Kytos

von Kesmark John

Description

The second book in "The Rathing Chronicles" trilogy, "Kytos - The Dark Beyond" covers events in Britain in 2078. The half-rat half human Rathings rule with an iron fist but have to rely on press-ganged humans to run the country and the economy, which is crumbling due to trade and travel embargoes imposed by the rest of the world. The Rathings are just one of the breeds of hybrid mutants let loose on the world as a result of The Kytos Project - a genetic engineering, hybrid cloning programme almost 60 years earlier. A disillusioned and altruistic Rathing General and a cabal of senior officers plan to overthrow their government and launch an invasion, initially into Europe, and then further afield with a view to conquering the world.By accepting the assistance of an amoral Rathing Senator from the parallel future dimension, the General unknowingly takes the first step to being manipulated by the duplicitous Senator, who has his own dark agenda. With unrest mounting amongst the Rathing military and elite, a showdown between government forces and rebel troops is inevitable. An epic battle eventually takes place between the two factions. The losing General is captured and executed in a barbaric manner. Meanwhile, a young human called Ashok is laying down his own battle plans. He wants to destroy the Rathings before they mature from their embryonic stage, as he holds them responsible for the death of his parents. The only way he can do so is to return to the past through a Time Gate and persuade the scientist who created the clones to stop his experiment.But his plans are dashed at every turn and his determination to stop the creation of the clones puts two friends' lives in mortal danger. And there's the mystery surrounding the assassination of dozens of Rathings. A small mound of residual molecular dust left at each of the crime scenes is a tell-tale sign that the killers may be etheric beings from another dimension. The pressure is on Rathing investigators to catch these shadow souls before they murder more of their kinsfolk. With Rathing and human lives in peril, the challenges Ashok and the General must overcome change each of their lives forever.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 02 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781848769922
• Langue: English

