Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

I had known mother to be very devout; constantly devoting herself to penitent prayers, uttered aloud, for forgiveness over things I did not reckon one would need forgiving. She often recounted how she had embraced this faith borne upon the tidings of missionaries when we were still part of the Bengal Presidency of British India.

She said it was better to be born again of Christ than of the Gift, and that it was important to know that the Gift, however wondrous it might appear, belonged to a depraved world. The abstraction was confounding; and short of an epiphany, I am much obliged to consider them words of delirium.

Mother had always resolved to keep our family plot. She said it was the only heirloom father could offer, and that it must never, under any circumstance or price, be bartered or sold. She said we are the last of the lot; which I took to mean our plot since most of the surrounding plantations have already been sold to the colonial administration. “Keep it always to your name and honour, because father had willed it so.” So she said.

If there was sense left in her she would have taken notice of our blighted fields, where a beetle infestation had ruined our entire stock of nutmeg trees two years earlier, and retracted that burden of an instruction laid upon me.

Mother also issued explicit instructions for me to acquire a new persona when my age exceeds 30, and from it I shall once again become a young man of an appropriate age who shall, in turn, acquire another persona when his real age exceeds that which reflects his appreciable youth. And this process must be repeated for as long as I live, though she did not say for how long.

Dementia forbade her to recall that such peculiar instructions had already been given. They seemed to have precipitated from a Gift (or a Curse) that I was never meant to receive, but had to in light of the circumstances which she refused to elucidate. It is absurd for any sane man to be held to such tasks. But I have given her my word. This mystery I have yet to uncover, and probably never will.

In her final days Mother was rather garrulous about how fortunate she and father were to have met each other. I never understood her affection for a father who never was; whom I am compelled to believe had left us for better riches. Scarcely did she ever speak of him—until now, and in the years of my life I have felt nothing for him but disdain.

I hear the sounds of lumber being piled. In the darkness I see lamps dotting a trail that bobs downhill, to the east. The military has been at it all day: felling trees, clearing the undergrowth, sawing and tinkering away at frames and armatures of more sheds and longhouses. Soldiers have been stationed in the completed barracks to the west, beyond sight of my residence. It was no less a prodigious feat to have completed the barracks in three months, and I should hope that the construction of new ones would be equally expeditious.

In the wake of mother’s passing I hope only for peace and calm. I am alone and in possession of little but a spot of land and an old house. Our nutmeg business is no more, and after mother’s burial tomorrow I shall contemplate the full measure of my quandary.

Here I must end with mother’s last words: Remember all that Harriet has given us, and remember your father’s name: Qara Budang Tabunai.

WHO WAS HARRIET? Landon circles the name with a pencil and dries his hair with the towel on his shoulders. He googles it and finds celebrities dead and living, sports personalities, social networking pages of common people. A website lists the name Harriet as a variant of the French Henriette , the female version of Henri . Someone close to his family? Someone he loved?

It doesn’t matter because Little Miss Harriet probably precedes any leads to Clara or Hannah by a century or more. The only memories of his past are those of the oath made on the day of mother’s passing. Keep it always to your name and honour. This, thinks Landon, is the beauty of an oath unbroken. But for how long? And to what purpose? He closes the journal and slides it back into the bookshelf. A pinned schedule shows an early shift today.

With any luck he might just run into Clara.

It is past seven in the morning. A parked sedan, frosted in morning dew, rests quietly by the road. Through a clear spot in the misty windshield John watches Landon leave the house with his knapsack, and tracks him visually until he passes beyond sight.

John does not yet enter. He waits, and ten minutes later sunlight skims the treetops and casts long, slanting shadows across the old house. Through the second storey windows he catches the iridescent glint of bulbous lenses. It glides from one window to the next before the glare of sunlight off a pane swallows it. He dons a pair of shades. His vision goes monochrome, and he sees shafts of infrared radiation sweeping the room like beams of searchlights.

Ghosts—robotic infiltration probes the size of golf balls, borne upon a mag-gravity propulsion system not yet revealed to the known world. Unauthorised contact with them is cause for sanctioned elimination without trials or inquisitions. It isn’t worth the risk. In time the Ghosts will depart and he will commence his recon. Getting into the house is easy, staying invisible isn’t. A probe or two might still be lurking in the depths of an ancient attic. Caution bids John to prolong his wait and it pays off.

The Ghosts withdraw and in their absence a spectral shape appears. It loiters in the study, almost too recklessly without stealth, sifting through Landon’s effects with abandon. Confident of his invisibility, John leans nearer to the windshield and goes on watching the spectre going from room to room, browsing, angling for clues and signs just as John would if he’d been the one inside. Then he sees it halt, lift its head and turn towards the window.

The faceless silhouette is now looking right at him.

John glowers. He has been careless—too careless. The mission is irrevocably compromised and the shame of it scorches him from the inside. This Tracker is a huge step ahead of him and he knows it. He calmly lowers his gaze, twists the ignition and with commendable composure, eases the sedan onto the street.

FourBees wouldn’t see a morning crowd if not for the spouses of wealthy expats living in the posh neighbourhoods around Dempsey Hill. The café offers just the right balance of sophistication and finesse to beat the competition and have the loaded mistresses flocking to it. Raymond even designed portions for their trim tummies to have them mop up every morsel on their plates. Dishes licked clean make for good publicity.

They breeze into the café every morning with their Stokkes and Fendis, and Sam receives them at the door with a sprightly toss of her head and a practised grin. Table for four? Right this way. Pets leashed to the columns outside, please. We’ll have water served to them in clean, stainless steel dishes, free of charge.

The front door jingles and John walks in, dressed in denims and a chequered shirt that conceals a pistol. Sam gets to him like a hawk and leads him down an aisle full of whinnying toddlers and their mothers dressed in sweatshirt fleece, and offers him a freshly-vacated corner seat by the window, farthest from the bar. John sidles into it and manages to catch Landon’s attention from behind the hulk of a coffee machine. He smiles and Landon snaps a patronising one in return.

The café settles into its usual lull after lunch. John sits alone with his third coffee, surrounded by empty tables and used crockery. When Sam tells him they’re closed for the afternoon, he idles by the lawn outside and smoulders away two cigarettes in succession. He lets the third one linger between his fingers.