by Karen Heuler
“Is this where you work?” Lena asks.
“Me?” He laughs. “No, no, no. You haven’t figured it out yet? You can’t guess what my job is?” He stops to watch her think.
She looks at the four people who surround them. Each one is looking in a different direction—at the walls, down the corridor, into the rooms that flash with computer screens. “Sometimes I feel that there’s a plan,” she says finally. “When things go wrong again and again. I keep telling myself it’s just bad luck.” This isn’t the kind of thing she admits. Not normally.
He smiles. “The plan keeps changing,” he says agreeably. “Something we do seems good, and we do it; and then someone comes along with a better plan. For the little people,” he whispered. “For the pawns. Isn’t that how it feels?”
She nods. But she resents it.
“You see, you were never called here. You simply don’t belong here. Another accident? Do you think so?” He pats her on the shoulder. She thinks, for a moment, that it’s a friendly pat, avuncular.
She can hear names being called out in one of the rooms. Just names, no emotion, then a list of diseases. “Heart attack. Lung cancer. Malaria. Stroke.” She steps into the doorway and looks inside. People are standing at whiteboards, where they write and then erase diseases, as if to keep track of trends.
“Food poisoning!” a worker cries. “How about a funeral?”
There’s an instant crescendo of agreement. She turns back to Bossephalus. “You’re with security, aren’t you?”
“Head of,” he says cheerily. “Specializing in break-ins. We don’t see them too often, we’ve got a good system of checks and counterchecks. The guards don’t look too intelligent, but that’s deliberate. If someone is interested, they’re going to get in, and it’s best if we get them at our own convenience.”
“So.” She takes a deep breath. “So what happens now?”
He grips her shoulder again and leads her to another room. “It’s not so bad,” he says in a reassuring tone. “We’re going to put you back where you belong. But you won’t be in any danger, and neither will we.” He waves her forward, over to the main desk in the room. “Shayton,” he says. “Lena Shayton.”
“Ah,” the woman at the desk says. “Got her right here.” She turns to the computer screen and starts clicking away.
Lena’s hands began to perspire and she feels a lump at the back of her mouth. It’s so big she has trouble swallowing. Bossephalus’ hand moves up from her shoulder and he spreads his fingers hard around her ear. “Right about here, maybe,” he says. “Though I’m not a doctor. But right where the speech centers are, the communication centers.”
“Got it!” the desk person calls out. “Here we go!”
“Stop,” Lena says. “Fot are ye doon?”
“Not just the sounds,” he advises. “Make it the meaning, too.”
“Croon wizzes, who saw that blucksbin. Terrible blucksbin!” I try, I try, she thinks.
“That’s it!” Bossephalus cries. “That’s exactly what I mean. Give her lots of words without meaning, make it almost make sense.”
She can eel her tongue twisting, he says, “Goo.” She can’t find things, sharp or thin. Is it in her turn? Maybe she can write, with a spit on the knee, so they’ll wonder highways and believe then, get a gooseberry rhythm.
Lena Shayton, boom boom, ready now? Upsy upsy.
Whirlybanging all over bingo next Tuesday too. Please please bing she think. Words, she say words.
DOWN ON THE FARM
One of those pigs with the ears all down its back walked by, snorting.
“Little piggy,” Tercepia called, bending over and holding her hand out. “Here, here, here.”
The pig ignored her.
She was standing next to a crib of grain. She reached in and took a handful and threw it in an arc towards the pig. Some of the ears on its back were moving.
The pig did a little jump and trotted away. Tercepia straightened up and ran after it. The pig went faster and so did Tercepia and all at once she was racing really swiftly, wind in her face and the pig rounded the corner of the barn and she lost sight of it for a moment and that made her run even faster so it wouldn’t disappear altogether and she put on a burst.
“No!” Dr. Sandam yelled. He was right there around the corner of the barn. The pig was slowing down, looking back at her, and the doctor’s face looked really annoyed. At once she stopped and felt ashamed. She wasn’t supposed to chase the pigs. She was never supposed to chase the pigs.
