by J M Hemmings
Margaret reached over to the nearest platter and stared for a while at something that looked like a green sweet potato. She picked out the smallest of the tubers and stuck it on her plate, and then added a small helping of what appeared to be some sort of bean and spinach curry and took a few fried plantains to put on the side.
‘You eat like a bird!’ the General laughed as he heaped hearty servings of all of the various dishes on offer onto his polished stone plate. ‘Don’t be scared, go on! This stuff is great for you, all of it!’
Margaret laughed nervously and took a helping of some exotic-looking stewed greens.
‘I’m er, I’m just not feeling particularly hungry right now,’ she said, keeping her eyes focused on a spot on the table ahead of her. ‘I’ll just try this, and maybe have more later.’
‘As you wish,’ the General said, still heaping generous portions onto his own plate.
For a while they talked about how the city was run, with the General explaining in detail how almost everything functioned now as it had in the days of Old T’Kalanjathu, with clean running water being piped down from mountain springs via aqueducts and ancient systems of pipes, how human waste was efficiently converted to fertiliser for crops, how crops were grown in symbiosis with nature, wild plants and the soil, how refrigeration without electricity was done, and how cooking and other energy requirements came from refracted sunlight and water turbines.
Margaret nodded as she digested this information, and started poking gingerly at her food, trying a few cautious mouthfuls. She was surprised to find that the strange-looking vegetables were actually quite palatable, albeit in a way that was quite different to any flavours she was used to from back home. She soon started shovelling down her food with gusto, pausing halfway through a mouthful to see the General staring at her with an almost cheeky smile on his face. Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment and she looked away quickly, making sure to chew a lot more slowly after that.
‘It is good food, is it not?’ he chuckled, and murmurs of affirmation rippled around the table as everyone ate.
Margaret noticed that the General was eating a lot more food than any of the other guests.
Look at how much that guy is putting away! Is it because his body needs to metabolise so much more energy to fuel these transformations into an elephant? No, no, no! This is crazy talk. How can I even be considering this? God knows what kind of drugs he’s been secretly feeding you, Margaret, but he sure has done a whack-job on your brain. Come on! These are the drugs talking! Somehow, you’ve been doing a hell of a lot of hallucinating without feeling sick or high. Maybe that’s why this guy has all these virologists and microbiological engineers working with him … he’s developing some sort of military grade, perfectly camouflaged, remotely activated hallucinogen to use against his enemies. What a weapon that would be! And it’s certainly working against me, if it is indeed present in my body. Maybe I’m some sort of guinea pig in this whole scheme of his, maybe—
‘Dr Green?’
Margaret snapped out of her daydream of thoughts and paranoia as Dr Ogilvy called out her name.
‘Oh, er, yes?’
‘I don’t mean to be rude, but are you finished with your dinner?’
Margaret had cleaned up her plate and was feeling quite refreshed and satisfied after the hearty and nutritious meal; she was, in fact, feeling a lot better than she could remember feeling in quite a long time.
‘I’m done, yeah. Thank you kindly for the meal, it was really great.’
Dr Ogilvy smiled.
‘We treat all of our guests as royalty, and I promise that you will have many more amazing meals in the days to come. However, at the present moment there are things that we members of the Antidote need to discuss in private. I’m sorry to seem rude, but what we are going to be discussing is top-secret, classified information.’
Margaret nodded.
‘I understand. I’ll uh, I’ll go.’
The General stood up.
‘I too must apologise for this seeming rudeness,’ he said. ‘We do not mean to exclude you, Doctor. As I have mentioned before, we are in need of your expertise. We just cannot reveal everything to you at this particular moment, though.’
Margaret felt a matchhead of anger flare up inside of her, but realising the vulnerability of her position here, she quickly doused it.
‘That’s perfectly reasonable, sir,’ she replied in as calm and even a tone as she could muster.
‘Thank you.’
