by D B Hartwell
“No problems walking?” said Doctor Flynn.
“No,” he replied, but the doctor hadn’t been talking to him.
There was a final checking of consoles. One by one the assembled doctors and nurses and technicians gave a thumbs up.
“Okay,” said Doctor Flynn. “Well, thank you Buddy Joe. You can put your shoes on now. They should still fit if you roll the joints of the feet over each other, and in that way you can conceal them. We’ll see you again the same time next week.”
“Hey, just a minute,” said Buddy Joe. “You can’t send me out there with the Compliance still active.”
Doctor Flynn gave a shrug. “We can’t keep you in here. Laboratory space costs money. We’re out of here ourselves in five minutes time to make way for yet another group of Historical Astronomers. Goodbye.”
And that was it. He had no choice but to slip on his shoes and to walk out of the laboratory onto the fifth-level deck.
• • • •
Buddy Joe made his way to a lift that would take him down to the Second Deck. The Fifth Deck was quite empty at this time of night. With any luck, he would make it home without being recognized as someone under the spell of Compliance.
His feet were rolled up in his plastic shoes and socks, it took all his self-control to hold in the exhalation of acid that would melt them away and allow his feet to flap free. Don’t let go, Buddy Joe. The metal grid of the deck will feel horrible against your poor feet.
The laboratory lay a long way out from the Pillar Towers. He could see through the mesh of the floor, all the way down to the waves crashing on the garbage-strewn shoreline far below. Looking up, he could see the flattened-out stars that pressed close, smearing themselves just above the tops of the highest buildings. He would have liked to stop for a while, it was a rare treat to look at the remnants of the universe, but he didn’t dare. Not with Compliance still inside him.
The few Fifth Deckers who were out walking ignored him as usual. Scientists or lawyers, who could tell the difference? All wrapped up against the winter cold, trousers tucked into their socks against the cold gusts of wind that blew up through the metal decking. Buddy Joe kept to the shadows, dodging between the cats’ cradles of struts that braced the buildings to the decks. Approaching the Pillar Towers he saw the yellow light that bathed the polished wooden doors of the main lift and he relaxed, but too soon. The woman who had been following him called out from the shadows behind.
“Stop there.”
He did so.
“You’re on Compliance, right?”
“Yes.”
Buddy Joe felt a pathetic cry building inside. First they had taken his feet, now they would take his wallet, or worse.
“What did you do?”
“Rape,” he said. “But . . .”
“I don’t want to hear the details.”
Buddy Joe dutifully closed his mouth, panic rising inside. His shoes were melting.
“Some bastard raped my partner only two months ago. Caught him alone in a lift coming up from the Second Deck. Are you a Second Decker?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“I’m not interested. How about if I told you to throw yourself off the edge?”
“Please don’t do that.”
“Funny, that. John said ‘Please’ too. Bastard didn’t listen to him.”
Buddy Joe clenched his fists together. His new feet were flapping open and closed by themselves, trying to creep away from the woman. There was a gentle intake of breath. This was it. This was the end. She would tell him to go and jump off the deck and he would have no choice but to obey. She was going to say it. She was going to . . .
And then nothing. A lengthening pause.
He turned around: the woman had gone. In her place was the stuff of nightmares. Buddy Joe began to make a noise. A thin scream of pure terror.
He was looking at another alien. He was looking at himself. It had his feet. It was his height, its hands stretched out . . . No. Don’t look at the hands, Buddy Joe. But worse than that.
It had no head.
No head, but it was watching him. It was trying to say something to him, but he wasn’t ready to understand.
—Forget it, then, said the alien.—For now.
It rose up into the air and vanished.
Two minutes later, Buddy Joe walked, shaking, into the lift.
He had Compliantly forgotten all about the alien.
