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Chapter 26
When dawn came, Darc was faced with the enormity of the task before him.
(Did you know that in Swedish, "task" means di... oh, never mind.)
He searched his fading memory for experience in medicine and science: what did he really know?
("Lemme see: Homeopathy, Christian Science, bio-rhythms, how to make tinfoil hats...")
The effort was so much greater, because he had no peers in this time, no one to test his skills against.
(Let that be a lesson to you, kids: Peer pressure stimulates your intellect!)
From the hidden pockets of his cloak, he produced his foremost scientific instrument: a thick notebook and a set of pencils.
("Too bad I left my Utility Belt in the 20th Century!")
He made a mental picture of his role: A detective, on a mission to solve the great mystery of the new Dark Ages - and perhaps he was one. A crusader in dirty clothes, with disreputable female company.
(Historians have proved that Crusaders wore dirty clothes, and some of them did have disreputable female company as well.)
And yet, the challenge excited him.
([George Takei voice] It excited him very much...)
He entered the investigation.
("Meanwhile, in stately Wayne Manor...")
("And here's the stoning pit...")
Shara had decided to stay above in their room - a choice she quickly regretted, when she discovered that a big, cloaked Leper armed with a spiked spear was guarding her.
([Female voice] "Are you one of those singing Gregorian monks?")
Stoically, without a word, he followed her every movement across the cliff shelf.
(... until his lunch break.)
When Darc had been away for an hour or so, Shara awoke from her state of shock.
("The sequel to State of Fear made me fall asleep!")
Fear had been paralyzing her mind since the Lepers captured them, to the extent that she could not remember one conscious thought from that moment until this morning.
([Woman's voice] "So that's what it's like to work in Congress!")
The desert sunlight seemed to make the surroundings hyper-detailed; even the colors of objects were alien to her.
Darc is my only hope, she thought. I must put all my hope in his powers - because if he isn't the miracle-worker he appears to be, we're doomed. It might be too late. I touched their food...
([Woman's voice] "I can feel myself getting fatter already!")
Slowly, so as not to raise the guard's suspicions, Shara treaded toward the shelf's edge. She sat with her legs resting along the edge, and looked down the canyon.
("I can see my house from here!")
The sun was breaking through the rift to the east, where they had entered the evening before - but the air was still cold. She pulled the cloak tighter around her curvy, shivering body.
(The author tries too hard to put some sleaze into this scene.)
Shara knew that she could put an end to the fear, right there and then - one jump over the edge, and she would fall twenty meters.
(Twenty curvy, voluptous meters.)
It would have been so easy. Yet she was holding on to life, in a situation where any decent, law-abiding citizen would have chosen a quick death.
(Many people experience this sort of situation while standing in line at Disney World.)
Her brooding was interrupted; the Leper guard grabbed her cloaked shoulders, and brusquely pulled her away from the cliff's edge.
("For God's sake, be careful! Do you know how many tourists get killed here every year??")
Shara screamed, filled with the mindless fear of the unclean touch.
(The touch of Lindsay Lohan.)
He held her, facing the panicked woman for a couple of seconds.
("One... two... three... OK, that's enough facing for today.")
She screamed and twisted in his grip, as his curious eyes searched hers. The hood slipped off and his head was exposed to the sun; Shara's scream died in her throat.
("*ACK* *GAG* *COUGH*" - "What're you doing??" - "I choked on a dead scream.")
The guard had two normal eyes, slightly bulging - but his face was twisted on his skull, turned almost completely upside-down at a sloping angle. His eyebrows grew under the slanting eyes, like little beards - and his thin-lipped mouth was located directly below the ridge of his brow.
(What Michael Jackson's face will look like on his funeral.)
The upside-down nose snorted every now and then, as dust blew into the upturned nostrils.
(Too much nose-powder will do that to you!)
His face was framed by a distorted jawbone which began up at the ears, narrowing down toward the thick, folding neck - in a way, the man's tattooed forehead was a bloated, independent chin connected to his skull.
(Jay Leno starring in Evil Chin!)
If a surgeon had cut up and peeked inside the man's forehead, he would have discovered a pained tangle of nerves, tubes, veins and muscles, that just barely functioned.
(Inside the head of Rosie O'Donnell.)
Disappointed to find only fear in Shara's face, the guard let out a snort and released his hold of her arms. Shara, reeling away from the big man, thought she saw a leer on his lips.
(Alas, many children suffered this trauma first time they met Santa at the mall.)
She ran inside Claw's house and into her room, then blocked the door with the bed.
("Why did I ever join that Congressional page program?")
She sat trembling in a corner, listening to the heavy steps of the guard outside.
([Sings] That's me in the corner... that's me in the spotlight, losing my religion...)
(You know... psychotic!)
Through the fear, she felt a tinge of shame. She waited a little more, before she carefully removed the bed and peeked outside. The guard was not around. She slipped outside and washed herself.
(And tossed her long, just-washed hair in sensous slow-motion, shouting "Yes! YES! YES!")
When finished, Shara began looking for the guard. The cliff shelf was narrow, so it did not take her long to search the entire place.
