Gray Matters

by William Hjortsberg

  He climbs between the treads of the up-turned Amco-pak, tapping the floor plate with his knuckle. Kneeling, he opens the flap of his instrument case, an oblong leather wallet embroidered with a pattern of dyed porcupine quills. It unfolds like a map to reveal a gleaming row of precision microtools. Within minutes, Gregor removes a circular portion of floor plate and probes into the tangle of connections and circuits. The Mark VIIs watch, immobile, as he finishes his work, making the final adjustments inside the Amco-pak by touch alone, reaching in with both hands to haul the cranial container into the open air like a newborn babe.

  “More than thirty hours of breathable atmosphere left in here,” Gregor says, checking the weight of the reserve oxygen tank. “No need for a cockpit. We’ll make a litter while the vans take care of the wreck.”

  Skiri and Swann set to work with their long knives, cutting and trimming a pair of saplings. Soon a litter is arranged, with the cranial container and two packbaskets lashed fast between the poles by several lengths of rawhide thong. Using cranes and winches, the Mark VIIs at last succeed in righting the Amco-pak. With the mangled machine in tow, the vans lumber awkwardly after the three Nords, already out of sight downstream, carrying the resident between them like hunters returning with their kill.

  Inside the swaying cranial container, Obu Itubi’s mind fights for sanity. His serenity and the placid underwater view both ended with the simultaneous shutdown of all his other sensory controls. The memory unit, the auditory system and navigation center, the chorus of comforting displays and gauges, all vanished in the same terrifying instant. Darkness and silence enclose him like endless space. Itubi combats his fear with reason. Only two possibilities exist: either the Amco-pak suffered a sudden, unexplainably massive breakdown, or else the breakdown is his own and he is dead.

  If this is death, Itubi is in hell. His isolation is complete and the hallucinations and bardo visions begin at once, his conscious mind continuing its logical and reassuring dialogue in spite of the waves of insanity rising out of the dark ocean of his subconsciousness. Beckoning lights and luminescent cogwheels whirl in the darkness. A panoply of lesser demons writhe and grimace. The terrible faces of his accusers are encrusted with precious jewels, the cold ruby eyes aflame with cruelty. Moment by moment, the calm island of his logic is submerging, the wild visionary tide rises and Itubi knows he is lost, the forces too strong. Soon he will be one with his madness.

  After her first visit, Vera stays away from the house for a week, suspicious and afraid. Of what, she isn’t sure. A trap perhaps, with all those inviting memories for its bait. But curiosity is too strong, her afternoon rides seem to lead always to the house and soon Chi-Chi knows the way even when she drops the reins.

  One afternoon she stays past sunset, looking through a box full of snapshots, and it is dark by the time she rises to leave. Vera spends the night on the couch downstairs, sleeping only fitfully as the old house creaks and sighs and numbers of bats slide with a silken flutter from under the tin roof. The coming of daylight calms her; she falls asleep at dawn, waking only when the noon heat turns the shuttered room into an oven.

  That same afternoon she rides to the beach shelter and stuffs a pillowcase with her clothes and cosmetics. Yesterday seems years in the past. She finds it hard to believe that she’d ever lived in such a cramped bamboo hovel. Even a restless night on the couch is more comfortable than sleeping on a damp sandy floor. No, this isn’t Vera’s style; she can’t have been happy here. The idea is preposterous, as is the notion that she ever loved someone with the absurd name of Skeets. It was all a joke.

  Vera leaves the shelter laughing, the pillowcase bundled in her arms. She mounts Chi-Chi and rides off between the sea-grape trees, never once looking back.

  The air is acrid and hazy inside the domed Surface Installation. Squads of maintenance vans bulldoze the debris into smoldering mounds. A Mark V cuts a mangled I-beam into scrap. Gregor asks the machine who is in charge. Pointing the brilliant torch, the van directs them to a Unistat Administrator Exec Series: eight stationary oblong computers, interconnected slabs of steel and glass, arranged like a precision-made Stonehenge in an approximate circle around the ruined turntable.

