Mockingbird

by Walter Tevis

  For years he had felt that if he could find a woman like her and live with that woman he might find a key to the other life that the consciousness he bore had lived—the life of whoever had been copied to make his brain. And now he was doing it. But he had found no key.

  The dream, which happened every eight or ten days, was always disturbing, and he never became entirely accustomed to the fright he felt during it; but he accepted it as a part of his life. Sometimes there were other dreams, with subject matter from his own memory. And there were others that used subject matter he did not recognize—some involving the catching of fish, and some a battered upright piano.

  He got off the bed and walked heavily to the window and looked out at the early morning. Distant and clear in the pale dawn it stood, higher than anything else outside: the Empire State Building, the high grave marker for the city of New York.

  Bentley

  I had no trouble finding Belasco’s cell. I had watched him go there to get Biff for me, and I found it easily. When I pushed open the unlocked door and went in, Belasco was lying on his bunk, petting an orange cat. His TV was not on. There were three other cats asleep in a sort of pile in the corner. Photographs of naked women covered one wall, and on the others were pictures of trees and fields and of the ocean.

  There was an armchair covered in pale green cloth, and a floor lamp—both of them gotten in some illegal way, I’m certain. Had Belasco known how to read he would have had a better place for it than I.

  I did not sit down. I was too agitated.

  When Belasco looked up at me he seemed surprised. “What you doing out of your cell, Bentley?” he said.

  “They were open again.” I ignored Mandatory Politeness and looked directly at his face. “I wanted to see you.”

  He sat up on his bed and gently dropped the cat to the floor. It stretched and then joined the others in the corner. “You look worried,” he said.

  I kept looking at him. “I’m frightened. I have decided to escape.”

  He looked at me, started to say something, and then didn’t. Finally he said, “How?”

  “That big knife blade in the shoe factory. I think I can cut these off with it.” I held my bracelets out toward him.

  He shook his head and whistled softly. “Jesus! What if you miss?”

  “I have to leave this place. Do you want to go with me?”

  He looked at me for a long while. Then he said, “No.” He pushed himself further upright in his bed. “Being on the outside doesn’t mean that much to me. Not anymore. And I wouldn’t have the guts to hold my hands under that knife.” He began fumbling in his shirt pocket for a marijuana cigarette. “Are you sure you have?”

  I let my breath out with a sigh, and then sat in the armchair and stared for a while at the manacles on my wrists. They were a little looser than when they were new; I had become leaner and harder from the work in the fields. “I don’t know. I won’t know until I try.”

  He lighted the joint and nodded. “If you do get out, what’ll you eat? This place is far from any civilization.”

  “I can find clams along the beach. And maybe fields with things growing that I can eat. . . .”

  “Come on, Bentley. You can’t live that way. What if you don’t find any clams? And this is winter. You’d better wait till spring.”

  I looked at him. What he said made sense. But I knew, too, that I could not wait until spring. “No,” I said. “I’ll leave tomorrow.”

  He shook his head at me. “Okay. Okay.” Then he got out of the bed, leaned down, pulled back the bedcover, and reached under. He slid out a large cardboard box and opened it. Inside were packages of cookies and bread, and soybars, all wrapped in clear plastic. “Take what you can carry of this.”

  “I don’t want to . . .”

  “Take it,” he said. “I can get more.” And then, “You’ll need something to carry it with.” He thought for a moment and then went to the door of his cell and shouted, “Larsen! Come here!” and a moment later a short man whom I recognized from the Protein 4 fields came walking up. “Larsen,” Belasco said, “I need a backpack.”

  Larsen looked at him a minute. “That’s a lot of work,” he said. “A lot of stitchin’. And you gotta get the canvas, and tubes for the frame. . .”

  “You’ve already got one in your cell, the one you made out of a pair of pants. I saw it when we had that poker game, that time when all the robots were malfunctioning.”

