Gray Matters (13 page)

“And you have a very rapid heartbeat,” she says, feeling his pulse rate with her fingertips. “I suggest a good night’s sleep.”

The cold Nord bitch! A corpse has more fire and passion than this frigid nursemaid. It is no wonder the other men ignore her. Itubi is disgusted. At the same time he feels a glow of pride for his own Class: a Tropiquewench would at least have slapped him. What an insipid lot these Northerners are.

Itubi’s question is spontaneous: “How did you know I was a Tropique?”

“You are what you are. What you were no longer matters.”

“But, how did you know? Why did you put me in a Tropique body?”

“I picked the first undamaged body that was available. It was just coincidence.”

“You mean, I could have become a Nord?”

“As a matter of fact, we considered the body of a Nord female, but she had no legs.”

“A Nord … female!”

“Would that have disturbed you so very much?”

Itubi is speechless. Swann places a hand on his forehead.

“You’re running a slight fever. I forgot you’re from the first level and probably still attached to your identity. I shouldn’t trouble you.”

“Doesn’t it matter to you who you are?”

Swann smiles. “Now, yes, of course, but I have been reborn. Whoever I was in the Depository is dead now. You’re alarmed because I might have been a man, or an Amphíbios, but such distinctions don’t exist on the upper levels; compared to Liberation, how important are those slight differences of sex or class? The Depository maintains a constant population in the world; when there’s a death, the vacancy is filled by a member of the corresponding class and sex. The first qualifying cerebromorph is chosen. A simple and efficient method. Life is what matters. I might just as easily have been given Gregor’s body, or Skiri’s. But I’m tiring you. This is your first day and you’re exhausted. You should sleep. I’ll prepare some medication for your fever.”

While Swann mixes her powders, the men return with armloads of dry wood and soon have a fire started. Itubi watches them silently prepare the evening meal and wonders to what sort of world he has returned.

Vera is not surprised to see the stranger in the orange suit trudging up the bone-white beach. The island is small and Chi-Chi’s tracks are easy to follow in the wind-smoothed sand. She gauged her distance carefully: far enough to express displeasure, but not too far to discourage an active search. As he approaches, she adjusts the hem of her skirt, exposing a few additional inches of sun-ripened thigh, and affects an air of indifference.

“Hello,” he calls. “I’m sorry if I upset you a while ago. I thought you’d be anxious for some news.”

Vera rises on her elbows to face him. “Please, no more about Skeets.” Noticing his eyes upon her legs, she arches a golden knee for emphasis. “It’s all in the past now.”

“I promise.” He kneels next to her in the sand and offers a hand of mature bananas. “I found them growing by the road. They’re very sweet.”

Vera takes a banana. “What about you?”

“Thanks, I’ve had plenty. They’re for you.”

Vera smiles, managing to seem at once ingenuous and seductive. She peels the banana with a knowing leer, removing the yellow skin strip by strip, like a courtesan exposing her lover’s white flesh. Slowly, she takes the curving shaft of the fruit into her mouth, slipping the whole length past her lips’ moist circumference and then withdrawing it by degrees, glistening with spittle, until only the tip remains between her teeth. Her eyes are languid and heavy lidded as she bites.

“Mmm, delicious,” she mumbles.

Quarrels clears his throat. He seems unable to watch her rhapsodic chewing. “What happened to your face?” he asks, staring straight out to sea. “You’ve got some nasty bruises.”

“I fell off my horse. Are you sure you don’t want a banana?”

“Positive.”

Vera studies the firm set of his jaw, the clean, angular profile. “I was hurt here too,” she says, opening her dress to show a discolored shoulder and skillfully offering a pink glimpse of budding breast in the same gesture. Quarrels glances away quickly, intent on the breaking waves, and says something about the dangers of bareback riding. Vera finds even his clenched teeth attractive. She remembers a Grand Prix driver who wore her scarf for luck at Monte Carlo and an Oberleutnant in the SS who seemed too handsome to be truly her enemy. There were other men with the same look, men accustomed to risk and daring, precise, military, and yet, at the same time, free and independent. Living in a world of actors who made a career of imitating such virtues, Vera always found the real thing irresistible and was bedded by a pantheon of test pilots, Olympic skiers, racing drivers, big-game hunters, mountaineers, and, once, an American astronaut. They were all one man to her: a swashbuckling dream prince who courted women and danger with the same devil-may-care nonchalance.

