GrayMan By Jeff Mercer Copyright (c) 1992, 1995 by Jeff Mercer All rights reserved * Permission for limited distribution is granted as long as this document * * remains unchanged and no fee of any kind is charged for access to this * * document. * ============================================================================== Between the angstroms lies an undefined color, the one that we see only with our imaginations and not our eyes. It is the color of a caring husband molesting his young daughter, the shade of cockroach nests executing their lives inside the walls of your home, the pigment of a woman facing her rapist through smudged glass and forgiving him for being. Humanity slumped slowly into awareness long ago, not bursted forth fresh and vigorous as some believe. Did the world exist before we did? Perhaps not as we know it. Perception changes things as much as action, as messy linkages of chemical energy try and force order onto existence. A world totally separate from the physical is created and molded, existing only as information. Our minds, our culture, our society, all entwined with the brutal face of biology. When was the color first noticeable? Did it exist before we clumsily uplifited ourselves into sentience? And is it growing? * * * Cold and bitter wind strokes the young girl's body gently, invoking her to shiver. Her clothes are tattered purchases from K-Mart which try valiantly to keep her warm. She is unaware of their efforts, however, as tears squeeze out of her eyes and her lower lip trembles. A sandy-colored cat clings obstinately to the young dogwood tree, its fur ruffled by that chill wind. It meows in a half-satisfied manner as the girl cries. Her mother waits at home, growing angry as the child does not arrive from school at the appointed time. The girl feels fear and sickness tickling at her insides. "Pleeeaaaaassse come down!" she begs the cat, feeling the warmth of her tears on her dark brown cheeks. She shouldn't have pursued the animal at all when she saw it, but the image of curling up in a lumpy but familiar bed with a warm, furry purring ball had brought a rare feeling... happiness. Now the momentary warmth had fled and she feels only frustration and creeping desolation. She sobs, imagining her mother's angry, coarse voice and the lonely bedroom with its pathetic collection of hand drawings distributed against the dirty walls. "Meeoowwr," murmurs the cat, content in its perceived safety. The icy breeze seems to suddenly snap through the young girl and she gasps, stinging pain running through her flesh. But as she staggers in surprise, a gentle hand steadies her. She gasps again, for no one had been around on the cold street only a moment ago. "Hello," the young man says softly. His hair is long and slightly greasy looking, pale as bleached concrete. His body is broad and thick, a bulky and heavy-set form. The girl is disoriented as she notices his eyes are pale, an off-white that seems slightly luminous. "Oh!" the girl cries in surprise while she takes in the man's appearance in one quick breath. She feels afraid, tensed and ready to run, but the man makes no threatening moves. "Do you want the cat?" the stranger asks her, as gentle as a butterfly. Feeling numb and waverly, she nods quickly. The man smiles slightly and then walks under the dogwood, looking up at the scruffy cat that glares back at him. The cat arches its back, then leaps suddenly into the man's arms, hissing. "Oh! Don't hurt him!" the girl cries, suddenly afraid. The man's hands are so large, holding the squirming feline. She easily envisions those hands twisting, bones crackling and the cat screaming. She has no reason to think of such a thing, yet she does. The stranger holds the cat firmly, then kneels in front of the girl, the cold, hard ground jabbing at his knees. He hands her the cat carefully, making sure she has gripped the suddenly purring animal properly. Blinking in disbelief, the girl feels the delicious warmth of the small body against her chest, its body vibrating. "Ann," the man says, "do you know why I did this for you?" The young black girl shakes her head. "Well, remember this particular event, and someday you will," the man says carefully. He pats the cat on the head, then stands. He bends over slightly to kiss the girl on her forehead. His lips feel dry and sandy against her smooth flesh. Then the wind snaps again and she has to squeeze her lids shut in its teeth, eyes tearing. Of course, when she opens them again, the man is gone. Only after she is home, in her bed, buttocks still stinging from her punishment, that she realizes he had known her name. She puzzles over this as a sandy-colored lump kneads the pillow by her head and purrs like a thunderstorm. * * * Friday night, youngsters partying all across the city. The mall is racourous and brilliant, shops vying with neon and condescent light for the money of the inhabitants. It's an energy-filled atmosphere that drives students into a frenzy of laughing, playing, and teasing. Faint tendrils of buried anger throb under the tension of so many bodies. The dynamics of human interaction going beyond normal ranges, stirring the soup of tangled emotions. A girl, tight black jeans hugging her ass, struts along with a practiced gait, long brown hair hanging silkily down her back. Pouty breasts bounce slightly under her tight shirt and brushings of lust turn heads to watch her pass. She meets a tall, handsome man near the center of the mall and smiles her cheerful greeting. In a store full of the sharp-edged musk of wicker and incense, someone steps out of the shadows. Dark hair like corroded obsidian, eyes as dark as beetle shells, the figure watches the couple briefly. As their hands entwine and they kiss, he moves through the crowd, a precarious dance of balance with his heavy form. He finds another young woman, red hair and freckles and an almost-pretty face, in