- Kowtowing to Lord of the Knives
The desecration of our dead—worst, a close family member—comes at so high a cost, no end to the price that must be paid . . . Milly gave her mother's just-defunct body to doctors for autopsy, against her mama's oft- muttered dying wish. Please, oh please, don't let them be breaking and entering my private belly or brain parts with their meddlesome
knives. Do not violate my chilled skin or bones, once I've crept away to my final resting place . . . But chief of the rare-disease center kept working Milly over: no one knew what killed dear Liza, it might be the start of a plagueor epidemic, many hundreds—oh thousands maybe—could die. If they found the root cause of a new, obscure virus, those thousands could yet be saved. Well,
loyal Milly refused to sign release papers for the cadaver until they'd upped the bribe four times— she hinted, from the start,that she was a woman of honor, an idealist—but just maybe she had a price. She'd never sold herself [End Page 278]
before, for blood or money, but the Advancement of Science and sleuthing out a dormant plague bacillus to stop
the killer outbreak were mortal stakes, so she pocketed the three hundred dollars and signed. No mystery bug turned up, for all their ruthless scavenging. The last word: she died of occult natural causes, a befuddlementto all tools of diagnosis. The body, bought and paid for, would be turned over to the rookie medical students at the new school in the neighbor
isle for dissection exercises, down to the innermost uterine tubes and cervical pipelets . . . Two days after they'd exhumed Liza'scorpse from fresh-dug grave, Milly up and vanished, leaving no clue of her whereabouts. All her close kin and friends were at a loss. They sought the aid of magnetists and augurers, but the best advice they got were denials,
negatives: she wasn't dead, she hadn't drifted far away—never left the island. One child clairvoyant guessed that she was raised high above the town. She could look upon us, but not we up to her hideaway. Anotherveteran soothsayer deemed her to be cast down far below, but not drowned in the sea or buried alive . . . Weeks passed. Mostly, her dearest next of kin had [End Page 279]
given up on her, all supposing she might have done violence to herself—for shame over betrayal of her mother's disinterredcarrion. But one day, a devout foreign gentleman—visiting from faraway Bolivia—idled on the flat hilltop nearest the Catholic church, and had a fierce premonition that shook him so hard where he stood he needed to grasp
a tree limb to keep his balance. He sniffed the flow of wind currents northeast to south, and pointed thus: A woman sat directly below the distant cliff! She was trapped, stranded in a cave. Who was she? He knew her not, but gave a fair accountof her features. They showed him a random sampling of photos—all young women from the town. He pickedMilly. She was the one he'd seen in his hilltop vision,
down to the small oval scar on her left cheek, where she'd been kicked by a pony as a small child, his findings soon reportedto the chief's council. Thereupon he left for his home country. Flyers were posted at all diners and watering holes, offering a reward to any man willing to risk his neck to rescue Milly from the remote, all-but-impassable [End Page 280]
crevasse in the cliff that impended over the sunken cave. One brave man came forward, and pledged to try his luck. A rock-climber and gorge-plunger of some repute, he bid the chief's office to supply him with cables and pulleys, wheelsand cranks, plus an assist staff to operate the mobile platform. They worked fast, day and night,racing against the clock to save the stranded lady
before she might starve to death. When they lowered him to a level from...