The General barked an order in a strange language at the two teen soldiers who were standing guard at the entrance door. Both of them saluted, and one of them came marching over to Margaret.
‘Hi Tesla, er, Sergeant Tesla,’ she said, recognising the boy from earlier.
‘Dr Green, I am to escort you back to your quarters. Come with me, please.’
The boy’s face was stony and emotionless, but there was no hint of a threat in his voice.
‘All right Tesla, you lead the way.’
Sergeant Tesla led Margaret once more through the winding and often confusing network of corridors and steps, not giving her much time to pause and take in her surroundings as they journeyed at a quick clip through the labyrinth of strange architecture. The combination of moonlight and starlight, coming in from the plenitude of large windows, as well as the glow from the bio-luminescent fungi on the walls, gave the place an eerily dreamlike atmosphere. This, along with everything that had happened in the last few days, had Margaret feeling as if she was somehow straddling the divide between the tangible solidity of reality and the surreal artscape of a nightmare, with a foot firmly planted in each conflicting sphere of consciousness.
‘Come on Margaret,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Get a grip on yourself. If you’re feeling weird, it’s from the drugs.’
‘Your room, Doctor,’ Sergeant Tesla announced when they arrived.
‘Thank you.’
She smiled at the boy, and he couldn’t help returning her smile before he remembered that he was supposed to be stoic and granite-cold. Still, the smile persisted in his eyes even though it vanished quickly from his lips. More than anyone she had encountered in this strange place so far, Margaret felt that perhaps the only person she could consider trusting was this child soldier. This notion struck her as being almost comically ironic, considering how many warnings regarding the dangerous, volatile nature of child soldiers she had been given prior to arriving in Central Africa. Still, this particular individual seemed to be the polar opposite of the stereotype, and Margaret did, after all, desperately need just a semblance of an ally here, even if finding a wholly trustworthy one was out of the question.
‘Can I just call you “Tesla”, without the “sergeant” part?’ she asked the boy as she stepped inside the room. ‘With all due respect, I don’t really enjoy using all of this military terminology.’
His expression remained blank and neutral as he began to speak in a flat tone.
‘The General has made it clear to us that—’
‘Oh pooh-pooh to the General,’ Margaret countered, taking careful care to keep any perceived abrasiveness out of her tone of voice. ‘I know you’re a soldier, and I really don’t mean any disrespect to you or your commander by saying that, but couldn’t you and I, you know, just be friends? After all, I am supposed to be a guest here, aren’t I?’
‘I, um—’
She noticed cracks appearing in the façade of his concrete-solid resolution, and she wasted no time in pouncing on them.
‘Come on, don’t be like that! You’ve got your orders, I totally understand. Don’t get the wrong idea now, kid. It’s just that, you know, you seem like a really nice, smart boy, and I don’t have anyone else to talk to here. C’mon, it’ll be our little secret. I mean, you’ve been ordered to stand guard over me, right? If we’re gonna be spending a lot of time together, we may as well be on good terms, don’t you think?’
There seemed to be a storm raging in the boy’s
mind right now, behind that stony mask of an expression he continually wore. Margaret knew that she had to capitalise on this moment of weakness.
‘I, um … well, okay then Doctor—’
‘Margaret,’ she interjected with as much saccharine warmth as she could pull off, jumping right in before Tesla could finish his sentence. ‘If we’re gonna be friends, you can call me Margaret. No need to call me “Dr Green”. Just “Margaret”, okay?’
Sergeant Tesla smiled shyly.
‘Okay … Margaret,’ he replied. ‘But please, if there is anyone else around, you must only ever refer to me as Sergeant Tesla. And I must call you Dr Green. I could get in a lot of trouble if the General finds out you and I are, er, friends.’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’
‘I need to leave now,’ Tesla said. ‘The overnight guard duty here will be done by another soldier. I’ll be back in the morning though.’
