Half Past Human (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by T. J. Bass

  Josephson watched the biolectricals entrain on the sound waves. He was amazed at the Pied Piper’s efficiency. Pressing the button, he activated Val’s collar – scrambling the biolectricals. Val coughed and stumbled. The crowd eyed him nervously – Sagittarius emblem! A hunter! Gitar ordered Door to open. The bright sunlight sent the Nebishes back downspiral. When Door shut again Val was alone – blinking around an empty garage.

  Josephson returned to Green Country. His birth permit was changed to a class one when it was discovered that he could not be polarized. He had two male chromosomes and one female – an XYY.

  Val and Walter reviewed the optics on the garage scene.

  ‘Coweye looks a little like the one I wounded on the Dark Continent,’ said Val. ‘But the Class Two has assured me that it isn’t. Sightings of that coweye indicated that she was still over there – nearly ten thousand miles away – as recently as last week.’

  ‘A new one then,’ said Walter. ‘But where has she been hiding? Three years is a long time to avoid what few detectors we have – not even an Agromeck sighting.’

  ‘How many Agromeck memories have you processed?’ asked Val.

  Old Walter shrugged. ‘My dispenser has been doing it – using my credits. I was just curious to see if Dee Pen was still alive. Looks like she might be dead by now.’

  Walter assembled optics of Dee Pen and Little Kaia.

  ‘These won’t help us find her,’ said Walter. ‘They are old sightings. But notice how her hair is bleaching. She must stay hidden when the sun is high. These are optics taken at dusk by returning mecks. Her pale skin has darkened – not with tan – but with blood blisters and ulcers. The wounds don’t seem to be healing, from day to day. This last one is really bad – see the dark hollows around her eyes – the scabby nose.’

  Val stood up eagerly. ‘She can’t get far in that condition. Let’s take a walk through that garden. We might find her – or her body.’

  Dee Pen huddled in her nest to avoid the actinics. Her vigorous son swam in the canal to wash off grit accumulated while grubbing for tubers. His dark eyes reminded her of his father. She marveled at the strength and speed of the youngster as he took to climbing leafy things for fruits or swimming for shells. She taught him what she could, smiling at each new accomplishment. He would survive Outside.

  When Walter found her, curled up and cold in the nest by the canal, he knelt down beside her and cried. Val sneered at the scattered loose leaves that covered her face.

  ‘Looks like the kid tried to bury her after she died.’

  Raising his bow, Val glanced around – searching. His Nebish eyes couldn’t see the orphan – a shaggy head among the smooth shapes of Sirenia and cetaceans splashing along the opposite bank of the canal. The herd of water mammals passed. One pair of eyes studied the hunters with a mixture of childish fear and hate. Val saw, but didn’t see. The concept of a swimming infant was alien to the four-toed mind. All he saw were the death traps of Outside – harsh sun, dense undergrowth and deep waters.

  ‘She was like a flower,’ sniffed melancholy Walter. ‘A beautiful blossom – dying to give birth. Only the husk remains.’

  ‘Well she died for nothing!’ snarled Val. ‘How could she expect her son to survive Outside when she can’t?’

  ‘He has the good gene,’ mumbled Walter reverently.

  ‘And Olga to protect him – I suppose,’ scoffed Val.

  ‘As a matter of fact – yes,’ said a third voice. The new metallic sound came over their helmet coms. It sounded close. ‘Olga will protect her children,’ it said.

  Old Walter glanced up hopefully. ‘Olga?’ he said. The voice had the same eerie loose-foil sibilance he had heard at 50:00. Dyspnea pressed on his oxygen dissociation curve. Pulse raced.

  Val tightened his grip on his bow and fumbled for an arrow. Stumbling in his thick suit, he spun around searching the skies. Doberman’s bronze hull approached over the tree-tops.

  The craft landed and opened its hatch. Gitar floated out on his peanut magnet’s sandwich field. Val nocked an arrow.

  ‘Planning on shooting me?’ asked Gitar, pushing the arrow aside with his tractor beam.

  Val lowered his bow sullenly.

  Gitar hovered over the nest with Dee Pen’s body. His voice lost its metallic quality – sounded almost human – as it came over their communicators.

