Sky Lights (15 page)

‘In here Prof?’ The pirate indicated the large, empty metal trough sitting on the autopsy table. The professor nodded. It took two of the pirates to lift and upend the bin. Instantly the room filled with a putrid stench as the gunge from the crocodile’s stomach slopped from one end of the trough to the other before quivering to a glutinous stop. Some solid bits floated to the top of the thick greenish soup. It was a sickening sight. Professor John Dante screwed up his face in disgust at the contents of the beast’s stomach lying in the trough. He wore green surgical robes with plastic overshoes on his feet, latex gloves on his well scrubbed hands and a plastic cap on his head to prevent stray hairs from contaminating the workplace. He placed the mask that was hanging round his neck over his nose and mouth. He was suddenly aware of a loud steady beating; he had never known his heart to thump this hard. He was terrified. At the thought of the task ahead of him, his spirits sank ever lower.

‘What do you expect me to do with this?’ he exclaimed. ‘I am not God. I can’t produce life from this primeval soup.’

‘You sounded like God in that TV interview.
‘We are proud to present a
miracle of Biblical proportions’,’
mimicked Skylights. ‘You said it and you’re going to do it. Produce a miracle for me. Just remember we’re not fussy if your girl lives or dies. It’s up to you,’ he threatened.

The professor started towards him with both fists raised. ‘You touch one hair on her head and I’ll……’

‘You’ll what?’ said Skylights. ‘You just do as you’re told, you pompous partridge! Or else.’

John Dante weighed up his chances and backed up to the metal table. He was no match for his captors. ‘All right. Tell me exactly what you expect me to do.’

‘Do what I brought you here for,’ snarled Skylights. ‘I want Hook, large as life and twice as ugly. Somewhere in that putrid mix there should be a bit of our old cap’n. Use your skills to reproduce that murderous, vile, individual. Not a clone, mind! I want the original, with all his memories and wickedness intact. Bring him back from the dead.’

‘But that’s a preposterous suggestion. And more than likely impossible,’ said the professor.

‘Well now, that’s a pity. A real pity. We were hoping we wouldna’ have to harm your bonny lass, but if you refuse to…….,’ began Skylights.

John Dante interrupted him. ‘Have I your word Wendy will be safe if I bring Hook back to life?’

‘You’ve got no choice. If we don’t get Hook, she’s dead as a dodo and you will be too.’

He knew he was powerless against the three of them. His only option was to humour them. ‘Give me some space and time,’ he muttered. ‘Bringing someone back to life is an entirely new procedure. I’ve no idea how it will turn out.’

Holding their noses, the pirates turned to leave. John Dante almost smiled. He was wearing a face mask, but they had not been prepared for this abominable stink. Fitzsmee and O’Mullins fled, in danger of bringing up the contents of their own stomachs. ‘You’ve got five hours,’ spluttered Skylights, gagging before following the others.

John Dante heard the key turning. He was alone with the gloop. He contemplated the enormity of the task he was facing. This was not about re-growing a couple of fingers lost in an accident. Not this time! He had to search in this glutinous mess and find some part of James Hook, the notorious pirate, and re-grow the rest of his body from the small part. Could it be done? He didn’t know, but he was about to find out. John Dante felt sick at heart as well as sick to his stomach. If he didn’t succeed, his daughter would surely die. He realised Wendy’s life depended on what he did in this basement in an abandoned hospital, somewhere in Edinburgh.

He weighed up the chances of success. Why not? He had to stay positive; it was the only way. The procedure for renewing small parts of the body was so secure the Roslin Institute backed him up on national television. What was to stop it working on a grander scale? And if anyone in the world could do it, then he could.

He resolved to give it his best try and steeled himself for the moment when he had to immerse his fingers in the gloop. Yes, he was wearing latex gloves, but the very idea of it disgusted him. He had never done anything like this before. Taking a deep breath, he carefully lowered his hands into the sticky mess and began to separate the solid matter from the sludge. He picked out the largest bits quite easily, and laid them carefully in the Petri dishes prepared with a special solution to keep the parts viable.

