Incest Inc Ch 01

Incest, Inc

Part One:

Indecent Relations

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~~ All characters in this book are over 18. ~~

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Friday, 4:03 PM

"Roberts Foundation, Scott Gallifrey speaking."

"Scott. This is Veronica Miller. Could you step down to my office, please?"

Panic almost closed Scott's throat. Somehow he choked out. "Of course, Ms. Miller. I'll be there right away."

Fuck. What did I do?

As he walked numbly down the quiet, well carpeted hallways, he flogged his brain for some hint of why the president and CEO of the Roberts Foundation might want to talk to him on a Friday afternoon, when all the regular business of the day was all but completed. But his mind remained a total blank. His week had been blessedly free of emergencies, even for a multinational charitable foundation that was dedicated to the education of people in third-world countries. No banana-republic strongman had closed down one of their schools, accusing them of subverting the youth of their country, or claimed that an education which consisted of more than the ability to count to ten was improper for the women in his mud-smeared, snake-intensive part of the world.

He stopped outside of Ms. Miller's office. The door was shut, and for a brief moment he contemplated running down the hall, taking the elevator down to the parking garage, and driving home before it could open. Unfortunately, her secretary was there, and would undoubtedly rat him out. He pointed at a chair. "Have a seat, Mr. Gallifrey. Ms. Miller will be with you in just a moment."

"How is she today?" he asked nervously. He knew that some of the executives monitored Veronica's moods as closely as old-time weathermen monitored barometers, constantly tapping the glass to make sure a storm was not in the offing.

The young man gave him a cool smile. "Just fine, Mr. Gallifrey." He bent his head to his keyboard.

The door swung open. Perhaps it was only his imagination that made it sound as if it creaked on its hinges. Framed in the opening, outlined in the blue sky of a glorious Chicago afternoon, stood the woman who could wreck his career, such as it was, with a word.

"Scott. Please come in."

*****

Tick tick tick tick tick.

Tick tick tick tick tick.

Tick tick tick tick tick.

Veronica's nails tapped on the surface of her glass-topped desk, the ceaseless rhythm serving to drive small but important parts of Scott's mind slowly insane as he sat in the chair in front of her. She ignored him, concentrating on her computer screen. He tried to keep an expression of polite interest on his face, and not show the bowel-clenching fear that was gripping his brain.

She was known as the "Ice Queen" among the denizens of the Roberts Foundation. A cold, platinum-haired beauty with pale blue eyes and pale white skin, who seemed to be able to look through you and know instantly how you had screwed up. No one, from the interns who thought a summer working for the foundation would look good on their resumes, to the department heads, secure in their positions, looked forward to being brought within her field of fire.

She wore a conservative suit that somehow managed to combine attractiveness and power. Its close-fitting skirt hugged the slim lines of her legs, while the white shirt and dark jacket outlined her small, firm bust. Her hair was cut severely, not even reaching her shoulders. When she was in motion, Scott knew, she resembled a long-legged hunting leopard, searching for a hint of weakness in its prey.

At last Veronica looked away from her monitor. "Ah. Mr. Gallifrey." A long pause. "How long have you been with the foundation?"

"Twenty...two years, Miss Miller. In February."

"Hmm." An even longer pause. An elegant finger tapped a key. "Well, we certainly have had no complaints about your performance. Although one might think that a person who has spent over twenty years with the same organization might have risen to a higher level than you have, Scott."

He cut his reply short, contenting himself with a simple, "Yes, ma'am."

A raised eyebrow was her only response. "Tell me. What is your marital status?"

He floundered for a moment, caught off his guard. "I'm married. My wife, Beverly, is a clinical psychologist."

"Children?"

"Three," he replied, becoming more and more confused. And more than a little annoyed, though he tried to hide it. Where was she going with this? Veronica had met Beverly at several work functions. And she had asked after the kids more than once. He knew better than to think the steel trap of Veronica's mind had somehow forgotten a single detail. "Shannon is the oldest. She's a senior at the University of Chicago. Angelica and Jason are twins. Angie and her brother are also in school."

"At?"

