Gray Matters (15 page)

“Don’t look so sad,” Vera scolds, massaging his chest with slender fingers.

“Am I being sad?”

“Such a long unhappy face.”

“I don’t feel sad. Perplexed maybe.”

“Is it because of me that you’re glum?”

“Sometimes even pleasant memories are painful.”

“Then it’s time for more pleasure.” Vera siphons his nipple into the rolled tip of her tongue.

Quarrels regards the sleek child squirming in his arms. It seems impossible that so innocent a sylph initiates attitudes and techniques unfamiliar even to the mature Vera of his motel memories. Back in those Smilin’ Jack days, Quarrels favored the double-entendres of his profession and made frequent conversational allusion to “joy-sticks,” “cockpits,” and “bailing out.” This flight-deck humor was consistent with his reputation as an ace of the boudoir, but it served to cover up sexual adventuring as conventional as the manual of arms. For all his many conquests, Captain Quarrels has never encountered anyone to equal the teenage doxy who nibbles at his fingertips and blows saliva bubbles into his ear. Not even the CO’s nymphomaniacal wife at Pensacola had been so inexhaustably acrobatic. None of the Saigon prostitutes were capable of such calculated innovation as Vera’s trick of inserting a knotted silk scarf into his rectum (first lubricating the way with her ingenious tongue) and reaching behind as she rides him like a piston-powered jockey to remove it, one knot at a time, at the onset of his climax.

Vera’s hands are busy, exploring thighs and stomach. She tends his flaccid cock as devotedly as a battlefield nurse caring for a fallen trooper. She cleans it with little catlicks, blowing gently where the skin is chafed. Quarrels marvels at the girl’s magic. She is breathing life back into his loins. Incredibly, he wants her yet another time. He arches his back to receive the knotted scarf and the dream ends with the shrill complaint of his electric wrist alarm.

AudCom HQ signals when the weekly surveillance file is available and Auditor Y41-AK9 disconnects a lecture by Sri Aurobindo, regretfully turning his attention from the compassionate words of a great teacher to the vagabond behavior of his ego-ridden runaway subject. This river voyage is becoming as tedious for the Auditor as it is for Itubi.

In the white water there was hope for a capsized canoe and subsequent remote control capture via Sentinel. (The machine’s instructions would call it a rescue operation.) But the last two files show the river widening into an even mud-colored avenue, deep and fast-moving, a kilometer across to the opposing banks. The dugout sweeps along with only the random possibility of underwater snags.

This week’s file begins: a high-altitude view of the delta, a broad alluvial fan spreading into the gulf, latticed by irregular channels and interconnecting creeks. The Sentinel holds, unseen, more than a myriameter above the curving coastline. A cut to a three-masted sailing ship over on its beam ends at low tide. Itubi and the Nord mingle with the crew gathered on the mud flat. A stranger paddles off in their canoe. Soon, he is lost among the bayous.

Y41-AK9 pays little attention to Itubi. His subject has signed up for a sea voyage. Nothing can prevent the tide from rising. Just as the file will end. Soon. Much too soon. For Y41-AK9 is entranced with the image of the master mariner, the first Amphíbios he has seen outside the Depository. The sun gleams on the smooth silver-blue skin and for a moment when he lifts his gaze, the Auditor can look into his multicolored eyes and watch the rings of red, green, and black change and shift as the translucent inner lids slide into place.

Through the silken folds of the tent Vera watches her lover as he walks toward the beach. His buttocks are lean and small, tense muscles shift under the pale flesh with every step. Vera likes the way he moves.

He crosses the beach, hands on his hips, walking to the water’s edge where the sand is wet and hard. He never waves or turns his head. Vera watches, careful not to blink, once it starts. First, there is a hint of color, a nacreous shimmer vibrating along his arms and back. For an instant, an iridescent chrysalis surrounds his body. The light intensifies. A quick flash and Phil Quarrels is gone, leaving a green blur hovering in Vera’s retina, an optical ghost bisected by the line where the sea meets the sky.

She smiles, stretching her feet into the soft sand under the rug. She is pleased with herself. This time there was no pleading with Quarrels to stay. There wasn’t the embarrassment of clinging to his legs. She knows she will see him again. When the wrist alarm sounded, she rolled easily from his arms and said, “Too bad you have to go. It spoils my surprise.”

