A Day for Damnation twatc-2 Page 30

  "This is going to sound real weird, but I think General Poole was right. Dance naked with the bunnydogs."

  "An interesting idea-" she said. She patted her mouth and tossed the napkin aside.

  "I can justify it-"

  "You don't have to. I know the reasoning."

  "Huh?"

  "We talked about this for a long time last night. We pretty well explored the subject."

  "Really?"

  "The military sat the meeting out. We accomplished a lot. I didn't put it in your book because I wanted to see how much of it you'd figure out yourself. You did good. Now let's see if you can get the second half of it. How would you prepare for such a dance?"

  "It's obvious. Go into the herd."

  "Mm."

  "You're not going to argue with me? I've given this a lot of thought. "

  She shook her head. She stretched over to her desk and picked up her clipboard. She settled it in her lap and switched it on. "When do you want to go in?"

  "The sooner the better, I guess."

  "Mm hm. Tomorrow morning?"

  "Sure, I could do that."

  "And how long do you want to stay?"

  "Two days, three. Just long enough to get the sense of it."

  "Mm hm." She was writing all this down.

  "I figured I could wear a beeper collar, so you could track me."

  "And-" she looked up, "-how do you figure we're going to bring you back?"

  "Well, you could always break my leg?"

  Fletcher smiled. "As a matter of fact, we might just have to do that. Let me give you some bad news about the herd, James; some things we've been finding out.

  "We've been doing enzyme analysis on various herd members, and we've found that the brain chemistry is slightly skewed. There's a shift in the body's ability to produce certain memoreceptor activators. In other words, there's a chemical basis for the lack of timebinding. To some degree, it's a self-induced drug experience. But-" She hesitated. "It's the permanence of the effect that we can't understand. We have a ... theory, but-"

  "Go on," I prompted.

  "Well, you're not going to like this. We think it's another plague, only-not quite. It's not a fatal one. We think that there are some low-level Chtorran viruses spreading through the biosphere. The suspicion is that these viruses do not produce diseases as much as they shift out body chemistry-and as such shift our state of consciousness."

  "Like a drug experience?"

  "Mm, maybe. Maybe not. We think that the human species has always had this herding potential, but we've always been so acculturated that we've been able to channel the herding instinct into the service of the culture; but this viral effect so damages our chemoreceptors that we're-all of us-functioning right on the. edge all the time now. The slightest stimulus can push us over. In other words," she said somberly, "-it is now an act of deliberate will to be an intelligent and rational being."

  "Hasn't it always been?" I asked.

  She smiled. "I appreciate your cynicism-but, James, you need to appreciate the danger here. The process may be irreversible."

  "Isn't there a counter-enzyme or a vaccination or something-?"

  "We don't know. We don't have the people to do the research. Listen, I've given you the bad news. Now, let me give you the worse news. We suspect that the viral agent that unlocks the herding capacity is already so widespread in the human species that for all practical purposes it's transparent. We're all infected. Did you see the news this morning?"

  "You mean the cleanup of the Capetown riots?"

  "Mm hm. There was no reason for that madness-all that rage. It was as if all those people just went berserk at the same time. Could that have been another effect of the same virus? We don't know. I'd love to do a dozen autopsies, but with the political situation the way it is-anyway, you get the point, don't you?"

  "We could all fall into herds tomorrow, couldn't we?"

  She nodded. "Just waking up human is a victory."

  "So... what you're saying is that if I go into the herd, you don't know that you can bring me back, right?"

  "That is the risk," she admitted. "Do you still want to go-?"

  "Wait a minute. I thought this was all theoretical-"

  "Then you don't want to go?"

  "I didn't say that either. You've already got this approved, haven't you?"

  She nodded. "We have conditional authorization, if we can find a suitable volunteer." She looked at me pointedly. "Someone who understands the real nature of the problem.

  "Here's what we realized last night. The whole question of sentience is premature. We can't even consider it until we know if our two species are compatible. Can humans and bunnydogs even herd together? Forget communication until that question is answered. "

  "So, you were already planning a dance-?" I said.

  "None of this was in your briefing book because I wanted to talk to you about it privately. I know your sensitivity to the herd, James. This whole thing could be very dangerous to you personally. "

  "I came to you, remember?"

  "James-I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I want you to go. I argued for this opportunity all last night. But it has to lae your choice. Before I can authorize this, you have to know what all the risks are, so you can choose responsibly."

  "I know the worst that can happen," I said. "The bunnydogs could be the worm predators. I could get eaten. But I have to deal with that possibility every day I get out of bed."

  "The worst that can happen," Fletcher said, "is that we can lose you to the herd."

  I stopped my reply before it fell out of my mouth and reconsidered what she'd just said. I looked at her thoughtfully. "You've put people in the herds before, haven't you?"

  Fletcher nodded. "And we've lost some of them too."

  "How long can a person stay in the herd before he's lost?"

  "It varies. It happens fast. Four or five days is the maximum safe time. Even that's pushing the margin. The experience is too intense. It's a mindwipe."

