Sandpaper Kiss

by Angel Wedge

  The gods each had their own worlds. The White Lady ruled over the lands above the jungle canopy, a ground atop the highest branches. Her land was the source of all water and wisdom, and she was known to send down her bounty to guide the people of the middle world. Albinos were said to be touched by her, and became priests. Then there was the Prince of the Hidden Lake, who would constantly drink from all the streams. His land was beneath the earth, the destination for the spirits of the dead. It was assumed without question that if you had lived according to your nature, the wise waters from above would carry your spirit to their underground nirvana. His prophets were precocious children, who were said to channel some of the wisdom of their ancestors who had since passed on. Their triumvirate of gods, the Imatribi, was completed by the Spirit That Walks, which seemed to my understanding to be some kind of nature spirit. The Spirit lived within the trees, and in the space between vines. It was responsible for telling the jungle that it is a jungle, which I felt must have a meaning more profound than anything I could understand.

  “Does the Spirit have prophets too?” I asked, wondering what kind of vessel an immanent force would choose to walk among men.

  “It can be anything. The Spirit is everywhere in the jungle, but its heart is the tiger. This is why you may not hurt the tiger.” And for a moment there, anger clouded his eyes. I remembered reading that one of the first Dutch explorers to visit here had been driven away by natives after shooting a tiger. Zoologists hoping to capture a specimen of the rare Panthera pardus alba for study had met an unusually violent reaction from every tribe in the area. If the animal was a god to them, then could they still hold a grudge against outsiders over this lack of understanding? I felt like I was standing on the brink of an abyss here, risking the trust that we’d built over hours of conversation, but I had to know.

  “I think our people don’t know that. So if a tiger chased you down in the forest, you would have no option but to run and hide?” I stumbled over the words, and I could tell that Marcos knew the issue was contentious. He seemed hesitant, maybe wondering if helping to translate would only land me in more hot water. But Amba looked at me carefully, as if the words he used were of the utmost importance.

  “If the tiger chooses to hunt you, then your body will serve to nourish the Spirit, and do more for the jungle than your life ever could,” and after a brief pause, he continued, “Though I doubt that most men would offer themselves so willingly. Some would hurt the great beast in their fear, and then if they survive it is their brothers’ duty to punish them. But, there is no doubt about the right thing to do, even if some do not do it. When the Spirit walks among us, we will always honour them.” And just when I thought I had a handle on their beliefs, that was something else that took an hour to comprehend. The tigers could take on human form, apparently. They would sometimes visit, and at first you’d think they were a visitor from a different tribe. The Spirit could take whatever shape it wanted, could be any of the creatures of the jungle, though it mainly looked like a tiger because that was the strongest. The king of the jungle, in a very literal sense. But it could just as easily be a man, because they were a part of the jungle ecosystem too. The only way to tell if a man was a tiger was to speak to him; because for all the Spirit’s skill in looking like other creatures, it would never speak the language of men (which came from the White Lady), or show respect to the bones of the ancestors (which belonged to the Prince).

  When Corliss finally came to tell me we had to go, he was eager to discuss everything I’d learned. There was still some chance I could have picked up on a detail he’d missed, I guessed. It was only when we reached the Lucretia Falls compound again that another thought came to me: Was there some reason that Barishkov needed us away from the compound that day? Something that neither the foreign reporters nor Marcos the city soldier could be allowed to see?

  Chapter 6 — Bird in a Cage

  I didn’t know how long Corliss’s secretive business would last, but I couldn’t be there when he came out again. So I found another store room a little way down the corridor and waited. As the seconds stretched into minutes, my own heartbeat was all I could hear. It was probably around fifteen minutes before the anthropologist came out, I heard his footsteps ringing past my hiding place. I allowed a good few minutes after the sound had died away, then peered out cautiously. There was nobody in sight.

  The double doors to the lab each had a tiny porthole of toughened glass, about the size of my hand, allowing me to see that the lights were off in there as I came close. I held my camera up and peered at the LED display. I couldn’t see anyone, but it was still possible there could be someone hiding in the gloom. There must be dozens of animals in there, if any of the background information I’d received could be correct, but they weren’t making a sound. I couldn’t help wondering what tortures and experiments they’d been subjected to, for them to stay so silent.

  I looked at the keypad again. The native letters had been applied as 10 adhesive labels, presumably over the top of more conventional numerals. The symbol where the number 4 would normally be – three lines crossing like an asterisk – was peeling slightly at one corner, and the ink was faded. I could assume that key was used in the code, maybe, and if I reduced my 558 possibilities to just those with a ‘4’ in, then I only had 174 options to try. I had no problem summoning a list of the keys I’d have to press in my head. For all that I worked at being a journalist and mastering the art of words, I was just as good with numbers without needing the effort.

  0-7-4-4-7, I tapped the keys. A low buzz, and a red LED illuminated. No luck. Still, it made sense to start with the combinations that repeated the number 4, as that label was noticeably more worn than all of the others.

