by John F. Carr
"Your body responds to me," she said. "It always has. Why deny both of us? Take off your tunic and exercise those backwater tricks that seduced the sophisticate of Alura."
She stepped back from me, pulled off her tunic, and let it fall to the floor. I couldn't look away from her lean, shapely figure and the rich, brown triangle of pubic hair. She parted her thighs and said, "See. The scars are hardly noticeable. I bring you a beautiful body once again, the body that drove you to scar my mind."
I had a hard time taking in what she said; either I was a monster or she was mad. Had my memory been taken from me because I abused women? I made no move to accept her sexual offer, leery of what it might mean to her or me. Her voice became strident as she said, "So you reject me after closing me off from everything I ever had that wasn't you. I ought to notify the VIS."
I knew I didn't want that. "I can't stay with you now. I'm in this urbode to get a wristlock. After that I have to find my way to a new dwell. After I get relocated we can talk and I'll try to understand what you're telling me. I do want you and I want to know what you know about me. How can I find you again?"
"Find Hushel and I'll be nearby. You won't tell Hushel who I am, will you?" The bright glaze of paranoia crystallized in her eyes.
Hastily I promised, "I won't say anything about you to Hushel."
"How can I be sure? What am I to you but a damaged instrument of power? But I warn you…do not underestimate the extent of that power. I am still learning about it. Every time I survive the holocaust that you ignited in me, I become stronger."
Her presence disturbed me in multiple ways. Her voice and actions differed from what I'd seen and heard among the grays. When she bent over to pick up her tunic, the sight of the bare curves of her buttocks brought a lump to my throat. She snapped the tunic in the air and then began to tie fist-sized knots in it. I had no idea why she was doing that until she flicked it toward me, hitting the side of my head with the knotted end.
I gasped, lost my balance, and almost fell to the floor. She began screaming invectives at me in a loud voice, "Scum! Rake! Bum! Fake!" She repeated the words over and over as if chanting a curse while she continued slapping me with the tunic knots.
I moved into a defensive crouch, taking her blows on my arms. I managed to grab the tunic. With surprising strength, she jerked me off my feet. I panicked at the sound of the door closing. I let go of the tunic, lurched to my feet, and slammed my body into hers. We fell in a tangled heap to the floor, our bodies in intimate, but hostile, contact. I was terrified at not being able to see Hushel's door, afraid I might not get a wristlock, half-afraid that I might not see my enigmatic guide again.
Lyonella's frenzied attack subsided, perhaps because my strength matched hers. She pressed her body against me as if trying to push me through the floor. When I braced myself, getting ready to heave her off me, her hand clutched my genitals. My body jerked in agony.
She twisted my sexual softness and the pain drove me berserk! I thrashed around like a madman, making spastic position changes. Using all my strength, I beat at her arms until she released me.
When she started rising up from the floor I hit the side of her head with a roundhouse blow that knocked her down. I rose and put my foot on the door cell. The door opened. As I limped into the corridor, she said, "It's all right, Vargan. You know this isn't the first time that you've beaten me."
I didn’t like what she was implying, it felt wrong somehow. I had no memory of ever seeing her before, much less hitting her. I didn’t bother to reply, because I was afraid I’d get caught up in her endless game of recriminations. I wasn’t sure what kind of person I was before my memory fled, but I was almost certain that I wasn’t anyone who beat women for pleasure or out of malice. I certainly hoped not….
The door closing behind me cut off her words. I straightened my tunic, ran my hand over my hair, while trying to calm the shakiness I felt after our violent, disturbing encounter. I was not quite composed when Hushel's door opened. Errox stepped out and looked toward the elevator where he had left me. When he turned and saw me in the corridor, he asked, "What are you doing down there?"
"Just pacing," I answered. I was surprised by how spontaneously the lie came out of my mouth, without a second thought. I didn't know whether or not I was Vargan, but Lyonella had said Vargan was an accomplished liar. As far as I knew it was the first lie I had ever told.
"Come in. Everything’s ready." I saw Errox was now wearing a green wristlock; it brought back the image of Errox severing the wrist of the dead woman in the Rainbow Room. I shook my head to clear out the disturbing image and followed Errox into Hushel's quarters.
Errox introduced me to the wristlock smitty by saying, "Hushel, this is Rathe, the nu-blanc I told you about."
I wondered if Hushel would recognize me as Vargan. Lyonella knew him and he might have known me. From what Lyonella had said, I had surmised that wristlock smitty was an illegal pursuit. If so, Hushel was the kind of person Vargan would know.
Hushel, showing no sign of ever having seen me before, pointed to a chair and said, "Sit."
I wondered if he recognized me and was keeping quiet for reasons of his own, or because he didn't care who I was. I sat down in the chair, which had an unusual device built into the right arm. It was comprised of a strong metal frame around a short, hollow cylinder that ran along a track.
Hushel locked my right arm in the frame at the bend of my elbow. He attached fittings from five thick wires that ran through the cylinder to the ends of my fingers. Using a complex spreading tool, he carefully fitted a gray wristlock on the cylinder, treating the wristlock as if it were fragile.
