Twelve O'Clock Tales

by Felice Picano

  “Is there anyone who might be able to tell me where Mr. Mazudrah may be now?” David tried and as the little man merely smiled and rolled the obscene, dried artichoke from one hand to another he added, “Are you trying to say to me that Raji is transformed in some dramatic and unrecognizable manner?”

  “You are truly an amusing gentleman. I was simply speaking of ar-ti-chokes. I wonder, can you tell me what this other object may be?”

  “You needn’t be afraid for his sake, you know. We were great friends,” he added.

  “Were you indeed, Sahib?”

  “I mean to say, we were great friends at one time.”

  “Four years ago, you said, Sahib?”

  “Yes. But we never had a falling-out or anything of that sort, you understand. He merely up and left.”

  “Up and left, Sahib?”

  “Just up and left. Although I assure you we were great friends.”

  “So I understand.”

  “One remains friendly after four years, you know. Even after one has just up and left, you see. It does happen. He wouldn’t be purposely hiding from me, therefore. There’s no earthly reason for him to do so. He hasn’t an idea I’m even here looking for him, you must grasp. There would be nothing in the world to even suggest that after four years, upon some whim or other, I’d suddenly come looking for him, would there now? Would there? Would there, I ask you?”

  David’s head throbbed with possibilities he’d never before entertained, thoughts which had come spewing into his mind simultaneous with his absurd bout of self-defense. What if Raji was actively hiding from him? What if he didn’t wish to be found? By anyone? What if all this was some sort of blind? A smokescreen? And he, David, a complete ass to have come here, to have tracked him this far, to this ridiculous shop with this inane spice seller?

  “Of course not, Sahib. Not if you say not,” Bardash sweetly enough answered. In his hand he now held a small repellent greenish object, sort of a cross between a dried-out lizard and a hairy plant. “I wonder, Sahib, if you can tell me what this object is?”

  David could only stare. Three objects. Three tests. As in some mad Oriental tale. David had already soundly failed the first two. Gaping at the object before him, he knew that once again he wouldn’t be able to even hint at what it was—some rare medicinal root? Some large, specially preserved caterpillar?—and failing to answer that question too, he would be ridiculed, humiliated, and who only knew, perhaps asked to identify another and another more outlandish even than these. Before he could reach across the counter and throttle the little beggar, he spun around and was outside the doors, leaping up the steps, and into the square.

  Inexplicably—how long had he been in the shop?—the cab was gone. The square abandoned.

  He could have sworn the driver had said he would wait for him, had put up a newspaper and begun reading the telly listings. And now he was gone! David was certain he saw a sari behind one of the curtained windows flash orangebright into and out of view on the floor directly above V.R. Bardash, Spices of the World.

  An appalling thought crossed his mind. That last object…was it…could it possibly be…a scalp? A human scalp? Raji’s scalp?

  He turned to face the shop doors’ grime-stained windows. They didn’t seem in any way different; yet, as a result of his going in through them and meeting Bardash and asking questions and being asked questions and…they were now quite ghastly different. As though some dark deed carefully withheld until these past few minutes and his arrival here could no longer wait but must be accomplished with all haste, and with utter ruthlessness.

  He rushed down the steps to the shop door and shook the handle. It was locked, damn it. And though he rang the bell and rattled the door and could hear the shop bell echo shrilly within, no one answered.

  When he finally, defeated, ascended back to the street, many curtained windows in the row above the shop were filled with veiled faces openly—mockingly, he was sure of it—staring down at him.

  Suddenly, and with an unshakable certainty, David knew he would never see his friend again. He thought he should shout something at them all, that he was going to find a bobby, a dozen bobbies and half of Scotland Yard, and come back until he found Raji. But as he watched, all the curtains fell closed, shades dropped. Filled with horror and despair, he turned and began to walk away, feeling the curtains once move a half inch open behind him, the shades lift a bit, the eyes once again observe, watching, laughing.

