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A.R.Yngve

DARC AGES Book Three
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Chapter 17


"It's now or never," Mechao told Darc the following noon, in the lab. "Do you have any experience of surgery?"

"Not really," he confessed. "But I've got a strong stomach and I'll do anything I can to help. How long will it take Eye-Leg to heal afterwards?"

"Anything between a month and a year. It is an extremely difficult operation. Afterward, she will be vulnerable to complications. She may end up a drooling idiot, or die from a blod clot or ruptured artery."

Darc rubbed his scalp nervously; the ultimate decision to go through with this was even harder than he had imagined.

"I know! Either she might die today, or she will die for sure, soon! I told you... we are doing it."

Mechao turned to his two oldest sons, who had already put on sterilized coveralls and facemasks -- they walked away to a sealed chamber further inside the darker recesses of the laboratory, and started preparing it. From another corner of the cave-like place, Shara rolled in a bed on wheels. Eye-Leg lay on it, sedated. Shara had tied up her own long hair in a shawl over her head, and put on a baggy set of coveralls. She gave Darc a brief, frightened glance, but remained in control of herself. Darc looked at the artificial womb in its glass greenhouse, then to Mechao -- who gravely shook his head.

"No, Shara," Mechao told her. This time you stay outside, until it's over."

Shara's eyes shifted between Darc and Mechao, pleading silently. Mechao wavered, as if some natural force was tugging at his senses. Then, the vigor of the old witchdoctor burst forth in a fit of anger.

"Beware, woman!" Mechao barked; his thin voice echoed through the halls of the laboratory. "I am still the ruler of this island, and my word is law! I am the son of eighteen generations of master surgeons!" Mechao banged his fist at a stone pillar, and paced up to the stunned Shara. He pointed a bony finger to the machinery in the background, and shouted in her face: "My forefathers learned to create life in the machine womb, even before they learned to breed the natural way! How dare you think you can teach me how to save this Leper's life! Go, go help Amada in the house!"

Shara shrank away. For an instant Darc thought she would lose her temper -- but he misjudged her. Shara nodded, and briskly walked off to the exit doors. Mechao wiped his brow and sighed heavily, taking a swill from a small flask of medicine.

He sighed again, and muttered: "I just needed to draw the line." Then he winked playfully at Darc, rubbing his hands -- once more the enthusiastic, childlike wizard he was the first time they met. "Now, let's get the clone out of the womb. It's going to be a messy task."

At dusk it was finally done, and the operating team beheld the result. Eye-Leg was still being kept unconscious as she lay under observation in the sealed operations chamber -- her bald head was resting precariously on top of her new, pale body, wrapped in warm blankets. The girl's original, misshapen limbs were kept frozen in a storage locker, for later study. When Eye-Leg awoke, she would find a perfectly normal body below her chin, and a heavy neck-brace that kept her head firmly clamped against that body until it was safe for her to move. It was first now, that one could truly see the beauty and innocence of that young face. Her gray eyes were still bulging slightly behind her eyelids, as an aftereffect of a life spent upside-down. The DNA-shaped tattoo on her head was still there, as a reminder of her past. Now don't lose your head, girl, Darc prayed. Please don't. The bloodstained operating team left, leaving one member to guard the sleeping Leper during the first night shift.



They were allowed a long, undisturbed sleep. Darc dreamt of his lost children again -- not a nightmare this time. When he opened his eyes, a surprisingly pleasant memory of the dream was lingering in his mind. A sense of closure, of a destinty made complete filled him. Through the tall mansion windows, he saw the sky with rain and clouds drifting by. Another storm was rising, one that he might not live through. He turned in his bed. Shara was already up and away. He sniffed at the bedclothes, trying to savor her scent in the imprint she had left.

A little later he rose from the wide bed, groaning and yawning as he stretched his limbs. In the mirror on the wall, he saw himself: A tall, lanky man in the prime of his life, with unkempt snow-white hair -- even in his armpits and on various parts of his body. He stared into that undetermined-of-age, yet lined face with its sharp, Caesaresque features. Is that you, David? he pondered. Or is it Darc? Or...

"'He is both young man and old man... alive to the night...'" His muttering grew into a high-pitched, hoarse cry. "No! I'm not you! I'm me!" He picked up a shoe and flung it at the mirror. It bounced off to the floor. Darc chuckled to himself -- or was it a sob? -- and held up an imaginary microphone to his face: "And now, ladies and gentlemen," he said in rapid American English to the mirror, "for the first and last time in history... the King... back from the dead... possessing the body of a fool! A-one, a-two, a-one-two-three-four..."

In that moment, Shara carefully entered the door, so as not to wake him up. She was fully dressed in a green and blue native skirt and shirt -- Darc wore a pair of baggy long underpants. They looked at each other.

"What did you say?" she asked confusedly. "That sounded like your song."

"I was just trying to remember something," he excused himself. Then it hit him; he cornered Shara and grabbed her shoulders. "The operation! I haven't checked if... have you seen her?"

"I know," she said, flashing a quick grin. "I wanted to let you sleep. She is alive and recovering. Thank you... for everything."

She embraced him, and he mumbled in her ear: "Don't thank me yet."

"Oh, but I will," she half-whispered in his ear, tugging at his pants, and began to kiss her way slowly down his chest.