I suspected that this was the gray wristlock that Errox had worn. Hushel touched a control on the frame and my fingers were pulled straight by the wires. He sprinkled a warm liquid over my hand that first tingled and then created numbness. He bound my numb hand and my wrist with a strip of silvery material. He pressed a lever on the frame and my hand was compressed to a degree I would have thought impossible.
When he turned a dial, the cylinder moved to cover my fingers and then my hand. For a moment it felt as if my hand was being crushed, then a sudden snap and the wristlock popped onto my wrist. Hushel disconnected me from the machine. I looked at the opaque grayness of the wristlock. I touched its smooth surface. I pulled at it and it stretched without appearing thinner.
"Don’t do that!" Hushel shouted. "They only expand so far. If you pull it too hard, it'll blow your wrist off."
I gazed down at my wristlock. Had I been freer without it? I really had no way of knowing. With or without a wristlock, I was still more dependent on Errox than I wanted to be.
Hushel said, "Once the numbness wears off, your hand will be sore for several cycles. Don't see a medic about it. A medic would only notify the VIS. And, whatever you do, don't try to take it off yourself. There's an explosive charge in wristlocks that will shred your body into chunks the size of food cubes."
I stared down at my new wristlock with a newfound sense of fear and respect.
FIVE
After getting my wristlock I followed Errox out of the building. He said, "I’ll take you to another urbode where you'll be able to stay. Don't tell anyone there or anywhere else that you were a blanc or how you got your wristlock."
I tried to make a map in my head of the slideway route we took but the many turns and reverses of direction made remembering difficult.
We arrived at a gray urbode no different from the rest, as far as I could discern. Errox led me inside and introduced me to Mirall, the pink-faced, blond-haired gray in charge of my new residence. He was slightly shorter than me and heavier. He seemed eager to please Errox and was friendly toward me. After Errox left, Mirall introduced me to some other resident grays. After glancing at my new wristlock, they seemed to accept me as one of their own. If they knew I'd been a blanc, they didn't care or mention it. Small talk and jarva juice seemed to be their major interests.
In my
new dwell, I tried to rest and ignore the pain in my right hand. My thoughts turned to my missing memories, and then to Lyonella. The encounter with her made me wonder for the first time if I wanted to regain my memory. Was I Vargan, the shady, shadowy character whom Lyonella blamed for all her difficulties, or was this a case of mistaken identity? Could I merely be a stranger that she had coerced into her disjointed, troubled life?
I had mixed emotions about seeing Lyonella again. Even if I wanted to see her, I wouldn’t know how to find her abode without assistance. I knew that I didn't want to ask Errox for help because I didn't want him to know I'd met her. I distrusted Errox. If he decided that he wanted her white wristlock, he wouldn’t hesitate to harm Lyonella to obtain it—of that I was certain. Therefore, I must have known others like him in the past with his ruthless disregard for other people. If I had been like that myself, I didn’t want to be that way any longer.
Regardless of whether or not I may have hurt Lyonella in the past, I didn't want to cause her any trouble now or in the future.
During the next two days I learned what I could about finding my way around. I was living in an urbode identical to the other ninety-nine urbodes that were in a large square bounded by slideways. On the other side of the slideways were other urbode complexes which from a distance appeared to be identical to the ones in this compound. From all viewpoints around the urbode, there appeared to be endless rows of urbodes as far as the eye could see. Wherever I was, I was just one unidentified mite among a teaming mass of humanity.
All the urbodes in the complex faced in the same direction, each with slidestrips heading toward a slideway that ran from left to right. From what I could find out, the grays in this complex found their way from one urbode to another by using a mental map. The first row of urbodes that faced the slidestrip was called front row one; the last row was called front row ten. The first line of urbodes on the left was called left line one; the last line, on the far right, was called left line ten. I lived in an urbode mentally identified as front row six/left line four.
With this map in my head I could find my way to any of the hundred urbodes in the square and get back again. I was pleased to have mastered even this small bit of orientation even though I had no one to visit in any of the other urbodes in the complex.
I was sitting alone, thinking about Lyonella and the possible implications of what she had said to me when Mirall interrupted my musing by saying, "Rathe, you have a visitor."
I knew it wasn’t Errox because Mirall would have said his name. Could it be Lyonella? I felt both lust and apprehension about the possibility. I looked up as Mirall ushered Kahalyton into the room and left. I rose to greet him.
Kahalyton smiled and clasped both my hands in his. We exchanged nods and sat down. "You're a hard man to find, Rathe. I had to get some help to learn your whereabouts."
"Didn’t Errox tell you where I am?"
"That one! We do not talk. I'm sure he would be displeased to find me here. Someday when I've drunk my fill of jarva, I will tell you all about him."
I didn’t want to wait. I was desperate to know more about Errox, but not badly enough to risk driving my visitor away. After two days among Mirall's gray shadows, I craved significant conversation and stimulating companionship
"Why did you move?" Kahalyton asked.
"I felt uncomfortable at Ural's."
He nodded sagely. "Running into Ural's personality is like falling face down on a slidestrip. I can’t see why Errox finds her attractive, but I’m certain they deserve each other."