  ‘I am sorry I was not here to care for her when she came Outside. Do you know where the child is?’ said Gitar.

  ‘Why are you concerned?’ asked Walter weakly.

  ‘He is the next generation. He has the good gene.’

  ‘Bad gene,’ interrupted Val.

  Gitar turned toward the truculent young man.

  ‘You are still thinking as an agent of the hive. Of course the gene is bad in your eyes. I am not interested in hive creatures. I’ve come to help individuals – five-toed men.’

  ‘Come?’ gasped Walter. ‘From where? From whom?’

  ‘Olga,’ said Gitar. ‘Olga wants to save her five-toed men from the hive. That includes all who carry the gene—’

  Walter sat up, animated. ‘When Olga comes again – can she take us with her?’ he gasped and collapsed.

  Val knelt down beside his old, fat friend and opened his visor. The cyanotic domino mask had returned. He attempted to lift him, but he was much too heavy.

  Gitar called – ‘Rhea!’

  The coweye stepped hesitantly from the Huntercraft and glanced around. Val recoiled. She gently picked up Walter and placed him inside the craft.

  ‘Medikit under the seat,’ suggested Gitar.

  Val collected his wits and climbed in. Opening the kit, he found vials of vasopressors and steroids. Nudging his friend’s systolic pressure with the molecules, he brought pinkness back to his face – erasing the domino mask.

  Gitar took his place in the empty socket that had housed the powercell. Lights came on. The hatch closed. The internal environment cooled. Gitar began to play a light musical tune. He asked Val if he had ever been this close to a coweye before.

  ‘I’m not even going to talk about it,’ said Val stiffly. ‘The only reason I’m staying here is Walter. He needs help.’

  ‘Relax,’ said Gitar. ‘This is a truce until his strength returns. Rhea, fix Walter a bowl of tea.’

  Val watched the coweye rummage around in the back of the craft where her belongings were stored – bowls, baskets, Neolithic weapons and tools – and a large bundle of poles and hides that probably represented her shelter.

  Val moved to block the proffered brew.

  ‘I’ll drink it – whatever it is,’ gasped Walter. ‘If the guitar can make a dead buckeye walk, maybe he can help me get back on my feet.’

  Walter drank and felt refreshed.

  ‘Actually I did not make the dead man walk,’ explained Gitar. ‘I was just holding him up with my tractor beam.’ He pressed on each of them with the beam to demonstrate. It felt like a cold, hard hand.

  ‘Why?’ asked Walter, sitting up straighter. ‘Was it some sort of a warrior funeral rite?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Gitar. ‘I needed another five-toed for stud. I used the body of the buckeye to lure one Outside.’

  ‘Didn’t work too well,’ chuckled Val. ‘You got me. I’m a four-toed hunter.’

  Gitar didn’t answer immediately. He played a tune with a strong rolling base while he tried to lock onto Val’s thoracic autonomies. He sang a melancholy ballad of a buckeye and a hunter meeting in the gardens – only one walked away.

  The words irritated Val.

  ‘It may sound fine and noble, but many of those hunters were eaten. Nothing noble about men going out to protect their crops and getting eaten themselves.’

  ‘Strong eating the strong. It is necessary when all the good protein is concentrated in one species,’ said Gitar.

  Val stood up to leave.

  ‘This is stupid – “If you can’t mate them; eat them.” What kind of reasoning is that? I want no part of
it.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Walter.

  Val spun around and pointed to the coweye sitting cross-legged in the corner.

  ‘Next you are going to try to mate me to – that!’

  ‘You have already,’ said Gitar.

  Val paused, open-mouthed.

  The coweye turned her back and lifted her flowing mane. A puckered white asterisk marked her left scapular area – the old scar of Val’s arrow. Then she leaned over a small basket and lifted out a sleeping jungle bunny. The infant was about a year old, and had Val’s thin face and delicate features. It also had its mother’s broad palms and five-toed feet.

  ‘We call her little Rea. She’s a girl,’ said Gitar.

  Val sat down next to Walter.

  ‘Bred true,’ said Gitar, launching into a joyous paean.

  ‘I carry the gene?’ mumbled Val.

  ‘Look at your finger tips – the simple patterns – just an arch or a simple whorl. Wide ridge width. Few triradii. The four-toed fingerprint is full of double whorls and multiple triradii,’ said Gitar.

