The Boxer Rebellion - the first chapter of my novel
Jan 19 '07
The Bottom Line The first chapter of my sci-fi techno-medico thriller. Encouraging comments very welcome!
I'm posting this because I've hit a bit of an impasse and need some encouragement to start working on it again!
When finished, I will release the book in paperback format at my online bookstore - www.lulu.com/DARSCOM
-------------------
Chapter One
Steve walked into the pub to be greeted by the putrid smell of alcohol of stale vomit. What on earth was Lars doing in a place like this? He was normally went for very stylish (and over-priced, but that wasn’t a problem for him) jazz cafes and the like. Kimi certainly wouldn’t approve of him being in a place like this. But it was the phone call that had worried Steve most – he’d never known Lars to get drunk before in all the 22 years that he’d known him. The look on his face on the hologram that sprang up out of Steve’s phone, had been absolutely traumatised. (Not to mention seeing Lars’ face suddenly appear next to him had nearly made Steve crash his car – he still couldn’t believe he’d been conned into buying the new model when his old one still worked perfectly well.)
Steve glanced around at the messy interior of the pub. It was full of people who were drinking either to celebrate or to drown their sorrows, though after a while almost all of them had a very similar bleary-eyed melancholy about them. Espying Lars sitting in a corner looking rather unsteady and muttering to himself, Steve walked over and sat down after carefully examining the seats to see which one looked cleanest, or at least not clinically dangerous. Lars was a lot calmer than when he’d phoned since he’d clearly imbibed a considerable amount of alcohol in the meantime.
The hubbub from the rest of the regulars faded away slightly as he concentrated on his friend, who appeared to be trying to choose some words to start with and failing. Steve waited patiently, eventually having to prompt Lars to speak by saying, “what’s happened Lars? I’ve never seen you like this, or in a place like this. What’s wrong?”
Lars blearily looked at him and tried to focus. “Kimi... she’s….” and then stopped, tears forming in his eyes.
It seemed that nothing more would be forthcoming for a minute, so Steve went and got half a pint of Stout before returning to his seat. In the meantime his friend had emptied what appeared to be his seventh pint, which for him was unheard of.
There was no point trying to drag what was bothering Lars out of him, Steve knew him far too well for that. Better to just sit there, sipping his drink, trying to ignore the slightly raucous goings on behind him, and wait for the inevitable to happen. It would be like a volcano erupting… what seemed like an age of inactivity, a little smoke, another long period with nothing seeming to happen, then everything spewing out all at once. That phone call had been the smoke, so the eruption would be the next thing to happen, the only question was when.
Steve was sidetracked by a commotion by the bar. Two men who had definitely had far too much to drink were having a heated argument about whether West Ham or Chelsea were the better team. It looked likely to come to blows, with other football supporters in various stages of inebriation voicing the merits of their own favourite clubs. Everyone supported London clubs these days, Steve noticed – well, everyone in London did. He knew from visits to Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham that they were just as bad. England had almost become like ancient Greece, with city states battling for supremacy, except the warfare wasn’t open but rather contained to non-violent local nationalism. Sports, economics, education systems, even accents were a matter of furious contest and intense pride. The cities were fiercely proud of their own teams, but that didn’t stop the fans of each city’s teams from being at war with one another – unless they were playing against a team from another city, when Blues and Villa fans would mysteriously unite against the evil of Manchester United. Musing that at least it was a diversion from the equally intense corporate culture that epitomised the 22nd century (though not much better), Steve’s peripheral hearing registered that Lars had just mumbled something.
“Sorry, what did you say Lars? All that noise over there sidetracked me.”
There was a slight pause as Lars braced himself to repeat the terrible utterance again. “She’s… got cancer.” His voice broke half-way through the last word, but it was clear enough what he’d said.
Steve sagged in his seat. Most types of cancer were very successfully treatable these days of course; there were very types that still defeated most efforts by clinicians, physicians, and surgeons to resolve completely. And the worst of these four was…
“Kontz-Ewing’s,” choked Lars.
As a friend Steve was in shock, but the clinician in him took over for a second. “Was it caught early? Is it a primary? Are there any mets?”
His friend seemed to come out of his stupor a little but looked even more miserable. “Nope, it’s quite advanced in the left femur, highly malignant, it is the primary, and has metastasised to the right greater trochanter, liver, lungs, and stomach. She has about 3 months to live – at most.”