  “Hell,” Larsen said. “I can’t let you have that one. That’s for my escape.”

  “Horseshit,” Belasco said. “You ain’t going nowhere. That poker game was three or four yellows ago. And how are you going to get your bracelets off? With your teeth?“

  “I could use a file . . .”

  “That’s horseshit too,” Belasco said. “They may run this prison dumb, but they ain’t that dumb. There ain’t no hand tools hard enough to cut them bracelets, and you know it.”

  “Then how are you getting out?”

  “Not me. Bentley here.” Belasco reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “He’s gonna try using the big knife in the shoe factory.”

  Larsen stared at me. “That’s a damn fool thing to do.”

  “It’s his business, Larsen,” Belasco said. “Can you let him have the backpack?”

  Larsen thought a moment. Then he said, “What do I get for it?”

  “Two of my pictures from the wall. Any two you pick.”

  Larsen looked at him narrowly. “And a cat?”

  Belasco frowned. “Shit.” Then, “Okay. The black one.”

  “The orange,” Larsen said.

  Belasco shook his head wearily. “Get the backpack,” he said.

  And he got it, and Belasco filled it with food for me and showed me how I could carry Biff in it if I needed to.

  Without sopors, I did not sleep that night. I did not want the aftereffects of sopors when I went to the shoe factory in the morning. I was tormented by thoughts of what I planned to do: not only to risk grave injury under the knife but to face a life of bare survival, in winter, with no knowledge of the places I would be traveling through and with no training for the difficulties except for one thin book about shore dinners. Nothing in my education— my stupid, life-hating education—had prepared me for what I was about to do.

  A part of me kept saying that I should wait. Wait until spring, wait until they told me my sentence was over. Life in prison wasn’t really any worse than life in a Thinker Dormitory, and if I learned to be like Belasco I could make an easy life for myself here. There really was almost no discipline, once you learned how to avoid being beaten by the guards, just by keeping an eye out for them. Obviously, once the device of the metal bracelets had been invented, everything about running a prison had gone slack, as with so much else. There was plenty of dope, and I was used to the food and the labor. And there was TV, and Biff, my cat...

  But that was only part of me. There was another, deeper part that said, “You must leave this place.” And I knew, knew even to my terror, that I had to listen to that voice.

  My old programming would say, “When in doubt, forget it.” But I had to quiet that voice, too. Because it was wrong. If I was to continue to live a life that was worth the trouble of living it, I had to leave.

  Whenever I would see that huge knife in my imagination, or the cold and empty beaches, I would think of Mary Lou throwing the rock into the python’s cage. It made the night alone in my cell bearable.

  In the morning I wore the backpack to breakfast and ate my protein flakes and black bread while wearing it. None of the guards even seemed to notice.

  When I finished my breakfast I looked up to see Belasco walking over toward my little table. We were not supposed to speak at meals, but he said, “Here, Bentley. Eat this on the way to the factory,” and he handed me his chunk of bread—which was far larger than mine had been. A guard shouted, “Invasion of Privacy!” from across the room, but I ignored him.

  “Than
ks,” I said. Then I held out my hand, as men did in films. “Goodbye, Belasco,” I said.

  He understood the gesture, and took my hand firmly, looking me in the face. “Goodbye, Bentley,” he said. “I think you’re doing the right thing.”

  I nodded, squeezed his hand hard, and then turned and walked away.

  When I filed into the doorway with the rest of my shift the knife was already in operation. I stopped and let the others walk in past me and stared at it for a minute. It looked overwhelming to me and my stomach seemed to clamp tight inside me and my hands began to tremble, from just looking at it.

