The Chromosomal Code, page 4
“Oh.” Starkman had no better name for them, either, and the label “zombies” was more convenient than his own of “strange childish young men.”
“Let me introduce you around; it'll give me a chance to make sure I've got everybody right myself,” White suggested.
Starkman agreed readily.
The nursing mother's name was Althea Vandeventer; the baby, Lazarus, was her youngest at three months old. Ruth was her oldest, at thirteen, and Joshua second, at six; there had been other children who hadn't survived, her husband Peter Vandeventer mentioned. The family had been living on his ancestral farm near Washington, Pennsylvania, since they had married, before the cold first became serious, and they had refused to give up their land, though of course nothing had grown there in years except in their improvised greenhouse. After a certain point it had been little more than habit that kept them there, and with the new child's birth and Ruth reaching puberty the arrival of the great ship that had landed yesterday in what was once their cornfield had seemed like a gift from God, sent to fetch them away to somewhere their children could live a normal life.
The other two children were Charlie and Kathy Saslov, aged nine and eleven respectively; they and their mother, Jenny, had been working their way south from Englehart, Ontario, since the death of their father more than a year earlier. They had been spotted and picked up two days ago outside Pittsburgh. Jenny had been reluctant to cooperate at first, but knew she could never escape burdened with two children – and she wasn't about to abandon them. Kathy was scared; Charlie thought it was all “neat.”
Janet and Wesley Hatfield were from West Virginia, in their forties, and still too confused to have much to say. They had been roused out of their beds the preceding night by the sound of the ship's engines. Janet claimed she had thought she was dreaming, and had gone along aboard the ship because what harm could it do, in a dream? Wesley wouldn't say even that much.
The old man's name was Robert Carvel, and he had had all of downtown Pittsburgh to himself until two days earlier, when the ship had set down in Point Park and the six zombies had hunted him down in his hidey-hole in the old William Penn Hotel. He wasn't at all happy about it, but he hadn't dared argue; his old bones were brittle, he said.
The last of the group to speak was Nathan Molley, sixty-one years old, who had stayed on in Good Intent, Pennsylvania, out of sheer stubbornness. As he explained it, no one had ever asked him to leave until yesterday evening, when the polite young men came and invited him aboard. Once someone asked he was glad to go.
Starkman asked Jerry White about his own origins; he had, he said, been the first to be picked up on what was apparently an east-to-west route, since he had been living in the Monroeville Mall, east of Pittsburgh. He'd been getting low on supplies, and was tired of moving on from one wasteland ruin to another, so after some hesitation he'd boarded the ship willingly.
Thinking it over, Starkman realized that the others had, indeed, been picked up more or less in a line moving southwest – assuming Good Intent, which he'd never heard of, fit – but the ship must have doubled back, since he had been living in Pennsylvania, not West Virginia. He had moved around over the years, and was unsure just where he had been picked up, but his home had always been in the suburbs south of Pittsburgh. He had had no idea there were so many people living in the area; he had twice made the journey into the city, but had never found any evidence of continued human habitation there. He had preferred the outlying areas. He had had an irrational fear that the tall buildings were about to collapse on him, and the echoes in the empty streets had made him nervous.
When everyone had been introduced the conversation began to sag badly. In an attempt to shore it up, White remarked, “Looked like one of the zombies must have taken a fall and bumped his nose.”
Starkman could not resist boasting. “It wasn't a fall that bloodied his nose,” he said, holding up his fist.
“You did that?” Carvel asked, evidently delighted. “Good, good! Serves him right!”
“Why did you hit him?” Peter Vandeventer asked.
“I didn't want to come; I was happy where I was.”
“They forced you to come?” White asked.
“More or less; they threatened to drag me, so when one of them tried it I hit him. The poor fool couldn't fight any better than little Lazarus here, but then someone in the ship fired a warning shot about a centimeter from my feet, and I decided there wasn't any point in getting fried.”
“What kind of a warning shot?” Jenny Saslov asked.
“Laser, I think; something that boiled the snow, anyway.”
“I guess it's just as well I didn't resist, then – but I'm glad that someone did!”
“It was a damn stupid thing to do,” Molley said. “One look at this ship should have been warning enough for anyone. Besides, they don't mean us any harm.”
“If they don't mean any harm, then why did they bring Mr. Starkman here by force?” Jenny Saslov demanded. “Why did they insist I come with them? Why did they pick up any of us?”
“To take us south, of course!” Molley replied.
“But why?”
The conversation degenerated rapidly into an argument. Starkman was not interested; no one here knew anything more than he did, apparently. He seated himself on a cot and looked around the room. White sat down beside him.
“Why don't you take off that coat? You must be hot in here.”
It was true that the room was warm. Starkman looked down at himself, then shrugged. “I'm used to it,” he answered, but he reached up and pulled down the zipper.
“Suit yourself. I don't think you have to worry about anyone stealing it; none of us is going anywhere. The corridor door only opens to let in new arrivals. If you change your mind, just stick it under whichever cot you pick.” He pointed out where the other captives had put hats, coats, scarves, boots, a few packs, and even a rifle.
