Shamanka (29 page)

Father Bayu smiles on the inside. “And what would that be, Sam?”

“I wondered if you could heal Kitty's face? Kitty, show Father Bayu your burns.”

Kitty drops her basket of oranges. “Oh, I don't think so.”

Father Bayu takes Kitty's arm. “Come, my friend. Let me see what I can do. What have you got to lose?”

Sam urges her to go with him. “Go on! I promise not to look at you.”

To her surprise, Kitty allows Father Bayu to lead her away to the inner sanctuary of the church. He closes the door behind him. Lola comes down from the tree and sits next to Sam.

“He seems like a nice man, doesn't he, Lola?”

“Ooo.” Lola nods vigorously and spits out a hail of orange pips.

“That's not very ladylike, is it, Lola?”

No, but it's fun, so the two of them suck oranges and shoot pips until the portly psychic healer returns with his patient. To Sam's disappointment, Kitty is still wearing her mask.

“Didn't it work, Father Bayu? Not even a slight improvement? Can I see, Kitty?”

Father Bayu smiles on the outside. “Patience, Sam Tabuh. In time, Kitty will show you her face and you will know the truth about me … about many things.”

With that, he genuflects and drifts off to deadhead his orchids.

The masked magician pours water into a cup and declares it will turn into ice before your eyes. With a wave of a wand, the cup is turned upside down and an ice cube falls out. How?

THE SECRET

You need: an ice cube, a jug of water, a small dry sponge, a large white plastic cup
.

1. Wedge the sponge in the bottom of the cup so it won't fall out when you turn it over.

2. Put an ice cube in the cup on top of the sponge.

3. Pour a small amount of water into the cup.

4. Say the magic word and turn the cup upside down. The ice cube will fall out but the sponge will have soaked up all the water.

L
eaping forward as we must – for life is short – we are now flying to America. Sam has sold the second pearl to pay for the flight. There's enough money left to afford a good hotel and buy new shoes. It's tempting, but as there's only one pearl left and several countries to visit, they'll have to check into a cheap hotel and stick with their old shoes. Lola's happy; she's fond of Mrs Fraye's slippers – they have fur around the ankles which she likes to pet.

The person who bought the second pearl was a Mexican jeweller who looked rather like the sort of old lady who might buy a barge full of cats, except that
this
old lady had a black twirly moustache (but then so did my grandmother).

Another thing. Although Esperanza had confirmed that Mr and Mrs Tabuh were heading for America, what she didn't know was that, on the way, they were kidnapped by bandits who kept them hostage for months. If the Dark Prince hadn't spooked them with his famous mind-reading trick – the one with the envelope and lighter fuel – they might never have been released. He'd have performed it much earlier of course, but have you ever tried to get hold of white envelopes in bandit country?

We are about to land in Arizona. According to the witch doctor's list that's where Beau Farthy lives, and it's crucial that Sam visits him. There's a portrait next to Mr Farthy's name in which he appears to be holding a cigar or a carrot. Or is it a blowpipe?

Actually, it's a test tube. Yafer Tabuh might be an excellent witch doctor, but he isn't the best of artists. If he drew you a cat, you might easily mistake it for a guinea pig or a moose, or even a hairdryer.

“Maybe Beau Farthy's a plastic surgeon,” suggests Sam. “That'd be good, because if Father Bayu was a fraud and your face doesn't heal, he could give you a new nose, Kitty.”

“Yes, and maybe he could snip a bit off yours to stop you poking it in my business.” Kitty adjusts her mask automatically; it's become a nervous tic. She's ultra sensitive about her appearance. I almost wish Beau Farthy were a plastic surgeon. Plastic surgeons create illusions. They go against the laws of nature and magically reverse time. Sam would have learnt a great deal about what is real from someone who specializes in altering appearances.

In fact, Beau Farthy is an expert in doing the opposite; he keeps people looking exactly as they are for as long as possible – for centuries if necessary. He's a pioneer in cryonics: the art of preserving bodies until science finds a cure for their disease – at which point, they could be defrosted and brought back to life.

“That's the theory, folks!” says Professor Farthy, pushing his fingers through his blond quiff and wiping the excess hair oil down his laboratory coat.

Sam is intrigued. “When – if – you're able to bring the dead back to life because of medical advances, would you call that resurrection, professor?”

He shakes his head irritably. “No, no, I'm not bringing back the dead. I'm preserving the life of the
living
.”

“You freeze people while they're still alive?”

Professor Farthy rolls his eyes and rearranges his biros in order of thickness, unable to relax for a second. “What is being alive!” he exclaims. “Not everyone has the same definition of Mr Death.”

He sharpens his pencil down to a stub and glares at Lola, who is merrily jumbling up his pens. He bats her away and rearranges them again, then with a sigh of relief, continues, “Death is just medicine's way of excusing itself from problems it cannot fix today. In the West, doctors believe the brain dies five minutes after the heart stops. But that's poppycock.”

“Really? Where's your pouffe?” enquires Kitty.

“My pouffe?”

“Your proof,” explains Sam. “My friend was hit on the head; she forgets certain words.”

Beau Farthy thrusts a brochure into Kitty's hand.

