Yngve, AR - Darc Ages

by Darc Ages (lit)

  Neither of her two personalities could stand the mounting popularity of Darc and Shara. Double-Mouth had been the prettiest woman of the Eksako tribe for several years - a position now threatened by the newcomer.

  The face on Double-Mouth's back egged her on: We must destroy them now, now, before the white-haired one can threaten me. Give them the Plague!

  Double-Mouth had already tried that - with no visible result. She had now summoned the hatred to go even further and risk the personal wrath of Claw.

  She spread incessant, malicious gossip among the other villagers, claiming that Shara was drawing the attention of their men. This was partly true, so the message took hold.

  Darc's and Shara's safety was hanging by a thread, and any minor provocation might result in disaster...

  On the fifth day since his arrival, Darc started taking tissue and blood samples from the tribe. Claw volunteered first, though Double-Mouth tried to discourage him.

  It was early afternoon in the deserts of Amrica - late night in Castilia, where Dohan had already taken off on a long flight across the Atlantic. Darc carefully took a fine instrument from his belongings and picked a miniscule slice of skin from Claw's distorted left hand. Claw was rigid, but controlled. With another instrument, Darc sampled a few drops of blood from Claw's arm.

  That done, he climbed into the elevator, and retreated back up to the cliff shelf to study the samples. Shara trailed closely behind him, and the grotesque-faced Up-Mouth guarded them both all the way.

  Up-Mouth was well aware of the threatening glances the villagers were giving the newcomers - and he had invested some personal trust in Darc's powers to heal him.

  One day, Up-Mouth thought, he would speak without pain - or his children would.

  "Could you hold that lamp closer, Shara?" Darc asked.

  Though he had placed his stool and table outdoors, sunlight receded early in the narrow canyon. The hours passed all too quickly, and Darc's eyes grew tired from peeking into his tiny microscopes and analyzing tools. At a respectful distance, Up-Mouth stood watching them as he had been doing all day.

  Darc's equipment, given to him by Mechao, was partly archaic, partly advanced beyond his wildest dreams. This applied especially to the miniaturized, 100-year-old hand-crafted microscope he was using.

  Darc could discern crystallized strands of DNA molecules as sharply as if they were a man in the street, projected onto the microscope's tiny peephole. But the light with which to illuminate the microscope controls had to come from a smoking grease lamp, and the table was not quite steady at all times.

  Shara edged closer, careful not to bump into the hunching scientist.

  "Now it's starting to work," he said to himself.

  "What is?" Shara asked.

  Darc showed her a sheet of thick paper, no larger than his two hands, lined with handwritten columns.

  Each column contained a dot of pre-prepared chemicals, which took on certain colors when they reacted with certain parts of the human genome. He had diluted and mashed the cell samples from Claw, and soaked the prepared paper in it.

  The paper was, in effect, a miniature laboratory. From the resulting colors, Darc could decipher if any key genes were missing or improperly structured.

  He slowly compared the test paper with the color chart provided by Mechao, frowning and blinking in the waning sunlight. Finally, he looked up and stretched his aching limbs.

  "Damn!" he said, brushing bushy white hair back from his forehead. "This test can't find anything odd about Claw's genes. If I'm reading this sample correctly, there should be nothing wrong with him - or with any of the Lepers."

  Shara was dumbfounded. "What does that mean? They are Lepers, aren't they?"

  "Yes... but why? All this time, I've been asking myself: is it inherited or an infection? The smaller deformities might be caused by some kind of virus or bacteria - as long as they start early, in the womb. But there are Lepers whose skeletons are so twisted, that it must be something wrong from the very beginning - when the fetus started to form."

  "Why not both?" Shara said without thinking; this was pure magic to her.

  Darc sighed, and replied: "Because there is one piece of evidence that indicates a non-genetic disease: every new Leper child has a completely unique deformity. The children have their parents' eye and hair color, and skin... but their bodies are all twisted up in different ways."

  Shara understood less and less, and this worried her; her insides felt upset, and she wondered if it was the Plague or just her nerves.

  "What is this 'D-N-A', Darc? Can you read it... like a book?"

