“I mean no offense, sir,” the captain says. “I only wish to point out that this is not the Buddha.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A common mistake. This is Hotei, a buddha of prosperity and wealth, as indicated by his sack that never goes empty. The image of this deity has become conflated with the actual Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and often local merchants either don’t know the difference, or choose not tell the entire truth during transactions. But I assure you, sir, this is not him.”
“Enough,” Mister Brooke says. “I did not hire you to tutor me on culture, seadog. Return to the ship and await further orders from me.”
For once, the captain has nary a word to say, but rage at this casual dismissal seethes beneath the surface. I have grown to realize that the best course of action when Captain Kennedy is in such a mood is to simply stay out of the man’s way. As he stomps from the room and out of the front entrance, I in no way envy the other crew members of The Swift who will have to endure his wrath.
Mister Brooke turns to me, and smiles. I am pinned under his expression of triumph, of confidence, of power.
“So,” he says, “now that he’s gone, shall we continue?”
Mister Brooke leads me through a passage to a locked door. On its surface are written words in an unknown language, possibly that of the native workers outside, as well as a skull and crossbones painted in white. The intent is clear: no trespassing. He produces a key, unlocks the door, and ushers me inside. A single candle resting on a table in the center of the small room is the only illumination, and the details of what is located at the room’s perimeter are obscured by the darkness. I briefly wonder if he lit the candle before meeting us at the docks, and why he would do such a wasteful thing as to expend tallow and wax. Two chairs are stationed at the low table; he is seated in one, and motions me to do the same in the other.
Also on the table is a small wooden chest, inscribed with sigils and pictorial symbols. From the same iron key ring he unlocks the chest and opens the lid. Within lies an odd-looking pistol, constructed completely of metal, its barrel flared out into a bell, along with seven small cylindrical amber glass bottles.
“What do you think, lad?”
“Very impressive, sir.”
“You have no idea what this is, do you?”
“It isn’t a gun?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “The Illanun traders called it senapang kenangan. It translates to something like ‘memory gun.’ Come, I saw it demonstrated but need to know myself if it works.”
Mister Brooke removes his wig. His natural hair color is a rich chestnut brown; it suits him far more than the powdered wigs in current fashion. He extracts the gun and one of the glass bottles from the chest, then slides the bottle into a hollow in the side of the gun’s handle. He places it in my hands; the metal is cool and light.
“Make sure that lever there is set in the backward position,” he says, “so that it points toward you.”
I check the indicated lever, a tiny switch where the hammer would normally be located, and it is indeed pointing toward me. I affirm this, and then Mister Brooke reaches out, takes the barrel of the gun while it is still in my hands, and places it against the side of his head. Does he intend me to shoot him?
“Very well, my boy. Pull the trigger.”
“Sir?”
“Not to worry, Master Davenport, it will not harm me. My life is too rich and full to end it in such an undistinguished manner. Pull the trigger.”
“But sir ...”
“Do it, boy.”
I pull the trigger.
And instead of the expected loud report and kickback of pistol shot, the gun hums softly and grows warm in my hands. Mister Brooke winces slightly, but gives no other indication of physical or mental distress. A hazy reddish fog slowly oozes into the amber glass bottle in the gun’s handle, threaded through with thin ghost-like filaments that pulse erratically with beats of light. The sight is beautiful and terrifying.
“Very well,” he rasps after the bottle has filled, “your turn.”
“I don’t understand, sir, any of this.”
“A captain’s time is best spent on the deck of his ship, not squirreled away inside his cabin dictating the day’s events. This device extracts a day’s worth of memories, my own experiences now there in that bottle, and you will implant them into your own thick skull.”
I stare at the magical gun in my hands, unwilling to accept the insanity of such a suggestion. Will the injection of the man’s memories also infect me with his character? Am I endangering my immortal soul by contaminating it with another man’s? And what if the process leaves me an imbecile, unable to function, to write, to think? But before I have the slightest chance to challenge my patron’s assertions, and possibly risk punishment and humiliation, Mister Brooke in one swift movement grabs the gun, flips the small lever so that it points forward, presses the barrel to my temple, and pulls the trigger.
