Universe 6 - [Anthology] Read online

  “I can’t go to my assigned shift, sir. I know the girl under that scoop.”

  “Okay then, that leaves Durghemmer. Take it or no more job.”

  Feeling drained, Denton nodded dumbly and left the office.

  Durghemmer could wait. Denton called hospital information and was informed that Donna was still unconscious.

  * * * *

  Denton went to see his only close friend. He took the bus to Glennway Park.

  Donald Armor was a cripple in one sense and completely mobile in another. He had been a pro race-car driver for six years, several times taking national honors. During the final lap of the 1983 Indy 500 (the last one before the race was outlawed), while in second place, Armor’s car spun out and bounced off the car behind it and went into the grandstands, killing five onlookers, maiming four. When gas-cars were banned and electric air-cars instituted in 1986, the authorities made an exception in Armor’s case. He was allowed to drive his own car, the only vehicle on the streets with wheels, because he could drive nothing else. Part of the firewall of the racing car had been ripped loose by the impact of the accident, slashing deep into Armor’s side, partially castrating him on the way and cracking his spine. Doctors could not remove the shred without killing him.

  Armor was a rich man and he had a car built around him, customized to his specifications. It was a small sports car, but with the cockpit, firewall, steering wheel, and dashboard of the original Indy racer. He was now a permanent organ of the vehicle, living in it day and night, unable and unwilling to leave. Until he died. Excreting through a colostomy bag, eating at drive-ins, he was aware of the absurdity of his existence but he considered his predicament appropriate to the society in which he lived.

  Denton sat in the seat next to Armor and, as usual, tried not to look at the thirteen inches of ragged steel protruding from the driver’s right side to run to a ball-joint connecting him with the dashboard. The ball-joint gave him limited freedom within the car.

  Armor had rudimentary use of his scarred and twisted legs, enough to gun the car down the boulevard with a speed and fluidity which never failed to amaze Denton. Armor drove without hesitation or false starts, always twenty miles in excess of the speed limit, knowing that no policeman would give him a ticket. They all knew him. Armor was famous, and he was dying. He had less than a year to live (long-range complications of the accident) but they could never install a generator over a moving car. He was the source of livelihood for some reporters who spent all their time trying to get interviews and photographs of him. He had no comforts; no radio or tape deck or juice dispensers. He didn’t drink and he couldn’t have sex.

  “What’s eating you today, Ron?” Armor asked in a voice like the distant rumble of a semitruck. He was dark and raw-boned and his bushy black brows sprouted alone on a scarred bald head. His hard gray eyes were perpetually lost in the spaces between the white dashes marking the abdomen of the road. “Something’s messing you up,” he said.

  They had been friends since before Armor’s accident. Armor knew Denton almost as well as he knew the road. Denton told him about Donna and his doubts concerning the generator.

  Armor listened without comment. His eyes didn’t leave the road—they rarely did—and his features remained expressionless aside from slight intensifications when the road called for more concentration.

  Denton concluded, “And I can’t bring myself to leave the job. Donna is still in the coma, so I can’t talk to her about it. I almost feel like I’m working against her by continuing there. I know it’s irrational. . . .”

  “What is it you like so much that you can’t quit?”

  “It’s not that. I. . . well, jobs aren’t easy to find.”

  “I know where you can get another job.”

  He eased the car to a halt. They were parked in front of tremmer and fleisher slaughtering/processing. Below the older sign was, newly painted in black: generator annex.

  “My brother Harold works here,” Armor said. He hadn’t turned off the engine. He rarely did. “He remembers you. He can get you a job here. Go on up to the personnel office. That’s where he works. You might like this job better than the other, I imagine.” He turned uncompromising eyes from the hood of the car and looked at Denton with a five-hundred-horsepower gaze.

  “Okay.” Denton shrugged. “Anything you say. I can’t go back to work now anyway.” He opened the car door and got out, feeling his back painfully uncramping after the restriction of the bucket seat. He looked through the open door. Armor was still watching him.

  “I’ll wait here,” Armor said with finality.

  * * * *

  The bright light hurt Denton’s eyes as he followed Harold Armor, brother to Donald, into a barnlike aluminum building labeled slaughterhouse generator annex i.

  Inside, the sibilance of air-conditioners was punctuated with long bestial sighs from dying cattle. There were two long rows of stalls, a bubble of the generator scoop completely enclosing each prostrate steer. The top of each scoop ducted into a thick vitreous cable joining others from adjoining stalls in a network of silvery wire like a spiderweb canopy overhead.

  “Now these cattle here—well, some of ‘em are cows what got old—they have a generator for the whole lot of ‘em, and one compensator for every three animals,” Harold intoned proudly. “And we’ve got some we’ve maintained there at just the right level of decay, you know, for six to eight months. And that’s just plain difficult. They die a lot on us, though. A lot of ‘em dying of old age. Most of ‘em we bleed to death.”

  “You bleed them?” Denton was unable to conceal his horror. Seeing Denton’s reaction, Harold stiffened defensively.

