Hayden settled back, taking absent-minded pleasure in the soft creak of the leather. He stared at the suspended ceiling, the gleaming baffled louvres of the light diffusers, and wondered where to begin. "I had this toothache," he began; and then thought: G.o.d, the toothache, yeah. What about that? Where does pain go, when it goes? We remember the fact of its having happened: rationally, its existence is accessible to us as a memory, and all the rest of it. But does the body itself remember on some cellular level, tissue, meat and pulp? Not in the same way, or else we"d surely go crazy. Imagine if each component part of us had 24/7 sentience in its own right, equal broadcasting time, like candidates in the Presidential debate. Suppose each bone, each nerve ending, had its own hotline to the sensorium; imagine the clamour, as the body became a Grand Central of sensation, a Babel of reaction . . .
"A toothache?" Dr. Pang was waiting patiently. Hayden blinked, and tried to pick up his thread. "Er, sorry, yes. It started about a month ago, I suppose, just as I was arriving in Hong Kong."
"A month? My goodness." Dr. Pang was the picture of respectful sympathy. "Four weeks is a very long time to be in pain. Was it perhaps not so bad at first?"
"No . . . I mean yes. It was very painful." If the Eskimos have all those words for snow, supposedly, then how come extreme discomfort boils down to a single syllable? True pain is irreducible, probably; indivisible, unchanging at the root. There are modifiers, quantifiers, stabbing and throbbing, acute and severe and all the rest of them, but they really just serve to dress up the thing in itself: the monad constant and impregnable, the primordial principle of existence. Ouch. It hurts, therefore I am.
Dr. Pang"s alert expressive face settled into a troubled moue. He shook his head slightly, as if in reproof. "Then you should have come to see me before now. Have you taken anything for the pain?"
Hayden felt in his pockets for the mangled remains of the various blister packs he"d picked up at the pharmacy, and handed them to Dr. Pang to be tutted over. "I was going through those a strip at a time at one point," he confessed, resettling himself in the dentist"s chair. "Popping them like M&Ms. The thing was, none of them were really working."
"Of course not." Dr. Pang was shaking his head again, more in sorrow than in anger. "Over-the-counter medications such as these: you cannot expect them to deal with severe neuralgic pain. The problem must be dealt with at the root, Mr Hayden. Literally, in this case." He allowed himself an unpresumptuous smile.
"Yes . . . " Hayden was thinking. "Yes, I see that now, of course. Stupid of me, really." He rubbed a thumb experimentally along the point of his jaw. "I suppose it must have been around the third night when I just couldn"t bear it any longer . . . "
Somewhere towards the witching hour, after the last of the cheap pills had worn off, he admitted to himself there was nothing for it but to seek help. He ought to have done it before, of course, but a quick status check had confirmed his worst fears: his bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt traveller"s insurance didn"t cover emergency dental treatment. He"d have to pay for the treatment himself, and if the pricing policies of the first ten local dentists on the list he"d googled on his laptop were at all representative, even a quick backstreet extraction sans anaesthetic would leave a hole in his current account roughly the size of Hong Kong harbour. This trip was running on the very edge of profitability as it was: one thumping dental bill would leave him dangerously out of pocket.
Over and above that-go on, admit it-he just didn"t like dentists. They scared him: everything about them, their white coats, their whirring drills, the lights they shone in your eyes. Their cold unblinking stares, as they leaned over you and stuck sharp metal spikes into your soft pink gums. The way they charged you an arm and a leg for the privilege of inflicting their medically sanctioned torture. Dentists? Monsters. Who else would volunteer for a job like that? It was a measure of the extremity of Hayden"s predicament that he"d even considered going to one in the first place. Now, having come to the end of his tether, he was checking through the small-print of his freelance employment contract to see whether it might cover medical treatment. It didn"t, of course: Hayden could almost hear the sn.i.g.g.e.rs of the s.a.d.i.s.ts in the legal department as they carefully precluded even the possibility of such a claim. Smug toothy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. He stuffed the contract back in his briefcase, riffled through the rest of his papers- -and came up with the Scientific American he"d bought for the flight. The magazine was folded open to the last article he"d been reading, back on the plane: "MIRACLE" CHINESE DENTAL TREATMENT TO UNDERGO TRIALS IN WEST. Squinting from the pain, he tried to focus on the headline; the final clause dissolved beneath his crosseyed scrutiny, leaving just four enormous words that filled the entire page, like newspaper declarations of war. "MIRACLE" CHINESE DENTAL . . . and as he stared, those super-cautious quotes, those weasel qualifiers, seemed to dwindle all the way into transparency and pop like tiny bubbles in champagne. A miracle; Christ, yes, that was what he wanted, a bucket of that, please.
The hotel porter, once buzzed up to the room and acquainted with the contents of Hayden"s wallet, was gratifyingly eager to help. Hayden handed him the copy of Scientific American: scanning through the article intently, he nodded from time to time, then looked up. "You want-drugs!" he announced brightly.
