Yoo Retoont, Sneogg. Ay Noo

11

At last the day came that had to come. The day that Tibsnorg had imagined in many different variations, but never thought that when it came, it would find him so unprepared.

He was working, as usual, at the viewscreen. He had saved up 48 money plus 320 of deferred credit. The screen presented the next order requiring a decision. A neat row of green letters and numbers informed him, with precision, that for AT044567744 it was proposed that the arms, legs, and trunk with neck be removed for one female recipient, the head for another. The brain would be terminated, and of course the code would be removed from the register.

“The woman must have had to work hard and long to afford such a body,” he thought bitterly. “And the other woman, she must have liked the slender face and blue eyes in the catalog, liked them tremendously, to put up with deafness. Unless she saved enough to buy another pair of ears…”

He had known all along that this would happen, yet now he hesitated. He had thought he could save more money for this moment. But he had to act quickly, in this situation that was not the one he had imagined.

“Shit,” he said over and over.

He asked the system for time to think, explained that he was considering the possibility of only one recipient’s acquiring specimen AT044567744, as that would be more profitable. His request would delay the decision a little. He disconnected the cameras, got up from his desk, and left. His stride was efficient, swift. Exertion of will at every step had become a habit with him.

It was not far to the warehouse of biological material. He had already learned from the system in which room she was being kept. The system had also given him all the entry passwords. The sleepy guard at the massive metal door did not challenge him. Tibsnorg was covered with sweat. The elevator went with terrifying slowness. At last-the right level. An endless corridor with identical doors. What he intended to do was unheard of.

He came to door AT0445677. It opened automatically. Along the walls of the next corridor were stations that held biological material-dozens of individuals of different sizes and different degrees of deformity. All were without clothes; all were in a web of wires, electrodes. At first he counted nervously, then saw that there were numbers over each station. A long time passed before he reached her. She stood with open eyes. Their eyes met. She knew him. Disconnecting the wires took a few moments. It took longer to undo the straps that constrained her arms and legs. She immediately pressed herself, her face, to him.

“Yoo retoont, Sneogg. Ay noo,” she said softly.

“Hurry, Tib, hurry.” He took her by the hand. He knew that her muscles would be in good condition from electric stimulation. No one wanted to buy an atrophied limb.

“Piecky,” she said, pointing to a small shape in a cluster of wires. Together they freed Piecky, who immediately woke.

“Leave it, Snorg,” he said. “This is absurd.”

Snorg took him in one arm and led Tib with the other. He caught his breath only in the elevator.

“And now what?” asked Piecky. Tib nestled her face against Snorg the whole time.

“I know all the passwords,” said Snorg. “We’ll have surprise on our side…”

In a room they passed, he found coveralls for Tib. At the main door the guard gave them an indifferent look. The thought did not occur to him that two of the three leaving were only material. He entered the password Snorg gave him, looked at the screen, and nodded for them to go.

Outside the warehouse, they practically ran. Snorg stopped a small automatic car, and they all climbed in. Even by vehicle, it was a considerable distance to Dringenboom’s room. In all the corridors, the silence was unbroken and ominous.

They found Dringenboom in his room; he was still sleeping. A blow, and the camera hung sadly from its cable. A sharp pull completely broke the connection.

“Abe! Get up!” Snorg shook his shoulder. “Tib’s with me. Are you coming with us?”

Dringenboom rubbed his eyes. He looked at them.

“Don’t call me Abe. I’m Abraham,” he said. “She’s lovely,” he added, looking at Tib. “No, I’m not going with you. Take the keycard for my truck and hit me on the head. Do it with that book, so there will be some blood… and get as far as you can from the city. That’s your only chance.”

“All right,” said Snorg. “I’ll tie you up too. It’ll look better.”

It took a while, because Snorg didn’t want to hurt him too much. Finally Abraham Dringenboom lay senseless and tied up on his sofa, blood flowing from the broken skin on his forehead.

They were driving to the hangar of the transporter machines when the corridor filled with the howl of sirens. It was beginning. Every few meters, a red light flashed. The cameras in the corridor all turned slowly. The fugitives made it to the hangar before the doors locked. Snorg found Dringenboom’s truck. He slid the keycard in its entry slot, and the machine responded. All three of them got on the rising platform and in a few moments were inside the control cabin. Snorg drove the truck from the hangar. It was a dark day, the clouds heavier than usual. He activated the viewscreen. An information broadcast was being given.

