______________
A.R.Yngve
The MSTing Of
DARC AGES
Book 2 1/2: The Smell Of Fear
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(15% of U.S. voters will vote McCain only because they find this image offensive. Sad, eh?)

Chapter 36

Meijji gazed up into the sky for the fifth time that day. Her female friends shook their heads and grinned at her.

("Silly girl can't tell the difference between an African swallow and a European swallow!")

The two oldest, bravest of the young women spoke up: "Bird-watching again, Meijji?" - "Yeah, that's a seagull, not a flying-machine!"

(Parents, don't let this happen to your nearsighted child!)

They instinctively darted away laughing, but Meijji was strong and quick.

(And all-knowing and wise!)

She ran after them, caught one of them by the braids, and pinned her to the ground. Meijji savagely yanked the girl's hair, until she cried out in pain.

([Chorus] IN PAIN!)

"Next time I'll cut off your braids, you hear?"

(Say what? *snicker*)

With a snort Meijji released the sobbing girl, who ran off to tell her parents on the terraced fields farther downhill. The other girls resumed their washing chores, sitting down by their wide barrels filled with water and soapy textiles.

([Bass voice] Chores of the fuuutuure...)

This batch of garments, linen and drapes belonged to Mechao's household. Meijji, being the oldest daughter of the island's most powerful man, was under strict orders from her mother to oversee the laundry work and help out.

(And the working class so admired her for pulling their hair.)

She used to complain that her younger brothers and sisters were allowed to play around when they weren't in school, but her old mother was relentless - if Meijji wished to be treated like a grown woman in the future, she would have to earn it in the present.

(Anyone care to guess if Paris Hilton was brought up like that?)

Mechao did feel guilty because of Meijji's complaints, though - so from time to time, he tried to teach her the workings of his laboratory, and had created her monstrous pet "Pipo."

(And her first nose job.)

During the last few years, her interests had wandered more and more into the social domain - and, for the past few days, her mind had fixed on one man.

(Woody Allen!)

Everyone in the Kap Verita archipelago knew what Meijji was waiting for, and why she acted even testier than usual. Every day, she scanned the skies - and saw nothing but birds.

(Not counting the clouds, and the sun, and...)

She grasped the little golden figurine that hung from her necklace, his gift to her, and shut her eyes to dream of his presence.

([Female voice] "This tiny, bent golden stump reminds me of a part of him..")

Suddenly, a little past noon while the working population rested in the available shadow of trees and roofs, silence blanketed the island.

(It was later found that a neutron bomb had killed all life in the area.)

The crickets and birds fell quiet. The islanders ceased talking, felt with their toes at the ground for the vibrations of an earthquake, or the first stirrings of the old volcano Fogo.

(Also known as "Mount McCain.")

But no earthquake came, no volcanic eruption, just the distant rumble of a double-engine aircraft. Meijji's little siblings ran to tell her, but she knew immediately and hurried down to the beach - closely followed by a score of other women. They, too, had been dreaming about pale-skinned warriors from faraway lands, and this one might not come alone.

(Can you find the lousy pun buried in that paragraph?)

Up at the camouflaged mansion of Mechao, the servants alerted the house master and his wife. He sent out word to greet the visitors with rifles ready, just in case.

("We welcome all visitors to the NRA convention!")



Meijji, her legs draped in a striking red and orange sarong, gasped when she saw the steep angle of the descending jet craft.

(But she looked fabu-lous!)

It was the Sunray, undoubtedly - coming in fast and low, not at all like the slow, hovering descent of the previous landing.

"Launch the boats!" she commanded her following.

(And the women started to argue over who should sit in front.)

Without a moment's hesitation, they ran for the sloping camouflaged roofs of the boat sheds, covered by sand and shrubs.

(And the oars were camouflaged as trees.)

Carried on the shoulders of forty women and young girls, four canoe-shaped boats were rapidly moved across the beach and launched into the sea.

("Hey, shouldn't we be in the boats?")

Meijji took the seat at the stern of one boat, her eyes never leaving the descending Sunray. The girls fell into a well-exercised paddling rhythm; the four boats shot forth like floating arrows that sliced through the waves.

(The waves bled all over the sea.)

Above the sea, the descending craft's roar increased in pitch - it flew just sixty meters above the waves, yet several hundred meters off-coast.

