This story first appeared in 1968 in Playboy. I
typed it in by hand and posted it here because it's almost forgotten and I think
it's more important now than ever. Knight, by the way, also wrote the story "To
Serve Man," which was turned into the famous Twilight Zone episode, and wrote a
book on Charles Fort.
The eight pens danced against the moving
strip of paper, like the nervous claws of some mechanical lobster. Roberts, the
technician, frowned over the tracings while the other two
watched.
"Here's the wake-up impulse," he said, pointing with a skinny
finger. "Then here, look, seventeen seconds more, still
dreaming."
"Delayed response," said Babcock, the project director. His
heavy face was flushed and he was sweating. "Nothing to worry
about."
"Okay, delayed response, but look at the difference in the
tracings. Still dreaming, after the wake-up impulse, but the peaks are closer
together. Not the same dream. More anxiety, more motor pulses."
"Why does
he have to sleep at all?" asked Sinescu, the man from Washington. He was dark,
narrow-faced. "You flush the fatigue poisons out, don't you? So what is it,
something psychological?"
"He needs to dream," said Babcock. "It's true
he has no physiological need for sleep, but he's got to dream. If he didn't,
he'd start to hallucinate, maybe go psychotic."
"Psychotic," said
Sinescu. "Well -- that's the question, isn't it? How long has he been doing
this?"
"About six months."
"In other words, about the time he got
his new body -- and started wearing a mask?"
"About that. Look, let me
tell you something: He's rational. Every test--"
"Yes, okay, I know about
tests. Well -- so he's awake now?"
The technician glanced a the monitor
board. "He's up. Sam and Irma are with him." He hunched his shoulders, staring
at the EEG tracings again. "I don't know why it should bother me. It stands to
reason, if he has dream needs of his own that we're not satisfying with the
programmed stuff, this is where he gets them in." His face hardened. "I don't
know. Something about those peaks I don't like."
Sinescu raised his
eyebrows. "You program his dreams?"
"Not program," said Babcock
impatiently. "A routine suggestion to dream the sort of thing we tell him to.
Somatic stuff, sex, exercise, sport."
"And whose idea was
that?"
"Psych section. He was doing fine neurologically, every other way,
but he was withdrawing. Psych decided he needed that somatic input in some form;
we had to keep him in touch. He's alive, he's functioning, everything works. But
don't forget, he spent forty-three years in a normal human body."
In
the hush of the elevator, Sinescu said, "...Washington."
Swaying, Babcock
said, "I'm sorry, what?"
"You look a little rocky. Getting any
sleep?"
"Not lately. What did you say before?"
"I said they're not
happy with your reports in Washington."
"Goddamn it, I know that." The
elevator door silently opened. A tiny foyer, green carpet, gray walls. There
were three doors, one metal, two heavy glass. Cool, stale air. "This
way."
Sinescu paused at the glass door, glanced through: a gray-carpeted
living room, empty. "I don't see him."
"Around the ell. Getting his
morning checkup."
The door opened against slight pressure; a battery of
ceiling lights went on as they entered. "Don't look up," said Babcock.
"Ultraviolet." A faint hissing sound stopped when the door closed.
"And
positive pressure in here? To keep out germs? Whose idea was
that?"
"His." Babcock opened a chrome box on the wall and took out two
surgical masks. "Here, put this on."
Voices came muffled from around the
bend of the room. Sinescu looked with distaste at the white mask, then slowly
put it over his head.
They stared at each other. "Germs," said Sinescu
through the mask. "Is that rational?"
"All right, he can't catch a cold
or what have you, but think about it a minute. There are just two things now
that could kill him. One is a prosthetic failure, and we guard against that;
we've got five hundred people here, we check him out like an airplane. That
leaves a cerebrospinal infection. Don't go in there with a closed
mind."
The room was large, part living room, part library, part workshop.
Here was a cluster of Swedish-modern chairs, a sofa, coffee table; here a
workbench with a metal lathe, electric crucible, drill press, parts bins, tools
on wallboards; here a drafting table; here a free-standing wall of bookshelves
that Sinescu fingered curiously as they passed. Bound volumes of project
reports, technical journals, reference books; no fiction except for
Fire and Storm by George Stewart and The Wizard of Oz
in a worn blue binding. Behind the bookshelves, set into a little alcove, was a
glass door through which they glimpsed another living room, differently
furnished: upholstered chairs, a tall philodendron in a ceramic pot. "There's
Sam," Babcock said.
A man had appeared in the other room. He saw them,
turned to call to someone they could not see, then came forward, smiling. He was
bald and stocky, deeply tanned. Behind him, a small, pretty woman hurried up.
She crowded through after her husband, leaving the door open. Neither of them
wore a mask.