“If that memory of yours doesn't improve none, why not consider cryonics, Mam? In the future, poor memory will be a thing of the past… Dang! Now you've made me forget what I was saying!”

“That our brains stay alive after our hearts stop.”

“Indeedy!” beams Professor Farthy. “Many folk have been pronounced drop-down dead only to be revived a whole hour later.”

Kitty tells him that a similar thing happened to her after she'd tripped over a cat and fell down the stairs but Beau Farthy isn't interested in anything anyone else has to say.

“The Catholic Church has yet another definition of death,” he continues, snatching a red biro from Lola and slamming it back in its rightful place. “It insists that death is the final separation of your soul from your body. But to believe that, you must believe in the existence of a soul.
Pah!
”

“Don't you believe we have souls?” asks Sam.

The professor rearranges a pile of papers on his desk and groans. “I am a
scientist
. I've studied every cell in the human body but I have yet to see the slightest sliver of soul under my microscope.”

There's a slight pause, then, as politely as she can, Sam interjects. “But just because we can't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, does it? Perhaps it was a really cheap microscope.”

He reels back as if she's slapped him in the face. “Not so! My mommy bought that microscope. She always bought me the best!”

He explains mournfully that his mother's generosity was to compensate for the fact that she never visited him at boarding school or sent him cherry pie like the other boys' mothers and that she'd even missed his graduation day.

Sam can only sympathize with him. “I'm sure it was a great microscope. Maybe it's just that no one has made a lens powerful enough to see the human soul yet.”

“Until they do, I remain sceptical,” insists Professor Farthy. “I'm a scientist, I need scientific proof that the soul exists, which I truly doubt.”

He grabs a rack of test tubes from Lola, who is playing a tune on them, then flings himself back in his chair, eyes glazed, mouth gaping.

“I might have proof when I'm dead,” he drawls. “But as I intend to have myself cryonically preserved and cured of whatever vile disease carries me off, the truth will be a long time a-coming.”

The prospect of immortality cheers him up no end. He vaults out of his chair and asks if they'd like to visit his clients. They are preserved like human ice lollies out the back.

I hope you're wearing a vest. It's bitterly cold here in the Room of Temporary Rest. Although Lola removed her costume after she left the airport, she still has her slippers on, which provide much needed warmth. Sam and Kitty are shivering.

Beau Farthy draws their attention to a row of human-sized churns, dabbing the end of his nose before the drip hanging off it turns into an icicle.

“Each dewar contains one of my clients,” he exclaims, slapping the side of the nearest churn and chatting to the contents. “Howdy, Mr Dwight. Brought some visitors to see you.”

He undoes the lid. As a cloud of liquid nitrogen escapes, he encourages Sam to look inside. She isn't squeamish, but she hesitates; she's never seen a corpse before. Could it be a more scary sight than Aunt Candy first thing in the morning? She swallows hard then peeks at Mr Dwight.

“He looks very dead to me, Professor.”

Beau Farthy waves his arms wildly, shushing her and putting his finger to his lips. “I reject that observation; my patients aren't dead, their lives are on hold. Their brains were still functioning when they arrived, which is more than can be said for some folks.”

He smiles sarcastically at Sam. She's tempted to throw her voice and make Mr Dwight say something rude, but she desists; she doesn't want him to lose his dignity any more than he already has, crammed into an ice box like a piece of pork past its sell-by date.

“Mr Dwight is not
dead
!” repeats the Professor, “He's in a state of suspension, like a hibernating turtle. Before his brain stopped, I cooled him down to a temperature at which he no longer requires oxygen; breathing is not an issue for him. His organs remain as fresh as a daisy – have a sniff!”

Nobody wants to, so he closes the dewar lid with a bang and, rubbing his hands together, asks if they'd like to see his horses.

“Do you have stables, Professor Farthy?”

“No, but I sure do have a big refrigerator.”

Sam and Kitty are led to another room. Sporting a pair of mittens, Beau Farthy removes what looks like an ice-cube tray from a chiller cabinet. In each section there's a translucent embryo no bigger than the snotty chick in an under-boiled egg.

“Race horses! Future champions. Say, would you ladies like to see my bulls?”

There's no polite answer to that. Sam, Kitty and Lola are treated to the entire contents of the fridge, which contains not only bull embryos but endangered species from around the globe, including the Sumatran tiger and the giant panda.

“Only last year a wild cat was born after its frozen embryo was implanted into a domestic cat – a total success!” whoops the professor. “Which sure does give me hope for Mr Dwight. I see no reason why I can't restore him to the peak of health some sunny day.”

Except that Mr Dwight wasn't a wild cat; he was an insurance salesman – and he was a whole lot bigger than a kitten embryo. Sam finds it hard to share Professor Farthy's optimism.

“Have you thawed out any patients yet?”

He avoids the issue by showing them what else he's got in his freezer: three pots of yogurt, half a pizza and rack upon rack of individual human cells stored in frozen vials.

“Looky here now, skin cells! They were grown in my laboratory. Entire organs can be grown – here's a kidney that I made earlier; so sleek, so shiny…” He rubs the kidney lovingly across his cheek then produces a liver. “I could transplant one organ after another, endlessly,” he enthuses. “Completely negating the ageing process.”