by Allen Steele
I told him, yes, my name is Alec.
He blinked rapidly and murmured something under his breath. The translucent film came over his eyes and he went silent. There was a long pause, then he focused his attention on his oatmeal. He didn’t speak to me again for many weeks.
His face was familiar. I couldn’t place it, but it always seemed to me as if I had met him somewhere before.
Breakfast always ended the same way. My associate would address me, and when I responded—if my mouth was full, all it took was three blinks—his patient voice would tell me what I had to do that day. I listened carefully to his instructions; if I had any questions, I merely had to whisper them and my associate would elaborate either verbally or with an image that would materialize before my face. Sometimes this would require a map—leave the room, go down the corridor, turn right, enter the elevator, press this button or that, get off the elevator, walk this way, turn left, turn left again, turn right, walk this way, stop here—or a demonstration by the little stick man, but after a while all it took was a simple verbal instruction:
Mop and polish the floor of the Great Hall.
Mop the upper and lower terraces.
Prune the roses in the gardens.
Clean all the toilets and sinks in the castle and restock them with soap, tissue, and towels.
Dust the tapestries, the paintings, and the statuary.
Manicure the shrubbery around the castle and mow the lawns.
Clean the windows.
Go to this room here, pick up a bunch of boxes, and carry them to another room there, and repeat as often as necessary until all the boxes in room A have been transported to room B.
Rearrange furniture in these rooms according to this plan.
Take a service elevator to another level, follow someone to another room down the corridor, and spend several hours helping two other servants move a very large object from one place to another.
Make up all the beds in these rooms. Make certain that the sheets are tucked in.
Wash everything in these baskets and fold them neatly.
Remove the filters from these ducts, clean them, and put them back in place.
Move this statue from one side of a garden to another.
Go to the upstairs kitchen, clean everything in sight. Twice if necessary.
Don’t quit until you’re told to do so.
Do you understand?
Of course, I understood. There was no question that I would misunderstand, or that I wouldn’t obey. My chores might be easy, tedious, difficult, more difficult, or close to impossible, but it was never asked if I wanted to do any of these things, or whether I liked performing these errands, or if they were frustrating.
I simply did whatever was asked of me.
More often than not, even the easiest task required a tutorial by my associate, yet the result was always the same. By the end of the day my muscles would be aching, my hands chafed, my robe filthy with dirt and sweat. Groaning aloud, my arms and legs so heavy I could barely move them, I would make my way to the nearest elevator and let it take me back to the servant quarters, where—alone or with others—I’d eat fish stew or steamed vegetables or something else I was too tired to taste. Then I would be allowed to retire to my little room, where the ceiling would darken as soon as I lay down in bed. And then I would fall asleep, until morning came and the hornet buzzed again.
Usually…but not always.
Some nights, I lay awake for hours after lights out, staring up at the ceiling as I reflected upon little flashes of memory I had collected during the day like bits of broken pottery. This isn’t an accidental metaphor; one afternoon I knocked over a small foyer vase while dusting it, and in a rare moment of insight while picking up the pieces, it suddenly occurred to me that the shattered ceramic was much like my own mind. If only I could find all the fragments and put them together in some coherent order, then I might know who Alec Tucker was, what he had been before he awakened in the White Room.
Almost every day, something else would come back to me, but only in sporadic bursts, with little or no context. Little snatches of the past: strange songs
(“I’m onna a Mexican ray-dee-ohh…”)
(“Ahhhh-ah-ha’m…I’m still ahhhlive…”)
(“Ahh’m a looser, baby…so why don’t you kill me…?”)
or voices saying things with no apparent meaning
(“Maytag…the one you can depend on…”)
(“Make it so, ensign…”)
(“And it’s a line drive to second base, but Ozzy’s out on first…”)
but mostly they were impressions. The recurring memory of cuddling up with a woman—my mother?—as she reads a picture book to me. A spoonful of hot soup swallowed the wrong way makes me cough, and this causes me to recall another time I had taken a hot liquid into my lungs instead of my stomach, only that time someone had laughed and pounded my back, and for an instant I see a long dinner table of polished wood, with a pair of silver candlesticks in the center. I drop my mop into a bucket of water, and there’s something about the splash it makes that brings back an impression of jumping off a long board into a deep well of shining blue water that smells vaguely of chlorine. An elevator door closes, and there’s a quick flash of another elevator door closing somewhere else.
All these things, and many more like them, but none as disturbing as one occurrence in particular: the morning I was in the shower, when Anna was standing next to me.
I had seen Anna naked many times and never thought anything of it. By now, she was almost like a sister to me, although I was almost certain that Alec Tucker had no brothers or sisters. Yet that morning she turned her back to me just so, with her left hip pivoted a certain way, and as I watched the warm water sluicing off her shoulders and down her bare back, I remembered another woman, standing nude beneath a hot shower
(“Hey, shut the curtain, it’s cold…!”)
seen in an instant just before I wrapped my arms around her waist
(“…oh, I see…”)
and drew her close to me
(“God, Alec, you’re always horny…”)
and then a name
(Erin)
and for no accountable reason, I found myself crying. Anna heard me weeping and turned around, and for the briefest instant I saw another woman’s face superimposed on her own. That only made it worse. Anna asked me what was wrong, but I shook my head and walked out of the bathroom without bothering to rinse off the soap. I skipped breakfast that morning, went through the day with an empty stomach and a melancholy soul.