"Sam and Irma have the next suite," Babcock said. "Company
for him; he's got to have somebody around. Sam is an old air-force buddy of his
and, besides, he's got a tin arm."
The stocky man shook hands, grinning.
His grip was firm and warm. "Want to guess which one?" He wore a flowered sport
shirt. Both arms were brown, muscular and hairy, but when Sinescu looked more
closely, he saw that the right one was a slightly different color, not quite
authentic.
Embarrassed, he said, "The left, I guess."
"Nope."
Grinning wider, the stocky man pulled back his right sleve to show the
straps.
"One of the spin-offs from the project," said Babcock.
"Myoelectric, servo-controlled, weighs the same as the other one. Sam, they
about through in there?"
"Maybe so. Let's take a peek. Honey, you think
you could rustle up some coffee for the gentlemen?"
"Oh, why, sure." The
little woman turned and darted back through the open doorway.
The far
wall was glass, covered by a translucent white curtain. They turned the corner.
The next bay was full of medical and electronic equipment, some built into the
walls, some in tall black cabinets on wheels. Four men in white coats were
gathered around what looked like an astronaut's couch. Sinescu could see someone
lying on it: feet in Mexican woven-leather shoes, dark socks, gray slacks. A
mutter of voices.
"Not through yet," Babcock said. "Must have found
something else they didn't like. Let's go out onto the patio a
minute."
"Thought they checked him at night -- when they exchange his
blood, and so on?"
"They do," Babcock said. "And in the morning, too." He
turned and pushed open the heavy glass door. Outside, the roof was paved with
cut stone, enclosed by a green plastic canopy and tinted-glass walls. Here and
there were concrete basins, empty. "Idea was to have a roof garden out here,
something green, but he didn't want it. We had to take all the plants out, glass
the whole thing in."
Sam pulled out metal chairs around a white table and
they all sat down. "How is he, Sam?" asked Babcock.
He grinned and ducked
his head. "Mean in the mornings."
"Talk to you much? Play any
chess?"
"Not too much. Works, mostly. Reads some, watches the box a
little." His smile was forced; his heavy fingers were clasped together and
Sinescu saw now that the fingertips of one hand had turned darker, the others
not. He looked away.
"You're from Washington, that right?" Sam asked
politely. "First time here? Hold on." He was out of his chair. Vague upright
shapes were passing behind the curtained glass door. "Looks like they're
through. If you gentlemen would just wait here a minute, till I see." He strode
across the roof. The two men sat in silence. Babcock had pulled down his
surgical mask; Sinescu noticed and did the same.
"Sam's wife is a
problem," Babcock said, leaning nearer. "It seemed like a good idea at the time,
but she's lonely here, doesn't like it -- no kids--"
The door opened
again and Sam appeared. He had a mask on, but it was hanging under his chin. "If
you gentlemen would come in now."
In the living area, the little woman,
also with a mask hanging around her neck, was pouring coffee from a flowered
ceramic jug. She was smiling brightly but looked unhappy. Opposite her sat
someone tall, in gray shirt and slacks, leaning back, legs out, arms on the arms
of his chair, motionless. Something was wrong with his face.
"Well, now,"
said Sam heartily. His wife looked up at him with an agonized smile.
The
tall figure turned its head and Sinescu saw with an icy shock that its face was
silver, a mask of metal with oblong slits for eyes, no nose or mouth, only
curves that were faired into each other. "...project," said an inhuman
voice.
Sinescu found himself half bent over a chair. He sat down. They
were all looking at him. The voice resumed, "I said, are you here to pull the
plug on the project." It was unaccented, indifferent.
"Have some coffee."
The woman pushed a cup toward him.
Sinescu reached for it, but his hand
was trembling and he drew it back. "Just a fact-finding expedition," he
said.
"Bull. Who sent you -- Senator Hinkel?"
"That's
right."
"Bull. He's been here himself, why send you? If you are going to
pull the plug, might as well tell me." The face behind the mask did not move
when he spoke; the voice did not seem to come from it.
"He's just
lookinhg around, Jim," said Babcock.
"Two hundred million a year," said
the voice, "To keep one man alive. Doesn't make much sense, does it. Go on,
drink your coffee."
Sinescu realized that Sam and his wife had already
finished theirs and that they had pulled up their masks. He reached for his cup
hastily.
"Hundred-percent disability in my grade is thirty thousand a
year. I could get along on that easy. For almost an hour and a
half."
"There's no intention of terminating the project," Sinsecu
said.
"Phasing it out, though. Would you say phasing it
out."
"Manners, Jim," said Babcock.
"Okay, my worst fault. What do
you want to know?"
Sinescu sipped his coffee. His hands were still
trembling. "That mask you're wearing," he started.
"Not for discussion.
