Transmigration

by Nicholas Maes

  “What?”

  “You’ve seen my kaba. You can read it. Remember to do so.”

  Simon wanted her to explain more fully but they’d reached the road. The goons were all over them and they couldn’t speak freely. A minute later they were beside the car. When Simon tried to approach Clara, Tarhlo cut him off.

  “Let us drink before we leave,” he said, unstringing a leather skin from his shoulder. Cletho pulled wooden cups from his knapsack. Filling these with the drink that Clara had swallowed, Tarhlo passed the cups around, setting one in Simon’s hand. He left out Jenny and Emma, however.

  “May our efforts prove successful,” he said, raising his cup and glancing the group over, “and may every hunter receive his dues.”

  Crying “Stolh!” they drank with grunts of satisfaction.

  “Please don’t take it hard, Son,” Tarhlo said, eyeing Simon warmly. “You are with us but your spear has no place in this hunt.”

  “What?” Simon answered. He was about to press Tarhlo to explain. Before he could, the earth seemed to wobble, Tarhlo grew distant, and a cloud of blackness descended.

  His last conscious thought was, “I’ve failed my sister.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “How do you feel?”

  “Groggy.”

  “Course you do. Smakho’s strong. I’m amazed you’ve only been out for sixteen hours. On tastin’ it de first time, most bolkhs don’t recover for at least a week. Dey’re a lot like zombies ’n can be steered wherever. It also plays wid deir power to project.”

  “That’s why Tarhlo gave it to my sister?”

  “You’ve got dat right.”

  Simon’s head was killing him — or rather, the head that belonged to his corpse of a shatl. He was lying in the cavern. The goons had carried him back from the car as soon as Tarhlo and the girls had left. He could hear the hemindhs laughing in the background and joking about what the future would bring. Cletho had opted to sit beside Simon — his shatl was bald and had a stump for a hand. He was friendlier than normal. This was partly because Simon was Tarhlo’s son and the hamax’s brother, and partly because he was drunk on smakho.

  “Drink some of dis,” he said, handing Simon a cloudy liquid. “It’s great at counteractin’ smakho.”

  “What is it?” Simon asked with suspicion, staring down into the wooden cup. “It sure smells funny.”

  “It’s milk, oregano, and thyme,” Cletho said. “Go on, drink. It ain’t poison, believe me.”

  “That does feel better,” Simon admitted after taking a sip. “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “What’s goin’ on?” Cletho asked, in a deadpan tone that concealed his excitement. “Let’s see. Oh yeah, we’re incarnatin’ bolkhs.”

  “Yeah, I know. But how exactly?”

  Cletho eyed him doubtfully. To judge by his expression, he’d been warned to keep things secret; on the other hand, the smakho had him wanting to blab. In the end, his drunkenness beat his prudence out.

  “Your sister’s a hamax. You know what dat means?”

  “Sure.”

  “And we wanna be incarnated.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So figure it out. You know what limnls are, don’t you?”

  “I should. I was one myself. But I still don’t get it. Unless …”

  Simon’s jaw dropped. A possibility struck home, so simple, so obvious, yet so horribly ruthless. Tarhlo wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  “Dat’s right,” Cletho said, with a burst of laughter. “I can tell by your puss dat you’ve pieced it togedder. De plan is to find babies dat’ve just been delivered. Tarhlo’ll lead your sister to dem and de bolkhs i’side her’ll push de newborn kabas out. Dat’ll produce five t’ousand limnls lickitysplit.”

  “Wow. But where can he find newborns clustered together?”

  “In maternity wards, dat’s where,” Cletho crowed, as if he’d come up with this plan himself. “He’s gonna travel from one ward to de next, chasing out lura kabas just when dey’ve appeared. In de past, bolkhs found newborns by luck — dat’s why limnls are incredibly rare. ’N if we entered a ward in our usual shatls, drunks ’n udder lakhn types, we’d be tossed on our keisters. But wid a hamax, we can sneak in by de hundreds, de t’ousands, ’n no nurse ain’t gonna t’row a l’il girl from de ward.”

