The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  The two love-birds giggle, and Tree turns to me. “Julian, this is exactly why I wanted you to sit down with this man—and how I wish Lillian were here. Mr. Xu has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening on this planet, and he senses, just as we all do, that we are at the tipping point of something absolutely incredible. We have to be. Either we all grow out of our childish ways in a hurry or we’re history.”

  “Ding, ding!” says Xu.

  I think our Mr. Xu may have his finger elsewhere, anatomically speaking, but I let it pass. I’m experiencing some serious pain over here. I loose a theatrical groan, and Xu stands abruptly.

  “I should go. It was a pleasure to talk to you at last, Julian. I really admire your work on Lindenmayer grammars. Maybe someday you can explain the subject to me in language a novice can understand.”

  “Next time,” I say.

  “I’ll walk you out,” offers Tree.

  “No, no, I’ll be fine. Goodbye, Julian.”

  “Have a pleasant day,” I reply.

  Careful of termites.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  At dusk, eight red taxis are cued in front of Studebaker Supermarket. I sit next door at the Sidewalk Fish Brains Café, attending the remains of a Japanese baked flounder. All eight taxi drivers are asleep or very near it, their feet either on the dash or hanging out the passenger window. Fares are hard to come by these days, as the latest round of rumors links cabbies to the spread of atypical pneumonia. In Beijing meanwhile the word is that household pets are responsible for spreading the blight. In response, people are flushing songbirds down toilets and flinging lapdogs and tabbies from upper-story windows. Those Chinese. Such sentimentalists.

  I’ve picked my way, single-handed as it were, through most of today’s China Daily and all of tonight’s baked flounder, yet I can’t quite make myself rise and return to Lil’s apartment, where Tree no longer dutifully waits, nor does much of anything else but a slow dial-up and a lot of wilting flowers. I’m running a three point one, possibly three point one five. The coping mechanisms kicked in at two, what little aid they provided. Here I am less than a week away from another close encounter with a rabid one-armed policeman, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot I can do about it.

  A waiter approaches to offer me a fresh Hsingtao, but I’m growing increasingly fond of the old one. I pull my glass and its three fingers of flat beer a little closer, and he gathers up the remains of the flounder. This place I call the Sidewalk Fish Brains Café because once you select a live fish from the tank, a young man in a dirty apron flips it onto the sidewalk and stomps its brains out. You can arrange for yourself how the sidewalk smells. I selected this particular fish on this particular night because I enjoyed the unexpected flashes of blue along his flanks as he—presumably he—coasted effortlessly around the huge tank. As soon as he was out of the water and struggling on the sidewalk, there were no more flashes of blue.

  So it goes.

  Before Tree returned to her school two days ago, she swept, mopped, and dusted every square centimeter of the American Teacher’s Apartment. It now smells like the school lunchroom. Lil’s resident rat doesn’t seem very impressed. He hasn’t been back since.

  As Her Treeness cleaned, she lectured me relentlessly about my wounded warrior issues. Actually, I prefer Tree’s story to that of just being a fuck-up from Memphis.

  This morning, Joe and the headmaster knocked at the door to check on me, usual big smiles in place. The police, they informed me, have made little progress in solving my case. Big surprise there. Joe did think to bring along an envelope full of cash, though, which was a nice touch. Turns out I get to collect all of Lillian’s salary, despite all the sick days. I told them to expect me back in the classroom Monday morning. Truth is, I need something to focus my mind on. The plan for the weekend, meanwhile, is to take a fast train to the casinos in Macao and get lucky to the tune of eighty-seven thousand dollars. Actually, I’m shooting for eighty-eight. I’d like to buy myself a set of silk threads before returning to Memphis. Never come dragging back into town looking like a substitute teacher.

  I’d consider running from these ill-mannered people if I had some faint notion of where to. The world only has only so many sides, geographically speaking. Meanwhile I’m down to five days and one arm.