Starkman peered at the gun, and White guessed his thoughts.
“It's Jenny Saslov's, and there aren't any bullets; she kept it to scare people off. It didn't scare the zombies at all.”
“Oh.” The excitement of his capture was wearing off, and he was becoming aware of a need. After a moment's hesitation, he asked, “Is there a bathroom around here?”
“Oh, yeah, of course! That door there.” He pointed to one of the broad hatches. “Just tell it to open; it's voice-actuated. There's a sort of a shower, too, if you want one.”
Starkman wasn't sure if that was meant as a hint or not, but he didn't much care; he knew he was rather malodorous, even if nobody had said anything about it yet, and the thought of a real shower was extremely attractive. “Thanks,” he said. He stood and crossed to the indicated door. After a moment's hesitation, he said, “Open up.”
The door slid aside, revealing another bare metal chamber, this one considerably smaller. It appeared to be a featureless cube, about four meters on a side; it was lit by glowing spheres set in each of the eight corners. Starkman saw nothing resembling plumbing anywhere, nor any other doors, but, looking closely, he could see that there were several tiny holes in the nearest wall. Cautiously, he stepped inside; the door slid closed behind him.
The light from the eight spheres seemed very peculiar, coming as it did from below as well as above; he wondered if there were any way to shut off the lower four. He also wondered what kind of lunatic had designed this ship.
There was a drain in the center of the floor, about half a meter across. Looking about, he saw that all four walls and the ceiling were patterned with tiny holes, and that there were some even in the floor. There were, however, no other signs of plumbing.
“Damn,” he muttered. He should have asked White how the place worked.
“May I help you?” asked the voice that had identified itself earlier as the ship's commander.
Starkman paused for a moment, then said, “What are you doing? Are you watching me?”
“No. The privacy conventions of your society have been explained to me. However, all mechanisms aboard this ship, of whatever nature, are under my control; therefore, I continue to monitor the audio circuits throughout the ship, in order to be able to provide whatever services may be required.”
“Every mechanism is under your control?”
“Yes.”
It was immediately obvious that nobody, no matter how bizarre they might be, would have designed a ship this size where everything down to the plumbing was controlled by a human commanding officer. “Are you a computer?” Starkman asked. “I thought you were human.”
“I am not human. I am not exactly a computer, however. I am a conscious entity artificially created for the purpose of running this ship.”
“You're a machine, though?”
“That is subject to debate. Your language is not sufficiently precise in its definitions for a definite answer.”
After a moment of groping for his next question, Starkman decided to drop the subject temporarily, and inquired instead after the workings of the plumbing.
The drain in the center of the floor rose up on a shaft of gleaming metal and irised open.
This was not like any facility Starkman was familiar with, but it served its purpose. When he had done with it, he asked how the shower worked.
The voice directed him to a panel in one wall that slid aside as he approached, where he could store his clothing while he bathed; he stripped and put his worn, dirty garments in the opening. The panel slid shut, and a fine spray of water jetted from the holes in the ceiling – and also from those in the walls and the floor.
The water was gently warm, but having it strike him from all sides at once was a novel and not particularly comfortable sensation at first; he blinked, and instinctively backed toward one wall, avoiding as much of the spray as he could.
“Temperature and pressure may be adjusted, and soap added, at your request,” the calm voice informed him.
“Can you shut off the water from the floor?”
The upward spray ceased.
The horizontal jets of water he could deal with, and even enjoy after he'd had a moment to adjust to them; he tinkered with the water temperature, and the nature of the spray, wondering idly how the controlling entity – whatever it was – could hear him over the hissing and splashing of the water. He tried the soap briefly, but didn't like the feel of it. At last he obtained a fierce fine hot spray, and luxuriated in the resulting fog of steam and vapor and the sharp, invigorating feel of it on his skin.
After a few moments he felt cleaner than he had in months or even years. He ordered the water off and asked about a towel. Instead of supplying him with one, the spray of water was replaced with jets of warm air.
When he was thoroughly dry the panel in the wall slid aside, revealing his clothing. He hesitated to put the dirty garments onto his wonderfully clean body, but decided he didn't trust the ship to clean them without destroying them. He dressed, slung his coat over his shoulder, and told the controlling entity to open the door.
It obeyed, and he stepped out into the larger room. His fellow prisoners were somewhat more spread out than they had been, scattered across a dozen beds instead of clustered on a third that number. Jerry White sat nearest him; he rose, smiling, and began, “I guess you're. . .”
His smile froze, then vanished, as he took in Starkman's face. “Oh, my God,” he said. “What's wrong with your eyes?”
Chapter Three
Starkman grimaced with annoyance as he realized that he had forgotten to put his sunglasses back on. When he had undressed he had stuck them in his coat pocket, as he always did, and when he had dressed again he hadn't put the coat back on, so that it had been easy to forget about them.
“There's nothing wrong with my eyes.” He swung his coat around in front of himself and reached for the pocket.
“But they're yellow!”
“I know they're yellow. They've always been yellow, and they probably always will be yellow.” He found the glasses and put them on.
“But why? What's wrong with them?”
