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A.R.Yngve DARC AGES Book Two _________________________ |
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Chapter 8
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 dozed off, 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, and saw a dark figure 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 tone. Up-Mouth stood up, towering ominously over the shorter woman. He said, with audible strain: "Claw." She 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: "Claw beats me, every day. Claw is so mean, not like you, Up-Mouth. You are always so kind to everyone..." This speech 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. His innermost fear had been confirmed. 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-disaster feudal society. No -- The acrid smell of burning chemicals brought Darc back to real consciousness. The "awakening" had been a dream; this was reality. Darc sat up, and saw the small flames next to him on the table. The grease lamp oil had been spilled over the pre-prepared test papers, and they were burning up. Darc's hands reached out, managed to rescue the delicate instruments, and he 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 onto 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 searched for Up-Mouth, calling out his name, promising that he would risk no punishment, if 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!" "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 his 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 were 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 there. But there was still one possibility left, and Darc's worry grew. It could 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 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. This contagion was made by humans, for a war fought centuries ago, specifically targeted at humans. Darc clenched his teeth. Beaten at last, by a tiny virus -- a puny, pseudo-living bunch of molecules! He grimaced, raised his fist to smash the microscope -- and stayed his hand. He took another look in the microscope, and made a puzzling discovery. Something was happening to the viruses. They weren't penetrating the membranes of his cells, but were just floating helplessly around them -- something was aggregating around the viruses, some kind of whirling, blurred shapes that moved too fast for him to discern. He increased the resolution to molecular level, but the sample had not yet crystallized -- so Darc couldn't get a sharp image. Then he understood. Antibodies. His own bodily defenses were working, and were fighting back the viruses with its own molecules, antibodies that were shaped to catch and paralyze these particular viruses... Now wait a minute, Darc thought. That's impossible. I'm from another era, when these viruses didn't even exist. How could my body have created these specific, unique antibodies right now? I must have been infected much earlier than I thought. No, that wouldn't have made any difference. I should have gone sick first -- then, when it would have been too late, my immune system would have identified the invaders and created an entirely new type of antibody molecules to trap them. Or... the genetic dose that Mechao infused into my immune system while I was dying from the "one-year flush" saved me. Enough to immunize me... no, that's just too good to be true. If it had been that simple, the Plague would have been eradicated centuries ago. Even with his ancient genetic cure, I still would have caught the Plague. Unless... Unless the first Plague viruses I got were weakened and dead, already hit hard by antibodies from somewhere else... no, a cocktail of foreign antibodies and dying germs. An inoculation! The sickness plus the cure at the same time. Yes -- that could be it. My immune system identified the shape of these alien virus molecules, and got the time to produce its own antibodies as fast as possible. But where did this "vaccine" come from? The air, the water? The Lepers' food? Could be. And if the viruses were already dying when I got them... then there is a Leper, in this village, who is naturally immune! And who contaminated me with masses and masses of dead viruses and his own antibodies... he, or she, saved me without knowing it. I must find out who it was. He stood up from his chair, and grinned at the waiting, restlessly shifting Shara. The thunder from the skies grew closer. |
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