  I tried making a call to the States last night, but it required the use of two hands plus sundry phone cards, the patience of Job’s housecat, and half a liter of blood. I managed to connect to the Western hemisphere once, I think. I also think the brassy whiskey-voiced woman is coming on to me. She must have located her placemats. Now she phones me for no reason and talks about her day as though I’m listening. I think she imagines she’s cheering me up.

  Yesterday Marilyn and Madam Wu each brought me a pan of chicken soup. Marilyn’s looked the better of the two, so I poured off the broth, mixed in some rice and barbeque sauce and ate it for dinner. Madam Wu’s went into the toilet. It wouldn’t flush. I ended up on my knees raking grey hunks of chicken back into Madam Wu’s pan. Now what was I was supposed to do with it? The answer seemed to be: open the kitchen window, rear back, and fling it into the trees below. I kind of missed the window. Now toilet-flavored chicken was dribbling down the wall. That’s when I noticed something.

  Beyond that same kitchen window, on a masonry ledge—actually the ledge of another wing of the building, if you’re tracking—was a careworn but still recognizable North Korean chocolate Buddha, one bite missing from the globe of his head. Even the insects hadn’t been able to deal with the goddamn thing. The chocolate wasn’t even melted. Here was North Korea’s answer to mortality. And. Embedded in the still-laughing chocolate head, at the exact spot of the third eye and gleaming quite brightly in the direct afternoon sun, was a small but unmistakable nugget of jeweler’s gold. My maxillary first premolar crown.

  I ran my tongue around the replacement recently installed by Dr. Xylophone, formed entirely I believe of JB Weld, and tried to picture myself crawling out onto that ledge, negotiating the ninety-degree turn, and returning ass-first back to this window. I shuddered at the thought. As toilet-flavored chicken dribbled down the wall. But it was my maxillary first premolar crown. And it was worth money. Maybe if I could get my hands on a length of bamboo and a decent wad of bubble gum…

  “Excuse me. Are you Julian Mancer?”

  With a start, I return to the Sidewalk Fish Brains Cafe to look up, and up, at a very tall Westerner in new khakis and a comical safari hat. In his right hand is a shopping bag. From the slightly dazed expression, I’d say he’s less than five hours off the plane. But I’m wrong a lot.

  “Do you have any drugs?” I reply. “Or a decent wad of American bubble gum?”

  “You’re Julian, all right,” says a husky American voice. “I’m Tim Dobbins from Chicago. Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Won’t you please do,” I answer, my mind suddenly reeling. Tim Dobbins. Chicago. Timothy Dobbins. Director of Research. Hydrangea Laboratories.

  Dobbins remains standing. “Could we possibly move to another table?”

  Mind still churning, I pour the last of the Hsingtao from the bottle into my glass and follow Tim Dobbins to a table deeper in shadow.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I call you Julian,” he says, struggling to fit his knees beneath the table. I notice that he’s wearing suede desert boots with checkered laces. Though his erect bearing puts this man’s age at little more than fifty, Dobbins has the thin, wrinkled arms of an octogenarian. I watch him place the plastic shopping bag on his lap, pull out an antiseptic wipe, and clean a spot on the table before placing his reedy arms there and leaning forward. “I’ve followed your writing career for some time,” he tells me. “Your recent pieces in Magazine Mariposa have been nothing less than spellbinding. I’d give anything to visit the Lu Shoukun scrolls before leaving South China, but I’m afraid that will be impossible.”

  “You’ve had me followed,” I say bluntly.

  Dobbins�
��s smile thins just a little. “True.”

  “You tried to have Lillian arrested.”

  “Not arrested,” says Dobbins. “Deported. Sent away from here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because China’s not a safe place for her. Nor is it for you, Julian.”

  We share an unblinking gaze.

  “Someone was killed,” I tell him, “in front of Lillian’s school.”

  Dobbins says, “We had nothing to do with that. We are a pharmaceutical company.”

  “Who was responsible?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, Julian. Many people are watching you. They’re probably watching us right now, which is why I can only meet you this once.”