“Nothing is wrong with them, dammit. I was born with yellow eyes, that's all, just the same as you were born with dark skin.” He realized the others were all watching and listening, staring at him.
“My skin is perfectly normal. I never saw anybody with yellow eyes before.”
“All right, so I'm a freak! Just shut up about it and leave me alone!” Starkman shoved him aside and stalked past. He picked himself a bed and sat down heavily upon it.
He mentally cursed his carelessness; he was an outcast all over again, it appeared. Always, he remembered, people had stared at him, and he had had to struggle to be accepted as a human being. Sunglasses had been all that made his life bearable in his self-conscious adolescence; he had hated cloudy days and prayed for sunlight, making his mirrored lenses almost a fetish, keeping an extra pair always close at hand. Each fall he had had to convince a new set of teachers that an exception should be made for him and sunglasses allowed in the classroom; each time he had won his argument simply by taking them off once.
His few serious dates had all ended in failure; girls who had not known of his peculiarity in advance were invariably shocked and revolted when he removed his glasses, and those who had known of it but still dated him were always motivated by either pity, which he could not stand since there was nothing wrong with him, or by a morbid fascination that repulsed him as strongly as his appearance repulsed others.
There was nothing at all wrong with him, and the stories he had told of eyes too weak to take strong light had been pure lies. He simply had a unique pigmentation. Doctors had examined and analyzed it, and told him that it was a minor genetic peculiarity, harmless, and nothing to be concerned about. The doctors did not have to live out their lives with eyes that were rich golden yellow throughout both iris and ball.
It was his eyes, more than anything else, that had prompted him to stay behind in Pennsylvania when the snows came and everyone else fled south. The climate change gave him a chance to live alone, away from misguided pity, sick curiosity, or simple disgust, without having to hack himself a place in the wilderness. Furthermore, in the eugenics campaigns that were announced and pursued with varying degrees of enthusiasm during the exodus, he was quite sure that his little quirk would have been grounds for sterilization or death. He was not sure that he would have any real objection to sterilization – after all, he wouldn't want to stick anyone else with a life like his own – but he had no desire to risk death.
He sat on the bed and looked around at the other prisoners, and saw the old familiar expressions of fear, curiosity, and pity in their faces. It hurt; he had forgotten how much it hurt to be stared at.
He wanted to turn away, but stopped himself; if he turned away, he knew, he would be accepting the division between himself and the other, normal people. He returned their stares from behind his mirrored glasses.
The silence was broken by Carvel's voice.
“Aw, hell,” he said, “so the guy's got funny eyes. That's no excuse to gawk at him. We're none of us quite normal, after all, or we wouldn't have been living up here in the snow.”
“Speak for yourself,” Molley retorted. “I'm not a freak.”
There had been a time when Starkman would have taken umbrage at being called a freak, and done his excellent best to pound Molley's face in. He had gotten over that; he had finally managed to accept that he was a freak, literally. Still, the term stirred up old resentment and anger, and his hands clenched into fists as he fought down a rude reply. There was no point in fighting; it would only antagonize the others unnecessarily. He would win no friends by beating a sixty-one-year-old man.
Jenny Saslov answered for him, telling Molley to shut up. Her face was one that showed no sign of fear, but only pity and a tinge of curiosity. Molley's was a shifting display of anger, fear, and distrust. Carvel's was unreadable. White's expression was still nothing but surprise.
All four of the older children showed fear and curiosity mingled, but it was Kathy Saslov who came over and asked, “Can I see?”
Reluctantly, he removed his glasses and met her gaze. She blinked, turned away for a moment, then turned back.
“They're kind of pretty,” she said.
The other children came up behind her, and he looked at them, one by one. Joshua ran away, but the others met his gaze and looked back.
“Don't feel too upset about Joshua,” the boy's father called. “He did the same thing the first time he saw Mr. White.”
“He'd never seen a black man before,” Althea Vandeventer agreed.
“And none of us ever saw a man with yellow eyes before,” Ruth added.
Starkman was still too full of hurt and anger to reply or even smile, but he managed a nod as he slid his glasses back on.
After a moment of awkward silence he decided it was time to change the subject. “I wonder why we're still on the ground,” he said. “Do they always stay this long when they pick someone up?”
Several of the others smiled or exchanged looks; Jenny Saslov told him, “Mr. Starkman, we took off some time ago, while you were in the shower. This room is completely soundproof, and you can barely even feel the vibration; I guess you didn't notice it over the running water.”
“You mean we're moving now?”
Several heads nodded.
He felt foolish. “Oh,” he said.
“That's all right,” Jenny said. “It's hard to tell.”
The conversation languished and died after that. No one had any cards or dice – after all, most of them had been living alone, without much use for such things – and there was nothing in the room except the uniform rows of identical cots and the meager belongings they had brought aboard. There was little for them to talk about, and little urge to talk, since they were all strangers to one another, and all accustomed to solitude. The brief feeling of camaraderie engendered by their mutual predicament had been dispelled, at least temporarily, by the discovery of Starkman's peculiarity and the mixed reactions the discovery provoked.
