Surrogate Protocol

by Tham Cheng-E

  Her ruse had worked flawlessly.

  “Lap!” She barked, now charged with a burst of ecstasy.

  Anton bent a knee and she leapt onto it and ran her hand affectionately down the side of his face before shoving it away. The move startled Anton, and his bewildered expression amused her so much that she flew into a string of laughter and executed another double-timed march down the floor.

  They danced on with their foreheads touching as the tango piece progressed to its final bars. Vivian, now supremely thrilled, wanted to end it all with a dramatic fall-and-catch. But for fear that she might fracture the back of her head she opted instead for a more conservative corte. She executed a lápiz; leisurely inscribing a wide circle with her free leg before bringing herself and her unseemly partner to a bow with a leg extended far behind her. Anton, still locked in the kettle-posture, mistakenly bent both knees in the bow and shot out his free leg only when he saw what Vivian had done, just in time for the ending note.

  Applause rippled across the dancehall. Vivian and Anton wove their way past the envious gazes of couples, particularly the ogling gentlemen, and went over to the cocktail bar. Vivian pulled the jacket off Anton and dropped it back on the seat from which it was taken. Anton, flushed and sweaty, blew out his cheeks and stood awkwardly beside her.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Vivian unfurled a sandalwood fan and began fanning herself.

  “Like what?” said Anton.

  Before Vivian could speak, a Kling left his cases of liquor at the kitchen and came bounding over to them. “You never tell me you can dance?” He delivered a jarring slap on Anton’s back and hung the last syllable of his speech on a grin.

  “I can’t, Amal,” said Anton. He turned to Vivian with the intention to introduce her but faltered when he realised she hadn’t told him her name.

  Instead, she reached her hand past Anton and made the introduction herself. “I’m Vivian,” she said. “You got any engagements with your friend tonight?”

  Amal, puzzled by the question, retracted his grin. “Only deliver liquor lah.”

  “I’d like to take him out for a drink, to thank him.”

  “Thank him for what?” asked Amal, shifting his gaze dubiously between them.

  “Why can’t we have a drink here?” said Anton to Vivian.

  She nodded at the cases of liquor Amal brought in. “But they aren’t real, are they?”

  Amal’s expression darkened, clearly put out that she had realised they were bootlegging counterfeit liquor to the club. He looked at Anton, who declared his innocence by shaking his head.

  “Just a drink.” Vivian threw him a wink. “And you’ll have him back.”

  / / /

  Vivian was certain that Anton would come along. And when he did it made her happier than she thought she’d be. Maybe it was a nice respite from the murder she had committed less than an hour earlier. Or maybe it was something else—something she’d always craved but never confessed to. She brought him to a spot along an alley where the mellow illumination of gas lamps accentuated the rusty shades of its mouldy, peeling walls.

  On a moisture-warped table sat dishes of stir-fried beef, steamed peanuts, roasted pork and oil-drenched greens. Vivian poured the sixth serving of Chinese huangjiu into Anton’s glass and topped up her own. The clear red-brown liquid sloshed luxuriantly and gave off a fragrant waft of herbs and alcohol. Behind them, a wizened wizard of oriental stir-fry clattered away at his wok over a roaring furnace. The tables around the stall were filled.

  “How many palms did you grease to get this job?” Vivian took a sip out of her glass and watched Anton over the lipstick-stained rim.

  “I don’t know,” said Anton, chewing on meat and greens. He washed them down with a sip of wine. “Amal does the negotiating. I only help him.”

  “And you think that’s sensible?”

  Anton shrugged. “We’re partners.”

  Vivian lifted her chin and fanned her neck. “That’s what they’ll make you think.”

  “So why are the police looking for you?” said Anton.

  “Mistaken identity.”

  “Really?”

  Vivian poured him another drink. “I’ve never met someone who could hold his liquor as well as I.”

  Anton looked at the two empty wine bottles at the far side of the table. “You drink very well for a lady.”

