DUE

  By

  ROBERT REED

  WE REACH HIM TOO LATE, pulling him out of the curing pond, nothing left but a melted body and a pain-twisted face. For a moment or two, we talk about the dead expeditor, how he was good and why he wasn't perfect, and why he killed himself-- because he was imperfect, but noble is why. Then we wash his face and kiss him, as is customary, and I deliver the body to Scrap.

  Our plant manager needs a report, but she doesn't want stories of another suicide. She tells me that she doesn't. So I describe it as an accident, another misstep from the high corundum mesh, and maybe we should repair those railings during the next down cycle. But she doesn't want to hear that, either." No cycles but up. "She is delivering a threat." We're too far behind as it is Jusk."

  I nod. I smile. Then I ask, "When can I have a new expeditor?"

  "Three shifts," she warns. Which means ten shifts, or more. Then she gives me a hard stare, eyes and silence informing me that it would be so lovely if this little problem vanished on its own.

  I step outside.

  Traffic is scarce in the main corridor. I walk exactly as far as I can without leaving home, waving at the passing birth wagons until one pulls off. The driver shows me his cargo, but only one of the newborn is large enough to do the job. I ask what it will take for that big one to be lost during delivery, and the driver says, "I can't." He says, "That's a special rush order, that one."

  A lie, most likely.

  "Wait," I tell him. I go inside, then return with a piece of raw Memory. Memory has no color and very little mass, and of course it is incomplete. It's salvage. That's the only kind of Memory that's ever traded. Laying it flush against his forehead, the driver sighs and grows an erection, then says, "Deal." It's the Memory of one of His long-ago lovers -- a popular commodity. The driver is even willing to help carry the newborn through the closest door, he's so eager. Then I give him a look, asking where he got that Memory.

  "I found it," he says. "I don't remember where."

  "Good," I say.

  My crew is at work. Standing in the main aisle, I can see our entire line -- bug ovens and the furnace; the curing pond and finishers-- and I see the tiny faces that look over at me, curious and eager.

  "Keep working," I tell them. Then, "Thank you."

  With laser shears, I cut the newborn out of its sack. It's a big worker, all right: shiny and slick and stinking of lubricants and newness. I unfold the long, long limbs, then engage its systems. There's no way to be certain what job it is meant to do, but anyone can be anything, if needed. All that matters is that we serve Him.

  I kick the newborn in its smooth crotch.

  With a flutter, its eyes open, absorbing light for the first time.

  "My name is Jusk," I tell it. "I'm your superior. This is my right hand. Shake it with your right hand, please."

  It obeys, without hesitation.

  "Stand," I say. Then after it succeeds, on its first attempt, I tell it, "Walk with me. This is your introductory tour. Pay close attention."

  "I shall."

  "What is my name?"

  "Jusk."

  "On your left is a stack of crates. Look at them. And now look at me. How many crates did you see?"

  "Fifteen."

  "What are the dimensions of the third-largest crate?"

  "Point one by point one by point four standard."

  "Now, without looking, tell me the serial number on the top crate."

  The newborn recites twenty-three digits before I lift my hand, stopping it.

  "Good," I say. "You're integrating nicely."

  The mouth can't yet smile, but I sense pleasure. Pride. "What do you make here?" My new expeditor inquires.

  "Bone."

  Its eyes are simple black discs, yet by some trick of the light, they seem astonished. Or disappointed, perhaps.

  "It's not a glamorous product," I concede, "but bone is vital." What would He be without a skeleton? Without His handsome, most perfect shape? "You'll be my expeditor. That's a critical job. Before you begin, you'll need to find an identity. A name and face, and a body suit."

  It nods.

  "Culture a sense of self," I advise. "My strongest workers have the strongest identities."

  It says nothing.

  "You'll find everything you need in Personnel. Mock-flesh. Eyes. Everything." I watch it for a moment, then add, "Most of us pattern ourselves after someone from His past. A trusted friend, a lover. Whomever. Just as long as it honors Him."

  The newborn is a head taller than I, and strongly built. Simple eyes gaze at my face. At my workers. Everywhere. Then it speaks quietly, warning me, "I'm not supposed to be here. I was intended for another duty."

