“Please.” Thaddeus gestured at the door.
Arthur stepped out onto the sidewalk and scurried under the covered walkway before the rain could drench him. Dolefully he watched the black Chrysler pull away and merge into the flowing motor traffic. He looked around as if aware for the first time of his surroundings and, with a lugubrious sigh, accepted all that would befall him. I am told to go where I do not want to go, to live a life I know nothing of. I am endowed with years of a lowly existence whose purpose I do not know, and by day I bleed memories.
Just across the road a row of shophouses housed motorcar showrooms. They would offer a sheltered route back to the ice cream parlour, if only Arthur could get across to them. He stepped into the rain and passed behind a red Volvo coupé.
Flash.
The right side of Arthur’s vision erupted in white just before it went dark. For an instant gravity abandoned him. His back stung with the pain of a thousand needles that came with a shockwave. The left side of his body hit something hard and his hands touched wet asphalt. He lost all sensation in his right arm. He heard nothing but an incessant, hollow roar that sounded like winds bellowing through a cave. His vision alternated in flashes of darkness and wan, smoky daylight.
The burrs of something broken ground against his back. His wounded sight drew slowly into focus. A man writhed on the ground near him, his face studded with crystalline shards. Blood dripped from the lacerations in slick, dark strands.
Amid a host of muffled noises came the screech of tires, and then Helio filled Arthur’s sights, saying something about how miraculous it was that the coupé had been between him and the blast. A pair of strong arms lifted him and dragged him over a distance, his bare heels scraping the asphalt. He was back in the Chrysler, his eyes stinging with blood. Hands ran across his brow, mollifying his brutalised senses. Something hissed and stung the side of his neck.
“The law of a demented world as old as Creation itself.” Arthur heard someone say before he lapsed into unconsciousness. “Murphy merely attached his name to it.”
Poppy sat by the store window with his second cup of half-eaten ice-cream. The rain had subsided to a drizzle, the air was humid and the store window, chilled by the store’s air-conditioning, misted up from the bottom. Poppy earnestly tracked each passer-by along the sheltered five-foot way, expecting that at any time one of them would turn out to be Arthur.
He pried open the lid of his biscuit tin with podgy fingers and took an inventory of its contents. Little stringed trinkets of plastic beads, a faux jade necklace, a brown rubber ball, a peeling wooden top, some old coins and a monochromatic photograph of Arthur seated in an eatery with himself perched on Arthur’s lap.
Then a thought crossed his simple mind: Arthur would probably return only if he finished the third cup of ice-cream he was promised. He replaced the lid of his biscuit tin, picked up the teaspoon and fed himself a scoop of his melted ice-cream. Then he took another, and another, all the while scanning the passing crowds and merrily kicking his slippered feet over the edge of his chair.
18
LEGACIES
LANDON AND JOHN sit on black granite benches and watch the rippling bay in the shade of crepe myrtle trees. Landon feels out of place when couples are occupying most of the other benches and it doesn’t help that John is a far bigger man than he is. Just as his stomach reels with its first hunger pangs, John fishes two packets of food from his backpack and hands him one of them.
“Taco?” he says. “It’s almost dinnertime.”
Landon seizes one packet. “Where’d you get them?”
“Before the museum. About two hours old. It’s soggy but still good.”
In his hunger Landon bites off an entire third of the taco in one mouthful. When they finish, John hands Landon a caramel-nut bar.
“You eat junk all the time?”
“When I’m on the move. It’s a habit.”
Landon nibbles on the bar and broods. “I don’t understand. Why me?”
“Chronomorphs are safe as long as they stay hidden,” John says. “But not many of you are adept at that.” He pauses, chewing on his candy and staring at the water. “Everyone knows you’re the thief who stole that woman’s IC for the birth registration.”
Hot shame creeps up Landon’s neck.
“You compromise yourself, you compromise the Serum.” John adds. “CODEX opened a file on you and here I am. It’s a damn shame.”
“Thing’s a curse.” Landon muses bitterly. “Upends my life and empties it.”
“For some Chronomorphs it’s the price to pay,” John says. “The Serum was meant to function as a black box for those seeking the Unknown, but it ended up offering unexpected gifts. The absence of human senescence is a consistent one. Some obtained abilities they never had. Others, like you, got the downsides like amnesia.”
Landon shakes his head. “Had to receive the wrong end of the stick.”
“There are worse ones: insanity, death. Ever heard of running amok?”
“Vaguely.”
“Incidents happened frequently at the turn of the century. But Nobody but us knew why.”
“So we’re basically insane and amnesiac immortals?”
A shade of annoyance flits across John’s face, as if he has got the same question many times over. “You live a long life, but you can die,” he says. “That’s longevity, not immortality.”
“So how long does a typical—Chrono-thing live?”
“Don’t know.” John shrugs. “They always get killed off before we find that out.”
The words weigh upon him like anvils. They remind him of a frailty he has forgotten, and Death returns to his mind like an old friend. There were times when Death beckoned temptingly, after solitude had taken too much out of him. Now it terrifies him. It just isn’t the same when you know someone’s out to erase your existence because it isn’t worth snot.
An elegant, silver-haired lady wheels a very old man towards them. A younger Caucasian couple walks with her and three children run on ahead. Tourists—British or Australian from their accent. The wheelchair comes close and its occupant pivots his head on a withered neck; he has a blanket over his lap, and his stare reminds Landon of the dribbling patient at Loewen Lodge.
“You,” the old man struggles with a hoarse croak. Landon feels John go stiff with tension beside him.
“I know you.” He lifts a weak finger at Landon. “You got out, like I did.”
Landon, stupefied, tries to smile and his cheeks quiver at the effort.
The old man strains to look at the lady behind him. “He got out, he was with me.” The lady smiles apologetically and tries to wheel him away but his insistence keeps them in the same spot. “You got out, didn’t you?” The old man holds up the bony finger at Landon. “There were others who didn’t. And I told them… I told them—”
Age has disfigured him. It’s the brutal, honest truth. Landon stares at the puckered face before him and finds no recognition in it.
“Tell him you don’t know him.” John’s whisper drifts into range.
“I’m so sorry.” The lady addresses them both. “He’s ninety-three.”
Landon smiles at her. Beside him John adds, “Return a smile and leave it as that.”
“I—I was sorry for them, y’know?” Beneath thick, hawkish brows the old man’s eyes are stretched open like marbles. “It was the airconditioning… I was—”
The lady pats his chest. “Don’t bother the men, Papa.”
“You don’t know him, Landon,” John whispers.
The old man puts an arthritic hand to the wheel and stops it. “I didn’t—” He shifts, sucks in his saliva and reaches for Landon. “I remember their names—them all—”