  It was about the length of a man’s leg, and broader. The metal was adamant steel, silvery gray, with a curved edge that was so sharp it hardly made any sound as it cleaved like a guillotine through twenty layers of thick polymeric shoe material. The material was fed to it on a conveyor belt, and held in position on a kind of anvil under the blade by a set of metal hands; they would hold a stack of material under the blade and the blade would drop from a height of five feet and shear noiselessly into the stack and then pull back up again. I could see light glitter on the edge of the blade when it was at its high point, and I thought of what would happen if it touched my wrists. And how could I be certain where to place them? And if I succeeded with one arm, I still would have to do the other. It was impossible. Standing there, I felt it wash over me like a wave: I’ll bleed to death. The blood will let from my wrists like a fountain . . .

  And then I said aloud, “So what? I have nothing to lose.”

  I pushed myself through the other men who were taking up their positions on the assembly line and walked up to the machine. The only robot in the room was the one presiding over the blade, with his arms folded across his heavy chest and his eyes vacant. I walked up beside him. He shifted his eyes toward me but remained motionless, saying nothing.

  The blade came down, glittering, with horrible speed. I stood there watching it, transfixed. This time I could hear the soft hiss of its slicing edge. I put my hands in my pockets to stop them from trembling.

  I looked down at the belt, where the automatic hands were pushing the cut material into a hopper to be sent back for further cuts. And I saw something that made my heart beat even faster: there was a thin, dark line on the anvil where the edge of the blade had been touching it, probably for blues and yellows. It showed exactly where the blade would come down!

  And then I thought of how I might do it. And without stopping to consider, to let myself think and become even more frightened, I went ahead.

  When the next stack had been cut and before the hands could push it off the anvil, I reached out and took a handful of the half-pieces, keeping their freshly cut edges still lined up. The hand removed the others, and a fresh uncut stack was brought into position. There would be a few moments’ hesitation before the knife came down. Not letting myself look up at or think about the blade, I pushed the new material onto the floor.

  Immediately I saw, out of the edge of my vision, the robot by me move. He unfolded his arms. I ignored him and placed the stack of already cut pieces so that their straight new edges were exactly flush with the thin line on the anvil. Then I took the wire hook I had made, hooked it through the bracelet on my left hand, made a fist, and then looked up. The blade was poised above me, unmoving. Its edge, from directly beneath it, was like a perfect hairline under the thickness and heaviness of its heft.

  I forced myself not to shudder and not to think. As fast as I could, I put my knuckles down on the belt about an inch from the thin line, pulled the bracelet with the hook with my right hand, steadying my right hand on the stack of material. There was a space of a half inch there, as I pulled the arm against the force of the hook, between the back of my wrist and the metal of the bracelet. I was holding my head back, away from the blade. My body felt like stone.

  And then the robot shouted in my ear, “Violation! Violation!” But I did not move.

  And the blade came down, fanning my face, came down like a destroying angel, like a bullet. And I screamed out in pain.

  I had closed my eyes. I forced them open. There was no blood! And a piece of the bracelet lay, severed, on the belt in front of me. Already the computer-controlled hands were pushing it into the bin. The robot was still shouting. I looked at him and said, “Bug off, robot.”

  He stared, unmoving, his hands now at his sides.

  I looked at my left wrist. The metal of the bracelet, with a gap in it now, was twisted into the flesh. With my right hand I loosened it, ignoring the now-staring robot, and flexed my wrist. It hurt, but nothing was broken. Then I slipped one cut edge of the bracelet under the near edge of the anvil away from the blade and, using the hook, pulled up on the other side, and the bracelet, slowly, opened up until I could remove my hand. As I did so the blade came down again, missing me by about a foot.

  I took a breath and then transferred the hook to the bracelet on my right hand.

  I waited until another stack of material appeared and was cut and then took another handful as I had before. As I reached out to place my right fist on the belt I felt a hand clamp on my arm with a powerful grip. It was the robot.

  Immediately, without thinking, I lowered my head and butted him in the chest as hard as I could, loosening his grip and pushing him back up against the belt. He doubled over forward. I pulled back and kicked him in the stomach. I was wearing my heavy prison boots and I kicked as hard as I could, with all of the strength a season’s work in the Protein 4 fields had given my legs. He made no sound, but fell heavily to the floor. But immediately he was struggling to get up.