front of a Waldenbooks store. "Lisa," the man says, his voice soft as caterpillar's fur, "your fiance is cheating on you. He is going to a movie right now with a very attractive girl who you have never met." The redhead gapes at the man, astonishment, disbelief, and fear beating at each other for control of her face. "You will find them over there," the man continues, gesturing in a quick, fluid motion. "Justin did not realize you were shopping for his birthday present here." Eyes shimmering, the woman looks past the stranger, where she can just barely see the top of her fiance's curly-haired head over the bustling crowd. She senses the stranger move and turns quickly, only to see him blend into the people moving past them, vanishing from sight. Lisa feels very alone and very angry. It's hard to disbelieve something like that when the person who tells you apparently knows so much. A sob catches in her chest and she feels like her heart is crumbling into pieces. After a few moments, she walks towards confrontation. * * * A force of silence like no other, the weight of the cool, clear water encloses Jake (happily married, father of two) in his SCUBA gear as he swims lazily towards the dark opening of the underwater caverns. A murky burbling noise thrums through the depths as exhaled gases vent towards the surface. As Jake enters the caverns that he has never been in before, a cross- legged figure floats behind him, navy-gray hair streaming behind it in slow-motion. As insubstantial as the ripples on the surface, the floating man slowly examines the dark entrance, than washes into the rocky tunnel after the diver. Silent blackness hugs Jake. His tightly sealed underwater light casts a chalky beam through the cold liquid, spotlighting the twisted, knobbed twistings of the cave's walls. He swims at an almost brisk pace, twisting and turning as he explores his surroundings, an underwater rubberneck. He never sees the cross-legged man following him. The excitement of his first time in a cavern, of the risk he takes, let slip through the impossibility that stays just at the edge of the blurred light's beam. Eventually, Jake realizes he is lost. His crudely drawn, plastic-sealed map is not reliable after all. The controvulted rockways are unfathomably dark except for the slowly dimming beam of quartz light that the diver wields. Panic apprehends him, stealing precious oxygen as he begins to pant in fear. The floating, cross-legged man watches in static interest. His skin is pasty gray, eyes like scratched steel ball-bearings. Jake doesn't notice the apparition until the foggy beam sweeps across the man's expressionless face. Too terrified to think how this man could be here, with nothing but jeans on, Jake propels himself forward. The strange man wavers and scatters as the panicked divers passing disturbs the cold water where the figure floats. Jake freezes up, and turns slowly. The man remains, his form as solid as the water around the two. Slowly, the thick gray tendrils of his hair moving aimlessly, the stranger plucks Jake's message pad from his belt and presents it. Hopeless finality rolls across Jake's soul. He feels very calm as he writes out his final words to his family. "I love you. I love you more than anything else." He drops the waterproof pad and it dangles loosely from his belt. He swims slowly away from the cross-legged stranger, until they are at opposite ends of the small cavern. They watch each other, stolidly, until Jake passes out. The figure remains for a while afterwards, then follows the last of the exhaled air in its silvery track out of the caves. * * * In Poland, the skies are distantly warm, the air slightly bitter but peppered with the scents of grass and wildflowers. The lands around the old, deserted camp are nearly silent. No one spends much time near Auschwitz. (A faint sobbing, a child's cry, echoes strangely through the air.) The wind tugs gently at a forlorn figure, whispering garbled secrets to him. His off-white hair flutters slightly in the spring breeze, but his luminous eyes are sad, so sad. He stands in the center of the silent, stripped camp. Frantic insects work their lives around him and his heavy-shoed presence. Faint traceries of clouds hang frozen far above in the sky. He sighs, the sound slightly trembling. Walking, through the borders of cement bricks that outline where great ovens belched their evil clouds, into the central compound. Feeling, probing the ground beneath his feet. Bugs scatter and re-group, and a lone hawk soars far overhead, looking for its prey. (The sobbing dwindles for a moment, then returns like a dried, windblown leaf.) Look up from under ground and see him pause far overhead, then look down at you. Swing up and above, and watch the figure fall easily into a lotus position. His eyes close and the wind drifts away. While crickets chirp curiously, he slowly, cautiously sinks into the good, dark earth to join you. Five, ten, twenty feet. He stops. The crying is louder. His eyelids open and he sees the vast, entangled jungle-gym of bones in the mass grave surrounding him. The arthopods and worms long ago finished their task and died to join the soil. Only the slow, gentle cleansing by the earth continues. A hand drifts through the packed soil as if it were thin molasses. Pale fingers meet pale bone. The man strokes the forehead of a tilted skull softly, like a lover. The empty, far-away sobbing that had been calling him slows, and after a few hiccups, stops. He continues to gently caress the skull for a time. With assurances that the peace and quiet will continue for a long, long time, the man slowly drifts upwards, back to the pale open sky. * * * So the cycle goes, plundering the emotional web of humanity for more anger, more hate, more love, more sadness, more envy, more life. And the Grayman trails through it all, watching and learning, sometimes acting. Is he you?