2 Attraction, 3 Determination

Chapter 2 Attraction

"Kamala?” Gervaise snapped sharply, “Are you listening?" Kamala looked up from her note book – now three quarters covered in doodles - the fall of black hair that curtained her face from view parted to reveal her serious, angular face. He tightened his grip on the pencil he’d been tapping on his ankle and finds himself suddenly speechless, trapped in the deep brown-black of her still half-dreaming eyes....

I was watching her with more ancient eyes... without eyes at all (what eyes could see through this darkness, this rock and ice?) across time, across space. And I was waiting too - have been waiting for many a decade - watching her progress through bud and blossom. Whispering to her in her dreams... Waiting for the right time to wake her and bring her to me, because I can't do this alone... But I'm getting ahead of myself. I sometimes forget that for you Time is linear, that your past comes before your present and that your future has not yet become. (Who am I? I’m the person telling this story. But don’t worry about me yet, the story will come round to me eventually... like all stories do...)

Gervaise pulled himself together. He'd been caught that way before, and only the very understanding attitude of the Vice Chancellor had saved him from dismissal that time. It wasn't worth it. And anyway, each wave of students that washed up on the tired old shore of his tutorial room, seemed to be getting younger and younger - impossibly and unattainably younger.

"Do try and pay attention, young lady. Do me the courtesy of at least appearing to absorb these pearls of scientific wisdom I am attempting to cast before you." The pomposity didn't quite come off. The black suit - though the velvet was faded and actually coming apart at some of the seams - might almost have done it, but the wiry blond hair, scraped back from receding temples into a little ponytail held with a frayed pink scrunchie and the psychedelic green and pink tie skewed the effect. Kamala had been listening, as a matter of fact. Doodling helped her concentrate. She slammed the book shut.

Gervaise noticed how the dimples in the brushed steel briefcase at her feet reflected wavy, dreamlike images of the puce-painted toe-nails peeping out of her black sandals – the only touch of brightness around this sombrely dressed creature. Then he looked up, wrestling with the temptation to linger on the topography of the t-shirt beneath the logo of some scientific equipment supplier, past the white teeth pressed in embarrassment into the edge of the slightly cracked bottom lip, into the dark eyes again...

"Sorry, Gervaise. I am listening, really. Go on, you were saying about these new soil water retention techniques they're trying out...?"

* * *

Kamala reached her rented student house just as Amelia was wrestling her bicycle up the four steps to the front door. Melodious sounds drifted through the open ground floor window - Doh Re Mi So Fa... In one of her hands, Amelia had keys, a bottle of fizzy water she'd bought earlier, the butt of a roll-up she hadn't got round to dropping and the door handle. With the other hand she was trying to keep the bicycle upright, shove the stiff door open, hold back a huge, mirrored, cloth bag straining at its seams, which kept swinging forwards and pulling itself off her shoulder.
Kamala leaned against the gatepost and watched, fascinated that anyone could get themselves into such a state over simply opening a door – there was no planning, no forethought, no co-ordination... As Amelia jerked back her bag, swearing under her breath, her hair sticking to the sweat on her face, the bike swivelled round raking the pedal across her ankle leaving an oily, bloody streak outlined with ripped skin. The door exploded open and deposited Ameliabicyclebagbottlebooks in a screeching, cursing heap in the passageway.

"Laaa, Tiiiiiiii - hi, Meeleeeeee – Dooooooh! Doh Ti La Fa So Mi Re Dooooooh"

"Hi...J- shit! Hi Janey".

The commotion jerked Kamala out of scientific observation mode...

"You're hopeless, Amelia! You're the only person I know who can make walking through a door into such a palaver! Why don't you ever put anything down?"

"I don't know, Kam, it just never occurs to me... my mind's already gone onto the next thing...I'm not like you, always knowing exactly what you're doing, where everything is, how much time you've got left... I even used to forget to swallow my food before I put the next mouthful in when I was a kid, for god's sake!" A problem which had clearly been overcome, as evidenced by the generous curves and mounds of Amelia's silk-clad form.