"No-well, sort of, yes-look, I want medicine." Hayden pointed to the article, then to his swollen cheek. "Medicine. For toothache."
"Medicine . . . ?" The porter (whose name was Jimmy Tsui) frowned. "You use up all your medicine already?" Only the night before, he"d pointed Hayden in the direction of the pharmacy round the corner.
"It"s not strong enough," explained Hayden. "I need something much much stronger-do you understand?"
"Sooo . . . you want drugs?"
"Not just any drugs," insisted Hayden. "This drug. I want to know where in Hong Kong I can go to get some of this-look, here, this miracle Chinese dental treatment, see?" Why was everything so complicated?
Between Hayden"s ravaged jaw and the magazine article, enlighten-ment gradually dawned on Jimmy Tsui. He jabbed a finger at the magazine and rattled off a musical burst of syllables. It might have been a brand name; it sounded pithy and to the point, uuan-shan-dhol. Hayden tried it out himself: "w.a.n.g-chang . . . wan-shang-dole? Is that this? The miracle thing?"
"Miracle, yes . . . " The porter nodded hard, his eyes saucer-wide in the wonderment of understanding. "You want-ask man about this?" He indicated the article, its ill.u.s.tration of a human head scanned by MRI into skull-like abstraction, all fangs and empty eye sockets. "Man who will sell you medicine . . . for this?" He pointed gingerly at Hayden"s mouth.
"G.o.d, yes! Do you know anywhere I can get it? I can go up to five thousand Hong Kong, maybe seven . . . "
At long last, the porter seemed to have grasped it. "I know good doctor, yes, he got-all what you want! My shift-over, fifteen minutes! We take taxi into Mong Kok, you and me!" He tapped a finger against his nose, then laughed a trifle nervously as Hayden followed suit. Almost weeping at the prospect of relief, Hayden made to shake his hand, but the porter was already excusing himself, slipping backwards through the door in a deferential bow.
And so, soon after midnight, Hayden found himself crossing the harbour in the company of Jimmy Tsui. The taxi injected them directly into the rush and clamour of the Mong Kok strip, close by Sim City and the soaring Grand Tower. Even at this hour the bright sidewalks were chock-full of pedestrians jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, streets glittering and congested like the chutes of the pac.h.i.n.ko machines in the slot parlours, all played out to a chorus of tinny chipmusic leaking from headphones and shop doorways. Above their heads neon advertis.e.m.e.nts flickered the length of Shantung Street, pulsing through the pollution layer, making rainbows on the oily tarmac underfoot. The night smelled of spent fireworks and overheated motherboards.
Jimmy tugged at his sleeve, once, twice. "Not far now! Follow me!" Hayden did his best to keep up with the porter as he dodged and shouldercharged across the road. Once he caught sight of himself in an unlit window: the surgical face-mask with which Jimmy had thought-fully provided him-"Best you wear this-keep mouth hidden!"-made him look like the mad doctor in a Frankenstein movie. It was all in the eyes, he decided, before hastening on to follow Jimmy down a narrow entranceway between two buildings.
The walls on either side leaned in so close there was barely room for Hayden and Jimmy to walk line abreast. Optimistically, or else suicidally, a gang of kids came rollerblading at breakneck speed towards them: Hayden flattened himself against the graffitied concrete as they whizzed past, one hand raised to guard his face. Up ahead Jimmy had come to another right turn; he waited for Hayden to catch up before gesturing theatrically and exclaiming, "This Night-town! You in Night-town now!"
Night-town took the form of another, wider alley running parallel to the strip. Each of the commercial premises stripside seemed to have its corresponding-probably unlicensed-counterpart round the back: some were simple stalls of wood-strut and canvas, while others were breezeblock lean-tos built straight on to the backs of the buildings. Jury-rigged lighting run illegally off the mains lit up the bustling alley: between that and whatever moonlight could reach the concrete canyon, Hayden could just about pick his way through the detritus underfoot. Dismembered cardboard boxes blocked his way; drifts of Styrofoam packing beads, twisted snares of parcel strap, split plastic bags in the process of leaking their unguessable contents. Bedded down amongst the rubbish here and there were people lying slumped against the walls, needy or beyond need, it was impossible to tell. Whenever they pa.s.sed one of these unfortunates, heads lolling anyhow, skins the colour and texture of mushrooms grown in tunnels, Jimmy would grab Hayden"s arm and hurry him onwards. All the while, the ambulant dwellers of Night-town padded past on their backstreet errands, cl.u.s.tering briefly by each chop stall before disappearing off into the shadows.
