The Lost Goddess

43

“Please. Wear this, over your clothes. It is time for you to meet Chemda. We are going outside, and it’s a little cold.”

Sen was offering him a coat.

Two men came in, imperviously unsmiling Chinese guards, in some kind of uniform. They unlocked the shackle on Jake’s ankle. He swung his legs out of the bed and stood. As he did, he waited for the sense of weakness in his limbs; yet he felt nothing. Nothing? Nothing. He felt quite fine. Completely normal. Yet also anguished.

What had they done to Chemda?

He would have taken on Sen and Tyrone, here and now — but the silent guards were armed.

Neatly piled on a table, he found his clothes: clean boots and clean jeans, a neatly pressed, blue-striped shirt.

Dressed, and wearing the coat, escorted by the guards, Jake followed Tyrone and Sen through the door into a corridor, with a rectangle of silver and dazzling light at the end. A glass door.

Jake pushed the door and stepped onto a sunlit terrace, where he saw one man sitting at a large table laid with food for many. Jake recognized the figure from the photograph Julia had shown him: it was Colin Fishwick, a much older Colin Fishwick. The smile of Phnom Penh had been replaced by the sad, sad face of Balagezong.

Balagezong.

Jake stared across the table on the terrace, at Balagezong.

The laboratory complex was set on a vast butte of rock. Surrounding them, guarding them, even, was a hamlet of Tibetan houses, themselves surrounded by turnip fields and yak paddocks; a lane at one end of the village led to a white stupa where prayer flags rappled on a promontory of rock.

The sky was faintly veiled; blue skies smiled behind the translucent mist, like Buddhist paintings under rippling silk thangkas.

A noise. He turned.

Chemda.

She was approaching the table, her expression distant and opaque. He scanned her body and her head for signs of injury, but she seemed intact; yet the eyes were different, untrusting, clear but untrusting. He walked around the table and embraced her, and she kissed him.

The guards had hung back. Tyrone and Sen loitered at the other side of the table. Observing. They knew there was nothing Jake could do. He was imprisoned here, with his fate. He kissed Chemda again. And confirmed the bitter truth.

The kiss was different.

“Chem?”

Detaching herself from his arms, she said, “I’m OK. Thank you for trying to save me. Ah. Ah. What can I say.”

Her eyes said I love you but her words were worryingly staccato.

What had they done to her? She was different.

She pressed a hand flat on his chest and shook her head, and a tremble in her mouth told him she was near to tears. She shook her head again — as if she were trying to say goodbye but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

All she said was: “I’m OK. They kept me here. Wouldn’t let me see you until they had done that thing. Their surgery.”

“So you know it all? The whole story?”

Her dark eyes avoided his gaze, her voice was low and murmuring.

“My grandfather, S-37, my family, his role, I know it all. Sonisoy? Anlong Veng? All of it. Ah. What can we do now, what choice do I have? It is too late anyway.”

“Chem?”

Her eyes lifted. They found his regard and she said: “How do you feel? How do you feel about me now, Jake? Now they have done this?”

He gazed at her and gazed around, and he surveyed the meaningless circle of summits, above the plunging and pitiless gorges. And he knew that what he really wanted was to have sex, maybe with Chemda, with her firm, eager breasts. Or maybe with one of those cute Tibetan girls in the village, with their rose-apple smiles.

But he didn’t love her. He wanted to fuck her. But he didn’t love her. He didn’t love Chemda anymore.

It was true. Why deny it? He just didn’t love her, not in that special, ludicrous way. No. She was beautiful and sexy and he liked fucking her. Of course. She was a fine woman, intelligent, moral, and he respected her, he could imagine her as his wife, but love? That was all absurd.

He didn’t love her. Love was a neurochemical reaction, a disorder of the hormones, a ruse designed by nature to make men procreate and then hang around with some yowling brat for at least eighteen months until the trick of love expired like free software with a time limit, so no, he didn’t love her, but he still admired her and he desired her. And they were friends.

Jake happily smiled and kissed Chemda on the cheek, and she looked at him fearfully and said:

“What have they done to you? Jake? Tell me? How do you feel?”

Her soft hand went to his head and she touched the top of it, and, as if he had been injected, he felt a stab of sharp pain.

His hand reflexively went to his head, to the scar. A scar? He had a scar on his head.

He was freshly scarred. The top of the forehead.