by Allen Steele
I nod as much as I’m able. “Good. Do you remember what happened to George, that time in the bathroom when he attacked Kate? They can do that to you, too, if you do something really wrong…and they’ll know about it if you do, because your associate is always watching you no matter where you are.”
“But…I thought he was my friend.”
“He is your friend, Alec, but he can also be your enemy, if you do anything wrong.” He taps the top of my head. “He lives up here, and he sees what you see, hears what you hear. You can’t get away from him. Understand?”
“I understand.” As I speak, a new word surfaces to my mind. I say it aloud: “Okay.”
“Huh?” John seems surprised. His pink eyes drill into mine. “What did you just say?”
Believing I’ve just done something wrong, I pull away from him, but he quickly shakes his head. “No, no, it’s all right, it’s…okay.”
“Okay?”
He smiles, but his lips tremble when he does so. “I’ve never heard you say that before.” He pauses. “Do something for me. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun. Blink three times and say, ‘Eyes-up reiteration, okay.’”
“Okay.” Nothing happens. John repeats his instructions, and so I say, “Eyes-up reiteration, okay,” and blink my eyes three times.
Okay
The word appears in front of me just as the little stick man has done many times before, floating in midair before my eyes like a translucent ghost. Startled, I cower against John’s chest.
“Can you read that?” John whispers. “Can you tell me what it says?”
“Yes…it says ‘Okay.’”
He takes a deep breath. “Good,” he murmurs. “The osmotic damage must not be as bad as they thought. You’re recovering your long-term memory…”
His words are meaningless. He notices the blank look on my face and shakes his head again. “It’s all right. You’ve done nothing wrong. Let’s try this again. Say, ‘Eyes-up’ again, and then ask the associate to give you your name. Do you think you can do that?”
More nervous now, yet wondering at what I had just seen, I say: “Eyes-up…what is my name?”
Once again, the ghost words appear in front of me:
Your name is William Alec Tucker III.
“What does it say, Alec?” John whispers.
It takes me a few moments to puzzle it out. “It says…‘Your…name is…William…Alec…Tucker…I…I…I.’”
“Very good. Now, say ‘Eyes-down.’”
I repeat what John had just said, and the words vanish. “I want you to practice doing this. Whenever you’re working or taking a shower or eating, every time you’re alone…but only when you’re alone, off by yourself, when no one else is watching you…I want you to say, ‘Eyes-up,’ and then speak aloud the things that you see, or what you’re holding in your hands. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, John.”
“This is our little secret, so I don’t want you to let anyone know what you’re doing. Okay?”
I nod. “Very good,” John says. He stands up and helps me get back on my feet, then he reaches down and picks up the mop. “Now I want you to mop this entire balcony and the stairs. Don’t go anywhere else. Just mop the balcony and the stairs. Make them nice and clean. When you’re done, I want you to push your fingers against your lower jaw like this…” he demonstrates by pressing his own fingertips against his right lower jaw “…and say, ‘John, it’s Alec, I’m done.’ Can you do that, Alec?”
I tell him that I can, and I’m rewarded by one of his smiles. “That’s very good, Alec. I’m very proud of you. You’re my favorite student. When I come back for you, I’ll take you to the place where you’ll be living from now on. It’s much nicer than the place you were before, and you’ll have it all to yourself. Would you like that?”
I’m not sure if I do. The White Room is home; it’s snug and secure, and the few friends I’ve made are there. Yet after everything I’ve been shown, I don’t want to return to its white-on-white sameness…and I’m really tired of chicken soup, even though I’m still uncertain whether there are any alternatives.
“Yes,” I say, “I would like that very much.”
“Okay,” John says. “I’ll see you later.”
And then he turns around and walks away, leaving me alone with my mop, my bucket, and my fear.
CHAPTER
FOUR
* * *
MISERY
“If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for,
he isn’t fit to live.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
I finish mopping the balcony and the terrace stairs, then I prod my lower jaw just as John showed me and tell him I’m through. I hear his voice in my ear; he tells me to remain there until he comes for me. My back is aching and my hands are sore from grasping the mop handle, so I sit down on the steps and rest for a few minutes, and it isn’t long before John reappears.
He spends a couple of minutes inspecting the balcony, running his fingers along the tiles and making sure that I’ve mopped beneath the railing, and when he’s through there’s a broad smile on his face. He says that I’ve done a good job and that he’s proud of me; I might have been delighted by his praise if I wasn’t so tired. As it is, I simply nod my head.
The light is a little dimmer now. I hadn’t noticed earlier because my attention was focused on my work, but now I see that the shadows cast from the castle walls and the nearby trees and bushes are longer. The sky has faded from mustard yellow to burnt orange; now I can make out a thin glow coming from thin lines running parallel across the sky. Between the lines are wide bands of deep blue; I can make out tiny pinpricks of light here and there…save at the center, where there appears to be a large dark mass.
John sees that I’m looking up at the sky. “It’s late afternoon,” he says before I ask. “The day’s coming to an end. Night’s coming on, and it’ll be dark soon.”
Day. Night. New words, but nonetheless familiar…and another word comes to mind. “Sun…sundown,” I say.