“…shocking theft of biological material at a value of more than 4500 money! Nothing like this has happened in our memory! An intensive search is being conducted for the perpetrator, who is a DG-rank officer of the Archive of Biological Material. His name is Tibsnorg Pieckymoosy. The defense forces are joining the search. They will guarantee that the stolen property is reclaimed without damage and that the perpetrator is captured quickly.”

The screen showed a number of taped images, from various cameras, of Snorg carrying Piecky and with Tib walking beside him.

Snorg whistled through his teeth. “Those defense forces are several hundred he-men with perfectly functioning bodies full of muscles,” he said.

“I would say we haven’t a prayer.” Piecky took his eyes from the screen. “But I’m grateful to you for allowing me to see this…” He gazed out the window. “I lost track of time, hooked up to those wires. There was an injection for sleeping, an injection for waking… and so on, in a circle.”

Tib also had been staring out the window, silently, from the moment they left the hangar.

“Fortunately there was a guy my height opposite me, and we could talk,” Piecky went on. “The guy also talked with Tib, so she wouldn’t become totally stupid. I couldn’t talk to her, because she couldn’t see my mouth and she can’t hear. She’s getting smarter. At least that’s what the guy said.”

Snorg drove the truck to the mine.

Piecky watched with great attention as a powerful claw gathered pieces from a ruin that had once been a cathedral. “And people lived in that… ?” he asked. Snorg nodded. Pieces were loaded into the truck.

“So that was how they lived before the war,” Piecky said to himself. “They must have felt very lonely in such spread-out buildings.”

When the truck was filled, Snorg turned it around.

“We’re going back?” asked Piecky, uneasy.

“I have a plan,” Snorg said.

The truck went at maximum speed.

“Tib, put a mask on yourself and one on Piecky,” he said, nodding in the direction of the compartment that held the masks. But Tib didn’t respond, because Snorg was facing the viewscreen as he spoke and she didn’t see his lips. When he repeated it toward her, she took out the masks and suits, and then quickly and with surprising skill put them on herself and on Piecky. Snorg put on his own mask and suit. They came to the hill where the solitary intact building stood.

Snorg stopped the truck, and the moving platform took them to the ground. The sound indicator he carried chattered. Tib carried Piecky in her arms like a baby. The protective suits they all wore were made of transparent material. Piecky was too short, so Tib wrapped the excess several times around him. They saw that they would have to walk a distance much greater than any they had ever crossed on foot. In addition, the dust came to mid-calf. For a while they stood and watched the truck leaving, on automatic, the huge machine growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared at the horizon. They turned and started walking. It was slow and difficult making their way through the dust and loose sand. By the time they reached the building, they were covered with sweat. Tib was a little less tired, because her muscles had been kept in such good condition in the warehouse.

Inside, they found that the roof was in one piece, and the thick wood door as well, and there was even a fence and gate in the back. Snorg continued to hope that their escape would be successful, but Piecky thought it was a mistake for them to have left the truck. He said they should have driven as far as possible from the city and its defense forces. The city might then have given up its pursuit of them. Snorg privately agreed with Piecky, but he wasn’t able to break altogether with the city. Having left it, the three were so extremely alone.

None of them removed the protective suit, because the dust was everywhere.

Tib sat and looked at Snorg.

“Ay w’shoor yood retoon f’mee…,” she said. He smiled.

“Ay’d a dreem… that ay leff th’Room. Layt was all round… and thees straynge peepul, s’many peepul… Then thay put mee ther next t’Piecky… It’s s’good that yoor heer ’gain,” she said, watching his lips the whole time.