  “And you’re the first who’s standing up to the challenge.”

  “Maybe it’s in my blood,” Anton uttered without thought and resumed eating.

  That response worked up a fantastic possibility that made her very excited. What are the chances? The thought left Vivian’s lips in a whisper. She considered the impossible odds of them being acquainted so fortuitously and couldn’t help breaking a smile. She surveyed Anton, her shrewd, darting eyes now seething with curiosity.

  “So what is in your blood?” she asked.

  Anton frowned, uncertain of what she meant.

  “Let me see your palm,” she added.

  Anton acceded, thinking it to be a round of amateur palmistry. She took his hand tenderly in hers and traced the creases with a finger. Then with a flirtatious smile and a flick of her wrist something pricked Anton’s pinky and drew blood.

  “What was that?” Anton withdrew his hand. “What did you do?”

  “To see if you have venereal diseases,” Vivian pouted innocently.

  “Venereal?”

  “I like being safe.” She leaned away and adjusted her gown at the waist. “Safer for my clients too.”

  “Clients?”

  “Don’t you want it?”

  “I…” Anton fumbled at the allusion of her words. “Do we have things like that?”

  “Afforded only to the rich. A client gave it to me,” she said. “To keep me clean.”

  Anton poured himself another drink, though it would do little to calm his nerves.

  “So do you want it?” Vivian cupped her chin and playfully joggled her eyebrows.

  Anton’s jaw fell open and he made such a fool of himself that Vivian reeled back and hid her rancorous laughter behind the sandalwood fan.

  “You, Anton, are such a prudish, proper young man,” she said.

  / / /

  By the end of their supper Vivian had swooned, slumped across the table like a log with her head resting on a thin white arm. From her beaded purse Anton extracted a crumpled blue card that bore a tiny, scarcely recognisable monochromatic portrait of her and an address. It was quite a run from where they had supped, and the rickshaw puller—a sunken, sun-dried Chinese man with bulging calves and enormous callused feet—agreed to take them only after much haggling.

  Along the way Anton considered Vivian’s words with disgust. If he truly was as prudish as she had claimed he would have rejected her salacious offer at once. He knew he stammered only because he coveted it so bloody much.

  Vivian drowsed limply on his shoulder and he grasped the side of the rickshaw, belching frequently and being ever ready to retch. The puller’s back glistened in the light of street lamps, capering from side to side in tandem with his running strides.

  The three-mile run with the burden of two passengers almost killed the puller. At the end of Rangoon Road he stopped and panted heavily for a moment before he mustered the energy to drop the shafts and allow his passengers to alight. Anton paid him handsomely, and he sustained his bow long after Anton lumbered up the staircase of a shophouse with his arm around Vivian.

  A lone, naked light bulb lit the narrow stairway. When Anton reached its top fatigue scorched his throbbing thighs like acid. The second storey was a warren of subdivided rooms where filmy curtains were all the privacy offered. A hefty, middle-aged lady with a long braided pigtail recognised Vivian and pointed Anton to her room, though not without a disapproving shake of her head.

  Anton parted the curtain and was surprised to find an unlocked door. The room was clean and smelled of sandalwood and cosmetics. It was furnished with only a
wardrobe and a bed with a thin mattress. He carried Vivian in and laid her on the bed as softly as he could.

  A few cotton frocks were slung over a string drawn from wall to wall. A calendar hung from a rusted nail. Crockery resided inside a large, blackened pot. A bunch of chopsticks bristled from a tin mug. Anton could hear the sound of mah-jong being played downstairs.

  Vivian lay on her side, soundly sleeping. Anton watched her slow, regular breaths through the red silk of her gown that fitted snugly over her midriff. A flap of her skirt had fallen away at the slit, revealing her stockinged legs. When he tried to cover them she suddenly moaned and flipped on her back, thrusting up the contours of her chest and offering Anton a full frontal view of her slumbering visage.