Colors, shapes, whirls of experience, a storm at sea in my own mind. The images are disjointed, unconnected, nonlinear, a rush of twenty-four hours worth of memory. Vertigo overtakes me, my gorge rises, my pulse pounds violently in my ears, my skull. It is as if the world itself has turned inside out, and language no longer makes sense, and identity is but a phantom, so adrift am I in this maelstrom of thought. And then slowly, slowly, the feeling recedes, and understanding blossoms, to reveal Mister Brooke’s memories of that morning and the previous day, chronologically, as if happening directly to me, and with this comprehension an incredible feeling, a wonderful bliss, as if all my worries and pains and cares matter not at all, and the corners of my mouth involuntarily stretch upward, and I imagine I appear euphoric. Lost in my ecstasy, but after a time, too short, the feeling fades and I open my eyes. Mister Brooke stares at me, as if studying a newly discovered breed of lizard.
“Well?”
“Remarkable, sir.”
“Yes,” he says. “And useful in more ways than one. It is publicly intended as a scrivening aid, but you will also receive the captain’s unfiltered memories of the days’ events. You will know things that only Captain Kennedy knows, secret things, things he may even be hiding from me. This is an untrustworthy world, my boy, and I must be able to protect my investments.
“I am entrusting you with this technology, Master Davenport. You will use it once a day on Captain Kennedy under the auspices of your duties, but you will also keep a separate log on the captain himself, which you will periodically deliver back to me. If the senapang kenangan is lost or damaged, or if you fail to report in, things will not go well for you. However, if you cooperate, I will make it worth your while. Are we clear?”
We are indeed. “Yes, sir,” I say.
“Good man.”
~
Captain Kennedy proves naturally resistant to being subjected to the memory gun, but after further threats from Mister Brooke, and assurances that his own memories will be but copied and not stolen, he at last relents. We perform the extraction procedure each evening at dusk, and the captain soon warms to the experience. An intimate trust grows between us, as I begin to inhabit his ambitions and his fears.
As yet, he is completely unaware of my clandestine recordings, written hurriedly on scrolls provided by Mister Brooke, and stashed away among my belongings.
~
The world has gone red, completely red, as if a blood fog has engulfed me. Stone and wood and damp. Tired, so tired, so ready for the end of it all.
~
Two years of shipping antimony, precious metals, spices, silks, cotton, linen, sugar, opium, and porcelain in a steady triangle: Singapura to Jakarta to Kuching. Commodore Kennedy commanding Mister Brooke’s growing fleet—The Royalist, The Clarion, The Aurelia, The Pickle, The Dolphin, and The Tiger—and lording his promoted position over the other captains. He has grown suspicious of my private meetings with Mister Brooke whenever we drop anchor in Singapura, and has seen fit to confine me to the ship at all
other times. Stuck as I am belowdecks, I would never know of the people with whom we barter or the places we visit, but through the commodore’s memories, I see and experience everything firsthand. Commodore Kennedy now extracts his memories at an alarming pace, filling up the amber jars almost too fast for me to empty them again. At times, the experiences leave me feeling soiled and embarrassed, such as the commodore’s violent actions against the natives who inadvertently raise his ire, or his carnal visits with whores, all of which I dutifully report to my employer, but the rapturous euphoria that accompanies the ingestion of each memory is a necessary balm against such unpleasantness.
We are now vulnerable to attack.
Mister Brooke, in defiance of Crown law prohibiting the sale, transport or possession of unregistered senapang kenangan devices (I suspect because the Empire wishes a monopoly on such remarkable surveillance technology, although they will not admit as much), has taken to all three actions, and I am frequently used in the demonstration of the use of the memory gun. All profits from these transactions are made off the books. Though we are seven ships strong, I fear for our safety. Word has spread of our current black market dealings, and we are set upon more often than not by pirate ships, long low vessels with a number of triangular sails, constructed with a dark iron wood. Thus far have we withstood significant damage to our fleet, thanks to favorable winds and the speed of our ships in outrunning trouble, but I fear our luck will not hold.