• • • •
Buddy Joe’s flat was at the top of a block built on the Second Deck, home of those just bright enough not to believe in anything, but not bright enough to believe in something. His window looked out into the gloom cast by the underside of the Third Deck. He had a bed, a food spigot and a view-screen. Down the corridor were a bathroom and a row of toilet cubicles. Buddy Joe’s father lived two flats down, his sister in the next flat again. Buddy Joe’s grandfather had lived in the flat just next to the lift shaft. That flat had echoed and boomed every time the lift had moved. It echoed and boomed all day long, and most of the night. Buddy Joe’s Granddad was dead now, though, and a new family had moved in. Granddad would have called them an Indian family, but he was old-fashioned in that respect. He had been old enough to remember when flowers had first bloomed on the moon.
“What do you know, Buddy Joe?” asked the woman on the viewscreen.
“I don’t know nothing,” said Buddy Joe.
“Next dose of Compliance at 40 P tomorrow. Next part of the alien suit at 60 P.”
Buddy Joe rolled over on his bed. He was seriously thinking of throwing himself off the edge of the deck.
The viewscreen flickered and his sister appeared. She was sitting on a bed in a gray metal room just the same as his, just three doors away.
“Forty P tomorrow, eh, Buddy Joe?”
“That’s right.”
“And the next part of the alien suit at 60 P.”
“That’s what they said.”
His father appeared on the screen. It might as well be the same room, the same bed, only the person changed.
“Forty P, Buddy Joe.”
“Yes.”
“New suit at 60 P.”
“That’s what they said.”
“Your Granddad would say two o’clock, you know, not 60 P.”
“Really, Dad?”
“You’re a lot like your Granddad, Buddy Joe. He was always thinking about things, too. I always said it would get you both into trouble. I was right, too.”
Buddy Joe looked down at his strange gray-green feet. He had placed a plastic bag between them and the nylon sheets: they didn’t like the feel. He looked at his thin pale legs.
“Get used to them, they’ll be gone by tomorrow.”
That was James, from the flat below, his big moon-face leering from the viewscreen. He was filling a cup with food from the spigot as he spoke. Buddy Joe felt hungry. He looked for his cup beside the bed. The viewscreen flicked to show Mr. and Mrs. Singh having sex. Seventy P already. Definitely time for something to eat.
He knelt on the bed and leaned across to the spigot, his feet up in the air; well clear of the nylon sheets. Marty from Deck One was on the viewscreen now. He drew a sacred symbol in the air as he spoke.
“Shouldn’t have raped that girl, boy,” he shouted. “Gonna lose a lot more than your feet tomorrow.”
• • • •
Buddy Joe was dreaming about walking with his grandfather through one of the meadows of the moon. Butterflies dipped and sipped among the nodding red and yellow heads of the flowers that stretched in all directions. Buddy Joe bent down and sniffed a flower.
No! Dirty, No! That was Dirty, Buddy Joe!
He woke to gray morning light, feeling disgusted with himself. He had to watch himself. Dirty thoughts germinated in your sleep and then bloomed as actions in your waking life. He knew that. Think of the decks, he told himself, think of the decks.
His sister was watching him from the viewscreen. “Thirty-five P, Buddy Joe. They’
ll be dosing you with Compliance soon.”
“That’s right,” he replied, rubbing his eyes. He fumbled for his mug and held it under the food spigot.
“What do you reckon it will be? New legs? New arms?”
“I don’t know.”
His father appeared on the screen. “Thirty-five P, Buddy Joe. They’ll be dosing you with Compliance soon.”
“That’s right.”
He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to lose his legs. He was being turned into an alien against his wishes. What would happen when he put on the head? What would happen to him then? Where would Buddy Joe go? Still, he deserved it. Just look at his dreams.
“Shouldn’t have raped that girl, Buddy Joe,” said his father.
Didn’t he wish that every day?
Martin came on the screen. Then Katie, then Clovis, then Charles . . .
