by Jesse Ball
But three remained. One below the podium, two in the seats above.
Quietly: What is it?
I want to ask him something, said Lois.
MANDRED WAS PUTTING PAPERS INTO A LEATHER valise at the bottom of the concavity. They went down to him, in a darting procession of legs.
When they came opposite, they lifted themselves backward onto the carpeted stage and sat feet dangling. The young are so quick, so agile! Their limbs so strong! Now it was they who watched him.
And then Lois was speaking, she was asking her question:
Why was it always the right thumb? You would think that they would want to take the dominant thumb, but that isn’t always the same, is it?
Lethe peered at Lois, and Mandred nodded.
This is a good question—I don’t have time to answer it now, but . . .
He paused in thought. No, no. But then he reconsidered.
I am going later on a special day trip. My assistant is sick. If you want to come along, you could act as my assistant. We’d have more time to talk about this, this thumb conjecture. It’s an hour’s train ride. What is your name again?
Lois.
How would that be?
Lois looked at Lethe. Lethe looked at Lois.
I think so. Can Lethe come too?
Mandred looked the two of them over, as if regretting his proposal, but the cloud passed and he smiled suddenly. What did he smile at?
Yes, he said, Lethe can come. Lethe. It’s a strange name.
Lethe looked confused.
When would we be back?
Not late, not too late.
She’s just asking that because she’s dutiful. She’s always home for her parents, like clockwork, aren’t you?
Shut up.
It won’t be late. Don’t worry about that.
He went up the steps and out. At the door he turned off the lights and paused.
You didn’t even ask me where we are going, Lethe, Lois.
They stared at his outline against the light.
We are going to a zoo, a real zoo. I’ll leave at three from the front entrance.
THE GIRLS WERE IN CONSTERNATION. A ZOO. NEITHER had ever been to such a place. Zoos were like barge trips, and mountain retreats, they were for party functionaries, high officials, the very wealthy. Regular people did not get to go to the zoo.
Lethe could hardly believe it.
There’s no zoo. The old man just wants to strangle you in some back corridor.
Awful, don’t say it.
I think he does.
He won’t.
You should let him.
You should, you can be his assistant.
No, you. You’re the one he asked.
The two girls sat in the dark, joking and saying this or that, touching each other lightly on the face or arm. None of it meant anything, but the whole of it was of course as meaningful as a thing could be. To be alongside another person, and somehow in them, in their eyes and mind, to feel what they feel, and have what you feel be felt? And all in a soft darkness, a film just finished, the freedom of free hours beckoning. And ahead—a zoo!
THEY HAD GONE DOWN TO EAT SOMETHING BY THE fountain. They sat on the edge and said things to each other. People walked by in the midst of drab lives, not even conscious that the moment passing was that moment. Likewise Lethe and Lois were elsewhere—they were in the next day, speaking rapidly, almost glowing.
Ogias’ Day had been announced not yesterday and not the day before that but the day before that. Lois said the moment she heard, she had gotten herself a light-blue dress with blue boots and a burned-red rain cover. When she described her clothing, it was almost as if it appeared in the air before them, rotating in a kind of glory. How delightful!
I will take my Salman b3 because it’s the same blue, she said. It was my mother’s idea. She said Ogias’ Day has a traditional blue tint. In the festive materials, blue, so the b3 will be perfect. I guess I prefer the Gotch 2 (here she patted the mustard-yellow mask at her waist), but the b3 is so nice.
Lethe blushed slightly at this—she had only one mask, not several like Lois.
I like that one. I tried it at the store. It is quite narrow.
Well, my face is narrow, like a shrew.
They both laughed.
I don’t even know what a shrew looks like.
Me neither.
Maybe we’ll see one at the zoo!
A man walking past turned. He stared at them a moment too long. Lois peered at him and waved him over.
What is it, miss?
He was old, and wore a worker’s coveralls. He seemed to instinctively flinch.
She said something. He couldn’t hear, and she waved him closer. He couldn’t hear again, and she waved him closer. He hesitated, but came and was standing there practically in between them.
I’m sorry, he said. Can I?
Could you go fuck yourself.
Lethe burst out laughing, but Lois kept a straight face, staring right at the guy.
Go fuck yourself, she repeated. And don’t look at us.
She’s just like that, said Lethe. Don’t worry. It isn’t about you.
Unless it is, said Lois. Maybe it is about you.
He shook a bit and hurried away. They both laughed some more and watched him go.
Would you ever gas somebody?
What? asked Lethe.
Would you gas somebody, if you had to?
Of course. Wouldn’t you?
I definitely would if I had to—I guess what I mean then is, what if you didn’t have to? What if you just wanted to? Would you do it? Do you ever think about gassing someone?
You know Mandred’s wife gassed herself. She tugged off the end of a canister and breathed it all in. That’s what some guy told me.
Wait, she’s dead?
Yeah—last year. Same guy said that’s why Mandred’s a drunk.
Is he a drunk?
I don’t know.
Why would she do that?