‘How could this have happened?’ thought Steve. Surely Steve and Kimi of all people checked regularly for the slightest irregularity in their bodies and got it checked out immediately? Kontz-Ewing’s had only been classified a few years ago by Professor Kontz in Berlin. The name stuck despite the fact that it was now recognised as being more than merely a more aggressive variant of Ewing’s sarcoma; in its own right, it was the deadliest of all forms of cancer.
It was as if Steve was reading his thoughts. “We had her left leg checked in the Lumps and Bumps clinic only a week ago – said it was just a ganglion. It didn’t grow outwardly very much and there was no pain, no redness… we couldn’t have known. Kimi only went to have the presumed ganglion excised because we were going on a beach holiday to Tenerife and she… wanted to look good in a bikini. The surgeon was a friend and did it as a favour, otherwise we wouldn’t have bothered about it for months. If that had been the case… well, it would have been too late to worry about it... This was a ‘whoops’ procedure…”
How ironic the phrase sounded, though Steve himself had used it a thousand times before. In medical circles, if you found something malignant that had been diagnosed as benign, it was called a whoops… only because this was about someone he personally knew, the expression suddenly lacked dignity, detracted from the seriousness of what had been found.
“They’re… they’re sure there’s no mistake?”
Lars shook his head. “Checked and re-checked. It’s definitely Kontz-Ewing’s. The primary’s already 12cm long. Kimi was complaining of pain over the last few days but we thought it was because we went rock climbing over the weekend. She’s on Anti-Neoplasm Medication, of course, so there’ll be no more growth for two weeks. After that she’s on her own – nobody’s system can cope with more than that amount of ANM. ”
Paralysed with shock, Steve tied to access his vast medical knowledge but his brain refused to function. He couldn’t remember a case like that… how had it spread so far, so fast? It was inconceivable… yet apparently, it had happened. He’d look it up when he got home, but he was positive that no case like this had ever been recorded before.
They sat in silence for a while, inasmuch as they didn’t make any noise and tried to ignore the fracas still going on behind them. In the end Steve could take it no more. “Come on, let’s get you home. This isn’t doing you any good, and if you let on that you’re an Ipswich Town supporter, you may well end up getting… um, two black eyes.” He just stopped himself talking about people dying in time. Strange how the most inappropriate things always seemed to come out of your mouth in these situations.
Shuffling past the still arguing football fans (or more likely hooligans, Steve thought), they managed to get outside and into Steve’s car, a Mercedes Delta V900. The car cruised along the newly resurfaced A40, and the combination of their own lack of words, the car’s environmentally friendly ultra-quiet engine, and the new Tarmac Compound 15 surface combined to envelope them in an eerie silence as they travelled from Euston to Brentford.
Getting Lars home was the easy bit, of course. Seeing Kimi was the hard part, even though Steve had told countless patients about their diagnosis of Ewing’s sarcoma. As the helped Lars to the door in the dim aura of the streetlight, he saw the door open and Kimi standing there, glazed look in her eyes. “Hi Steve. I guess he told you all about it, huh? He never could hold his drink. Not that he wouldn’t have told you anyway, you’ve been through tougher times than this before. Come in for a drink, babe, help me get this lump up to bed.”
She helped support Lar’s weight, who had fallen into a dazed half-sleep and was completely incoherent by now. Steve left Kimi to getting her husband comfortable while he went down and made himself a cup of coffee. He sat on his usual chair and waited for Kimi to come down.
He heard clinking sounds coming from the region of the kitchen, and Kimi came in carrying a plate full of biscuits. She smiled at him. “Can’t let a little thing like this stop me from being hospitable, even if you are practically family and would help yourself to anything you liked in our house.” He started protesting and she put her hand on his knee. “I’m only joking – you’re probably the politest man I know. The most decent, too. Thanks for bringing Lars home, I wasn’t sure where he’d gone – though I had an idea – and he wasn’t answering my calls. I was worried he’d… hurt himself…” Her voice trailed off, and Steve could see tears welling up in her eyes. She looked away, trying to control herself but failing. Steve put his arms around her and she wept openly for the first time. “Why did this have to happen, Steve? It’s not fair. It’s not fair on me, and it’s not fair on Lars. Neither of us can cope. What are we going to do? Steve wants to cancel the holiday, but I’m trying to persuade him to go. If I really do have only 3 months to live, I want them to be happy ones!”
Steve couldn’t think of anything to say. If he’d been talking to a patient, he’d be very positive, comforting, and suggest referring them to a Counsellor. But this was different – this was a close friend, and none of the normal words seemed right. In the end he broke down too and they wept together, while the world outside went on as normal.
