Musk (Jose Garcia Edit) CASSIUS CROON HEAVED HIMSELF OVER THE OBSTACLE WALL AND SCALED DOWN the hempy mesh. Panting heavily, he jogged to a row of monkey bars, leapt to the first rung and (maintaining his kinetic energy) swung himself to the end. He then followed a muddy trail which for some time rambled through the russet Vermont hills, clouds of breath trailing autumnal in his wake, grey tracksuit dark with at least three triangles of sweat. He karate-chopped the air as he ran. Freshly changed into a baggy suit and anointed with the latest Spice Girls stench, agent Croon stood patiently in his superior's office sometime later that morning. Gerald McCumbie put on his spectacles, activated on a projector, and one wall of his office was instantly splattered with newspaper headlines. McCumbie sniffed. <<What's that you're wearing?>> <<Sir?>> Croon said. <<I'm wearing the scent of musk.>> <<Hmmmph. Engineered from the glands of a synthetic platypus?>> McCumbie laughed wistfully, to himself. As he didn't have a clue what was going on, Croon studied the headlines on the wall. Most of them had to do with nature habitats, smuggling, aphrodisiacs and genetic manipulation. And there were lots of photos of gorillas. Cued to his voice, the projector flashed up a new image: a grainy close-up of a mountain gorilla. Cued to the image, McCumbie said, <<Scientists estimate there are approximately 2000 wild eastern gorillas on the African continent, inhabiting the lowlands of Cameroon to the central highlands of Congo and Uganda, as well as the Virunga Mountains. 2000 specimens! That's not much biodiversity! This population has to contend with a declining habitat, disease and occasional tribal war.>> A short film-clip was projected on the wall: poachers chasing startled gorillas through the bush, the discharge of an ancient rifle, then cut to a butcher slicing lumps of heavily veined meat in what looked like an Asian wet market. When it stopped McCumbie said: <<Lately gorillas have had to contend with a new threat: poachers. Chinese medical practitioners have developed a strange new taste for a certain part of the gorilla anatomy: specifically, the testicles.>> <<Eeek.>> <<They got this funny idea that eating ape nuts will keep their genetic codes intact and safe from all the modified food in their diet these days. By munching on the loins of the world's last mountain gorillas, they think they can preserve their own racial prowess.>> <<Ahhh>> Croon said. Which of course meant: That's what this is about, a political thing. As if reading his mind McCumbie negated: <<If this fad continues wild gorillas could be extinct by the end of the decade. The Chinese government claims to be clamping down on the trade, but it's not enough. The CIA's getting involved.>> <<I'm not>> Croon insisted <<going to the Africa without a stopover in Morocco!>> <<You're going to China first. I want you to pay a visit to the man they call the Castrator of Canton.>> Croon remembered the name from a recent CNN report - <<The guy who neutered all those peasant boys? Sir...>> McCUMBIE HAD CLEVERLY cloaked the operation in the inscrutable veil of wildlife conservation. While carbon sequestration initiatives were gradually easing the worst excesses of Climate Change, and bioengineering advances had given humanity mastery over the very building blocks of life, a powerful pang still reverberated whenever one of the cuter species became extinct. Naomi Campbell's traipse down the catwalk in an authentic fur coat in 1999 had set the world off in a particular philosophical direction, that so much is fact. But overall, most people were still fond regard for the pre-human kingdoms. To put it in layman terms: gorillas were politically correct. Nonetheless, Cassius Croon knew this wasn't about saving gorillas. Obviously it was a political stunt, and the aim was to embarrass the Chinese government. In this age of east/west trade wars and Chinese companies muscling into every field from textiles to robotics, in this time of Taiwanese Tension... to expose the hideous exploitation of animals in the Middle Kingdom, to trace this exploitation to the top of the Communist Party: well, it would be excellent PR for the vested interests of the White House. Anyway, everyone was into animal exploitation these days - you couldn't just pin this on the Chinks. Even Croon had a pet wallaby... and a girlfriend called Thelma T. Thelma was cuddled with the wallaby on the mink bedspread when he arrived home. He stripped out of his shredded leather suit and strode across the apartment bare ass - two bullet scars on his abdomen flexing, large Māori tattoo rippling over his shoulder blades. Thelma smiled at this development, curled as she was on the purring bed, but Cassius just walked right past her to a wardrobe where he began putting on an outfit which was half spider silk, half imported yak hair. Croon lit a Cuban cigar, sniggered. <<Hell baby, I ain't got the time for jumping about. I got a fucking job to do.