  Anton paced the tiny room like a stag in heat. Then in a burst of resolve he smothered his temptation by pulling a terrycloth blanket over her. Still he couldn’t resist planting a kiss. He stared longingly at her lips, and after being painfully undecided as to where he should kiss, finally picked out a spot he thought would be perfectly neutral.

  He kissed her between her eyes.

  / / /

  The gasp that slid out of Vivian’s lips went undetected as Anton showed himself to the door and closed it softly behind him. And for a long time she lay in bed, berating herself for conceiving the despicable notion of luring him into a kiss on the lips with the prospect of tagging him. It felt inimical even if it was to be done with the seemingly harmless intent of tracking him.

  Finally she sat up and touched the spot where he had kissed her, awestricken by the miracle that the paths of two random Chronomorphs should cross so fortuitously, and deeply moved by Arthur’s virtuous gesture. She had believed the centuries of her existence had eroded her vulnerability to emotions and had taken pride in the stoicism she possessed. But with a single kiss Anton had shattered everything.

  To dispel a thickening cloud of melancholia she unlocked her wardrobe and retrieved a battered Pathe phonograph with the only vinyl she owned, cranked it up and put on the needle. The old vinyl scratched to life, and from it flowed these lyrical words:

  Just try to picture you upon my knee

  Just tea for two and two for tea

  Just me for you and you for me alone

  Nobody near us, to see us or hear us

  No friends or relations or weekend vacations

  We won’t have it known, dear, that we own a telephone

  Sorrow bade Vivian to pull the needle off and leave the vinyl spinning forlornly to a stop on the plateau. She buried her face in her hands and did something she had never done in almost a century. She wept.

  33

  INTERNMENT

  LANDON’S HEAD SPINS and throbs. He finds himself in a hotel room of the budget kind, with steel-framed beds and tiled flooring. Beyond the window he hears the vehicular traffic of a small street. The sunlight is white. It feels like lunchtime. In the background, to a light instrumental accompaniment, a songstress sings:

  Day will break and I’ll awake

  And start to bake a sugar cake

  For you to take for all the boys to see

  We will raise a family

  A boy for you, a girl for me

  Oh, can’t you see how happy we would be

  When Landon finally feels up to it he rolls onto his side and closes his eyes until the vertigo eases. He opens them to the sight of Hannah seated on a chair, her tilted head pressing forlornly against a wall. The music flows from a touchpad on the table. Beside it an omnicron gleams in the daylight.

  “I love that song,” Hannah says, looking at a spot at the ceiling. Her smile is wan, and Landon thinks he sees the remnant of tears in her eyes. “It’s a nice lyrical dream.”

  He throws his leg over the edge of a bed, shakes off the somnolence and hangs his head between his shoulders. An information card on a nightstand reads: Come Inn! A haven for all streetwise backpackers and budget travellers! Free wi-fi!

  The moment is surreal. Not all his memories have returned, but enough to thread some sense across the disparate fragments. The object of his quest now sits before him, flexing her feet and tucking strands of hair behind an ear. He finds himself remembering every detail of that gentle face, every line, every contour. They affirm recognition and kindle a radiant warmth in his chest. At last he musters sufficient confidence to speak.

  “So what do I call you now? Clara? Hannah? Or another name I don’t know about?”

  His tone is mordant, but Hannah does not appear to have taken offence. She goes on looking at the ceiling, now aloof and distant. “Whichever one you want.”

  Assailed by her effrontery Landon almost succumbs to a fit of rage. If not for his spinning head he would’ve stomped up to her. “Don’t get all sassy on me. I’m beginning to remember all that I ought to.”

  It does not impress her. She blinks and swallows a nub of emotion in her throat. “Pansy died last night,” she says.

  “Your pet?”

  “A little girl with HIV.” Her voice, hard and indicting, stills the air in the room. “An orphan who’s lived out the first half of her life in an institution and the other in a hospice. I loved her as a daughter.”

