Landon feels a throb of pain in his chest.
Cheok’s fingers squirm restlessly over his pistol. “Don’t forget me, okay?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Write about me in your notebooks, okay?”
“I write about us all the time! So I won’t forget our football games!”
Cheok pulls the vests over Landon’s chest, gives him a thumbs-up and exits through the front door.
Under the vests Landon stays so still his limbs ache with fatigue. An eternity later he catches spectral shapes flitting across the curtained windows, backlit by security spotlights that John installed on the lawn. He hears a composition of skids and steps that suggests a struggle. Fits of fear rack his body; he’s too frightened to offer aid, and fiercely hates his cowardice. From the window he thinks he hears a gasp. Is it death? His mouth goes dry, his heartbeat rushing in his ears.
Then all at once the shapes disappear, and an eerie silence settles.
It doesn’t last. Moments later the roof comes alive with a fretful pounding. He hears roof tiles crashing. A shape appears near the kitchen. Someone cuts the power and a stifling darkness swallows everything.
Streams of white light erupt from the rear of the house, punching smouldering holes through wood and glass. Plasma and ozone scorch the air. The shots miss Landon by a mile but they induce such fear it triggers a seizure.
Through the convulsions he hears screams: Amal’s, the bayoneted victims’. Someone approaches. The sound of muted thudding morphs into the clatter of military boots. He stares down the barrel of a Nambu pistol, and behind it he sees the bearded, vengeful countenance of the Japanese officer.
A pair of arms enfolds Landon’s chest and drags him through the door and across the driveway. Landon is shoved once more into the back of a car. A sting at the side of his neck, and the hiss of a pneumatic needle follows. The convulsions abate, and a wave of drowsiness steals over him.
His sub-conscious construes the possibility that John has rescued him. But upon shifting his sight he finds Hannah in the driver’s seat, ostensibly enraged over something, and sees her toss an object resembling a pistol onto the seat next to her.
31
OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS
26th July 1938, Tuesday
My name is Anton. It poured today, a harsh, unrelenting torrent that hurt as it drove sideways against my face. I made a successful rendezvous with my “mate”. I met her by the right-hand post of the gateway to Happy World. She was standing under the Mandarin character for “happiness” and clutching her baby swaddled in chequered cloth.
So it was arranged.
The rain in all its fury played cruelly against her. She did not budge and stood drenched with her back turned to it, just so that I could pick her out. I went up to her and said that Vivian sent me. At once she proceeded forth and led the way, rejecting even my offer of an umbrella. I don’t know why Vivian set us up here; there are other registration stations closer to town. By the time I got there my toes were already pickling in my squelchy shoes, all raw and shrivelled from the trek along a flooded Grove Road. I knew my laments were unwarranted. This woman had it worse.
The live birth registration station was a long metal and wood shed at the end of the row of stalls just west of the dance hall. Thankfully it had a roof, and rain drummed loudly upon it. Just before I joined the lines the woman handed her infant to me as if she had been eager to get rid of it. Then she sat on a long wooden bench and held her elbows for warmth.
She didn’t appear in want of interaction or speech. I couldn’t see her face well, except for her fair cheeks and round chin. She wore her hair in a braided tail, but her fringe, loose and frayed, fell in wet, curling locks and obscured much of her face. Vivian had assured me the child was born out of wedlock. No husband, no father, no strings. Just pay and waltz, as with any joget ladies. I don’t know where Vivian found her, nor would I deign to ask. In her profession there are probably hundreds of women like her. It wouldn’t be difficult to find one.
The British lady at the stall smiled at the child I was holding and asked no questions. She had a large, kindly face. Her hair was blonde and wavy. She wore a fuchsia rayon-crepe blouse with winged sleeves that stood out against the drab colours that everyone else wore. I said everything Vivian told me to: date of birth, birthplace, mother’s name. It was a titanic feat for me to have them all memorised.
The live birth was registered without a fuss and I named it Arthur. Only after did I part the swaddle and peer into her wet little face. Couldn’t have been more than six months old. She was grimacing, shuddering slightly perhaps of the chill.
At the end of it I had to give her back. It was a natural recourse. I paid the woman the 80 dollars I’d agreed to, and she precariously cradled the child in one arm and tucked the money between her breasts. She refused my umbrella for the second time. She merely pulled the drenched swaddle over the poor infant and charged into the merciless downpour.
If only this registration were real. If only the child had a father.
I went to Vivian’s home later in the afternoon when the rain thinned, to thank her and tell her that it all went well. I was certain I got the address correct until I saw the empty room. The landlady said she left the night before with a month’s rent paid in advance. Her room was bare, sterile, like a chalkboard scrubbed clean of a fine hand, its traces forever lost.
In the years between us I thought something could’ve blossomed. Now it’s as if we’ve never met. She had become distant, frosty, as if in preparation for her imminent departure to wherever she’s gone.
Perhaps I could’ve done more to keep her.
Count to Arthur 1 of 5,475.
32
OCTOBER 1933
THE RITZ ZION was a glitzy hotel with a grandiose Grecian-Creole façade of columns, cast-iron balconies, shuttered windows and fanlights of wire netting. It offered five royal suites fitted in the finest of imported furnishings, and drew a niche clientele comprising mostly wealthy, married men of status who fancied a fling with their mistresses or a willing taxi-dancer from the Great World Cabaret.
A black market had peddled Serum duplicates for over a century. They were the elixirs of life, and the wealthy had paid fortunes for rogue operatives to deliver them into their blood. They weren’t real Chronomorphs but Transplants, and for them infertility and an immunity to venereal diseases were attractive perks to longevity.
And brothels were where you’d find them.
The chosen Chronomorphs of the Coterie wouldn’t abuse the Serum this way. Only Transplants would display such deficiencies in restraint and discipline. So it was at the Zion where CODEX laid the dragnet for them. And Vivian had always been part of it.
At nightfall the hotel glowed with the light from its rooms, screened behind filmy curtains that offered teasing glimpses of the activities that took place inside. Rows of rickshaws were parked out front. Their pullers—hollow-chested, steely-eyed coolies, crouched along the road-side in wait of customers. From the back of a large Buick a group of chortling Caucasians threw out a bunch of coins. Under the illumination of gas lamps children emerged from the five-foot ways in bundles of rags and skin and went pattering after the motorcar on little bare feet as the coins pelted melodiously onto the street.