I guess there are a lot of reasons.
Yeah. Huh. What are you going in tomorrow?
I think that Litnas jacket with the pants.
Didn’t I make fun of you the last time you wore that?
You promised you wouldn’t again.
You’re only going to wear it because what’s his name came to talk to you because the top is so—
Shut up, it isn’t. What was his name? He was from—
Do you want to come by my house in the morning and we can go together?
Sure.
A man came up and offered to sell them replacement filters for their masks. They declined. He went on to the next group, farther along the fountain, and gave the same speech, got the same reply.
I’d never trust those, said Lethe. Who knows where they came from?
Hey, said Lois. From the lecture. I don’t get what he said about safety. Why is it safer for the niners in Baseltown or Row House? Isn’t it dangerous in there? Everyone talks about the horrible things that happen. My mom said she’s never been in a quad and she would never go. When my father started in about his visit to a quad, she made him stop. If it’s so bad, why do they like it in there?
Well, it’s safer for us out here, obviously. But in there—it’s safer for them because no one can gas them. Except the guards. Out here anything that happens to them is fine. They have to be on their toes—all the time. You know that.
Lois nodded.
Like that poor fuck just now. I never want to get old.
A truck went by with a loudspeaker on the back. It blared the gas creed, and everyone stood to attention. No bird looked down upon the scene, however, because there were no birds left to perch on anything, no birds left to look down on anything. The girls we’ve passed the morning with had never seen a bird, or any other animal for that matter. It was a new world.
The girls’ behavior—does it seem cruel? You have to understand, it isn’t cruel so much as natural. What is natural must be res
pected, must be wallowed in. Isn’t it so?
Why should they bother to care about someone so inferior? It makes perfect sense that service of every kind should be given by those who can provide it. Those who are ridiculous bear ridicule. Those who are beneath notice are not noticed, and those who are elect are raised up.
As much as we like to think there can be fairness, it is really a foolish idea, one we ought to have done away with long ago. Instead of fairness there is just order and its consequences.
Humans of the past were often hobbled when they saw other humans and felt themselves like to them. Was this not the cause of so many wars, a series of wars leading up to a final, enormous war that might have ruined everything?
We are not alike! We are only alike to those who we are like to, to those who are known, certainly known, to be the same as we. This is proven in the course of time.
AND IN FACT ON THE FOUNTAIN WHERE THE GIRLS HAD sat, there was raised lettering, a scroll in the hands of a girl, half-fish, half-human. Do you know what it said? It was one of the creeds, one of the most important creeds, the creed of the elect. The girls had probably never looked into the fountain and seen it, but the creed they felt in their hearts.
A world of tiers—
Know your place upon it
By looking down.
Be strong!
HE CAME ALONG THE HALL AND SAW THEM STANDING there, each the other’s shadow, leaning provocatively on the window casement. His eyes lingered on them. Of course!—those girls—they were to come with him. A good thing he’d come down that hall and not another. He’d forgotten their names. What were they? One was . . . One was . . . It was as if he swam in a cloud, surfacing to clarity and diving again. He’d been lying on his back on the floor of his office for the last hour. What were their names?
They were saying something, they were greeting him.
Girls. I think you’ll find this trip worth your while. The zoo director is an old friend. He is proofreading a book that I wrote.
About what?
What’s that?
Lethe wants to know what the book is about.
It is a comparison of lives. Statesmen from the New Epoch, and statesmen from the old, the lives told so that they frame one another.
The girls said they were unlikely to read a book like that.
He snorted.
Well, it isn’t for you, not unless you want to read it, and then of course you could, if you found it.
Lethe shook her head.
I won’t read it unless you put some women in there.
Oh, I see, he said. Confusion in the ranks. . . . You see, statesmen includes women. There are women in the book, don’t worry.
They argued about whether statesmen includes women. The girls did not believe it.
At the station they were to board a train for the outer circuit of the city, which lay beyond a kind of ringed park area. The Center was where people lived, there and in the First and Second district. Beyond that was the ring of parkland, and then the industrial areas. There was also, of course, the quad.
They were looking at a map. Everything on the map was drawn smaller than its actual size, of course, because it was a map and that’s how maps work, but the quad was drawn even smaller than anything else. People didn’t like to look at it.
Will we see Gall Roads from the train?
It’s behind a series of berms. But we’ll pass it.
He ran his finger along the route that they would take.
ON THE TRAIN THEY SAT IN A BOX WITH TWO OPPOSING benches. The girls occupied one, he the other. Lethe whispered in Lois’s ear, something about the stench of liquor. It was all too much—they were giddy. Anyone would be. They leaned into each other and breathed and breathed.
The ever familiar voice came, and they stood and said the gas creed and sat again.
When the train lurched, Lethe’s bag fell over and a book slid out. The old man picked it up. He coughed.
Tradition and Culture of Row House. A very famous and controversial book. Which of you is reading it?
Lethe raised a finger.
And what do you think?
Lethe said something, but the train drowned her out.
Mandred squinted.