  He would’ve liked to believe her. But he opts for caution, staying silent.

  At last she lowers her gaze and looks at him. “How’s your head?”

  Landon presses on his temples. “Still swimming.”

  “It’ll go away,” she says. “Nice seeing you again, Arthur.”

  There she is, after five decades or more, youthful as ever. The reality of it settles, calcifying in his head, almost inuring it to the fascination of it all. For an instant it feels as though she had left him just yesterday, and the intensity of it renders him speechless. It’s easy to forget that she might well be out to murder him.

  “What are you doing here?” he manages, with only a slight stutter.

  Hannah moves over to the bed and Landon leaps to his feet in a feeble attempt to get away. Straining against a spinning head he staggers over to the table and collapses into a chair. She takes her place at the edge of the bed and tilts her head and regards him with something that could be discerned as fondness. “Keeping you hidden.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Hannah. My bodyguard’s filled me in quite a bit.”

  “Still so sweetly naïve,” she says, her eyes squinting in a smile. “You don’t realise there’s no such thing as a bodyguard.”

  Landon doesn’t reply. He crosses his arms snugly over his chest, as if to warm himself from a bitter cold.

  “He didn’t tell you about Internment?” she asks him.

  “No.”

  “Well, here you are.” She lifts her palms and brings them back between her knees. “When all possible information has been fished out of a Chronie the investigation concludes and the Tracker keeps him under full surveillance while he awaits the order—all done under the pretext of round-the-clock scrutiny, which explains the gizmos in your house.”

  Spot on. Landon grits his jaw. John is a darn fraud.

  “Your friend is a Tracker, just as I am,” she adds after a thoughtful pause. “When he receives the order you’ll be on your way to a safe place where they calm you like a heifer and milk you of the Serum before the slaughter.”

  A wince puckers Landon’s face. “Milk? Me?”

  “That’s the way it’s done on his Side.” Hannah’s gaze hardens. “And that where we differ—they milk the Serum and destroy the host but we destroy both Serum and host. Who knows what would happen if it falls into the wrong hands?”

  The intrigue wears away and mortification takes hold. Landon holds his head. If it has to be he’d want it quick and painless. “Might as well do me now,” he said.

  “There’s a slim chance the order won’t come. I’m hoping against hope for that because I really don’t want to kill you.”

  “What have you done to my life, Hannah?”

  “I’ve been hiding it,” she says. “After Amal died I made sure no one
found you. I hooked you up with the operatives after you killed Khun, had you exiled to London and masked your signature so you wouldn’t be tracked. I had to make sure you stayed clear of the system.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “Because I think you’re a good man.”

  The response forces a sardonic laugh out of Landon. “It’s been an entire century so don’t tell me we got nothing going between us.”

  Hannah’s head lists. “You’d feel better if I said it was because of love?”

  Landon glowers. He so badly craves for the courage to confront her and shake her up because he is sick of her shrewd little remarks that always leave him no room for retort.

  “Between the both of us, it’s official,” she adds soberly. “You messed up that surrogate-stunt at the hospital and someone assigned you to me.”

  “To stalk and then kill?”

  She looks down at her feet. “I’ll work something out.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Cheok and John…” Landon says haltingly. “They’re dead?”

  Hannah rises from the bed. “It’s complicated.” “Where’re you going?”

  She opens the door and steps outside. “Don’t go exploring.” She lifts a sententious finger. “You never know who else might drop in.”

  / / /

  The order arrives just before nightfall. It comes through the omnicron in code while Landon is sleeping away the vertigo. It is past 11pm when he wakes, having at last been completely purged of the effects of the powerful tranquiliser.

  Hannah fetches him a hot cup of tea. She is smiling, and his spirits lift.

  “Does that mean I’m off the hook?” he asks. “At least from your side of the picture?”

  “No,” she says. “Directive four-eighty-seven means they are thinking of reviewing you. We’ll rendezvous with an Agent who will assess your case. I could exert some influence.”