  Hastening now, and damning his legs for moving so slowly, barely able to restrain himself from breaking into a full run, certain that if he dared turn and look back, there would be footsteps behind him, men in poorly wrapped turbans and filthy dhotis. His breath came on tighter, a stitch had begun to rip into his side. And now he did begin to run, to run until he was approaching the end of the infernal row, and around an accursed building, out of the hellish square.

  He dashed across a narrow lane and dared himself to stop, to stop, and look back. Damn it! He wouldn’t be made a fool of by some despicable Pakis.

  He steeled himself, stopped, and turned, panting like a cur. A dark figure he’d not noticed collided with him.

  “So sorry!” David uttered, courtesy rising mechanically to the occasion.

  The man who pulled away was short and turbanned, with a flowing bright dhoti.

  “I wonder,” the voice said in a remarkable basso voice. “Could you tell me…?”

  David didn’t remain for the rest of the question, didn’t even look at the questioner. He was running, running, running now for sanity, for his very life, down the narrow lane and into the next street, running directly into the blaring horn and brightly red bonnet of an oncoming omnibus.

  Eye

  This morning’s edition of El Nacional de Caracas noted the death of astrophysicist Jose-Martí de Rigoberto y Alain with a long tribute to his many accomplishments that the earlier Internet obituary glossed over in its effort to be timely.

  With Professor Rigoberto’s death, my twelve-year-old promise to him and to the others in the Puruana Laboratory has come to an end.

  Professor Umberto Ventano died four years ago in a rented single-engine Cessna, somewhere around the Iguaçu Falls in a still not adequately explained flight and fatal accident. Dr. Santiago del Cuerco went missing from his home in Maracaibo a year after, leaving a garbled note that suggested that his sanity had fled some time before he physically decamped. He’s since been declared legally dead.

  We had all promised never to reveal what happened in that laboratory we all shared overlooking the pellucid lapis waters of the golfo during the first few days of July 2001. More precisely, our promise concerned the small, prismatic torus of unknown material and origin that we discovered in connection with the El Tigre Meteorite—so named because it was first spotted in its descent over that jungle area.

  The meteorite was seen shooting across the sky and then falling spectacularly—witnessed by many thousands in the cities of Caracas and Maracay, the towns of Valencia, Carora, and Calimas. It was recovered by the Venezuelan Coast Guard on the shore of the Golfo de Venezuela and sent to our laboratory in Puento Fijo for analysis.

  I wrote “our” laboratory, although it was Professor Rigoberto y Alain’s lab. The other two men had already worked with him: del Cuerco at NASA in Houston a decade before, Ventano for ten months at the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Lab even earlier. So I was the newcomer, just graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Venezuela’s College of Applied Physical Sciences and still far from completing my Ph.D.

  When the meteorite arrived at the lab, del Cuerco joked, “Here it is, Georgie-Boy”—my given name is Jorge—“your Ph.D. thesis itself, in person, all wrapped up with ribbons and bigger than life.”

  One reason for the sensation caused by the meteorite was its size. Most meteorites that reach Earth in one or more pieces are small. Showing video clips of it falling not an hour after the event on national television, the nightly weatherman had describ
ed it as “a green-gold flaming moon!” So it seemed, photographed by many as it fell at around ten p.m. on a beautiful balmy night on May First, one of our bigger holidays. So many people had been out in the streets that it was widely witnessed.

  When recovered, the object measured some four and a half by six meters, and weighed close to three tons. It was of a dark brown and charcoal gray color, with a few small streaks of what appeared to be ferrous red.

  El Tigre had spent most of the two months before its arrival in a completely sterile lockdown in some undisclosed location, thanks to the vigilance—del Cuerco said due to the paranoia—of the Venezuelan Armed Forces and the Academy of Science. We were assured that it had been already subjected to a wide range of preliminary chemical, physical, and biological tests. All of which proved it to be totally inert and safe to be handled “without extraordinary measures required.”