When he had retrieved several large pieces, he identified them and made notes in his book. The largest of his specimens was a human hand, still with flesh on it. ‘Well this can’t be what I’m looking for,’ he said to himself. ‘That’s not been in the stomach very long; much too recent to belong to Captain Hook. Maybe I’ll be able to….hmmm. We’ll see.’ He laid the hand in a dish by itself and covered it in preserving fluid, before sealing it up and labelling it. ‘I’ll save that for later.’

He set aside several large pieces of fish and a turtle’s head. He lifted out parts of a small reptile. ‘That’s no good to me either.’ Disappointed, he continued retrieving solid pieces; parts of seabirds including feathers, a couple of lobster claws and the leg of some poor mammalian creature, maybe a rat or an otter. A few small unidentifiable fragments of bones also emerged from this first search. He brought them to the autopsy table and laid them out carefully in separate dishes. He took photographs and labelled the dishes, giving each an identification number.

Taking a deep breath he plunged his hands in once more, this time right to the bottom of the sludge. His hand brushed against something hard and sharp. It felt wrong. It felt different. And it was pulsating like a living thing. He withdrew the alien object from the mix and examined it. It was a fist-size tangled mess of metal and seaweed. Bit by bit he dislodged the plant material until he was left with what looked like the inner workings of a clock; a metal spring, several cog wheels, a winder. So that was what he had heard beating; not his own heart but an ancient clock. Intertwined with the metal pieces were numerous thin bones, green with algae. They looked like human finger bones that had been there for some time. He extricated all but one of the bones and laid them to one side. The final bone seemed to be wedged between two pieces of metal. He cleaned it using a tiny saline spray to dislodge the last of the gunk clinging to the piece. That was when he saw it! Encircling the small bone and jamming it between the cogs was a ring.

‘What the——!’ exclaimed the professor. Delicately using two pairs of tweezers, he manoeuvred the ring until it was free of the mechanism. The clock stopped ticking. He lifted the bone with the ring still in place on to a clean glass. He placed it under the microscope. As he focused the image, he could see details on the ring that made his blood run cold. It was a large, ostentatious, gold ring. On top was a scull and crossbones with two gems that looked like rubies in the eye sockets. Round the edge in bold relief were the initials J.H. as clear as the day they’d been engraved. There could be no mistaking the owner of the ring and therefore there could be no mistaking the owner of the finger bone. ‘My God!’ he breathed, ‘Maybe I
can
do it. This is Hook’s ring, so this must be Hook’s finger.’

Carefully he picked up the glass with its precious contents, carried it to the table at the side of the room and laid it down. He prepared a lidded glass jar with an 80% alcohol solution and using tweezers, gently transferred the bone and the ring into the jar and closed it. He labelled the jar with shaking fingers. Sinking back on to the stool he stared at the specimen. This could be a major breakthrough in his research. No one had contemplated this kind of procedure before. Even he had not dared think of it. If he could pull it off, he would be as famous as Alexander Fleming who had discovered penicillin or Marie Curie who had discovered radium. His hands were sweating inside his latex gloves, so he pulled them off and disposed of them in the waste bin. He poured himself a glass of water from the flask provided by the pirates. He wished it was whisky! He needed to calm his nerves. He sat down again with his notebook to plan the procedure. The glass of water was forgotten and the smell from the trough ceased to trouble him as he concentrated.

Plans made, Professor Dante set about preparing all his solutions, jars and medical tools. He plugged in the electrical equipment he’d brought from Roslin. He began to run statistics and probability studies through his ABRT machine. He calculated quantities of liquids, drugs and powders, mixing here, separating there till he was ready to start the procedure. Then he checked everything twice. Carefully he took the lidded jar and removed the finger bone with the ring from the solution, laying it on a sterile white sheet on the prepared trolley. With a small tool, he delicately probed the tiny space where part of the bone and the ring touched. Yes, he could feel some soft tissue there. How on earth it could have survived all these years in the acidic fluid of the crocodile’s stomach, he had no idea. Nor did he know how a clock could have gone on ticking all these years. But these trivial points didn’t concern him. His job was to use the piece of tissue to fabricate a man.