She said nothing is simple—even the quads. So it makes sense that they would have . . . what was it?
Inner lives.
Inner lives.
Ah. Inner lives.
He said the words with a scowl in his mouth.
Well, there are differing opinions about this book. Some people think it is largely fantasy. You see—when a person, in this case an anthropologist, goes to study people, the people are affected by the fact that they are being studied.
Lethe rolled her eyes.
The point is, he continued, the human mind seeks out patterns, and even creates them, even creates them from chaos. It finds patterns where there are none. Row House was a terrible slum, is a terrible slum, has always been a terrible slum. For a long time it was thought of as the worst of the quads.
But she was so brave to go in there. Lethe told me about what she did, going in there by herself, and staying in there for days at a time. The people even protected her while she wrote it. She won them over.
And do you know what happened to her?
The two girls shook their heads.
She was raped and killed in Solston. Not in Row House but in Solston. A man just grabbed her in the street, and no one helped. No one knew her there. It went on for an hour. They say the guards saw it and didn’t help either, because they knew who she was. The guards didn’t come out well in her book, so they felt she was their enemy. There was an opinion, well, some people thought she got what was coming to her. Some people even said she might have been a quad that somehow managed to escape the branding and thumb taking. Every now and then it happens. They’re crafty.
There is a part, Lethe said, where there’s a funeral. The quads think there’s another life after this one. They think it matters what you do in this life because to get to the next one you need to do certain things.
The old man laughed.
Yes, we all used to think that. Everyone. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?
Can you answer my question now?
Mandred tried to remember what the question had been. He looked at his hands in his lap, and at the cover of the book he was holding. It didn’t come to him. His embarrassment was plain.
Lethe nudged Lois.
It was about the thumb taking. Why not take the dominant thumb?
Oh, yes, the thumb taking. A very good question. In fact, they do take the dominant thumb now. But at the start they didn’t have the time to test for hand dominance. The essence of this question is of interest. That essence is: What is the heart of the enterprise? Is it to make the quad less efficient, to render him weaker and less competent? Is it merely an echo of the ancestral law: to cut off the hand of a thief? Is it a quick cataloguing gesture, that of a librarian, to clip off the same corner of every page? Which do you think?
Lethe whispered to Lois.
She thought it was the last one, cataloguing, so it’s odd they alter which thumb. How many lefties are there anyway?
I have always thought it was inconsistent. It would be better if they just took all right thumbs, as they did at the start. For instance, it means that when a guard is inspecting a person, at a random checkpoint, for instance, he must check both thumbs to see if they are prosthetic, rather than merely one. This in effect doubles his workload.
I met a guard once, said Lois.
I think we have all seen them, haven’t we?
I mean socially. He came to my parents’ house. He was a regular citizen, not a bottom-grader like most of them. For some reason he decided to join up. I guess anyone can.
She flashed a look at Lethe.
He was kind of good-looking. But I was just nine then. I remember he picked me up and twirled me around in the air and my heart beat so fast. I could feel him holding
me there at my waist for days.
Well, they aren’t all like that.
Lethe looked out the window. There was a waterway off to the left, a thin gray-blue line, and alongside it a series of low dwellings, each in perfect order. The landscape was devoid of people. Why is it that wherever we go when we look for people we can find no one? Where is everyone? Where have they gone?
THE TRAIN STOPPED AT THE NEXT STATION, AND A DOOR opened. A large man entered their compartment and sat down in the box opposite theirs. He was looking at a newssheet. He noticed them staring and turned, and the raw red brand on his cheek stuck out.
Mandred looked at the girls, then at the man. He stood up and went over and spoke to him. What he said was too quiet to hear, but the man got up and left the car.
What did you say to him?
He should know better. What is he doing, sitting right there? Sometimes I think the Forthright Doctrine has gone too far. Sure they should feel like people, but they aren’t people, at least not when real people are around.
What did you say?
Mandred snorted.
I told him if he didn’t get out right then, that would be it for him. Just like that. I know you think it’s harsh, but it’s the only way. You have to speak like that. The niners are children, essentially. They don’t progress beyond a certain point. They don’t understand abstract things.
Well, I’m glad he’s gone, said Lois. He was awfully big. I’d hate to be alone with him.
What would you have done if he hadn’t left?
Mandred seemed confused by the question. He sat down.
The fact of disposal. It’s an interesting subject. When the prisoners were first released, gassings were common. Before that, those in prison who were to be executed had to go through an enormous rigmarole. It was no easy thing to handle an execution. Yet when the prisoners became quads, when they essentially went on to continue their bad behavior in the midst of life, regular citizens started doing what needed doing, started the business of disposal for themselves. That is to say, these new quads who had been criminals were often simply gassed the first wrong they did. It happened that a housewife at a tram station would pull a lever or pop a canister, settle her mask on her face, and lay down two or three of them at once. A child might do it, just the same. He’d feel afraid when a few of them joined him in some alley he was walking down, and the end of his canister would pop—and that would be that.