His lips thinned, growing tired of the interrogation. "Angie's at Northwestern. Jason's at the University of Illinois."

A raised brown, somehow mocking. "A public school?"

"It's one of the top engineering schools in the world," he bit out. His hands clenched around the armrests. "No offense meant, Miss Miller, but do you have a

point

?"

"Ah. At last, a little spine. I was afraid I was going to have to start saying mean things about your mother to get a rise out of you." She leaned back in her chair, her business suit somehow managing to look both professional and provocative at the same time. Her legs crossed, but Scott knew better than to eye her shapely legs. Rumor had it that the last person to hit on Veronica Miller was currently teaching remedial English in a North Korean prison camp.

She steepled her fingers in front of her chest. Pianist's fingers, he thought distractedly, long and delicate. "I have chosen, Mr. Gallifrey, to tell you the true purpose of the Roberts Foundation. And you are not the first interview I have had today."

He blinked. "What?"

She gave a tiny sigh. "We have two purposes, I suppose you might say. The first, which is what the public sees, along with most of our employees, is to encourage educational opportunities around the world. That is what you have been hired to do, and what, for the past twenty-whatever years, you have done, with varying degrees of success. We build schools, recruit teachers, provide infrastructure in areas of the world which are still trying to bootstrap themselves out of poverty, or try to rebuild in areas where war has left entire countries as shell-pocked wastelands.

"But there is a true purpose, which our outer layer serves to conceal.

"You know the story of Adam Roberts. He died in the nineteen-fifties, a man of incredible wealth, one of the first billionaires in history, but utterly disgusted at the sheer wasteful folly of human existence." For a moment her cool voice vibrated with repressed passion. "He had lived through two world wars and a global depression. What he saw sickened him. It was his belief that if only people were smarter, or better yet, had more able leaders, we could avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Or, maybe, not make the original,

stupid

mistakes in the first place.

"The provisions of his will were to set up the Roberts Foundation as a charity organization. Its purpose was, and I quote here, 'to encourage and to increase the overall intelligence of the human race.'

"The executors were somewhat baffled." A chill smile crossed her lips. "How does one make the human race

smarter

? How is one to do that in the face of millions of mediocrities? A simple look at statistics would seem to indicate it would be all but impossible. You might as well try to raise the level of the ocean by spitting in it."

"Well," Scott said, when Veronica paused, "we're surely doing some good, aren't we? Our schools have educated hundreds of thousands of people over the last sixty years."

She shook her head. "Education is not intelligence, Scott, as you well know. Oh," she said, flipping a hand, "we have raised some people out of ignorance. And I'm not ashamed to say we have had a hand in finding some rough jewels and helping to polish them.

"But the human race is

dumb

, Scott, when you look at it as a collective whole. You know that as well as I do. Every day, we see celebrities with a bare minimum of intelligence listened to by thousands of sheep-like fools, as if their babbling has any meaning, while the truly knowledgeable are mocked." She leaned forward, her pale eyes intent. "Look at the world. Can you say that it is being run by adults? We have countries with

nuclear weapons

led by men and women with the attention span and maturity of toddlers."

He shook his head, confused. "Even if that is true, why am I here?"

"Ah. We come to it at last.

"At the heart of it, the Roberts Foundation's quest for higher intelligence is a breeding program. We wish to pair off men and women of superior intelligence and have them mate.

"You are a very intelligent man, Scott. It's a pity your lack of confidence has stuck you in middle management. You could rise much higher than you are, if you bothered to apply yourself."

"I'm happy doing what I am doing," he said stubbornly. "You're starting to sound like my wife."

She nodded. "Your wife. Beverly. A formidable woman on her own merits. I have been impressed with her when we have met.

"And you have sired three extraordinary children. Any father would be proud."

"I am," he answered reflexively. He frowned. "This...breeding program. Are you saying that you want to encourage Shannon and Angie and Jason to marry others like them?" A sour laugh escaped his mouth. "Good luck. They're as stubborn as a pack of Missouri mules. They never do anything they don't want to do. If I brought a packet of pictures home with me and asked them to pick out their future husbands or wives, they'd have a contest to see who could kick me out of the house quickest." He paused, considering. "Well, not Shannon. She's too quiet and good-natured to do anything like that. She'd just sigh and ignore me. But Angie and Jason would roast me alive. And Beverly would help."