  I turned my back on him and I looked up. The blade was just returning to its top, waiting position. Behind me I heard men’s voices, and then the robot shouting again, “Violation! Violation!”

  Not looking away, I held my right wrist under the blade, keeping my head well back, trying not to think of what would happen if the robot got to me and grabbed my arm just as the blade was coming down.

  The wait seemed to last forever.

  And then it happened. There was the glitter of adamant steel and the sudden fanning. And the pain. And just before I screamed again I heard a sound like the sound of a dry stick breaking.

  I opened my eyes and looked down. The bracelet was cut, but my hand was bent strangely and I knew instantly what had happened. I had broken my wrist.

  Yet, realizing that, I felt no further pain. There was a ringing in my ears, and I could remember the pain of the impact; but now there was no more pain. And my mind was clear—as clear as it has ever been.

  And then I thought of the robot and looked over to where I had knocked him.

  He was still on the floor. Larsen and the old man with white hair were sitting on him. And Belasco was standing over him holding a heavy wrench in one hand and my cat, Biff, in his other.

  I stared.

  “Here,” Belasco said, grinning, “you forgot your cat.”

  Using the hook, I got the other bracelet off and put it in my pocket. Then I walked over to Belasco, and took Biff in my good hand.

  “Do you know what a sling is?” Belasco said. After I took Biff, he began taking off his shirt, transferring the wrench from hand to hand, and keeping his eye on the now still robot.

  “A sling?” I said.

  “Just wait.” He got the shirt off and then tore it in two. He tied a knot between sleeve and tail and put it around my neck, just above the backpack harness, and then showed me how to put my right arm in the broader part of the shirt. “After you get a little distance,” he said, “soak your wrist in ocean water. Do it every now and then.” He gripped my shoulder. “You’re a brave son of a bitch,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Haul ass, Bentley,” Belasco said.

  And I did.

  After I had run and walked for several miles north of the prison, keeping the ocean on my right, the pain began in earnest in my wrist. I stopped and put down Biff, who had clawed at
me a few times and scratched, and meowed loudly, and finally gotten quiet. Then I lay down at the edge of the water, on my back, with my chest heaving painfully from the running, and from everything else, and I let my damaged wrist lie in the shallow and cold winter surf. Some of the water came up and lapped against my side. Biff began to meow plaintively. I said and did nothing and lay there as the tide came closer in and washed icily across me, making me finally get up and away from it. I had not lost the pain, although, the cold water muted it. And I had not lost my fear of the journey ahead of me. But despite that there was jubilation in my heart. I was a free man.

  For the first time in my entire life, I was a free man.

  I went to the water’s edge and, using my left hand, raised a handful of water to my mouth and drank it. And my throat constricted on it, gagged, and I spit the rest out. I did not know sea water was undrinkable. No one had ever told me.

  Something in me suddenly gave way and I let myself fall to the beach and lie there, in pain and in thirst, crying. It was too much. It was all too much.

  I lay there on the cold wet sand with a bitter wind blowing across me, with my whole right arm throbbing in pain and with my throat burning from the sea salt, not knowing where to find water. I did not know even where to begin looking for water, or how, really, to find clams, or any food, once the supply I had in my small backpack was eaten.

  But then I sat up suddenly. There was something to drink. Belasco had given me three cans of liquid protein.

  I took the backpack off, opened it where Larsen had sewn buttons on its top, and found a can and opened it carefully. And I drank only a few swallows of it, gave some to Biff, and then plugged the hole in the top of the can with my handkerchief. Some of my good feeling came back. I had enough to drink for a few days; I would find water somehow. I got up and began walking northward, with Biff keeping more or less at my side, or ahead of me or behind. The sand near the water’s edge was easy to walk on and I kept up a brisk pace, swinging my good arm at my side.