Gray Matters (7 page)

Getting her aboard is a problem. Somehow Skeets makes her fast to the rudder until he gains his footing on the deck and hauls her roughly over the gunwale like a gaffed tuna. On her back, lax and unmoving, the wanton spread of her legs sends Skeets into open-mouthed panic. He stumbles forward after his sweatshirt but is dismayed to find the garment insufficient for the task. If he covers her loins, the breasts remain exposed; laid across her chest, the shirt reaches just below her navel and Skeets is confronted by that other item, pink and succulent as a razor-slit peach. His face burns so hotly he could be staring into the mouth of an open furnace.

But all modesty vanishes at the sight of her bluish lips and pallid cheeks. The girl isn’t breathing! Skeets remembers the chapter on artificial respiration in the safety manual. Space is too cramped for the back-pressure-arm-lift technique and rolling her over a barrel is obviously impossible. So, after only a moment’s hesitation, he takes her cold face between his hands and very carefully starts to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Obu Itubi is on the move. The Amco-pak rumbles up the long silent aisle, past sullen power units and coteries of flashing communicators. Ahead, banks of deposit drawers stretch into the distance like an endless blue canyon. His journey has begun, but Itubi is too occupied to savor his triumph. A thousand details need attention. Maps of the sub-district must be studied and course instructions issued to the auto-navigator; an inventory must be made of nonessential equipment (such as the Compacturon DT9) which might be jettisoned to conserve power; all critical systems require diagnosis for fatigue and potential parts failure. Any breakdown would be disastrous. But Itubi relishes the responsibility of command. After an inert century in the Depository, with the memory-file his only outlet for escape, every small task, each trivial detail, is a source of the most extreme pleasure. Itubi has been reborn. The Amco-pak’s throbbing power center provides a new heartbeat; structural steel tubing his muscles and bones; sleek pneumatic fingers await his discretion; the lucid unblinking scanner stares straight ahead into the unknown.

Many summers ago, in another lifetime, Vera Mitlovic had been thrown from her horse. The young stableboy who held her while she regained consciousness was as surprised by her passionate kisses as is Skeets when a living titillating tongue interrupts the serious business of resuscitation. The naked girl fastens to him like a lamprey, arms around his neck, lips eagerly nibbling his lifesaving mouth, the tips of her hard wet breasts performing open-heart surgery on his hairless chest. Unlike Skeets, the stableboy had not been without experience and he quickly took full advantage of Vera’s concussive eroticism. But the virgin Boy Scout, for whom even handholding is still a novelty, interprets the girl’s voracity as simple gratitude and attempts to disengage from her embrace as she pulls him down next to her in the cockpit.

“Hey, it’s okay, I mean, anybody would’ve done the same as me if—”

Vera stops his protest with her probing tongue. Her clever hands generate waves of goose flesh as she caresses his suntanned shoulders and back. Giddy with excitement, Skeets returns her kisses in gape-jawed approximation of a matinee idol’s wide-screen technique. The girl whimpers with pure animal pleasure. Skeets crosses his legs but Vera, never one for coyness, reaches into his trunks and declares her intentions without saying a word.

Maintenance and Repair wants a full report. Every year, for almost a century, Center Control has turned down requisitions to replace the outmoded Amco-pak series and this is the inevitable result, a runaway maintenance van. To make matters worse, a decanted resident is on board and an emergency-level power drain has been left unattended in Aisle B. The safety of the entire subdistrict is in jeopardy. Center Control will certainly hear about this.

Maintenance and Repair does what it can under the circumstances. Although it means calling in machines off regular assignments, three Amco-paks are immediately dispatched to deal with the trouble. A Mark X is sent to Aisle B and two Mark IXs at the outer edge of the subdistrict are ordered to intercept the runaway. The fugitive Amco-pak is under scanner surveillance, a computer plots its probable course, and the twin Mark IXs wait in ambush, instructed to proceed cautiously and not imperil the captive cerebromorph.

The folds of the mainsail enclose the lovers like a tent. Sunlight glows through the Dacron and, within the radiant cocoon, Skeets and Vera lie entwined like caterpillars, tasting each other’s breath. A stormy petrel perches on the port gunwale, intrigued by the mysterious rocking motion of the boat. All around, the sea is gently rolling, yet, every few minutes the frail sloop will lurch and pitch as if tossed by a violent gale.

