Xanthe sipped her coffee as she eyed the dragons. They climbed the wall, seeming to curve sinuously around invisible poles. Some of the dragons were black and white, some were coloured and gaudy, some shared the long and square snouts seen in the classical Chinese dragons, while others bore the sharpened snout and piercing eyes of the westernised dragons. She let her gaze drift across the wall to the section with all the women on, skipping over the coy smiles set in beautiful faces, the mermaid tails or devils’ tails, until her eyes settled on the one that held the only picture she cared about, the wall with the eagle’s picture. She felt a small thrill when she looked at it.
The eagle had deep, black eyes, set in a sharp, aquiline face that seemed to stare right at her. Glorious wings rose up either side of a feathered, golden body, with dangerous looking talons, ready to grasp what was in front of it, pointed straight at her. This wasn’t just a picture of an eagle on the wall, it was her eagle, and soon it wouldn’t just be a picture on a wall, but would become part of her forever.
She looked up as Steve, the tattooist came over. He was tall and shiny-bald, his bare arms a gallery of coloured designs and sigils that merged with the thick and black Celtic knot-work wrapped around his neck and licking at his cheeks. He smiled.
“What do you think?” he said, taking the drawing off the wall and handing it to her.
Xanthe studied it for a few seconds then looked up.
“It’s beautiful,” she said softly, brushing back the few stray locks of auburn hair that had dared to swing away from the rest. “It’s exactly what I want.”
“Okay, you ready to go then?” he asked, sitting on a chair to the side of the couch and looking at her.
She nodded, no second thoughts needed, so he got up and walked to the front of the shop and locked the door, swinging the sign on the glass to “Closed – Ink In Progress!” He walked back to where Xanthe sat on the leather couch and pulled across the mobile screen, so that anyone walking past the large plate-class windows and looking in wouldn’t see what was going on. Wiping the contoured, medical like bed with an antiseptic solution, he pulled some disposable paper over it from a large roll at the foot end, and turned back to Xanthe.
“Okay, when you’re ready.” He waved a casual hand at the bed. “If you can get your top off so I can work on your back and climb up that’d be great.”
At only five foot six in her heels and young enough looking to sometimes get asked her age in a bar, Xanthe was no pushover. She knew what she wanted and this was her treat to herself for her twenty fifth birthday. She had wanted an eagle since she was old enough to understand what a tattoo was, and now she was going to get one. With a single deft movement, she pulled the loose top up and over her head; her bra was at home because she knew that when finished she wouldn’t be able to wear one for at least a week. She noticed Steve’s eyes fall to her breasts and felt a blush kiss her cheeks.
“Looking good, Xanthe,” he said and leaned in for a closer look, but his eyes were only professional. With a quick movement he sat back, reached behind him to a small cardboard box and extracted some latex gloves, which he pulled on before leaning forward again to examine the rose he had inked on to the side of one of her breasts. “I’ll go over that green again while you’re here,” he murmured, his face showing how critical he was of the work he had done in the past. He straightened again. “Right, last chance, you sure you want to do this in one go?” he asked, and she could see he was watching her reaction.
Xanthe nodded and, to emphasize her decision, lay face down on the couch, leaving the canvas of her smooth, creamy back exposed.
He laughed. “That answers that, I suppose,” he said. “It’ll take about four to six hours, though, so if you need a break you just yell, okay?” His voice was caring but authoratative. She liked this, it helped put her at ease.
“I’ll be okay,” she said. She lay her head in her arms and relaxed, her back straight, the skin smooth.
“Cool,” said Steve. “And, just so you know, I’ve ordered in some special ink for the black work.” He paused for effect. “Just for you!”
“Really?” She raised her head slightly from the couch and looked at him. There was never any harm in playing along.
“Yeah. That’s right.” He seemed pleased with himself, showing her the small container holding an ink so black it seemed to drink in the light. “This eagle is going to cover pretty much your whole back and I want the black to stay solid and focused for a long time. Most blacks fade to a dull grey-green, but this stuff shouldn’t. And I’m using American ink for the colouring,” he nodded to a collection of coloured bottles on the table where the inking needle rested, “because that stays the brightest and just plain looks good.” He finished with a nod, as if it was a done deal.
She felt impressed, letting her head fall back into her crossed arms again. The design of the eagle alone was the result of weeks they had spent together perfecting the image. “Thanks,” was all she could manage, the anticipation almost tangible.
He swabbed her back with ice-cold sterilizer before laying the picture on as a guide. “Just to do the last medical check, have you got a pacemaker or any other medical equipment that I should know about in your chest? These inking guns produce quite a strong magnetic field and can interfere with some medical equipment.”
She shook her head. “No, nothing that wasn’t there when I was born.”
“Great. Got to ask. Mind if I put some music on?”
“Sure, go ahead.” His choice always seemed to fit whatever she was getting inked. If it wasn’t for the needle, she was sure she would fall asleep listening.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade swelled to fill her ears and she sighed, knowing this one from before. She closed her eyes and managed not to wince as the needle began its scratching across her skin.