  Darc scratched himself, turned, and held Shara in his arms - not tenderly, but like a man clutching a tree as a storm approaches.

  He explained to her, like he once used to lecture his two children: "All living things are made up of cells - very small bodies. Each cell contains two sets of instructions in the form of DNA: one for how to keep the single cell alive, and another set that tells the cell how to relate to the other cells in the body.

  "When the fetus takes its proper shape in the womb, the mother's body sends commands which activate the second set of instructions. And so, as the fetus cells multiply into more cells, they also assume separate roles; some cells decide to become the head, other cells begin to form a heart, and so on.

  "In my student days, we experimented with changing these genes on flies and tiny fishes. Witchdoctors, you'd call us. If the right control gene was damaged at an early stage, the shape of the fly or the fish would get all mixed up: the head would be placed on the tail, or you'd get a fly with tails at both ends, and so on..."

  Shara said, again spontaneously: "But I haven't seen Lepers with the heads on their behinds... or with two behinds and no head... I would have noticed that!"

  Darc nodded, rocking Shara in his arms: "I know, I know." He paused. "Then again, when we created those kinds of deformed fishes or flies, they were dead before they hatched..."

  He suddenly grinned; the light of inspiration changed his sunburned face.

  "Yes... that's it! We don't see Lepers with two behinds and no head - because those were naturally aborted from the womb long before they were born, or stillborn! The Plague might be hereditary after all!"

  "Does that explain how Claw got those lumps on his skull?"

  "It explains his hand; the bones in his skeleton are simply grown wrong. Claw must have been that way since he was born. But his lumps... I don't know. They are different..." Darc turned glum for a few moments. They stood holding each other, as the air grew colder. "What was that you said earlier?" he asked absent-mindedly.

  "What?"

  "You asked: 'Why not both?'"

  Shara frowned for a moment; then her memory caught up.

  "I meant... why not both an infection and an inherited disease? Why just one or the other? Do you mean that one can't have both?"

  Darc shook his head; he could have kicked himself for not seeing it before.

  "Of course! I love you, Shara!"

  He kissed her hard on the mouth, then pushed her away and sat down, leafing through his notebook.

  Darc talked exaltedly to himself, thinking out loud: " One set of deformities inherited to the control genes... plus another set of deformities that spread by touch. And everyone believes the legend that if you touch a Leper, your children also become deformed! And since all Lepers were forced together from the beginning, nobody saw any difference! That's why the Plague was never cured or went away by itself! There were two Plagues - or dozens of them, what do I know!"

  Shara slowly began to realize the meaning of Darc's ranting.

  "Do you mean," she asked anxiously, "that we could still become deformed by... touching them?"

  "Yes," he said quickly, then froze. "There might still be time. First of all, I must find the virus or germ, or whatever, that spreads by touch."

  Shara bit her lip; the fear returned in her.

  "If... if we are tainted by touch, how soon wil
l it show?"

  Darc looked up from his instruments again, and was saddened by the beautiful sight of Shara, standing in the last gleaming of twilight, looking at him with her large dark eyes. He would never forgive himself if this wonderful woman were ruined. Briefly, he wondered if he was in love with her - then he shook off the thought, because it might complicate his work.

  Darc moved his instruments indoors, and received more lamps from Up-Mouth to see with. Finding an unknown germ was not easy, when you did not know what to look for.

  With trembling hands, Darc took a few samples from himself and compared them with those from Claw. This work took a few hours, and he once paused to relax his eyes. He swallowed some aspirin from the medical supplies in the pockets of his cloak, and continued the search.

  Chapter 31

  A few hours past midnight, Darc dozed off over the table where he was sitting.

  Shara lay asleep in the bed next to the table.

  Up-Mouth sat slumped in front of their door, half-slumbering. He fell asleep, snoring unhealthily as he breathed - his late mother had often remarked, that only a miracle prevented Up-Mouth from choking in his sleep.

  Then he started awake. A dark figure was trying to sneak past him. Up-Mouth grabbed his spear, and blocked the door to Darc's chamber. In the weak light of the grease-lamp, his tired eyes could barely discern the healthy face of Double-Mouth. She stepped back, her lips pinched.

