Gray Matters Read Online Free PDF Page B

able to list the memory-files which are the source material for his terror.
    He viewed them originally during his studies of Eastern art. The first he programmed by mistake, thinking he was to see a Cambodian temple dance. Its title, “Monkey-Moon Ceremony,” was misleading. The file actually deals with a ceremonial banquet peculiar to the highland regions of Laos and Cambodia. For the first course, a smooth stone table, several inches thick, with a perfect round aperture cut through the center, is brought into the banquet hall. The guests seat themselves, arranging their robes and bowing with mannered formality. Soon a bronze gong sounds and the servants bring a live monkey, limbs trussed in an attitude of prayer. The monkey is placed under the stone table with the top of his head protruding through the opening in the center. The servants complete their arrangements, providing each guest with a long silver spoon. When all is ready, the host gives a curt nod and his chief retainer unsheathes a short gleaming double-edged sword and, leaning forward, slices off the top of the monkey’s skull as easily as he would uncap a soft-boiled egg. A chattering gibberish continues underneath the table as the dinner guests, each in his turn, sample the monkey’s brain. There is just enough for everyone to have a taste. Happy smiles all around attest to the excellence of the dish. The host claps his hands and calls loudly for the soup.
    The second file Skeets programmed deliberately, after searching through the Index for the correct code key, his curiosity inflamed. He found a Chinese variation of the same culinary eccentricity. A different place-setting is used: along with each set of chopsticks, a small golden mallet is provided. The monkey is brought to the table confined in a cage and passes among the guests, who reach between the bars and give the cowering animal a discreet tap with the mallet. The cage is circulated many times and, as the blows are never strong enough to stun, the monkey continues to voice his complaints in a high-pitched wail which greatly amuses the worthy Oriental gentlemen.
    At last it is over. The dazed monkey is removed from the cage, a sharp knife skins away his scalp, and the shattered skull is picked apart piece by piece in a manner which reminds Skeets of the way he used to deal with hard-boiled eggs.
    It is this similarity to eating eggs that bothers Skeets. He remembers his mother serving them to him at breakfast, standing upright in little painted cups. He dipped fingers of buttered toast into the yolk and ate the whites with his baby spoon. When he finished, the hollow shell looked clean and bleached, like a skull. He mentions this on the auditing report as a prelude to his dream.
    The dream itself is quite simple. Skeets is looking through the scanner. He sees an Amco-pak maintenance van approaching down the aisle, silently gliding past the anonymous pale-blue façade of the Depository. The machine stops in front of his deposit drawer and removes his cranial container without a word. Somehow, Skeets is able to watch through the scanner as the Amco-pak carries him out of the Sector into a region which is totally unfamiliar.
    A set of stainless-steel doors slide open and Skeets is brought into a large chamber and set on a feast table in front of twelve jolly diners, all of whom look like Humpty Dumpty. They are talking Chinese! The Amco-pak opens the lid of the cranial container and, without further ceremony, the bizarre Mother Goose figures proceed to dip slices of buttered toast into poor Skeets’ frontal lobe. “Yum-yum,” they cry, in Nanking dialect. Skeets watches it all until there is nothing left of him but a few stray crumbs of gray matter floating on the oily surface of the electrolyte solution. He has had this dream at least once a week for the last fifty years.

2. Pupa
    T HE AISLES ARE QUIET . Only the most determined residents still tune to their scanners, waiting patiently for