Drago reported urgently. "A Guardian has been badly injured, and we desperately need your expertise."

With nothing better to do, I followed behind them to the hangar bay where two flyers rested side by side. From one of them, two Guardians carried a third between them. The man mumbled deliriously. His uniform was scorched, almost beyond recognition, and his upper body was very badly burned. His injuries were extremely severe. In my day, his chances of survival would have been minimal at best.

"What happened?" Petrius demanded.

"Troyal's heat weapon malfunctioned and released all its charge."

I vaguely remembered Troyal, particularly the one time he'd teased me over breakfast.

"How long before we can culture replacement tissue?" Drago asked.

"Three days," Petrius replied.

I doubted Troyal had three hours left to live in his current condition. Drago apparently agreed with me, shaking his head sadly.

"The stasis pod," I blurted without thinking. Their heads turned towards me, resenting the interruption. I continued regardless. "We could freeze him until your grafts are ready."

"Your machine would probably kill him," Petruis replied dismissively.

"He looks like he'll be dead before the day is out anyway. What do you have to lose?"

Drago scratched his chin, considering the proposal, but left Petrius to make the final decision.

Petrius nodded, and ordered Troyal transported to my lab. I was under no illusion that I would be held responsible for the man's death if things went badly, and that Petrius would take all the credit for his survival if he should live.

They positioned him carefully in the tiny chamber whilst I quickly filled a syringe with the blood additive, desperately checking off in my head all the steps necessary to complete the procedure. He continued to mumble as I injected him, whilst Petrius took a skin sample from his thigh with which to grow the replacement tissue.

"The Silver..." Troyal gasped deliriously, "the..."

"The Silver?" I enquired.

"It attacked us. I tried to shoot it..."

"The Silver Demon?" I suggested.

"He's irrational!" Petrius exclaimed. "Do what you need to do, before it's too late."

"The Silver..." Troyal babbled repeatedly.