Half Past Human (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by T. J. Bass

  ‘That’s changes in temperature, you know. It was light, then dark. Hot, then cold. The air stood still, then moved fast carrying dust and leaves around. The ground became covered with foam, then dried. Weather!’ Willie took another quick sip from the bubbler and started eagerly up the walkway. ‘Maybe we’ll see some weather if we hurry.’

  Moses followed.

  Willie realized that his show of enthusiasm was a mistake. Glancing nervously around, he slowed his pace.

  ‘Weather is awful,’ he repeated unconvincingly. ‘So is living Outside. They explained that to me real good when they brought me back into the city. Man was meant to live in cities – not the gardens. The Eyepeople who live In-between the cities are bad. They crush crops, live like animals, reproduce without controls – kill, steal, commit all manner of crime. That was explained to me real good.’

  They walked in silence for a time. The sunlight filtering through the shaft cap above began to fade – dusk.

  Willie continued: ‘Of course it is natural for the Eyepeople to live like animals – they are part animal. Some theories place them below us as direct ancestors on the evolutionary tree, but I’m certain we must have descended from a common four-toed ancestor. The five-toed beast is just a blind end – unable to fit into the hive,’ he made a gesture of disgust. ‘Eating human flesh! I think I could forgive them everything but the eating of their own kind. I suppose that is why I am proud of my trophy – I hunted the last of Earth’s carnivores.’

  At the rim of the cap they caught a glimpse of a blue sky through the stout metal grill. Willie clutched his chest and sat down facing the blank wall of the spiral.

  ‘I can’t look out.’

  Moses gazed through the grill, giving Willie a word picture.

  The plum and grape sunset darkened to a star-speckled licorice. They were sitting on a flat featureless platform that encircled the yawning shaft. The grill – a one-inch gauge, six-inch mesh – rose thirty yards to a shaggy green roof. Shaggy greens dangled. A man-sized Agromeck scuttled in from the shadowy fields and disappeared into its garage beneath the platform. Distant plankton towers lit up. White clouds of Agrifoam flowed out over the fields carrying their auxins and nutrients. Rows of shaft caps marched to the horizon, each marked another cyberconduit shaft city.

  ‘Stars?’ asked Willie’s plaintive voice.

  Moses nodded.

  ‘Bright. Some big like an eye peeking down. Others small and numerous like spilled metallic dust.’

  He searched their twinkling patterns for the familiar form of Orion. Shoulders and feet wide apart, narrow belt with sword. Years ago he had noticed it. No one in the Big ES seemed to understand what he was talking about. There was little curiosity about astronomy in the subterranean hive. Sewage, lice and calories were real; but a star was just something in the background on entertainment shows to indicate the time of day. No one saw patterns in them. His search of the stacks didn’t help either – stars were with the occult.

  Night passed. In the darkness an Irrigator sucked at its canal and drenched the land. Foam melted away. Orion marched westward until dawn erased him. Moses was confident ‘he’ would return again. The roof of Outside seemed to have a very stable night pattern.

  In the growing light, Moses turned to Willie.

  ‘Willie – do you see things in the stars?’ Willie cringed and covered his eyes. Moses carefully reworded the question. ‘When you were Outside – the stars came out each night, didn’t they? Could you see outlines of things in them? Patterns that came back night after night?’

  Willie did not answer immediately. He stood up, careful to avoid looking Outside, and slouched down the ramp. Moses followed. They walked in silence for several quarter-mile turns of the spiral.

  Finally Simple Willie spoke: ‘I don’t remember too good. Stars? I know I must have seen them – but I can’t remember actually looking. There are lots of things about my time on the Outside that are all mixed up. Do you think it could have been the drugs?’

  ‘Maybe—’ said Moses sympathetically. ‘Speed does more than make you go fast, I’m sure. But maybe the Big ES erased some of your memories too – trying to psych you into a better citizen.’