Extractor fans heaved and whirred stale second-hand odours at them: cigarette smoke, fast food, generator fumes. Hayden pulled his mask up over his nose and pressed on after Jimmy. Which of these booths was to be their destination? This one, perhaps: the concrete box with no door stacked floor to ceiling with cans of Kirin beer? Or the one opposite: racks of old iPods and Wiis, all scorched and heat-warped, the pinstriped proprietor perched toadlike on a tiny stool in the doorway, both hands permanently hidden inside the open briefcase that lay across his knees? Maybe this one: a whole wall full of Blu-ray discs, no cases, the discs hung up on nails, their laser-etched data tracks scattering rainbow moires of light across the faces of the teenagers who examined them.
None of these, of course. Instead, Jimmy stopped outside a plain doorway towards the end of the block, in between a dirty-looking noodle parlour and a tattooist"s with screaming demon shingle. "This way," he announced proudly, "the bas.e.m.e.nt!" He ushered Hayden through the door, and followed after him down a flight of concrete stairs. At the first turn there lay sprawled another of the mushroom people. Hayden stepped gingerly over him, but Jimmy administered a sharp kick in the ribs that sent the man crashing against the wall. "Filthy monkey," he spat after the unfortunate indigent as he scrambled away up the steps. He turned to Hayden. "You follow me," he urged, and pushed past him down the stairway. By the light of red emergency bulbs, they continued their descent.
Down to an open fire-door, before which Jimmy stopped and looked round, nervously it seemed. Hayden smiled encouragingly, then realised he was still wearing the face mask. "You come please," said Jimmy, holding wide the door.
The corridor beyond was disturbingly dark, lit only by a crack of greenish light that shone through a door left ajar at the further end. It didn"t look like normal room-lighting; Hayden was put in mind of the luminosity of certain sea creatures, or weird electrical discharges like Saint Elmo"s fire. Jimmy jogged down the corridor and gave a sharp double knock at the door, then vanished inside after signalling Hayden to wait.
Hayden heard voices through the open door, Jimmy"s first of all, then that of another, much older-sounding man. After a few seconds Jimmy reappeared. He positioned himself very close to Hayden and spoke almost directly into his ear.
"Doctor has agree to see you. Make-examination! Ready in a little while."
"That"s good," said Hayden uneasily. The subterranean consultant will see you now. They waited by the door, during which time Jimmy played a game of Tetris on his mobile phone. In the absence of chairs and magazines in this unorthodox waiting room, Hayden got bored; he made as if to take a look inside, but was blocked off rapidly by Jimmy. "Wait one minute!"
Frustrated, Hayden gestured with his hands at the bare corridor; Jimmy shrugged, I don"t make the rules round here. But even as he spoke, a guttural word of command came from inside the room, and Jimmy clapped his hands in satisfaction. Taking Hayden by the shoulders, he propelled him through the doorway. "See you outside," he said, and vanished.
What had Hayden been expecting? Something stagey and traditional, a scene from the movies: a whiff of the mysterious East. An old-fashioned apothecary"s with boxes of dried frogs, incense on braziers and twirling paper lanterns; or a smoky Triad opium den, the lair of Fu Manchu. What he actually found himself in was something else again.
It was a plain concrete bunker, dank and claustrophobic, lined floor to ceiling with industrial slotted shelving. There were no light-fittings, nor were there any candles or lanterns. The only illumination came from an enormous fish-tank, which was lit partly by electric light, and partly by the eerie bioluminescence of whatever was inside it-Hayden couldn"t quite make it out, and wasn"t really sure he wanted to know anyway. Silhouetted against the greenly glowing tank was a figure, standing very close to the gla.s.s but facing Hayden.
He"d sounded like an elderly man, but looking at him now he could have been any age. Between the green medical cap and a face-mask like Hayden"s own hardly any of his features were exposed, and over his eyes he wore tinted swimmer"s goggles. The rest of his uniform consisted of a green smock and dark trousers, terminating an inch or so above his rope sandals; old man"s ankles, noted Hayden, glad to have something to cling on to. The overall effect was deeply unsettling, and probably only a man in Hayden"s sort of pain would have dreamed of going through with it. But he was desperate, and he wanted more than anything to get it over with, so he advanced a couple of steps into the room and bowed slightly.
The doctor said something brusque and croaky. Hayden thought of fetching Jimmy in to translate, then remembered that rolled up in his coat pocket was the invaluable copy of Scientific American. Bowing once more, he held out the magazine, indicating the article in question. The doctor made no attempt to look at it. Hayden gestured again for him to take it; this time the doctor extended a rubber-gloved hand and s.n.a.t.c.hed the magazine away. He studied it for a minute, then rolled it up very tight as if wringing a chicken"s neck. He stared at his patient blankly, waiting for him to acquire basic conversational Mandarin perhaps. Behind him, the air filtration unit in the tank bubbled softly.