I nodded in agreement.
"How are you getting along here, Rathe?"
"Better. At least I can come and go on my own," I said, proudly holding up my right arm to show my wristlock.
He started in surprise. "How did you come by that Rathe?"
"Errox arranged it."
Kahalyton grabbed my hand roughly and examined my wristlock. He made several clicking noises and said, "It doesn't look like a forgery. The VIS would put you through a cell-strip if they found a fake on you. Now I think I know why Errox was in the Rainbow Room, am I right?"
I shrugged my shoulders in feigned ignorance. Errox had told me not to tell anybody that I'd been a blanc or how I'd gotten a wristlock. Kahalyton already knew that I'd been a blanc and that Errox had brought me to Ural's. Maybe I'd already said too much, but Kahalyton was the only person who’d shown any interest in me, other than Lyonella. Still, I had only a limited amount of trust in Kahalyton.
"Errox told me not to tell anyone about the wristlock."
"For your sake, I hope this isn't one of his multiple-player scams."
"Multiple-player scam? What's that?"
"Sometimes two or more colors band together to help each other play the Game. If they are high hues, they sometimes get away with it—for a while."
The more I learned about this world,I found myself in, the less I cared for it.
"Why are the abodes so crowded?" I asked. "There are more grays here than at Ural's. Mirall has seventeen people here and a three-shift schedule for the sleep rooms."
"Ural has powerful associates. Most of the gray abodes are overcrowded. When I first slid down the color scale, a dwell like this would have housed six and been considered crowded if a seventh moved in. Things have changed rapidly. When I was a white just hitting my stride in the rainbow run, I talked to an elderly white who told me that only three or four grays shared a dwell when she had emerged from the House of Rebirth."
"Do all colors share dwells?"
"Almost all of the shades share dwells—the grays, beiges, blues, browns, purples, and greens—but the highest hues have private dwells." Kahalyton's eyes took on a distant look. His face was slack as if he were lost in memories of a distant time.
"Are all the dwells like this one?"
"Yes, except for the residences of the rainbows. During transit the rest of us have to move from one urbode to another and into a different dwell. Even the high hues move, but they don't have to share. The VIS and other white wristlock wearers, who all live in white urbodes, can return to their private dwells in the same urbode if they choose to do so. Shades like Ural and Mirall, who get enough jarva to bribe the best spotters, take possession of a new dwell as soon as the urbode is cleaned and opened. Then offer shelter to friends or foils who won't complain when the householder cuts their gruel."
"So that’s what Ural is after. I've heard transit mentioned before. What is it?"
"Transit is the time of change when all colors except rainbows have to leave their old urbodes and find new dwells in different urbodes. Just as three shifts make a cycle, thirty cycles make a transit. On the first day of the new transit, all urbodes—except those that are limited to whites and rainbows and have a separate cleaning schedule—open their doors and stay open until the occupants leave. Even if they want to stay, they’re forced to leave because everything in the urbode ceases to function. If any continue to stay the VIS arrests them. When the urbode is empty, the doors close for automatic cleaning and maintenance. The doors open after that and new occupants come in. The doors won't open to previous residents."
"How do people stay in touch with their friends?"
"The permanent grays use spotters and runners to keep track of new available locations and old associates. Those who stray too far from their compound during transit may or may not ever encounter anyone they knew before. Some grays use transit as a way of starting fresh, running or moving away from the old life. Most find that the newness gets old after fifty or sixty transits—especially for those who don't play the Game."
"Are there many urbodes where different colors live together?" I asked, thinking of Lyonella with her white wristlock.
"In a gray urbode only grays can key into the individual dwell identification system. A higher color can enter the urbode but can't get into any of the dwells without assistance. Not that many want to. The exceptions are rainbow and white wristlock wearers; rainbows have universal access and
whites have limited access. But there is very little mixing. Dedicated Game players don't have the time."
"What does a white wristlock signify?"
"White is the service color, worn by medics, clergy, helpers, and listeners. If the wristlock has black stars on the white band, the wearer is a member of VIS. Anyone can apply for a white wristlock after reaching the fifteenth level of the Game; some use a period of service as a timeout from the pressures of the Game. Service people are free to live in the lower thirty levels of any urbode; those who choose to live in urbodes that house only whites and rainbows have the privilege of continuing to stay in the same dwell at transit time."
Making certain that I wasn't being overheard, I asked, "What will I do at transit time?"
"Rathe, I'm a member of the Counter Colors, a political group working for the abolition of wristlocks, transit time and the VIS. You can join the movement and come with us."
I shook my head. "I appreciate your offer, but I'm too new to this world to commit myself to a political viewpoint and a system I know nothing about. I need more information and more experience to understand the situation."
"You've already got enough experience to know the system has serious flaws and stinks of corruption. The Counter Color movement needs you. Unlike the majority, you are open-minded, perceptive, alert and not addicted to the Game."
"But where would I go and what would I do?"
"Believe me; we have a place for you. We are better organized than anyone suspects. Remember, I found you; didn't I? For now, we want our enemies to underestimate us, but we have our own spotters, runners, busters, and other skilled people."