‘All right,’ Margaret said, feeling a dash of disappointment that she could not cement these gains any further tonight. Still, she had at least achieved something with this little exchange. Things were looking at least a bit more positive now than they had been prior to this.
‘Goodbye,’ Tesla said, turning around to wait for his replacement.
‘I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Tesla. Have a good night.’
The sound of army boots clopping on hard stone began to resound through the corridors, and in a few moments another teen soldier appeared, striding brusquely towards Margaret and Tesla. This one was a tall and long-limbed teenage girl, and atop her lanky frame was perched a narrow, rectangular face with pinched features and cold eyes.
‘Sergeant Tesla, you are hereby relieved of guard duty,’ the girl announced in a curt tone.
Tesla saluted her and, with no trace of a smile remaining on his lips, he turned to Margaret and gave her a cool nod.
‘Good night Dr Green,’ he said before turning on his heels and marching off.
‘Good night Sergeant,’ she called out after him. She turned to the new guard and tried to spark up a conversation, but this was quickly shut down; this particular soldier seemed rather hard-boiled and stern, and appeared to have no interest whatsoever in chatting.
‘You need to go inside your room,’ the girl instructed.
It was neither a threat nor an order, but there was a hardness behind the words that was as cold and sharp as flint, and Margaret understood that it would not be a good idea to push the boundaries with this child.
‘Okay then,’ she acquiesced meekly.
‘You will be awoken at dawn,’ the girl said. ‘Get some rest. Good night.’
Margaret stepped into her room and watched the door as the girl shut it – and she then heard a lock click into place.
‘“Guest” my ass,’ she huffed. ‘“Prisoner” is where it’s at. Still, I’ve at least got someone on my side now. Thank you, Tesla. Hopefully you’ll be my ticket outta here, somehow.’
She shuffled around the room for a while, watching how the flickering orange glow from the candles changed and distorted her shadow, morphing it into strange and almost demonic forms on the curved stone walls. After a while she sat down on the bed and hung her head in her hands for a while, feeling the caress of despair running its icy fingers across her cheeks; escape was seeming like an impossibility at this point.
After a while she stood up and limped over to the sink, where she turned on the water and splashed a bit of it onto her face.
‘This must be the same stuff we drank earlier,’ she said to herself. ‘It’s gotta be. I’m sure I can drink this.’
She took a ginger sip, and immediately recognised the fresh taste that she had enjoyed earlier at the dinner table, so she imbibed a few more mouthfuls of the crisp water. Supporting her weight on the sink, she began staring idly at her face in the mirror. She leaned in closer, examining the pores of her nose, and as she did this she switched her grip to better support her forward-leaning weight – and immediately noticed something that felt quite odd on the underside of the basin.
‘What’s this now?’ She got down on her knees to peer at the anomaly her fingers had brushed over beneath the basin, and saw that it was some sort of lever. ‘Why’s this hidden back here?’ She got up and stared at the sink for a moment as curiosity and caution traded blows in the boxing ring of her mind. ‘I’ve gotta try it … I have to. If something happens, well … I can just say that I bumped it while washing my face, can’t I?’ She drew in a deep breath and held the air in her lungs, and then after one quick glance over her shoulder at the door behind her, she pulled on the lever. There was some resistance on its part, but as she progressively applied more force the lever began to move, and then with a brief shudder it clicked into place.
Something groaned and rumbled behind the wall, and Margaret bit her lower lip as a flood of panic began to boost its raging torrents through her entire body. Puffs of dust suddenly began spurting from the walls, and with a pained, deep moan, the stones themselves started shifting.
‘Oh Jesus! Oh shit! He’s gonna kill me!’
She lunged forward and grabbed at the lever with fumbling, panic-clumsy fingers. With an exponentially increasing fervour she tugged and pulled at it, huffing and whimpering with desperation and fear, but despite her efforts the lever would not budge; whatever reaction she had triggered seemed to have become unstoppable. She fell back in terror, tripping over her own feet as she saw what happened next … for the wall itself began to open up.
