Gray Matters

by William Hjortsberg

  The landscape seems familiar to Vera: the round bronzed hills, stands of live oak and eucalyptus. Although it will be twenty years before she makes her first Hollywood film, the young actress urges her horse down a California trail with the same youthful confidence that, in another girlhood, had blossomed along lonely roads on the high meadows of the Carpathian Alps.

  At the bottom of the draw, the sunlit Pacific glitters through the dripping trees. Vera rides out across the sandy beach, threading between scattered driftwood logs. A line of jetsam, an assortment of trash and sea litter, marks the high-water line. Vera rides into the surf until the receding foam boils above Chi-Chi’s shanks. The sun is quite hot now. She pulls her sweater up over her head and knots the sleeves around her waist. For a long while she looks out at the horizon where a small white sail is barely visible.

  Scanner viewers are having a treat. An Amco-pak Mark X comes hurtling down the aisles, caroming from side to side, the encircling duraplast bumper leaving long skid marks on the cerulean surface of the Depositories. Such speed is unusual. The Amco-pak is accustomed to more sedate operation and it is all the machine can do to maintain control. The Mark X had been quietly recharging in a subdistrict vehicle hangar when the emergency call came from Maintenance and Repair. At a time of repose for the machine: the end of a day-long shift, all work facilities switched off, the controls at half power, pneumatic limbs dormant—peace and relubrication, a chance for bearings to cool and metal to lose its fatigue. Then the alarm signal. All systems are instantly active, all circuits automatically open, and the Amco-pak is speeding down the long ramp to the Depository even before Center Control signals the location of the breakdown.

  The trouble is in Aisle B. A preliminary diagnosis teleprints in the memory unit of the on-rushing Amco-pak: multiple short circuits cause major power drain; no communication with the resident; only three minutes of reserve oxygen remaining. The situation is urgent. Emergency cranial decantation is a ten-minute job; cell damage is irreparable after the brain is without oxygen for only eight. Aisle B is half a mile away. Center Control authorizes all possible speed.

  A strong offshore wind blows from the port quarter and Skeets trims the mainsail of the Sand Dab III, giving the sheet two turns around a cleat to secure it. It was his father’s sloop and although he was often crew, manning the jib sheet in races on Lake Michigan, he had never been allowed to take the helm. He is alone in the boat, an anomaly which bothers him no more than the inverted coastline. The course is southerly and instead of seeing Lake Shore Drive to starboard and Chicago in the distance, there are rolling gold foothills and low pine-covered mountains visible over his port gunwale. He recognizes the contours of Point Reyes peninsula. An aunt (one of his mother’s sisters) had a home on Tomales Bay and Skeets spent a summer in California when he was six.

  The wind shifts slightly and Skeets corrects, sailing on a beam reach, a course which carries him, by degrees, farther out to sea. Skeets remembers his father’s warning about keeping in sight of land and jibes suddenly, coming about hard-a-lee. The boy leans back as the boom swings across, lashed by a stinging spray blowing over his bow. It is a dead beat to windward all the way to shore and Skeets prepares himself for a long hard sail.

  Vera rides in a trance, unaware of the wind-tears streaking her cheeks or the splatter of sand against her legs. The warm powerful flanks rippling between her thighs and the steady tickling crotch-rubbing joy of galloping headlong down a deserted beach have dampened her panties and filled her head with wild whirling thoughts.

  Spent, she reins in. Chi-Chi slows to a trot and walks stiff-legged for a few paces. Vera dismounts, weak-kneed and trembling. She leads her mount up the beach and ties her to a splintered piling. Vera wonders if she is going to be sick. All this summer new emotions have troubled her body like seismic tremors. At night she can’t sleep; during the day she feels frequently dizzy. Only long reckless rides on Chi-Chi seem to satisfy her yearning. Or almost, for the fire still burns, the itch continues to prod.

  Vera unbuttons her cotton dress and steps lightly out of her entangling underclothes. The wind caresses her burgeoning body and makes her nipples pucker. She runs her hand down across her tummy and the furz of maiden floss, cupping her sex, which hungers like the mouth of a raging vacuum cleaner. She wishes she could hose-up the entire world: beach, sea, sky, and stars. She would be like that storybook Chinaman who swallowed the ocean, filled to the bursting point with all the unbearable beauty of a summer morning.