Hayden had hoped the doctor would catch on sooner. What to do? Gingerly, he removed his face-mask, the better to articulate his wants. "Aaangh," he said, mouth wide open, finger pointing inside to the source of all his misery. "Naad toos. Agh ong." Surely the old codger could see what the matter was? "Bad tooth. That one." Please.
The doctor unrolled the magazine, looked from the article to the inside of Hayden"s mouth and back again. He traced his finger along the text and read aloud, "Den-tee-shon . . . denteeshon?" He looked back up at Hayden. Hayden nodded his encouragement. "Denteeshon,""the old man repeated pugnaciously. Again Hayden nodded. The doctor spread his hands wide in the universal mime for no idea, and threw the magazine at Hayden"s feet.
Hayden scowled, then winced as his wrecked tooth yanked on its taproot of agony. How difficult was this going to be? "Look, I"ve got a toothache," he said, speaking slowly and emphasising words as if clarity alone would render them comprehensible to the doctor. To drive the point home, he pulled back his lips from his teeth to reveal the offending molar. "Hajg hju-" the doctor recoiled as if offended, and Hayden removed his fingers from his mouth-"Have you got any of this stuff?" He tapped the headline, ran his saliva-smeared finger beneath the familiar words, words that now only mocked him: "MIRACLE" CHINESE DENTAL TREATMENT. The old man shrugged, and Hayden felt like picking him up, all six stone of him, and shaking him till the medication fell out. Why couldn"t everyone speak English, for G.o.d"s sake?
On the verge of giving up and going back to the hotel, he tried one more time. "Jimmy, the man who brought me here? He said you"d be able to get me treatment for it. Like in the magazine?" Pointing at the Scientific American on the floor. "He called it wan-chang something . . . w.a.n.g-shan-dole?"
Behind the face-mask came a sharp hiss of indrawn breath. The doctor had understood that part, all right. Emboldened, Hayden repeated it, pointing at his tooth: "w.a.n.g-shan-dole?" He smiled, hoping at last to get the consultation properly under way.
Quaveringly, the old man pointed at him, and fired off a breathy burst of Cantonese; something fast and high and wildly inflected. It ended in uuan-shan-dhol and a question mark, and a finger insistently jabbed in Hayden"s direction.
Hayden seized eagerly on the one thing he thought he recognised. "Wan-shan-dole," he a.s.sented, pointing at himself.
Even under his mask there was something almost comically incredulous in the doctor"s att.i.tude-what, you?-as he let off another volley of Cantonese, again with that magic uuan-shan-dhol tucked away in it. Before Hayden could agree with him, the doctor was off and rooting through his shelves.
Without turning to Hayden he kept up a running commentary out of the corner of his mouth, shaking his head and throwing in the odd uuan-shan-dhol for good measure. At the time, Hayden was too impatient to register subtleties, but looking back later he got the feeling the old man didn"t really care to have him in the room much longer than was absolutely necessary, now he"d diagnosed the problem.
After all that fuss, it took the doctor less than a minute to come up with the goods: a pocket-sized cardboard box completely covered with small print in Pinyin and Standard Script. He held it out at arm"s length; Hayden went to take it from him, and had to grab it as it fell. The old man had simply let it drop, before s.n.a.t.c.hing his hand away as if afraid of catching Hayden"s toothache.
Hayden turned the box round and round. "That"s great," he said, hardly daring to believe he had the miracle cure in his hands at last. "Absolutely brilliant. How much do I owe you?" He took out his wallet and held it invitingly open.
The doctor, more animated and seemingly more nervous than before, scuttled forward and plucked out a few bills at random. Looking at what was left, Hayden realised he"d taken forty, fifty HK at most. The larger notes he"d withdrawn specially from the cash dispenser in the hotel lobby remained untouched. "Here," he urged, taking out one of the hundreds and waving it at him, "that"s for your trouble," but the doctor wasn"t having any. Backing away from Hayden, he jabbed a finger at the door and hit him with one last volley of croaky Yue dialect. Then he turned to the monster aquarium behind him. The consultation was at an end.
Slipping the cardboard box into his inside pocket, Hayden headed for the corridor. At the door he paused and tried to say goodbye: the old man turned impatiently around, lifted his face mask to reveal a flaccid maw lined with spiderish old-man"s beard, and spat on the bare concrete floor at his feet. That seemed final enough: Hayden left him to his fishing.
Jimmy was practically jogging on the spot with nervous excitement. "Come on now! Time-to go!" Hayden had to hurry after him up the stairs and back outside. They barged down the alleyways to the main street, Hayden feeling oddly like a john might feel on being dismissed from some tart"s parlour: surplus to requirements, something embarra.s.sing to be got out of the way before the next punter showed up. At the taxi rank, Jimmy shook his hand for an unnaturally long time before relieving him of some of the high-denomination notes the doctor had spurned earlier. Once in the cab, Hayden couldn"t wait; hands trembling ever so slightly, he reached into his pocket for the box with the medicine in it.