Together they hoisted the bike onto the contraption in the corridor ceiling, while Kamala picked up the books and stuffed them back into the bag (rip!), Amelia roughly mopped the spilt fizzy drink with a sleeve, applied the wet sleeve to the burning graze on her ankle. She stuffed the roll-up butt into the bottle, stuffed the bottle into the bag with the books and the keys (rip!) – and they continued up the stairs. As Kamala reached the first landing, she went into the musty cave of a bathroom and started the bath running.

At the second landing she stopped and took a new light bulb out of her briefcase. She extracted the elongated loop of the energy saving bulb from its box, put it in her jacket pocket, climbed onto a chair (placing her feet on the edges and not the frayed, swayed seat) which, for reasons no-one could quite explain, lived on the landing. She removed the old bulb, put it in her other jacket pocket and replaced it with the new one. She climbed down from the chair, put the old bulb into the cardboard box and put it back into the briefcase. As her weight on the top stair before the third landing made it creak, a voice floated out of the closed door to the right...

"Yo! Kammy Knickers! Get in here and get yer clothes off!"

Kamala smiled. "In your dreams, Jerome!" Everyone else treated her with a kind of shy respect – the ‘demure’ Indian girl ("Half Indian, and never set foot in India" she always corrected them) so sensible and straight. She rather enjoyed Jerome's irreverent flirting.

She reached her attic bedroom, and, after putting the blown light bulb and the light bulb box in the waste paper basket, hung her charcoal grey jacket up on a hanger. She decided to lie down for a moment while the bath was filling up.

She looks up at a sky as blue as Gervaise's eyes. A bird swoops on still wings across the evening. Clouds tinged with glory pass slowly between the window frames. An aria from Carmen ascends from the ground floor up to the attic window – so pure and beautiful it has ceased to be human. Kamala's mind keeps count with the beats, the ordered, mathematical precision of the music. The pattern of the beat is mapped out against the skylight and the perfection of the pattern fills her with joy, a joy that builds painfully until it explodes into the sky... while words unbidden stream through her mind...

Time is like an arrow speeding straight towards infinity - with no reverse gear, Kamala. But it’s also an arching loop of possibility, two serpents endlessly chasing each others’ tails. Turn it this way and it’s a figure of eight, folding yeastily back on itself… as the two strands cross in the middle, sparks of recognition flash across from one to the other. Turn it again and they’re aeons apart, galloping down corridors of nothingness, until they swerve again, gather themselves up and prepare to go around the big swoop one more Time.

Kamala came back down to earth - and back into her body - with a bump... She blinked hard and shook her head - must have dropped off for a moment. Shouldn't stay up so late at night reading Tropical Agriculture theory, She ran down to the bathroom undressed and climbed in to the just-perfect bath... just as all the lights went out. Cries of dismay echo from each floor.

"Oh Christ! Not again! That's the third time this week...! This is getting like a Developing Country - no offence, Kam..."

"None taken, dear, since I have never set foot in a Developing Country. Anyway, I think we're supposed to call them Semi-Developed Countries now."

Kamala systematically lit all the candle stubs (which she had thoughtfully installed after the first time this happened), around the side of the bath, on the window sill, floated a couple in the basin – and sank into the warm, scented essence. She let her eyes unfocus on the mellow mists rising, uplit, from the surface of the water, felt the surface tension on her knees, her chest, her arms. Regarded her painted toenails sticking up out of the gloom down the other end of the tub and – for a brief moment - imagined they were beautiful, mutant mangrove trees rising from a tropical swamp.

Stupid! She firmly told herself, toes are toes, trees are trees. Trees got her thinking about the tutorial - Gervaise's laid back, somehow 'decadent' voice of his... Gervaise... removing his psychedelic tie, his black suit, his shoes, pulling the elastic band off his pony tail and letting his hair flow... climbing into the bath with her, the suds darkening the golden curls around his belly button...

The door swung open, Amelia swayed in and flumped down on the toilet seat. Kamala had never got used to the casual invasion of privacy that all her housemates seemed to think so natural. The bathroom door didn't even have a lock on it. Still, everyone else seemed to be so relaxed, it would seem churlish to tell them how uncomfortable it made her feel, so she just sank a little lower to let the bubbles shroud everything but her face and knees.

"You alright, darling?"

"Yeah – had a tutorial with Gervaise today."

"You fancy him, don't you?"

Kamala smiled and, heavy lidded, swirled the water with her toes.

"So, you are coming on this demo, aren't you?"

"What demo?"

"Oh, Kam! You know exactly what demo! The one we were all talking about over dinner last night! The demo against the dam they're building in India? You know, they're going to displace all those tribals? I'd have thought you of all people would care."

"Why me? Oh, sorry, I know, it's because I'm your token darkie isn't it? So I'm supposed to live a life of permanent guilt about my poor, suffering fellow Indians. I've never even been there, Meelie. All I know about India is what I've learned about its agriculture. I don't care about people. I care about trees."

"Don't pretend to be cynical with me, Kam. I know that's not true. Of course you care about people! Anyway, think of all the trees that'll be flooded when they build the dam."

"Yeah, and think about all the crops they'll be able to grow with the irrigation system they build."

"Crap! The water's all going to be piped in to the cities for the rich bastards to mix with their whisky"

"Goodness me! That's an awful lot of whisky, isn't it? Thirsty bunch, those rich Indian bastards."
"Come on, Kam, it'll be a laugh. We'll take some beer and a picnic. Jerome's bringing his guitar. Come oooooon, Kam, pleeeease!"

"Oh god, Meelie - it's all so fake. We're not sixties flower power children any more... you know
these demos are just mobile theme-parks laid on to make us feel like we're changing the world. That generation is dead and buried... the powers that be don't seriously care about demos any more."

Amelia's look of hurt could rival a kicked spaniel puppy - her eyes filled up and wobbled shinily in the candle light.

"Oh alright, alright! I'll come, if it makes you happy." Kamala said quickly "But don't expect me to chant Damn the Dam slogans."

"Good. Ok, so tell me about Gervaise. You do fancy him, don't you?" The tears evaporated as quickly as they had appeared.

Later, Janey, Amelia and Kamala sat hunched in the darkness round a tray stuck with candles on the floor of Janey's room (there was a little common room on the first floor with a flickering black and white telly, but nobody liked going in there – it smelt weird). They were wrapped in quilts and blankets. Blobs of not very fresh cheese and frozen chips were toasting on the ends of forks in the candle flames – it was a slow process with very small and charred rewards, but the beer and the spliff made it seem like the most fabulous and hilarious feast they'd ever had. The only sounds were the spitting of chip fat, the sizzle of melting cheese and the odd giggle.

Into this silence tore an explosion, the shock lifting the three of them off their seats. They clutched each others' arms, a candle was knocked over, they frantically beat at it with their blankets, screaming and giggling, putting all the other candles out in the process, as overhead four jet fighters broke the sound barrier and ripped across the sky in tight formation. Suddenly the feast had lost its pleasure. In total darkness now, they shivered in their blankets.

"This is what it will be like for those poor tribals when they're chucked out of their villages." said Amelia, gloomily, "No food, no light. No hope."

"No beer." added Kamala, shielded by the darkness from Amelia's glare.

They heard the front door open, and under-breath swearing. There were fumbling sounds and then a click. Light flooded the room, the radio groaned back into action and the clattering whir of the fan heater started up again. The three bedraggled figures sat blinking stupidly, their scorched blankets stuck with gobs of melted cheese and wax, candles, thawing chips, empty beer cans and ash scattered around them.

"Oh! You're all in here are you? Why were you sitting in the dark?"

"The electricity went off again..."

"And you didn't switch on the BUPS because...?

"Bups?" they blinked back at him, blankly.

"Back-up Power Supply" he said slowly and clearly with a pitying look in his eye... "Every building in the civilized world has had them since the power cuts started in the 10's, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, right. We knew that." blustered Amelia (and now vague memories came to them of parents-teachers-shopkeepers fumbling in cupboards and lights coming back on again) "We wanted to, you know, prove that... that you can easily live without electricity... in case we get interviewed by the press at the demo..." She finished in triumph. The others were impressed.

"Well now, isn't that sweet? You can tell the world's press how the impoverished peasants can live on frozen chips toasted over lavender scented candles. Seriously... I sometimes wonder how you people ever got into University... Well, I'm off to bed – I suggest you three toddle along too. It's late."

They spluttered into laughter as soon as he'd shut the door.

"'Toddle along'!? Who the fuck does he think he is? Bloody Mother Superior?!" gasped Amelia

"'You people'? Who the hell's 'You people'?" squeaked Kamala, indignantly.

"He's right, though," said Janey, starting to potter around and clear up the mess. "It is late... nearly midnight..."

At indeed the radio was announcing "The News at midnight... " The girls all took on the proper,
grown up expressions for listening to the news; but the raising of the real world's ugly head, pitiless, blood-sodden, aching with hunger and sorrow, sent a chill creeping down their backs, and soon their eyes were flickering around the room looking for distractions.

They weren't fools whatever Simon might think - they knew that the world they now lived in was balanced on a political and environmental knife edge. They spent most of their waking hours trying to push that knowledge to the backs of their minds, filling up instead with more innocuous, less painful knowledge. And they spent most of their nights cushioned in chemical or alcohol induced stupors trying to keep the nightmares at bay.

They were standing, blinking at the threshold of adulthood, the safe, milky shadows of childhood just at their heels, and what they glimpsed was so blinding they could hardly bear to look - though they sensed that as "adults" now they ought to try. As children, their parents had tried to shield them from the worst of the truth, but now they were out in the open, reality raining down on them like radiation. And all the parents could do was murmur reassuringly like they had when the monsters-under-the-bed had come creeping out, oozing shadow-fingers over clown-pattern counterpanes...

Only these monsters didn't disappear so easily, these monsters got bigger and scarier the more light you shed on them. And deep down the children - all grown up now - couldn't stop themselves wondering how their parents, who were supposed to be so big and clever and sensible, who were supposed to keep them safe, who they had trusted with their lives... had let things get so appallingly out of hand.

So while the measured BBC voice detailed the latest movements in the ever tightening knot of political tensions tangled across the world, they were chucking pieces of burnt cheese at each other, as the voice trotted out the inevitable litany of assassinations in America, kidnappings in Kurdistan, hijackings in Jakarta, car bombings in Cairo, they were comparing zits. As multi-millionaire industrial tycoon, Andreas White, started describing how he felt about the challenge ahead of him - to walk across the entire Sahara desert alone - they were brushing each others' hair. These dobs of banality acted like cotton wool in their ears...

Chapter 3- Determination

Ping!

"There it goes again, look! Do you see it, Laine?"

The tiny flicker arcing out of one of the ice blue oscillations across the computer monitor was reflected in Laine's gold-rimmed spectacles as the two men leant in close.

"Yes, dammit, I do! What the hell is it? What are they, I should say?"

"I don't know, but I've had the lab and the research guys look over the records for as far back as they go and like I said, once you notice it, there's no doubt about it, they keep coming up, again and again - some are bigger than others, there was a monster one about a hundred and forty years ago. I haven't figured out a pattern yet, but I'm sure there is one. They're scattered through all the records right from when they started being kept ... There's even references to blinding flashes of light, surges of energy, in ancient forest folklore - probably referring to these babies - so God knows how far they go back... All the scientists have discounted the phenomenon before because they just couldn't explain it..."

