Surrogate Protocol

by Tham Cheng-E

  “A portion of my land,” Aldred counter-offered.

  Hoo shook his head wryly. “It’s the best offer a man like you can get. Refuse it and you’ll be ceding your land to them.” He nodded at a bunch of Ghee Hin thugs crouching in an unlit corner like a pack of carrion vultures.

  The man was right. For one trapped and sinking in quagmire it would be inconceivably inane to refuse a lifeline. Aldred reasoned he could persist in his convictions and perish, but that was foolish because they would seize his land anyway once they had murdered him for failing to pay his debts.

  Hoo did not wait for Aldred to respond; the look on his face must have been all the reply he needed. “After you.” He made a broad, gracious sweep of his arm.

  Aldred was offered the first stake, and he had thought hard before betting on odd—a choice that naturally left even to Hoo. They stood side-by-side before the croupier, this time a stumpy man who sported rings of dirt in the folds of his sweating neck, and waited.

  The croupier dug his bowl into a sack of buttons and capped it on the table. He then lifted the bowl and began separating them into groups of four. Aldred didn’t have to wait long; by the time they got to the last thirty buttons he already knew the outcome. Hoo, smiling, gestured to an aide and sent him out to fetch something. Aldred, his elbows on the table, ran his hands dejectedly around his stubble as if seeking comfort from it.

  In time the aide returned and presented a rolled document with a wax seal already in place. Its script was small, calligraphic and profuse.

  “Your debts are paid.” Hoo set it before Aldred. “Now it’s time to honour your end of the deal.”

  Someone gave him a steel-nib pen already dipped in ink. Only a scribble stood between him and destitution. He allowed himself to slip into a reverie, and everything froze in the revelation of a great and unpardonable error. Unable to recover from the pangs of his loss he absently scribbled his name.

  “A man of your word.” Hoo beamed as he blew at the ink.

  As Hoo made his way out with the document Aldred tailed him like a zombie would its voodoo master. He felt ill. The guilt of a broken oath had turned into a blade that took pleasure in lancing itself leisurely into his pounding heart.

  Once outside Aldred was surprised to find Hoo conferring with someone wearing a red tunic, sash and the shako cap of an army officer. From his waist hung a sabre adorned with tassels of golden threads. There was silver embroidery on his collars.

  Hoo handed the rolled-up document to him. “As agreed, the price still stands.”

  Inexplicable to even himself, Aldred flew at them, gnashing and snarling like a wild, rabid creature, his hands clawing at the document which was by then beyond his reach. A host of sweaty arms wrestled him to the ground, and the officer boarded a gharry with Hoo and carted away into the night.

  Aldred still thrashed and kicked. Fingers dug savagely into his mouth and pried it open. He felt his tongue being stretched and tasted blood when the cold steel of a blade was brought to it, threatening to sever it if he ventured so much as another twitch. He conceded and the men drove his cheek into the tarmac and held it under a filthy, callused foot. A kick to the ribs had him curling up like a foetus.

  After the ordeal Aldred limped over to the steps in front of an old tenement and fell against an old, spalling pillar. He closed his eyes. The noise of the gaming houses was now a distant drone. Their dim interiors threw wan shafts of light onto the fivefoot way.

  Then footsteps approached, slow and gritty.

  “I am a friend of your father’s and I will offer you my lodging,” said a voice.

  Aldred kept his eyes closed. The voice and the sounds around him had a detached, dreamlike quality to them.

  “I will offer you my lodging,” the voice repeated. Aldred peeled his eyes open.

  The appearance of an exceedingly tall man roused him from the malaise. The man was wearing an enormous black overcoat and a black top hat of fine beaver felt. His smooth, pearly skin shone as if it were made of moonlight and his eyes glittered green and yellow under bony brows that jutted like the crags of a glacier. He stood straight as a cedar, as if allowing Aldred to appreciate the full measure of his immense stature.

  “Who are you?” said Aldred.

  “My name is Origen,” said the man. His voice, flat and toneless, flowed like a thick, oleaginous substance. “I am a friend of your father’s and I will offer you my lodging.”