>> And he started packing a suitcase with binoculars, mosquito repellent and at least three safari suits. <<Don't expect me to be waiting here when you get back>> Thelma said. GUANGZHOU, SOUTH CHINA SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE: It seemed like everyone was clad in spider silk in the teeming streets and elevated walkways of New Canton. They should have been, because spider silk was the third most important force driving the economy here. Dulled into the respectable Calvin Klein blues and greys of the businessmen in their suits at the Metro stops, or dazzling with its native sheen in the strobe lights of the inner-city nightclubs... spider silk was the wonder fabric of the 00s, and Guangzhou processed about 90 per cent of the global trade. It permeated the very structure of the supercity, its profits stringing out miles of monorails and fiber optics and eight-lane motorways into the countryside, and from above Guangzhou had begun to look a spider's web: delicate but strong, beautiful but a crueler peasant trap that ever was. Croon stopped outside the cell's observation window, gaped in mock awe at the size of the spider. <<Man, that thing must sure spin some thread>> he said, in street Cantonese. Croon was playing Trent Perkins, an alias he had spun for this infiltration. Perkins was a senior executive for Hugo Boss and he was in China to secure about 7,000 meters of silk for the North American market. He was touring the prison factory as part of the deal and this naturally included a glimpse of its most notorious inmate. Wong was used to such propaganda and looked suitably bored, seated on a stool and toying with his spider. <<It's our finest work-horse>> Wong replied. <<Five years of selective breeding went into the creation of this monster. It produces up to 60 per cent more silk than our earlier models, and that silk is 50 per cent stronger, and the spiders require 40 per cent less upkeep. That translates into an 80 per cent increase in profit for this organization. We're now working on a new pedigree for lingerie.>> <<The eastern mind>> Wong explained <<doesn't seem to suffer the right-hemispherical restrictions which inhibit your growth in the west. We think laterally here, our imaginations range across parameters you would find obscene.>> Wong made a scoffing noise, as if to dismiss this barbarian. Sensing it was make or break, Croon went all out: <<What about gorilla testicles, huh? Ever chomped on one of them? They protect your DNA, apparently!>> KARAOKE BARS HAD DIVERSIFIED in China, and they now enabled their guests to embarrass themselves in a dizzying array of mediums. When Croon arrived at the Flying Carp (as recommended by the Castrator of Canton) there was a guy on stage acting out the lead role from Enter the Dragon. He was fitted into a VR suit which superimposed his movements on to footage of Bruce Lee's seminal work. Croon settled into a corner by himself, bought a packet of cigarettes, ordered a Moutai27. Defend your essence. That's all I can say. Hmmm, if that wasn't a tip-off, then Croon didn't know what was. He was beginning to think the whole point of the Guangzhou stopover was to be delivered those words. Obviously, the Flying Carp disguised the next piece of the jigsaw. So he sat, and he waited. ONCE THE PANIC HAD SUBSIDED, they left Kinshasa and made for the highlands near Goma, accompanied by guides and several dozen Tutsi soldiers. After two days of hiking, they stumbled upon a known gorilla nest... only to find it abandoned. Gorilla hair strung compelling from crumpled undergrowth, along with patches of dried blood and bullet cartridges. They moved on. Croon began to feel (as he usually did after three days of pulling leaches from his boots) that this was all a bit of a needle in the haystack situation, and that there might not be a pot of gold waiting at the end of this particular rainbow. To complicate matters, someone had lost the booze. He kept replaying the scant leads that he had, over and over again in his mind: the serial butcher in his prison cell, the mutated elephant in the karaoke club, fragments of McCumbie's headlines. The zombies and the antiglobalists. It just didn't make any sense. Croon was invited to dine with the president later that day. His Excellency was apparently a keen fan of nature documentaries (who wasn't?). A week bumming around the tropical undergrowth had taken its toll on the agent's godliness, however, so he was pampered to an afternoon in the baths. Several members of the presidential harem were dispatched to scrub his back, pluck his nostril hair and offer him tray after tray of musk essence (he settled on a wildebeest/jaguar combination). <<My friend, sit please, and eat!>> His Excellency instructed. He dropped a lettuce leaf to some creature beneath the table... presumably it was his pet? Croon sat down and despite himself sliced a steak from the purple bulk with a large carving knife. <<Good meat, eh?>> the president inquired. <>> The president handed his pet another lettuce leaf and lifted it to rummage over his plate. Croon gagged, fork frozen literally midair. For the president's pet was a poodle-sized sky-blue elephant. <<I'd like you to meet our chef>> the president said. <<All the way from China...>> Wong Ka-Fai sauntered out of the kitchen wearing a floppy chef's hat and holding a silver tray. He smiled at Croon, lifted the lid from the tray and offered him a pile of steaming scrota. Archives april 15 2024 FIRST CONTACT (c)opyright Rob Sullivan 1988-2024. Contact the author for all your criticisms and feedbacks.