There was a respectful but insistent knock on the door.

"Come in!"

"Sir - the camera crew is ready for you now."

Andreas White smiled into the camera. His smile, many said, was the secret of his fortune. It dazzled, it charmed, it seduced - it was a string of pearls, a stream of sunshine. The creases at the corners of his eyes, his high, bronzed forehead and the silver highlights at his golden temples whispered that he was not just intelligent - he was also wise. Others disagreed that it was the smile, or even the brain, that drew people and luck and wealth towards him - like sailors to a siren sung shore. They said it was The Voice.

"Yes, I know there has been some opposition to the project, John..."

The Voice purred, with the assurance of a well-oiled, exquisitely crafted Jaguar.

"...and sadly a lot of beautiful countryside will, indeed be submerged with the construction of the dam. But that's the egg, if you will, that needs to be broken, to make the omelette. The rich, creamy, nutritious omelette - which will feed the region's - the whole country's economy in fact."
"But, forgive me Mr White, you're not trying to tell me that Extronn's investment in this dam is purely for the benefit of the country? An astute business-man like yourself is surely set to make a bob or two out of this?"

"Is that so terrible, John? Isn't commerce what makes the world go round? You wouldn't resent a semi-developed world farmer for selling his grain at a profit, would you? Is this so very different?"

"No, but..."

"I mean, there was an excellent piece in The Financial Times only yesterday that set out in great detail all the economic gains that would result from this project. With the trickle-down effect, even the re-homed tribal people will get their cut... and may actually be even better off than before."

"Well, yes, but doesn't your conglomerate own the Finan..."

"Plus there's the ecological angle. Now as you know, this little planet of ours is rapidly running out of fossil fuels. The rationing, the power-cuts... it's already started. With the big eastern economies - India, China, Brazil - roaring up now, the demand for energy's already rocketing... where's all that energy going to come from? The fossil fuel larder's bare, I'm afraid, John. But, thank God, there are alternatives. Like hydro-electric power. You could argue that that's why Someone put those phenomenally powerful rivers there in the first place..."

"Oh, come now Mr White, surely you're not claiming God is..."

"I'm not claiming anything, John. I'm just a humble business man minding his own business, and wishing others would do the same.

Ok, thank you, Mr White."

"No, thank you, John" purred The Voice, and as The Smile beamed across the world a million hearts (amongst other things) fluttered.

"How was I?" White ran his fingers through his silver-gold hair. White's easy bonhomie on screen didn't come naturally to him - it was a bravura performance which left him drained every time.

"Great, Andy, just great. Charming, informative, tactical - you always are. No-one would have noticed you were nervous. I'm almost sure they wouldn't." Laine gushed, throwing a soft, bolster-like arm across White's shoulders and squeezing. "Although nervousness is sometimes interpreted as a sign of dishonesty... but no, you were great. Just great! They love you, everyone does. Especially the dames, eh?!" He pummelled White's arm with his pudgy fist and winked.

White smiled, but his forehead creased slightly. Why should he need Laine's approval? He was Laine's boss - without him, without his ideas, Laine would be nothing. But without Laine, what would White be, he wondered?

"So, like I was saying...These power surges - bigger than Vesuvius and several Tsunamis rolled into one - but without a trace of a tremor or any kind of radiation or anything reported in the vicinity before or afterwards. Everyone's just always assumed that they must be glitches in the equipment readings."

"Well, they must be, mustn't they? There's no other explanation."

"Maybe, maybe. But if there is another explanation... these are the mothers of all energy sources, Laine. The energy this dam's going produce is a kitten's fart in comparison. If they're for real, if we can find them, tap them..."

The two men stared at each other, eyes glittering. But there was a subtle difference. Laine's eyes glittered with calculating fervour. White's with determination.

