Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  The General paused here, and his hands were trembling with emotion, his face glowing with such a heat of fury and passion that Margaret shrank from him. His nostrils were flared, and his breath was coming to him in great heaving lungfuls, as if he was in the middle of a savage fight to the death in the pit of some gladiatorial arena. He closed his eyes, drew in one long breath of air, and clenched his fists, calming himself before he became too worked up. After he had held the air in his lungs for some time he expelled it slowly, and then continued in a softer, less manic tone. ‘But how can I expect you to understand these things? It is asking too much, I suppose,’ he murmured in a tone of defeated resignation. ‘You First World citizens spend all of your waking time staring at screens and dead things and revelling in soulless pursuits. How can you expect to even begin to truly comprehend the vastness of the web of life, to feel the souls of the animals and the trees and the soil, and the infinite webs of interconnected power that flow between all of them, as they have flowed since the dawn of time? It is only when you commune with the forest, with these ecosystems in all of their depth and wondrous equilibrium, that you can truly experience life for what it is, and experience the awe, the wonder, and the deep interconnectedness of it all. But of course for you, for your people, such things are simply … impossible.’

  Margaret felt the unmistakable signs of her waking temper starting to boil and bubble. Who was this arrogant warmonger to talk, sitting there and looking so smug, this hypocrite with his guns and child soldiers and army uniforms? Talking down to her, singling her out personally, as if he knew everything about her and her personal choices. She clenched her fists on the table and set her jaw tight, doing her utmost to bite back her rising anger.

  ‘Well listen now, you can’t simply tar everyone with the same brush!’ she protested. ‘I’ll have you know that I recycle! My partner Ting and I, we only eat what’s in season, each of us drives a Prius, and we do a lot of biking and walking too. And you’re talking about livestock and methane? Well, don’t you dare accuse me of funding factory farms with my choices. No sir! I only purchase organic, locally raised, pasture-fed, free-range meat, dairy and eggs. It’s a damn sight better than, than yuppies and conservatives, and well, those people who go out and poach wildlife from the jungle, like they do here! And we sure as hell don’t eat at fast-food chains, not ever! I’m a medical doctor for God’s sake, I know—’

  ‘You and your personal habits are not the issue here, Doctor,’ the General growled with gravid authority, as that strange and terrifying fire flared up again in his dark eyes. ‘And I’m sorry to say that any of us at this table could easily tear apart each and every one of those ultimately useless acts of “green” consumerist addiction in which you so proudly participate. For these things are, indeed, meaningless in the greater scheme of things. Forget about those trivialities for the present, and just try to understand what I am explaining to you, instead of reacting with knee-jerk defences and offended anger. Tell me, were I to tell you that my foot was rotting with gangrene, would you simply advise me to put a band-aid on it?’

  I certainly would, and then I’d happily watch you suffer and die a slow, agonising death.

  Margaret realised, with a shock of icy panic, that she had completely forgotten about the General’s mind-reading abilities. She really hoped he hadn’t read that particular thought.

  ‘Of course not,’ she huffed, only realising after the words came out how haughty her tone sounded. ‘I’d suggest amputation of the foot, or perhaps even the entire lower leg, depending on how advanced the infection had become.’

  The General smiled strangely.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Do you now understand my analogy? Human beings, with their cultures of waste, exploitation, devastation and consumerism, are a virus—’

  ‘Actually, gangrene is caused by a bacterial infection, not a virus,’ Margaret interrupted, allowing her argumentative nature to get the better of her common sense.

  The General paused for a moment and glared at her, and she could not help but cower beneath his withering gaze. An eerie terror crept through the very marrow of her bones, and with its chilling passage she began to understand that this man, no, this thing, this monster, hurling its terrible glare like a fiery spear into the depths of her being, was immensely powerful, beyond the scope of anything of which her imagination could possibly conceive. She bit her quivering lower lip and stared at the table, gripping the edges of it with trembling hands.

  ‘That little factoid is of no importance,’ the General growled. ‘Do not interrupt me again.’

  Margaret nodded, still biting her lip and gripping the edge of the table. The General, however, seemed to calm down, and the boiling steam in his eyes withdrew to the dark place within him where it hissed and sizzled on glowing coals, subsiding temporarily from view.

  ‘The Earth is a living thing,’ he said calmly. ‘Are you familiar with what is now known as the Gaia hypothesis, first touched on in the eighteenth century by James Hutton, and postulated as a cogent theory by James Lovelock in the sixties?’

  ‘I, er, I think I’ve heard of something like that,’ Margaret answered, a degree of uncertainty clouding her voice.

  ‘Well let me make it clear, lest you harbour any confusion regarding the theory: it states that the Earth is not merely a dead lump of conglomerate elements and minerals hurtling through space. Instead, the Earth is a superorganism: a self-regulating entity that is alive.’

  ‘Well, er, that seems a little absurd to me. I can tell you that the conditions necessary for defining something as being “alive”, are—’

  The General interrupted her with a slow, dry laugh that reverberated through the expansive chamber. The sound ran along the rounded stone walls and disappeared down the stairways like a flock of startled crows alighting from a shaken tree.