  “It’s ingenious. Where are these wards?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know? I’ll give you a hint. Dey ain’t nearby. Tarhlo’s flown to a place where de pickin’s are rich. More t’an dat, I can’t tell you.”

  Cletho added that this was just the beginning. There were hundreds of thousands of bolkhs worldwide. After Clara launched the initial group — that would take at least a couple of weeks — she would return to Gibraltar and load up again. After eighteen months, every bolkh would be a limnl. And with hundreds of thousands of limnls at large, the seeds would be sown for huge numbers to follow.

  As Cletho spoke Simon had to stop himself from retching. He’d known all along that Tarhlo’s plan would be violent, but he’d never guessed his victims would be newborns. How could anyone target a baby? Even if Simon agreed that the bolkhs had suffered, and that the luras had to pay somehow, why should newborns die by the thousands?

  Tarhlo would argue that this was war. Had the luras shown pity for the bolkhs long ago? Hadn’t they been just as cruel and indifferent? Hadn’t bolkh babies died in horrifying numbers? If the bolkhs could only win by destroying newborns then the deaths were justified, necessary even. In a fight for survival there was no right and wrong.

  And Tarhlo wouldn’t stop there. He would remind his son of his place with them, that his days of living with the luras were over, and that the Carpenters would never want to see him again, especially if he visited in the guise of a corpse. He’d been born a bolkh and he would die one too. And the same line of reasoning applied to Clara …

  Clara. The thought of his sister brought him up short. She’d warned Emma that Tarhlo was dangerous, she’d caused Emma to flee to Vancouver, and she’d preferred that home to living with her father. Why? Because Tarhlo’s schemes disgusted her. From birth she’d known what he was up to, how central her own role would be, and still she’d rejected Tarhlo’s ambitions. Maybe survival wasn’t such a big deal, not if innocents had to pay the price.

  His choice seemed clear. As a woplh, he was supposed to follow his sister. If her instincts said this scheme was wrong, who was he to question her judgement? He would join her side, his uncle’s too. If this meant living apart from bolkhs and luras, then this would be the price he’d pay.

  “… Arithmetic ain’t my strength,” Cletho said, drowsy from the smakho, “but we bolkhs have a lot of kids, twenty on average — least we did when we could reproduce. If you factor dis in over fifty years, startin’ with two hundred t’ousand parents, our tribes’ll grow even faster dan rabbits. So it ain’t ridiculous to hope dat we’ll take over one day.”

  “If this plan is so glorious,” Simon asked, “how come Tarhlo didn’t take us along? You’re his assistant and I’m the woplh.”

  “I’m arrangin’ de next crowd o’ kabas,” Cletho yawned. “And it’s ’cause you’re de woplh dat he don’t want you wid ’em. You might interfere ’cause you ain’t never hunted. Not bein’ used to killin’, your heart is soft. And to mix de hamax ’n you togedder, well, dat ain’t exactly a good ideer.”

  “So I’m your prisoner?”

  “Our prisoner?” Cletho laughed. “You’re a Khalkon ’n a woplh! Like we could hold you if you t’ought of escapin’! Dat’s rich!”

  “So I can leave?”

  “Any time! Who’s gonna stop you? But if you were plottin’ to interfere, it ain’t gonna happen. You don’t know Tarhlo’s where’bouts so dere ain’t no catchin’ up wid him!” He screeched with laughter. After a minute his laughter turned to chuckles, then his chuckles to grunts, and his grunts to snores. Pretty soon he was out for the count.


  Simon sighed and asked himself the question again. Bolkhs or luras? He pictured Clara being blasted with kabas and imagined this crowd hurting lura newborns. No question about it. His loyalties were clear.

  Without wasting time, he took off from his shatl. There was an indecent sound as air left the throat and the vessel became Death’s possession again. Simon felt bad about killing the flesh, but the boy was dead and his fate was sealed already. Besides, those newborns were counting on him.

  Spying a beetle, he jumped inside it. He spread its wings and gradually stole from the cave. Cletho’s snores were echoing through its hollows. They seemed to jeer at him that he was backing the wrong team and his efforts would end in disappointment.