  Willie stopped and smiled his relief. ‘Of course. They put in blocks to keep my nostalgic memories from flooding out of my deep amygdaloid complex. But the blocks are not complete. Memory fragments come through sometimes—’

  Willie abruptly sat down, again pressing his forehead against the wall. Sullen, morose and brooding, he mumbled something about the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Moses tried to prod him out of his catatonia, but Willie’s gloom just deepened into stupor. Simple Willie spent much of his time so – Moses was used to seeing him in this condition. All that was missing was the grisly trophy cube . . .

  Moses sat beside him for a half hour, but his eyes remained glassy. His consciousness was being dragged back through painful memories. Neural reflexes, triggered by their discussions, groped for the forbidden memories. The Big ES had placed effective blocks on single-step associations to the Outside, but Willie’s struggled with double and triple associations to get at the memories. Slowly the traumatic memories were assembled to torture him again.

  Simple Willie carried a heavy bow in his left hand. Green leaves – large and loose – flapped in a breeze. He saw his quarry – a coweye. Her large eyes and tiny neck and waist gave her an insect-like appearance through the scope. Lifting the bow he set cross hairs on her form. She shook back her yellow mane exposing tiny pink-tipped breasts. Her delicate figure triggered a headache. The images jumped.

  He sat naked and tan surrounded by children. There were three little jungle bunnies – all yellow-haired like the coweye. The coweye came laughing and dripping from the canal. She playfully rolled into the group. Children giggled. Sunshine, bright flowers and tasty food. Happiness.

  Pain and black shadows. Laughing Hunters held up dripping red trophies. Cold yellow-haired bodies lay scattered about on gory matted grasses. His view shifted and stretched. A head lay on the grass. Just a head. But it spoke to him in a language he couldn’t understand. Then the head opened its mouth wide and a pair of legs protruded. Lifting itself on these legs, the head ran off laughing.

  When Willie’s consciousness returned to the spiral walkway, Moses was gone. A pile of food bars – flavored woven protein – were in his lap. Gathering them up, he returned to his cubicle. His trophy cube made him a little nervous. If only there was some way to analyze it to see if it were male or female – if only he could remember if it was really his trophy. Had he actually killed?

  Moses put his little class thirteen dispenser to work searching for data on the Outside. Probing through old rusty dusty memory banks of the stacks, the cyber gathered bits of information and printed it out on flimsies. Stars were lost under the occult. Star maps could be found under seasons. Moses wasn’t sure what a season was, but he did see Orion’s familiar pattern under summer.

  Earth’s biosphere was very simple. Oceans contained only plankton – scanty and mostly microscopic. A few mussels filtered green waters of ocean and canal. Plants were listed under crops only – edible grasses, herbs, vines, trees – all bore fleshy items of caloric or flavor value for the hive. He smiled. Moses’ Melon would be listed soon. Megafauna included several species of water mammal – Sirenia and cetaceans . . . the canal cleaners. Buckeyes were classified as a garden varmint with approaching hive-induced extinction. While the Nebish numbered over three trillions, the buckeye population was estimated at a fraction of a million – worldwide.

  The stacks contained only scanty information on such things as sun, moon and stars – as if atrophy by disuse had allowed these items to be dropped. Hive flora included bountiful species of vermin – sharing the warmth and nutrition of Big ES – lice, roaches, meaty rats (cross-indexed under game food), and insects. Nothing else. Nothing was reported swimming the seas, flying in the air or walking the land. Fish, birds, reptiles and mammals
– gone. Moses didn’t miss them, never having known them. He was just a little amazed that the total mass of protoplasm on the planet was concentrated in one species and his food chain. Man had proved to be a very successful creature indeed.

  As the week came to a close he checked in with the Pipe caste for his next duty assignment. J. D. Birk’s square face came on the screen – nodding and grinning.

  ‘No need to come in this shift, Moses. Your melon is a big success. It is a slime mold, just as we guessed. The troph stage is an ordinary-sized amoeba that thrives on aerobic sludge. At maturity it coalesces to sporulate like a fungus. Bio classifies it as safe. Synth plans to gray-age the melon and try it in the mushroom flavor line at first. If it goes over big, we’ll be rolling in Augrams. Meanwhile, you have your Climb authorization. Your gear is on its way.’

