Gray Matters (11 page)

Across the hall in an empty bedroom are several old steamer trunks, brass-bound and beautified with collages of faded travel stickers. The trunks are packed with Vera’s clothes, fashions four hundred years old, yet every dress and gown seems fresh from the showroom. Vera often spends the day here, changing in front of a full-length mirror. She flings what she’s worn on the floor like a spoiled child; but when she returns, everything is neatly folded and hung in its place. And every night she climbs the stairs to find her bed freshly made, the sheets clean and smelling of sunlight, the pillows fluffed, a slender candle flickering in a silver wall sconce.

There are no clocks in the house. Vera rises when it pleases her. A dish of sliced mangoes or a tall goblet of orange juice is always on the bedside table. And when she grows hungry, she knows she will find an elegant breakfast waiting under the arbor in the garden. Luncheon and dinner are served inside. Fresh-cut hibiscus decorate the center of the heavy Florentine table. Vera neither prepares the food nor clears the dishes. She never learned to cook and, even as a child, there were always servants to do the chores. The mysterious appearance of her meals and the magical way the house keeps clean and tidy are taken for granted by Vera. She expects her help to be unobtrusive.

Life is perfect in the house. Each day provides the joy of discovering another forgotten treasure: some bauble belonging to her mother or a bundle of perfumed letters from an old admirer. Every meal is a masterpiece, the work of a cordon bleu chef. A trained sommelier presides unseen in the wine cellar, sending up bottles of exquisite vintage. Even the garden, tropical and efflorescent, is trimmed and tended by a skilled hand. Yet sometimes at night Vera is lonely and wishes her grandmother’s bed wasn’t so large and empty. Her sleep is dreamless. In the mornings, she wakes fulfilled and happy. Stretching out her hand, she finds the other side of the bed always warm.

Swann moves along the top of the pyre, checking bodies as the men work with the vans, sorting arms, legs, and heads to match the dismembered trunks. The bodies are arranged according to ritual, facing the east, arms, when there are arms, folded across the chest, faces powdered a chalky white. Swann scatters sacred amulets and talismans among them: cowrie shells, iridescent feathers, fragments of beadwork. As a healer, it is Swann’s duty to perform the Rites for the Dead. Because these bodies have never held a spirit, she omits most of the ritual; there is no blowing of conch trumpets or chanting sacred mantras; neither does she paint mystic symbols on the closed eyelids or read the ancient texts to the deceased. Still, Swann anoints each body with fragrant oils and spices. Here and there among the logs, she conceals small caches of piney frankincense and handfuls of chemicals to make the fire burn a variety of colors. “Swann,” Skiri calls to her. “Here’s another.” Swann finishes above and climbs down the structured log wall of the pyre. Earlier, Skiri and Gregor found a body still breathing. It was a Nord female. Both legs were gone below the knee. Swann applies a lethal poultice. The toxins immediately penetrate the epidermis and respiration ceases within seconds.

These bodies are so close to perfection, almost human. It’s disturbing. Surgically, Swann can repair the damage, graft limbs back in place, staunch the hemorrhaging, even stimulate stilled hearts into pumping again. But it would only be a game, a sport without purpose. Let the hatcheries produce a new crop of zombies.

“Over here.” Skiri points to where Gregor kneels in the blood-clotted grass. “It was at the bottom of the pile.”

Swann approaches, observing the neatly gathered limbs, arms in one pile, hands and feet in another, legs stacked like cordwood. The men stand on either side, stripped to the waist, their bare arms and chests slick with blood and sweat. At their feet lies the intact body of a male Tropique, so drenched in blood its features are obscured. At a glance she can tell it is not alive; the position of the tongue suggests suffocation. No matter. She knows why the men called her down. Using a wet cloth, she cleans the blood from the Tropique’s face and body. Aside from a few superficial scratches, she can find no sign of injury. The blood belongs to others.

“A fortunate day,” she says as Skiri and Gregor pick the body up and carry it across to where their packs are piled, the cranial container of Obu Itubi perched on top, its polished surface effulgent with mirrored sunlight.