***
Professor Paul Marty chewed on the sandwich without really being aware of what he was eating, his attention focused on the bank of monitors in front of him. He watched, in data-form, the actions of the robotic arm that sat in the meter squared glass cube in the centre of the laboratory. He saw, reading the numbers only, an arm reach out, grasp a ceramic container, and move it onto a scanning stalk in the centre of the cube. When he was satisfied that all was well, he turned to the cube and looked at the pure glass stalk that rose from a likewise glass floor, the top flattened into a small table on which rested a semi transparent, sealed, ceramic beaker that held a dark, viscous liquid within its confines. Satisfied that all was well, he raised a hand and made a circular motion above his head. Seconds later, the low basso hum of the ten Cray Quantum 6800’s, stationed around the lab like sentries guarding a temple, murmured into life.
“How’re the passives looking, Ann?” he asked the physicist who was assisting with experiment to his side.
“Erm, well,” she paused, tapping at the keyboard in front of her, “I’m getting … nothing,” she said finally.
“Nothing?” the professor leaned over and looked at the screens, his brow knotting. “Wow, you’re serious. There really is nothing.” The container should have shown some sort of magnetic signature resulting from the content’s electrical activity, but it was completely inert. He took a breath in, letting it out slowly through his nose as his face showed a fierce concentration. “That’s strange. Okay let’s give them a kick. Lower the torus and tap them with, say, half a Tesla?” He looked to Ann for confirmation.
She shrugged and said, “Might as well. Nothing much is happening so nothing to lose.”
Ann entered the sequence at her terminal with a few taps and they both turned to watch as a magnetic torus, lowered by an arm from the ceiling, surrounded the glass cube, the beaker centred within it.
“Everyone out,” Ann said loudly, and the team moved away from the cube to stand in the safety of a protected office. Satisfied that everyone was safe, she pressed the activation button. They felt the EMP kick as a pulse in the building’s structure. The Crays, wrapped in custom designed Faraday cages, recorded in real time everything that happened.
“Bugger,” said Ann when she looked at the screen afterwards. The professor leaned in as well, reading the results.
“Oh,” was all he could manage.
***
The afternoon sun leaked in from the parlour’s windows as Steve worked, throwing bars of light through the air and casting bright pools around the place. The whine of the inking needle was still audible over the music that played, a different composer now and one she didn’t recognise. Xanthe’s pain threshold was high, but even she was finding it hard going. Maybe one sitting was asking too much of her, but she was determined to get it done in one go.
The needle’s scream stopped and Steve wiped away some excess ink and blood. “That’s all the outline work done, now I’m going to colour it in. How you doing?”
“Fine,” she lied, knowing that whatever was happening she’d say nothing less. A few seconds later the needle started and she felt the painful scratching start up again.
***
Paul and Ann were standing by the glass cube, looking at the beaker.
“So, what is it then?” he asked, leaning forward and peering intently at the wording on the outside of the container.
Dr. Ann Parks, world renowned nano-physicist, and by far the more practical of the two, opened the cube and picked up the beaker to examine it properly. “It says it’s ink.”
“Ink? What do you mean, ink?” his voice rising. He held his arms out and looked around. “So, where the bloody hell are my nanites?” he shouted. He looked through the glass walls at the other technicians in the lab. “Anyone?” But everyone looked just as confused as he was. He turned towards the part of the lab where the stores were kept. “Drorn, get the order trail up and let’s …” He stopped. “Where’s Drorn?”
One of the other technicians coughed before calling back: “Um, it’s his day off, Professor.”
“Day off?” Professor Paul Marty, two PhDs to his name, consultant advisor to the government, consultant to NASA, credited with the creation of the build theory that made nano structures possible, proved that even an intellectual can swear with the best of them when required.
***
Steve finished the last bit of colouring in, the needle quiet and discarded now. Using a tissue, he wiped away the last bit of excess ink and blood, then rubbed in some cream to help with the healing process, and stood back from his work.
“All done, you can relax for a bit” he said. “If you sit up, I’ll do that rose again.” He loaded some bright green into the needle’s small reservoir.
Xanthe sat up as asked and, taking only a few seconds, Steve went over the green in the rose tattoo as he’d promised earlier. Now she was hurting front and back, she thought, but the new green really did work. She could see how it brought the rose out and made it all that more real. “Thanks, it looks good.”
“You wait until you see the eagle,” he said, moving two mirrors around so that she could see her back reflected. “What do you think?”
She held her breath as she looked at the tattoo that covered nearly all of her back, the tips of the wings just touching the tops of her shoulders, the head of the eagle in the centre of her back. “It’s … it’s … beautiful,” she breathed. Xanthe looked to Steve. “Thank you,” she said, smiling.
He smiled back. “No problem, glad you like it. Another tattoo ‘Drawn by Dr. Drorn’,” and he laughed at his own slogan. “Mind if I take a picture for the records?”
“Go ahead, take as many as you want,” she said, her eyes shifting back to the mirror to look at the tattoo. The eyes in the eagle were perfectly lined up, sitting just right so that they seemed to be watching you, the black ink he’d used as intense as midnight.
Dr. Steve Drorn, physicist and part time tattooist, held up his cell phone, lining up the image so that it filled the screen. Carefully he pressed the button, the camera flashing two or three times in rapid succession before the main burst of light lit her back as the shutter fired. He glanced at the small screen, his face looking happy that he’d got the image he wanted. “Perfect,” he said, putting the cell phone away. He started to pull some clear-wrap from a dispenser to cover her back so that it wouldn’t scab up.
Xanthe, though, was still looking in the mirror. She frowned. She was sure, just after the main flash went, that the eagle, bright and glistening wet on her back … had blinked.
David O'Neill lives and writes in Essex in England. Read the latest novel from David O'Neill: The Oui Trip
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