* * *

I suppose it was just a matter of Time before one of you noticed of your own accord. You can't really keep a thing like that secret forever. We'd been lucky until then. The system had worked for aeons. It had become a lot easier since you people came along with your marvellous little nervous systems and that extra special 'je ne sais quoi' - a 'soul', I suppose some of you would call it - and we always pick one of you with a particularly pure and shiny one for the task. And you explained it all neatly away with your myths and theories.
But then, there was always this possibility - this flipside to your genius - that you would one day put two and two together and come up with infinity. You pre-empted it, had a shadowy premonition of it, when you put two halves of a split atom together and made... eternity of a kind, I suppose. What will you make this time, my clever little monkeys, if We let you? What sulphur-steaming, life-defying hell will you cook up, if We don't head you off...? Even you don't know - and yet you'd do it anyway, just out of curiosity... That's what's so chilling.

* * *

Determination. Andreas White had always been determined. He'd had to be from the day he was born if he was win his mother‘s affection. She followed her handsome explorer-scientist husband to the remotest jungles and wildest mountains of the world, assisting him in his search for rare flora with medicinal properties. As soon as the Ketchua Indian midwife in the small Peruvian mountain settlement had delivered her baby, she thrust it over to the maid they'd hired for the purpose and set about getting fit and beautiful again for her husband.

Somehow little Andreas - with his eyes the same blue as the Peruvian sky and his golden curls - always knew that the woman who suckled him, played with him, fed him and slept by his side, though he loved her, was not as important to him as that other woman whose blue eyes matched his but were always turned away from him, whose blonde curls were almost the only thing he ever saw of her, except for one heavenly hour every evening when he was allowed to sit on her lap, toy with her gold pendant, lean against her softly thrumming chest. The man her eyes were always turned towards occasionally poked him playfully in the tummy or ruffled his head before turning back to his experiments. Little Andreas was forever trying to escape to get to his mother, and on many a night was grabbed by the ankle as he sped out of his nanny's tent towards his parents'.

On one such foray, when he was three years old, he had managed to escape unheard just as the sky was growing light and had almost made his way all the way to the parental cocoon, while his nanny snored in her scratchy llama wool shawls. When he had got about 20 yards from his goal, he caught sight of a stray beam of golden hair curling invitingly at him from the shadows of the hallowed tent - mesmerised, his little dimpled legs accelerated over the rough scrub.

He was already sprawled face down onto the scrub before he saw what he had tripped over, before it rose before him, its tongue flickering like lightening, licking its lips, before the lightening struck into his thigh and the pain shot through him. His shriek was like a gunshot, causing a pulse of alarm to ripple through the campsite and all the birds and beasts in a half mile radius.
His mother was the first to reach him... beating the nanny by a hair's breadth. She hugged him to her chest which, Andreas noticed despite the pain searing through his body, was still warm and smooth, like a newly baked bun, from sleep. While she kissed and kissed the raging red, slippery-with-tears face, the nanny deftly pulled the injured leg free from the embrace and sucked out most of the poison. By doing so she not only saved Andreas' life, but her own job as well.

It seemed to wake his mother from her husband-enchanted dream and make her notice her little boy properly for the first time. She abandoned her husband for long hours after that and sat beside her son, soothing his fevered brow with her cool, white fingers, spooning the milky potions the nanny prepared into his baby-bird-gaping mouth, she sang him songs and hugged him to her soft, warm chest again. And again.

Even the father dragged himself away from his sorting of samples, cooking of concoctions and lists of actions and reactions to come over and sit at his son's bedside for minutes at a time and call him 'daddy's little trooper'. He informed Andreas that his accident may have had a silver lining, since it had helped daddy discover another vital medicinal plant, as the nanny had shown him what leaves she had used in the milky brews which seemed to have been so effective in curing the boy. Andreas eked it out for as long as he could, but even he knew deep down that it couldn't last for ever.

He got better (despite secretly spitting out the nanny's healing potions whenever he could) and his mother drifted back to her husband. Having tasted the bliss of those long embraces, Andreas redoubled his efforts to draw them back to him... Danger had done the trick last time... so he climbed up to dizzyingly high branches of the jungle trees, leapt from high rocks, plunged into icy streams and wrestled with their virulent, wiry currents shouting "Look at me, mummy, look at me!"