(Let's look at the radar coordinates. Just don't lose track of the plot!)

Then, something burst open from the Sunray - Meijji's heart jumped, and she thought the craft would crash - but when she looked again, she saw a rectangular shape of white fabric bobbing wildly above the jet craft, connected to it by tight wires.

(At last, a thorough description of the oft-mentioned "Something.")

The contraption seemed to curb the fall of the craft, which roared past the boats and in over the rocky beach - toward the open field of the old ruined harbor.

(Hint: It's a frickin' parachute!)

Meijji ordered the boats to turn back to shore.

(The boats, being inanimate objects, didn't hear a thing.)

As they did so, the Sunray made a shaky glide downward, and disappeared in a wall of spouting dirt and dust. The women could not see or hear a crash.

(They were deaf and blind?)

They dashed from the landed boats, and ran to the harbor ruins to see. Up on the ridge above, the camouflaged cable-way was erected; a loaded platform came slowly gliding down from the mansion. Meijji knew it was her father, and increased her running pace until her lungs ached.

(Her father is a loaded platform?? Or should that be taken metaphorically?)

When she arrived at the open place, she coughed and squinted her way through the settling dust, ignoring her friends' warnings.

("Can't *COUGH* talk... *COUGH* busy...")

She called out for Dohan, stumbled forward and finally reached the bulk of the flying vessel. It was radiating heat and settling engine noise, but was undamaged.

(Did I mention the author's aircraft fetish?)

Without noticing the blistering heat of the metal hull, she banged on a jet tube with her bare fists - and, in an answer to her prayers, the rear port opened and the cargo ramp extended down onto the ground.

("I say! What's that smell of scorched fist?")

"Hello?" sounded a familiar young man's voice from inside.

("Hello? Father O'Donohoue? Can I please have my pants back?")

There followed some commotion from the cabin, a brief but heated argument between Darc and Dohan. Meijji was about to run up and inside, when Dohan's sweaty face appeared in the doorway. He grinned wide when he saw her - then held out his hand to stop her.

(Who is this "Then" and why did he stop her?)

"Meijji! Stop!

([Sings] In the name of love!)

Please! You must not come near us yet!"

("Let me check my calendar and see if I can squeeze you in next week!")

Meijji stopped, struck by anxiety. She only wanted to spring up and be caught in his embrace.

(BOI-OI-OI-OIING... - "Gotcha!")

"Wait for your father!" Dohan said. "Mechao must make sure that there is no risk to you!"

("And raise your voice, I'm practically deaf from all this shouting!)

The girl stepped back, seeing the fear in her man's eyes. She retreated farther away, and the other girls came to ask her what was wrong.

([Girly voice] "Dad's got The Fear in his eyes and it itches like you wouldn't believe.")

As they stood there, the local fire brigade came driving into the crowd, with an extra cargo of Mechao and family members. The old doctor stepped down from the motorized wagon, and looked around. He waved his walkingstick angrily at the assembled girls, and snapped his fingers at them - they all scattered away, except for Meijji.

([Elderly voice] "Git offa mah' lawn, ya gaddamn kids!")

Darc had seen Mechao arrive, and steeled himself for another lengthy quarantine procedure. Patience, he told himself, was now all they needed. Time he had plenty.

([Yoda voice] But grammar he had none, hmm?)

He showed himself to his hosts, but kept his distance - and started to explain matters as carefully as he could, without stirring a panic among the islanders. And he made them listen.

Yet, Mechao was the first one to panic when he saw the Leper girl.

(It's one of those moments when you realize that "Inner Beauty" is a load of bull.)



Their quarantine lasted another few days, but the passengers aboard the Sunray endured it quite well.

([Whiny voices] "I'm hungry!" - "I'm thirsty!" - "And I'm too warm!")

When Mechao had regained his composure - he feared Lepers just as much as anyone else - he got to work. Searching his old library for quarantine procedures, he dusted off a set of protective breathing-helmets, had suits made to fit them, and whipped up a supply of sterilizing fluids.

("Thisch isch a great schteriziling fluid, and a damn good *HIC* gin...")

Dressed in the protective gear, he could visit Darc inside the ship without risk, supply them with food and water, and examine Eye-Leg closer. His fear was gradually replaced by intense curiosity.