  "All right-so all I want is two days. A day and a half. I'll go in tomorrow morning, spend the day getting acclimated, spend the night and participate in the next day's gathering. You can pull me out around dinner time. That'll give me a day to debrief and the weekend to assimilate the experience. Monday, I can get back to work on the mission."

  She switched her clipboard off and put it back on her desk. "You're clear this is what you want to do?"

  "I'm clear this is what I have to do."

  "All right," she said, picking up her phone. "Jerry? It's a Go for tomorrow. Right. No, not at all. Thanks." She hung up and turned back to me. "Okay, we've got a lot of work to do this afternoon."

  "Huh?"

  "I'm going to train you."

  "Train me? How do you train for a herd?"

  "There are exercises we can do that will strengthen your sense of self. It might help."

  "Meditation?"

  "Mm, not really. Call it soul-centering. It's something from the Mode training-"

  "I thought you were down on the Mode training."

  She shook her head. "Nope. Only some of the people. I don't like what they're doing with it. But the training is one of the most valuable things I've ever done. It was the thing that kept me ... rational ... during the worst part of the plagues. I think it's what keeps me rational today. The truth is, I don't know if it will help or not. I just want to give you every advantage I can."

  "I'll be fine," I said. "Really." She didn't answer.

  "What's the problem?" I asked.

  "I know you're confident. I know you've thought this out carefully. So have we. But I'm still scared. I know how easy it is to miss something. And I really would hate to lose you too... ."

  FORTY-THREE

  "ALL RIGHT. I'm going to activate the collar," Fletcher said. She turned to the monitor in the back of the jeep and typed something into the keyboard.

  The collar around my neck beeped. Loudly. "How's the signal?" I asked.
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  "It's good," she said. "So's your heartbeat and your respiration. All right, I'm going to lock it on." She stepped over to me and did something under my chin, I couldn't see what.

  When she stepped back, I tugged at the collar experimentally. It was locked and operating. There was no way I could get it off or turn it off. Not until I was retrieved.

  I had the feeling that there was something she wanted to tell me, but when I looked at her she glanced quickly to her watch. "You'd better get going."

  "Yeah," I said. I took a breath. I began pulling off my shoes and socks. The herd was already starting to form in the plaza. It was going to be a warm day.

  I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Was that too much? I wondered if I should take the T-shirt off. I glanced to the herd again. There were far more naked bodies than I remembered. I decided to take my cue from the group; I pulled my shirt off and wondered if I should abandon my shorts now too.

  I glanced at Fletcher. She looked pensive. "You okay?" I asked.

  "Uh huh," she said.

  "You don't look it."

  She shrugged. "I was just thinking."

  "About?"

  "I wish we'd had more time."

  I took her hands in mine. "I'll be all right," I said.

  "I know you will. I guarantee it."

  "No, I mean in here." I tapped my head with my forefinger. "I won't get lost. I promise."

  She squeezed my hands and searched my face. "You'd better be right, because I'll break your leg if you're wrong."

  "I'll remember that." I glanced over at the herd. Too much nudity. Modesty prevailed. I'd keep the shorts on. For now, anyway. "Well..." I said, "I guess I'd better. . ."

  "Yeah," she agreed. Suddenly, she put her hands around my neck and pulled my face down to hers. Her lipstick tasted of roses and apricots and sunshine.

  I broke away, embarrassed. Her kiss had been a little too intense. I turned away quickly to face the herd. If I didn't do it now, I never would.

  The herd was a great milling mass of humanity. They were so dirty, I could smell them from here.

  I started walking. The dry grass was scratchy under my feet. The sun was hot on my back. My mouth was dry.

  I stopped just before the fringes of the herd. And studied.

  I didn't know what I was looking for yet. Some clue. Some cue. Something that would tell me how to act.

  A group of young bulls was posturing on the lawn. Two of them were casually wrestling. Some of them glanced over at me. There was a knot in my stomach.

  I knew this feeling.

  It was the first day of kindergarten all over again. The first time having to shower naked with the other boys. The first time with a girl. The first time I saw a worm.

  It was the feeling of walking into a roomful of strangers and having them all look at you. Only, it was worse than that. I didn't know if these were animals or people.

  They looked like people. They acted like animals.

  Apes.

  If I could act like an ape, the right kind of ape, they'd accept me.

  So ... now I had to figure out how to act like an ape.

  "The problem is," I said quietly, "that nobody around here is giving ape lessons."

  And then I realized the joke. Nobody ever taught me how to be a human either.

  You just are.

  I circled around the young bulls wrestling and headed toward a clear space in the center of the plaza. There was a long wide wading pool there. It was the water hole. Some of the children were playing and splashing in one end of the pool. I moved away from them. I found a place away from everybody else and dropped to my hands and knees. I looked to see how the other apes were drinking. Did they cup their hands or did they just lower their faces?

  No. I had to find it out for myself.

  I lowered my face to the water and drank. The water tasted horrible. Chlorine? And what else? I couldn't tell. I was glad I had my shots.

  How do you act like an ape anyway?

  This was the same problem I always had with my own species. I never knew how to act.

  Other people always seemed to know exactly who they were. I always knew that I was pretending to be who I was. I wanted to stop pretending. I wanted to just be a human being. Or an ape. Or whatever it was I had to be.

