Punktown: Shades of Grey (23 page)

“Orangu-what?”

“An extinct species of earth primate. It’s in good condition considering they died out, oh, hundreds of years ago, I’d say.”

The skeleton stood in a corner, dusty webs strewn between the ribs and long arms. The
skull made Griffin think
of a dog.

“Impressive fangs,” he noted. “Was it a carnivore?”

“I don’t believe so. It is a beauty, though, isn’t it?”

Griffin nodded slowly. “Yes. I think I like it.”

Back in his lab, Griffin sawed the tip off one of the orangutan fingers. While he only needed a small piece, he had decided against asking the shopkeeper to compromise the integrity of the rare specimen. He felt guilty for doing so himself, but the skeleton had appealed to him—something seemed right about the idea of fixing that long black hair to an ape’s frame.

The fingertip was placed in a small groaning container where it was pulverized before being immersed in a tube of foamy green
gel which
then was converted into a molecular mist and funneled into The Womb. Griffin pecked hastily at his keyboard.

The cameras refused to cooperate, the image on the screen crumbling into static, winking like a strobe. Whatever was in the adjacent chamber, it was larger and darker than before.

««—»»

The room smelled like old apples, its low ceiling stained brown from water leaks; a vent in one wall was rattling, the sound of a fan distant in an air duct, squeaking. A fly as big as a watermelon lay dead on its back on the battered kitchen table—the centerpiece in a
room which
was otherwise unadorned. Griffin paced, smoking, and started when the door opened. A gaunt Hispanic man in a long
snake skin
coat whisked in.

“Okay, so you’re the guy who wants a brain, right?” The man seemed impatient.

I don’t like this neighborhood. I don’t like this lout, but what else am I to do?

“Yes, a brain, yes—preferably an Earthling. As fresh as possible.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure you don’t want a whole body? My hombre at the morgue, he gets some nice chicks in there. Real young ones too…”

Griffin shuddered. He was glad for the gun beneath his
wind breaker
.

“No, no thank you. A brain is all I need. Um, you’re sure you’re not going to kill someone for this…I wouldn’t want any part of that.”

“Kill somebody? Not for what
you’re
paying me.” The man snickered.

««—»»

60% white matter…dendritic branchlet…glial cells…diencephalon…cerebral cortex…

The brain came from a four-year-old boy who had been strangled by his stepfather. Griffin verified this by buying a newspaper. The brain-stage of the operation proved so meticulous that he stayed up all night processing and infusing the matter. Too tired to work the next morning, he called in sick. Besides, he was too excited to leave the creature alone.

Over the weekend, he completed an air-based nutrition system along with the time-release administration of energy beams. That solved the sustenance matter. The thing in the sealed room was responding nicely, according to the functions readouts. If only he could get the cameras to work as well as the more complicated, more crucial apparatus, but replacing them would not be easy, due to their in-wall locations—it would call for workmen, renovators, and he couldn’t allow his creation to be seen by them.

Griffin sat with his face close to the hissing screen. He saw the shadowy figure stand, saw it take its first steps, watched as its hands explored the empty walls. How much of it was shadow, and how much was hair, he could not tell.

“I’m afraid I have to get to bed now,” Griffin spoke into his mic.

The thing looked up at the ceiling of The Womb, where the speaker was. The eyes were working fine, as far as it could be determined.

“Pleasant dreams,” Griffin whispered.

««—»»

Trembling weeds of light ran from the bottom of the screen to the top. The image was only black and white now as the vid-system continued on its course of betrayal. Griffin fretted, considered calling that fellow who had provided the brain; perhaps he could arrange for some zip-lipped workers to tear into the walls to replace the cameras, but Griffin really did not want to resort to dealing with him again.

One might wonder why Griffin did not simply open the heavy pressure-sealed door and go into The Womb to set up a new camera… Well, the creature, still in a developmental stage, required stringently controlled atmospheric
conditions which would have been deleteriously compromised
were such a course taken. It was unfortunate that the limited space at Griffin’s disposal did not allow for an airlock between the lab and the all-important chamber.

Griffin flopped onto the love seat in the inconsequential living room—sat next to the skeleton of the
orangutan which
was propped there.

It’s not fair.

He picked up the newspaper and paged through it halfheartedly. There had been another riot in the Indonesian neighborhood—more effigy burning, more looting, more cars torched. Belly Girl, a corporation-manufactured teen singing starlet—thrust upon the masses like soda bottles packed with flesh—had died in a sadomasochistic mishap. The Paxton Antiquarian Museum was going to be displaying the brain of Reikon Yoshizawa for the next three weeks.

Reikon Yoshizawa!

The paper rattled in Griffin’s hands. Yoshizawa had been one of the great minds of the last century—a philosopher, an historian, an explorer,
an
inventor. He had risen to revered status as a diplomatic presence but was assassinated while attempting to mend a civil war on some far and ravaged world. Griffin tossed down the paper, turned and spoke to the ape skeleton, “Reikon Yoshizawa…”

He went to the lab, gazed at the screen, at the blurry hair-draped figure. It was pacing, much as he was known to do.