“What surprise?”

“Oh, I wanted to show you the diary I kept while Skeets was here. We would have a good laugh together.”

Itubi skulks among the hawsers coiled in the bow. Not even the other Tropique crew members take his side in disputes with the vessel’s master. They grovel and toady like a pack of pasty Nords, speaking in whispers, never raising their heads from work to join in songs or joke, not a word of protest while that damn
tadpole
struts in his gossamer robes and looks on when there’s a yard to be hauled or a sail reefed. Master mariner be damned, he was nothing but a fisheyed tadpole to Itubi, a pompous cold-blooded tad.

Obu is glad the ship is not bound for Africa. Think of months on the open sea, ruled by that reptilian, and for what? He has no desire to see mangoes thrive where once mighty Lagos towered. What value is the Benin heritage in a world without art? Southern Hemisphere One doesn’t sound like home. Where he goes is not important. Any place will be a beginning. The options are endless for the reborn.

Skiri told of islands lying ahead, a new landfall every few days. It’s a fine thing for the Navigator to meander about the ocean on his Quest. His is an easy birth. Life on deck is not so sweet. Another week at most is Skin’s guess, before the green mountains rise out of the sea. A few more days of drudgery. Itubi plans a campaign of Nordic piety: attentive to his duties, tolerant of the master, indistinguishable from the other toadies. No one will suspect his intentions until he is over the side and away.

Becalmed. A fierce sun rages above the slackened sails. The decks are spread with brightly woven carpets; hammocks hang between the shrouds; a drum-taut tarpaulin rigged to an idle spar shadows the six crew members. Itubi carves a bit of hardwood salvaged from the northern forest. The keen cutting blade is Gregor’s gift. One of the Nords studies a painted scroll; the other strums a drone harp. Skiri works with his charts spread out on the patterned rug. Beside him, a Tropique hums the holy
AUM.

The master mariner stands at the rail, his cobweb gown spilling like smoke from his shoulders. Spider silk provides the finest test for a weaver’s fingers. It is the only fabric an Amphíbios can wear. Even the loose-fitting cotton tunic favored by Tropiques and Nords alike in hot weather will foul in the gill vents. Beneath the surface, there is no need for the constricting garments which shield his sensitive skin from the sun.

A form appears in the opalescent water. And another. Two bottle-nosed dolphins rise toward the hull and veer away, a single fluke slicing into the air. For a brief moment of recognition, the master mariner looks into a squinting eye. A cluster of froth marks their swift turn.

The master mariner loosens a clasp and his ephemeral garment slips to his feet. He climbs to the taffrail, the clefts of his gill intake showing under his arm as he reaches for the ratlines. His dive cuts the water with a soundless splash. A trail of bubbles marks his descent as he voids the terminal air in his lungs. Rising from the depths, he hears the silver oscillation of the dolphin’s song.

Y41-AK9 ends an audit session with these words of advice for a lower-level subject:

You must relax. Without withdrawal from tension there can be no concentration. Tomorrow, during the meditation exercise, tune your mind to the alpha-wave broadcast; hear the sacred AUM, the shining sun of suns, Just as you have shed your physical body, be aware of the subtle nature of your astral body. Remember the nineteen elements which compose it: ten organs of action and knowledge, the five vital airs, plus the four mental principles, mind, intellect, subconscious, and ego. These all are shed at the moment of Liberation; the Great At-Oneness.

Find the Divine Power within you. Activate this manifestation of the universe; it is Serpent Power. Let the power uncoil, moving upward toward the seat of the thousand-petaled lotus in the brain. This is the union with pure consciousness.

End transmission.

AUM
.

“Why go back?”

“The more serious question,” Quarrels says, his eyes fixed on the sunset, “is why do I want to stay?”

“It’s a good thing you’re so sexy, you certainly win no points for flattery.”

“Stop playing games, Vera. I’m not talking about passion, or that fascinating diary which keeps you so busy between my visits. I do like your pout, but that’s not what’s bringing me back. Each time I set the controls for a longer stay.”

“Fuck the controls. This is as good as life has been in a long time and you know it. Admit it. Even for a fancy Level II Auditor, or whatever the hell you are, this is the best you can remember.”

“How did you know I was from Level II?”

“Because you sound like a young abbé who once gave me music lessons, full of zeal and chastity. Quite good-looking, too. When were you cerebrectomized?”