No comment, no comment. Sorry about that, don't mean to be rude; a personal
matter. Ask me something--" Without warning, he stood up, blaring, "Get that
damn thing out of here!" Sam's wife's cup smashed, coffee brown across the
table. A fawn-colored puppy was sitting in the middle of the carpet, cocking its
head, bright-eyed, tongue out.
The table tipped; Sam's wife struggled up
behind it. Her face was pink, dripping with tears. She scooped up the puppy
without pausing and ran out. "I better go with her," Sam said, getting
up.
"Go on, and Sam, take a holiday. Drive her into Winnemucca, see a
movie."
"Yeah, guess I will." He disappeared behind the bookshelf
wall.
The tall figure sat down again, moving like a man; it leaned back
in the same posture, arms on the arms of the chair. It was still. The hands
gripping the wood were shapely and perfect but unreal; there was something wrong
about the fingernails. The brown, well-combed hair above the mask was a wig; the
ears were wax. Sinescu nervously fumbled his surgical mask up over his mouth and
nose. "Might as well get along," he said and stood up.
"That's right, I
want to take you over to Engineering and R & D," said Babcock. "Jim, I'll be
back in a little while. Want to talk to you."
"Sure," said the motionless
figure.
Babcock had had a shower, but sweat was soaking through the
armpits of his shirt again. The silent elevator, the green carpet a little
blurred. The air cool, stale. Seven years, blood and money, five hundred good
men. Psych section, Cosmetic, Engineering, R & D, Medical, Immunology,
Supply, Serology, Administration. The glass doors. Sam's apartment empty; gone
to Winnemucca with Irma. Psych. Good men, but were they the best? Three of the
best had turned it down. Buried in the files. Not like an ordinary
amputation, this man has had everything cut off."
The tall figure
had not moved. Babcock sat down. The silver mask looked back at
him.
"Jim, let's level with each other."
"Bad, huh."
"Sure
it's bad. I left him in his room with a bottle. I'll see him again before he
leaves, but God knows what he'll say in Washington. Listen, do me a favor; take
that thing off."
"Sure." The hand rose, plucked at the edge of the silver
mask, lifted it away. Under it, the tan-pink face, sculptured nose and lips,
eyebrows, eyelashes, not handsome but good-looking, normal-looking. Only the
eyes wrong; pupils too big. And the lips that did not open or move when it
spoke. "I can take anything off. What does that prove."
"Jim, Cosmetic
spent eight and a half months on that model and the first thing you do is slap a
mask over it. We've asked you what's wrong, offered to make any changes you
want."
"No comment."
"You talked about phasing out the project.
Did you think you were kidding?"
A pause. "Not kidding."
"All
right, then open up, Jim, tell me; I have to know. They won't shut the project
down; they'll keep you alive, but that's all. There are seven hundred on the
volunteer list, including two US senators. Suppose one of them gets pulled out
of an auto wreck tomorrow. We can't wait till then to decide; we've got to know
now. Whether to let the next one die or put him into a TP body like yours. So
talk to me."
"Suppose I tell you something but it isn't the
truth."
"Why would you lie?"
"Would you lie to a cancer
patient."
"I don't get it. Come on, Jim."
"Okay, try this. Do I
look like a man to you."
"Sure."
"Bull. Look at this face." Calm
and perfect. Beyond the fake irises, a wink of metal. "Suppose we had all the
other problems solved and I could go into Winnnemucca tomorrow; can you see me
walking down the street -- going into a bar -- taking a taxi."
"Is that
all it is?" Babcock drew a deep breath. "Jim, sure there's a difference, but for
Christ's sake, it's like any other prosthesis -- people get used to it. Like
that arm of Sam's. You see it, but after a while you forget it, you don't
notice."
"Bull. You pretend not to notice. Because it would embarrass the
cripple."
Babcock looked down at his clasped hands. "Sorry for
yourself?"
"Don't give me that," the voice blared. The tall figure was
standing. The hands slowly came up, the fists clenched. "I'm in this thing; I've
been in it for two years. I'm in it when I go to sleep, and when I wake up, I'm
still in it."
Babcock looked up at him. "What do you want, facial
mobility? Give us twenty years, maybe ten, we'll lick it."
"No.
No."
"Then what?"
"I want you to close down Cosmetic."
"But
that's--"
"Just listen. The first model looked like a tailor's dummy; so
you spent eight months and came up with this one, and it looks like a corpse.
The whole idea was to make me look like a man, the first model pretty good, the
second model better, until you've got something that can smoke cigars and joke
with women and go bowling and nobody will know the difference. You can't do it,
and if you could, what for."
"I don't-- Let me think about this. What do
you mean, a metal--"
"Metal, sure, but what difference does that make?
I'm talking about shape. Function. Wait a minute." The tall figure strode across
the room, unlocked a cabinet, came back with rolled sheets of paper. "Look at
this."
