Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg Read Free Book Online Page B

erotic (the stinging kiss of the thorns, her second husband’s playful habit of sharing her with his Great Dane), and if she desires immediate satisfaction, she can dial for an orgasm at any time, night or day.
    Skeets Kalbfleischer prepares for his first date. Centuries before, when he still had hair to comb and teeth to brush, he would have forestalled his nervousness in front of the bathroom mirror, plastering his cowlick down with Vaseline and water, polishing his smile and mentholating his breath. There would have been difficult Windsor knots to be tied and retied until the ends of the unfamiliar four-in-hand hung exactly even; shoes would have to be flawlessly shined; fingernails cleaned; pants pressed—a million trivial details to make the time go faster. But, alone in the eternity of his cranial container, Skeets is without armpits to deodorize or acne to conceal. He is trapped, like the Titans in Tartarus, in a world where time has ceased to exist.
    The blueprints for the Amco-pak series come through without difficulty. Itubi is pleased. The Auditing Commission must be relishing his contrition. Another soul saved. Score another point for technology. Somewhere an unknown calculator adds his name to the list, a cipher among ciphers. Itubi is unconcerned. Let the Auditors enjoy their false triumph; what he wants are the blueprints.
    They are exact detailed plans, reproduced three-dimensionally on the memory-file. The diagrams and scale drawings seem almost to float in Itubi’s consciousness, like models spun from fine glowing wire, a cobweb designed by an electrical engineer. Itubi is able to view the plans in the round; he can study them from any angle, from above, along the sides, underneath. His early training as a machinist (a part of his boyhood he had always resented) now does him yeoman’s service. The complexities of the Amco-pak are easily unraveled. In less than an hour, Itubi has memorized the plans.
    Kalbfleischer? Kalbfleischer? What sort of name is that? Vera Mitlovic is positive it sounds Jewish. A rich American Jew. They were trying to humiliate her. Once before, advised by her Auditor, she underwent not a merge, but a simple memory transfer. It was felt that maternity would be a beneficial experience for Vera (all of her marriages and affairs were barren) and so she experienced prerecorded childbirth. Vera was in labor for over thirty hours, the delivery a nightmare of forceps and clamps. As instruments of torture, not even the racks and wheels of the Inquisition could rival that hideous table with its fiendish straps and stirrups. Now they add insult to injury by preparing this merge with a Jew. Somehow Vera will persevere. She’s lived through worse. It might even prove a diverting novelty, like a Chinese or a black. Certainly, it will be better than being alone.
    Obu Itubi is ready at last. The moment for action has come. Without ending his original transmission, he simultaneously submits three random memory-bank requests. The warning light blinks on and off. Itubi ignores it and activates his communicator antenna. The light is blinking faster now. Itubi opens all circuits. The Memo Center clicks on, a distant humming in his guts. Gyros spinning, feedback eliminator up to full, magnetic relay-transfer switch to the on position, photon oscillator near the danger point. The warning light goes berserk as all systems function and Itubi is alive, alive… .
    Like a prizefight manager at ringside, Auditor Philip Quarrels is hurriedly giving Skeets last-minute advice. He warns the boy of the ephemeral nature of induced memory-merge. Although the phenomenon in many ways resembles a dream, it registers in the conscious mind as actual experience. A sublime process, the Auditor concludes, a commingling of spirits beyond the wildest speculations of all the poets in history. Aside from the miracle of cerebrectomy, it is technology’s finest gift to mankind. Skeets pays little attention to this rhetoric. He