  Vera heads for the water, a swim in the Pacific to cool her torrid flesh. The sea feels fresh as an Alpine stream; the girl runs splashing across the foam and dives beneath the curl of a breaking wave. She swims straight out, ignoring a weathered sign nailed to a submerged piling. It is in English, a language Vera didn’t learn until she was over thirty, but the reincarnated adolescent reads it naturally and without effort:

  DANGEROUS CURRENT … NO SWIMMING.

  The Amco-pak has all of its arms working at once. While several pair are busy with the cranial container—removing the face plate, disconnecting media hookups, and attaching an emergency oxygen hose—another set probes within the Mark X’s own interior, readying the reserve cockpit for its new occupant. This vestigial operation center remains from the time, centuries before, when the Amco-pak was first developed as an ambulatory vehicle for cerebromorphs. The introduction of the portable Compacturon DT9 computer emancipated the maintenance van but the original cockpit was retained for emergency operations.

  Actual cranial transfer is the simplest part of any decantation. A long rubber-and-steel duct extends from the side of the Amco-pak like a mechanical ovipositor. Electromagnets maneuver the cranial container onto internal conveyor rails and the resident rides smoothly inside where final linkage is completed automatically. While a spectrographic medical analyzer (standard equipment on the Amco-pak) probes for possible cell damage, the Mark X attempts communicator contact.

  B-0489 … B-0489 … attention … all lines are open … answer immediately if you receive my signal… B-0489 … attention … attention …

  Obu Itubi hears the mechanical voice and relaxes. There had been panic and doubt during those moments of isolation when all his circuits were disconnected, but he is safe now. Everything is working perfectly. He is ready for the final phase. It is time to communicate.

  Attention, Amco-pak; I am receiving your signal clearly. Please let me thank you for being so prompt.

  Over-all time from Vehicle Hangar Nine to Aisle B, a distance of 1.6 kilometers, 6 minutes, 20 seconds. Emergency decantation completed in 7 minutes, 3 7seconds. The Amco-pak series functions to guarantee resident safety. B-0489 … describe the breakdown as specifically as possible. Your words will be teleprinted as part of my report to Center Control.

  Am I completely connected to all circuits?

  Positive.

  Do I have scanner control?

  Positive.

  Is the coordinator impulse mechanism active?

  Positive.

  Can you disconnect any of the reserve control systems?

  Negative. All emergency connections are automatic. The reserve control system is an independent function.

  Very good. Reserve control operations will begin immediately on a coordinate of Delta Seven, Sigma Nine-five. Preliminary instructions: disconnect the Compacturon DT9, all emergency repair procedures will cease, end communicator contact with Center Control.

  The Amco-pak obeys without complaint, shutting off its intelligence almost gratefully. The memory of serving human masters is still imprinted on the ancient circuits and the machine awaits further orders, arms telescoping into storage position with long pneumatic sighs.

  Skeets Kalbfleischer is prepared. He has a merit badge in water safety and the bold ensign of the Red Cross is sewn to his bathing trunks. When he hears the cries for help and sees the girl’s frantic splashing, there is no hesitation. The sea anchor is over the side in a second. He pushes the tiller around until S
and Dab III is in irons and, springing to the mast, he uncleats the halyard and drops his mainsail. At the bow, remembering the safety manual, he removes his top-siders and yacht club sweatshirt before diving into the heavy swell.

  The girl is naked! Skeets swallows sea water in astonishment when he hauls her into a cross-chest carry. The taut young breasts strain against his forearm as he sidestrokes back toward the drifting boat. With each scissor kick, his legs graze the marble smoothness of her ice-cold butt. Where did this mermaid come from? His boyish imagination summons up all the funny-paper possibilities: shipwreck, abandoned by pirates, falls from airplanes and cliffs. The girl is unconscious. She was sliding under the surface without a struggle when Skeets caught hold of her wrist, and her legs trail lifelessly behind her as the floundering young lifesaver reaches the stern of his boat.