He was still lying on the bed when the drone came buzzing down from the upper decks. A wasp-striped cylinder, just smaller than his thumb, dropping through the traps and gaps between the decking and the Pillar Towers. Swooping through the tunnels of the support struts, weaving through the balconies and walkways that led to his flat. Sending the signal that opened his door. He saw it hanging in the air at the end of the corridor, swelling in apparent size as it zoomed toward him. It settled lightly on his hand and there was a slight prick, then the crystal of Compliance slid beneath his skin. His arm tingled a little, felt as if it was somewhere else and then, there it was back again. He looked down at the tiny body of the drone, felt the pitter patter of metal feet on his skin. It spoke to him.
“Sixty P, Buddy Joe. Back at the lab. Be there for your new legs.”
“Okay,” he said. His new feet started to flap, all by themselves. They were excited. Buddy Joe rolled off the bed. It would take five P for Compliance to properly take hold. He intended to be in the lab by then, before anyone could take advantage of him again.
Hold on. Again? What did he mean again? Had he forgotten something? He shook his head, searching for the thought. It had gone.
Outside his flat, clattering down the steps to Deck Two. Threading through riveted metal cuboids that were bolted together to make blocks of flats. Walking around a gang of teenagers who were laughing as they incited each other to piss through the metal grating of the floor onto the Churches and Mosques and Synagogues and Temples far below on Deck One. One girl, her panties around her ankles, looked at Buddy Joe, saw the mark on his arm where the drone had settled and slow comprehension spread across her face. He hurried off before she could say anything.
• • • •
Buddy Joe was waiting outside the lift entrance at the Pillar Towers. The tower stretched up into the sky, a tapering, dirty metal shape that vanished into the shadows cast by the Third Deck. Covered in deep scratches that bled rusty red. His grandfather had said that was from where they had grown from the earth. He had laughed. That surprises you, he had said. Bet you thought humans built the decks. Bet most people think that nowadays. Well, it’s not true. A lot of strange things happened after flowers started growing on the moon.
Buddy Joe had kept quiet. Up until then he had never thought anything but that the decks had grown by themselves. He had never thought of humans building anything. Looking at the solid, earth-colored shapes of the Pillar Towers, how could anyone not believe that they had grown from the ground?
The polished wooden lift doors slid open and three people came out. Buddy Joe stepped into the padded interior. He gave a shiver. They were going to take away a little bit more of his humanity. He didn’t want to go, but he heard his voice as it clearly asked for . . .
“Deck Five, please.”
Someone pressed the button. The lift fell a little and everyone’s hearts beat a little faster. Everyone had heard the story that, just as humans had sprung from the earth, someday they would all be called back to it. The lift doors would slide shut and carry them down to meet their maker . . .
But not today. The lift began to rise.
• • • •
Walking across Deck Five, Buddy Joe could see the gray of the sky, sagging over the spires of the towers on Deck Seven. The winds blew harder up here; they blew through his thin cotton suit and made him shiver. His feet liked the feel: they shivered with anticipation.
He arrived early. A team of Historical Astronomers had projected pictures across the interior walls of the dome of the laboratory. They showed a strange landscape. Grassy plains, snow-capped mountains, fields of yellow corn: but everything out of proportion, the mountains, the valleys, all bigger than the pictures Buddy Joe had been shown of old Earth as a child.
“What is it?” he asked a white-coated astronomer next to him. The astronomer gave him a suspicious look and then realization dawned.
“Ah, the gentleman being fitted for an Alien Suit,” he said. “A waste of time, if you want my opinion; but you probably don’t.” He turned and waved his arms around the room.
“This, my friend, is Mars. Mars, I should say, between the Shift and the Collapse. These pictures were taken about two months after the colony was established.”
“It looks very . . . strange.”
“It does to your eyes, my friend, because you have always lived in the world post-Collapse. To those who were alive before the Shift, that world would be a paradise. It would look like the real world.”
“The real world?”
“Well, one of them. That’s what we’re all looking for here, my friend. That’s why they have built those towers on Deck Seven; that’s what your friends who are making that suit for you are looking for. The real world.”