(Like searching Nick Mamatas' blog for some snark.)
He was not in the clay-brick house, and the elevator sling was untouched - the sets of ladders had been removed before, and lay at the canyon floor below.
(Where's Waldo?)
Then a notion struck her, and she got worried.
([Female voice] "My head's bleeding where the notion struck me... I ought to get stitches...")
She ran up to the cliff edge and peered down. There was no body lying at the foot of the cliff face, no angry voices shouting up at her.
(...no street mob burning Danish flags...)
Shara spun around at the sound of falling pebbles, and caught sight of the guard.
He had climbed out onto a narrow path at the eastern end of the shelf, where the blinding light of the sun hid him from Shara's sight. When she had rushed outside, he had treaded his way back to the house.
("What's 'treading'?" - "It's like walking, but more pretentious.")
They both stood watching each other, the distance between them no more than ten meters, and waited for the other to say something.
(Once they had carefully measured and verified their relative distance.)
After a minute, Shara broke the silence:
(*CRASH!*)
"I - I was afraid that you had... j-jumped o-over the edge. I'm so-sorry that I screamed... you s-s-scared me."
(Dick Cheney remained impassive - but inside, her words made him weep.)
The guard's mouth, placed where his eyes should have been, made a sour grimace - that is, a happy grin turned upside-down. He snorted again, a sound that evoked fright but actually was just an acquired habit.
(I'm just kidding! Cheney is incapable of weeping on the inside.)
Even as she impulsively flinched at the sight, Shara knew that the Leper was no monster.
(He was just misunderstood and alienated - as she had been taught that all murderers and monsters were "misunderstood" and "alienated".)
What was it Darc had said yesterday?
(Was it... "Goodnight?" Or, "Don't hog the blanket again?" Maybe, "Shut up and go to sleep?")
"All humans are Lepers." Nevertheless, she still feared the contagious touch.
"Please... I ask you... not to touch me. The Plague... you understand, do you? Can you speak?"
(Parlez-vous Francais? Sprechen sie Deutsch?)
They both remained still. Then, surprisingly, the guard spoke - a forced, high-pitched voice squeezed out between warped vocal cords: "I... can... speak. But... hurts."
(When... Simon Cowell... mocks... me.)
He coughed and snorted, holding his face in pain.
"What is your name?" she asked quickly. "I'm Shara."
("And I'm the Artist Formerly Known As Leper.")
The guard looked at her, and now she knew his face was expressing joy: "I am... Up-Mouth." He coughed once more, and added: "Not be... afraid. I... will not touch... you."
(The Oscar jury are suckers for adorable handicapped characters. I smell a winner!)
He sat down on the ground, and put away his spiked spear. Shara sat down too, and decided to continue the conversation; what else could she do?
(Start a campaign to stop cholera? Open a day-care center? Promote peasant literacy?)
Shara did not think of it as such, but she was a historical pioneer: the first healthy woman in several centuries who actually talked to a Leper.
(The first woman who shook hands with a Leper and kept his hand!)
Change which otherwise would have come much, much later, was now proceeding at a fantastic pace - thanks to Darc's influence.
(And Ex-Lax!)
She found out a few things during their awkward conversation.
(About talking to a person who slurs, spits and drools.)
The adult Leper named Up-Mouth sincerely believed Darc to be some kind of holy man, and Shara his blessed bride. The very idea of hurting her would have been sacrilege to him.
(Irresistible sacrilege, but still...)
If I ever get out of this alive, nobody in Damon City is going to believe what happened to me, she thought.
("I'll just say I gave him a massage.")
As she carried on stuttering, fractured small talk with the deformed man sitting at the other end of the house, the hours passed... her heartbeat relaxed and the goosebumps recede from her skin.
("Here, let me tie some splints around this fractured small talk!")
When they had agreed that Up-Mouth could nod or shake his head instead of speaking, the conversation went much easier.
(Is there any other way to hold a conversation with Li'l Jon??)
Up-Mouth was several years younger than Shara, she found out, and one of Claw's several family members. Apart from his upturned face, he suffered very few effects of the Plague, except for his toes which also grew upside-down.
At Shara's request, he showed her his feet; and indeed his toes grew with the nails on the underside.
(Think of all the shoes he'll wear out!)
"You poor creature," she mumbled. "Does someone help you with... your health? A doctor?"
([Hoarse voice] "No, my Blue Cross policy doesn't cover birth defects.")
Shara managed to explain what she meant. Up-Mouth used his spear to draw figures in the sand, and told her in few words what she wanted to know. No doctors. Only shared knowledge of herbal remedies, a few cures, and crude surgery.
(Only a few verbs, and crude grammar.)
He himself had been born almost unable to breathe, and his windpipe had been artificially adjusted. He said this without sadness or asking for pity.
(Violins played in the background, and a dog howled sadly...)
And Shara wanted to hold his hand and comfort him, even as she dared not touch the deformed, smiling Up-Mouth...
([Female voice] "I can change him!")
DARC AGES (c)A.R.Yngve 1995, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
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