Today Skeets has earned another merit badge, one not awarded by the Boy Scouts. The glazed look in Vera’s eyes is his citation, her sated moans his only testimonial. Nothing in the girl’s actual past can compare with the absolute bliss occasioned by this electronic dream. For in spite of his elaborate boasting afterward in the village tavern, the stableboy had been no better than a hit-and-run artist, parting Vera from her maidenhead with all the style and grace of a Cheyenne brave collecting a victim’s scalp.

Skeets receives the adulation due any successful athlete with typical modesty, stroking Vera’s damp clinging hair as she croons his praises in a throaty unfamiliar tongue. It is not surprising that the boy is exhausted; he responded to Vera’s unexpected passion with the same energetic enthusiasm he once lavished on woodcraft, sailboat navigation, and touch football. Skeets’ mom always complained that the boy just didn’t know when to quit. Never mind his health. If he enjoyed something, he’d keep at it till he dropped, a trait for which Vera will be eternally grateful.

“Wow,” Skeets says under his breath, “boy-oh-boy.” The girl’s head rests on his chest, her fingertips tracing tiny circles about his navel. He holds her with languid arms and thinks of tigers moving in the grass.

An Amco-pak Mark IX blocks the aisle ahead. Itubi slows his own van to half-speed, scanning to the rear for possible escape routes. Too late. Another Amco-pak rumbles out of a side aisle, cutting off any retreat. Itubi wheezes to a stop. Let the opposition make the first move.

The Mark IXs edge in gradually. Their instructions are to detain the runaway machine without endangering the resident on board. This much has been accomplished. Maintenance and Repair is notified; further directions are requested.

The multiple lenses of the scanner focus independently, like a chameleon’s eyes, and Itubi is able to look in opposite directions, keeping both Amco-paks under simultaneous observation. Using the code key within his own machine, Itubi selects the correct communicator channel and listens as Maintenance and Repair broadcasts new orders. The Mark IXs are to couple magnetically with the fugitive, disconnect the Compacturon DT9, and, after safely removing the resident, tow the captive to the central hangar for examination. A simple procedure. Itubi plans his defense accordingly, extending the Amco-pak’s telescoping arms as his enemies close in.

Itubi waits until the Mark IXs are only meters away, studying his magnetometer to gauge their force exactly. His van is immobilized, magnetically attracted from either side as if moored by invisible cables. The Amco-paks advance with confidence; in another moment coupling will be complete.

All at once Itubi reverses his own magnetic field. The Mark IXs are instantly repelled, lurching backward as several steel arms lash out at them like Shiva the Destroyer turned prizefighter. Pneumatic fists drive into delicate crystal scanner lenses, communicator domes are shattered, critically exposed wires yanked from their roots by the handful. Blinded, the Mark IXs reel about insanely, groping for the enemy with spastic determination. Itubi easily avoids their clutches. Power up to full, he glides in a smooth do-si-do around his grappling assailants, and as he rolls up the aisle, his scanner shows the two blind machines locked in a magnetic death grip. Deprived of communication, they hammer and smash at one another with their efficient multiple arms, each convinced he is destroying their common enemy.

The Auditor is eager for an immediate interview, but Skeets stalls Quarrels off, using a time-tested alibi: the desire for additional meditation time. Returning to the cranial container was like awakening from a beautiful dream only to confront the stone walls of a prison cell. And yet, it is the memory-merge that seems real and life in the Depository a hideous nightmare. He knows the astronaut will call his attention to the
koan
of the sleeper and the butterfly.

Skeets can do without this spiritual advice. At the moment he is not at all interested in the illusory nature of reality and seeks to avoid any metaphysical discussions. The time for such consultation will come soon enough, but first he has to think of an argument that will convince Captain Quarrels of the need for additional memory-merges. Anything at all to get back into that boat with Vera.

Poor Vera. When Center Control selected her for memory-merge, she assumed the authorities were forgiving all transgressions and would soon reconnect her memory-file hookup. But, after the sailboat and the balmy California morning dissolved in a vortex and she was back in her deposit drawer, nothing had changed. Vera still floats in solitary confinement. Even her communicator antenna has been disconnected.