~
A cry from above, an announcement I have been dreading since departing from Brighton: “Bugis!”
I race to the porthole and behold a massive naval fleet, dozens of vessels, blockading our path to Singapura, so close that I can see the harbor in the distance. The same ships that have attacked us for months, now displaying black sails and their own Jolly Roger of a blazing yellow sun against a dark field. The sight inspires an equal sense of awe and terror.
Shouts from the crew, to arms, echo throughout the ship, and a moment of dread washes over me like the tide. This is it. We will not survive this time. The Bugis, grown brave after having sunk The Aurelia the previous week, appear to have decided on a great stand of force.
The sounds of cannonade and pistol shots are too enticing for me to ignore any longer, and I wish to experience the battle myself, rather than through the vicarious eyes of my commodore. If I am to die, I will do so in full sight of the action, rather than squirreled away in my warren. I emerge from the cabin into air thick with sea salt and gunpowder, and a confusion of noise. To port, The Royalist and The Clarion are enveloped in flames, being quickly boarded; to starboard are the wreckages of The Pickle, The Dolphin, and The Tiger. It appears that The Swift alone is left. From the crow’s nest comes the cry, “The Dido! It’s the Dido!” The HMS Dido, under the command of Captain Henry Keppel, pirate-hunter extraordinaire, but it will not reach us in time.
Commodore Kennedy stands proudly at the ship’s wheel, barking orders to the crew, and I reach his side. He glowers at me, and I aver the impression he will order me back below, but the look in my eye must reach him, for he says, “Just stay out of the way.” Then sounds in rapid succession: cannonfire, thundering impact with the mizzenmast, thick timbers splintering and shattering, shouts and yelps from the crew, rigging and rope and sails tumbling to the deck. The commodore tries to push me out of the way, but his effort is in vain.
I lay on the deck, vision blurring almost to darkness, a heavy weight on my legs. The sky above is a lovely azure, white fluffy clouds close enough to pluck from the firmament, dark birds of prey cawing and diving all around, several wisps of smoke obscuring. The commodore’s face, and other members of the crew, may as well be strangers, yelling to each other, lifting the mass from my legs. Such a beautiful day.
Then an overwhelming blinding white of pain. Something is wrong, I cannot move my legs, I cannot breathe through this agony, I long for the rapture of the memory gun, I am dying, I am dying, an explosion, another, screams, I slide on the deck, I list with the ship, the ocean so close, the waves overlapping, rushing up to me, comforting, enveloping, dragging me away from pain and noise and battle, into the briny warm depths, home, home, I miss my mother.
~
Muzzy. Unfocused. A bald woman wielding a pistol. No, now a white man with a handsaw. Now back to the woman, but sporting long dark hair, standing above. She says words to someone outside my vision. The world retreats. Blue. Black. Back into the black.
~
Awake, afraid. I swing lightly in a hammock, momentarily disoriented, under the impression I am still on the ship, rocking back and forth at sea, though no ocean sounds reach my ears. A large room, dark, although a soft light seeps in from hidden corners, revealing a cotton curtain partitioning the room in half, as well as an array of frightening sights on earthen shelves: a large glass jar inhabited by a preserved python, a clump of severed lizard heads missing their eyes, smaller glass bottles containing a variety of colored powders, a pile of twisted tubers and roots, a nest of dead flattened frogs, the skins of a dozen small birds, and a string of what I at first assume to be dried sausages, but upon closer inspection are revealed to be stumpy animal penises. Also on the wall stands an impressive cabinet of dark wood, its doors clasped with an iron lock, and it is this sight that frightens me most of all, for if all of these other abominations are presented in plain view, what in the Lord’s name is hidden away in the cabinet?
I raise my head in an attempt to extricate myself from the hammock, but all my strength, such as it was, has left me, and my head throbs in concert with my heartbeat. The bile rises to my throat, and I breathe hard through my nostrils, willing it back down. The sickness subsides and I lay back. What will become of me in such a place?