I had found another piece of the shattered vase, and a significant one at that.
I had once known a woman named Erin, and I had been in love with her.
And so it went, day after day after day. I saw the pink-eyed John now and then, when he dropped by while I was working to see how I was doing. He inevitably asked if I had remembered anything else: a friendly, almost casual question, yet one which I instinctively avoided answering. I played dumb, shaking my head as I went on mopping or wiping or cutting or folding, and after a while I stopped seeing him almost altogether.
I often asked my associate—whom I started calling Chip, for no other reason than it seemed to be an appropriate name, although I couldn’t fathom why—for details on the things I remembered. Chip, it was now apparent, could not read my mind; he could view exactly what I was doing at any given moment, and he could respond to verbal instructions, including the “eyes up” command, which would cause a translucent double-image to appear before my eyes, but he wasn’t privy to my thoughts. This was both a blessing and a drawback; although my thoughts were still my own, it also meant that I had to carefully describe my flashbacks. Since I was still struggling with language, forming those thoughts into meaningful expression added another degree of difficulty, and even when I was able to formulate a question, Chip either couldn’t—or, increasingly more often, simply wouldn’t—give me a reply.
“Chip, do I have
a mother?”
“No, you don’t have a mother.”
I would think about this a bit, then I’d try again: “Chip, did I ever have a mother?”
“Yes, you once had a mother.”
“What was her name?”
“I’m sorry, Alec, but that file is closed.”
That was the response I most often received to the questions that interested me the most: file closed. I had no real idea of what a file was, and when I asked Chip what that word meant, he went eyes-up and showed me pictures of two objects: a metal hand tool with coarse edges, and a folder filled with paper. The former was contained in one of many supply closets, and was readily available to me if I needed to use one; the latter was simply unavailable, period.
“Chip, did I once know a woman named Erin?”
“I’m sorry, Alec, but that file is closed.”
Okay. So I did once know a girl named Erin. “Chip, open the file on Erin.”
“I’m sorry, Alec, but I cannot.”
So I would try a different tack by verbally describing Erin as best as I was able—a little shorter than me, very slim, long brown hair, about my age—but without mentioning her name.
“This is Erin Westphall,” Chip said.
Now I knew her last name. “Tell me more about Erin Westphall.”
“I’m sorry, Alec, but that file is…”
In my anger, a new word bubbled up from my brain: “Chip, open the fucking file on Erin Westphall!”
“I’m sorry, Alec, but I don’t know what a fucking file is.”
Come to think of it, neither did I. I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said, “what does ‘fucking’ mean?”
“I cannot tell you this.”
“Is it in a file?”
“No, but I cannot tell you this.”
More frustration. “Then you’re fucking stupid!”
No response. End of discussion.
So I sweated and toiled and gathered ten times as many calluses on my palms and knuckles for every sliver of memory that resurfaced from my mind at odd moments, and at night I fought to put it all together, only to fall asleep knowing little more about my past than I had when I had woken up that morning.
And then one day, without even trying to remember, everything came back to me.
CHAPTER
FIVE
* * *
CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE
“What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”
—Anonymous mugger, to Dan Rather
And so it went—for a couple of months, at least, although I had no real way of keeping track of time. No calendars, no watches: no idea where I was, or even when I was. The world existed in a state of perpetual summer. By now, though, there was yet another mystery about this place: the apparent absence of people.
When John took me from the White Room, we had walked down a busy corridor in what I now knew to be one level of an underground labyrinth below the castle, the top level of which was the servants’ quarters. At first I assumed that the people I saw that day lived in the castle, but the more time I spent cleaning its dozens of bedrooms, the more obvious it became that the castle was virtually deserted. If the people I had seen in the corridor lived anywhere, it was in another level of the labyrinth, not here.
Along with Anna, Sam, Russell, and a few others, my principal job was to take care of the castle. The rest were assigned duties outside its walls, tending the gardens, vineyards, lawns, and groves that surrounded the manse; thus I seldom saw anyone except other servants. When I carried my mop and pail from one room to another, it was through empty hallways that echoed with the sound of my own feet. I changed linen on beds that had not been slept in, restocked towels and toiletries in bathrooms that had not been used, and mopped floors where no one had walked since the last time I had been here. I scrubbed pots and pans in a silent kitchen whose pantry and walk-in freezer were stocked with enough food to feed a small army, polished silverware and antique china from the mahogany cabinets of a vast dining room with sufficient chairs and table space for that same army to dine in high style, and dusted a library whose upper shelves could only be reached with a stepladder, yet which contained books that had never been read.
There was no one here.