“Pig ran,” she said faintly.
“What did I tell you?”
“No chasing pigs,” she whispered.
“Only the pigs?”
“No chasing anything.”
“And if you do?”
She hung her head. Her hands dangled, her shoulders sank and curved her back. “Sit forever,” she said sadly.
“For one hour,” he amended. His voice was cheerier, and Tercepia looked up. There was someone else standing next to him and the doctor was looking at this person now, smiling. “An hour seems forever at that age,” he was saying. “But the pigs can’t be disturbed, of course. Too much agitation and we might damage the implants. Not to mention that the pigs get stressed, and that wouldn’t be right.”
“Woulda be right,” Tercepia agreed, eager to please him.
The doctor’s friend looked at her and put a smile on his face, but she didn’t trust it. She stepped closer to the doctor, keeping her eyes on the smile.
“This is Portafack,” the doctor said. “He wants to look around. Do you want to show him around?”
She hung her head and hid behind the doctor. “Please no. Feed pigs now.”
“They’re all shy?” Portafack asked. “Or just this one?”
“They like routines,” the doctor said and shrugged. “They get nervous when anything changes, and we’ve had a few changes lately. But yes, the females are a little shyer than the males. Would you prefer a male?”
Portafack’s smile went away. “I was interested in the females. Thought they would be . . . well, more docile, I guess. No aggression issues. That kind of thing.”
The doctor stepped aside and pulled Tercepia forward. “Yes, there’s been a lot of interest in the females. They’re smart and submissive, by and large. Here, let me show you what she can do. Tercepia, bring water.”
Tercepia looked alert and said “Yes!” eagerly. She was allowed to run to bring water, so she flung herself away. She went back the way she had come, around the corner, and then across the yard to the office, where there was cold water and glasses. She knew how to do that.
That pig was there again, twitching its tail and all its ears, and Tercepia tried very hard not to see it, but when it noticed Tercepia, it did a little pig turnaround and trotted off to the next yard. Tercepia was still in control, but then she saw the dog, which she hadn’t seen in hours, and she gave a gleeful little call and ran to the dog, then sat down next to it, and hugged it over and over again.
The dog’s mouth moved but there was no sound, so Tercepia kept saying, “Good, good, good Cerbo! Good, good, good dog!” and Cerbo licked her face and then, still silent, looked at her earnestly. He lifted a paw and placed it gently on her knee.
“Food? Water?” Tercepia asked him. She hugged him fiercely and stood up. “Come.”
The dog followed her to the office, where she got a bowl of water and put it down for him, and then took sandwiches out of the refrigerator and put them down on the floor.
She sat down and leaned against him for comfort but the dog inched away from her; he was hungry and pulled the sandwiches apart, eating them piece by piece. When he was done he drank the water, which reminded Tercepia of her task. She leaped up and said, “Bring water!” Then she filled two glasses, put them on a tray, and walked out the door, her eyes devoted to the glasses, trying not to walk so fast she would slop them. The dog watched her from the doorway, licking his muzzle fastidiously. When she disappeared, h
e went over to Portafack’s car, lifted his leg, and then walked away in satisfaction.
Tercepia went in search of Sandam and the stranger. They weren’t at the first barn, which held more of the pigs with ears. When she was younger she would run in there to pull their ears and the pig would squeal a little and jump and the ears would wiggle. Sandam made her sit still in the middle of all the pigs, sit forever, and she had never done it again, but the ears always made her chin rise up with excitement, and her mouth would open. Even as she passed, she panted a little, longingly, but held the glasses steady and went on to the pens behind the second barn, where the pigs had rows of eyes like polyps growing around their necks like garlands. The eyes rippled as the pigs moved.
“Sometimes they roll over,” the doctor was saying, pointing things out to Portafack. “Which the ears can take, but not the eyes. So we made the eyes into a sort of necklace, they suffer less damage that way.”