  Moses sat on the edge of his cot munching breakfast and listening. The words were what he had expected – more or less – but Birk’s face was tighter than usual, and his voice sounded strained.

  The dispenser began to drop items for the Climb. He carefully checked his new suit of clothes for defects before chucking the soiled ones down the digester chute. His kit contained food bars for the long trip to the mountains. He would be in the tubeways for several days – even without losing time at dispensers. Public dispensers had an irritating way of delaying the traveler – otherwise he tolerated them. After all, most dispensers were only class thirteens – and identities had to be carefully checked. Moses didn’t want a nonworker eating flavored calories and charging them to his account.

  For two whole days Moses fought his way through the stinking crowds. He was weak from trying to keep his footing in the slippery excrement and crushed roaches, sore from stumbling over decaying neglected bodies, and continually nauseated by the rotten vapors that saturated his nose filters. He was sorry he had come.

  He stepped out at a strange shaft city to catch a nap. There were the usual piles of refuse and bland stares. He found a corner to sit down and sleep in. A sickening thud woke him up. A small gob of something wet hit his cheek. A jumper. Another suicide. From the skeletal fragmentation Moses judged that he or she had started a quarter of a mile upshaft. There appeared to be more than one body. That irritated Moses. The jumper hadn’t had the simple decency to scream a warning so the impact area could be cleared.

  Moses was wide awake now. He elbowed his way back to the tubeway and continued toward the mountain. A class nine Sweeper brushed by. Its five-foot-tall snail shape took up the space of ten humans as it busied itself wetting, scrubbing and sucking at the stained floor. Its thin-walled sac already contained one large lump that had elbows and knees.

  The tubeway deposited Moses on the floor of Rec shaft. He was alone. The large dispenser on the spiral called his name and issued the heavy pack of rations – dry staples for his time on the mountain. As he stood strapping it on, he mentally complained about his own Pipe caste. Their conduits moved everything on the planet – humans, food, water, air – everything – thousands of miles – but always horizontally. Never up. The energy was not available. The Rec shaft was narrow – a mere thirty yards in diameter. The spiral had a steep 20 per cent grade. There was only an occasional crawlway. No humans. A pinpoint of dim light in the center of the spiral marked what he estimated to be the two-mile height. Taking a deep breath of the cold, damp, metallic air, he paced out. Three hours later he passed three gray-haired men leaning on their packs.

  He felt smug about his endurance until, an hour later, a girl – puberty plus seven – passed him. Her pack was about the same size as his. She wore the smock and emblem of the Attendant caste.

  He stopped at the one-mile level to sleep. Crawling into one of the cubicles, he was surprised at how sterile it was. Without dispensers man seldom stayed more than a few hours. No nests, no vermin.

  He slept over ten hours. A deep, restful sleep without all the usual slapping and scratching.

  His Attendant met him at the top of the ramp. She was a puberty-plus-ten female – probably well epithelialized with mature cornified squamous cells – pleasant enough, too. But dull-witted and sterile. He stood, sweating and swaying under his heavy pack – exhausted. She steadied him with a firm hand on his shoulder strap.

  ‘Supper or sex?’ was her greeting.

  Politeness prevented him from growling, ‘Sleep.’ This was a Climb, after all. He forced a smile and carefully straightened his aching back.

  ‘Let’s try both,’ he said, ‘after I’ve refreshed myself.’

  ‘Saved us some water. Come on. We’re family for two weeks.’

  She led him to their room. In the dim light he paid more attention to the temperature of his bath water than the room’s decor. She found the soap duck in his pack and tossed it in the refresher with him. He adjusted the cycling to hold a knee-deep soak. After fifteen minutes, she joined him with a scrub brush. He wallowed around – water up to his chin – while she worked the stiff bristles over his skin. The water was a little too cold for his liking, but he had to admit he was beginning to feel clean.

  When he stepped out she handed him a coarse towel wraparound. She wore a vented robe belted at the waist.

  ‘This is the latest model of the cot-and-a-half. It has all the attachments for the first seventy-two positions,’ she said proudly.

  The thin mountain air dragged him down. He sat on the cot smiling weakly.