Veronica shook her head with a faint, regretful smile. "You misunderstand me, Scott. We're not interested in your offspring going outside their gene-pool. We need to have them under our control."

"Well, if they're not going to have your super-smart babies outside their gene-pool," he said, allowing himself the luxury of sarcasm, "exactly who the heck are the supposed to be having them with? Each other?"

Then the import of his own words hit him, and he looked at her with something approaching horror. "Oh, sweet Jesus. You mean..."

"Yes." Her smile was almost pitying. "Obviously, we don't advertise this. But when the time is right, we ask that certain chosen members of the Roberts Foundation breed children within their own families. Parents with their offspring. Siblings with each other. Cousins, as well, if luck and circumstances allow it.

"You will find," she said, sliding a leather binder across the table to him, "that the financial incentives are more than generous."

Numbly, he picked it up. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

"Five hundred thousand dollars?"

She nodded. "The foundation has been fortunate in its investments over the years. And we had quite a bit of money to start out with, of course. We can afford to be generous. Five hundred thousand for each healthy live birth, confirmed as the offspring of some combination of you, your wife, and your children." She cocked her head. "Though we would prefer that you and Beverly refrain from having more kids with each other. I am sure your children and yourselves can keep each other busy for quite some time."

"You're...you're

insane

," he whispered. "Why not...why not just grab the smarter members of the foundation and try to pair

their

children up? You'd have a larger statistical universe to pull from and you wouldn't be breaking a sackful of public morality laws into the bargain."

To say nothing of the dangers of inbreeding.

"We tried," she replied frankly. "But your suspicion about the reluctance of young adults to be led into a relationship not of their choosing is correct. We've had very few successes. And far more divorces than we could accept.

"Plus, there was always the risk of word getting loose. People can be unbearably small-minded when it comes to genetic manipulation." She made a disgusted sound. "As if humans haven't been doing that since the first farmers tried to get bigger cows and better crop yields! People would think that we're trying to breed some sort of superman. Or worse, that we have some sort of evil plan for world domination."

"We don't?"

"Of course we don't!" she snapped. "We just want more intelligent people. God, Scott, can't you see it? We have millions of people breeding like flies, but our entire civilization rests on the people who can find their ass without two hands and a map!" Veronica leaned forward, all pretense of dispassion gone from her voice. "Can you imagine what people could do if we finally started living up to our potential?"

He looked back at her. Obviously, she believed in what the foundation was doing. "But...God, Veronica. How can you ask me to do this?" He looked at the framed pictures on her walls. Four smiling teenagers graced the photos, along with Veronica's husband. "Are going to do the same thing when your children are of age? How will you be able to bear it?"

"Oh, I started far earlier than you, Scott." Her smile was inexpressibly tender.

"Huh?"

"My parents were early members of the Foundation. And among the first to agree to implement the breeding policy. My brother and I were encourage to mate." A soft sigh escaped per pale lips. "It was the best choice of my life.

"He understands me. The way no one else can. And the world has four more exceptionally intelligent children, thanks to our incestuous mating." She used the words without the faintest hint of a quaver in her voice. "I

cannot wait

until Steven and Jack and Deirdre and Margaret are of age." A keen gaze pierced him. "Do you see? By keeping it in the family," her lips tightened at the crude phrase, "the two parties are bound together. Both have the greatest possible incentive to keep word of what we are doing from leaking out. It is a much more secure way of doing things than just randomly pairing up individuals and hoping they fall in love."

"Humans have been doing that for millennia," he pointed out. "Pairing up randomly."

"Yes. And look where it's got us."

"Well, my kids won't go for it. They don't like each other. Most days, they barely tolerate each other. Or Beverly and myself."

Veronica leaned back, her eyes shrewd. One lip twitched. "And how much of that dislike is sexual repression, bubbling to the top, Scott? Your kids are smart, attractive, and unattached. Your wife is a lovely woman. Even you are more than acceptable.