  Val couldn’t focus.

  ‘It figures,’ said old Walter. ‘The hive has been sending its best men Outside to fight for generations – getting rid of the troublemakers, the gamma A, the independant nonconformists.’

  Val moaned. ‘I’ve been hunting my own kind.’

  ‘The five-toed gene has always been its own worst enemy,’ said Walter.

  Gitar’s music grabbed Val’s autonomies and shook them – singing of freedom – strength – and the future when Olga would return. All of Val’s hive training fell away when the infant woke up and smiled at him. He picked up the infant, awkwardly at first – then gained confidence. This was his child – a natural child . . . a hybrid.

  Gitar seemed proud of his breeding efforts.

  ‘Where will we live?’ asked Val.

  ‘Outside. There is no room for you in the hive,’ said Gitar. ‘Olga sent me to breed a new population of the five-toeds. I’ll try to concentrate them on the surface – keep the genes pure. My guitar identity will enable me to smuggle my thoracic autonomic resonator into shaft caps. I can call out those with high autonomic tone – some will have the gene and survive. I estimate that the incidence of the gene is one per billion now. It was less than one part per million prior to Olga’s last return. But she carried off the cream of the crop.’

  Walter’s face lit up.

  ‘GITAR – guitar identity thoracic autonomic resonator!’

  ‘At your service, sir,’ bowed the meck, ‘Gitar is my name – mobile surface unit – class six. Servant of Olga—

  I was born on a wandering star.

  You’ve heard my name, I’m called Gitar.

  I’ve come to Earth, mankind to find.

  I’ll search canal and spiral wind.

  I’ll extract his soul from out the Hive.

  Return him to Olga, strong, alive.

  No Hive can hold true five-toed men.

  Their five-toed genes and endocrine.

  They mate and run and live alone

  They chew red meat off the bone

  When I return to my home sun

  I’ll take Olga’s men, every one.

  I was born on a wandering star

  You know my name, I’m called Gitar

  I’ve come to Earth, mankind to find

  I’ll search canal and spiral wind

  I’ll pipe him buckeye with a song

  Mate him, run him, make him strong

  When I return to my home sun.

  I’ll take Olga’s men, every one.

  Val lowered his visor and watched the sunrise – apprehensively. He remembered his almost fatal bout with sunburn.

  ‘I don’t think it is safe for me to go outside. I’ll just end up like a flower reaction – blistered and baked,’ said Val.

  Gitar changed the light wavelength in the cabin.

  ‘Take off your suit. Let’s take a look at those old burn scars.’ Gitar’s optics scanned the geographic patterns on Val’s chest – whites, pinks, creams and light browns. ‘There is melanin there. You’ll tan,’ said Gitar finally.

  ‘But I blistered so quickly. In less than an hour I started to—’ protested Val.

  ‘Your protective suit will last several months. We’ll grade your exposure. Most of the burn reaction was pellagric hypersensitivity. If we get your total body nicotinic acid stores up to normal – you’ll tolerate actinics much better.’

  ‘Pellagra?’ said Walter.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gitar. ‘The Nebish diet is measured in calories only. The essential amino acids, vitamins, minerals are ignored. The hive’s so-called flavors are richer in essentials, so the job-holders manage to live a little longer. But look at yourself – objectively. Loose teeth – scurvy. Most citizens are edentulous by their early twenties. Yellow livers – cirrhosis. Without lipotropic factors the fats can’t even get into the tricarboxylic acid cycle to be burned. Even with the necessary factors the four-toed body would still accumulate fat – for its mitochondria have scanty cristae and the fires burn low. It is pointless to list dietary deficiencies for the Nebish – who lacks so many of the basic enzymatic tools. What good is dietary iron if transferrin is short and the hemoglobin polypeptide chains have their sequences jumbled? Four grams of hemoglobin is all he can manage – even with Hb-F and Hb-N. His endoplasmic reticulum is agranular. He lacks the RNA-rich granules that make protein. Without them, he can’t make good collagen, bone, enzymes or proteins of any kind – no matter how we improve his diet. However, hive life can make a somatic Nebish out of anyone.’