  ‘Leather or lace?’ she asked over her shoulder. She began rummaging around in the closet.

  He stared at the pillow, longing for sleep.

  ‘Leather or lace?’ she repeated.

  ‘Oh,’ he answered, ‘skin will be fine.’

  She looked disappointed. Evidently she had some special outfits she wanted to show off. She loosened her belt and walked toward the cot.

  ‘You aren’t one of those Position-One fellows are you?’

  ‘Of course not. Are you familiar with the 54/12 switch?’

  ‘Switch on the plateau phase?’

  He nodded.

  She smiled. At least she had been matched with an interesting partner this time. She glanced inside the closet door for the diagrams. Fifty-four/twelve switch?

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’ she asked. ‘It looks a bit awkward to attempt during the plateau.’

  He was still awake enough to grin. ‘Yes, I’m sure. This is a Climb, isn’t it? Might as well make it challenging.’

  She hung up her robe and came to the cot. While she was removing the attachments they wouldn’t be using, he stretched out and looked into the mirror on the ceiling. In a moment he was fast asleep.

  She was an accomplished succubus.

  Dawn was a bright surprise. At full blaze the yellow sun quickly rose above a pair of snow-covered peaks, filling their room with a blinding glare. One entire wall was transparent. His Attendant stumbled unsteadily from their cot and turned down the wall, changing the sun into a pale lunar disc. Then she collapsed back onto the bedding.

  He felt fairly rested. The thin air didn’t bother him so much. Walking to the edge of the room, he looked down. Pyramids of monotonous cubicles covered the lower slopes as far as he could see – he was reminded of an obscene glacier. The black crags of a distant mountain still looked pure – they seemed to be naked rock – but the distance was too great for his visual resolution. He hoped the crags remained black at sunset instead of flaming with window-reflected rays.

  ‘Breakfast?’ asked the Attendant, fingering his packs.

  Odd, but when she began to share his food – calories he earned and hauled . . . she changed in his eyes. No longer was she a loving Attendant, here for his companionship. Now she was a parasite, trading her efforts for calories – flavored calories!

  Try to go through life a little bit edible.

  You never know when you’ll meet something hungry.

  –ESbook – on charity.

  Moses took his Attendant into the eerie cavelike bar. The outer walls were on step-down,
almost opaque. Moses saw the hazy outlines of mountain and sky – grays and blacks. The hour was noon. The four-toed Nebishes crowded, thigmotropically, around the massive stone bar – comforted by the warm hips and elbows. Everyone wore the standard issue of loose translucent party garments. Moses ordered their layered drinks from the giddy dispenser and dialed for flambé. A tiny white fire flickered on top of their multicolored cylinders.

  Drinks in hand, they joined the crowd. Conversation turned to the recent megajury execution. Moses’ Attendant asked him to repeat his version. He complied, then lifted his drink.

  Moses watched the flames on his pousse-café. Bending his straw, he deftly sampled the pomegranate, chocolate and mint of the deeper layers. Sitting back, he rubbed his singed eyebrows.

  A man – short and hostile-looking – shouted from across the bar: ‘Killing a psychotic prisoner by remote and diluting your guilt in the group conscience of the megajury – not too manly.’

  Moses had heard these arguments many times, but they still stirred reflex hatred when they were directed at him. The adrenal response felt exhilarating. He shot back: ‘Charity over Justice. Is that what you want – suspend a worthless psychotic and crowd out some hard-working citizen with an organic illness?’

  The hostile parroted gleanings from news channels out of context: ‘Thousands of patients move in and out of suspension every year. There’s always room for one more. But then, you’re better at strawing-up your cordial than being manly – button-pushing is your style.’

  Moses strawed-up his mint without disturbing the other layers – drinking slowly – a study in irritation. ‘You’re a man?’ he parried. ‘Who have you killed lately?’

  ‘Nobody,’ frowned the hostile, ‘but I did go on a Hunt – Outside. A real Hunt. I didn’t make a group activity out of it, either. Exposed myself – man to man. Just didn’t see any game – that’s all.’ He threw down his drink and brooded.