  Swann leaves the men and climbs over the rubble obstructing the smoking entrance of the hatchery. Gregor and Skiri watch until she is gone from sight before approaching the Unistat Administrator, carrying the litter in their hands, like sedan-chair porters. They are greeted by the first of the towering consoles and quickly instructed to proceed in a clockwise direction to Unit Five, where the Sentinel’s broadcast is being monitored. Console Unit Five starts speaking before either man has a chance to say a word. An obviously prerecorded speech: torrents of rhetoric praising the men, followed by the mundane unreeling of facts and details patiently recorded. The men set the litter on the floor and hunker down, only half listening as they trace idle patterns on the dust-covered plastic.

  Swann returns moments after the Mark VIIs come lumbering in with the wreck in tow. “It was terrible,” she says. “Rooms full of bodies, torn, bleeding, most of them dismembered. Like a battlefield… . And the vans were cleaning up, shoveling the bodies like garbage. I made them stop. They’re transporting all human remains to the edge of the clearing for cremation.”

  “Grim news here as well,” Skiri says, rising to his feet. “All communication channels to Center Control are dead. Only canned information is available from the Unistat Administrator. This unit has been instructed to isolate the cerebromorph immediately, using the quarantine procedure for handling contaminated material. Our resident stands condemmed of serious crimes.”

  Gregor has his instrument case in his hands. “Let’s hear him out,” he says. “We listened long enough to the machine. I’ll disconnect the communicator from the wreck.”

  The work takes only a few minutes, for the communicator is not an integral part of the Amco-pak’s mechanical system and is easily removed. Gregor immediately begins attaching the insulated neurofibril wire to hookups on the cranial container, expertly making a hundred difficult connections in a third of the time a maintenance van takes for the same job. “Last one… .” He tweezers the final cable into place with his microgrip wrench. A thin squeal issues from concealed speakers.

  “A little more volume, Gregor?” Swann asks.

  He adjusts the exterior control and the tiny piercing sound builds into a scream so agonized and unvarying, so explicitly the voice of utter terror and desolation, that it seems to echo from the very chambers of hell itself. The removal of deposit-drawer number A-0001-M(637-05-99) occasions very little real sorrow in the subdistrict. Every twentieth-century resident (more than seven-tenths of Level I) knows the story of Skeets Kalbfleischer, but they feel no loss at his passing. He is only a casualty, overlooked in the excitement, a bit-player in the drama of the recent emergency. Those who were not underground in Depositories during the Thirty-minute War remember the brotherhood of survival. A similar emotion unites the subdistrict; everyone together, enduring the same hardships, at the mercy of a single peril. To the residents who’d lived through the war, the news of the destruction of the world’s first cerebromorph seems as trivial as the wartime report that a stray Israeli missile leveled the pyramid of Cheops.

  One twentieth-century native is concerned by the accident. The loss of Skeets Kalbfleischer’s brain is a problem for Auditor Philip Quarrels. No resident of Level I has ever been Elevated and Center Control had hoped Skeets would be the first. A big job. The onus is with the Auditor in charge. Success brings its own reward. Failure is unthinkable.

  Although Quarrels is aware that this emergency period is bound to complicate matters, he nevertheless files a requisition with the Medical Authority for a mature adult brain. If none is available, perhaps the hatchery can be asked to grow one on special order.

  Skeets Kalbfleischer is only organically dead. His brain has been destroyed, but his memory lingers on. His every thought and experience, even the unknown depths of his
subconscious, are recorded on micro-encephalogram files. His dreams are preserved on old auditing reports. Spiritually, Skeets Kalbfleischer is very much alive; he is on file. When a new brain is available, Philip Quarrels will supervise the playback procedures. He doesn’t mind if he has to wait. He’s got all the time in the world.

  In a distant sector on Level II, another Auditor confronts his problems. No direct communication channels have opened up to the Surface Installation and the Sentinel’s signal must be monitored by the Unistat Administrator. Then a file is delivered to the Dispatch Division and rebroadcast. There is a frustrating ten-minute time lapse; Obu Itubi’s Auditor is able to watch only the past. Any command takes another ten minutes to reach the Sentinel. He is powerless. But the Auditor knows his impotence is temporary. His quarry has only a twenty-minute lead.