A high-frequency electronic humming brings Vera out of her reverie. “What’s that?” she demands.

“My wrist alarm,” Quarrels says, rising to his feet. “I’m on auto-merge control and prescheduled for disconnection in sixty seconds. That was my warning.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There isn’t time to explain. I have to leave now. It’ll be easier for you if you don’t look. Less traumatic.”

“Are you coming back?”

“I don’t know… . It’s against regulations.”

“Please. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Skeets. Anything at all. Only promise to come back.”

“Goodbye, Vera.”

“I’m sorry I acted so stupidly.”

“Don’t apologize. I must go now.”

“Next time I swear it will be different.”

“Goodbye.”

Quarrels turns and sprints up the beach. Vera watches the bright orange suit as he hurries around low clumps of seagrape and coco plum trees.

“Wait!”
Vera scrambles through the hot sand, holding her dress above her knees. “Don’t go.” She runs after him, past the bushes at the edge of the beach, and into a grassy shaded grove of coconut palms.
“Phil!”
She stops, searching the green expanse for even a trace of his Day-glo costume.

Except for Chi-Chi, grazing peacefully a hundred yards away, the grove is deserted.

Devotion to duty is the goal of Level II and an Auditor’s busy schedule leaves little time for leisure. As much as Y41-AK9 would like to personally conduct the surveillance of subject Obu Itubi, his crowded agenda makes this impossible. Other duties require his constant attention and he assigns a clerical machine at AudCom HQ to monitor the Sentinel’s scanner signal and edit those portions not of immediate interest. The silent hours of sleep are of no concern, and whole days of hiking without a single word exchanged are erased by the Magnacor-650, along with the nightly repetition of camp-site chores. At the end of a week, the file programmed for Y41-AK9 is less than ten minutes long. There are three episodes on the brief file.

The first occurs on the bank of a mountain lake. It is late afternoon, calm and silent; no breeze disturbs the mirror-still surface and, except for the dimpling rise of occasional trout, there is little to distinguish the placid water from the cloud-flecked sky above. Obu Itubi lies full length on the trunk of a pine fallen out over the lake. He rigs a trotline, tying the end to an upright branch, and while the others gather firewood, he waits face down on the mossy log, staring at his reflection in the water.

The file cuts to early morning. Following a game trail, the party passes within a dozen meters of a salt lick. Itubi points at two strangers, both Nords, standing immobile under the trees. Skiri and the others act unconcerned.

“But, what’s the matter with them?” Itubi asks. “They seem to be in a trance.”

“Hunters,” Skiri tells him. “I fear we have prolonged their wait.”

“Hunters? I thought you people didn’t eat meat.”

“We don’t. The nuts and cereals and dried fruit we share with you are our only diet. These hunters look for illness and disease. When they find an animal that might infect others, they destroy it painlessly. The meat is left as carrion, but we use the hide and bones. A trance state enables them to leave their conscious minds and wait for days without moving if necessary, silent and free from thought. Animals approach without fear.”

The Sentinel’s long-distance lens clearly catches the incredulity on Itubi’s face.

Later, they encounter an old man, sitting alone in the lotus pose at the center of a small clearing. Like the hunters, he is naked. He smiles as they pass, but makes no other sign of greeting. Swann, Gregor, and Skiri each bow respectfully and avert their faces, but Itubi looks the old Nord straight in the eye. Except for his thinning hair and the fine network of incised wrinkles, he appears no older than Skiri.

“What’s that one hunting,” Itubi asks once they are back in the shadow of the woods. “Butterflies?”

“Your sarcasm is inappropriate, Obu,” Swann says. “He is waiting for death.”

Secure in the monastic confines of his cranial container, Philip Quarrels contemplates the pernicious nature of his desire. It is bad enough that a resident of Level II, a Class C Auditor, should be suffering the pangs of lust, but what makes the whole affair monstrous is that the object of his libidinous yearnings is only a child.

Quarrels’ attempts to reconcile his memories of the Hollywood Vera (all paint and peroxide, a caricature voluptuary) with the slim dark-haired girl who sat beside him on the beach are no help. The thought of that faraway Palm Springs weekend only intensifies his longing.