‘What the hell is happening?!’ she shrieked.
The walls continued to shudder and rumble, and a gaping black maw opened up before her as the stones disappeared inwards. All Margaret could do was lie on the floor where she had fallen, and watch with fear-bulging eyes and panic-laden heaves of breath as the process of whatever it was that was happening played out before her.
After what seemed like an eternity the walls stopped groaning and vibrating, and silence returned to the room. Now, however, there was a huge hole in the wall. It seemed that it was large enough for an adult to pass through.
‘Is this … is this what I think it is?’ Margaret gasped. ‘Could it really be a … a secret passage?’
She scrambled up to her feet and dusted herself off, and thought right away about the guard posted outside her door. The girl must have heard all the noise, but why hadn’t she come in to investigate? Margaret hurried over to her door and pressed an ear to it.
Nothing.
She then dropped down onto her hands and knees and peered under the door. There didn’t seem to be anyone there, as far as she could tell. Perhaps they thought that since she was locked inside her room, there was no need to post a guard outside, or maybe the girl had just gone off for a bathroom break. For whatever reason, the soldier wasn’t there, and apparently nobody had heard the sound of the shifting wall.
Margaret breathed out a deep sigh of relief and took a few moments to sit on the bed to calm her pounding heart and buzzing nerves. After a good few minutes there had still been no reaction from anybody, so she stood up and squeezed her forehead, and then breathed out slowly and massaged the back of her neck to release some of the tension from the earlier moments of panic.
‘Well, isn’t that convenient for me,’ Margaret said to herself. ‘Looks like nobody noticed that. Ain’t nothing left to do but see where this tunnel leads.’
With every nerve ending alive with a tingle of fear, excitement and trepidation, she pulled one of the candles from the wall and set off into the inky darkness of the tunnel.
PART EIGHT
27
MR MA
5th October 2020. MANMO-M Technologies Company Product Development Headquarters, Shenzhen, China
The meeting room was abuzz, sprayed with shrapnel fragments of excited conversation, each blasting outwards from the object of everyone’s attention: a small glass vial containing a few gleaming chrome capsules.
The chattering ceased a
bruptly as two figures entered through the main doors: the frail figure of Mr Ma cut a disproportionately imposing silhouette as he shuffled in, followed by his brawny interpreter and bodyguard, Mr Wang. The suits all hurried to their prescribed seats at the ornately carved agarwood table, standing in silence until Mr Ma had taken his seat at its head. For a few tense moments the old man stared at all of them with icicles in his eyes, after which he gave a curt nod, permitting them to sit. Mr Wang took his seat to the right of Mr Ma and beamed a warm smile at each person sitting at the table before clasping his hands and speaking.
‘Welcome everyone! Mr Ma is eagerly awaiting the demonstration of the new product. As we are all well aware, the MANMO-M Kestrel RS failed to make the projected impact on the smartphone market, while the sales graph has yet to come even close to touching the projected curve at any stage of this financial quarter. Furthermore, we all know that the MANMO-M Peregrine TZ-787 failed even more spectacularly in the tablet market. In short, Mr Ma is very displeased, and so are the shareholders. What’s more, there’s the ongoing lawsuit from the families of the seventy-seven workers who died in the collapse of one of the factories last year, and another attempted lawsuit on the part of a couple of annoying little piss-ants who are upset about MANMO-M poisoning their precious drinking water. Our court and, er, other actions to deal with these irritating plebs have eaten into our profits. In light of all of this, and because we have seen a fairly precipitous decline in the share value of MANMO-M over the last three years, we at your parent company, the Huntsmen Corporation, are seriously consider cutting your funding by forty percent in the coming fiscal year. The board of directors voted overwhelmingly in favour of these cuts, and as CEO, Mr Ma has the power to push this through immediately … so you had best convince us of the efficacy of this latest development that you have been so, how do I put it, “hush-hush” about.’