Extrait

John von Kesmark is a retired Company Director who has worked in the UK, USA and West Africa in shipping, travel, advertising, wine trade and management & marketing consultancy.
He lives by the River Thames near Richmond, Surrey with his wife, Diane, and is a member of The Society of Authors.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Kytos Project ISBN 1 84624 047 6 Case Files from Charlie Cat Detective Agency PYBO 1522 [Children s stories]
Author s web site: www.kytos-thedarkbeyond.com
KYTOS-
THE DARK BEYOND
THE RATHING CHRONICLES
JOHN VON KESMARK
ILLUSTRATED BY LUCY BLAKE
Copyright 2008 John von Kesmark Illustrations Lucy Blake
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador 9 De Montfort Mews Leicester LE1 7FW, UK Tel: [phone] / 9312 Email: [e-mail] Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1906221 966
All characters in this publication are fictitious And any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, Is purely coincidental.
Typeset in 11pt Stempel Garamond and 12pt Eurostile by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I must first acknowledge the debt I owe to Generals Str esser, Garbath, Echt, Caius, Hesper and Melchor and the other army officers, as well as Overlord Vadek, Senator Memnon and the scheming High Priest, Panuf, and, of course, Ashok, Ellie and Bill. They all contributed so much to the discussions we ve held, sometimes deep into the night. Suggestions and opinions as to which course the plot should take came thick and fast and no one was hesitant in making their point of view known. The inter-action between all of them and their understanding of what I wanted to say is appreciated. Without any of them, there would have been no story.
My principal thanks must go to my wife, Diane for her encouragement and for her practical support, without which this page and the ones that follow would have been blank. Diane s help ensured that my friends Str esser, Garbath et al would see the light of day.
Our children (children? They re all in their thirties, some with children of their own!) - sons Paul and Carl and daughters Rosemary and Sarah, my brother Mark and son-in-law Steve all played invaluable practical roles in the development of my ideas.
Special thanks must be extended to Lucy who produced visually the stunning images of those characters that lived in my mind for many, many months and I also thank her for her fantastic design of the book cover.
When I asked Doctor John Platt MA FRCP, Consultant Physician at West Middlesex University Hospital and Doctor Penny Sowden, BmedSci BMBS D (obst) RCOG MRCGP how one could carry out a murder which might appear as a death by natural causes, I am sure their first reaction was to consider contacting the police. But they were very charming, especially when they realised that my question was hypothetical and in the interests of research. I am very thankful to both of them. If any reference to medical matters contained in these pages is not quite right, then the fault lies squarely on my shoulders for not having listened properly to their advice.
Thanks are due to Lisa Hasselton in the USA for her initial critique, advice and editorial role and for putting me right on the correct use of English-American phrases, to Lorna Read at Cornerstones for her helpful and encouraging words, and also to Barry N Malzberg in New York, USA for granting permission for me to include a quote by the respected science fiction author, Fredric Brown.
I am grateful to Jeremy Thompson, Managing Director, Julia Fuller, Marketing Manager, and Terence Crampton, Publishing Assistant, amongst others at my publishers, Matador/ Troubador Publishing. Their sound advice and support throughout has been tremendous.
Finally, thank you, my reader for having waited patiently for this second book in The Rathing Chronicles.
Kytos - The Dark Beyond is truly a team effort.
To you all, I am most grateful.
John von Kesmark Old Isleworth, England 2008
WHAT IF?
There is a difference between a creature that is cloned and one cloned as a hybrid. With cloning, one is an exact copy of the other [as in Dolly the Sheep]. A hybrid - or chimera - possesses two types of cell, one from each progenitor, to create a new entity which retains the identity of its origins. Hybridity, such as cloning a human gene with that of an animal has been going on for very many years. Yet it is only recently that British scientists proposed that legislation be introduced for human-animal hybrid cloning for stem cell research purposes.
Of course, arguments concerning the ethics of cloning and hybrid cloning will continue to rage. No matter on what side of the fence you sit, you and your conscience cannot escape the inevitable fact that cloning is here to stay. That is why the question what if ? is essential. What if no effective International controls in cloning are introduced? What if stem cells are not destroyed within the prescribed time but allowed to mature? What if a rogue scientist decides to play God and create his own mutants? What if a great deal of pain and suffering is perhaps experienced by these cloned creatures? What if certain experiments serve no purpose in medical advances? Some aspects of research and cloning are essential. Others may not be so. For example, two research teams (at King s College, London and Newcastle University) are attempting to create embryos made up of both human and animal genetic material. The resulting embryos, known as cytoplasmic hybrids, are to be used in research into treatments for diseases such as Parkinson s and Alzheimer s. Compare that with the recent report that an American woman was prepared to pay 75,000 to a South Korean firm if their attempts to clone her pet pit bull terrier were successful. And of a woman from Texas who paid 26,000 to replicate her 17-year-old tabby. It shouldn t be too difficult to decide which is cloning for serious scientific research and which is not.
If someone is willing to pay to have their pet dog or cat replicated (and this is not fantasy or science fiction but fact), who is to say what could be created if the owner of a pet rat may not be willing to pay handsomely to have his dead rodent regenerated through cloning? Or might not distraught parents want to have their dead child reproduced through cloning? It is not beyond the bounds of probability that among the myriad cloning experiments that take place every day throughout the world there might be one that produces an awesome chimera. After all, a generation ago few people had heard about embryonic stem cells A generation ago, no one had thought it possible to build a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals A generation ago no one spoke of knockout mice - that is mice who had certain genes removed or knocked out , resulting in such rodents not having, say, the gene that causes fear or that which creates anxiety. We can no more dismiss the prospect of bizarre clones being created in the future than we would have ignored the possibility a generation ago of stem cell research or of building a synthetic chromosome.
Kytos - The Dark Beyond is a piece of fiction. It does not pretend to be anything other than a sci-fi thriller. It is at present scientifically impossible to create such creatures as my imagined clones. But to quote Fredric Brown, the respected science fiction author, Fantasy deals with things that are not and cannot be. Science Fiction deals with things that can be, that some day may be . [my italics]. So what may seem outlandish today could be a possibility tomorrow. Advances in genetic engineering may one day enable you to have tissue taken from your dear departed Dad cloned with genetic material from your favourite pet rat. There are more than enough rich eccentrics in the world that would rather fancy treasuring that conjoined image in their home. It would certainly be a talking point amongst their friends! And there are enough avaricious scientists who would try anything in return for a big fat financial incentive in the back pocket. After all, there s no law with muscle to stop them. So, nothing should be discounted insofar as advances in scientific research and cloning is concerned and, given time, nothing is impossible.
Man has always striven to learn, to discover and to invent and we should be excited as we stand on the threshold of the wonderful future opportunities that genetic engineering offer us. But that should not preclude ethically-motivated scientists, doctors, legislators, those in the news media and the man in the street from always asking what if ?
John von Kesmark
PART ONE
BIRTH OF THE MUTANT CLONES
Politicians and scientists encouraged us to believe that stem cell research would cure all the World s ills. Cloning offfered us so much hope. How wrong we were.
Doctor Pierre Fournier, before becoming a prisoner-slave, s in a letter to a friend [From The Kytos Project ]
GENESIS
THE KYTOS PROJECT
It was nearly midnight as the two men carried out their work in the dimly lit laboratory with hardly an exchange of words. When it was necessary for one to address the other, he did so in a whisper. Otherwise, they moved about their allotted tasks in complete silence. On one occasion, when a petri dish was accidentally knocked onto the floor, the resounding clatter split the silence like a thunderclap. Both men stopped what they wer