“I suppose you could call it that, yes.” He points to my mop and bucket. “Time to go. Pick those up and bring them with you. Be careful that you don’t spill any dirty water…you don’t want to have to mop up the hall floor.”
He leads me back to the closet and shows me how to empty the gray mopwater into a drain marked Water Recycle and where to place the mop and bucket. As I do so, another white-robed figure enters the closet: a short black man carrying a wicker basket filled with brushes, towels, and bottles. At first he seems startled to find us here, but then he eases into the closet and begins putting away all the stuff in his basket. When he’s done, he turns to me.
“My name’s Sam,” he says.
“Sam?”
“Sam I am,” he adds, and as he says this, something flashes through my mind: a faint recollection of
(curled up in a woman’s lap, a large book spread open on her knees, looking at)
warmth and security and
(pictures of a cat in a tall striped hat, carrying a platter of food)
wonder unfolding.
“Green eggs and ham,” I say, not really knowing what it means.
He stares at me for a long moment. “Yeah,” he says very softly, almost as a whisper. “Green eggs and ham. Do you…?”
John clears his throat. Sam gives him a furtive look, then he turns and quickly walks out of the closet. He almost collides with another robed figure standing just outside: a slender young woman carrying a broom. It’s Anna, and she looks about as exhausted as I am. Her mouth drops open when she sees me, but we don’t get a chance to speak before John ushers me out of the closet.
“That’s Anna,” I say to John as he leads me further down the corridor, away from the Great Hall. “She sleeps with me.”
John laughs out loud. I don’t know why, but if he thinks what I’ve said is funny, it must be, so I laugh, too. “I know,” he says, “but you’re not going back there
, ever again. I’m taking you somewhere else now.”
“You want me to mop some more stairs?” I hope not; my back is really hurting, and hunger has made a nest in my stomach.
“Oh, no. You’re done for the day, and you’ve performed very well. I’m taking you to your new room…one you get to have for your very own. Would you like that, Alec?”
I nod, although I’m uncomfortable with the notion. The White Room has been my home for a long time now; it’s a safe place, and I don’t wish to leave it behind. John seems to notice this. “You’ll like this place better, Alec, I promise.” Then he hesitates. “Have you ever met Sam before?” I shake my head. “But you both knew the same rhyme. Where is it from?”
“I don’t know.”
He peers at me. “Something else you remembered?”
I shrug. “I think so. Sort of.”
A door at the end of the corridor leads into another elevator, this one a little smaller than the one we used earlier. John shows me how to push a little blue button marked “2” on a panel inside the elevator. The doors slide shut; there’s a sensation of downward movement. “If you remember anything else,” John says, “be sure to tell me about it. All right, Alec?”
“Okay.” Another thought occurs to me. “Should I tell you, or the other John?”
John stares at me. “Why do you think there’s another John?” he asks.
“Because the other John has different eyes. Yours are…” I grope for the right word: “Pink.”
His back stiffens, his mouth becoming a tight line. For a second I think he’s angry with me, and I shrink back against the handrail. Then he relaxes: not naturally, but as if he’s telling himself to do so. “I’m the John you want to talk to about this,” he says. “Don’t talk about your memories to anyone else…not even the other John.”
“Okay, John. But why…?”
The complex question I want to ask—Why are there two people who look like you and have the same name?—dies on my lips, for just then there’s a small voice in my mind
(“Well, Alec, you’re right, he’s not the real Santa Claus. He’s…”)
that tells me
(“…one of Santa’s helpers, because Santa’s very busy right now…”)
it probably isn’t a good idea
(“…but everything you tell him, he’ll tell Santa himself, okay?”)
to tell everything I know to this John, that John, or any other John, because
(“…Now don’t cry. It’s just Santa. He just wants you to sit in his lap.”)
you never know who you can believe.
“What is it, Alec?”
I remember the expression on Sam’s face, how he suddenly became quiet when he saw John standing next to me, and how the man who was scrubbing the floor in the Great Hall quickly looked away when he saw us walking through. They’ve been here longer than I have; they know something that I don’t…and now, for the first time since I’ve known him, I’m unwilling to fully trust John.
“I don’t know,” I say very softly, shaking my head. “I just…forgot.”
John doesn’t seem satisfied by this answer, but then the elevator stops and the doors open again. “Well,” he says, “when you do remember, be sure to tell me.” Again, the smile. “Okay?”
“Okay, John. I will.”
This is the first time I’ve told a lie.
John leads me down a long, narrow corridor with plain gray walls and a low ceiling. The corridor is lined with doors; mounted on them are small rectangles with luminescent letters, each inscribed with a name. As we walk past the doors, John pronounces each name in turn—Bill, Susan, Amad, Christopher, Stan, Lisa, Winston, Hugh, Veronica, Anna, Sam, Kate, Russell, and so on, including some that I can’t pronounce and a couple that are written in alphabets that I don’t recognize—until we arrive at a door marked Alec.