When I asked Chip about this, he told me that the rooms were reserved for Mister Chicago’s personal staff, consorts, and special guests, and since the master of the house and his entourage were absent on a prolonged business trip (to where, Chip wouldn’t specify), these rooms were presently unoccupied. When I asked why I was changing the sheets on beds that hadn’t been slept in, Chip told me that Mister Chicago abhorred dust and mildew, and that he was due to return home soon (but when, he wouldn’t tell me).
Yet there was one suite—the largest, located at the end of a short hallway off the gallery overlooking the Great Hall—that did show signs of habitation. When it was my turn to clean it, I noticed that the sheets and pillows had been recently slept on, the towels in the bathroom damp and wadded, the shower and sink wet. So someone was residing in the castle during Mister Chicago’s prolonged absence—obviously a favored guest—but I never saw who it was, for he or she never showed his or her face.
This was the least of the puzzles that preoccupied me, though. I was still trying to sort out the pieces of my shattered memory, one tiny shard at a time, and put them together in some sort of rational order. The harder I sought these clues, though, the more it seemed as if they were obscured by a sort of cerebral fog. My past lay scattered across the floor of a dark room, and I was crawling about on my hands and knees, trying to gather them even though I couldn’t see them until my hands fell across them…and I still hadn’t found the largest fragments, although I knew that they lay somewhere out there.
I’m still scrabbling about when happenstance solves the problem for me.
One morning, I woke up sick. I hadn’t been feeling very well the day before, and after I finished my chores I was too listless to even eat dinner. Instead, I had gone straight back to my room and put myself in bed. Anna stopped by to check on me, but I told her that I was okay, I was just a little tired, that’s all…but when I get out of bed next morning, my joints ache, my head throbs, and I’m chilled to the bone even while standing under a hot shower. The final blow comes when I go to the mess room for breakfast; one whiff of the bowl of oatmeal placed on the table for me, and I double over and vomit into the lap of my robe.
Chip tells me I’m ill—like I haven’t figured this already—and orders me to the infirmary. It’s located on the level below the servants’ quarters. Although I’ve visited it several times earlier for minor cuts, sprains, and burns, this time I’m so disoriented that John (the brown-eyed one) has to lead me there. A nice woman in a white smock—she never tells me her name, but I mentally call her Big Nurse for no particular reason—makes me lie on a table beneath a glowing panel that bloops and bleeps while she sticks plastic things in my ears and my mouth, and finally announces that I’ve contracted a stomach virus.
She places a little gun against the crook of my right elbow. I feel a tiny sting, then she hands me a fresh robe. Get up, she says, put on this fresh robe, and go back to your room. Sleep as much as you can and don’t eat anything for a while. You’ll be fine tomorrow morning.
And so I lie in bed for the rest of the day. It’s the first day off I’ve had since leaving the White Room, but it doesn’t make me any less miserable. When I sleep, it’s in fits and starts, my mind plagued by weird visions about stuff I’ve perceived earlier in my flashes of memory. I wake up from these fever-dreams to find the bedsheets soaked with sweat. I lurch out of bed and stumble to the sink for some water, or to the toilet where I vomit again. Then I collapse back in bed and fall asleep once more. All things considered, I’d rather be mopping floors.
I hear everyone come back from their jobs. Outside my room, doors open and shut, then a long silence: my fellow servants are in the mess room having dinner, something I don’t want to think about.
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Then more movement in the hallway: doors opening and shutting again.
Then silence. The ceiling panels go dark. Lights-out; everyone’s gone to bed. I fall asleep once more.
And, all of a sudden, then I wake up.
Someone is in the room with me.
A hooded shadow looms against the light cast from the open door. He sits down on the edge of my bed. “Lights up,” he says.
I squint and raise a hand against the glare as the ceiling brightens, but now I can see who has come to pay me a visit.
It’s the pink-eyed John.
He’s holding a pitcher of ice water and an empty cup. He pours some water into the cup and offers it to me. “Hello, Alec,” he says. “How are you feeling?”
My throat is parched, so I take the water and greedily drink it down. It’s nice and cold, the best thing I’ve ever tasted. “I feel…” A new word enters my mind, and an appropriate way to phrase it: “…like shit.”
A long pause. “That’s not a good word,” John says softly. “Please don’t use it again.”
“All right.” What have I just said? “Sure. Sorry, man.”
His eyes narrowed. “And don’t call me ‘man.’ It’s very rude.”
“Okay. Sorry, John.”
“Have you…?” He hesitates. “Have you remembered anything new recently?”
I’m feverish and sick to the bottom of my stomach, and he’s come to see how I’m doing. He’s been thoughtful enough to bring me water when I’ve been too weak to fetch it for myself. Still, I’m reluctant to trust him. For a long time now I’ve been picking my brain for clues as to what Alec Tucker had been before he arrived here, wherever here was; I’m not about to tell what little I’ve learned for the price of a cup of water.
“No,” I say. “I don’t remember anything, John.”
His pale eyes search mine. I stare back at him, and in that moment of silent contact I know that he knows that I’m lying. If I wasn’t so sick, I might be scared.