  0-7-4— bzzzt. What was wrong there? The red light was flashing now. Did the system only allow one incorrect attempt before locking down? Had this set an alarm off somewhere? I could imagine a security system that did both, but I’d assumed this place was built on the minimum budget possible given the shambolic rat-maze of identical aluminium-panel corridors. Then again, perhaps that was because Faulkner had cared about protecting the horrors of his research more than the comfort of the staff.

  As I wondered what to do next, the tiny indicator light went from flashing to steadily lit, and then after a few heartbeats winked out. Another light, blue, cast just enough illumination to reflect from the glossy symbols in the darkness.

  0-7-4-4-8. Buzz, red light. I waited, unsure if an alarm would sound after one more press. My heartbeat drummed out a count of twenty, though a rational part of my brain insisted I had probably only waited ten seconds. The blue light came back on. Could that be the key, just waiting?

  0-7-4-4-5. Buzz, red light. Wait. Wait. Wait. Blue light. Wait ten seconds between each attempt, maybe fifteen. That could be an hour to try them all, if I was incredibly unlucky.

  0-7-4-4-1. Buzz, red light. I glanced through the window while the seconds slowly flowed past. Was that some sign of movement beyond? I felt like if my eyes were just a little more suited to the dark, maybe if I squinted just a little harder, I could see movement. But I couldn’t afford to get distracted, knowing that even if one of the animals awoke there was nothing I could do to put it out of its misery right now.

  0-7-4-4-2. Buzz, red light. I tried to commit to memory the sequences I’d already tried. It wouldn’t do to waste precious time repeating them. It was the kind of thing I was normally good at, but this kind of pressure could drive anyone to make mistakes.

  0-8-4-4-7. A buzz, and a red light. I should be getting used to it by now, but my mind wouldn’t settle down to this tedious work. Could there be some other way to get into the lab? Maybe with a flash, I could get some photos of animals in their squalor through the little portholes. I suspected it would just result in glare off the glass, though.

  0-8-4-4-8. Buzz, red light. Again.

  0-8— buzz. Flashing light; I’d let my attention wander too far, and leapt on the butto
ns just before the light went out. I stood, forcing myself to wait as the tiny red eye blinked.

  0-8-4-4-5. Buzz, red light. Slow and steady, that’s the way to do it.

  0-8-4-4-2. Buzz, red light. It was tedious already, and I’d only managed 10 codes. Still, I’d rather do this for a week than repeat the farce that had been Tehran. It was always that memory that came back, when I started to worry on a job. I knew that however badly I did, whatever happened to me, it was better than the events of my first visit to Tehran.

  0-8-4-4-1. Buzz, red light. This time I was sure I’d glimpsed movement on the other side of the glass. There was a tiny pinprick of light through there, gently swaying. I wondered for a moment if it was a guard, and tensed myself to run. But then my eyes managed to identify the vaguest of shapes in the gloom, and I realised the emergency lighting was reflecting off something.

  0-4-7-7-4. Buzz, red light. I wasn’t even looking at the lock now, my fingers knew the shape of the keypad. I could just watch the movement of two glittering specks in the darkness. Eyes, I realised, and with that point of reference I can start to make something out of the vague black-on-black shapes in the lab. That could be a hunched up form, some kind of creature tensing ready to strike. The eyes were gleaming with reflected light, and from this distance looked almost white.

  0-4-8-8-4. Buzz. I punched the code in one handed, not even looking. I tried to meet the creature’s gaze. Could it see me, maybe? Predators often had better night vision. I couldn’t help wondering what it would look like: a cat, or a wolf, or some chimera of mismatched parts like a living taxidermist’s joke. How obvious would its mutation be, or marks from whatever experiments the scientists here had conducted?

  0-4-5-5-4. Buzz. The eyes held mine, not wavering in the slightest. This creature had seen me. There was a part of me that wanted to be afraid of the monster in the dark. But this was no monster, I knew. I should only feel pity for the victims of the geneticist’s experiments. I knew that with the images I’d capture today, these creatures’ suffering would be seen by millions of people around the world, and they would finally be allowed a peaceful end to their suffering.

  0-4-1— Pain. The world spun around me and for a second I couldn’t even tell where the pain had come from. Then as I tumbled to the ground I caught sight of a man behind me, holding some kind of wooden club. It was an ornate carven thing like a whole tree limb whose natural lumps had been turned into geometric shapes while staying just as irregular. A few of the tribesmen had carried them when we were in the jungle. The angry figure standing over me now was how the Benedicteans liked to stereotype the jungle people, and could have come straight out of one of the jokes over there. His chest was bare except for a light cape around his shoulders, and the muscles on his body were sculpted like an onyx statue. His skin gleamed with sweat, faint hints of orange and blue where the lights on the keypad and fire alarms gave shape to the silhouette. He was terrifying, more so than any soldier I’d ever had to bluff or avoid.

  The giant didn’t speak, but scowled down at me. He reached down with his free hand and yanked me up from the floor by my collar. He didn’t even look at me as he punched in the door code – 3-8-4-4-2, I was just aware enough to catch it – and dragged me bodily into the lab. There was immediate movement in the darkness, scuttling and rattling as the thud of my head against the door awoke the tortured creatures imprisoned here.