Portafack leaned over to look at a bunch of pigs grunting in a group by the railing. One had brown eyes, about half grown, around its head. It kept twitching.
“Those flies,” Portafack said. “Don’t they bother the eyes?”
“The eyes are rudimentary at this point,” the doctor assured him. “They don’t feel a thing. Ah, here she is. You see? Good girl, Tercepia.”
She held out the tray, looking around uneasily. She didn’t like these pigs. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of eyes peering at her from every direction. Her neck prickled; she kept feeling that the eyes were following her. The doctor looked at her steadily as she held the tray.
Portafack was also watching her. “How old is she?”
“Four. The hybrids learn very quickly, though there’s a limit. Her vocabulary is about a hundred spoken words, but she understands much more than that. You can teach her. It takes some repetition and reward, but she learns quickly. Her motor skills aren’t as good. She can carry things, but nothing too fine. We teach them to pour drinks and to make sandwiches, but we don’t allow knives, and no cooking. They can do assembly lines if it’s blunt work—nothing like turning screws, for instance. Were you thinking household or assembly lines? They’re very good at both, though you have to allow them rest breaks—or exercise breaks, really—after an hour. They make mistakes when they get bored.”
“It’s incredible. She looks grown up.” Portafack’s eyes scanned her body. “A little woman,” he said.
“Well, for the most part, she is.” There was a pause as the men stared at her.
“How long do they live?”
“Our guess is somewhere around 30. They may live longer—after all, they’re visibly human; they have human bodies. The dog gene will affect their longevity, of course.”
Portafack shook his head. “Dogs,” he said. “I had a dog when I was a kid. Broke my heart when I had to destroy him. Those mournful, loving eyes. Hard to think of a world without dogs.”
“There’s no reason to,” Sandam said quickly.
“Does she act like a human girl? Domestic urges, that kind of thing?”
The doctor glanced at Portafack. “You want a household servant, then?”
Portafack’s lips twitched slightly. “Yes. I live alone, you see. My life needs a woman’s touch.” His smile inched across his face again.
“Would you like to see some of the others? You have a choice, you know. After all, if you’re going to be seeing her every day, you’d want the one that appeals to your eyes the most, no? I think Tercepia is exceptionally intelligent, but that may be because she was one of the first and I spent a lot of time with her. But there are differences in appearance, too. She does have a slightly more noticeable ridge along the nose; some of the others have less. It’s up to you.” He turned to lead the way and Portafack glanced at his back for a moment, appraisingly.
Tercepia followed them, away from the eye pigs and past the outside pen with the nose pigs. They headed for a red brick building called The House, which had a front door and windows with curtains.
A pair of young girls answered the doorbell. To Portafack, they looked like they could be twins—or almost twins. There was only a slight difference between them. They wore similar loose dresses and one had a somewhat bigger nose and one had thinner lips
The girls jostled each other and one fell back against a lamp. They lunged together and rolled around the floor.
“Stop!” Sandam shouted, and the girls rolled away from each other, looking slightly shamefaced. “Up!” They got up reluctantly, grabbing each other and bumping in a playful manner.
“Sit,” Sandam said, and they began to sit on the floor. “On the sofa,” Sandam said, and when they appeared confused, he whispered to Portafack, “They’re still in training.” Then he walked over to the sofa, called them, and made them sit properly. He saw a certain air of expectation on Portafack’s part, so he said, “We never hit them.”
“Really? That’s remarkable. How do you get them to learn?”
“Repetition and rewards. If they don’t do a task right, they don’t get a treat. But they want praise, of course. Rewards just tell them they’ve succeeded.”
Portafack raised his eyebrows. ”But surely there must be times when they do something wrong? Or when they disobey?”
“We never hit them,” Sandam repeated, and Portafack shrugged his shoulders lightly.