Obu Itubi’s Auditor is too angry to watch the scanning of the operation with any care. His anger is the result of pride, perhaps why Y41-AK9 is one of the very few members of his class on file on Level II. Most of the other Amphíbios were already at 180 degrees of Understanding, or higher, when incorporated into the System. To their honor, it was the Amphíbios delegation that proposed universal cerebrectomy, the Day of Awakening, at the World Council.

Obu Itubi’s Auditor prefers his number to his name. Ku-ni-qu-ri-ri-ki is a dolphin name (all Amphíbios have dolphin names). What good is a name in a language without nouns? He is more comfortable with his number; at least he really is Y41-AK9 (397-00-55). Transmit that number on the communicator and only his deposit drawer will respond. The concept of a name as a specific identity is meaningless to a dolphin.

Not that Y41-AK9 has anything against the Cetacea; a dolphin was his first teacher. He has great respect for these enlightened mammals: more intelligent than man, free from the demands of gravity, innocent of fear, singing a language capable only of expressing action, totally blissful creatures. He venerates them as the Chosen of God.

Y41-AK9 contemplates the scanner image of the Tropique. The Nord healer has the body breathing again and it lies facing up into the lens on a down-filled sleeping robe. Like Obu Itubi, there are other Tropiques, and Nords as well, on file in Level I—and not just from the first hatchery generation. Itubi’s fetus came out of the tanks in 2156, only thirty-odd years before the Awakening. There are no Amphíbios on Level I; Y41-AK9 is proud of that fact. And the Amphíbios population below Level V is the smallest of the three humanoid classes; only members of the first two unfortunate generations are on file below the median.

Y41-AK9 has always thought of his generation as unfortunate. It wasn’t like being a Nord or a Tropique; the first Amphíbios were a new species of humanoid. The difference was more than physical. What good were terrestrial traditions and history in a hostile undersea environment? The first Amphíbios were aliens by birthright. Even their humanoid bodies were a liability in the ocean. Many of the aquatic pioneers demanded that the hatcheries develop a more adaptable Amphíbios body. There was no genetic reason why they shouldn’t have fins and flukes and a stronger backbone. But the World Council disagreed. The Amphíbios class had lungs as well as gills; they were
Homo sapiens,
members of the family of Man. The Reproduction Centers were not concerned with creating new life-forms; their task was to perfect the human race.

Yes, the future generations were the fortunate ones. They didn’t have to fight for survival in the earth’s final frontier. It was quite tame beneath the surface when they arrived. Sharks were no longer a menace; the coral reef colonies were established; plankton and algae farms were prospering; all of the various Cetacean dialects had been translated. A newcomer could spend his time listening to the glorious oral epics of the sulphur-bottom whale. Many were adopted into pods. The wisdom of the great whales became their inheritance. It was no surprise to Y41-AK9 when the initial audit after the Awakening showed these amiable philosophers to be farther along the Path to Understanding. He was just an old shark fighter who knew how to survive.

The Sentinel has the Tropique’s head in close-up focus during the critical phase of the operation. Y41-AK9 is not interested in the techniques of chemical surgery, but he pays close attention as the healer applies a cellular solvent to the exterior cranial surface. The liquid solvent is traced on human tissue with a needlepoint stylus. Against the bone white of the cranium, the fine blue line looks as innocuous as ink, yet the solvent takes effect in less than a minute. The healer gives a slight pull and the skull comes apart exactly along the line. Almost a pint of liquid drains out onto the ground.

The moment is come. The cranial container is opened and the healer reaches in with her hands (with her
hands!)
and withdraws the brain of Obu Itubi. Y41-AK9 is spellbound. It seems so simple. The brain is rinsed of electrolyte solution and held in place as the healer meticulously reconnects severed nerves, arteries, and veins with organic adhesive. Y41-AK9 feels the beginnings of an old regret. Obu Itubi is free! Free to walk the earth again, to be among men. And all because of luck, simple haphazard luck. The same damned luck that doomed him to a career of combat with hammerheads and makos while others were born to have a whale for a guru. But this time it is different. Itubi will not get away. Even if it takes a hundred years, the Auditor will triumph. This time the luck will be his.

