Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

“Where then is my father?” he asks.

“That’s for you to remember.”

A pair of assistants in lab coats ushers them through a steel door in the steel-clad wall and into a white corridor. Another assistant emerges from another unseen door trundling medical equipment bristling in a tangle of tubes and plungers. Together they pass into a darkened room with an enormous mirror on one side of the wall. At the centre of it all rests an empty surgical bed, its stainless steel frame gleaming beneath a surgical lamp.

Thaddeus gestures at the bed. “I’m afraid our journey ends here.”

Landon looks wanly at it and sighs. Everything he sees augurs the grim possibility that he is about to be cut apart. With tons of bedrock and fathoms of seawater above them the thought of an escape is as preposterous as a trip to the moon.

“Seems I haven’t got a choice,” he says.

“I offer you normalcy, which you may choose to reject,” says Thaddeus, “But in doing so you return to the protocol and the tracking will continue. Chronomorphs who subject themselves to such scrutiny usually don’t get to live very long.”

“I was told that no Chronie ever survived a Transfusion either.”

“If there is as much chance to life as there is to death, would you take it?”

A moment’s thought, and Landon nods.

Thaddeus breaks a smile. “Then trust me.”

“Wait…” says Landon. “What happens to the Serum once it’s taken out of me?”

“It comes into our custody.”

“Are there options? I mean… is there a chance of putting it into— better use?”

Thaddeus reads well between the lines and carefully considers the proposition.

“We might work something out.”

It feels rather odd that after the spate of bizarre events Landon should be subject to the dreary process of form-filling and indemnity endorsements. An assistant is on hand to dish out one form after another as he fills and signs them rather negligently, their tiny print being too profuse to be read in a short span of time.

When it is done Thaddeus collects and checks them. Good . He hands them over to the assistant, flicks out a business card and offers it to Landon. It reads: Odds & Ends Antiques & Collectables . There is an address and a mobile number.

Landon looks at him quizzically.

“In case I don’t see you when you wake,” says Thaddeus. “Call this number if you’re having trouble adapting to life. Just say the code and someone will direct you to me.” He bats out a wink. “Take it as an after-sales service.”

“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.

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.