The girl’s eyes were his undoing. He was able to ignore her adolescent flirting, the enticements of her nubile teenage body, but when she removed her sunglasses to plead for his return he was lost. For a moment he didn’t comprehend. Her innocent, bruised face was so deceptively vulnerable that it took him several seconds to notice the violet eyes glowering under those swollen discolored lids: the most depraved he had ever seen in his life.

Quarrels knows he should seek help before it is too late. He should report the whole business to his Auditor, confess his unnatural attraction to the delicate girl whose saintly face frames a sadist’s eyes. He is so close to Elevation that it is a shame to spoil his chances by surrendering to secret passion. Instead, he reviews his schedule to determine when he will have enough free time to squeeze in another brief merge. Just one more time, he assures himself. This next will be the last. It is in the interest of self-knowledge. There can be no real harm in that.

After the noon meal, Obu Itubi wanders with his friends around the outskirts of the Nord village. This settlement of the Xi tribe contains only one permanent structure, a hand-hewn log-walled lodge rising to tree top height among the pines on the shore of the lake. Inside the great hall, with its overhanging balconies and broad staircases, are dormitories where the tribe lives communally after the snows come. For warmth, steaming water from a nearby hot spring is diverted into a network of ceramic pipes laid under the floor planking. Even in mild weather, when most of the Xi Nords live outdoors in tents and on platforms built high in the trees, the tribe takes all meals together inside, on long trestle tables gathered around the circular stone hearth in the center of the hall.

Itubi learns these facts from Skiri, who visited the Xi tribe on Quest twenty years before. The Navigator shows him the village, answering his many questions with a tolerant smile. Among themselves, the Nords seldom speak and Itubi is certain they practice some form of telepathy. How else can they anticipate one another so unerringly? A day’s march ends without discussion; camp chores are never assigned; decisions come without words. If they are not actual mind readers, then how explain lives so attuned and harmonious? Telepathy might be rationalized as a trick, a freak of nature. But to accept the evidence of their Enlightenment, their seeming
prajna…
.

Itubi refuses to believe his companions are really any different from himself. In time, he’ll grow used to the world again. He’s been away for a long time. Things may have changed, but he’ll soon catch up. And yet, Itubi is uneasy when he remembers the unearthly grace of the Nords. In a score of days, he never once saw Swann or Skiri or Gregor make a clumsy move. They seem free from all the little accidents to which he is prone: cutting his fingers, stubbing his toes, burning his mouth on hot food. They never trip or stumble or grow tired on the trail. Whenever the party stopped it was always at Itubi’s request, and yet they each carried a heavy packbasket and his only load was the clothing he wore. Some mornings they rested a dozen times on his account, never complaining or showing anger. Nothing disturbs their eternal calm. The same placid smile remains on their lips. They are always at peace.

A similar peace prevails in the Xi village. Itubi hears the sounds of men at work: a blacksmith hammering at his forge, carpenters repairing the shake-shingle roof of the lodge, the steady scrape of a cooper shaping barrel-staves with a spokeshave. But something more important is missing: there are no children in the village. Instead of the laughter and shouting of children’s games, the familiar wail of babies, there is only the high solitary quaver of a reed flute lost among the pines.

Itubi follows the path down toward the lake, listening to the unseen musician. Off to his left, a funeral pyre is prepared for the old man they passed yesterday in the woods. In another day or so, a party will search for his body. Swann explains the custom. The old go off alone when it is time to die.

“Why can’t the hatcheries supply the aged with new bodies?” Itubi asks.

Swann only smiles.

“Death is the natural consequence of life,” Skiri says. “For the reborn it is an end to Illusion.”

Along the shores of the lake the Nords mend their nets while others carve and paint the goose decoys. The Xi tribe are down gatherers. In the season when the aspen changes color, great flocks of geese migrate from the north. The decoys are arranged on the lake and the fierce honking birds are trapped in nets dropped from the trees as they land. After the down is plucked from under the contour feathers on their breasts, the geese are released, alive and unharmed. Skiri explains the importance of this village. “The down for the winter clothes of Northern people all over the world is gathered here. This is the only source. That is why the Xi village is so large.”