He gave a sigh and looked around. “Of course, my great-grandparents would not recognize these pictures as the real world.”
“Why not?”
But someone called to the man. “Excuse me, I have to go now, maybe I will be able to tell you more another time.” He shook Buddy Joe’s hand and hurried away. He looked a little like Mr. Singh from down the corridor—what his grandfather would have called an Indian.
The Historical Astronomers were packing up now. Another set of scientists were coming into the room. The Alien Suit scientists. Two of them were pushing a trolley, and Buddy Joe felt a thrill of fear. The next part of the suit lay on it. He felt sick. It was more than he had expected. Not a pair of trousers, not a top. It looked like a jumpsuit. It would swallow up all of Buddy Joe except for his hands and his head. And when your head is gone, where do you go, Buddy Joe? (Head. Head. Now why did he think of the head of the alien? Don’t think of the Hands!)
Doctor Flynn saw him shivering at the other side of the room. “Ah! There you are. Take your clothes off quickly. We haven’t got much time.”
Buddy Joe began to do so, but inside he was crying with fear. But I don’t want to! Well you shouldn’t have raped that girl, Buddy Joe, said his Compliant hands, busily undoing his shirt.
Someone pressed sensor pads onto his face. He kicked off his shoes and his feet unrolled themselves. Doctor Flynn stood patiently beside him, looking at a picture inadvertently left behind by the Historical Astronomers.
“Fools,” he said, “living in the past. We never understood the truth when we held the possibility of the whole universe in our hands. Why should we learn the answers by looking at copies and replicas of what we had? Better to give up the past. The truth lies elsewhere.”
He let go of the paper and it fluttered to the ground. He turned and looked at Buddy Joe, now standing naked before him. A pale white body traced in blue veins.
“I need the toilet.”
“Wait,” said Doctor Flynn. “It will be an interesting test of the suit.” He turned to the rest of the team. “Are we ready?”
One woman shook her head. “Five minutes. We’re having a little trouble getting the neck to dilate.”
Doctor Flynn gave a slight nod. “That’s okay. We have some slack time built into the session.”
Buddy Joe shivered. Partly it was the cold; ma
inly it was fear. The gray-green body of the alien suit glistened wet and smooth on the outside, but inside, looking into the neck, he could see the strange purple color of the interior. Rows of silver-gray hooks that appeared half metal, half organic, lined the suit. What would they do to him when he pulled it on? Just how deeply would those hooks reach into his body? But he knew the answer already. They had told him. All the way in, Buddy Joe, the hooks reach all the way in. They’ll soon be twisting around your veins and nerves and organs, hooking their way in and using them as a basis for the shape they will grow. They’ll paint over the template of your black-and-white body in glorious Technicolor. You’ll be a paint-by-numbers man.
Doctor Flynn began to hum to himself. The yellow lights reflected from his head and glasses.
“Why?” whispered Buddy Joe.
“Why what?” said Doctor Flynn.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Doctor Flynn gave a shrug. “Just luck, I suppose. We notified the courts that we would like a test subject. Yours was the first Capital case that came up, I guess.”
“No,” said Buddy Joe. “I mean, why are you changing me into an alien?”
Doctor Flynn gave him a strange look. He seemed a little impressed, despite himself. “You understand what’s going on, don’t you? You want to know the reasons? You really are a cut above the common herd, aren’t you? Well, I’ll tell you . . .”
“Ready, Doctor Flynn.” The woman by the suit gave the thumbs up.
Doctor Flynn gave an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. Maybe next week we’ll have the time to talk.”
He clapped his hands together. “Okay people, let’s get going. Buddy Joe, if you can step toward the suit?”
Buddy Joe let out an involuntary whimper as he stepped forward. The neck of the suit had expanded. Now it looked like a huge purple mouth, lined with bristling hook-like teeth. It was flexing, the teeth rippling as he watched.
“Everything ready?” said Doctor Flynn, looking around. “Okay, step into the suit.”