Shamanka Part 22

Leaping 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 poppyc.o.c.k."

"Really? Where's your pouffe?" enquires Kitty.

"My pouffe?"

"Your proof," explains Sam. "My friend was. .h.i.t 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 p.r.o.nounced 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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!"

n.o.body 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."

"Have you got any brain cells?" asks Sam.

He looks in the salad box as if they might be in there somewhere, but it's empty.

"I'll grow brain cells in jars and use them to replace the ones that die in my head. I'll build nano-robots smaller than bacteria. They will float around my arteries repairing my body. Hot diggerty, I will be the immortal Professor Farthy!"

It's a remarkable vision of the future, but it doesn't appeal to Sam. She worries about Mr Dwight. If he were revived in a hundred years' time, the world he knew would have changed beyond recognition. His friends and family would all be dead. Wouldn't he be lonely? Beau Farthy leans against the chiller cabinet and refuses to catch her eye.

"Friends and family? Never had much to do with them. Too busy putting lives on hold."

"Family is very important to me," Sam tells him. "Did my father ever have an appointment with you? His name is John Tabuh."

Beau Farthy keeps his records immaculately. He whips out his address book and dons a pair of white cotton gloves so that he doesn't soil the pages.

"Tabuh?"

He drags his finger down a list of names, each of which has a list of appointment times against it. "Let me see now. Tabard ... Tabbidge ... ah, here we are!"

There it is, in black and white. John Tabuh had kept an appointment with Beau Farthy two years ago at three minutes past three, third of March. The professor closes his address book.

"Your daddy had an enquiring mind, but he couldn't grasp the notion of cryonics."

"He's a magician," explains Sam.

"That figures he would keep producing frozen organs from behind my ear. He implied that I could never bring Mr Dwight back to life and I had to remind him that, as a scientist, I knew a whole lot more about life and death than he did that's when he said a strange thing."

"What was it?" asks Sam. "Can you remember? It might be really important."

Beau Farthy remembers only too well. "He said, and I quote, 'Professor, in your opinion, would it be scientifically possible to bring a person back to life by using the power of the mind?'"

"Well, do you?" asks Kitty.

The professor thinks for a while then announces that, as the power of the mind has been scientifically proven to heal the body on occasions, he couldn't rule it out entirely.

"But I sure hope it doesn't happen too often, or I'll be outta business."

By now, Lola is bored. The conversation is of no interest to an orang-utan, so she slopes off unnoticed, back to the room full of dewars. Meanwhile, Professor Farthy has just mentioned that John Tabuh had been very keen to reserve a dewar for his father.

"He seemed mighty anxious that his daddy might die before he'd fulfilled some mission or other. If that situation occurred, he asked if I could freeze the old man until such time as he'd completed it and then defrost him. I turned him down, of course."

"Why?" asks Sam.

"Your grandaddy would have to get here within an hour of his heart stopping. There's no way he could travel all the way from New Guinea to Arizona in time."

"Grandpa lives in New Guinea?" It's the first she's heard of it.

"Sure thing. John said the old man had lived there all his days and would never leave, not physically anyhow. He said his father could leave his body at will and travel anywhere he pleased. I call that poppyc.o.c.k but-"

"I call it teleporting," says Kitty, who for once has remembered the correct word.

"Call it what you will," replies Farthy. "Teleportation has no scientific basis whatsoever. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a crank."

Sam doesn't like to hear her father and Kitty dismissed as cranks.

"Aren't scientists meant to keep open minds, Professor?"

He shakes his head in mild despair. "If you keep your mind open, why, it'll let the flies in. Teleportation is a pretty thought and I concede that certain chanting and drumming has been scientifically proven to affect the temporal lobes, inducing feelings of floating outside of the body..." He pulls out a pen and draws a brain on the wall, marking the temporal lobe with a big arrow, then continues. "I'm telling you that teleportation goes against the laws of science. It's just a hay-lucy-nation. A strong magnetic field can have the same effect, as can drugs. Under the influence, even sane folk claim to leave their bodies, visit unearthly places and converse with the spirits."

"I converse with the spirits and I'm not insane," Kitty pipes up.

Beau Farthy snorts loudly. "That is debatable, Mam. This is not: teleportation is an eye-lusion. Given that Grandaddy Tabuh is a doctor, I'm surprised he has any truck with such nonsense!"

"He's a witch doctor," protests Sam. "Don't you dismiss my grandpa! You might be a scientist but you know nothing about magic."

"Magic?" he scoffs. "Here's five dollars. Go see a magic show. You believe in magic, you'll believe in just about anything. Lookee, little lady, there's a fairy!"

Professor Farthy might be a brilliant scientist but there's no need for him to be so patronizing. He is much easier to bamboozle than he likes to think. Just before Sam, Kitty and Lola leave, he goes to the Room of Temporary Rest to inspect his clients. All is as it should be until he opens Mr Dwight's dewar and finds him sporting a pair of ladies, fur-trimmed slippers on his frozen feet.

They weren't there before; try as he might, Mr Farthy can think of no scientific explanation for them whatsoever and, for the first time, he begins to doubt his own mind.

AN EXCERCISE IN TELEPORTATION.

Teleportation is the ability to move matter instantaneously from one point in time and s.p.a.ce to another. Some psychics claim to be able to time travel by leaving their bodies. This is known as astral body teleportation. Objects can be teleported visually by doing the following: 1. Charge your physical body with energy and place an object in front of you.

2. Close your eyes and picture the object in front of you in your mind's eye.

3. Visualize the energy around the object blending with your own energy.

4. Visualize the object disappearing.

5. Focus your mind on a new destination six feet in front of you.

6. Feel the object reappearing in that new position. Open your eyes.

Do not be disappointed if you can't teleport straight away it takes years of practice and it helps enormously if you're a witch doctor, a midiwiwin or a child with paranormal abilities.