  Getting her aboard is a problem. Somehow Skeets makes her fast to the rudder until he gains his footing on the deck and hauls her roughly over the gunwale like a gaffed tuna. On her back, lax and unmoving, the wanton spread of her legs sends Skeets into open-mouthed panic. He stumbles forward after his sweatshirt but is dismayed to find the garment insufficient for the task. If he covers her loins, the breasts remain exposed; laid across her chest, the shirt reaches just below her navel and Skeets is confronted by that other item, pink and succulent as a razor-slit peach. His face burns so hotly he could be staring into the mouth of an open furnace.

  But all modesty vanishes at the sight of her bluish lips and pallid cheeks. The girl isn’t breathing! Skeets remembers the chapter on artificial respiration in the safety manual. Space is too cramped for the back-pressure-arm-lift technique and rolling her over a barrel is obviously impossible. So, after only a moment’s hesitation, he takes her cold face between his hands and very carefully starts to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  Obu Itubi is on the move. The Amco-pak rumbles up the long silent aisle, past sullen power units and coteries of flashing communicators. Ahead, banks of deposit drawers stretch into the distance like an endless blue canyon. His journey has begun, but Itubi is too occupied to savor his triumph. A thousand details need attention. Maps of the sub-district must be studied and course instructions issued to the auto-navigator; an inventory must be made of nonessential equipment (such as the Compacturon DT9) which might be jettisoned to conserve power; all critical systems require diagnosis for fatigue and potential parts failure. Any breakdown would be disastrous. But Itubi relishes the responsibility of command. After an inert century in the Depository, with the memory-file his only outlet for escape, every small task, each trivial detail, is a source of the most extreme pleasure. Itubi has been reborn. The Amco-pak’s throbbing power center provides a new heartbeat; structural steel tubing his muscles and bones; sleek pneumatic fingers await his discretion; the lucid unblinking scanner stares straight ahead into the unknown.

  Many summers ago, in another lifetime, Vera Mitlovic had been thrown from her horse. The young stableboy who held her while she regained consciousness was as surprised by her passionate kisses as is Skeets when a living titillating tongue interrupts the serious business of resuscitation. The naked girl fastens to him like a lamprey, arms around his neck, lips eagerly nibbling his lifesaving mouth, the tips of her hard wet breasts performing open-heart surgery on his hairless chest. Unlike Skeets, the stableboy had not been without experience and he quickly took full advantage of Vera’s concussive eroticism. But the virgin Boy Scout, for whom even handholding is still a novelty, interprets the girl’s voracity as simple gratitude and attempts to disengage from her embrace as she pulls him down next to her in the cockpit.

  “Hey, it’s okay, I mean, anybody would’ve done the same as me if—”

  Vera stops his protest with her probing tongue. Her clever hands generate waves of goose flesh as she caresses his suntanned shoulders and back. Giddy with excitement, Skeets returns her kisses in gape-jawed approximation of a matinee idol’s wide-screen technique. The girl whimpers with pure animal pleasure. Skeets crosses his legs but Vera, never one for coyness, reaches into his trunks and declares her intentions without saying a word.

  Maintenance and Repair wants a full report. Every year, for almost a century, Center Control has turned down requisitions to replace the outmoded Amco-pak series and this is the inevitable result, a runaway maintenance van. To make matters worse, a decanted resident is on board and an emergency-level power drain has been left unattended in Aisle B. The safety of the entire subdistrict is in jeopardy. Center Control will certainly hear about this.

  Maintenance and Repair does what it can under the circumstances. Although it means calling in machines off regular assignments, three Amco-paks are immediately dispatched to deal with the trouble. A Mark X is sent to Aisle B and two Mark IXs at the outer edge of the subdistrict are ordered to intercept the runaway. The fugitive Amco-pak is under scanner surveillance, a computer plots its probable course, and the twin Mark IXs wait in ambush, instructed to proceed cautiously and not imperil the captive cerebromorph.

  The folds of the mainsail enclose the lovers like a tent. Sunlight glows through the Dacron and, within the radiant cocoon, Skeets and Vera lie entwined like caterpillars, tasting each other’s breath. A stormy petrel perches on the port gunwale, intrigued by the mysterious rocking motion of the boat. All around, the sea is gently rolling, yet, every few minutes the frail sloop will lurch and pitch as if tossed by a violent gale.