  Still, the behavior of the Nords is so erratic, so utterly haphazard, that the Auditor is forced to acknowledge the irritating symptoms of anxiety as he watches them carry the cranial container away from the dome. At the far end of the clearing, three Amco-paks are piling brush and deadfalls. Another group of vans approaches, laden with mangled carcasses. The Nords follow single file. Perhaps they intend to add Itubi to the pyre. Why not incinerate him along with the rest of the defective equipment? The Auditor finds this a satisfying thought. A man reaps what he has sown; destruction awaits all destroyers. Itubi has earned his Inferno.

  Vera never leaves the house. She sleeps in one of the high-ceilinged bedrooms upstairs. The canopied bed is her grandmother’s; rococo mahogany posts twist up past a fringed vault, carved pinecones ensure fertility. The blood-red satin sheets, however, are from a shop on La Cienega Boulevard, a gift from some forgotten Oscar winner. On the floor is the skin of a tiger Vera shot from elephantback while the guest of the Maharajah of Cooch Behar. The room is a delight, filled with the favorite possessions of a long lifetime: hand-painted porcelain dolls, a collection of glass paperweights, mechanical tin orchestras, all childhood relics lost along with the family heirlooms and furniture when a crippled Flying Fortress jettisoned its bombload on the Mitlovic estate before crashing in the mountains. Every day, Vera turns up another souvenir from her past: a scrapbook of publicity stills stolen from her Hollywood apartment, boxes of misplaced jewelry, dried flowers pressed between the pages of unread bestsellers, a tiny crystal vial filled with tears shed at the funeral of her noble Italian husband.

  Across the hall in an empty bedroom are several old steamer trunks, brass-bound and beautified with collages of faded travel stickers. The trunks are packed with Vera’s clothes, fashions four hundred years old, yet every dress and gown seems fresh from the showroom. Vera often spends the day here, changing in front of a full-length mirror. She flings what she’s worn on the floor like a spoiled child; but when she returns, everything is neatly folded and hung in its place. And every night she climbs the stairs to find her bed freshly made, the sheets clean and smelling of sunlight, the pillows fluffed, a slender candle flickering in a silver wall sconce.

  There are no clocks in the house. Vera rises when it pleases her. A dish of sliced mangoes or a tall goblet of orange juice is always on the bedside table. And when she grows hungry, she knows she will find an elegant breakfast waiting under the arbor in the garden. Luncheon and dinner are served inside. Fresh-cut hibiscus decorate the center of the heavy Florentine table. Vera neither prepares the food nor clears the dishes. She never learned to cook and, even as a child, there were always servants to do the chores. The mysterious appearance of her meals and the magical way the house keeps clean and tidy are taken for granted by Vera. She expects her help to be unobtrusive.

  Life is perfect in the house. Each day provides the joy of discovering another forgotten treasure: some bauble belonging to her mother or a bundle of perfumed letters from an old admirer. Every meal is a masterpiece, the work of a cordon bleu chef. A trained sommelier presides unseen in the wine cellar, sending up bottles of exquisite vintage. Even the garden, tropical and efflorescent, is trimmed and tended by a skilled hand. Yet sometimes at night Vera is lonely and wishes her grandmother’s bed wasn’t so large and empty. Her sleep is dreamless. In the mornings, she wakes fulfilled and happy. Stretching out her hand, she finds the other side of the bed always warm.

  Swann moves along the top of the pyre, checking bodies as the men work with the vans, sorting arms, legs, and heads to match the dismembered trunks. The bodies are arranged according to ritual, facing the east, arms, when there are arms, folded across the chest, faces powdered a chalky white. Swann scatters sacred amulets and talismans among them: cowrie shells, iridescent feathers, fragments of beadwork. As a healer, it is Swann’s duty to perform the Rites for the Dead. Because these bodies have never held a spirit, she omits most of the ritual; there is no blowing of conch trumpets or chanting sacred mantras; neither does she paint mystic symbols on the closed eyelids or read the ancient texts to the deceased. Still, Swann anoints each body with fragrant oils and spices. Here and there among the logs, she conceals small caches of piney frankincense and handfuls of chemicals to make the fire burn a variety of colors. “Swann,” Skiri calls to her. “Here’s another.” Swann finishes above and climbs down the structured log wall of the pyre. Earlier, Skiri and Gregor found a body still breathing. It was a Nord female. Both legs were gone below the knee. Swann applies a lethal poultice. The toxins immediately penetrate the epidermis and respiration ceases within seconds.