“Listen to her yap,” said Piecky. “Next she’ll tell about the injections… how a needle jabs you in the side, and bam, you sleep… and bam, you’re awake… Like turning a switch on and off. And the gurneys every day going down the row, the three-level gurneys… always pulled by the same people in gray. And they’d always take someone away in them. And few returned, and if they did return, they were all bandaged up… I couldn’t see much down where I was. Always one of us. And it was hard to talk, because every other guy in the row was out, and if you shouted, bam, you got a needle. But even so we exchanged information, like a chain, using just the right voice that could be heard but that wouldn’t cause the needle. The worst was… how silent he’d be when they wheeled him by. Then the ones in gray would remove the bandages, and… he wouldn’t have arms, or legs. It varied. The worst was when a gurney slowed down by you, and you’d think, will it stop? The ones in gray weren’t sadists, but the gurneys had bad wheels… They tried to make them go as smoothly as possible, because they knew what we were feeling… But sometimes a wheel would catch and the gurney would slow down. But I decided that if they took me, I didn’t want to come back. I don’t have much body as it is…”

“On thoos gurnees thay took always three peepul,” said Tib, whose eyes now were on Piecky’s face. “Too came back, yoozhly, sometaymes one… I r’member Moosy, how she came back. Only one eye showt from the banjes, but it was Moosy… Colfi said she was coming back… and tole us how thay took off the banjes…”

“Enough!” said Piecky. “I don’t want to hear that again. I know what she looked like… and then they took her a second time, and she didn’t come back.”

“Moosy,” said Snorg with a groan. “That didn’t happen on my shift. But they could have taken Tib too,” he said to himself. “I was lucky, lucky that with her it happened on my shift.”

“How, lucky?” Tib asked.

“That you’re here with me now. There were so many things I didn’t take into account.”

“Ay coodn’t anymor. Th’mussils jumpin, makin me s’tired… and talkin w’Colfi, b’cause ay coodn’t see Piecky’s mouth… and the rest. Ay wood of gone crazy. Ay din go crazy, but if it was longer, Ay wood f’shoor…”

They both talked, she and Piecky, interrupting each other. Piecky spoke while she spoke, but when she saw he was speaking, she stopped. Then she would break in again, to tell her story in her hoarse, halting voice. It was hard to express so many days in just a few hours. Then Piecky turned away to look at the thick brown cloud of dust swirling across the sky. He watched, rapt, and something shone in his face, something like bliss, which surely would have amazed Snorg had he seen it.

“Stop rustling that plastic,” Piecky finally said.

They both looked at him.

“Listen, Snorg, I’m talking to you, because Skinny’s eyes are fixed once more on your smug face…” He went on, and the way he spoke was so much like the old times that Snorg grinned with pleasure.

“What I feel… that someday I’ll fly among those clouds, high above the earth, on wings, and it will be the best part of my life.”

“Maybe they’ll make you the controls of a machine, because your body is useless, but your brain, that’s really… But first they have to catch us, and that won’t be so easy for them. No camera saw where we went.”

“What will happen when they catch us?” said Piecky. “Because I am certain they will.” He wasn’t impressed by Snorg’s arguments.

“Shut, Piecky!” It was Tib. Snorg had never heard her talk in that tone. “Less yoo pr’fer thoos jekshins, ther.”

“I say what I think.”

“We should consider,” said Snorg after a moment of thought. “It seems to me that two of us are not in any real danger, since this situation has no precedent. Two of us should be all right, though each for a different reason. Nothing will be done to me, because the preservation of life is a fundamental law for human beings. Once someone is named a person, then he can’t stop being a person, so they would never turn an officer of the Archive of Biological Materials into just another specimen for the warehouse. And Piecky, you too will be all right. Your dream will come true: you’ll look down on us from the height of a mine shoveler. They’ll have to make use of us, you see, to justify all the effort and energy it takes them to catch us.”

“Was that why we left the truck?” Piecky asked.

“No,” answered Snorg after a silence. “There is no place to go… Other than the city, there is nothing… But here, Abe knows where we are, he remembers this little house, he’ll bring us food. Abe is our hope.”

This time the silence was broken by Tib.

“An mee, Sneogg?… Wha ’bout mee?” She bent and fixed her eyes on his mouth.

“You. You’re the only one,” he said, turning fully to her, “a tragic fate awaits… One woman wants your body, another your head and face. They’re rich and no doubt deserving women, but I would die rather than let that happen.”

“So it was thanks to Baldy that I got to see the sky,” Piecky said softly, and said nothing after that. He gazed at the sky, at the swiftly moving clouds.

When the twilight turned from gray to the darkness of night, they fell asleep, huddled together, hungry and cold.