  From deep inside a kingfisher, Simon was surveying Gibraltar from a dizzying height. After the cave, the sun was glorious to bask in. It was close to noon, as far as he could tell. For the fifteenth time he studied the land closely. Its main spur looked unfriendly, but its villas and swimming pools gave it charm. There were several ships at sea, freighters, speedboats, and fishing vessels, and each leaving a wake behind it. Everything looked normal, which bothered Simon. How could things look normal when Tarhlo was plotting his bolkh revolution?

  As he flitted about the peninsula, Simon wondered what his next step was. He had to find Clara, but how? Cletho had given him nothing to go on, except that Tarhlo was where the pickings were rich. Because Emma and Jenny weren’t able to project, and Clara clearly needed her shatl, they’d be forced to travel by normal means — a car, a boat, or a plane, most likely. So their first stop would have been the airport, maybe.

  The airport. It was directly below, on the neck of land joining Gibraltar to Europe. A jet was taking off just then, but where was it headed? There were dozens of possible destinations. If Simon was right and they were travelling by plane, there was no predicting what the target was — Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas. So how could Simon track them down?

  He cheeped in frustration as he circled the Rock. Just as he was thinking that he should return to the cave and try to shake an answer from Cletho, never mind that the bolkh was unlikely to crack, he happened to scan the water again. The boats looked so elegant and yet something about them was teasing his brain. What? Each of them was different, from the freighters to the fishing crafts, so …

  The wake! That was it! Each was trailing a wake. What had Jenny murmured when they were hiking down the hill? “Follow in my wake.” What did she mean? What was her wake? Was it linked to that stunt over at the farmhouse, when she’d persuaded him to jump at her so he’d recognize her feel? He mulled this over. There was one way to find out.

  He steered his vadh toward the airport.

  Simon was in a lizard. He was watching the departures hall, which was spacious but nothing like the one in Vancouver. It was fifty metres long and five metres tall. There were a dozen airline counters, a snack bar, and some shops. He’d searched them all for a clue from Jenny but nothing had jumped out at him. His legs were tired from running all over and his desperation was fast returning.

  A woman walked by and almost crushed him with her heels. Dodging behind the leg of a chair, he saw her approach the women’s washroom. The washroom! It was the one place left that he hadn’t checked, because he was making lura assumptions and believed such places were off-limits to him. But he was a lizard now and couldn’t afford to be squeamish. Running at full tilt, he zipped past the door as the woman in the heels wheeled it open.

  His plan was to inspect each of the stalls, but that proved unnecessary. Over by the sinks, in the floor’s far corner, a familiar waft caught his interest. He slipped across the tiles to sniff things out.

  His goal was a wad of dried out spit. As disgusting as that was — though in lizard form it wasn’t terrible — it conveyed Jenny’s aura to Simon’s senses. Why, he couldn’t say. His kaba’s “antennae” just told him so. That had to mean the spit was hers. But there was something else. Beneath the spit? Letters had been scrawled, in ballpoint pen. “NYC-JFK” they read — shorthand for New York City, JFK International Airport.

  He experienced a thrill. His entire lizard’s body shook. Jenny assumed that Simon was tracking her and would leave more clues as he followed her trail.

  He didn’t waste a second. Exiting the washroom when the door next opened, he sped toward the electronic screens. Because he couldn’t see them from his lizard’s perspective, he left this vadh and studied them in kaba form.

  There! A flight for JFK was listed. It was leaving from Gate 6 in … seven minutes. Panic-stricken, he searched for his lizard: free to wander, it had up and vanished. But there was a movement by the window, on the far side of the hall. Darting over, Simon stumbled on a ladybug.

  Hijacking this vadh, Simon steered it toward the gates and passed security with the greatest of ease. A minute later he was nearing Gate 6. An agent was processing the final passenger, a distinguished-looking man in a pinstriped suit. He was greying at the temples and carrying a briefcase. As the woman handed him his boarding pass, Simon perched himself on the guy’s left shoulder. Blind to his presence, the man boarded the bus that would take him over the tarmac to a 747. Feeling exposed, Simon hid under his lapel.