Perhaps he felt less interest in Eye-Leg as a person, and more as a biological curiosity. Shara watched over his every move, so that he would not harm the nervous Leper girl.

("No, don't let her eat with a knife and fork! She could poke her toenails out!")

On the third day of quarantine, Mechao allowed his own daughter inside the ship cabin. Covered up by a protective suit, she embraced and kissed Dohan the best she could - the glass plate of Meijji's mask separated their lips from each other. They agreed to save their talk for later, once the quarantine was over.

(Readers pray the quarantine may never end...)

After Meijji had left the ship, Darc had to confront her father.

("Dad, I've changed my name to 'Darc.'")

"Mechao," he asked with just a hint of reproach, "how come you haven't thought of this before? Or did your ancestors? Did any other witchdoctor? I don't understand."

("And is it true that you can steal people's penises?")

To this challenge, Mechao responded with utter bewilderment. His first impression was that Darc had caught him acting stupid - an unforgivable sin in his clan.

("Fool! You acted stupid and for that sin you shall burn in hell!)

Like a grumpy old man, he turned defensive behind his face-mask: "You think me lacking in brains to understand the Plague? You imply that I was blind to the misery the Plague is causing? Perhaps I'm just a reclusive islander, afraid of dealing with the outside world, is that what you mean?"

(What do you mean, "like" a grumpy old man?)

Darc replied: "You know more about genetic engineering that I ever did in my time. You can perform wonders with your laboratory, as could your forefathers. And that is precisely why I can't understand... why me?"

("Why did you steal my penis?")

Mechao laughed; not his peculiar little laugh, but a cackling guffaw.

"Of course my ancestors thought of the Plague! Everyone does. But you thought differently! Like... like a man from another world, you were able to see us stripped of our own preconceived notions.

("You taught me it was wrong to steal penises!")

You opened my eyes, Darc - opened my eyes to a new way of seeing! What was the name of that profession again?"

"'Science'," Darc answered.

(That's the correct answer to "She Blinded Me With What," but it should've been stated as a question.)

And just then he felt that intoxicating chill down his spine again, the rush of insight through his head, the high to which he had always been addicted. He sensed what enormous power he was holding: to actually change the world. Just knowing it was enough for him.

(...to want more power.)

"'Science'," Mechao mimicked appreciatively. "That's it! With the eyes of science, you looked at the things we had accepted as inevitable for hundreds of years.

("Can the eyes of science get nearsighted?" - "No, but she can blind science with itself.")

And you saw that the Plague was an intrusion into the world, not the fact of life we were born with.

(Just like American Idol.)

"Us witchdoctors are spread far apart; we usually avoid each other as well as the city-states.

("Until our yearly gathering in Las Vegas.")

Indeed, I have never personally met one outside my own bloodline. We have preferred the comfort of stability for too long... peddling in petty genetic play. It is time for a change."

("That we can believe in.")

The two men shook hands, thinking they were on the same wavelength.

(Both of them thinking: What a SUCKER!!)

Mechao meant change on a modest scale. Not even he could guess at the impact of change to come.



The quarantine ended; Mechao could happily declare to the anxious islanders that the visitors had been sanitized and cleared.

("Hooray! We don't have the clap anymore!")

Only the Leper girl was kept isolated; she was brought to Mechao's mansion and laboratory. Shara kept her company in this new environment that was Kap Verita.

("We should buy a condo by the beach, and join the golf club!")

Eye-Leg took in everything that came across her sight: an explosion of colors which had been absent in the desert; the lively, dark-skinned people - so devoid of deformities, so immensely beautiful compared to her own people - and the sea, vast and blue, scented with salt and life.

(And fish poop.)

Shara saw tears streaming down Eye-Leg's upside-down face, from her large eyes down over her tattooed forehead. She thought she knew what made the girl cry - all the beauty she had never known, which was now revealed to her.

(Or a hernia.)

The first day in the laboratory, Shara came close to a fistfight with Mechao when he approached Eye-Leg with some horrid-looking instrument.

("I only wanted to lend you my can opener!")