“Hungry?” Griffin spoke into the mic.

The creature looked up as if to find the source of the invisible talker, while Griffin inserted a measure of green powdered nutrient mix into a dispensing
chute which
infused the substance into the filmy air of the chamber.

“I’m off to work,” Griffin said.

Did the creature make a sound back or was it only the groaning of the steam ducts?

««—»»

The Paxton Antiquarian Museum, situated in a better part of town, was an impressive structure. It conjured an ancient castle, but for the central verdigris dome and the balcony where a succession of holographic historical figures came out to gaze pensively across Punktown.

The inside was a maze of delights—halls of primitive carriages, the bleached carcass of a recovered wooden ship, tomb goods, crockery, glass cases where preserved clothing hovered, Stone Age tools and temple sculptures. Griffin was humming inside.

A tiny hidden camera attached to the side of his sunglasses recorded his visit. Casually, safe behind his shades, he paid particular attention to the layout of the place, trying to discern what security features were in place. Getting in would not be difficult, but getting out…

A certain large circular room set aside for traveling displays contained the Yoshizawa exhibit. The brain floated in a luminous green dome on a stone pedestal mounted on a platform in the center. Holograms, journals under glass, sketches and even an old writing desk ringed the perimeter. A pensive, bluish, life-sized Yoshizawa stood with his arms folded, grinning pleasantly.

Griffin stuck his hands in his jacket so that no one would notice that he was trembling. He stood mere paces from the brain—pale in its serene green liquid. He wanted to reach out and touch the glass but suspected that such an action would trigger alarms. So he stared…for longer than he should have.

He had always thought of his creature as a specimen, a lesser life form, until he saw that piece in the newspaper. True, he had given it some degree of sentience, but it was not until that serendipitous moment when his eyes fell on the article that he considered imbuing his creation with greatness.

Parents always want their children to aspire to
a greatness
that surpasses their own, don’t they? Ha, ha!

««—»»

The creature seemed to be sleeping, huddled on the padded floor, its shaggy black coat pouring down from its limbs and body as if it were melting. Griffin turned up The Womb audio so that he could hear it breathing. He remembered sleeping like that as a boy, curled so tightly, as if he could disappear into himself. Its face, while murky in the defiant vid screen, was notably simian, but wasn’t there some reflected essence of his own? I think I failed to mention that the first ingredient in the creature’s composition had come from Griffin. He did not like to think that it was a matter of vanity…it had simply seemed the inevitable thing to do.

Griffin bent to the microphone and whispered, “Soon we’ll be able to converse. Imagine that? You will be brilliant. I will no longer be your inventor…we will be friends, brothers.”

Griffin ground out his cigarette and turned to go to work.

««—»»

The plan ran smoothly. Following work, Griffin took a shuttle out to the antiquarian museum where he wandered like any other spectator in its depths. Near to closing time, he ducked past the Hall of Mollusks, past a room ranked with primitive armor, into the Burial Customs Suite. He had checked this room on his previous trip and determined that certain objects were not armed with contact-alarms. So, when no one else was in view, he slipped into a side chamber lined with upright coffins of varied size and style and climbed into one that was made of pale wood.

It was just a matter of waiting…time enough for his heart to slow down. A palm-sized silent laser drill had provided a hole for breathing (he regretted having to put a hole in a museum artifact). He peered out through this, saw that the main lights had been shut off. A soft whirring sound came within range and he wondered if it were some type of floor buffer being run by a cleaning crew. A dark shape floated past—a guard robot. That was to be expected.

Griffin was no stranger to claustrophobic situations. His living quarters and the lab were quite confining, and back when he was going through the skin replacement stage of recuperation he had been forced to lie still for weeks on end in this or that Plexiglas tank. Spending two hours in a coffin was not so bad.

Arise and walk. Ha!

The casket door—almost disappointingly—did not creak when opened.

Griffin was quick and quiet in his sneakers but the place seemed suddenly endless as he made his way toward the Yoshizawa exhibit. He could hear the distant hum of a robot echoing gently in the dark. Small auxiliary lights, inconspicuously positioned, provided the only illumination and the place took on an eerie cast. Suits of shadowy armor loomed, stuffed bears and period-dressed mannequins stared from corners.

There was a long dark hall dedicated to an impressive collection of Mahnzee artifacts, close by the room with the brain. There had not been time previously to take in this collection, and while Griffin’s adrenalin was dragging him to his prize, he could not resist just taking a quick peek.

The Mahnzee were an extinct race of humanoid beings from Mahneez. They had died out many centuries before colonists ever planted a flag on the place. No one had ever seen one alive, obviously, but there had been a good number of mummies recovered over the years. Some of these hung in a big glass case, brittle and dehydrated. They were all about four feet high, emaciated, a shriveled grey. Their natural facial features remained a mystery as the Mahnzee had worn symbiotic masks of small living barnacles. The mummies squinted out of their glass, their faces pebbled, blackened,
hideous
. No mummified children had ever been found but there was a case showing petrified larvae the size of cucumbers.