  "You," he grunted - she understood his short, forced speech from long habit.

  "Quiet! Don't wake up the house," she whispered in a frightened voice.

  Up-Mouth stood up, towering ominously over the shorter woman. He said, with audible strain: "Claw."

  Double-Mouth clutched the lapel of his cloak, and pleaded: "No, please don't tell Claw! He..." Double-Mouth's second face came to her rescue, and suggested a suitable lie. She softened her voice, and continued: "He beats me, every day. Claw is so mean, not like you, Up-Mouth. You are always so kind to everyone..."

  She confused Up-Mouth, and his naive, twisted face showed it. The chief's favorite wife suddenly showed other feelings than indifference toward him, and he was enchanted by her friendly attention. She smiled up at him, and her healthy hands stroked his chest.

  "That's why I'm concerned for you, Up-Mouth. You spend too much time with those two city-people -"

  "Friends!" he retorted, and slapped his wide chest; he was getting angry.

  "But - haven't you seen? Haven't you heard? They laugh at us behind our backs! They think we are beasts - they would say anything to escape from here alive!"

  He shook his head jerkily, refused to look into Double-Mouth's wide-open eyes.

  But he stood rigid, unable to stop her poisonous, soft-spoken words: "That woman... Shara... you like her, don't you?" They both knew it was true. The big man seemed to writhe in the smaller woman's grip, his feet paralyzed. "People have seen her watch you - talk about you, with Darc..."

  Her voice trailed off; Up-Mouth craved to hear the rest. He grabbed her shoulders, and stared furiously at her with his slanted, upside-down eyes. Double-Mouth was frightened, but kept her calm.

  "She said... that you are dumb, that she fooled you into believing she liked you! She's going to betray you - I wanted to warn you, my dear Up-Mouth."

  Up-Mouth released her, feeling the bile rise in his throat together with a tidal wave of self-loathing. Double-Mouth was on her way out of the hallway, but her second face egged her to say more, to cause as much damage as possible.

  She approached the sad, angry man again, and half-whispered in his upside-down ear: "Don't stand there crying like a baby! Go inside, look at those strange things Darc is working with! They don't make sense, do they! Because it's a fake, all a trick! Go see for yourself!"

  With those words, Double-Mouth hastily sneaked off into her own chamber. She left Up-Mouth alone with his confusion and terror, fighting the temptation to follow her advice. He lost.

  Before him, Darc perceived the smiling, Oriental features of Dr. Percival Takenaka, and heard his smooth voice: "Welcome back to the living, Mr. Archibald! Your family is eager to see you."

  What joy and relief, to realize that it had all been a dream, a bad trip in his frozen sleep! No Ice Age - it was just a warped memory of the cold sarcophagus. No far future, no post-holocaust feudal society. No -

  The acrid smell of burning chemicals brought Darc back to real consciousness. The "awakening" had been a dream; this was reality. He sat up, and saw the small flames next to him on the table. The grease-lamp oil had been spilled over the test papers, and they were burning up. Darc's hands reached out; he managed to rescue the delicate instruments, and reached for the water pot - when a firm hand clutched his arm. In the gloom, he couldn't make out the attacker's face.

  "Let go of me... Up-Mouth? What are you doing -"

  "Fake!" the big man whined - he sounded like a hurt, accusing boy.

  Darc tried to jerk away from Up-Mouth's firm hold, but it was pointless. He groped for his notebook, and started to beat out the flames on the table. When Up-Mouth saw this, he abruptly dropped his hold.

  Darc threw his chest onto the table, smothering the fire completely - and the room went black. Stumbling on a bedpost, Darc heard someone crash right through the rickety wooden door - and Shara's voice.

  Suddenly, the chamber was illuminated from the hallway - because Up-Mouth had run down the door. Darc hesitated for a moment, then chose to stay with Shara. He stepped over to the bed and urged her to get dressed.

  "What's going on?" she asked anxiously.

  "Up-Mouth tried to destroy my work. Why?"