He was reluctantly forced, with Darc's consent, to have Shara watch over his work - checking and guarding him so that Eye-Leg would not feel intimidated or abandoned. In his mind, Mechao wondered if Shara had ever had a child of her own, but he did not care to ask; he was accustomed to dealing with strong-minded females.

("What's 'strong-minded' mean?" - "Ugly.")

In his laboratory, Mechao could make a complete scan of Eye-Leg's insides.



Shara, Darc, Meijji, and Dohan watched as Mechao left Eye-Leg lying on a soft couch, covered by a sheet of gauze. With the help of his white-clad sons, Mechao rolled a huge torus-shaped contraption over and around Eye-Leg's couch.

(Nobody knew why, they just did.)

Two of his sons connected the machine to a power socket and a cabinet-sized metal box with a circular glass screen. The setup reminded Darc of X-ray machines and primitive oscilloscopes - oversized, very old and exquisitely ornamented.

(Engraved with the name "Goldstar.")

"Please make her lie still!" Mechao asked Shara.

("It is very important that she lies while being still.")

She talked to Eye-Leg until the girl had stopped trembling.

("Stop shaking! GODDAMMIT, STOP SHAKING OR I'LL KILL YOU!!")

He then asked them all to step back behind a dark silk screen. He turned on a power lever; the equipment clicked and hummed loudly. The glass screen brightened up, showing a latticework of dancing green wave-patterns on a black background.

(An early Kraftwerk video.)

Slowly, the patterns merged into the outline of a three-dimensional shape - literally three-dimensional from all angles, defining every surface in green lines dancing across it. They could see it form a flickering image of Eye-Leg's body.

(Until the flickering gave them an epileptic fit.)

The old doctor worked a panel of dials, and the image zoomed inward, inside the girl's body. Now the screen showed a living, moving cluster of intestines - guts, kidneys, a pair of breathing lungs, and a pulsating heart. The organs seemed shaped about right, but they were distributed in a way that defied all normal concepts of anatomy.

("Pass the sick bag!")

Darc studied the moving, living imagery, and memorized all he saw.

("I remember this... thingamajig... with a... whatzitsname around it...")

Mechao and his son frantically took notes and scribbled down sketches. The machine quickly overheated and had to be shut down for a while, before Mechao could scan another image.

As the hours passed, they puzzled together a picture of the confusion that was Eye-Leg.

("I love these 1,000-piece mutant puzzles.")

Darc was the first one to notice the fatal flaw in the Leper girl's constitution.

("Ah yes... she has no lungs!)

"Look there, Mechao." He pointed out the central stems of arteries emerging from Eye-Leg's pumping heart. "The largest blood vessels are twirled into a knot around the heart."

("Where Vladimir Putin's soul was before it died.")

Mechao saw it too, and he worriedly looked up from the screen - at the unhappy, waiting creature on the couch, nursed by Shara.

Mechao lowered his voice: "I'll tell you this, Darc - a miracle it is, that she has lived this long. She might stay alive for a few more years, with proper care. But she is doomed, mark my words."

("Girl... doomed." Check.)

"I know," Darc muttered.

He banged his fist against the box that held the projecting screen, and the picture flickered out of focus.

("Focus! Focus!")

Mechao cast him an angry glance, and shut off the overheating machinery. Shara grasped Eye-Leg's hand - a hand that was nervously groping for support.

("Stop that groping! It's disgusting!")

She faced the two scientists, and said with calm determination: "You made a vow, Darc. You made a vow to cure her. What will you great men do now?"

("What's a 'vow'?" - "it's almost like 'Wow' backwards.")

Darc closed his eyes for a few seconds, shut out the world and steadied his pounding heart. Playing the Popeye tune in his head failed to calm the tension.

(So he played "99 Bottles of Beer" instead.)

The challenge had been there, all the way from his rebirth in this future: Change the world or die.

("Or... die before the world changes.")

Then it hadn't frightened him, it had helped him escape a great loss.

But the challenge had changed, to a more ominous note: Change the world or they die.

("Or: Die and not change the world. Or..." - "SHUT UP!!")

Please God, he thought, don't let me go through that kind of loss again.

He had lived through a second childhood and youth in this world, and perhaps he faced the beginning of a second maturity; an era of hard, sometimes drudging work, toward a goal he probably would not live to see realized. He had gained too many enemies, and many more would join in the effort to stop Darc.