  How did these apes feel about human beings anyway? Did they resent us studying them? Watching them? Or did they tolerate us? Did they appreciate us feeding them? Or did they even make that connection?

  Did they want us to join them? Or did they just allow us to join them because they had no way to keep us from joining them? Or was it that there was nothing to join?

  I started giggling. Wouldn't it be funny if everybody here were trying to act like an ape, just like me? Wouldn't it be funny if we were all pretending?

  I wished I could stop thinking. My mind was chattering like a machine. "Chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter.. ." I said. "My mind chatters. Chatters. Chatters. Lumpty lumpty lump."

  Nobody even looked at me. None of the apes noticed. Cared. The words were all meaningless. All words were meaningless. And who made up the meanings for the words in the first place? I had. Who else? All the words and all the meanings in my head were connected with connections I had made. They could all be false. Or worse-just some of them might be false connections. But how could I tell which was which?

  Where did it all start anyway? "Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma..." I said. A baby makes noises and gets a warm tit shoved in its face. That's such a powerful lesson that we spend the rest of our lives trying to find the right noises to make so we can keep getting warm tits to suck on. We spend years shrieking and yammering at each other, looking for the right control phrases. Humans have more control phrases than robots. Say, "I love you," and you can get laid. Say, "Fuck you," and you can have a fight. It's as simple as any other machine

  -it clicked.

  We treat each other like machines. We manipulate.

  When the apes gave up language, the control phrases didn't work any more. You could push the buttons all you wanted, but the machinery was broken. "Blabber ... blabber ... blabber... ." I felt the grin spreading across my face. This was very interesting.

  If you said a word over and over and over, and did it long enough, it lost all its meaning. But how do you lose a whole language? How do you detach all the meanings from all the words, the sounds, when you've spent a whole lifetime putting them together? How do you lose even the capacity for language?

  "Blabber... blabber... blabber.. . . "

  I had the feeling I was doing it wrong. I was sitting here trying to figure it out.

  Maybe this wasn't something you figured out. You just... did it. That didn't make sense, but then-figuring it out wasn't making any sense either. I just didn't know enough. Maybe if I

  No. Stop figuring it out.

  I was a part of the herd now. Because I said so.

  I was the part that was sitting here in red shorts trying to figure out how to be a part of the herd. I was the stupid part. I was trying to figure out how to be what I already was.

  I could let go now. I was here.

  A teenage boy squatted down in front of me. Uncomfortably close. He was dirty and naked. He had stringy black hair and a large narrow nose. His eyes were extraordinarily wide; they were a startling shade of liquid blue. He stared at me curiously.

  "Hi," I said, and smiled. Almost immediately, I knew it was the wrong thing to do. There was too much meaning in the words, and not enough of that other quality.

  The boy blinked and kept staring at me.

  I felt as if I were being tested. As if the herd were some kind of macro-organism looking to see if I had been assimilated yet. The boy scratched himself absentmindedly. His nails were long and dirty. Ape hands. That's what his hands reminded me of. He was skinny, like an ape, too. He squatted on his haunches, studying me. I studied back. I stopped trying to figure him out and just focused on him like a camera, watching him. His eyes were remarkably interesting.
Too blue to be real. He had thick dark lashes that shadowed his expression with mystery.

  But why was he so interested in me? I couldn't tell what he was thinking by looking at his face. He was there-and he was unreadable. His soul was home, I could sense that-somehow-but there was nothing else going on. No ... thoughts. No ... identity. It was compelling, just to sit there and look at him looking at me. It wasn't a staring contest. It was a ... a being with.

  Fletcher had had me practice this. Being with. Intensely. I couldn't look away. I didn't want to look away. It was a strangely reassuring encounter.

  I realized what it was about his eyes that disconcerted me-they were too feminine. If a woman had eyes like that, she would be a model or a movie star. On a boy... they were simply overwhelming.

  There was a strange kind of peace here. I could drown in it.

  The boy reached out and touched my face. Like an ape, exploring a strange object. He touched my hair, patted it. His hand moved cautiously, drew back quickly. He smelled of dust.

  And then he dropped his hand again. And waited.

  I don't know how I knew what he was waiting for, but I knew that it was an invitation.

  I touched his face as he had touched mine. I touched his hair; I let my fingers drift across his cheek. A smile spread across his face. He reached up and took my fingers in his hand and looked at them. I could see how clean my hand was in his. He sniffed my fingers. His pink tongue flicked out in a tentative, delicate movement and tasted my fingertips. He smiled at me again. He liked the way I tasted. He let go of my hand. And waited again.

  Was I supposed to taste his fingers now?

  I took his hand in mine. And sniffed it. And tasted. Dirt. I smiled at him.

  He smiled back. It was good. Complete.

  The boy stood up then and walked away. Didn't look back to see if I was following. I didn't know why; I followed. Realized I wasn't used to going barefoot. The dry grass hurt my feet.

  My body felt... held back. Not free. I knew what it was. I stopped and dropped my shorts, stepped out of them. Felt myself begin to disappear. Into the crowd. The herd. All bodies. Had to let go of bodies first. Be naked. Free. Vulnerable.