They went to the next room, where the larger girls were ironing and washing dishes. One of them was holding a tray with plastic glasses on it. The tray kept sliding forward and the glasses kept dropping.
Tercepia ran up to the girls one by one and just touched them on the arm, and then ran over to another girl. Portafack felt that he could trace the origins of some of the girls quite easily. One had hair that was coarse and slightly mottled. Another had eyes that seemed, to him, to be too close together. Tercepia on the other hand had even features and good hair.
They walked to the porch. The youngest girls were buttoning and unbuttoning their shirts, heads were lowered, their faces frowning in concentration. One girl was biting her lip. “Grooming,” Sandam said. “We teach them proper appearance. They don’t all reach the same abilities, but we do have some ground rules. They have to bathe and do buttons and zippers. They have to return when they’re called. They can’t bite.” He shrugged. “General rules.”
“Biters?” Portafack asked, his eyes traveling slowly over the girls.
“We haven’t really had any biters yet. We just try to come up with rules that guarantee hybrids with reliable temperaments.”
Sandam followed Portafack’s gaze to a girl who was having the most trouble, and whose bare skin was visible. “Perhaps you could give me a little information about yourself?” Sandam asked. “What you’re looking for exactly, what kind of household you have. Just in general some background. You mentioned a dog when you were a child. Have you had more pets, children, a wife?”
Portafack drew his eyes away from the girl. “I was married once but divorced. We didn’t have children. That was a while ago. I’m very busy and, I’m afraid, rather set in my ways. I like the house to be kept clean and I like simple foods well prepared. I had a housekeeper for many years but she left to get married. That was surprising, she was far too old, I would have thought, to interest anybody. I wouldn’t like to lose another one to marriage.” He turned back to the girls in front of him. “They don’t—well, marry, do they?”
Sandam smiled. “No. Though their sexuality is intact. They might find someone to sleep with occasionally.”
“But not get pregnant?” Portafack moistened his lips.
“No. They’re sterile. We own the copyright, after all.”
“So they don’t mind sex,” Portafack murmured.
Sandam let the statement rest for a second. “No. We didn’t see any reason to take that away. It can enhance their quality of life. You have to remember that they are dominantly human. You have to have some sensitivity, because they do.”
“Oh, I’m kind,” Portafack said.
“No one has ever said I wasn’t. They do prepare food, I see?” He was watching as the girls made sandwiches.
“Meals are really pretty simple. They don’t have much of an attention span so we’ve given up on using a stove. They forget about it and walk away. You might as well tell me exactly what your requirements are. Cleaning, simple meals?”
“Laundry, ironing. Can they do shopping?”
“Simple things only, I’m afraid. They don’t read.”
“Oh?” Portafack considered this. “I’m surprised. Is that deliberate?”
“No, we’ve tried teaching them. Their intellectual capacity varies from one to the other, but the best comprehends about as much as a 6 year old. They can be extremely sensitive, and unable to express it well.”
“She looks . . .” Portafack began. “Her name is Tercepia, right? She looks like a normal girl. A normal young girl.” His voice was soothing. He was looking at Tercepia more and more as she helped a friend make sandwiches. She wrapped two and put them in her pocket.
“We spent a lot of time with her. Of course she was one of the first group.”
“Oh? And what happened to the others?”
Sandam hesitated briefly. “It was just her and two males. We had trouble with one of them and he’s not for release. We keep him separated from the others, since he’s not really trainable. We can generally tell from their appearance how well they’ll do.”
“I suppose the ones who look too much like a dog get sent to the pound?” Portafack joked.
Sandam’s face froze and eyes shifted to the window. Then he produced a short laugh and said, “Nothing that drastic, I assure you. It’s very rare. Most of the hybrids are running the way we want now.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Portafack said. “They’re born in a group, aren’t they? Multiple births. I suppose you don’t call them a litter, do you?” He laughed and Sandam dutifully laughed with him. “Are the mothers the humans? How does that work?”