(...ness.)

He opened his eyes. The challenge was there for Darc to accept; it seemed to come right out of those questioning, bloodshot, bulging, innocent eyes of the girl on the couch. He worded the challenge in his mind: Change the world and then die. Very well, he thought.

He accepted the facts, as he had always been able to do, and faced the others. His friends.

("Friends, we're going to... hello-oo? Where'd everybody go...?")

"We," he told them slowly, "are going to cure Eye-Leg and defeat the Plague. Not I. We are."

("Whaddya mean 'we,' paleface?")

He walked up to the resting girl on the couch, and took her other hand - the one that was attached to her left hip. Her hand squeezed his.

"I must ask you to be very brave from now on, girl."

("You're going to an East L.A. high school.")

Meijji and Dohan walked out of the laboratory, away from the questioning, knowing glances of her family and siblings.

("What's a 'questioning' glance?" - "It sounds like this: 'Yees?'")

"Where are we bound?" he asked her, unfamiliar with the many rooms and corridors.

He reached out to hold her hand, but she evaded him, cast only brief glances at his face as she led the way up a winding, narrow flight of stairs. It seemed to go on forever.

(Just like this book.)

Then, just as he was about to demand a stop, they reached the top of the stairs. She looked over her shoulder to smile, and urged him inside.

(Inside what, you say?)

"This is the most private room in all of the family mansion. If someone wants to be absolutely alone, and escape the eyes and ears of the villagers and servants, this is the place."

It was a sort of massive pavilion, built from rock and concrete, dominated by a circular room, nine meters wide; the roof appeared to form a cupola, four meters high at the center, from which hung a wooden chandelier.

(INTENSE... INTERIOR DECORATING... ACTION!!)

The pavilion's seven windows, three of them in stained glass, overlooked the mountain peaks of the island from a rock outcrop high above the mansion. The position of the building made it impossible to approach from outside.

(Tonight, on MTV Cribs!)

Dohan stepped closer, trying to take in all the rich detail of the pavilion. He arched his neck and admired the painted ceiling: it depicted a blue sky with clouds, with the sun at one end, and the moon and stars at the other.

(And in the center... Uranus!)

The place was not gaudy with gold and costly cloth, like the quarters of his peers in the walled cities - its beauty lay in the use of simple paint, wood and stone to create a place that brought to mind the whole world around it.

(All that's missing is the male TV-show host with the campy voice.)

Meijji sauntered past the windows, across thick carpets, toward the heavy four-poster bed at one end of the pavilion. Dohan watched her hips sway, enchanted, and failed to realize that she was deliberately exaggerating their movement.

"You look far more lovely than I could remember you while I was away."

She stopped and faced him, her eyes wide open and her lips slightly parted.

"Darc told us of your imprisonment by your father, the city lord, and your daring escape. You did all that, to return to me?"

Dohan grinned, and shook his head ruefully; no matter what he replied to that, it would sound wrong. Meijji leaned against one of the bed's wooden posters, carved and painted into the likeness of a dolphin. She regarded his powerful build, his noble, strong-willed face, and could barely stand still.

("Where's the frickin' bathroom??")

Slowly moving closer to the waiting Meijji, Dohan fixed his eyes on hers and said: "I am not the man to make speeches.

([Chorus] Then SHUT UP!!)

But now, it all becomes clear to me. Everything that has happened this year, has driven me to you. How this will end, I do not know... I may be giving up all I ever owned, my birthright, the respect of my family, my life even... to be with you.

([With pathos] "I even gave up Zoroastrianism to be with you.")

I love you more than all of that. Do you still want to spend the rest of your life with me, if I lose everything I own? It could become a very short bliss."

(Please, don't tell us about your "very short" "little problem" ever again.)

Meijji rushed at Dohan,

(*CLONK!*)

and in that moment only had time to whisper a "Yes" - before they embraced each other, and she was unable to do other than kiss him.

(And they spent a romantic evening picking up each other's knocked-out front teeth.)

Locked tightly together, they fell onto the bed and tumbled among the sheets.

"No one but you, my love," she gasped, pausing for a breath.

"For ever and ever," he whispered to her.

(I give them two weeks before the fighting begins.)



(MSTing to be continued)

(Previous MSTed chapter)