  "No, not him! " she exclaimed. "He's like a child! He would never do such a thing."

  The din had awakened the household, and they could hear the heavy steps of Claw approaching.

  "Well, he did. I saved most of my things, but be careful now. If something more happens..."

  Then, Claw appeared in the doorway, dressed in a long rough nightshirt. The light from behind his head created a fearsome silhouette with a monstrous club-like claw hanging from his left side - Claw's hand.

  "What's this?" he grumbled.

  Just next to him came Double-Mouth, pointing at Shara, and screamed: "It was her! She frightened poor Up-Mouth, so he ran away! I saw him run outside, and she screamed: 'Rape!' "

  Darc blinked, and glowered at the furious Leper woman. There was no sign of deformity in her face and arms. It was her twisted words that made him feel sick.

  His pledge to protect Shara was about to be tested.

  The villagers on the higher levels searched for Up-Mouth, calling out his name, promising that he would risk no punishment, if only he showed himself. They lit torches and scanned every dark corner and narrow pathway. No sign of him was found.

  The villagers at the bottom of the canyon were soon alerted, and joined the search. It was they who, within minutes, found Up-Mouth. His body lay spread in a pool of blood at the foot of the cliff wall.

  Angry voices from the villagers echoed up the canyon and reached Darc's ears.

  "He must have jumped off the cliff, Claw," he told the chief - whose healthy facial half became lined with sorrow.

  "Up-Mouth was my oldest surviving son, Darc. He could never learn to hunt or do handiwork, with those eyes of his. His mother died very young. I promised her to take care of him."

  Claw gazed down the chasm for a while, at the circle of torches and figures around Up-Mouth's body. He turned to glare at Darc and Shara, who clung to Darc behind his back.

  "I will not blame you for Up-Mouth's suicide," he slurred hoarsely. I will protect you from the tribe's anger. I gave you my word.

  "But," he hissed, "you will stay out of my people's sight! Or you die!"

  He turned about and left them. In the yellow flicker of the torches, they could barely glimpse that Claw's healthy eye was weeping. Shara also began to cry.

  "Why did he do it?" she sobbed, as Darc patted her shoulders. "He was so kind!"
<
br />   "We'll find out. Don't lose hope now, Shara."

  They have a lot of hope, Darc recalled from his notes, but has it dried up already?

  He took her inside again, and his restless mind returned to the research. A distant rumble rolled down from the clouded, blue-black sky - Darc thought it was thunder.

  It was not.

  In the brighter light of several new grease-lamps, Darc was able to get a better look at the scorched test paper. Parts of the chemically prepared sheet had been lost.

  But just near the burnt edge, he discovered a difference. A chill went through him - the wondrous chill of discovery and breakthrough.

  The heat from the fire had changed the colors of the test!

  It dawned on him, that Mechao had mentioned something about correct temperature of the test chemicals - and Darc had been sitting outside, in the chilly evening air. The chemicals had not reacted properly due to the cold - which explained why he had spotted no effect the first time.

  But now, when he scanned the column of spots that should show a reaction to abnormal control genes - now, one spot was colored a fierce blue. He had located the genetic fault! It meant that a cure was within reach, at least for the as-yet-unborn children of the Lepers.

  Darc checked the reaction with Mechao's handwritten color chart. The blue spot indicated damage on sections of the DNA, which controlled the growth of the entire body - hence, a fault which caused the inborn deformities might be located somewhere in that gene.

  However, there was still one possibility left, and Darc's worry grew. It might be too late.

  He suppressed a shiver, scraped a skin sample from his own arm, and another sample from his tongue. If there was a second Leper virus, which spread by touch, water, or food, it could be infecting him right now - right where Up-Mouth had touched his wrist, or through a mug of water, or a bowl of soup.

  Darc placed the cell samples under his small but powerful microscope, and started looking for signs of his own doom.

  And he found them, after a quick search - swarms of oblong, spear-tipped viruses, encircling the bigger lumps that were his skin cells. They vaguely resembled the syphilis bacteria - yet, dissimilar to any virus he had ever known.