  ‘Dr Green … the almost childlike certainty you possess in your convictions is quite amusing. I do not mean to insult you, but surely after everything you have seen over the past few days, surely your mind must be opening, even just a little, to the acceptance of possibilities that are beyond the very narrow scope of what you have read in your academic journals and medical textbooks? You have seen me change form, before your very eyes, from man into elephant. This alone must surely defy every single dogma contained in those little periodicals of yours. No? Not yet? Are you still convinced, like most of your arrogant kind, that you know everything, that all that is to be discovered about this great and wondrous mystery called “life” has already been tagged, bagged and documented? Please Doctor, just for once, allow your mind to break free of the rusty shackles that imprison it, and try to open your thoughts up to new possibilities, possibilities beyond anything of which your myopic culture could possibly conceive. Therein lies true knowledge, true wisdom, and, ultimately, liberty and redemption.’

  Margaret’s temper began to boil over once again.

  ‘I’m, why, I’m not close-minded! How dare you suggest that! I’m an atheist, and a scientist! I use the tools of observation and peer-reviewed studies to shape my world view, thank you very much! And, what’s more, I’m a lesbian, sir! Something that in your culture, is probably still regarded as a perversion or a dirty sin or—’

  ‘I have no culture!’ the General roared in a vociferous eruption of volcanic wrath, jumping up from his seat and slamming a fist onto the table. Once again the white-hot chemical fire surged forth, crackling and burning with a wild madness in his eyes. ‘Do not presume to know anything about what I believe or where I come from, you petulant infant! I have seen the human world grow while the animal and plant worlds have died! I have seen empires rise and fall, I have been there at the moment of their births and have lived through their deaths! I have endured through countless human lifespans! You, you have been here for a mere forty-eight years! Do you realise how insignificant a drop of time that is to me?! Can your tiny mind even begin to comprehend that?! Now you will sit there, and you will listen, and you will
stop presuming to know anything about me!’

  Margaret cowered in fear, feeling the inferno of the General’s wrath radiating out from his ebony skin as if his entire being were aflame with the heat of an exploding star. Dr Ogilvy and Dr Teixeira sat in tense silence, each staring coolly at the ground. Margaret’s usual quick temper and haughty defiance were uncharacteristically cowed by the overwhelming intensity of this being, this creature who towered with an awe-inspiring grandeur before her, and it was all she could do to maintain the barest semblance of composure, and keep herself from wilting in fear before his gaze. However, once again he forced the fury back inside himself, and he sat down and breathed in a drawn-out, calming breath before speaking again.

  ‘My culture, as you would have it, died around two-thousand years ago. You see, this city, this palace in which we now sit – this is where I was born, in a very different life, a very long time ago. These stones that surround you, these ruins, they are all that remain of what was once my culture.’

  Margaret swallowed slowly, noticing only now how dry her mouth was.

  ‘But … I … I don’t understand,’ she murmured.

  The General’s wrath subsided completely, and his voice took on a gentler tone.

  ‘No, of course you don’t, and how could you? I will tell you, but I do not expect you to believe any of this, at least not for the time being. Perhaps when your mind has opened up more, perhaps then you will start to grasp but one or two of the cooling embers at the edge of the great bonfire that is enlightenment. Perhaps then, perhaps then…’ The General sat down again and clasped his hands together, staring at the surface of the table all the while. ‘The ruins of this city, which we have been restoring to its former glory over the past few decades, are the last remnants of what was once my culture and my people. T’Kalanjathu was once the capital of a vast empire of the ancient world. In the days when Rome was still in its infancy, we were flourishing. We traded with Egypt at the time that the Egyptians were first starting to build their pyramids. We sent ambassadors as far afield as Europe to the north and India to the east, and we even sent ships down the Congo River to the Atlantic. Indeed, some of our ships, after much trial and error with design, were able to cross the ocean. We made contact with the Mayan civilisation in the very final days of our empire, when the Mayans were in the infancy of their rise to power in Central America.’

  Margaret took a few moments to process this information before she responded.

  ‘That’s really fascinating,’ she murmured eventually, possessed of a genuine sense of wonder and awe. ‘But … what happened to your people’s empire? And what part did you have to play in all of this?’

  As soon as those words had left her lips she stopped and thought about what she had just said.

  Whoa! Hold up there Margaret? Are you actually starting to believe the crazy, schizophrenic bullcrap this guy is spouting? Yeah, he’s managed to fool you somehow with his little ‘turning into an elephant’ trick, which must be caused by some sort of hallucinogen he’s secretly feeding you, which he can somehow trigger at will – but these claims that he’s a few thousand years old?! Come on now! Don’t get sucked into this garbage. You’re an intelligent woman, a scientist and a sceptic. Absolutely none of this can possibly be true. None of it, not a shred! But … what about the feeling of having my mind read? That certainly felt real enough. And how does he know what he seems to know about my deepest and most intimate secrets? Oh Lord, this is all so confusing. It can’t be how he says it is, it just can’t be! Well, look – it’s best at this stage to just play along. Plans for escape will come later. Right now, don’t rock the boat! Stop challenging him! He’s obviously got an awful temper and some sort of scary god-complex thing going on, and you’ve got no idea of what he might be capable of if pushed. Play polite, play the believer. You have to survive this!