"So," said Dr. Pang, his face rigid in barely-concealed disapproval, "you self-medicated with this black market treatment?"
"Yes," admitted Hayden. "Yes, I did. And it worked."
"Really?" One eyebrow expressively tilted.
"Really," confirmed Hayden. "What it said in the magazine? Miracle cure? They weren"t exaggerating. Like turning a switch, and the pain just wasn"t there any more. One dab of the gel, and . . . wow." Unconsciously, beneath the face-mask, he smiled at the memory.
"It"s never quite as simple as "wow"," Dr. Pang informed him sternly. "There has been considerable trepidation as to possible side effects of your "miracle treatment," to say nothing of the ethical dimension of this new research in transgenics. Observations among the trial groups have pointed up several areas of grave concern-"
"Oh, I know," said Hayden, lying back in the chair and scratching his masked jaw ruminatively. "It"s not as if there haven"t been some side-effects . . . "
But who cared, if it wasn"t hurting any more? Which it wasn"t; he rubbed on gel from the tube, and the gel worked. It was cold going on, a s...o...b..ll in the face, and within seconds you could feel it going to work, numbing, soothing; ah. Before he got back to the hotel he realised, with a sort of delirious disbelief, that he was pain-free. Experimentally he mouthed the words. His tooth didn"t go ow. He said them aloud, until the taxi driver turned round. Regally, Hayden waved away his curious stare.
No pain for Hayden that night, and for the whole of the marvellous day that followed. He slept in-he slept! and it didn"t hurt-he slept in late, skipping his eight-thirty the following morning in favour of a lie-in, a long hot shower, and an extra pot of coffee brought up to his room. And he drank the coffee, and his tooth didn"t hurt any more. And he looked out of the window at the sun above the harbour, and no toothache. And he stuck his finger in his mouth, and the swelling had already gone down. It was fine.
The idea was that the gel would hold him till he got back to London, where his own dentist, a melancholy Welshman called Llewelyn, could deal with the tooth, cap it or drill it or yank it out. Whatever. That was one for the future, and Hayden was too busy relishing Hong Kong sans the agony. Padding across the room in bare feet, a lordly beast returning to its lair, he caught sight of himself in the mirror: his grin looked like something Jack Nicholson might sport at the winding-up of a particularly glorious orgy.
First thing on waking up, quite late in the afternoon; more gel. Mmmm. Rub it in, all nice and a.n.a.lgesic. And something to eat; Christ he was hungry. Big hairy lumberjack portions, now, straightaway. He started to call room service, but halfway through he changed his mind, and bounded into the shower instead. Bathed and dressed, he loped down to the lobby in search of a taxi.
By the time Hayden was disembarking at Causeway Bay all the businesses on the island were emptying out, each office block disgorging its load of commuter ants to jam up the streets below. Hayden took a deep breath and launched himself into the crowd, but his way seemed surprisingly easy; as if s.p.a.ce were being cleared for him, somehow.
He dived into the first restaurant he saw, a gleaming twenty-first century chow-parlour which seemed to be called the Futuristic Dragon. There he ordered up plate after plate of good things, all the protein he"d been denied over the last few days. Already all of that was starting to feel like a nightmare he"d once had, years and years ago. So complete was the current absence of pain, it seemed almost ludicrous to think that only yesterday he"d been desperate, maddened, panicking like a rat in a trap . . . hah. Absolutely ludicrous. He laughed out loud; some of the other diners glanced over before hastily averting their gazes. Supremely indifferent to everything except the contents of the platter laid before him, Hayden tore in to the exquisite char sui pork.
Several meat courses and the best part of an hour later, Hayden untucked his napkin and pushed his chair back from the table. Sated for the time being, he felt like strolling some of his dinner off.
Though still busy by Western standards, the streets were appreciably less insane by the time he was stepping out in the direction of the Mid-levels. Pedestrians own the city, thought Hayden contentedly; car drivers slide through it untouched and unenlightened, subways are just burrows. Pedestrians lay claim to all the s.p.a.ces; they flow through the arteries of the city and the city flows through them. As if to prove it, he took an unnecessary turn left at the next junction, following a sign that said Happy Valley. How long had it been since he"d walked anywhere just for fun?
For the next few blocks Hayden let chance determine his route. This he did by selecting, more or less at random, various pa.s.sers-by, and following very close behind them, matching his stride exactly to their own, sometimes less than an arm"s length away. As soon as they became aware of his presence, he would drop off, and select a new target. The fourth or fifth of his marks rumbled him almost immediately, though; they"d gone only a few paces when the man in front, a portly, respectable-looking type in a three-piece suit and, improbably, a white solar topee, suddenly became aware of Hayden"s presence. He turned, saw Hayden falling back just a moment too late, and unloosed a string of indignant abuse in a hoa.r.s.e high register. Along the street, people glanced in their direction, then turned, either incuriously or prudently, away. A couple of schoolgirls in pleated skirts and St. Trinian"s straw boaters had seen what Hayden was up to some blocks back; smothering their laughter behind their hands, they were filming this latest altercation on their videophones. When they realised Hayden was looking at them, they screamed and ran away, gwailo, gwailo. With no immediate object in mind, Hayden followed them for a while.