  Walter and Val exchanged glances. Two soft, pasty bodies. Val knew he carried the gene. His body could be salvaged. But Walter had been near death several times. Diet had reversed the edema and paralysis several times. He turned to Gitar, hopefully.

  ‘My genes?’ asked Walter.

  ‘Sorry, old man,’ said Gitar. ‘But life in the hive has brought you to the end of your life span, I’m afraid. Empty calories have accumulated in too many places – vessels, liver, adipose tissue. Your extra two hundred pounds of fat have taken you out of the stud category. Your physiology is strained by simple day-to-day existence. You must return to the hive – to die.’

  ‘But my genes – am I one of the children of Olga?’ asked Walter.

  Gitar appraised the fatty hulk.

  ‘You did have a spontaneous puberty—’ theorized Gitar, ‘but since then your liver failure has allowed estrogens to accumulate in your system. Gynecomastia and loss of libido have masked your true habitus; but I’d guess that under that four-toed exterior beats a heterozygous five-toed heart.’

  Walter beamed.

  ‘But,’ continued Gitar, ‘you lack melanin. I’d put you in the group of oculocutaneous albinos that make up most of the heterozygotes who carry the masking gene. You can never live Outside. Sunlight will kill you. Your retina and skin just cannot make pigment.’

  ‘But I want to be with Olga – serve her. She is my deity. Surely there is a place for me,’ pleaded Walter.

  Gitar read the erratic biolectricals in the old man’s chest as an index of his fervor.

  ‘Relax, old man,’ said Gitar finally. ‘You can stay with me – in the Huntercraft. Your knowledge of Hunter Control will make you a valuable acolyte in this flying Temple of Olga. Together we should be able to salvage many of the heterozygotes that Kaia has sired.’

  Walter nodded his three chins.

  ‘If you help me back to the spiral, Val, I’ll start serving Olga by going into the HC workshop and disabling Tinker’s vacuum pump. That should set back optic repair a year or more in this sector.’

  ‘I can do better than that,’ said Gitar.

  He flew straight back to HC Garage. Door irised him inside without comment. No one in the hive seemed interested in the missing craft. While Walter removed vital bushings and seals from the pump, Val eyed Gitar critically.

  ‘You aren’t promising Walter that he will see hi
s deity, are you?’

  Gitar hummed a happy tune.

  ‘Walter wants to serve. It will make him happy and give him purpose during his declining years. No, he won’t live to see Olga’s return. He has only a few years left – even with a natural food diet. But his soul will be with Olga one day. That will be his reward,’ explained Gitar seriously.

  Val didn’t want to get into a discussion of ‘soul’ with a machine.

  ‘What do you have planned for me?’ asked Val.

  Gitar’s tune continued light and soothing. Percussion kept hold of his autonomics.

  ‘You have the gene – Olga’s five-toed gene. You will live Outside, under Olga’s protection. It will be a good life.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘Stud.’

  Val swallowed. Silence.

  Old Walter contaminated the Hi Vac oil with volatiles and solvents. Using a pry bar, he cracked the cold trap and Christmas tree of the diffusion pump. Gitar was pleased.

  During the following months Val tanned. Rhea went luteal with the corpus luteum of pregnancy. Val joined Walter and Gitar in scouring junglelike gardens for heterozygotes.

  Walter melted away. Soon he was a lighter, firmer two-hundred-pound dwarf. Gitar monitored his dusk and dawn twilight outings – a swim, a jog, or just a brine soak in a tropical surf.

  Gitar interrupted his swim, whispering, ‘Jungle bunny.’

  Walter glanced down the beach to see a shaggy-headed female leaving the surf – a forty-pound child, cautious, alert. Gitar activated Olga’s Temple. Lights came on, disturbing the twilight fog of dawn. Music and lights called pleasantly to the child. Walter stood up, fat and dripping, to greet her. The tyke’s eyes widened in terror. She ran and dove back into the surf. Gitar scanned. Nothing. The Temple rose and searched over the waters. They saw air in one of the six-fathom domes.

  ‘One of the blue-domed cysts is alive. Its meck brain is giving her air and protection. No wonder we’ve had such poor luck in locating coastal jungle bunnies. They’ve gone to the sea,’ exclaimed Walter with a smile.