Unlike Y41-AK9, Auditor Quarrels is not a mystic by nature. As a young man he was a hedonist, a playboy jet pilot tending a napalm rose garden. Sex and speed were his obsessions. A war in Southeast Asia provided ample amounts of both. The war happened to Quarrels at Mach II it was totally silent and calm. Night raids were the most beautiful. Only once was it real: a SAM missile hurtling up at the speed of sound out of the green-and-brown abstraction below. His elaborate evasion tactics, a grim, desperate ballet, first taught him that you become a mystic when it isn’t fun anymore.

The lure of glamour, movie-star girlfriends and the fastest playthings on earth attracted Quarrels to the space program. He got it all as an astronaut, along with space in the bargain. Quarrels never wanted to come back down. And so he volunteered for the Aldebaran Expedition.

The three-hundred-and-twenty-year voyage of
Endurance II
proved the spacecraft worthy of her name. For Quarrels it was a rite of passage, an initiation earning him a residency on Level II of the Depository. Quarrels is content being a cerebromorph. His body was old, worn-out. He left it gladly and didn’t mourn when it burned along with the rest of North America in the Thirty-minute War.

Hardship and disappointment seemed meaningless when confronted by the vast eternal tranquility of the cosmos. Suffering, regret, anguish, envy—all of the old woeful earth-bound pains were purged by the awesome grandeur of space. Since his return from the Aldebaran system nothing has disturbed the serenity of the only Level II resident not born in a hatchery. The destruction of Skeets Kalbfleischer’s brain is a setback for Auditor Quarrels, but the Commission notes that he takes the news calmly and without emotion. Truly remarkable for a native of the most neurotic century the world has ever known.

And later, when the report comes from the Medical Authority, Quarrels loses none of his calm self-possession. There are no facilities available for the production of cerebral tissue; the hatcheries are not equipped to manufacture brains; the perfection of the modified (brainless) humanoid is the result of years of genetic research. Moreover, Center Control regulations forbid any departure from established procedure. Requisition denied.

Vera wakes with her head throbbing. She shuts her eyes to the brightness of the open window and drops back into a canyon of eiderdown pillows. Her pulse thunders between her temples like the muffled kettledrums of a funeral cortege. The headache sends tendrils of pain downward through her body. Her limbs are heavy and sore, her breasts swollen, eyelids puffed and tender. She hurts all over. Vera wishes the funeral were her own: the padded satin of the coffin, the numb nothingness of death, a tomb’s cool enclosing silence.

On other mornings, Vera found her slender adolescent body marked by love bites and scratches. Often she identified the lover by his imprint on her flesh: the itching thorn scratches on her nipples, the delicate canine punctures of blue-ribboned Hugo. Vera learned about hickies in Hollywood, but the ripe raspberry memories of passionate kisses could have come from any of a hundred casual pickups among the film colony. How amusing to discover the traces of a middle-aged passion blemishing her flawless schoolgirl’s complexion.

Today she is not amused. The pain is too great for any pleasure, the pulsing headache an agony she has long forgotten. Two teeth are loose and her jaws open only with difficulty. She recognizes the author of these discomforts. Her first husband was fond of beating up people. He would provoke arguments in restaurants just for the chance to use his fists. A brutal man. Vera had been first attracted as much by his savagery as by his hard athletic body. He was a hunter, the son of a French industrialist. He took Vera on expeditions to India and Africa and introduced her to the catharsis of the clean kill. (The tigerskin on the floor was a souvenir of a trip made with Raoul.) At night he would come for her with a riding crop, although she feared his heavy gold-ringed hands much more. He beat her until she couldn’t stand, seeking submission, not pleasure, and when she was on her knees he took her from the rear like an animal.

She tried to hide from him, sleeping on couches and under the billiard table in the library, as he stalked through the dark château. One night he cornered her in the trophy room and she seized a shotgun from the wall rack and added another corpse to the collection. The mounted shadows of oryx, kudu, Grant’s gazelle, and the world’s record rhinoceros were the only witnesses. The police reluctantly accepted her sobbing story of burglars and mistaken identity. The publicity was a great boost for her career.

But this was centuries ago, at Montigny-sur-Ourcq with its medieval keep and crenellated battlements crouching under a sullen sky. Vera sits up with a groan and confronts the summer luminance of a Caribbean morning. She hasn’t thought of Raoul since that night she pulled the trigger. All memory of her husband’s cruelty was cleanly erased by a magnum goose load of number four shot. Why then should he haunt her on her secret island?