“August 19, 1972.” An easy date for Quarrels to invent. His thirty-second birthday, the day he stepped from the LMV to the surface of the moon.

“Seventy-two. That
was
early. You must have really been some kind of nut.”

“No, it …” Quarrels gropes for another lie, “it was in Southeast Asia. I caught some junk on a strike. The navy picked up the pieces.”

“Then you don’t remember the pollution or the war? How life used to be, the air-conditioning and the gas masks? Oh, I had a charming mask from Gucci, all in python with a lot of style, but most people looked like insects on the street. The radiation suits were worse! Much too bulky to have any chic.”

“I was spared that, thank God.” This is true. From the orbiting space platform, the earth was a shining blue disk, only slightly smudged around the continents; and when the Thirty-minute War consumed half the globe,
Endurance II
was out beyond Pluto, seventy years deep into space.

“Well, my sheltered innocent, the world wasn’t the pretty place you remember from before the middle war. By the time I went into the box, there were quite a few changes. Nothing as nice as this was left. You ought to stick around; there isn’t a file in the Depository that can compare with life here. Who knows, if you stay you might find another airplane hiding someplace.”

The Sentinel stands in a clearing shaded by mango trees circled by a dozen seated members of the only tribe on Antilles Nine, the Qaf. Because the tribe is symbiotic—Tropiques on the island and Amphíbios in the coral reef surrounding it—there are two Law Speakers. They stand on either side of the tall tripodal cylinder, listening with folded arms to the communicator voice of Y41-AK9:

You must understand that Level I is a refuse heap. No resident of Level I has ever been Elevated, nor is there a likely candidate among their numbers. They are thousands of years from even the beginnings of spiritual awakening. This runaway must be returned to the Depository. He has not earned the right to live among you.

“It is in his karma to be with us,” the Amphíbios Law Speaker says.

True, Enlightened One, but his presence is a danger to your society. His unstable behavior makes harmonious life impossible. I am more convinced of this than ever after he
d
eserted his shipmates and managed to elude observation for such a long time. Remember the destruction he caused in the Surface Installation.

“Only machines were destroyed,” says the Tropique.

And the brain of a Level I resident.

“A brain is an organic machine, as replaceable as any other. Are the resident’s files intact?”

To my knowledge, they are.

“Then, don’t worry about the hardware. Develop some priorities.”

“Perhaps,” the Amphíbios says, covering his gleaming skull-bald head with a fold of his gown, “our worthy Auditor should not trouble himself with such refuse. Perhaps such matters do not concern his exalted attentions.”

My words were ill chosen, Seer of Truth. Devotion to my subjects on Level I is my sacred duty.

“Just so.”

Exactly why I must plead for the return of Obu Itubi.

The Tropique shakes his head. “It would be better if you examined your own motives. You might find your eagerness is caused by the demands of Ego. Obu is content here. Give him time to sort out his thoughts. He lives alone in a simple shelter built with his own hands. He’s planted a garden. Such is the foundation of a full life.”

A foundation built upon the sand will topple. I have had Itubi under continual surveillance since yesterday morning. Are the Law Speakers aware that it’s not a garden he tends, but a crock of fermenting guavas! Does the brewing of intoxicants yield a full life?

“A man’s life is his own if he causes no harm to others.”

With the Speaker’s permission, I have preserved his words on memo file. There may be a time when he will want to hear them once again. Until then, I maintain Sentinel surveillance as authorized by Center Control.

“Peace be unto you and all living creatures.”

Oona the Weaver wanders far into the backcountry each afternoon, hunting insects, plants, and other dye-stuffs under the arching canopy of trees. She carries a fiber basket for her cuttings and a pair of drawstring pouches to hold her more elusive discoveries. A dry streambed provides an easy pathway through the liana vines.

It is a warm flower-scented afternoon; slanting shafts of sunlight pierce the leaves and branches overhead; the only sound is a murmuring call of doves. Oona moves silently over the water-smooth stones. She feels the life energies of other creatures around her in the dense forest: young deer in velvet, sly mongooses on the prowl, lizards with their throbbing orange throats. She is aware, too, of another presence, vaguely dangerous like a sleeping snake. But, unlike the serpent’s lethal torpor, the vibrations she senses from the hermit hidden in the underbrush are alive and desperate.