“Place your thumb against the nameplate,” John says, and when I do the door slides open. Inside is a little room; the ceiling brightens as we walk in. It has a narrow bed that has already been made up with sheets, a pillow, and a blanket. There’s also a small closet which holds fresh white robes and a couple of folded towels, a shelf with nothing on it, and a toilet with a roll of thin paper on a hinge above it.
“Here you are, Alec,” John says. “This is your room.”
I stand at the doorway. The room is windowless and bare, not much larger than the closet where I had left the mop and bucket only a few minutes earlier, and furnished with only the barest of necessities…and it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a room of my own, with my name on the door and everything: a toilet I didn’t have to share with anyone else, clean clothes in the closet, a bed where I could sleep all by myself, a shelf for—well, for something…
John casts his hand across the room as if it was the Great Hall itself. “Yours and yours alone. Do you like it?”
“Yes, John. I like it very much.” But it’s so small…
“Good. When you’re ready to eat, go to the end of the corridor. The mess room is there, and you’ll find food there. You can eat there twice a day, along with everyone else. All your friends will be there. At the other end of the corridor is the shower room. It’s just like the one in the White Room.”
“Okay, John.”
“Tomorrow morning there will be lots of new things for you to do. Your associate will tell you what to do. If you have any questions, just ask him. All right?”
“Okay, John.” Even my voice feels tired. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore.
“I’ll let you get settled in now. I’ll see you later.” He gives me a fond pat on the shoulder, then steps back out the door and closes it behind him. I hear his footsteps receding down the corridor, and then I’m alone.
I sit down on the edge of the bed and gaze at all this for a few moments. Then I fold my arms together on my knees, bend my sore back until my forehead rests on my hands, and start to cry.
I don’t know why. It just seems like the right thing to do.
This was the beginning of my new life, as a servant in the household of Mister Chicago.
Mornings began the same way each day, with the ceiling of my little room softly glowing to life as an invisible hornet quietly buzzed in my ears. If I tried to sleep any longer, the light became brighter and the buzzing grew louder until it was an angry snarl; if I managed to ignore that and pulled the pillow over my face, a sharp pain in my skull would jolt me wide awake and leave me with a headache for the rest of the day. That only happened once; I quickly learned to get out of bed as soon as the light came on.
After using the toilet, I would take a short walk down the hall to the communal showers where, along with several other naked servants of both genders, I would wait for my turn beneath one of the ceiling holes. As in the White Room, there was no privacy to be had here; however, it never occurred to me to get turned on by any of the women showering next to me, although I was now aware that there were distinct differences between their bodies and mine. Our hair had grown out so we were no longer bald, but the depilatory soap we used kept us from growing hair on our limbs, faces, and pubic areas.
After the shower, I would return to my room, where I put on a clean robe. The one I wore yesterday I would dump, along with my damp towel, in the laundry cart that stood in the hallway each morning; once every few weeks, it would be my turn to push the cart with soiled robes and towels to a laundry chute further down the corridor; later the same day I would find a cart loaded with those same robes and towels, now clean and folded, parked in the mess room. I would then dispense them to the occupants of the various rooms. One size fit all, so there was no need to sort them out by proper owners.
Most mornings, though, I went straight to the mess room, where breakfast would be waiting. We were long past having chicken soup for every meal, but nonetheless there was little real variation in our morning diet: a bowl of warm oatmeal or cold granola, a cup of juice tasting like an odd combination of apples and grapes, a muffin or a
couple of slices of toast, a sliced banana or half of a grapefruit or a sliced orange. The only utensils were metal spoons, which had to be left on the table along with our plates and whatever we hadn’t eaten. If someone tried to smuggle something out of the mess room, he or she would receive a skull-splitting headache as punishment.
Breakfast and dinner were the only times when we got to socialize with one another. We sat together on wooden benches at long wooden tables, with no real seating order except that which we made ourselves. The first few days, the only people I knew were Sam, Russell, Kate, and Anna. I usually dined with Kate—who had recovered from her attempted rape by the late, unlamented George, yet never again entered the bathroom without Anna at her side—or Russell or Anna, but after a while I met other people who had also been in the White Room, and then those who had been living here before us. In time, I eventually learned everyone’s names: Peter, Rachel, Winston, Kent, Lisa, Caitlin, Chad, Saul, Rebecca, Kevin, Amad, Sue, Jeffery, Isak, Walt, Chang, so on and so forth, more than forty in all.
Some of us, like myself, had learned that we had last names as well, but we seldom if ever used them. Our conversations were hardly sparkling—mainly it was about what we had scrubbed, swept, or mopped the day before—and there were often long pauses during which you could see people batting their eyelids, then staring blankly into space as their eyes briefly filmed over. We all knew what that signified: our associates were speaking to us, giving us little pieces of information that we needed to know that instant, such as how to remove an orange seed from our mouths without spitting, or that we needed to excuse ourselves from the table and return to our rooms before we succumbed to the urge to relieve ourselves.
One morning, I found myself sitting across the table from the large man who had frightened me so much when I had first seen him in the White Room. He wasn’t nearly so frightening now, yet he made me nervous by staring intently at me as I ate. When I asked him what his name was, he told me that his name was Christopher…and then he asked if my name was Alec.