  Our job was to distinguish El Tigre’s exact composition and any special properties it might contain. It was a fortuitous task for us because of the fame of the meteorite. But not a terribly difficult task, since recovered meteorites tend to be pretty similar. Their makeup falls within a small number of acceptable parameters familiar to any high school student with Internet access. Even so, when it arrived, every magnet in the lab immediately went screwy and all of them were removed.

  All this to explain Professor Rigoberto y Alain’s decision to allow me, the youngest and least experienced of the four, to work with El Tigre. He and the others were already involved with other projects they deemed more interesting. So I received what they thought of as the rather humdrum object.

  It remains unclear to this day why after this two-month period of time El Tigre reacted as it did, although I’ve developed a few tenuous theories. Over the decade and more since, on the rare occasions that two or more of us happened to be in a room together—at some party or conference, say—we would invariably speculate upon this question, among so many other ones; del Cuerco most often, and at times with the most bizarre notions that he would present with a great cackling laugh. But after all he was the most affected by its arrival.

  Lest this preamble seem to be mere procrastination, I’ll announce what is to follow: the taped journals I myself as a new lab assistant faithfully kept, day by day, at the end, and sometimes in the middle of, each workday. With them any other writing from the others in the Puruana Lab that I later learned of or had access to—e-mails, etc.—for the six-day period involved.

  I wish to reiterate that the meteorite did not provide my thesis subject. And also wish to state again that I never spoke about El Tigre or what had happened to us to anyone outside of the Puruana Lab nor even inside the lab after that first week had passed—unless, that is, one of the others first brought up the subject.

  *

  July 2nd, 2___

  “El Tigre” arrived yesterday and was set up in the larger of the two rooms that represent the outer chambers of the laboratory here. Because of its name, I expected the meteorite to look somewhat extraordinary—perhaps even tiger-striped. It does not. It looks like any other meteorite that I have seen in a museum: dark, inert, un-intriguing.

  All of us except Prof Rig were out when it arrived last night, delivered by some cohort of the Armed Forces which had held it, and so I was the second of us four to see it in person, right after I arrived in the morning. I peered in at it through the separating triple-paned glass.

  When I had gotten over my initial disappointment for its extreme ordinariness, I met with the others in the little breakfast room. Over packaged desserts and the strong Dominican coffee that Prof Rig prefers, I received my instructions.

  “As you know, Jorge,” the prof began, “the Americans found what they claim to be fossilized proto-annelids and/or pre-bacterial life from Mars on that meteorite that dropped onto Antarctica a few years back. It’s still in doubt what they actually found. An ice sheet that extensive is supposed to be a natural sterilizing room…But who is certain! Your job will be to photograph El Tigre entirely, using ordinary and first-level micron cameras, and also to dust it, and remove anything that appears to be extrinsic. After we have completely mapped it, square inch by inch, we will decide where and using which methods we can take extremely thin slices of it to look at more closely under second-level, or even the electron microscope.”

  “It looks damaged,” I remarked. “There appears to be a very thin centrally running fissure equally from each vertical side on what is now the top, and all down the left side right to the plinth it rests upon, and possibly even beneath.”

  “Really?” Prof Rig asked. “I didn’t notice that last night. But it was so late and they made such a fuss that I never got that close to it.”

  “It landed where, exactly?” Ventano asked. “On a sandy beach, I heard.”

  “A beach almost directly across the gulf from the lab here. Saltwater sand can be a fairly sterile medium,” Prof Rig said. “Of course, not as perfectly so as antipodean glacial ice. The Armed Forces tells us that El Tigre was physically contained and removed from its landing site within twenty minutes of its touch-down. They were afraid of UFO nuts and looters. They also secured and tarp-covered the arrival spot.”

  “Georgie-boy is going to be hunting for pre-Cambrian life!” del Cuerco said, and corrected himself, “Pre-Solar life!” before stuffing himself with his third McDonald’s apple fritter.

  I joined the laughter of the others at this quip.