By the time they"d vanished into some glitteringly meretricious megastore or other, he had no idea how far away from the hotel he was. His various diversions had led him uphill, which he supposed meant south and away from the harbour. Probably he was somewhere above Happy Valley by now, near Aberdeen Park perhaps, still a good few miles away from his hotel. Not that he was bothered: it was good just to walk, to stretch the muscles in his legs and fill his lungs with unprocessed air. He breathed in deep, relishing the stink of charcoal braziers and the savoury smell of street food, all the jostling aromas of a strange new city at dusk. He consulted the rising moon, and decided his hotel ought to lie in that direction. As he set off, three shadows subtracted themselves from the gloom of a nearby shop doorway and followed him.
Perhaps a mile later, Hayden found himself on the outskirts of some sort of public s.p.a.ce, a closely planted grove of trees and bushes that fell away precipitately down the hillside. Beyond the topmost branches of the trees he could see the harbour down below, even pick out the landing lights of helicopters like fireflies round the cargo bays at Kai Tak. Hayden supposed he could waste time going round the park, or else he could just barrel right through it. Confidently-see what valorous animals we can be, when we"re only free of pain?-Hayden set off along the path.
Underfoot was hard compacted sand, no slips, no trips. Even when the branches of the trees closed above his head, there was still enough moonlight for him to pick his way. (Had his night vision always been so acute? d.a.m.n, he was in good shape. Queue forms to the left, ladies.) The path wound down the hillside, till it was blocked all of a sudden by a wrought-iron gate set in a high hedge. Private property? Hayden thought not; and in any case the gate opened to his touch.
Inside was a small burial ground, very compact and quite grown-over. Small family shrines in serried ranks, with here and there a votive candle burning; white marble ghostly in the moonlight, and black tangles of bracken between the slabs. Hayden stepped into the enclosure, closing the creaky gate behind him. Somewhere in the bushes, a nightbird sang out in alarm. There were flights of steps between the terraces; in no particular hurry, Hayden sat down and lit a cigarette. Behind him, the iron gate creaked. Hayden turned round. He had company among the dead.
Now for those of you who haven"t been in a fight recently (as Hayden explained to an increasingly bemused Dr. Pang), when it comes to mixing it the human male knows pretty much from the get-go how he"ll behave. He"ll either be emollient or abrasive, placatory or confrontational; he"ll flee or fight. There"s just something about the quality of the encounter that pre-determines these things-a hundred split-second decisions feeding into the adrenaline centres, instantaneous judgements based on the adversary"s appearance, one"s own state of preparedness, etc. And Hayden felt good tonight, dammit. He was enjoying his walk, and he did not appreciate being followed. And just in that moment, these simple factors outweighed any more practical considerations: the fact that there were three of them, young and lean and vicious, and that the leader was waving a flick-knife in front of him as he advanced. No matter: there was no way Hayden was just handing over his wallet and his watch and his iPhone. Not tonight, no sir.
Instead he found himself up on his feet in a curious sort of crouching pose, leaning forward on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, his head canted to a slight angle. The one in the front-mean-looking b.a.s.t.a.r.d in a leather jacket, hair flopping down across his brow-snarled and said something in Mandarin. The other two laughed. Hayden ignored them entirely, and took a few steps back, feeling with one outstretched foot for obstructions, never taking his eyes off the thug in front.
Slowly, as the muggers advanced, he was retreating down a terrace of graves, letting them come after him. Bad tactics, if he was planning to run-nowhere to run. However, because the terrace was so narrow, they could only come at him one at a time, single file. That was better for fighting; it nullified their numerical advantage. And that was what it would come to, he had no doubt. Everything in him was drawn tight and singing; clenched, filled with energy and ready to spring.
Again the lead bada.s.s snarled something. Very clearly-very Englishly-Hayden said, "Come on, then, f.u.c.kface. f.u.c.king have a go, then." Had he been paying less attention to the advancing roughneck, and more to the quality of his consonant sounds, he might have noticed some slight occlusion on the Cs and Fs, the sort of thing you a.s.sociate with the wearers of new dentures, or the chewers of sticky toffee.
Thug Number One said something over his shoulder to the other two, advancing still in Indian file behind him. They nodded, and one of them leapt down between two graves to the next lowest terrace. The other one tried to clamber up to the next highest, but lost his footing and went over with a yell, twisting his ankle in the process. Hayden knew he had to act quickly, or else his one-on-one advantage would be lost.