  Dobbins’s eyes tip down to my prodigious cast and sling. “Sorry about the incident the other night. It happened so quickly, there was nothing to be done. But steps have been taken. You won’t be bothered by that collection agency again.” The cool green eyes almost smile. “But I think I would steer clear of secret domino societies for a while.”

  I stare.

  “I’m going to leave this table in thirteen minutes,” says Dobbins, placing his wristwatch on the table. “Here’s my proposition. I’ll tell you everything I’m at liberty to share. All I ask in return is that you listen. Agreed?”

  Before I can answer, Dobbins says, “I’m here because someone in the States is very concerned about you. I can’t tell you this person’s identity but—”

  “Excuse me,” I interrupt, “Tim. Someone seems to be horsing around with my life and, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d kind of like to know who it is. And those articles in Mariposa are horseshit, and you know it. And I’d rethink the hat if I were you.”

  Dobbins folds his long, thin arms. “Why don’t I just come to the point then? I don’t know how closely you’re following this atypical pneumonia thing, but it appears that China is in for a rough ride. At this juncture, they don’t really know what they’re up against, and once they figure it out—what are they supposed to do about it? With the population density and the lack of sanitation, what could anyone do? No one controls China. Not the Chinese, not anyone.”

  “Oh,” I say, “I get it. You’re here to save my big white American ass from certain death. By the way, did you just tell me, or did I imagine it, that our otherly-abled policeman will never disturb me again?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “Thanks and thanks. I’m quite sure no strings are attached. Or could this outpouring of benevolence have something to do with current research projects at Hydrangea Laboratories?”

  “Not really,” says Dobbins.

  “Oh?” I set down my empty glass. “Here’s where you lose me, Tim. I distinctly remember hearing a very different story from a certain latter-day Charlestown attorney.”

  Dobbins shakes his head. “That was a hoax.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “There is no research project,” says Dobbins. “The focus all along has been getting the two of you out of China. The timing’s wrong. It’s very wrong.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Sorry about that,” he half-grins.

  My ears are starting to ring. “Well, you managed to get Lillian out. That makes your job half-done, doesn’t it?”

  “That wasn’t my doing,” says Dobbins.

  “What wasn’t?”

  “Lillian.”

  “Oh. Then you didn’t poison our mother?”

  Dobbins’s eyes dull. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Julian.”

  “I mean did you poison our mother? It’s a simple question.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I think you’re a lying sack of shit,” I say.

  “Julian, I need you to be calm right now.”

  “I don’t know or care whether you and your hunchbacked friends are DIA, or CIA, or Monty fucking Python—”

  “Your sister will very likely die unless you calm down and listen to me,” says Dobbins.

  We glare at each other across the table. Gradually the sounds of the street return.

  “Lillian can’t come back here,” says Dobbins. “It’s that simple. The only way we can ensure that is for you to go to Memphis and tell her what I’m telling you. And there’s something else.” He places the shopping bag on the table.

  “I’m very glad to hear there’s something else,” I reply.

  “Don’t talk, Julian. Listen.”

  “Because there’s a small problem with your story, Tim. Atypical pneumonia was unheard of before February. It was nonexistent before November. Yet you’ve had your nose up my ass since August of the Year of the Horse. You see my problem?”

  I watch the face across the table soften into a rueful smile. “I knew you’d be a hard nut to crack. I don’t suppose I can ask you to take my word for it?”

  “Your word?” I reply. “Want to give me your word that Hydrangea did not arrange Lillian’s hiring at Stuebans and Rehnquist? Or my little job at Magazine Mariposa?”

  Dobbins shifts in his chair.

  “And before that, Tim, back in our college years. Wasn’t it Hydrangea that suckered us into that lab so we could be measured and earmarked like a couple of white mice—and then sold to Defense?”

  “Julian.”

  “And what about our births, Tim? What about Lil’s and my immaculate conception? Whose work was that? Why do our whole lives seem to be one continuous hoax written, produced, and directed by Hydrangea Laboratories—except for one thing, that is. Our coming to China. That really seems to have you peed, Tim, and I’ll tell you something. That kind of makes me want to stay here.”