  “I don’t know my father. He walked out on us a long time ago.”

  “Still, I will offer you my lodging.”

  Aldred fingered his ribs and winced. “What do you want for it?”

  “You will live in it as your home and you will work for me.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “You will labour in a pineapple factory at Grove Estate. Someone will take you there at six in the morning. You will not see much of me, but your needs will be taken care of.”

  “That’s generous of you.”

  “I am a friend of your father’s.” Origen’s thick monotone filled Aldred’s head. “You may do well to stay out of trouble.”

  / / /

  They walked over to Church Street where a gharry stood waiting with its canvas top furled back under the lamplight. It was tethered to a black horse that would’ve been invisible in the dark if not for the swishing of its tail. The gharry-wallah was a skinny young Kling who turned his turbaned head at them when they got in and grinned brightly.

  They said nothing the entire way. Origen sat beside Aldred and moved little despite the bumps and ruts. He sat rigidly upright and rested his large hands decorously on his lap. His large face, strangely ascetic, was a portrait of Serenity personified.

  They passed through unlit groves and plantations that were so dark that the gharry-wallah had to turn up the wick of the kerosene lamps. After driving for almost an hour the gharry halted in front of a modest two-storey house along Grove Road.

  It looked empty and its windows stared at them like black eye sockets. A thin mist was taking form near the ground. All around it coconut plantations stretched unendingly into the thick phantasmal gloom beyond.

  Origen handed Aldred two bronze keys. “You may enter.”

  Aldred hefted them in his palm. “I don’t think I can thank you enough.”

  “I am a friend of your father’s.” Origen’s voice rose from the depths. “I knew him well. Live as you have always lived. And you may do well to stay away from trouble.”

  “Trouble,” said Aldred. “Yes, I’ll do very well to stay away from trouble.”

  Origen gave a half-bow. “Then I shall bid you good-night.”

  “Good night, Mister—” Aldred faltered, scorched by the shame of having forgotten the name of his benefactor.

  “Origen,” came the reply, rich and thick.

  “Origen,” said Aldred. “Thank you.”

  The strange man boarded the gharry and stared stiffly ahead. As the gharry drove off Aldred caught another glimpse of the gharrywallah’s bright, flawless grin. The rumbling of wheels soon fell away and the songs of katydids rushed in to fill the silence.

  39

  FIRST NAMES

  THE HEADLONG PLUNGE into the water crushes the bonnet and the inflating air cushion almost smothers Landon. Water gushes from the open windows and quickly floods the floor. Landon tugs madly at the handle but the door jams. He doesn’t realise he is yelling.

  Which dumbass would open the windows at a time like this?

  Beside him John deflates the air cushions with a pocket knife and stays in place while the rising water eddies around him. He is looking through the windshield as if waiting for the change of lights. Landon unbuckles himself and tries unsuccessfully to dive through the open window against the surge of water. John’s arm lashes out and hauls him in.

  “Trap a foot and the panic will drown you,” he says. “Just sit tight and wait it out.”

  Landon gawks wide-eyed at him.

  “Stay calm,” he squ
eezes Landon’s shoulder as the water creeps above their midriffs. “And follow the direction of the air bubbles on your way out.”

  Their noses go under. At John’s count Landon takes a deep breath and holds it. Water fills up the interior and the doors, aided by their own weight, now swing open with surprising ease. But the water is pitch black and the initial relief of having fled the car diminishes. Landon doesn’t know if he is swimming up or down.

  In nothing short of an epiphany, John’s advice about the bubbles surface like a dialogue from a dream. He blows and feels the bubbles run between his fingers and over his head. Furiously he kicks, until at last he breaks the surface and sees the city lights shimmering on the black waters around him. The underside of the Benjamin Sheares Bridge looms high, its colossal, branchlike columns reaching over the channel like great trees of stone. Farther on, the illuminated ring of an observation wheel beckons like a beacon.