Instinctively, he went for the high ground. From a standing start he leapt up to the higher terrace; no sooner had his feet found balance on top of the marble tombstone than he was kicking out like Jet Li, not connecting with Thug Number One but forcing him to stumble backwards in surprise. Behind him of course, was his mate, who"d tried but failed to scale the tombstones; he was kneeling down to rub his sprained ankle. The two of them went over together in a heap, and then Hayden was on them.
The impact of his landing drove all the breath out of Thug Number One, the one on top. An agonised squeal from the bottom of the pile suggested it wasn"t doing much for his clumsy mate, Goon Number Two, either, but Hayden didn"t care. First things first. Before he knew it he was close in and pinning the lead mugger down, forcing his arms away from his head to expose his face. In the brilliant moonlight Hayden could see the fear in the face of the kid-more than that, he felt it, tasted it rather-and it was the fear that set off some primordial time bomb buried deep within him. Heedless of the snarl that disfigured his own features, he leaned in and bit, hard and deep and fierce.
Hayden remembered little else about the fight, to be honest; the who-did-what-to-who, the wirework and the stunts. But that feeling, when he first battened on to his opponent? The roaring, the struggling, the piteous screams and whimpers at the end; his strong and bulging jaws clamped down tight against the limited resistance of skin and flesh? The power of it . . . that he remembered well enough. And afterwards?
When the two least maimed of his muggers had scrambled away, snivelling and shrieking, he"d straightened up in amongst the gravestones, and tilted his head back to the fat enormous moon above the harbour. Never in his life had he known such transformative intensity; never before such focus and clarity. Beyond the graveyard, beneath the moon, there lay the radiant sweep of Hong Kong"s harbour. Everything he could see was his, it belonged to him and him alone-and he could see everything. No element of it escaped his hungry gaze; not the meanest, least significant scintilla. All his.
Involuntarily, he tilted back his head and howled, howled to the echo. The nightbirds rose from the branches and broke in a panicking spiral; away down the hill, even the tamest, most domesticated dogs twitched and grumbled in their sleep, hackles rising the length of their tensed spines, muzzles peeling back to reveal mottled gums and sharp teeth.
"But the teeth-!" Dr. Pang was staring at him in amazement.
"Hang on," said Hayden mildly, and instantly the dentist closed his mouth. "I"m coming to that. Bear with me." He smiled, to convey rea.s.surance. Dr. Pang did not smile back.
Now, those things that take place in ancient graveyards after dark, under the appreciative sanction of the bleak and vengeful ancestor spirits, may end up looking very different beneath the bland pedestrian glow of electric light. When Hayden made it back to the hotel he was jacked up with energy still-he"d run the couple of miles from the hillside park to the Mid-levels in no time, and was up for another circuit of the harbour at least-but he was also exquisitely aware of the need for caution and discretion. Given the events of the last few hours, he realised that a low profile was essential at this stage of his adventures. In his jacket pocket he"d found his old face-mask, proof against infection, ubiquitous amongst the pa.s.sers-by during times of epidemic and contagion; before collecting his keycard at the desk he"d slipped it on, the better to conceal the focal point of his mysterious Shifting.
Up in his room Hayden made for the bathroom, where he used up a whole bottle of Listerine rinsing and gargling. There was a sharp bra.s.sy taste in his mouth, charged, electric, like biting down on tinfoil. When he woke very early in the predawn of the next day after a short yet intense power nap filled with strenuously incomprehensible dreams, his morning coughs and snuffles drew the clotted tang of blood from the back of his throat. Again, he spat for a long time over the washbasin, looking at himself in the backlit mirror.
He looked good, though. Didn"t he? A gloomy Gus no longer, freed from toothache pain and jet lag; d.a.m.n it, he was glowing, the way pregnant women are supposed to. Thoughtfully, Hayden squeezed a coiled blue blob of the miracle goo from its tube and applied it liberally to his gums. And another. No point in doing it by halves, was there? The gunk was menthol-cold going on-he could almost imagine his gumflesh shrinking back at its touch, which would at least account for the unusual prominence of his teeth in his grinning lean-mean-mother face. His teeth, oh yeah; warily, Hayden reviewed his exploits of the night before.
What had all that been about, then? The various cultural taboos governing use of the teeth while fighting were sufficiently well-established in Hayden"s blokey superego to make him feel a little ambiguous about the whole affair. The only habitual biter he could remember having come across was back in school, a pale malnourished lad with more-or-less permanent pinkeye and impetigo. Nigel Tavers was his name; he used to smell of p.i.s.s and stand by the radiators, and when cornered he would first of all whine, then try to kick you in the goolies, then use teeth and nails till he drew blood. Not the most admirable role model. So how, Hayden asked himself, did you square that inbred distaste for a dirty-fighter with those goings-on in the graveyard last night?