He connected his equipment to the overhead pulley system. Bringing down the leads, he attached them to the tiny piece of flesh with small electrode clips. Other leads from the overhead pulley were drawn across the room to the main ABRT transponder. This was connected to Professor Dante’s own prototype reconstitution machine. Various quantities of liquids and powders were mixed in a small dish. He added the finger bone. Only then, when he had double checked all his calculations and connections, did he switch on the machinery. At first nothing happened. No sign of anything at all. He studied the dials’ quivering needles indicating temperature and electrical activity. All seemed to be well. He stole a glance at the table. Was something happening? Taking a faltering step closer, he saw a cloudy gas starting to rise from the dish in faint wisps. He strained to see through it.

Going back to the controls, he increased the electrical activity into the tissue. He turned back to the table and was stunned to see a finger wearing the pirate ring. Before his very eyes, one finger became four. To his amazement, the fingers took on a life of their own. They crept across the glass dish like a spider. Climbing out on to the table top, the gruesome hand toppled over, electrodes still attached. Now a thumb appeared - as it lay on its back, like a dead insect. The flesh and bone, muscles and sinews continued to spread as the ABR technique caused the body to regenerate itself; first a wrist, then a forearm. The forearm became an elbow and slowly but inexorably grew towards the shoulder. The flesh of the arm was covered in tattoos - a scull and crossbones, a mermaid and a ship in full sail. The body continued to grow, first a shoulder, then a neck and a back. It seemed to be in a hurry to complete itself.

Professor Dante felt elated to witness such a transformation. The legs grew, then the back of the head, even the black ringlets the pirate was famous for. The effort to grow seemed to have taken a lot out of the body. It lay there face down with no further movement. The professor was relieved. It had been very unnerving to see the fingers move alone. Taking no chances, he picked up a large syringe filled with a sedative to subdue the body before it came to life. He approached the table just as the final parts of Hook manifested themselves. Pinching the flesh of the man’s thigh, he stuck the needle in and depressed the plunger till all the sedative had been administered. He reached for a sterile sheet to cover the seemingly lifeless, yet warm to the touch, body.

This was a glorious moment! He would be famous! The whole world would hear about this. He would go down in history as the brains behind the greatest medical breakthrough of the century. But now he had to hand Hook over to the pirates. What would they have to say about his efforts? Worse than that, what would Captain Hook have to say? Some things were not quite as they should be. He knew before he started this grotesque task that he may not succeed, that his research was not complete. But he was so close to perfection, closer than he ever thought possible. So close that he couldn’t help wondering what had caused the experiment to go ever so slightly wrong?

His next thought plunged him from elation into the deepest despair. What was wrong with him? Why did his work always come first? Now he was able save his lovely daughter, Wendy, and all he could think of was his experiment. She should have been his first thought. His next idea gave him some renewed hope. Maybe he had a bargaining tool to use with the pirates. He called them in as his plan took shape.

‘Well? Have you done it? Can we see him?’ barked Skylights.

The exhausted professor nodded, pulling back the sheet just enough to show them Hook’s face. There was no doubting who it was.

‘Shiver me timbers! It’s the man himself!’ MacStarkey was astounded.

‘Doesn’t he look peaceful!’ pondered O’Mullins. ‘I never saw him look that peaceful before, not ever.’

‘But he’s still dead! There’s no sign of life. I want him alive! I want him dead! I mean I want him alive so I can kill him!’ exploded Skylights in a rage. ‘Why isn’t he alive?’

‘I can make him alive,’ said the professor, ‘but first you bring Wendy here. I want to see her. I want to know she’s safe. Once you have your living Captain Hook, I want to leave with my daughter.’

As long as Hook remained tranquillised, the pirates would think he was dead. They wanted him alive. They would do anything to have him alive. And they knew John Dante was the only one who could make it happen. He was counting on it. The pirates gathered in a huddle and discussed the proposition. John, pretending to sort out his instruments, thought of Wendy and silently prayed that this deception would work.

‘Fine!’ said Skylights. ‘You win! We’re impressed with what you’ve done so far. Fitzsmee will fetch your lass. We agree to free you both as soon as Hook steps off that table. Shake on it? You can always trust a pirate’s word if he shakes your hand.’