  “Damn right we do. How else can we keep them at the right level of decay and still keep them alive long enough to produce? Sure, I know what you’re going to ask. Everyone does when they first come here. The government shut the ASPCA up because of the power shortage. And of course part of your job as compensator here is you’ll have to learn how to adjust their bleeding and feeding so they die at the right speed. It’s a bit more work than at the hospital, where they die for you naturally. But it pays more than at the hospital. All you have to remember is that if they sneak back up on you and recover too much, you either have to bleed them more or feed them less. Sometimes we poison them some too, when they first come here, to get them on their way.”

  Denton stood by one of the cells and observed a fully grown bull with ten-inch horns, massive rib cage rising and falling irregularly, eyes opening and closing and opening and closing. . . .

  “Now that one,” Harold droned, “hasn’t been here but a week and he ain’t used to it yet. Most of them just lay there and forget they’re alive after a few weeks or so. See, you can see marks on the stall where he’s been kicking it and his hoof is bleeding—we’ll have to patch that up, we don’t want him to get an infection. Die too soon that way. You can see he’s going to come along good cuz his coat is gettin’ rough and fur startin’ to come off. . . .”

  The trapped beast looked at Denton with dulled eyes devoid of fear. It was lying on its side, head lolling from the stall opening. Three thick plastic tubes were clamped with immovable iron bands to its sagging neck. The steer seemed to be in transition between instinctual rebellion and capitulation. Intermittently it twitched and lifted its head a few inches, as if trying to recall how to stand.

  * * * *

  From the New York Times review of Ronald Denton’s only play, All Men Are Created Sequels:

  “...like all so-called absurdism, Denton’s play was an inert corpse albeit a charming one. This state of inflexible down beat was probably intentional, and so, like all cadavers, the play began to decay well before the second act, as perhaps it was supposed to. By the end of the second act, the stage was a figurative miasma of putrid flesh, squirming with parasitic irrelevancies. The least Mr. Denton could have done would have been the courtesy of a generator scoop hooked up to the audience so that we could glean something of value
from the affair as the audience died of boredom.”

  * * * *

  Denton was looking out the window, wondering at the gall Armor had exhibited in arranging for him to see the slaughterhouse. He had known—

  Durghemmer interrupted his thoughts.

  “Come here, kid!”

  Denton didn’t want to go around to the other side of the generator. He didn’t want to look at Durghemmer.

  “Comere, boy!”

  Denton sighed and stood up. “Yes?”

  Durghemmer’s face was round and robust. His eyes were bright buttons sewn deep in the hollows over his cheeks. He had a miniature round mouth, a wisp of white hair, and minimal chin. His jowls shook when he laughed. He pointed at Denton with a stubby finger. “You skeered of something, kid?”

  “Shouldn’t you be asleep, Mr. Durghemmer? It’s past nine.”

  “Shouldn’t you be asleep, kid? Sleep?” He laughed shrilly, cowbells filtering through the plastic bell of the scoop. He half sat up, grimaced, fell back.

  Emanuel Durghemmer had come to the hospital three years before, dying of meningitis. He had been too far along for help; they had expected him to die within a week. A generator was immediately placed over him. He went into a month-long coma. When he woke, the needles jumped. According to the meters, he had come a substantial step closer to death by regaining consciousness. And according to hospital legend, he had sat up directly upon awakening from the coma, and laughed. The generator again had registered a drop in life-force and a corresponding gain in entropic energy. Each week for three years Durghemmer had shown signs of being on the verge of death. Always in pain, he delivered more negative energy than any other individual in the hospital. And he had developed a corrosive bedridden manner to counteract the doctors’ bedside manners.

  Denton was disquieted by Durghemmer’s paradoxical joviality. But Denton had two hours left of his shift. He decided to make the most of it, find out what he could.

  Somehow Durghemmer’s attitude made Donna’s imminent death seem ludicrous.

  “You’re wondering, aren’t you?” Durghemmer asked, as if he were still a politician casting rhetoric. “You’re wondering how I stay alive.”

  “No. I don’t give a damn.”

  “But you do. You care for the simplest of reasons. You know you’re going to die someday and you wonder how long you’ll last under the generator and what it will be like watching the needle go up and down. Or maybe—if it’s not you, is it someone else? Someone close to you dying, kid?”

  No surprise that Durghemmer knew. The old parasite had been in the hospital for three years, a record by two and a half years for being under the generator. He could smell death a long way away.

  “All right, but so what?” Denton said impulsively. “So you’re right. It’s girl friend.”

  “She got cancer between the legs?” Hollow laughter reverberated inside the scoop. Lines of mirth on the old man’s face meshed indistinguishably with lines of pain.

  Denton wanted to smash the plastic of the scoop to get at the old politician’s sour mouth with his fist. Instead, he said coolly: “No. She was knifed. I’ve got to see her. I heard she came around for a while this afternoon. Maybe I can . . .” He shrugged. “I’ve got to explain things.”

  “May as well write her off, kid. Nobody but me has ever figured out how to use it. I had training when I was mayor.” He guffawed, coughing phlegm.