  “It’s about Lillian,” Dobbins says dryly. “Think about Lillian.”

  “Okay.” I nod. “I’ll think about Lillian. I’ll get on a plane. I’ll do anything you ask if you’ll just tell me one thing. Why? Why would an international chemical conglomerate be so invested in two tiny lives?”

  Dobbins closes his eyes. “Julian, I know it’s hard but you’ve got to focus right now. I have to leave this table in”—he checks his watch—”seven minutes. There won’t be another chance.”

  His long fingers push the shopping bag a little closer to me. “There’s a vaccine, Julian.”

  “Get away from my table.”

  “Listen to me,” hisses Dobbins. “Just getting you out of China isn’t enough anymore. This thing is everywhere now. You could be infected in a taxi, at the airport, even back in the States.”

  “And wouldn’t that play hell with your little science project?”

  Dobbins shoves the shopping bag across the table. “Just take it. There are two doses. I included the syringes.”

  “Another lie,” I reply. “A vaccine will take at least two years to develop. Read the fucking newspapers.”

  Dobbins’s face flares purple-red. “Will you come out of the fog, Julian? I have the vaccine because I developed it, just as I developed the—”

  The stranger falls panting against his chair. After a long moment, he gasps, “It was all hypothetical. Hypothetical. Just a scenario. There are thousands of scenarios. Thousands… “

  I’m suddenly transfixed by something in this man’s breathing, in the way the words chase each other between gasps.

  “High population. Low sanitation. Holiday travel. Move up delivery. Increase security.” Two bleary eyes search mine. “I didn’t want to believe it. I tried not to believe it. That they were actually going to use this thing.”

  “Who are you?” my voice asks.

  “They’re onto me,” says Dobbins. “They know I’ve tried to get to you. They’ve followed everything back to me. That’s why I have to disappear. I’m running, Julian. You have to listen.”

  “Who are you?”

  “It’s more dangerous than they know. It’s mutating. No one knows what happens next. No one.”

  “Why wouldn’t you meet us?” I ask the man across the table. “Why?”

  Dobbins’s green eyes meet mine uncertainly before turni
ng away. “Your mother had an excellent IQ, good health, good bone structure. Why not? Why not see what would come of it? It was easy to do, to switch the specimen, to use my own genetics. When I learned that you were a mixed-twin pair—I don’t know. For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Vanity, I suppose.”

  “But you refused to meet us. Why?”

  Dobbins pulls out a handkerchief and dabs surgically at one eye. “Everything was exactly as I wanted it. I could enjoy your successes. I could reach out and help you when necessary. Why change things?”

  “Because we needed a father?” I reply.

  “Don’t judge me, Julian. I’ve helped you more times than you know. I’ve given up everything to come here. I couldn’t stand by and watch you and your sister be harmed, not by something I myself…”

  His eyes lose focus for a moment. “You’ve no idea the things I’ve created, Julian. I’m approaching the end of my life, and I realize that I’ve created nothing of value. Nothing except—”

  He looks at me. “Take the vaccine. Give it to Lillian. Don’t wait. Another mutation or two, and it may no longer work.”

  “I’d sooner die,” I tell him.

  A sneer crosses Dobbins’s expression. “Don’t be melodramatic. Not when your sister’s life is at stake.”

  I lean forward. “Listen to me very carefully. My sister’s life, both our lives, begin at the precise point where”—I shove the shopping bag onto his lap—”your help ends.”

  I stand up.

  “Sit down,” says Dobbins.

  Leaning, I say, “You want to be a big help to me? Fine. You can buy dinner.”

  I leave him sitting there.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When I was young, there was a room where I had a father. I visited him there sometimes when the house was too still for sleep. He’d return from work by twilight in a long, polished car. The tires made a popping sound in the gravel. I’d watch him close the car door with a flick of his wrist and toss me a quick smile. Then my father would squat on springy legs and open his arms for me.