  These bodies are so close to perfection, almost human. It’s disturbing. Surgically, Swann can repair the damage, graft limbs back in place, staunch the hemorrhaging, even stimulate stilled hearts into pumping again. But it would only be a game, a sport without purpose. Let the hatcheries produce a new crop of zombies.

  “Over here.” Skiri points to where Gregor kneels in the blood-clotted grass. “It was at the bottom of the pile.”

  Swann approaches, observing the neatly gathered limbs, arms in one pile, hands and feet in another, legs stacked like cordwood. The men stand on either side, stripped to the waist, their bare arms and chests slick with blood and sweat. At their feet lies the intact body of a male Tropique, so drenched in blood its features are obscured. At a glance she can tell it is not alive; the position of the tongue suggests suffocation. No matter. She knows why the men called her down. Using a wet cloth, she cleans the blood from the Tropique’s face and body. Aside from a few superficial scratches, she can find no sign of injury. The blood belongs to others.

  “A fortunate day,” she says as Skiri and Gregor pick the body up and carry it across to where their packs are piled, the cranial container of Obu Itubi perched on top, its polished surface effulgent with mirrored sunlight.

  Obu Itubi’s Auditor is too angry to watch the scanning of the operation with any care. His anger is the result of pride, perhaps why Y41-AK9 is one of the very few members of his class on file on Level II. Most of the other Amphíbios were already at 180 degrees of Understanding, or higher, when incorporated into the System. To their honor, it was the Amphíbios delegation that proposed universal cerebrectomy, the Day of Awakening, at the World Council.

  Obu Itubi’s Auditor prefers his number to his name. Ku-ni-qu-ri-ri-ki is a dolphin name (all Amphíbios have dolphin names). What good is a name in a language without nouns? He is more comfortable with his number; at least he really is Y41-AK9 (397-00-55). Transmit that number on the communicator and only his deposit drawer will respond. The concept of a name as a specific identity is meaningless to a dolphin.

  Not that Y41-AK9 has anything against the Cetacea; a dolphin was his first teacher. He has great respect for these enlightened mammals: more intelligent than man, free from the demands of gravity, innocent of fear, singing a language capable only of expressing action, totally blissful creatures. He venerates them as the Chosen of God.

  Y41-AK9 contemplates the scanner image of the Tropique. The Nord healer has the body breathing again and it lies facing up into the lens on a down-filled sleeping robe. Like Obu Itubi, ther
e are other Tropiques, and Nords as well, on file in Level I—and not just from the first hatchery generation. Itubi’s fetus came out of the tanks in 2156, only thirty-odd years before the Awakening. There are no Amphíbios on Level I; Y41-AK9 is proud of that fact. And the Amphíbios population below Level V is the smallest of the three humanoid classes; only members of the first two unfortunate generations are on file below the median.

  Y41-AK9 has always thought of his generation as unfortunate. It wasn’t like being a Nord or a Tropique; the first Amphíbios were a new species of humanoid. The difference was more than physical. What good were terrestrial traditions and history in a hostile undersea environment? The first Amphíbios were aliens by birthright. Even their humanoid bodies were a liability in the ocean. Many of the aquatic pioneers demanded that the hatcheries develop a more adaptable Amphíbios body. There was no genetic reason why they shouldn’t have fins and flukes and a stronger backbone. But the World Council disagreed. The Amphíbios class had lungs as well as gills; they were Homo sapiens, members of the family of Man. The Reproduction Centers were not concerned with creating new life-forms; their task was to perfect the human race.

  Yes, the future generations were the fortunate ones. They didn’t have to fight for survival in the earth’s final frontier. It was quite tame beneath the surface when they arrived. Sharks were no longer a menace; the coral reef colonies were established; plankton and algae farms were prospering; all of the various Cetacean dialects had been translated. A newcomer could spend his time listening to the glorious oral epics of the sulphur-bottom whale. Many were adopted into pods. The wisdom of the great whales became their inheritance. It was no surprise to Y41-AK9 when the initial audit after the Awakening showed these amiable philosophers to be farther along the Path to Understanding. He was just an old shark fighter who knew how to survive.