“What’s the code?”
Thaddeus gives his arm a reassuring squeeze. “You’ll know it.”
The seven-bulb surgical lamp comes on like the thrusters of a rocket. The shot of ether hasn’t yet taken effect and Landon is wide awake on the surgical bed. Bags of blood hang from a steel rack; tubes lead from them and enter a garishly golden contraption of gears, cylinders and narrow vitrines of glass. From four little golden taps four tubes emerge, tipped with hypodermic needles that enter the saphenous veins of Landon’s thighs and the cephalic veins of his forearms. An assistant powers the contraption and it whirrs alive, its gears and cylinders working away like a miniature V-8 engine. The source of its power remains a mystery, for Landon sees no wires trailing from it.
He watches the blood leave his body in a dark red stream and fill up the glass vitrines one after another. The sight of them breeds in him a sorrow that he does not expect.
Thaddeus eyes him closely. “You are receiving a new life, Mr Lock. Its brevity will give it meaning. So live it well.”
A powerful bout of emotion racks every muscle and nerve in Landon’s body. He finally weeps for all that has come to pass, for the ones who lived and died, and for the part of his father that now drains out of him. Yet his tears flow also for the joy that now attends his heart, in knowing that the past two centuries of his life have at last ended.
And that a new one—a real one, has just begun.
42
APRIL 1852
THAT AFTERNOON SWELTERED in the rhythmic shrilling of crickets. The sun was white and harsh. Aldred held up the two shafts of his plough in his skinny arms and conducted a pair of buffaloes along the length of a twenty-acre field that was recently cleared for a new batch of nutmeg seedlings. A cloud of midges accompanied them.
Aldred was only 13; his skinny frame lost in the oversized linen shirt with sleeves that went past his elbow. But the garment was cool and airy and he wore it whenever he took to the fields. The sun had wrung so much out of him that now and then he had to rest and drink from a calfskin waterbag.
They turned an angle to the first furrow and skirted along the southern edge of the plantation bordering the jungle on the right. The red clayey earth tore open as they went. Up ahead the fronds of a nearby coconut plantation wavered in a breeze. At a patch of clearing behind them six untethered buffaloes grazed.
Above the crickets’ shrilling the boy heard the hoots and calls of creatures hidden in the jungle. On occasion he would catch glimpses of birds of paradise and their gaudy plumage. Just two days ago he had seen a few wild peacocks waddling among the undergrowth—a rare sight that augured good fortune.
But that afternoon the calls of the jungle were different. They sounded distressed. The stalks of lallang quivered, and so did the thistles and hedges at the forest fringe. Aldred dropped his plough and listened. If there was to be any danger lurking in the shrubbery he had to discover it before it did him harm. He inspected the length of the fringe, rustling the tall grasses and peering into the jungle’s gloomy interior. After having exercised caution the boy turned into the winds that carried his scent.
And then it sprung like the Devil himself.
It was there the whole time, crouching, waiting—a tremendous hulk of muscle and bristly fur. It dragged Aldred to the ground and fastened its jaws over his shoulders, somewhere near the trapezius and dangerously close to his nape.
The boy screamed.
Having been forewarned of attacks by man-eating tigers, Aldred began thumping the beast with his fists. Briefly the vice-like hold on his shoulder eased and gushing blood warmed his skin. His fists were still flailing, and one of them seemed to have caught the snarling beast in the eye. From nowhere came the swipe of a paw that lacerated the boy’s forearm and tore the flesh diagonally across his left clavicle and chest.
His scream ended in a gasp when his vocal cords swelled beyond their ability to function. He now felt the same fangs upon his right thigh. They entered easily into the soft flesh, the bite firm and unyielding.
Aldred began convulsing in shock. His limbs, bloodied and slick with beastly dribble, were turning numb from the loss of blood. Flesh tore when the beast dragged him a few yards from where he had fallen. He felt the rumble of the tiger’s growl with his legs immobilised in its jaws. It was a growl of caution, and then something remarkable happened.
In a terrific trampling of hooves, the pair of buffaloes came charging towards them like cavalry, their gait firm and tenacious despite the drag of the plough behind them. They broke free from their yokes, fanned apart and advanced upon the tiger from its flanks. The tiger abandoned its prey and fled into the forest.
But the buffaloes did not leave. One of them circled its little attendant while the other stood sentinel by the jungle fringe against any possibility of the tiger returning.
Wisps of dandelions passed across the crisp blueness of the sky, borne upon arriving winds that carried the pungent scent of the buffaloes. Aldred lay on the ground tainted with his blood, watching the clouds and listening to the rustling grass. The shrilling of crickets sounded far away. In his narrowing vision he saw a wet snout appear and disappear. Then he closed his eyes and saw home.
When Aldred awoke, three kerosene lamps were flickering from rafters above him. He felt the texture of the straw mat on which he lay. The cloud of flies over him gave an unsettling intimation of the state of his wounds.
His mother was nearby: he could heard her snuffling. She wasn’t a woman who would snuffle. His father passed into his sight and looked down at him. Flecks of grey stubble above his ears were all the hair that remained. He had a large hooked nose that made up most of his broad, strong face. His eyes were long and narrow and were deeply wrinkled at the corners. His gaze was soft, and Aldred saw moist tracks across his parched, leathery skin. It was he who appeared to have been crying.
“Our buffaloes saved me,” Aldred found himself uttering in a throaty whisper.
“I know.”
Aldred felt a callused but gentle hand upon his forehead.
From the far end of the room he heard mother whimper. If she whimpered then things had to be very bad. Footfalls drifted into range, sounding strong and resolute. A large man appeared. He was bald, his hairless skin pulled taut over a craggy face and looked to be crafted of fine porcelain. Although Aldred didn’t recognise him he thought that he and father had to be very good friends because they embraced each other very warmly.
Afterwards he bent over to look at Aldred and beneath his protuberant brows Aldred saw that one of his eyes was green and the other yellow.
“He will survive the Transfusion if he shares your blood,” said the man in a voice as thick as tar. “But I cannot speak the same for you, Great Bear.”
Aldred heard nothing else. Father took the strange man by the arm and led him away to a spot where they could continue their conversation in private. The last Aldred heard was mother’s anguished cry.
By the light of dawn Aldred woke up to find most of his wounds already bandaged in strips of frayed linen. Beside his bed stood an elaborate metallic contraption that fitted neatly in a leather valise. Tubes of a strange gelatinous material ran from it and entered Aldred’s arms and legs. He heard movement and the tinkle of glass vessels but he couldn’t turn his head because of the pain. By the lamplight shadows shifted, and the tall, strange man appeared over him and touched his face. Aldred wanted to ask for his father and mother, but his glands and tonsils, now swollen with abuse and infection, afforded not even a whisper.