  The only thing lacking was a seat belt, he mused.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Simon was on the man’s shoulder and looking around. They were standing in the arrivals hall at JFK and Simon’s ride was waiting for his luggage to show. A crowd had gathered at the baggage carousel but only a dozen bags had come out. People were cursing, kids were going crazy, and a terrier in a cage was howling away.

  Simon was thinking: Tarhlo had arrived yesterday at roughly the same time, 8:30 p.m. Even if they’d spent the entire night sleeping, he and the girls would have been busy that day. How many newborns had they ousted so far? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred? More? Maternity wards were open twenty-four/seven and by pumping Clara full of smakho, Tarhlo could keep her working around the clock.

  He had to find his sister.

  A woman had freed the terrier and was stroking his ears. It had fallen silent and was settling down. Except that it suddenly leapt from its owner, jumped to the tiles, and dashed into the crowd. As he steered the animal past a forest of legs, Simon heard the woman screaming, “Petey! Baby! Where’re you going?”

  The first washroom he checked had nothing to offer. No trace of Jenny hung in the air. Threading the terrier past another wall of people, Simon lunged into a second washroom, but again it proved fruitless. By then the authorities were on his tail. Three figures in suits were running toward him, yelling commands into their walkie-talkies. From far away the woman was screeching, “Petey! Come back! Don’t hurt my baby!”

  Reaching the third women’s washroom was hard. Petey had six guards on his tail and various bystanders were trying to grab him. Twice he was missed by inches, and the shouts and laughter were very distracting. The little dog wasn’t used to such running and its heart was pounding like crazy. Just when he was sure the mutt would collapse, Simon spied the third washroom and dashed inside it.

  They were faint but he picked up traces of Jenny. He searched the corners, the pipes beneath the sinks, and the turquoise tiles behind the two garbage cans. Three uniformed women entered the room. He inspected the stalls, one by one. He got lucky in the fourth one. In the join between the wall and toilet there was a gob of spit and letters in red ink: “St. Luke’s Roosevelt Mat. Ward. Manhat.”

  Aha!

  “Got you!” a woman yelled, grabbing Petey and holding him tight. The terrier was spent and barely moved a muscle. A minute later it was back with its owner, who was crying hysterically and wailing over and over, “My baby! My baby!” Simon was about to leave poor Petey and find a way to get to St. Luke’s, when the woman told the dog, “You’ll feel better when you see Central Park from our window. Would you like that, sweetie?”

  Simon had never been to New York, but he knew from the movies and various books that Central Park w
as in Manhattan.

  “Give me two more hours,” he told the dog’s kaba, “then you’ll never have to see me again.”

  The dog whined, as if to say, “You’ve got a deal.”

  From inside Petey, Simon gasped as they emerged from the Midtown Tunnel. The lights of Manhattan were spread before them, along with buildings of every size and description, a weight of masonry so impossibly huge that it was a miracle the island didn’t buckle and sink. It was almost 10:00 p.m. yet the bars were full, pedestrians were everywhere, and the traffic was ridiculous. Simon had thought Paris was large, but Manhattan put its dimensions to shame.

  As he revelled in the chaos, he grasped why Tarhlo had come to New York City. It was overcrowded and its mat wards would be packed. If he wanted newborns in high concentrations, this sprawling metropolis was the right place to be. Simon had to give it to him — the guy was clever.

  He figured there was no sense staying in Petey. They were heading north as far as he could tell. They were speeding past the UN Plaza, which he recognized from his dad’s favourite movie, North by Northwest. Because the cab was maybe driving away from St. Luke’s his best bet was to abandon the dog and find a shatl that could steer him straight.

  That didn’t take long. At East 47th Street he spied a man lying on a concrete wall. His tie was crooked, his hair uncombed, and he was out of place in those fancy surroundings. He was singing too. He had to be drunk. Simon bade Petey farewell and left the cab through a half-open window.

  “Who are you?” the guy’s kaba yelled as Simon wrested control of his limbs. He could tell the guy had eaten garlic for dinner and the aching knuckles on his right hand revealed that he’d been fighting.