  However, soon after I followed orders and self-sterilized completely. I then put on what passes for Haz-Mat gear in the lab before I actually stepped into the room holding El Tigre, my awkward tent-like outfit dangling with various sterilized cameras and measuring tools. I must have looked a sight!

  From ten fifteen a.m. to two p.m. and again after lunch and siesta, from four p.m. to seven, I photographed El Tigre and dusted it. It was a boring job, worse than routine. Except that when I was done for the evening, the hairline crack I’d noticed looked somehow wider. I decided to measure that crack in four places, all of which I then tagged, and I noted these measurements down for Prof Rig to check over.

  I looked at it under the micron electroscope and it looked geologically apt: nothing special at all.

  July 3rd, 2___

  The media greeted us as we arrived this morning, Prof Rig first in his big Chevrolet sport utility, shortly after del Cuerco zoomed up in his silver Mercedes coupe and Ventano noisily arrived on his futuristic-looking motorcycle. I was ignored arriving in my little old sedan.

  Besides reporters and photographers from Telvisora Nacional, Televisia and Radio Caracas Television, there was a news team truck from our local television station as well as from Television de Zulia.

  For two hours they had us posing, having us re-arrive at the lab in our vehicles, sitting at our little communal breakfast, inside various offices, at blackboards showing the trajectory of El Tigre along with allegedly relevant formulas and information (“for the Science Nerds,” a pleasant enough dyed blond female TV reporter explained), and finally, and most crucially, posing next to El Tigre itself.

  The Puruana Lab has two Haz-Mat suits, and I and Prof Rig began suiting up and we were photographed alongside El Tigre—from the outside corridor looking in. But even this wasn’t enough for the media, and no sooner had we left and unsuited than we returned to find them busily videotaping and photographing Ventano and del Cuerco inside and along with El Tigre and without the Haz-Mat suits. The two of them were joking around, leaning all over it, del Cuerco licking the surface and giving a thumbs up for one photographer, and engaged in other nonsense.

  I could see Prof Rig’s little pointed beard trembling with anger at this foolery and he managed to get the media away from the meteorite fairly rapidly, and our colleagues soon left off their antics and went back to their offices.

  Editor’s note: Late at night, when my children are long abed and my wife too is sleeping, I remain awake sometimes an hour or so remembering it all. And every time, my memory co
mes back to this moment, this unexpected and conscious disregard of the Lab’s sterilization procedures, this direct contact of human flesh with El Tigre. I cannot say it is responsible for what occurred. That would imply an intelligence or activity in something that seemed merely material. Even so. It may in some way explain, if not what happened to us, then at least what happened to Ventano and del Cuerco in years after, and why two formerly completely staid and reputable scientists became so extreme in their behavior as to end up as they did: one dead in a plane accident, the other vanished.

  After the media had left, the others went to work and Prof Rig and I spent about an hour and half going over the forty-five photos I had taken of the meteorite, which I meanwhile had scanned and downloaded to the Mac.

  We settled on two areas that looked to be “flaking,” either as a result of the trauma of El Tigre’s atmospheric descent or as a by-product of some other unknown event(s) while in transit. One of these was completely surface in location. But the second one he decided upon was within what seemed to be a natural indentation at the top, and in fact near where I had first noticed the running crack yesterday. Prof Rig was especially anxious that I obtain that slice of material.

  I once again suited up and went into the room containing El Tigre.

  The first thing I noticed was that the fissure I had noticed the day it arrived had unquestionably opened further. All four points I had tagged it were now twice as wide. I thought this notable and planned to tell Prof Rig at the first opportunity.

  I had brought with me tools for the removal of the “flakes” of material we had decided upon. The first one was removed easily and in fact seemed to be just that, some previous ferric “rusting” that had flaked sometime earlier or in its last aerial transit.

  Prof Rig and I looked at the material together, once I was back out, using the micron electroscope. It appears geologically appropriate, not special at all.