And often, she did look, she sometimes smiled or clapped her hands, she sometimes hugged him... but she always turned back to her husband, to her work at his side. There are children in the remotest depths of the Peruvian jungles to this day who cry 'Lookami, lookami!" when they perform particularly daring feats, though the origins of the cry has been long forgotten.
And then, two years later Andreas' world ended. At the age of five, he was sent to boarding school in England. The culture shock, the cold, the deprivation of even the most fleeting hints of maternal affection were worse than death by snakebite would have been. But he was determined it was not going to defeat him. He was determined to prove to his mother that he was strong enough and brave enough to survive this, to make her proud of him. He set to work being the best he could be in his school work, in sports, in whatever they threw at him, and counted the minutes until the day he would go back to her in the Christmas holidays.

The day never came. The campsite was destroyed in a freak mudslide that winter crushing his mother, his father, his nanny... everyone he had ever known and loved. All he had left was his determination. To do well. To be the best. To make his mother proud of him, wherever she may be. And with every try he scored, every test he passed with flying colours, every accolade he received, a little voice would cry inside this increasingly tall and handsome young man - Look at me, mummy.

He didn't open himself up to friendship, or love, he just worked hard and success came to him. His good looks and intelligence, offset by that just-perceptible little-boy-lost air, charmed people, drew them to him; adults and children, male and female. They admired him, were attracted to him, trusted him. Whatever he turned his hand to succeeded. And the success made him even more attractive. By the time he left university - he had many powerful friends in the military, in government, in industry, in the media...

When he graduated, he went back to the jungles that had stolen his life from him and tried to followed in his father's footsteps. But it was too painful for him. Every birdcall, every bloom, every cricket's click, every Ketcua inflection reminded him of what was gone forever. So when he stumbled across a thin, yellowish distillation from a rare fungus in the higher elevations of the jungle, which he turned into a serum that his friends in the military and the police found extremely useful and said they would be willing to pay handsomely for, he packed up his tent and never went back. He set up a laboratory back in England to develop the serum synthetically and soon had more money in his bank account than several small semi-developed countries' debts put together.

And the wealth made him more attractive still. He was vaguely aware that the uses to which his serum were being put were not very pleasant - but he of all people knew that the world was an unpleasant place, it was not his responsibility if other people chose to make it even more so. He focused instead on the dizzying heights of profit, of success, that he was climbing to. Look at me, mummy.

George Laine, White's most constant friend and advisor since the first week at school, dealt with all the less pleasant aspects of business, while White himself was the intrepid explorer, the ideas man, the golden boy, the pretty face in front of the camera - Laine lubricated darker passages back stage to keep the offers coming, to forge the partnerships, to strike the deals. With Laine's advice, the money from the serum doubled, tripled, quadrupled, over and over.

While Laine negotiated, navigated and networked, White sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean, collected trophies for world records, crossed the Gobi desert in a micro-light, trekked through the ice floes of the North Pole (what was left of them). Laine played White like a fine racehorse - knowing exactly how much to rein him in and when it was expedient to give him his head.

Laine had always had a good eye for a sweet deal, a loophole, a soft spot (to press hard on)... He had spotted White's potential the instant the devastated little cherub set foot through the school gates. He had watched quietly and listened carefully and caught the resonance of a bright riff of genius echoing off the hollow of despair. Jackpot! The perfect combination. Laine had reached out curling tendrils of friendship, snaked himself into every crevice of White's insecurity and then never looked back.. never looked down as, together, they soared.

Watch where you're soaring, boys. Your blazing trail could set the world on fire... and not in a good way. That's why I've been waiting for you, watching. If you step across the line, I have a weapon waiting to use against you... I'm priming her, ready for that moment. She may not look like much, but appearances can be deceptive...