~
My legs, my legs, what has happened to my legs?
~
I know not how much time has passed before my captor reveals herself. A handsome native woman, older, Mother’s age, clothed in a thick low-cut red dress, small bones twined in her unruly black hair streaked with grey. Around her neck hang half a dozen amulets, trinkets against superstition between her breasts. Her skin is sallow, as if she suffers from infection, though her eyes blaze with intelligence and erudition. Metal rings adorn every finger on her right hand and none on her left. After she enters from outside, at first a silhouette against the blazing daylight, she approaches slowly, tentatively, as though not wanting to spook a wild animal, all the time clicking her rings together.
“How you feel, ah?” Her accent is heavy, but it is undeniably English that she speaks.
I cough, my throat raw and sore, as if I spent the past week screaming.
“Thirsty.”
She exits quickly, exposing my eyes once again to the brilliance outside, then returns with a dipper of water. A cooler or more delicious liquid I have never tasted, and it soothes both throat and chapped lips. She retracts the dipper before I have finished, perhaps knowing that I will drink until I become ill with water. She examines my legs and I follow her gaze; the stumps end just above the knees. Everything below—knees, calves, shins, feet, toes—is gone, replaced by blank air, and the stumps itch as if infested with a dozen dozen ants, though I dare not scratch them. The woman checks the dressings, tightening, loosening, adjusting until they meet her satisfaction. She lowers her face and inhales deeply, and the aromas emanating from my amputations must satisfy her for she smiles widely, exposing teeth and gums stained with red. Blood?
“Healing,” she says. “Hurt still, ang moh?”
“Who are you? What ... what is this place? Where is the ship, the crew? What have you done to my legs?”
The woman makes shushing noises, and produces from within a pocket of her dress a betel nut, a large seed I recognize from Commodore Kennedy’s memories as a mild stimulant. She places the betel nut in my hands and “Chew,” she says. I do so reluctantly, gnawing at the fibrous husk of the nut. Spices have been added to the surface, and possibly some of the concoctions located on her shelves. A
soothing calm subsumes through me, and the pain of my severed legs subsides slightly. She produces a small tin can, and I spit bright red sputum into it.
“Your legs crushed, lorh,” she says. “Ruined, make you sick. So, they gone.”
I do not want to cry in front of a woman, but the tears gush out of me, all my fears, my frustration, my sadness a torrent of emotion in front of this strange woman who has apparently saved my life. I am only twenty years of age and will never walk again.
She turns and opens the door, leaving me to my grief. “You cry,” she says, “you cry and be sad, and then you stop. Dzurina fix you, and then a surprise she give you, ah? Make you happy happy again.” She closes the door, plunging me back into my darkness.
I must escape. Bomoh, bomoh, the word echoes in my head, drawn from the commodore’s memories, bomoh, the Malayan word for a witch doctor. How can I trust such a woman in league with the devil himself? How can I believe her words about my legs? Perhaps they could have been saved instead of amputated. I shudder. Did she eat them?
The door is not so far away. I shall crawl, crawl on my stomach as the lowest of animals, crawl all the way home to England if need be. The horrors of my situation overwhelm my weakness, and I swing the hammock in my efforts to tumble out, landing on the dirt floor and producing a fresh wave of throbbing pain from my stumps. My vision swims, objects drifting out of focus, and I fear I may go unconscious again. My fingers reach out and claw at dirt; every speck and pebble is magnified in my proximity. The muscles in my arms strain and quiver, and I move forward hardly at all, aware painfully of the lack of assistance from my missing feet. Slowly, slowly, in measured piecemeal fits toward the door, exhausted, out of breath, layered in reddish dirt and my own sweat, and it seems as if I make no progress at all.
I collapse, unable to continue, and weep.
~
I awaken on the floor, Dzurina standing above, scowling.
“Stupid!” she says in her accent, emphasis on the second syllable, making the word somehow even more insulting.
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