The drawing showed an oblong metal box on four jointed legs. From
one end protruded a tiny mushroom-shaped head on a jointed stem and a cluster of
arms ending in probes, drills, grapples. "For moon prospecting."
"Too
many limbs," said Babcock after a moment. "How would you--"
"With the
facial nerves. Plenty of them left over. Or here." Another drawing. "A module
plugged into the control system of a spaceship. That's where I belong, in space.
Sterile environment, low grav, I can go where a man can't go and do what a man
can't do. I can be an asset, not a goddamn billion-dollar
liability."
Babcock rubbed his eyes. "Why didn't you say anything
before?"
"You were all hipped on prosthetics. You would have told me to
tend my knitting."
Babcock's hands were shaking as he rolled up the
drawings. "Well, by God, this just may do it. It just might." He stood up and
turned toward the door. "Keep your--" He cleared his throat. "I mean, hang
tight, Jim."
"I'll do that."
When he was alone, he put on his
mask again and stood motionless a moment, eye shutters closed. Inside, he was
running clean and cool; he could feel the faint reassuring hum of pumps, click
of valves and relays. They had given him that: cleaned out all the offal,
replaced it with machinery that did not bleed, ooze or suppurate. He thought of
the lie he had told Babcock. Why do you lie to a cancer patient. But
they would never get it, never understand.
He sat down at the drafting
table, clipped a sheet of paper to it and with a pencil began to sketch a
rendering of the moon-prospector design. When he had blocked in the prospector
itself, he began to draw the background of craters. His pencil moved more slowly
and stopped; he put it down with a click.
No more adreanal glands to pump
adrenaline into his blood; so he could not feel fright or rage. They had
released him from all that -- love, hate, the whole sloppy mess -- but they had
forgotten there was still one emotion he could feel.
Sinescu, with the
black bristles of his beard sprouting through is oily slin. A whitehead ripe in
the crease beside his nostril.
Moon landscape, clean and cold. He picked
up the pencil again.
Babcock, with his broad pink nose shining with
grease, crusts of white matter in the corners of his eyes. Food mortar between
his teeth.
Sam's wife, with raspberry-colored paste on her mouth. Face
smeared with tears, a bright bubble in one nostril. And the damn dog, shiny
nose, wet eyes...
He turned. The dog was there, sitting on the carpet,
wet red tongue out -- left the door open again -- dripping, wagged its
tail twice, then started to get up. He reached for the metal T square, leaned
back, swinging it like an ax, and the dog yelped once as metal sheared bone, one
eye spouting red, writhing on its back, dark stain of piss across the carpet,
and he hit it again, hit it again.
The body lay twisted on the carpet,
fouled with blood, ragged black lips drawn back from teeth. He wiped off the T
square with a paper towel, then scrubbed it in the sink with soap and steel
wool, dried it and hung it up. He got a sheet of drafting paper, laid it on the
floor, rolled the body over onto it without spilling any blood on the carpet. He
lifted the body in the paper, carried it out onto the patio, then onto the
unroofed section, opening the doors with his shoulder. He looked over the wall.
Two stories down, concrete roof, vents sticking out of it, nobody watching. He
held the dog out, let it slide off the paper, twisting as it fell. It struck one
of the vents, bounced, a red smear. He carried the paper back inside, poured the
blood down the drain, then put the paper into the incinerator
chute.
Splashes of blood were on the carpet, the feet of the drafting
table, the cabinet, his trouser legs. He sponged them all up with paper towels
and warm water. He took off his clothing, examined it minutely, scrubbed it in
the sink, then put it in the washer. He washed the sink, rubbed himself down
with disinfectant and dressed again. He walked through into Sam's silent
apartment, closing the glass door behind him. Past the potted philodendron,
overstuffed furniture, red-and-yellow painting on the wall, out onto the roof,
leaving the door ajar. Then back through the patio, closing doors.
Too
bad. How about some goldfish.
He sat down at the drafting table. He was
running clean and cool. The dream this morning came back to his mind, the last
one, as he was struggling up out of sleep: slithery kidneys burst gray lungs
blood and hair ropes of guts covered with yellow fat oozing and sliding and oh
god the stink like the breath of an outmouth no sound nowhere he was putting a
yellow stream down the slide of the dunghole and
He began to ink the
drawing, first with a fine steel pen, then with a nylon brush. his heel slid
and he was falling could not stop himself falling into slimy bulging softness
higher than his chin, higher and he could not move paralyzed and he tried to
scream tried to scream tried to scream
The prospector was climbing a
crater slope with its handling members retracted and its head tilted up. Behind
it the distant ringwall and the horizon, the black sky, the pin-point stars. And
he was there, and it was not far enough, not yet, for the Earth hung overhead
like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent and
alive.