A dusty old jeep, so old that it still used petrol for fuel, bumped its way down the ancient track as the sun beat down relentlessly on Pierre and his wife. It was the best they could get with their meagre WHO funding, though modern vehicles were very scarce in Africa anyway so money wasn’t the only problem they’d had. The vehicle they’d managed to obtain for this trip was so old that it didn’t have air conditioning either, which meant that the heat was only made bearable by regular use of their ice-sprays. Pierre glumly pondered their chances of having enough for the return trip; the village they were headed to, Diana Town, was hardly likely to sell anything that had been invented within the last century.
Antionette gazed ahead, her sunglasses shielding her eyes from both the light and the intense UV rays that plagued this land. “I think I can see it,” she muttered, “looks like we’re expected.” A host of children lined the side of the track, waving to them happily as the jeep passed along. “These kids can’t have much of a future to look forward to…)
Pierre pulled the jeep up near the biggest hut in the village and squeezed her hand. “I know honey, but we can only do so much, remember?”
As they got out of the jeep, an angry-looking old man stormed up to them. With a thick accent that made him barely understandable, he shook his finger at them and yelled, “what you white people doing here?” Pierre started explaining that they were there to help, but he just scowled at them. “White people only bring trouble. They say help but mean take away, use up our land, our things, and give what back? Never give back as much as take.”
The stench coming from a nearby open sewer was nearly overpowering, and the heat haze was almost too intense for their sunglasses InstaReactive lenses to cope with. There were a tense few moments as some of the younger men gathered behind the man still shouting at them in Pidgin, murmuring agreement and looking inclined to start some trouble.
There was a noise behind them as the door of the hut opened quickly. A large, important-looking man came out, palms outstretched and a slightly worried smile on his face. When he spoke he had a deep, booming voice, with perfect diction.
“Friends, friends, what need is there for this squabbling? We are all brothers, black, white, or any shade in between. Let us not fight over past differences, but be reconciled. This brother and sister,” he gestured towards Pierre and Antionette, “are friends from across the ocean and have indeed come to help. They have come to test whether the reports they have heard about my powers are really true, or whether it is some primitive belief system that has spread word about my healing powers. The rest of the world is sceptical, as they should be; anyone can claim to be a healer, but few possess the true gift. Now let these friends come to me, and welcome them to our village in the customary manner.”
The effect of these words was astounding. Instantly the young men bowed low to their visitors, and made arrangements for them to be accommodated as honoured guests, a tribal dance and celebration was immediately planned for that evening, and gifts were brought to them. Only the first man who had spoken to them seemed unmoved by the words and skulked off, muttering to himself in what Pierre took to be a tribal dialect, for he could not understand any of it.
“My friends, I apologise for Okatakyie there, he is old and stubborn, and set in his ways. He does not understand the ways of the word, and cares not for them. He is a man of simple thoughts, but pure heart… I just pray that one day his dreams of unity, though he may not have a part in bringing it about, will come true.” Antionette found herself liking this man immensely, he spoke with such sincerity and conviction, and she felt absolutely sure that this was no show. “Ironic, isn’t it? People resist the very thing they want to occur. I am sure you have already guessed that I am Badu Konadu, the Witch Doctor you’ve come to investigate.” The frankness of his speech unsettled Pierre a little, who tried to reassure him that it was ‘research’ rather than ‘investigation’, which sounded a little accusatory. Badu chuckled. “If you prefer, I will call it research. It matters not to me – you simply wish to know if these outlandish claims are true. You will see with your own eyes, and you will believe, for how can you believe through someone else’s eyes? And now I must introduce you. Incidentally, I am also the village Chief here.”
He turned to the small crowd that had amassed while they had been talking –the whole village had turned up to see what was going on. Only Okatakyie was absent. Piere noted some very sick women standing away from the group and winced… AIDS was decimating the whole continent, though this village seemed less affected than most they’d travelled through. Could that mean that the Witch Doctor really was what he claimed? No, that couldn’t be true… yet WHO had thought it worth sending them to find out. What if…?
Badu turned to his people and addressed them. “My friends, these new ones among us are Doctors Pierre and Antionette Du Ploy, from the World Health Organisation. Today the focus of the whole world has come upon our little village. Tonight we celebrate their arrival; tomorrow,” he nodded towards the women huddled in a small group away from the rest of the people, “our sisters who have suffered for so long, but who were willing to suffer a little longer to provide proof to the world, will be cured!”
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.