The Lucifer Code by Michael Cordy Page A

another and then a third. He admired them for a second or two then knocked them down gleefully.
    Holding the legs behind his back, Fleming pushed open the doors and walked into the hall. Jake swivelled round to face him, and the result of the car accident eleven months ago was plain to see: both the child's legs ended above the knee, the right marginally longer than the left. Despite his habitual exposure to similar and worse mutilations, Fleming was still shocked at the sight of his nephew's injuries.
    His sole consolation was that at least he had been able to help. He wasn't ideal uncle material -he had a workaholic lifestyle, interrupted only by mountaineering expeditions, and he was a poor role model when it came to stable relationships: every visit Jake made to his townhouse on the river seemed to coincide with the arrival of a new girlfriend. There was one thing, however, that he had been uniquely qualified to do for his brother's son: he had been able to help Jake walk again.
    'Hi, Mum,' Fleming said, hugged her and kissed her cheek.
    'Everything all right, Milo?' She looked nervous but excited. She had such faith in her son that it frightened him. At Jake's mother's funeral he had overheard her tell a friend: 'Rob and Miles were always close, even when they were little boys. It's so fortunate that Miles can help now.' It seemed to Fleming that his parents had only been able to come to terms with what had happened by investing their fragile hope in him. And he was terrified he might not fulfil it.
    He squeezed her hand. 'Everything's fine, Mum. You'll see.' He bent to his nephew. 'Hi, Jake.'
    The little boy gave him a sly smile. 'Hello, Uncle Milo.'
    Fleming held out the prosthetic legs and Jake's eyes lit up. 'Wow.'
    'They're the ones you've been training with, Jake, but we've put the final covering on them so now they look like real legs -your legs.'
    Jake took them as if he'd been given the best Christmas present in the world. 'Thanks, Uncle Milo.' Then he fitted the leg flaps over his stumps, connected the implants with practised skill and stood up as if they were part of him. The prosthetic muscles in the artificial legs were instructed by the boy's own thoughts, amplified and translated by computer. Six months ago, five months after the crash, Fleming had downloaded Jake's personal thought-signature from the NeuroTranslator. He had inserted electrodes beneath Jake's scalp, and with implants and an optical computer no bigger than a wristwatch Jake could walk unaided and lead a near normal life. He had been the first, but already others were benefiting from the technology.
    'Right, Jake,' said Fleming. 'Wait here and I'll get your dad. I want him to see this.'
    *
    The Think Tank. Later that evening
    'You made CNN. Saw it when I woke up just now. You got me worried, Amber. How you feelin'?'
    'Not too bad, Papa Pete. What do you mean you just woke up? Where you calling from?'
    'San Francisco.'
    'I thought you were in the Vatican.'
    'I am, but I'm in a crisis meeting with some colleagues over here.' Her godfather's New York accent sounded harsh suddenly. 'When the Jesuits, the storm troopers of Catholicism, start defecting to the Red Pope you know you gotta problem.'
    'I appreciate you calling me, Papa Pete,' she said, not wanting to get drawn into a discourse on the Red Pope. 'It's been a long time.' And she knew why. Ever since her adoptive mother had taken ill two years ago, and Amber had paid for her to stay in the best hospice in the bay area, Father Peter Riga, the man who had saved her life, had felt betrayed: not only did Catholics not run the hospice but 'the enemy', the Red Pope's Church of the Soul Truth, did. Amber had explained to him that she was determined to give her mother whatever she wanted, and if that meant staying in a hospice run by a rival church so be it.
    'Saw your mother yesterday' Riga said.
    'In the hospice?'
    'Sure. She seemed okay'
    'That was kind of you, Papa Pete. She felt bad about you