This is the worst punishment. Before the merge she never used her communicator; she had nothing to say to any resident of the subdistrict. But now Vera longs to find the tousle-haired sailorboy who saved her from drowning. She remembers his tanned body and gentle voice. The time they spent together in the drifting sloop seems happier than any episode from her first girlhood. The boy was so tender and kind. His smile haunts her like distant music. For the first time in centuries, Vera Mitlovic is in love.

Obu Itubi navigates the Amco-pak beyond the outer limits of the subdistrict, down unknown corridors and labyrinthine passageways. Everywhere the burnished gun-metal walls glow with the luster of recent cleaning. The floors are immaculately waxed and polished. The scanner lens adjusts to triple power, but no trace of dust or grime is revealed. Itubi can find nothing, not a single crumb or cobweb strand to indicate even the transient presence of organic life.

After endless hours traveling through silence, the Amco-pak’s auditory system picks up a distant noise. Itubi follows this clue like an owl homing in on the faint rustling of a mouse. Any new development will be welcome, even combat with another maintenance van is preferable to treading eternally down deserted corridors. The sound grows louder, a smooth, machined humming. Turning a final corner, Itubi confronts the source: a spiral conveyor ramp in perpetual motion. It threads upward from some mysterious level deep beneath the polished floor and continues on through the luminous ceiling like the interior of a mechanized snail’s shell.

Itubi wastes no time maneuvering the Amco-pak aboard; his power supply is critical and any opportunity for conservation is welcome. With the stateliness of an ascending angel, he spirals up through the ceiling, triumph and hope resonant beneath the shining surface of his stainless steel armor.

Itubi remains on the ramp as it carries him past level after level. He sees nothing that would encourage him to get off. Each new plateau seems exactly like the subdistrict he left behind: the same shining floors and metallic walls, the identical egg-crate ceilings. He might as well be standing still.

Without warning Itubi is disgorged onto a rotating platform in the center of a vast dome-covered arena. As the Amco-pak turns slowly on the revolving disk, Itubi studies his new surroundings. The dome above is transparent and the astonished cerebromorph thrills to the nearly forgotten sight of clouds and sky. At measured intervals around the wall enclosing the arena, large open doorways stand waiting.

Itubi rumbles off the turntable, urging the Amco-pak across the arena at top speed. But before he can reach the nearest doorway, a warning buzzer sounds and a solid steel portcullis slides securely into place. All around the arena his scanner shows every doorway firmly sealed.

Itubi is undeterred. He pulls to a stop in front of the armored door and sets to work. The Amco-pak is a mobile workshop, equipped with diamond-tip drills, high-frequency sound torches, and an all-purpose laser. In minutes the maintenance van has burned an opening through solid steel.

Itubi works at this aperture, widening the gap until he carves a space broad enough to permit the passage of the Amco-pak. Beyond the steel door is a long low-ceilinged chamber and, once inside, Itubi makes an incredible discovery. Arranged along each wall stands a series of large transparent cylinders, all glowing with radiant artificial sunlight. Housed within each of these tubular caskets, as perfectly formed as Adam or Eve, is the naked body of an adult human.

T
HE NEWS TRAVELS FROM
deposit drawer to deposit drawer with electronic immediacy. Many residents of Aisle B have been scanning the emergency decantation and the gossip starts with the unexplained suddenness of the Amco-pak’s departure. Communication channels are jammed as word of the runaway spreads; descriptions of the battle between the maintenance vans from outer-edge residents only fan the flames of curiosity.

A new hero is born. The legend of escape begins to germinate. So many residents request Obu Itubi’s files that the memory-file librarian is forced to remove his file number from the Index. The African Renaissance, a school held in disrepute since the Awakening because of its overt fetishism, is once again of interest to the scholars. Even Itubi’s Auditor is working overtime, screening and rescreening his subject’s files in a search for the clue he knows he will eventually find, some undiscovered quirk or weakness which Center Control can use to bait its trap.

Skeets Kalbfleischer listens to the delicate ping-pong music of a million distant circuits opening and closing. The warning tone of a deHartzman Communicator caught him dreaming of Vera and he concentrates on the fragile electronic sound, the Pure White Light of spirituality being unavailable. All prurient thought must be eliminated, the mind left pure and clean in the advent of his Auditor. How to behave in the face of authority is the first lesson learned in the sixth grade.