  “What did you do to Burt Lemmer?”

  “That kid that resigned? He was a short spit, only on my generator three weeks. Usually takes them at least a month.” He closed his eyes. In a low, tense voice: “You know, sometimes pain sharpens things for you. It kind of wakes you up and makes you see better. You ever notice when your gut hurts and you feel like every sound and sight is too loud or bright for you to stand it? Everything makes you feel sicker because you’re seeing it so well, so clearly. Sometimes people who haven’t done anything with their lives become good painters when they get sick because the hurt makes them look at things. And sometimes—” He drifted off for a full minute, his eyes in limbo. Then he spoke conspiratorially, whispering more to himself than to Denton, “Sometimes I see things in the blossoms of pain. Useful things. Peeks into that other world. I go into it a little ways, then I come back here and I’m on solid ground. And I see these invisible wires connecting each man to the others, like puppet strings all mixed up.”

  Denton had lost interest in the old man’s ramblings. He could see Donna’s eyes smoldering with pain like the red dials of the generator.

  Durghemmer’s generator hummed into life as it began to absorb a flood of negative energy. The old man was tiring. The machine began to chuckle to itself. Durghemmer lay composed, a faint smile lost in the mazelike etchings of his face.

  “Durghemmer,” Denton said, standing. “I’ve got to see that woman. I’ve got to make sure she’s all right. Now look, if I go, would you refrain from calling the nurse when I go out unless it’s an absolute emergency? I’ve got to—”

  “Okay, kid. But you can write off your girl friend. She hasn’t lived long enough to learn. . . .” He had spoken without bothering to open his eyes.

  * * * *

  Denton was alone with Donna; he had bribed the scheduled compensator. He peered through the scoop at her nervously, irrationally afraid that she might already be dead. Her elfin features, unconscious, blinked in and out of shadow with the strobing of the generator lights in the darkened room. Denton checked the dials, rechecked them, found a compensating factor he had missed the first time. He adjusted the intake of the scoop.

  She was dropping. The needles were climbing.

  He flipped on the intercom, walked around to the other side of the bed. “Donna? Can you hear me?” He glanced at the meter. It jumped. She was coming around but it took strength from her to awaken. Maybe talking to her would make her weak, perhaps cause her death, he thought abruptly. Something he should have considered sooner. His heart was a fist pounding the bars of his chest.

  Her eyes opened, silver-blue platinum, metal tarnished with desperation.

  He spoke hastily: “I’m sorry about everything, Donna. I don’t know how you got involved in my problems. . . .” He waved his hands futilely.

  She looked at him without comprehension for a moment, then recognition cleared her eyes.

  “I shouldn’t bother you now,” he added gratuitously, “but I had to talk to you.”

  It came to him that he really had no idea what he wanted to say.

  “Get out of here, Ron . . . you came for yourself, not for me.” Her voice was thin as autumn ice. And like being awakened with ice-water, Denton was shocked into realization: It was true, he had been more worried about his own feelings than hers.

  “You came here to apologize. Big deal. Maybe you should apologize to that Hurzbau kid. I heard that he died. I’m not moralizing. We killed him together.” Her eyes fluttered.

  “Donna?” She was giving up. Her voice trailed off. Get her attention, make her fight her way back. He buzzed for the nurse and shouted, “Donna!” His voice stretched wiry from hysteria.

  She opened her eyes a crack and murmured, “They took a psychological test for you, didn’t they? They tested you and knew you were right for the job.”

  The nurse bustled in then and Denton pressed the green button that lifted the scoop.

  As he left he saw the needles, still rising. Rapaciously, the generator giggled.

  * * * *

  He shuffled with great effort through the halls, two days’ lack of sleep catching up to him. His arms and legs seemed to be growing softer, as if his bones were dissolving. He came to the window overlooking the parking lot. As he expected, Armor was waiting for him below, driving around and around and around without pausing, circling the parking lot in a loop of abeyance.

  Denton left the window. He couldn’t face Armor now. He scuffled down the antiseptic hallways. He fancied that he felt negative energy radiating from him like a dark halo. Th
e penumbra grew darker as he sank deeper into exhaustion. His throat contracted till he could hardly breathe. He had memorized the exact shape of the trickle of blood on Donna’s chin, the last thing that had caught his attention before the nurse had made him leave. It had runneled down from her nose onto her cheek, splitting into forks, a dark lightning bolt. He pictured the fine branchings of red multiplying in the atmosphere around him as if the air were filled with a skein of ethereal blood veins. The red lines connected the spectral orderlies and nurses rushing past, like the wires Durghemmer had described connecting the heads of everyone in the city. Denton walked slowly, plowing through molten wax to Durghemmer’s room.

  “I want to know, Durghemmer, “he said to the old man, as he entered the sterile chamber. “I know you steal the negative energy of the scoop for yourself. I want to know how”

  The old man grinned toothlessly. His gums were cracked and dried, making his mouth into the crumbling battlements of a ruined city. He sat up, and the needles rose again.