Foreigners (9 page)

“It's back at the hotel in Espérance,” I said.

This pleased him. “Good,” he said. “Good. I'd thought of relieving you of your medication in Cap Gloire, but didn't want to raise suspicion. Besides, I could tell by your palsy that wearing-off had already begun. Now, when was your last dosage?”

“I haven't taken anything since we arrived.”

Marlowe smiled: “Even better. It will all be out of your system, then. We can get started right away.”

I realized now that I did not know this man, that I had never known him. All those years we'd worked together, me acting as his go-between with the bureaucrats at the institute, making certain he had what he needed to continue his search, our search, meant nothing. He paid me for my services with his tales of adventure, maybe the whole while planting the seed that brought me to this God-forsaken place.

“Tell me, Marlowe,” I asked, already knowing what the answer would be. “Is there even a drug here?”

“But, of course, James,” he laughed. “You don't think I'd have gone through this ridiculous charade if there wasn't, do you? What a silly question.”

“How about the pharmaceutical companies?” I said. “The ones who are greasing the palms, as they say?”

“Now that, I'll admit, was something of an exaggeration. But mark my words, James. There
will
be pharmaceutical companies. And their pockets will be very deep indeed.”

“So that's what this is all about, then,” I said.

Marlowe scrunched up his face and gave me a look of mock disapproval, then waggled his finger.

“I'm surprised at you, James. You know as well as I that it's always about that.”

He turned away from me then and spoke to the smaller man, who then went to the nearest hut, returning a moment later with a leather satchel. Marlowe took the bag and sat it between his feet.

“You know, it really is quite a fascinating narcotic,” he said, as he withdrew a hypodermic syringe and a glass phial. “At first I thought it to be a variation on the more common voudoun drug used in rituals all across the island. But it is, in fact, an altogether different beast. You see, the others employ a laughably rudimentary concoction of mescaline and ergo-tised grass seed, while these clever buggers have found themselves a nasty little tree frog whose skin exudes, would you believe it, a wholly unique form of tetrodotoxin.”

Marlowe smiled and held the phial out before him; the grin on his face was that of a small boy who has just found a shiny stone.

“All quite exciting, really,” he said. “Who knows, if we play our cards right, we may even be able to set up a little gourmet concern on the side. Could be big with the Japanese. We could import a gaggle of
fugu
chefs to the Excelsior and offer up a double course of pufferfish and Maladif
grenouilles.
Of course, we would have to take great care with the recipe.”

Marlowe seemed to be finding all of this quite funny, and when he laughed, the
Force Sûreté
men laughed with him, though I doubt they understood a single word he said.

“Now these heathens,” Marlowe went on, motioning toward the surrounding huts, “use the drug in its powder form. They blow it into the intended's face, so that it is inhaled and absorbed through the mucous membrane. Or else they mix it with crushed nettles and spread it over the ground. The small lesions produced are sufficient to allow the drug into the bloodstream. Both remarkably inefficient delivery systems, if you ask me. Injection is far more expeditious.”

He pushed the needle through the rubber stopper in the phial and began to extract the plunger.

“Shall I tell what makes this wee potion so remarkable, James?” He waited for me to answer, and when I didn't, he looked mildly perturbed. “You do have the right to know.”

Again he waited. I said nothing.

“Don't be petulant, James,” Marlowe sneered. “It doesn't become you.” He held the loaded syringe at arm's length and depressed the plunger so that a stream of the solution shot into the air.

“Fine,” I said. “Why don't you tell me what's so remarkable.”

“Gladly, James. Gladly.” His smirk returned. “Unlike the primitive concoction they employ down below, or indeed the
chiri
favoured by Nipponese gourmands,” Marlowe said, “this lovely little wonder does not affect heart rate nor, I'm pleased to say, does it depress respiration. This is no bogeyman potion, James. No Baron Samedi trick to steal the soul. In fact, for all its artlessness, it is quite sophisticated. Very specific. It seems to work exclusively on the voluntary musculature, inducing complete paralysis. There's many an inmate in Cap Gloire's central prison that could attest to that. Well, at least
they could have,” he said, casting a sly glance toward the two
Force Sûreté
men, “had my friends here not paid them a visit in the infirmary.”

“And me?” I asked. “Why me?”

“Please, James,” he said, shaking his head. “I should have thought it obvious by now. You are the perfect choice. Not only do you have a thorough professional knowledge of the disease, but you are also its victim. What more could a scientist ask for than a subject that can report on the effects from both the inside and out?”

I took a deep breath and thought that maybe it would have been better if I had put up a fight. Then I wondered about Mathieu. I wondered if he had fought. Or did he let them take his life as easily as they did his machete?

“This is madness,” I said. “You know that, don't you?”

“On the contrary, James. I see it as pure science.”

“And what about afterward? After you've catalogued your findings. What then?”

Marlowe pursed his lips and looked down at the ground.

“You went into the Maladif jungle with a local guide in search of a community well known for being hostile to outsiders. Neither you nor your guide was ever seen again. It was only by the grace of God and a nasty little viral infection that I didn't suffer the same fate.”

“And that's it?” I said.

“Yes, James,” Marlowe replied. “That's it.”

