by Ashly Graham
The Slaves wore their nicknames proudly as an adjunct to their designation as Impatients. Maintaining anonymity and impersonality assisted in dulling the senses, and they addressed each other by them in their nightly conversations, which was the only time when they could properly communicate with each other. Whereas during the day to avoid being overheard they could do no more than pass sotto voce comments, after lights-out the ward was filled with susurrous speech.
Although the ward clock had been removed, Squint looked to where it used to hang. A dark green circle like a memorial plaque marked its former position against the lighter scrubs colour of the rest of the wall. Squint’s glance was a reflexive action, for here each body’s Circadian rhythm pulsed so strongly that the Impatients always knew exactly what the time was. Every grain of time was counted as it ran through the waist of their sensory hourglass.
Knowing this, the lower orders of staff tormented the inmates by consulting their bare wrists, when 4285D was not present and they came to check blood pressures and vital signs. They felt a phantom twinge of the Impatients’ pain themselves if they did not get a reaction, and were always pleased to note any deterioration in their charges’ conditions, because it reassured them that their own lots could be even worse than they were in such an extreme Us-and-Them society.
In order to strike an even greater fear into his subjects, Bonvilian had considered altering his schedule to include random ward visits; and he might have done so, had his report deadlines to his superiors at Central not precluded the dislocation of timings in his control experiments, those that isolate the effect of one variable on a system by holding constant all variables but the one under observation. Also, he had no control group, of Impatients to whom the factors being tested were not being applied, so that they might serve as a standard for comparison against the others. Everyone here was grist to the Exeat Institute’s finely grinding mill. As to the value of an irregular pattern in inducing additional reactive stress in the Slaves, by over-stimulating heart-rates, contracting blood vessels, and dilating air passages, Ward One was already awash in more adrenaline that would have treated anaphylactic shock in a thousand elephants.
‘He’s got a bigger appetite today than usual, I can tell,’ muttered Squamous, ‘from his lean and hungry look. Might take two of us. Double cheeseburger, hold the fries.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Squint. ‘He had Slimfast yesterday and Slim weighed in at two-forty if he was an ounce, at least he did when he came in. He’d been packing on the pounds, he said, ever since he went on that Nutkins Diet. Weightwatchers-in-the-Sky will have its work cut out with him, he’s bigger than Ammonia Joan.’ Ammonia Joan was the Impatients’ name for Joanna Plunge 8801Z, a lowest-of-the-low orderly who emptied the bedpans and urine bottles. She was very large, and had cropped grey hair and a slash of vermilion lipstick that did not track the contour of her mouth.
Squint lobbed a cotton ball across the room at the snoring Snot’s open mouth; his aim, from much practice, was true, but Snot merely chewed briefly, swallowed and resumed his slumbers. Squint, disappointed, said, ‘The man’s nothing but a sheet sandwich.’ He was jealous of Snot’s ability to switch himself off from the current of terror that ran through the wires of every inmate’s veins.
The trading of insults and macabre humour on the ward was not malicious. On the contrary, it indicated the mutual support amongst the occupants, who recognized that any expression of sympathy was cruel, because it awoke a similar emotion in those who were extending it and equally in need of solace. They were as close in spirit as the beds were spatially, and as familiar with each other’s fears as they were with their bodily ebbs and flows. Dry disparagement helped divert them from brooding on the death that would shortly be visited upon them, and how excruciating it would be; and was intended as an anodyne response to 4285D’s best efforts to ensure that his Impatients should remain in full possession of their faculties, which he believed contributed to the accuracy of his experiments.
The eradication and removal of distinguishing physical features and other obvious aspects or tokens of identity was also part of the dehumanization process that the Slaves were subjected to. Upon arrival on the ward each person’s head was shaved. His clothes and personal possessions were taken from him, and he was treated in the same way that a criminal, upon being admitted to prison, is relieved of his wallet and watch, hosed down, and subjected to a body cavity search.
Again, the inmates approved, because uniformity of treatment and external appearance assisted them in their own internal process of desensitization and disassociation from themselves. That the staff members on Ward One were under instruction not to leaven their ministrations with humaneness, or allow anything on the ward that was not scientifically necessary, was also helpful to the Impatients in trying to forget their origins, and who they were or once had been; not to care about themselves or anyone else or anything; to pretend that their bodies had already assumed room temperature.
The past was another country, and the mentally framed photographs of their loved ones had been turned face-down. Having the boy Sorias amongst them made it especially difficult for the others to harden their hearts and refrain from attempting to comfort him, but the boy had to be considered a casualty of war.
The Minotaur was fed once a day with a Slave whom the Director chose for harvesting, the criterion of selection being that the individual’s biological characteristics were the most suited to 4285D’s immediate area and focus of research. The physiological details and chemical analysis of each transient individual were on record, and Bonvilian never hesitated over who should provide the corps du jour. Nobody on the ward knew in advance who was for the chop, and the only certainty was that the coffination rate was one hundred per cent.
The coffin, of course, even a plain deal one, was figurative: it was the chapel morgue or incinerator for the victim as soon as the body had been shredded and plundered of anything useful. After the coup de grâce had been delivered, each hunk of slave-meat was wheeled off to the laboratories, where teams of specialists set to work carving it up and analysing organs, cells, and blood. With the admirable economy of a mother making soup by boiling the left-over bones and marrow from turkey and chicken carcasses, and joints of beef, ham, and mutton: brain matter, connective tissue, skin, toenails...nothing went to waste or was not examined.
No one left the Exeat Institute alive, except those who were taken to the Central complex for vivisection and then brought back. This occurred when the As, Bs, and Cs, having failed to comprehend a complicated point in one of Bonvilian’s papers, which happened often, ordered him to appear before them to give a practical demonstration, while delivering a commentary in layman’s language on what he was doing, and why, and how many of his objectives had he achieved since his last report, and let us remind ourselves what those objectives are, and when will results be forthcoming that will be of practical benefit in moving the Project forward.
These operations were performed after lunch and without anaesthetic—except for the wine that the As, Bs, and Cs consumed—on the table of the executive dining room, after the cheeseboard had been cleared and the table pads replaced.
Chapter Three
Director Hugo Bonvilian 4285D advanced his party to the middle of the room. As the squeak of the trolley wheel ceased, Sister 2042M straightened and looked up at the roof dome to avoid the snap of her superior’s glance. He always attempted eye contact at this point, but she was too quick for him; as Othello did the malignant turbaned Turk, she smote him, thus.
4285D said, too anxiously as he immediately realized, ‘2042M. Gloria!’
The ejaculation came as a cry for help rather than a demand for attention. Also out of place was the use of a given, or proper, name at such a time: although friends still addressed each other by their birth identities in informal circumstances, there was a regulation that in the workplace only alphanumeric titles were to be employed, as assigned by the Department of Registration, the Central bo
dy administered by Monica Roll 9876C. In addition to being unprofessional, the Director was taking a personal liberty in that he and Sister Gloria Mundy 2042M were not friends or even acquainted outside of the work environment.
The nurses impassively noted the familiarity: Bonvilian’s staff heeded every nuance of his body language and inflection of voice, not just out of fear but hoping for a sign that he might have a softer side, or a weaker one. But although 4285D was careful not to let his guard down, such a situation as now presented his only opportunity to establish sufficient personal contact with 2042M to justify his following up with a suggestion that they might meet informally after hours. The risk was considerable; there were so many who hung on his every word, and Bonvilian could not afford to compromise his reputation as a disciplinarian, or allow anything inappropriate to be recorded by the monitoring systems and used against him.
Fortunately for the Director, instead of the members of his staff observing a face flushed with desire, all they saw was the customary pale blank look of one who did not care about anything outside of his work.
The slip was inevitable: Dan Cupid had shot his arrow the moment Hugo Bonvilian had seen Gloria Mundy for the first time, and it was lodged in the heart that he had subsequently carved on a massy oak tree in the woodlands of his dreams, within which coronary outline was also chiselled a passionate declaration: “Hugo loves Gloria”. For Gloria Mundy was Bonvilian’s eidolon, his queen; how he longed to tell her how he adored her! He had practised the speech many times in front of the mirror in his private quarters, and, knowing that compression was more effective than length, had got it down to forty-five minutes.
Although 4285D’s monosyllabic appeal went unanswered, Bridget Clott 1473T and Ivana Pipette 5749T seized upon the item as one that was guaranteed to cause merriment later in the staff room when they mentioned it. The nurses were eager to see how the Director would handle their Sister’s tacit reproof. They knew intuitively that Bonvilian was a virgin, and suspected that within he was shrinking with embarrassment. For his part, he knew that he must reassert his persona immediately.
4285D scowled his scowl. ‘Come on, buck up,’ he said, looking at all three women to convey that it was a general reprimand; he could not single out the object of his longing for rebuke. ‘Are we ready or not? Sister?’
Once one had caught sight of it, Sister Mundy’s face was not easy to leave. It was not square or round or oval, but tapered from a high forehead and high cheek bones to the chin. The whole was softened by a corolla of closely pinned hair. 4285D fervently imagined, both on and off duty and in the watches of the night, the tresses that would fall upon the shoulders of this vestal apparition when they were freed from their constraints. 2042M’s breasts swelled beneath her dress like dunes in the desert, like a welling in the ocean deep. Her nose alone was worthy of an essay: it was slightly bumped at the bridge and ridged, which gave it a patrician look, like that of the future novelist Virginia Stephen. The eyes were long-lashed and as grey-irised as a mountain tarn. Surely, Bonvilian thought, although Gloria Mundy must be aware of her iconic image, surely she would reject any man—please let it not be that she preferred women—who dared to make advances to her.
Unless it were himself, of course: one who had had greatness thrust upon him, one whose responsibility it was to impose his will upon others, one who deserved her admiration for accepting without complaint the obligation his genius put him under. Surely there was a glamour and romance to his position that must attract her, and surely 2042M could not help but pity the intense pressures he was subject to, and the personal life that he was being denied by the Project’s noble cause.
She would be as familiar as any with his lonely routine, and must recognize that the exigencies of his job precluded him from stepping off his pedestal of authority. She would know that the metaphorical candle burned late in his flat on the top floor of the Exeat building, overlooking the main quadrangle—in addition to the green glass-shaded banker’s lamp in the study, there was a Mickey Mouse night-light in the bedroom because he was afraid of the dark—as he wrote up his notes and filed his reports; and surely she must conceive that, however much the deathly decisions that he had to make might rack his soul, and however much his exalted position require he not betray the workings of his inner self, fire might smoulder within him that was the hotter for not being allowed to burst forth.
Bonvilian was always alert for some indication from Gloria that, were he gently to communicate his desire for her and press his suit, he would not be rebuffed. If not in deference to his status, then out of consideration for his situation or predicament, the signal must come from her. If it came and when, it would be subtle, perhaps no more than a shading of expression or the momentary closeness of her body. She was far too intelligent a woman...really, despite her M-Class seniority she was not much more than a girl...not to understand the need to preserve a professional distance on the ward. This made the suppressed intimacy, the electricity between them, as strong as if they were dancing cheek to cheek.
In place of God and Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 4285D saw Gloria and Hugo. Every night when he went to bed, his thoughts were of her coming to him and kissing him, just once, close to the mouth. As she moved away, her fingers lightly dragging along his arm to the fingertips, her gaze caressed his tired visage and willed upon him sleep’s sweet restorative. There was a vision he had, in which Gloria led him into a darkened room where numinous dancing figures wreathed to a discordant music, a zithery sound that he thought might be Algerian.
Amidst the whirl and swirl, she drew him onto the floor, where her closeness enfolded him within her love and understanding. Enshrined in the bell-tent of her hair, he dipped to sip her slightly parted lips, which were of spun sugar, and felt the porcelain shell of her cheek, which was slightly cool, slightly warm. She whispered something inaudible, and he fancied that her eyes were no longer grey, but the blue-black lacquered pools that one encountered on bareback rides through moonlit forests.
Every night from imaginary moonbeams, that celestial crop, in his mind Bonvilian wove a bag and filled it with the aery part of his being that was devoted to Gloria, i.e. all of it that was not weighted with the pebbles of professionalism. And then he hurled the bag back into the sky, to be cradled and lullabied for eternity by the constellations and the music of the spheres.
Love, see, said Bonvilian to himself, signifies more than “symbiosis”; more than just, quote, “an interaction between two dissimilar organisms living in close physical association, especially one in which each benefits the other.” Unquote. And it meant less than Helotism, quote: “A form of symbiosis in which one organism is held to make use of another as if it were a slave”. Unquote. As aphids milk ants.
Picturing Gloria, and jazzed by endorphins—those endogenous opioid peptides, functioning as neurotransmitters, which are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during exercise, pain, consumption of spicy food, and orgasm; and which are similar to opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being—Bonvilian spread his wings and flew, wheeling on thermals of ecstasy high in the sky. Such was his joyance that carols of birdsong, which normally he could not abide, burst upon his astonied ear, and spineless cactus flowers, Opuntia fragilis “Alberta Sunset”, bloomed in his head.
In contemplation of Gloria, Bonvilian resolved to convince himself, according to some scientific hypothesis of his own that he had yet to devise, that she was no Cervantean Dulcinea figure; one of whom it might be said, as Marcela does in Don Quixote, although “it is essential that every knight-errant be a lover...I cannot conceive that the object beloved for its beauty is obliged to return love for love.”
Gloria was Bonvilian’s Dantean Beatrice. She was his Alph, his sacred river running, as it did in Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, through caverns measureless to man. Her gaze was that of the Sphinx with green eyes; or would have been had her eyes been green. Her mouth and lips were
full and velvetine, her tongue of quicksilver, and her teeth of mother of pearl. Her body curved like Saharan dunes on a windless night, and her legs stretched to eternity. The sarsenet she wore for skin, a silk so fine as to draw the envy of a Saracen, was tauter than a ship’s topgallant sail as it rounded Cape Horn at the tip of the Terra del Fuego archipelago, in the days before that common Panama Canal was opened. If Bonvilian closed his eyes he could configure with Euclidian precision the thought-delaying gravidity of the eurythmic peninsulas of her breasts; her tigress loins; her Venusian vulva; everything except the Daedalian labyrinth of her mind, in which any man would be glad to be lost without a guide, until he got the hang of it for himself.
Hugo Bonvilian sang a Song of Solomon unto himself. He expressed the intention of spending the next four years in Gloria Mundy’s bosom. He contemplated telling his beloved that she was unto him like the filly among Pharaoh’s chariots; that she was as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi, and that his spikenard sent forth the smell thereof; that at the sound of her name he leaped upon the mountains and skipped upon the hills like a roe deer or a young hart; that to him it was as if she had come out of the wilderness like a pillar of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense; that her lips dropped honeycomb, and that honey and milk were under her tongue; that her navel was like a round goblet, her belly a heap of wheat set about with lilies; that her neck was a tower of ivory, and that her eyes were like the fish pools in Heshbon. And there were plenty more “thats” where those came from.