  A rumble of distant thunder, and rain begins to fall: thinly at first, then quickly escalating into a torrential downpour. Landon swims under the viaduct to flee the murderous pelting. He passes the islet footings and realises that the bank isn’t quite as near as he thinks.

  An onset of cramps locks up his calf muscles and panic engulfs him. He thrashes and his head starts going under. A large arm sweeps in over his jaw. A hand lifts his chin and he feels himself being dragged through water. In no time his heels scrape against rock. John wraps an arm around his chest and helps him over the granite boulders of the rip-rap. “Can you walk?”

  Landon hobbles across the craggy surface, nodding. “Nothing broken.”

  They stumble first upon a patch of lawn, then onto a jogging track of interlocked pavers, dimly lit under streetlamps spaced far apart. They pass through concrete columns clad in creepers and enter a dark, inhospitable space just beyond a row of shrubbery.

  It turns out to be a disused segment of a Formula One roadway that leads to the pit building. Construction trash and partly dismantled scaffolding lie strewn across the ground. Generator sets sit cold and dormant. Shambolic, skeletal structures haunt the gloomy setting like the silhouettes of dystopian wreckage. The viaduct, flanked by smaller descending slipways, looms as the lofty ceiling of a sunken cathedral. Against the faint rush of rain multitudes of hidden toads begin their throaty songs. Somewhere in the heights a bat screeches.

  Not a soul in sight. Nothing moves.

  Landon sees John tapping on his omnicron. Holographic touch-responsive dials and lines dance across its chromium surface.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hailing a cab.”

  Landon scowls, perplexed. He suspects actual taxis are not involved in this.

  John pulls out his pistol, checks for the round in its chamber and proceeds to haul Landon across the roadway by his collar. They haven’t got far when the snap of a twig upsets the stillness. The crush of footfalls drifts into audible range. John halts. Whoever was approaching certainly has little need for stealth.

  A woman forms out of the screen of rain and glides into the shelter of the viaduct. Like a stage diva she passes between the columns of creepers, tapping a pistol against her thigh to the leisurely cadence of her strides. The shadows recede to reveal Hannah’s hard, impressive visage. John raises his weapon at her and still she advances.

  “Don’t!” Landon yells.

  John aligns the sights right between Hannah’s eyes. She now steps onto the roadway and stops a few yards from them, all the while looking at John and never once venturing a glance at Landon.

  “Quite a duel, wasn’t it?” says Hannah, her wet hair pulled neatly behind her head. “Never had time for a formal introduction. What’d they call you?”

  “John.”

  Landon slides in between them, lifting his arms. “Don’t raise your gun, Hannah. He’ll shoot you. We can talk things out, I’ll get him to lower his gun and—”

  “Nice stunt with the Neut.” Hannah addresses John and cuts Landon out. “Never thought you’d fool me with an old trick. Seems we’ll have to do it again.”

  John’s voice is hard. “Putting me down won’t help anything.”

  “It would,” she says. “Gives you the jitters knowing you’d have to die again, for real this time.”

  John’s trigger finger twitches. “Try it.”

  “Don’t!” Landon screams.

  John takes a step back and shoves Landon protectively behind him. “As one entrusted with the Serum, you can serve a nobler purpose.”

  “Like giving it up to serve your interests?” Hannah’s unblinking eyes track the barrel of John’s pistol. “Either way the Chronie’s going down; whether by your hands or mine.”

  “We offer them life as we know it,” says John. “We offer the option of a Transfusion. That is the difference between our Sides. We don’t kill Chronies. We rehabilitate them.”

  “Hear yourself, John.” Hannah’s eyes soften into what appears to be sympathy. “No Chronomorph ever survived a Transfusion. You take him back and he’s as good as dead.”

  “We’re wasting time.” Landon watches as John conspicuously tightens his grip around his weapon.

  “I’ve got a four-eighty-seven on him.” She waves her gun at Landon without looking at him. “I can guarantee his life if he comes with us.”

  “It’s a dud. Whoever got you that Directive is going to kill him.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Believe me, I do.”