He motioned to one of the men, who retrieved a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a ball of cotton batting from the satchel. Marlowe held the syringe between his teeth as he swabbed the crook of my left arm.

It took only seconds for the drug to start taking effect. I recognized in myself the initial signs of tetrodotoxin poisoning, almost as if I were witnessing them in a lab specimen. My motor coordination began to fail and the entire surface of my skin was soon numb. I began to salivate; a long string of spittle slipped from the corner of my mouth and hung, unbroken, from my chin. I could feel my muscles weaken and my head started to droop. The sensation was quite frightening at first. It felt as if tiny strings throughout my body were unravelling, as if I were coming undone. There was a flash of heat behind my eyes. From there it radiated out and I was bathed in warmth, from the top of my skull to the tips of my toes. This was followed by a pleasant sense of hollowness, as if I'd been emptied out, leaving just the shell of me, nothing else.

I could hear Marlowe's voice, coming at me as if over a great distance. It wavered, then was loud again, as if it were being tossed about by the wind.

“James,” I heard him call. “Are you still with us, James?” He lifted my head and peered into my eyes. “Of course you are,” he said. “You're still in there.”

He was grinning like a cat.

“Don't you forget, James,” he said, almost shouting now. “Don't you forget what it feels like. Notes; a good scientist always takes notes. Now,” he said, gently turning my head to the side, “have a look at this.”

He was showing me my hand, my left hand. It lay motionless on my thigh. As still as it had been in many months, not a tremor to be seen. As if my body were at last my own again.

Then Marlowe turned my face back toward his own, and I noticed in it a look akin to compassion.

“I think that's good enough for our first go-round, don't you?” He nodded my head for me. “I'm going to give you another shot now, James,” he said, as if he was explaining a simple medical procedure to a worried child. “It's a mild
Datura stramonium
derivative. Has some rather intriguing hallucinogenic properties, but nothing too potent.”

At this point, Marlowe motioned to one of the others to hold my head while he prepared a second syringe. He administered it very near the puncture mark left by the first. Then he stepped back and waited, looking more than satisfied with himself. But when nothing happened, his demeanour changed. He became agitated.

He waited a moment longer, then knelt down on the ground in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders.

“James,” he said in a ridiculously stern voice. “Are you listening to me, James? I'll have no games here. This is serious business.”

The
Force Sûreté
man holding me from behind spoke. I did not understand what he said, but his tone was distinctly unfriendly. Marlowe hissed at him in indecipherable Creole, then reached for his satchel and withdrew another syringe.

“One more, James,” he said, offering me a hopeful look. “But that's it. I don't want you bouncing around this place like a madman.”

Thirty minutes later, I still showed no signs of re-emerging from the stupor. Frustrated, Marlowe grabbed me by my hair and pulled my head back over my shoulders. He put his face very close to mine and shouted my name repeatedly. Small
foamy pockets of saliva collected in the corners of his mouth. And as he yelled, the veins in his neck bulged. He could not tell that I was laughing at him.

He ordered the men to cut me loose from the chair. They carried me back to the hut and laid me down again on the straw mat.

As near as I could tell, the two men from the
Force Sûreté
left before evening fell. Until then, they had remained standing just inside the doorway to the hut, eyeing Marlowe as he worked to revive me. As the hours passed, he grew more frantic.

My third injection of the
Datura stramonium,
though it showed no outward effect, served to produce some rather interesting visions. At one point, I thought I saw Mathieu leaning over me, grinning, and telling me in a voice that sounded much like my own that he had gone back and found the mules, and that he'd returned them safely to the old man's livery. Then Mathieu's face began to swirl about, like water over a drain, until it was gone altogether, replaced by a large black fly buzzing in the air above me.

After the
Force Sûreté
men had left, Marlowe calmed considerably, though he appeared no less concerned about my condition. In their absence, he began to look to more arcane remedies to resuscitate me. He directed the villagers to produce balms and mud packs, and he spread a paste made from tree bark on the inside of my lips and under my tongue. The whole of the while he nattered away, scolding me one moment, the next caressing my brow and whispering softly
into my ear. Most of what he had to say did not register, so addled was I by the hallucinogenic cocktail he'd fed into my veins.

For a day and a half he disappeared. I can only assume he went back to Cap Gloire for supplies, because when he returned he brought with him several new intravenous variants of the original
Datura stramonium
derivative, each of increased potency. None produced any greater effect than magnifying my apparitions, and further deflating his own spirit. These failures took their toll. When he looked down at me, the disappointment registered in his features. Of the two of us, I'd no doubt that it was I who now appeared the younger. A thought that pleased me greatly.

Then, a few days after Marlowe's return from Cap Gloire, a colonel of the
Force Sûreté
came to the village. He and Marlowe stood outside of the hut arguing, their voices cracking in anger. When they came inside, the officer took out a handkerchief and held it over his nose and mouth. By then, the smell in the hut was ungodly. The sad fact was, with the paralysis of my voluntary musculature, I no longer had the ability to control my bodily functions. And the thin gruel that Marlowe forced down my throat through a feeding tube fashioned out of a length of rubber surgical tubing went through me like Pablum through a newborn. As he refused any assistance from the villagers, the job of my cleaning fell to Marlowe; it was not a duty he performed regularly.