  He held me with one hand, and I knew from his grip there was no point struggling. I may as well have tried to punch out a tree. His other hand flicked on the light, and I could see my captor clearly. He was dressed like the tribesmen I’d seen in the jungle, wearing just a short cape and a kilt made from woven vines and weighted with wooden rings. My memory suggested the style was known as orbaşa, my skill with languages asserting its presence even in these stressful circumstances. His head was shaven, and decorated with a pattern of interlocking blue-green triangles and spirals. Tattoos or warpaint, I had neither the courage nor the time to ask. He was also the first of the tribal people I’d seen inside the base, although the reports I’d read before arriving suggested that there had been quite a number on the security detail.

  The room was everything I’d expected, but somehow different too. Rows of gleaming metal benches held small cages, maybe six feet long at most. The cages were simple lattices of interlocking steel wire with no concession to comfort. Some were bright and new, while others had the patina of a decade’s exposure to grime. There were more specimens than I’d expected, many more than the lab was equipped to hold, hunkered down in their beds of dried reeds. They slept or watched nervously. Many had visible injuries from the testing; patches of shaved fur revealing rows of needle tracks, or shedding to reveal blistered and chafed skin. On some I saw teeth like fangs, strange on the face of a lemur or a monkey. When my gaze landed on a big cat with scaled horns growing from its back, it took all my self-awareness not to think of them as monsters. These creatures were the victims here, I had to keep on repeating the words to myself in the hope that I could get over my fear of them.

  They were large; too large for such confined quarters. Around the edge of the room were larger cages, the size of a small dorm room. Each of these held three or more living shapes. Each cage had a trough filled with a few different colour feed pellets, the container extending under the bars so that they could be refilled from outside. A second trough held cloudy water. Maybe they were transferred to the smaller cages only when the scientists needed to work on them, that was how a lab like this normally worked. It could have been the case originally, but now the overcrowding was evident.

  My survey of the room was interrupted as I felt myself sliding across a slick, greasy surface. The giant had literally thrown me into a lone empty cage at the end of one bench. A channel at each side led to drains at the end of the bench, but the aluminium countertop beneath this cage was still coated with a thin smear of blood and fæces left by its last occupant. The guard gave me a brief, gloating smile and left without a word.

  Fluorescent lights dimmed, flickered into darkness one by one. I was left staring into a pair of inhuman eyes, a pale lavender, gleaming in the darkness not six feet away. I silently cursed my brothers for pushing me into this job. But no, that wouldn’t be fair. We had all been doing what we thought was right.

  Chapter 7 — A Briefing

  Maybe it’s strange, but the first thing that comes to mind every time I try to remember that meeting was just how much I was sweating. Not as much as I did at Lucretia Falls, but in the jungle there was a good reason for having sweat-soaked clothes. I was travelling economy class, on the cheapest route I could find to get home. That turned out to mean leaving Laos in the middle of the night and crossing the world with half a dozen different budget airlines. Some of the planes should probably have been decommissioned some time in the previous century, and the provincial airports didn’t often have proper air conditioning where it was needed. Every place I stopped, I waited long enough to get frustrated with how long it was taking me but not long enough to get more than an hour’s uncomfortable sleep on an awkwardly shaped metal or plastic bench in the departure lounge.

  I would never have tolerated that kind of discomfort on a personal holiday. Though my parents hadn’t been particularly wealthy, we hadn’t been poor either and the money left over from my college fund had been repurposed into a tidy nest-egg to smooth over the worst hazards through my life. And now Paul had a good job, he’d seen it as his responsibility to be the substitute father, setting up a substantial trust fund to make sure my rebellion never let me hit rock bottom. So if I was travelling on my own budget, I could usually afford the top end of economy, or occasionally business class if I felt I deserved a treat. This time, I was travelling for work and had no such luxury. My employer at the time was an online magazine that was starting to be taken seriously by the traditional press. They could afford to send me to Laos, but only just, and it would have seemed inappropriate to show off my personal wealth
.

  It wasn’t a job in the traditional sense. As much as I hated the way my brothers had got their money, they were both generous enough when it came to family that I could afford to follow my ideals. The magazine was a group of great people who shared a worldview, and worked seriously on doing what we thought was right. If I’d paid for my own flights, it would have saved the group money as well, but it didn’t feel right. That kind of ethical conundrum was almost as convoluted as the one I’d gone to report on. After Ted had spent hours trawling through budget holiday websites and putting together the absolute cheapest journey possible, it would have seemed ungrateful to wave my privileged upbringing around. So I’d gratefully accepted her plan, but still offered to pay a substantial proportion of the costs myself. I’d regretted that decision only a couple of hours into the outbound journey, and the return was even worse.

  Now I was getting to London Heathrow, probably the busiest place I’d have to change planes, and I was seriously considering staying over there or taking a different route for the last two flights. Not because of the planes; back in the developed world, even the super-economy airlines weren’t too uncomfortable. In this case, I was reluctant to return straight to my poky little apartment, because once I got there I had a meeting I was dreading. Just before I left Vientiane, my office had managed to get a message to me to say that the Most Exalted Reverend John Jenner needed to speak with me.