  “You’re a good man, John,” she says. “You don’t have to die for a pack of lies.”

  “To a count of three. Back off the track or I’ll shoot.”

  The threat tickles her to a wry little smile. “I’ll just have to bite the bullet.”

  “One.”

  She doesn’t move. Somewhere above them the bat screeches. The rain lightens to a mizzle, and the choir of toads sings louder.

  “Two.”

  “Don’t do this, John!” Landon implores. “Listen to me!”

  “Three.”

  “Stop!” Landon’s voice reverberates off the underside of the viaduct above them.

  John looks sideways, and Landon sees the realisation of the empty holster on his ankle register on John’s face. “It is not a water pistol, Landon.”

  “I know.”

  “Why are you pointing it at my head?”

  Landon fights his quivering arm. “I’m sorry, John. Can’t let you do this. Drop it.”

  John grudgingly lowers his pistol.

  “Drop it and kick it to me.”

  “What you think this is? A movie?” John looks at him with a restrained expression of disbelief. “What would I do if she pounces?”

  “You kick me your gun and I’ll point mine at her.”

  “This isn’t a game, Landon.”

  “Never was.”

  Hopelessly flummoxed over the entire affair he starts shifting his weapon clumsily between John and Hannah, afraid that one would seize an opening and shoot the other. “Let’s talk our way through this, okay?” he cajoles. “You’re both some special forces shit, so go talk… Go…negotiate, you know… Do your stuff… your thing, whatever…”

  “Seems we’re in a fix.” Hannah goes on tapping her pistol against the side of her thigh. “Thought I’d seen everything after all these years.”

  “My back-up is on its way,” says John.

  “So is mine.” Hannah turns to Landon and accords him attention for the first time. “Between us, you have to choose.”

  Landon holds up the pistol and starts fidgeting with an awful spell of indecision.

  “You go to her and you’re dead,” says John.

  “He’s going to milk you dry,” Hannah offers.

  “Oh for God’s sake…” Landon swallows to soothe his parched throat. His eyes flit nervously between them, and each time Hannah’s weapon shifts in her hand he directs his pistol back at her for fear that she would shoot John.

  And then the shadows around them begin to stretch and shi
ft. A Nissan GTR cruises into view, headlights blazing white and blue, its wet, glossy body reflecting the spots of illumination around them. The splendid coupe purrs to a stop. Its engine gives a final rumble and goes quiet. The door swings open and out steps Marco. He plucks the stub from his lips and ejects a stream of smoke.

  “Evening.” He flashes a grin and checks his watch. “It’s two in the morning and we’re keeping the party going.” He takes his time identifying each of them before resting his good eye on Landon. “I trust you’ve found your missing IC?”

  “What missing IC?” says Landon. “And who are you?”

  “Marco, Police Intelligence.” Marco takes another draw and stamps out the stub. “It’s the third time I’m introducing myself, you absent-minded airhead. I was about to pair you up with the kind lady who processed your live birth application at the hospital.” A knowing half-smile breaks across his pouty lips and reveals the gap between crooked incisors. “She gave a description of a man who looks just like you.”

  Landon blanches and doesn’t realise that his arm has sagged and his pistol is now pointing at the patch of ground beside Hannah.

  The half-smile now widens into a grin. “Busted.”

  Landon could’ve shot Marco there and then. But he lacks the resolve and brutality to carry out the act. He turns to Hannah for an explanation, and sees fear in her.

  “One-Niner-One?” she says.

  Marco spreads his arms in a gracious bow. “That I am, AlpineOne.” He then recovers, shaking his head and clucking his tongue. “Is this how professional operatives handle situations? Even the Chronie has a gun. Could hurt yourselves bad with those.” He draws his own pistol. “Come, children, better to lose them all.”

  “Not going to happen, Marco,” says John.

  “Ah.” Marco’s attention suddenly sharpens. “How’s Sheik Didi’s case coming along? You should’ve told me if you wanted something from my hard drive.” He nods at Hannah. “So you’ve read all about her?”

  “Enough to know your part in this,” says John.