"Take the weekend to think about it. Talk it over with your wife. And those lovely, fertile daughters of yours. And your son. See what they have to say. In fact, take next week off as well. I'm sure you can find something to occupy yourself. Or someone," she added wickedly.

Scott stood up, so suddenly his chair nearly tipped over. "I have to go," he said, almost babbling in his panic. So quickly he was practically running, he opened the door and let himself out.

Veronica looked out after him, amused. One side of her mouth twitched as she shook her head. The psychological evaluation which she had ordered performed on Scott, done in the strictest confidence, had been incredibly accurate. She made a note to pay a bonus into the woman's account. Scott had reacted just as she had predicted, outward horror disguising inner interest.

Her smile grew as she noticed what Scott had forgotten in his haste. Or, rather, what he had taken. The leather binder was gone from her desk, picked up by the younger man as he fled. Her eyes grew hazy, remembering a similar conversation that had occurred between her parents and herself and her younger brother, almost twenty-five years ago.

She opened a file on her computer.

Gallifrey, Scott J.

Offer provisionally accepted.

Mating Status: To be determined

*****

He was already in the car when he discovered he still had the binder in his hand. He tossed it into the passenger seat with a disgusted sigh. He would slip it into Veronica's office on Monday, he decided, and send her a polite e-mail saying thanks, but no thanks.

He arrived home nearly two hours later, tired, tense and frustrated after having to fight Chicago traffic out to the western suburbs. Half the city, it seemed, was fleeing the urban sprawl to spend a weekend on the shores of Lake Michigan, either on the Wisconsin or Michigan side. There had been four separate pileups as people's haste outweighed their caution, causing traffic to back up for miles. He pulled into the driveway, seeing that Beverly's car was already there, along with those of the kids.

"I'm home," he said, entering the house.

"Hi, Dad," Angelica said, waving at him from the kitchen. "Mom's upstairs, changing. We'll have supper ready in a few minutes."

"Good." One of the new rules this summer was that the kids would take care of the evening meal. He and Beverly were both indifferent cooks, and neither of them felt like preparing meals for a family of five, especially after getting used to having the house to themselves while the kids were away at school. "What are we having?"

"Pizza," she said, somewhat guiltily.

"Frozen pizza," put in Jason, wandering in from the family room. He glared at Angie. "I was going to grill burgers, but someone forgot to pull the meat out of the freezer while I was at work."

"I was busy," she protested. "Daddy, really, I-"

"I don't want to hear it," he interrupted. Good God, he could not stand another night of these two sniping at each other. "I'm going upstairs to change. Yell when the pizza's ready."

*****

"Hey," he said, opening the door of his bedroom.

"Hey, yourself," his wife said, giving him a brief, distracted smile.

Dr. Beverly Gallifrey had retained much of the beauty which had drawn him to her when they met at the home of a mutual friend, over twenty years ago. Slim, with an erect carriage and a dancer's grace, she stood at the bedroom vanity in panties and a bra, removing a set of diamond earrings. Her skin was unblemished, and her stomach, despite the rigors of bearing three children, was firm and taut. Her hair, a deep, rich brown, bore no hint of gray. She was letting it grow long again, much to his approval, and the fine, silken strands now reached below her shoulders. Her eyes were an arresting, bronze-shot brown, terrifyingly intent when they focused on a person with their full force.

He slid behind her, his arms clasping her loosely. He kissed one shoulder blade, his eyes looking down her chest to the firm swells of her breasts, held in a satin bra, pale green in color.. "You smell good," he said. "Want to make love tonight?"

She stiffened slightly, and he closed his eyes in mute hurt. "Maybe," she said, slipping out of his grasp.

Which means 'no,' he thought bitterly.

"How was work?" she asked, changing the subject, as she pulled open a drawer, fishing for weekend clothes.

Well, my boss suggested you sleep with our son and get pregnant so we can raise the collective IQ of the United States by an infinitessimal amount,

he did not say. "All right. A bit weird at the end of the day," he found his mouth saying, as he shucked his jeans, worn on 'Casual Friday,' and pulled on a pair of shorts and a comfortable t-shirt. "I had an interview with Veronica Miller."