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  The General laughed softly and shook his head. ‘What happened is that we went the way of all human empires. First, we innovated, then we expanded, then we conquered and colonised. We were at the top, for a while. After that we overextended, we fell into excess, hedonism and complacency … and then everything collapsed. It is a pattern that has been repeated throughout history by all human cultures on every continent, across every time period. In fact, it is a pattern that is currently being played out at this very moment, but on a global scale, rather than being restricted to a single culture. You see, right now the entire human race has become one great empire, and her enemy to be conquered, enslaved and subdued is this planet and every non-human lifeform on it. The human world is currently in the “excess, hedonism and complacency” stage of civilisation. You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not perceive this.’

  ‘One may, er, see it like that,’ Margaret said uneasily. ‘But for the moment, I’m interested in your story. What part did you play in the history of your civilisation?’

  The General humoured her and continued.

  ‘The empire of T’Kalanjathu was ruled in part by a tribunal of wise men and women. The tribunal actually held the majority of the power of government. However, a small part of the power was also held by the royal family, with the power passing down through the female line – yes, Dr Green, we were a matriarchal society. If, however, no female heir was born, the firstborn male would inherit power, and pass it on to his firstborn daughter.’ The General paused here and beamed an eerie smile at Margaret before continuing. ‘I am the very last surviving member of the royal family of the T’Kala people. I am the last prince of T’Kalanjathu.’

  What he’s telling me sounds so absolutely inconceivable, so outlandish, but for some reason, I just can’t simply pass it off as the ramblings of a schizophrenic; he’s far too lucid and consistent. Part of me seems, despite all odds and reason, to actually be believing this. He must be – if this could somehow be true – well he must be thousands of years old! That’s insane though, seriously, it’s preposterous to imagine! I mean, I think I remember reading of certain trees and plants still alive today that are most certainly thousands of years old, but those are plants! They don’t metabolise and grow and expend energy in even remotely the same manner as mammals. But somehow the possibility is there, as crazy as it seems. If a tree can live for thousands of years, why can’t another organism?

  ‘I’m … I’m sorry to hear that you’re, er, that you’re the last um, survivor, of your people. May I ask how this all came to be? I mean, it’s not, er, well, um, it’s—’

  ‘It’s not every day that you meet a living, breathing historical relic of the ancient world,’ the General said, completing her sentence for her with a wry smile. ‘And I imagine that what I’m telling you is quite overwhelming. After all, it flies in the face of everything you believe to be the “truth” about the nature of existence. I imagine that you must think that I’m insane, that surely what I’m telling you cannot possibly be the truth. I understand that completely. Were I in your shoes, I imagine I’d feel exactly the same.

  However, I feel that I need to remind you that we are not here to discuss the story of my life. Should you wish to learn more, we will have plenty of time to chat about such things in private. As for the others here, they have known me for some time and are already very familiar with my story, so I do not wish to bore them with a further retelling of it. Ah! And here comes the perfect excuse to put the conversation on ice for a while: dinner!’

  At that moment a number of teenage soldiers marched into the room, bearing platters of food. One of them was Tesla, the boy who had spoken to Margaret earlier, and he flashed her a surreptitious smile before saluting the General.

  ‘At ease, troops,’ he said to them in a gentle tone. ‘Please, young ones, serve these blessed offerings of the land to our guests.’

  The teen soldiers hurried about the table, setting platters of food here and there and filling up stone cups of water for each of the guests. Margaret surveyed the cornucopia of food spread out before her. Almo
st all of the dishes seemed completely alien to her, although for what it was worth, they did look and smell appetising enough.

  ‘You do not recognise most of the items on offer here, do you?’ the General asked. He chuckled sympathetically as Margaret shook her head. ‘Not to worry. I can assure you that everything here is both wholesome and nutritious. All of this food has been made from things that we grow in and around the city, in harmony with the forest, or from fruits, nuts, legumes, tubers and seeds harvested from the jungle itself. The forests nourished my people for centuries – before, towards the end of our empire’s days, we fell into foreign-influenced habits of excess and began to enslave, breed and slaughter animals, and hack down and burn the very thing that had enabled our civilisation to grow and flourish. Now, in the days of New T’Kalanjathu, I have made a return to the old ways of the T’Kala, to the time before we became corrupted by greed and excess, to the period before we allowed ourselves to become slaves to the sensory pleasures and addictions that would eventually destroy us.

  Feast on what the earth has provided for us, Dr Green! These tastes and textures may seem strange and new to you, but I guarantee you that once you have acquired a taste for them, you will never again wish to partake of the destructive nightmare of violence, exploitation and wastage that forms the majority of the Western – and indeed global – human diet.’