Robin Jarvis - Fighting Pax

“So here it is, merry Christmas,” she muttered under her breath with heavy sarcasm. “Everybody’s having fun. Look to the future now, it’s only just begun… not.”

Little Nabi wanted to take a closer look at the blood, but Gerald led her back inside instead. There was something he wanted to ask her. Doctor Choe had just used the same word he had noted earlier in the meeting.

“Nabi,” he began with a friendly, coaxing smile.

“Itsy bitsy!” she demanded, pouting because he had denied her young bloodlust. For a little girl whose name meant ‘butterfly’ she took great delight in the gruesome.

“Later,” he promised. “I want to know, what does pookum mean?”

“Itsy bitsy!” she said, stubbornly folding her arms and glowering.

The old man realised he’d get nothing out of her until he complied. It was one of the nursery rhymes he had taught her. She enjoyed it because there were actions. She loved making spider legs with her fingers and miming raindrops and sunshine. Gerald spoke the rhyme with her and then she insisted he do it a second time.

“She’s got you well trained,” Spencer commented.

“Now pookum ,” Gerald asked her again. “What does it mean?”

The six-year-old laughed and shook her head. “Nabi no no,” she gurgled.

“Maybe you’re not pronouncing it right,” Spencer suggested.

Gerald tried again, using the same inflection he had heard in the meeting earlier and just now in the corridor. Nabi put her head to one side attentively, but smiled ever wider.

“No!” she declared.

“Never mind,” Gerald sighed. “You’re probably too young to know anyway.”

“What do you think it means?” Spencer asked.

The man shrugged. “Probably just me fretting over nothing as usual. Evelyn’s always telling me—” He broke off, startled at himself. He tried not to talk about ‘Evelyn’, having suppressed her since leaving Felixstowe with Martin a year ago. But her name had been on his lips more and more recently. It was as if she refused to be forgotten. That was so like her.

Spencer noticed Gerald was disconcerted, but he didn’t like to pry. He fiddled with some snippets of olive-coloured cloth lying on the table and waited. He was slightly in awe of Gerald, ever since he discovered the old man had once worked with the legendary John Wayne on a movie, in London, back in 1975. Gerald’s part only amounted to one line that had been cut from the final edit, but he had still shared the screen for a few seconds with ‘the Duke’ and that elevated him in Spencer’s eyes to some stratospheric level way above ‘cool’.

Nabi gave a small exclamation of understanding and pulled at Gerald’s arm enthusiastically.

“Boo gum!” she cried. “Boo gum!”

Grabbing the discarded stuffed bear, she laid it on its back with its legs in the air. Then, using the scissors, she mimed cutting it open.

“Boo gum!” she said gleefully, her eyes vanishing in her expansive grin.

“What was that?” Spencer asked, mystified.

“I think she’s just demonstrated an autopsy,” Gerald murmured faintly.

“Oh, well, that makes sense,” the boy said, not sure why the old man looked so afraid all of a sudden. “That’s what Choe’s going to do to the Shark, isn’t it? Although I’d have thought cause of death was pretty obvious, what with it happening right in front of you all.”

The old man made no response. He didn’t want to tell Spencer the doctor had used that word long before the Marshal had been shot. A ghastly chill crept along his spine and he shivered.

“I need to talk to Martin,” he said quickly. “We can’t stay here.”

Doctor Choe Soo-jin dismissed the stretcher-bearers and her technicians from the laboratory, which also served as an operating theatre, and put on a plastic apron.

The lab, like much of this base, wasn’t furnished with the most up-to-date equipment, but what it had still did the job efficiently. It was vaguely reminiscent of an old-fashioned, large and sinister kitchen and smelled sharply of antiseptic. Yellow tiles covered the walls, one of which was taken up by four great ceramic sinks. A blood analyser that looked more like a bulky photocopier stood in one corner and a cream-coloured refrigerator, showing signs of rust, occupied another. Cylinders of gas stood in a row like the artillery shells in the munitions section of the base. Electrophoresis apparatus, microscope, centrifuge, organ bath, steriliser and other instruments were stored neatly along two Formica counters, as if they were food appliances. Then there were metal trays containing surgical saws, serrated knives and scalpels, drill bits, retractors, clamps and rasps. Beneath the counters were built-in cupboards that housed the beakers, test tubes, flasks and Petri dishes. The glass-fronted cabinets fixed to the walls contained drugs, medicines and chemicals that were kept under lock and key.

Two stainless-steel examination tables, with leather restraints, were in the centre of the room. The body of Marshal Tark Hyun-ki occupied one of them; a cardboard box containing the remains of the spider creature he had shot near the demilitarised zone was on the other.

The doctor hooked a paper mask over her nose, mouth and ears. Her excitement caused her hands to tremble slightly. At last she would have a subject to study, in forensic detail. She needed an affected specimen such as this and she had never liked the man. He had been more than vocal in his scepticism of her competence and had insulted her more times than she cared to remember. Medicine was not considered a suitable occupation for women and she had worked and studied three times as hard as any man to get to where she was.

But there was no sense of triumph or acrimony involved as she looked forward to dissecting him. Her scientific hunger pushed any personal feeling aside. The Marshal was merely a resource now, an object to document and label. She was eager only to discover answers to this mystery. The power of that book simply had to change the biology. She had a theory about the hypothalamus that she was keen to explore, and other investigations would prove invaluable. She was glad also that the restriction had been lifted and she would presently be able to test those same theories on the English refugees.

Moving to the table, she lifted the blanket and extreme disappointment registered in her eyes. As a result of the gunshot wounds, there wasn’t a hypothalamus to examine. Letting the blanket fall once more, she looked up and her glance rested upon the cardboard box on the other table. Curiosity dispelled her frustration. The box had arrived in her absence and she approached it with interest.

A copy of the Newspaper of the Workers, Rodong Sinmun , covered the dead creature inside. Cautiously, Doctor Choe Soo-jin removed the paper and peered down.

Her surgical mask distorted as she inhaled sharply. The thing was unlike anything she had ever seen. It was the size of a small terrier and its eight spidery legs were wrapped in a tangle round a body covered in matted black fur. The repulsive face with its wide mouth, crammed full of sharp fangs, was upturned and the round, glassy eyes seemed to be staring straight at her. She couldn’t help shuddering and she wondered how it was possible – how could this have come from a book of children’s make-believe?

Her thoughts returned to the meeting and those introductory words the Marshal had read out. She recalled that they had sounded pleasant at the time. What was there to fear in them? A wide sea, dappled with silvery light, sparkled in her thoughts, giving way to a green land of thirteen rolling hills and, in the central plain, rising over a quiet, sleepy village, the turrets and high walls of a beautiful white castle.