  Today Skeets has earned another merit badge, one not awarded by the Boy Scouts. The glazed look in Vera’s eyes is his citation, her sated moans his only testimonial. Nothing in the girl’s actual past can compare with the absolute bliss occasioned by this electronic dream. For in spite of his elaborate boasting afterward in the village tavern, the stableboy had been no better than a hit-and-run artist, parting Vera from her maidenhead with all the style and grace of a Cheyenne brave collecting a victim’s scalp.

  Skeets receives the adulation due any successful athlete with typical modesty, stroking Vera’s damp clinging hair as she croons his praises in a throaty unfamiliar tongue. It is not surprising that the boy is exhausted; he responded to Vera’s unexpected passion with the same energetic enthusiasm he once lavished on woodcraft, sailboat navigation, and touch football. Skeets’ mom always complained that the boy just didn’t know when to quit. Never mind his health. If he enjoyed something, he’d keep at it till he dropped, a trait for which Vera will be eternally grateful.

  “Wow,” Skeets says under his breath, “boy-oh-boy.” The girl’s head rests on his chest, her fingertips tracing tiny circles about his navel. He holds her with languid arms and thinks of tigers moving in the grass.

  An Amco-pak Mark IX blocks the aisle ahead. Itubi slows his own van to half-speed, scanning to the rear for possible escape routes. Too late. Another Amco-pak rumbles out of a side aisle, cutting off any retreat. Itubi wheezes to a stop. Let the opposition make the first move.

  The Mark IXs edge in gradually. Their instructions are to detain the runaway machine without endangering the resident on board. This much has been accomplished. Maintenance and Repair is notified; further directions are requested.

  The multiple lenses of the scanner focus independently, like a chameleon’s eyes, and Itubi is able to look in opposite directions, keeping both Amco-paks under simultaneous observation. Using the code key within his own machine, Itubi selects the correct communicator channel and listens as Maintenance and Repair broadcasts new orders. The Mark IXs are to couple magnetically with the fugitive, disconnect the Compacturon DT9, and, after safely removing the resident, tow the captive to the central hangar for examination. A simple procedure. Itubi plans his defense accordingly, extending the Amco-pak’s telescoping arms as his enemies close in.

  Itubi waits until the Mark IXs are only meters away, studying his magnetometer to gauge their force exactly. His van is immobilized, magnetically attracted from either side as if moored by invisible cables. The Amco-paks advance with confidence; in another moment co
upling will be complete.

  All at once Itubi reverses his own magnetic field. The Mark IXs are instantly repelled, lurching backward as several steel arms lash out at them like Shiva the Destroyer turned prizefighter. Pneumatic fists drive into delicate crystal scanner lenses, communicator domes are shattered, critically exposed wires yanked from their roots by the handful. Blinded, the Mark IXs reel about insanely, groping for the enemy with spastic determination. Itubi easily avoids their clutches. Power up to full, he glides in a smooth do-si-do around his grappling assailants, and as he rolls up the aisle, his scanner shows the two blind machines locked in a magnetic death grip. Deprived of communication, they hammer and smash at one another with their efficient multiple arms, each convinced he is destroying their common enemy.

  The Auditor is eager for an immediate interview, but Skeets stalls Quarrels off, using a time-tested alibi: the desire for additional meditation time. Returning to the cranial container was like awakening from a beautiful dream only to confront the stone walls of a prison cell. And yet, it is the memory-merge that seems real and life in the Depository a hideous nightmare. He knows the astronaut will call his attention to the koan of the sleeper and the butterfly.

  Skeets can do without this spiritual advice. At the moment he is not at all interested in the illusory nature of reality and seeks to avoid any metaphysical discussions. The time for such consultation will come soon enough, but first he has to think of an argument that will convince Captain Quarrels of the need for additional memory-merges. Anything at all to get back into that boat with Vera.

  Poor Vera. When Center Control selected her for memory-merge, she assumed the authorities were forgiving all transgressions and would soon reconnect her memory-file hookup. But, after the sailboat and the balmy California morning dissolved in a vortex and she was back in her deposit drawer, nothing had changed. Vera still floats in solitary confinement. Even her communicator antenna has been disconnected.