And found, without too much need for soul-searching and self-examination, the answer, or at least an answer. It was a knife, Hayden told himself; the bad b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the cemetery was waving a knife at him, with every intention of using it. This being the case, he, Hayden, a nice guy who carried no weapon, was obliged to use the implements to hand; or, in this case, to mouth. Nature"s equaliser, in the face of the strong threat. No biggie.
This was true up to a point; at which Hayden stopped short, and threw himself back on the bed for a luxuriously bone-cracking stretch among the sheets. Had he been only slightly more open to self-examination, he might have gone on to consider both the nature of the attack-the damage done, the extent of the retribution-and the way it made him feel at the time. The buzz, the mega b.l.o.o.d.y buzz: he could still feel its aftermath, like the tail-end of a marathon c.o.ke binge. As it was, all he could think about was breakfast.
Naturally, only the full English would do. Hayden called room service to see if it could be fetched up now, immediately, right away; no question of waiting. When it appeared some minutes later-brought up by Jimmy Tsui, of all people-Hayden was waiting at the door like a zoo animal that hadn"t been fed in a fortnight.
"How you feeling?" inquired Jimmy, wheeling the trolley through into the bedroom before Hayden could wrest it from his grip and fall on the contents there and then. "Hope your medicine is-working out?"
"It"s fine," Hayden a.s.sured him through a mouthful of undercooked sausage. "Look-" pulling back his cheek to reveal the problem grinder. "Worked overnight. Amazing."
Jimmy stared at Hayden"s exposed dentistry; and as he stared, his own mouth fell indecorously open. Backing up rapidly, he waved away the proffered tip, and was out of the door before Hayden could press the folded bills into his hand. His parting shot came back along the corridor: "All part of the service! Enjoy!"
Shrugging it off, Hayden returned to his breakfast. G.o.d, it was great to be able to eat like a man again, and not some toothless old dear! He bit down hard on a crispy slice of bacon, and felt with lupine pleasure the action of his teeth reducing it to pulp. Not the slightest twinge from his damaged molar; all that was in the past now. Good riddance. He had a busy day ahead of him.
Meetings, mostly, rescheduled and rejigged, clean through to half six in the evening, at which point Hayden pa.s.sed on a corporate dinner with clients. He had to run an errand, he explained; which was true, so far as it went. A quick taxi ride over to Mong Kok, chop-chop, and after half an hour"s wandering the strip, the right back alley and the right set of stairs. As it had been the night before last, the door at the end of the corridor was ajar.
Hayden knocked, and waited till the old man poked his head out like a hermit crab ready to defend its sh.e.l.l against all-comers. Before the door was slammed in his face, Hayden put his weight to it, forcing it open and sending the old man staggering back into the room. Following him inside, Hayden closed the door behind them and pulled out the package from his jacket. "More," he said, holding it up so the old man could see. "I need more."
The old man"s response-a near-breathless tirade of what sounded to Hayden like every curse and swear word in the Chinese language-was pretty clearly in the negative. When Hayden asked him again, politely still, it was like standing in the way of a hosepipe of abuse. He tried cajoling him; he tried flashing his wallet, he made increasingly heated demands, but all to no avail. In the end, not knowing what else to do, Hayden ripped off his face mask. "Look!" he said, thickly, as if through a mouthful of something hard and uncomfortable. Immediately, the old man shut up.
Towards dusk he"d started to feel it, deep in the roots of his teeth. At first it had been bearable, actually not at all unpleasant: that rigid crackling sensation like popping your knuckles, only this was taking place inside his mouth, inside his jaw. Then the pressure, the constant pushing upwards, flesh and bone stretching, resettling. Probably nothing could stop it, that was the feeling he had. That was okay, though; that was fine, so long as he had some more of that blue stuff. More gel, now. Surely the old man must understand?
"You did this," said Hayden, stretching his lips wide open and showing the old man what lay concealed behind the second mask, the mask of his own skin. "You did this," advancing on him now, and the old man retreating, retreating, till he was backed up against the fish tank, yammering frantically; and then the tank tipped over and everything went flying, and the underground chamber was plunged into dark . . .
"So, anyway, I took all of the stuff he had left," explained Hayden. "That"s lasted me until now, but . . . " He spread his hands and looked at Dr. Pang.
The dentist frowned. "Mr. Hayden. I have to tell you, this account of yours raises the gravest questions. The science of transgenic pharmaceuticals is still very much in its infancy; goodness knows what unauthorised, possibly toxic substances you may have received from this, this street vendor. I must urge you to stop self-medicating forthwith, and I shall now examine you to a.s.sess the extent of the problem. Please remove your mask."
Above the antiseptic face-mask, Hayden"s eyes creased in disappointment. "Doctor," he said wheedlingly, "isn"t there some way we can, you know, come to an agreement on this? You know the right people, I"m sure. Can"t you get hold of some of this?" He waved his sc.r.a.p of paper from the Scientific American. "I need it. I"d be prepared to pay."