This Page
|
|
Night Shift |
Eulalia Segama
|
Detective Eulalia Segama is an uplifted orang-utang. In the late 1950s, a brilliant Japanese biologist named Ryuichi Itame arrived on the island of Borneo for the first time. Along with his interest in the incredible diversity of flora and fauna to be studied, the idealistic young man was drawn by the feeling that his research might be a way of returning some good to a place and people that had been ruthlessly exploited by his government in the late war. Almost immediately, and despite the mosquitoes, leeches, and other discomforts he experienced in his primitive camp, he fell in love with the place. As weeks turned into months, and Itame found ways of extending his studies longer and longer, he formed ties with the Dayak tribesmen who had hired on with the academic expedition as guides, hunters, cooks, etc. After his third trip back to Japan to arrange for more equipment, supplies, and leave from his University, he admitted to himself - he was going native. |
|
|
Fortunately for Dr. Itame, he had isolated some fascinating compounds from plants he discovered deep in the jungle, and his employers were willing to let him continue his work indefinitely if he wished - they being unaware of his increasing immersion in the native village nearest his camp in the northern Kalimantan region. The tenured staff of the University in Tokyo would have been horrified to learn that he had fallen in love with a Dayak woman, and married her according to the local religious customs. Dr. Itame found that the Shinto traditions he had been raised with fused easily with the animistic beliefs of his adopted family, and he was immersed every day in the powerful presence of the natural world, so the native rituals met with little resistance from him, and in fact, the natural world seemed even more willing to open its secrets to him when he offered the prescribed gifts and chants before taking his samples and running his tests. The results kept flowing, so of course it was only a matter of time before big business smelled potential profits, and started sending out feelers as to how best to exploit the gifts of the jungle. Dr. Itame, who rather naively had never considered this likelihood, was horrified and vowed to protect his second home against the risks he had unintentionally brought to it. The guru of his village performed a rite intended to imbue him with a guardian spirit to guide and strengthen him, and the ritual succeeded, awakening Itame's latent super powers (strength and speed, primarily). With the help of his Dayak family and guru, Itame created an alter ego; he hid his foreign origin behind an ornate ritual mask, and set out to scare the would-be developers off "his" island. The campaign worked, but proved to be the first of many. Over time, Itame honed his technique. Though he never took a name for himself, his cohorts named the spirit they felt they had called "Utan Adat", or Jungle Law, while international tabloids named this strange new science hero the Jungle Avenger. Along with the Dayak warriors who supported his efforts, Itame sought a sidekick among another group of Borneans who had fascinated him from the start: the orangutans. Around the time of his marriage, Itame discovered an orphaned orangutan infant too young to survive on his own, and brought him back to his camp to nurse. The baby, named Konrad (in honor of seminal ethnologist Konrad Lorenz), thrived, and offered Itame a chance to try and experiment he had been contemplating. Itame injected Konrad with a newly discovered enzyme he had isolated from jungle plants mixed with his own genetic material, (aided perhaps by the blessings of the local guru) and produced a miraculous gene splice . As Konrad grew, he proved to have developed mental capabilities that would have been impressive in a human child, along with a capacity for human speech. A few years later, when a female orangutan baby was discovered by hunters from a nearby village, Itame's wife Saroya convinced him that it would be cruel to create a new species having only one member, and Itame repeated the experiment, this time using his wife's DNA. This effort also proved successful, and in time young Leili grew to be a suitable and willing wife for Konrad, who as an adult had taken on the roll of Mawas [1], sidekick to Utan Adat and co-conspirator with Itame in driving back the colonists and exploiters. Leili developed a huge appetite for 19th century European novels (imported for her through the University of Borneo) and renamed herself Sophronia. When in due time she gave birth to a daughter, she chose the name Eulalia. Meanwhile, Ryuchi and Saroya Itame had also been raising a family, Three girls and two boys in all. The oldest boy and two of his sisters had clearly inherited their father's enhanced abilities, and went on to help him with his quest and, after Borneo established its independence in the early seventies and needed their services less, moved on to Java, Sumatra, and the Philippines to help these nations also through of the yokes of their colonial exploiters and rediscover their own cultures and heritages. The younger of the two boys showed a marked spiritual bent, and apprenticed with the guru to learn the nature and demands of the local spirits, the proper mantras and offerings, and how to read omens. The youngest child and third daughter, Amiko, who being only three years older than Eulalia has always been closest to her "cousin", went from the University of Borneo to law school in Europe, and has now settled in Tokyo where she specializes in environmental law and has made it her personal quest to bedevil Japanese whalers into giving up the hunt. It is unclear whether she inherited any of her father's powers beyond his mental brilliance. Throughout their far-flung educations, Eulalia and Amiko have remained in touch, primarily via e-mail, and take active interests in each other's adventures. As Utan Adat and Mawas waged their guerilla war on would-be developers, (and Ryuchi Itame and Konrad kept up with the news of the world and the gossip of academia), a shadowy figure began to take shape at the edges of their notice. Referred to only by his (her?) cone name, "Deep Pockets", the same person seemed, over and over, to have a hand in the deals the crusaders thwarted, or to be financing some particular line of research that Itame found troubling. Even the corporations, ships captains and scientists who were being paid by this figure didn't know who she (he?) was. Perhaps the secret identity of some politician or lobbyist, doing the deeds the public persona didn't want to be associated with? Or was this a cover used by more than one individual. Ryuchi has become obsessed with tracking the many business deals involving Deep Pockets - and it would seem this person returns his hostility, perhaps having had his (her?) ego bruised once too often by loosing to the Jungle Avenger. Itame has asked his daughter and his "niece" to keep their eyes and ears peeled in Neopolis, Tokyo, and whearever else they may find themselves for any rumors (or better, facts!) as to the identity of Deep Pockets. [1] For Borneans, mawas is to orangutan as Bear is to bear for North American natives. Return.
|
|
[Top]
Credits: