Half Past Human (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by T. J. Bass

  ‘My motor units have been partially disengaged,’ said the bulky meck. ‘I detect a citizen under my RF wheel, but I can’t back off.’

  ‘The Nebish killed himself pulling off your contacts that way,’ snarled Hip. ‘Forget him. Tell us – is there any word of our Tinker?’

  A flock of naked Eyepeople crowded against the huge wheels to listen. The meck’s power was down and its voice weak.

  ‘The three decaying bodies were found – squeak.’

  The muscular coweye who had carried the bodies smiled broadly. She had covered the distance in less than three days. Even with mummification the three corpses were a significant burden. Her peers acknowledged the feat, and would allow her any choice cuts Hip might assign. Accolades and calories.

  ‘Good. Good,’ said Hip. ‘Do you know where Tinker is?’

  ‘There have been no sightings I could assign to them. They are not being hunted. That’s all I can – say – squeak.’

  Satisfied, Hip and his followers began their slow climb back to their village.

  That evening’s meal became a minor feast. The corpse-carrying coweye was honored with prime slices of liver and quadriceps muscle. Buckeyes admired her.

  Hip spent several hours studying the heavens and drawing circles and lines in the dust. Finally he began to arrange colored stones along one of the curved lines. A large blue stone had a deep ring etched on its circumference. This he placed at one end of the line. Chanting about a wandering star, he pointed to a pinpoint of light in the eastern sky.

  Near the center of the arc he placed three more stones – a big white, a little red and a little green. Pointing to the western sky – still slightly aglow from the recent sunset – he chanted about three other pinpoints. They were scattered over about a two-constellation arc.

  The villagers watched and fingered piles of beads and cord. They began fashioning necklaces and bracelets to match the mystic diagrams in the dust. Their seer promised great things when the stars matched the beads.

  Ball glowed – a pleasant pulsing emerald green.

  Hip put his hand on Ball, frowned, and then hastily added a fourth stone to the center of his arc. Beads were threaded. Naked villagers squatted under a starry sky answering the chants of their seer.

  Scabby Mu Ren lay coughing bubbles as the thin mountain air put fluid into her lungs. Exertion aggravated her pulmonary edema. Tinker squatted down beside her and took the infant.

  ‘We’ll have to rest here for a while – until you can acclimatize. Your alveolar lining cells need more enzymes.’

  He put down the infant. Immediately little Junior began to crawl among the glowing plankton towers. Little hands explored. Chewy edibles were picked and examined orally.

  Spitting froth, she asked: ‘Can you see Table Mountain?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tinker. ‘It is past that range with the heaps of cube apartments. Cubes – Rec Centers. We can cross over easily enough – when you get your pulmonary function back.’

  Mu Ren watched little Junior, admiring the quick, easy way he crawled and climbed. Strong. Acclimatized quickly.

  Three days later her enzymes strengthened and handled the gas differential efficiently. Tinker carried Junior and they began to cross the Rec Center’s miles of cubicles. Translucent walls pulsed with eerie lights and sounds. No one saw them, for the walls were on step-down. It was a rare Nebish that was brave enough to look Outside – even at night.

  They climbed, walked and climbed again. Service ladders and spacious downspouts made their ascent easy. A harsh dawn drove them into a crevice where they found flint artifacts, ash and bone. Their scabs peeled. Tender mahogany skin appeared. A buckeye came to meet them.

  As the shaggy intruder stepped into their cave, Tinker put a protective arm around Mu Ren. Noticing their distress, the buckeye set his spear down at the cave mouth and held up empty hands, smiling broadly. Although small for a buckeye, he still towered over them – leathery skin, sinewy and tanned.

  ‘I’ve come from the Hip to take you to our village.’

  Tinker put down the bleached femur-bludgeon and held up his empty hand. Exposure had darkened his skin until it almost matched the buckeye’s. A beard and unkempt hair added to the similarity.

  ‘I am Tinker. This is Mu Ren and our child. We are very tired.’

  ‘I understand. Follow me,’ said the buckeye. He led them out slowly.

  The villagers grinned silently at their approach. The robed seer awaited them at the rocky cairn. His face reflected the dignity of his position as he spoke.

  ‘Welcome to our village. I am the Elder. My followers call me the Hip. This is my crystal ball.’

  At the mention of its name, the little sphere pulsed with a warm green light and levitated briefly. Tinker glanced from the ancient’s face to the magic ball. Mu Ren leaned heavily on his arm.

  ‘You must be tired,’ continued the Hip. ‘That wickiup will be yours.’ He pointed to a partially finished shelter on the opposite side of the clearing. ‘You will find a workbench and sleeping mats inside.’

  Tinker nodded: ‘Thank you. We have been traveling ever since our conversation. We passed a quiet Harvester on our way up this mountain. Is that the renegade?’

  Hip nodded: ‘Yes. He chose freedom. We called you through him. Unfortunately his power cell is now depleted.’

  ‘And the skeletons?’

  Hip smiled: ‘Two hive creatures who tried to salvage it.’

  Tinker took Mu Ren to their new shelter and bedded her down with the infant. He squatted in the door and studied the villagers – naked, leathery troglodytes, in his eyes. A plump motherly female from the next shelter offered him a bowl of broth containing recognizable vegetable cuts. He woke Mu Ren and they ate. Rested and nourished, he noticed his own calloused and tanned body. Shaggy hair. Weeks in the gardens had transformed them into villagers. He playfully scratched the sole of her foot.

  ‘They live close to nature up here. From now on, so will we. We are going to be very much like them – except for one thing. You and I are the only four-toeds in the village.’

  He took his restless five-toed son to the doorway and sat – rocking. Ball sat on its cairn – dull, opaque. Tinker wondered how the Hip had gotten Harvester to go renegade. Magic?

  The Hip of Mount Tabulum was nervous at the sight of Toothpick. For here was a companion cyber that could take a very active role in things – a talking spear – a weapon. And old man Moon looked every bit as old as the Hip, if not older. With the added sorcery of a four-legged carnivore – unknown to all who lived on the mountain – Toothpick and Moon were a real threat to the Hip’s authority. But Ball said cooperate, and cooperate he did, though reluctantly.

  ‘We have come to see your Tinker,’ said Toothpick.

  Hip folded his robes about him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To talk, toothless one. Where is he?’

  Hip eyed the truculent javelin sullenly. The little cyber returned his gaze. Moon and Dan sauntered about the cairn studying the village huts. For them this was a big village, almost civilization. Finally Hip pointed to Tinker’s wickiup.

  Tinker was skeptical.

  ‘You are a machine. You shouldn’t even be in the village. You might report us.’

  Moon held Toothpick up so the full volume of its lingual readout could play over Tinker. Here was the man Toothpick had promised would reconstruct Moon’s teeth, and Moon was going to see that he did.

  ‘I am a companion robot, thousands of years old,’ said the cyber. ‘The old chains of command were broken while I slept. My superiors are gone. Now my only loyalty is to Moon, who found me. Moon needs teeth.’

  ‘But how can I trust—’ objected Tinker.

  ‘Ask your seer, the Hip,’ suggested Moon.

  Tinker left them in front of his shelter while he crossed the clearing to the cairn. Hip was in a demitrance with his hand on his crystal ball. Finally, Hip turned to him and nodded. The strangers were safe enough.

&nb
sp; Tinker took Moon and Dan into his hut. Mu Ren and Junior were with some women of the village pounding grain. The hut contained their simple, hand-made belongings – cetacean hides, woven fiber, clay, wood and stone. Small crude tools of Tinker’s new trade – healer – were arranged on the split log. Most were flint. Picking up a polished white wooden stick, Tinker motioned for Moon to open his mouth. He prodded the gum line methodically with a flint tool – his retouched Levallois point. Then he glanced into Dan’s mouth, shaking his head.

  ‘Those teeth are really worn down,’ he said, looking over his pitiful tools. ‘Need full or three-quarter crowns on every one. Tin caps I can do – crowns, no.’

  Toothpick hummed a sharp request: ‘What would you need to do the restorations here? Now? You’ve done similar work in the Big ES. Couldn’t you try it on the Outside?’

  ‘Tell him what you need, Tinker,’ encouraged Moon with his toothless grin. ‘I’ve seen him make it rain. He can probably get most anything for you.’

  Tinker remained skeptical, but the prospect of working with his hands again excited him. He had nothing to lose but time – and there seemed to be a surplus of that.

  ‘Open up,’ he said, reaching for the Levallois point. He pressed the cold flint against the fibrotic tissue of the gum line and picked out a yellow flake of dental calculus. He put the tiny flake on the tip of his index finger. ‘This calcified debris is all around those stumps. My stone tools are probably strong enough to get it all out, but it will be an awful lot of work. There’ll be pain and blood – and a very real danger of infection. That black area, however—’ he held Toothpick so the cyber’s optic was in Moon’s mouth, ‘—is decay. Decayed dentine is softer than enamel, of course, but it is too hard for my primitive setup here.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I could adapt a power drill from an Agromeck’s tool kit. It could bring hunters if we tamper with that, however.’

  ‘I’ll handle that,’ said Toothpick. ‘Go on. What else would you need?’

  Tinker began to show some interest in the project. He looked into Moon’s mouth again.

  ‘Most of the root canals must be dead. It would be a good idea to fill them all. Cure the dead ones and drain any root abscesses that might be forming. Any rough metal wire will do for scraping the canals clean. For curing I can use a wick with any of several antiseptics – phenol, iodine, anything from a Hunter’s medipack. Those things should be no problem after we get a power drill set up.’

  Moon volunteered: ‘They are my teeth, and I know most of the Agromecks in the south valley. I’ll go for the tool kit right now. Anything else you might need?’

  ‘Don’t load yourself down,’ warned Tinker. ‘Hunters could be on your tail in half a day. But it is your mouth and any small sharp tools you bring could make it easier – tiny drill bits, scissors, pliers, picks. The smaller and sharper the tools, the less trauma. I’ll build a dry cache under a rock to hide them from the metal detectors.’

  Then he turned to Toothpick and continued: ‘I can use wax for the positive – sand-clay for the negative form. What metal can I use for the casting? I only have a little tin.’

  ‘Would gold do?’ asked Toothpick.

  ‘Certainly. The best.’

  ‘Ball can help us there. He was wearing a laminated foil cap when he was found. Most of the foil was gold. A simple charcoal forge will melt it. We can fire it up when all the molds are ready – shouldn’t attract any more Hunters than one of our regular campfires.’

  Tinker looked at Toothpick with more respect now that he realized how thoroughly the little cyber thought things out.

  The gum-trimming and tartar-chipping went smoothly enough. Both Moon and Dan dragged themselves around with swollen faces and rusty saliva for a few weeks, but that was what they had expected. However, when time came to drill away the black dentine, willpower began to fray.

  The drill was large and coarse. It raised a lot of heat with its vibrations. When Tinker worked, there was the smell of cooked blood throughout the village. Dan’s dog mind had a very high pain threshold, but he considered it torture. A hundred years of discipline proved inadequate to keep him on Tinker’s work table. Moon’s nerves, too, were about shot. He was ready to call off the whole project when Toothpick suggested using Molecular Reward to disassociate the pain impulses.

  Tinker dug up the remains of several Hunters before he found an intact neck console.

  ‘The last dose would be the MR,’ suggested Toothpick.

  Tinker snipped off the end of the tape. A tiny bleb contained the drug. By diluting it in several liters of melt-water he made a mouthwash that acted as a local anesthetic. The numbness lasted several hours. It was accompanied by a copious flow from the parotid – a watery saliva. Tinker made a flexible dam to keep his work area dry, and the grinding continued. Root canals were scraped and soaked with iodine. Slightly less than six months later Moon and Dan were grinning uncomfortably at each other with bright gold teeth.

  The bite surfaces were very irregular – fashioned freehand by Tinker with little regard for normal crown contour. They felt unfamiliar until the chewing stresses adjusted the periodontal collagenous bundles.

  ‘I should keep an eye on you two for about six months,’ said Tinker. ‘I don’t have X-rays, but I was careful not to fill any of the canals until the wicks smelled sweet. One could still turn sour, though. If either of you get a swelling it would be best if I drained it out the side of the alveolar ridge.’ He pointed to his cheek just above and below the tooth line. ‘That way we can save the root and gold crown.’

  Moon massaged his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you should come with us and keep an eye on your patients.’

  It took Tinker a moment to realize that he wasn’t joking. Toothpick repeated the invitation. Tinker shook his head. He much preferred the stable village life of raising a family. Mu Ren was big with child again. The Hip had already contracted with him for a new set of teeth. No, the life of a nomad did not interest him. Moon, Dan and Toothpick moved on in the spring – traveling north through the mountains.

  Hunter Control was empty except for its own class five built-in cyber – Scanner. His myopic sensors were scattered over the Orange Country – that part of the Outside that covered about a fourth of the continent, the southwest corner. Scanner’s memory banks stored data covering crop status, harvest yield, and the movements of Agromecks, Huntercraft and buckeyes.

  Fat old Walter waddled in carrying his first cup of hot brew. Slumping slowly into his soft console seat, he closed his eyes and sipped the steaming liquid. The warmth flowed down his esophagus into his stomach. Slowly, another warmth – vague and chemical – diffused through his vascular tree, numbing arthritic pains and stimulating a mild enthusiasm for his work.

  ‘Monitor on duty,’ he announced to Scanner.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ said the cyber, flexing his wall screen into threedimensional relief. Colors from chocolate to avocado indicated crop stages of cultivation, growth and harvest. These remained static. Movements of colored lights indicated activities of men and machines.

  ‘Anything on the fisheye detector?’ asked Walter.

  ‘It is no longer located over the canal. One of the buckeye detectors failed during the previous shift and fisheye was moved to cover the gap,’ explained Scanner.

  Walter frowned. Fisheye was his personal project. To build a fisheye took weeks. Circuits sophisticated enough to distinguish between water mammals and humanoids were hard to find these days. He hated to see it being wasted on a hill somewhere, doing a job any warm-body detector could do. He called up Val.

  The screen focused on Val’s quarters. Empty. The communicator meck tried some of Val’s usual haunts with the same negative result. Checking the labile memories of random Watcher mecks, the communicator retraced Val’s activities during his off hours. Picking up a clue here and a thread there it finally tracked him down. He was in Tinker’s deserted quarters sitting at the workbench.

  ‘Val,’ called old Walter.
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  The younger man put down the small brain box and turned toward the screen.

  ‘What is it, Walter?’

  ‘The fisheye.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that. But one of the detectors on the thirty-seven-oh-three line lost range. I had to cover the crops while I worked on it – first-line maintenance, you know. So far I haven’t found the trouble. Sensors OK. If the failure is in the image converter or discrimination circuitry again we’ll be months waiting for parts. I couldn’t leave a hole in the line that long.’

  Walter appeared irritated. Scanner followed the old man’s biolectricals. Myocardial edema had been showing up with more frequency lately.

  ‘I know how interested you are in fisheye—’ continued Val apologetically. ‘But even if there is an aquatic variety of the Eyepeople – they’re no problem as long as they stay in the water. If they feed on shellfish they just compete with the cetaceans and help keep the canals clean. If they come out to steal our crops the buckeye detectors will pick them up. Remember that a simple fifty-Au-gram BD can keep an eye on twenty square miles of open fields – but one of your fisheye detectors can watch only a few hundred yards of a canal. And the FD is going to cost several hundred Au-grams. I think it will be impractical to watch all the canals.’

  Walter slumped deeper into his chair. ‘I’ve explained before that the FD isn’t for hunting. It’s for study. If we can establish that the aquatics do exist, then we can decide if we want to monitor the dugong breeding grounds, or put sensors on them – or whatever. We won’t be able to completely wipe out buckeyes until we understand their life cycle.’

  ‘Your research will have to wait. We have today’s crop to protect,’ said Val.

  Walter said nothing.

  ‘Don’t take it so hard. If your grant comes through you can set up a dozen FD’s.’

  After another moment’s silence the younger man signed off and returned to his workbench.

  Already tired, Walter turned to the dull tasks before him. His grant – for fisheye census or the proof of the existence of an aquatic Eyepeople – was classified under research. Long-range buckeye control. But with next week’s harvest in danger the Big ES would postpone research – probably indefinitely. He shrugged and woke up Wolfhound IX. A crew of Hunters was assigned. Coordinates were given. A Hunt.