  "Except you're needed here." I have given these tours to more than a hundred newborns, and none has ever acted disappointed. "Come with me," I tell it. "I want to show you something."

  The stairs and high platform are a blue corundum mesh. The ceiling and distant floor are polished diamond, smooth and lovely, and the walls are a rougher diamond, catching and throwing the light. I point to Personnel, then the back doorway leading to the warehouse, and I name each of the five assembly lines. Every line has its own bug oven, squat and rectangular, the exteriors plated with gold.

  "You're my expeditor," I promise. "You'll feed my oven whatever raw materials it needs."

  "Your expeditor," it repeats.

  "Once you've got your name and face, visit the warehouse. Ask for Old Nicka. He'll show you what else you need to know."

  "How big is this place?"

  "Huge, isn't it?" I love this view. I always have. "It's nearly five thousand standards long, from Assembly to Shipping."

  "Yet this is all so tiny," my expeditor observes. "Compared to Him, this is nothing."

  I look at the faceless face, uncertain how to respond.

  "How many workers?" It asks.

  "Including you and me, five hundred and eleven."

  "And who am I replacing?"

  Newborns never ask that question. They're too grateful to be alive, and the prospect of anything else should be unimaginable.

  "Was it a suicide?" I hear.

  "No. An accident."

  Beyond the eyes is doubt. Clear and undeniable doubt.

  "Why bring up suicide?" I have to ask.

  The tiny, simple mouth seems to almost smile. "I must have overheard something.

  I'm sorry."

  New ears might have heard one of my people whispering, yes.

  "We run a careful clean shop here," I warn it.

  Softly, very softly, it says, "Due."

  "What's that?"

  "My name." With a long delicate finger, it writes Due against its own bright chest, in His language. "That is me."

  "Fine," I allow.

  Gazing clown at my home, and his, Due tells me, "It's surprising. You only make bone, but look how beautiful this is...."

  As if it should be anything else, I think.

  "I think I'll stay," proclaims Due.

  As if any of us, in any large way, has the burden of choice.

  AGES AGO, WHEN the construction teams were erecting our plant, there were plans to include a large chapel where we would have worshipped Him in our spare moments. It would have been a glorious chamber filled with inspiring Memories free for the touching, plus likenesses of His family and trusted followers. But according to legend, a sudden decree put an end to that indulgence. Instead of a chapel, the workers were told to build a fifth assembly line, increasing the production of bone by a long ways. And what's more, every existing chapel inside older plants were to be converted immediately, their space dedicated to making more of whatever those plants produced.

  Time is critical, the decree tells us.

  Maybe not with its words, but in the meaning that the words carry between them.

  Hurry, He calls to us.

  Hurry.

  "That new man --"

  "Due?"

  "Gorgeous." Mollene giggles, dancing around her work station. "I just wish he'd notice little me!"

  Nothing on or about Mollene is little.

  "So he found himself a pretty face," I say.

  "Not pretty," she warns. "Gorgeous. The whole package is. Handsome and strong... But not too strong...!"

  "Which means?"

  "He's delicious," she purrs, and that from a woman who has tasted more than a few. "Am I right, Tannie? Tell him I'm right!"

  Tannie works across from Mollene. The women are old, nearly as old as this plant, and while they're both durable, it's a durability built in different ways. Tannie is small, quiet and glum, not prone to courage or her partner's hyperbole. Yet even she admits, "He's one of the most beautiful creatures that I've ever seen."

  "I told you, Jusk!" Cackles Mollene.

  "You did. You did."

  The women are a good team. A great team, even. When I was made line foreman, I had an inspiration, putting them together at the bug oven's mouth. It takes good hands and balance to handle the freshly made bone, and it takes experience. And nearly two thousand shifts have passed since my inspiration. Much has gone wrong on the line, but nobody's better than Mollene and Tannic when it comes to giving our bone its first look and delicate touch.

  "A glorious, gorgeous man, and he didn't look at me," Mollene sings. "You like to have your looks at me. Don't you, Jusk?"

  Her mock-flesh is old and often-patched. The knees and elbows are worn thin, a band of softness encircles her waist, and her big strong confident hands are shiny where the real Mollene peeks through. Yet even still, she i

s spectacular. Broad thighs and hips serve to carry her central features -- two jungles of shaggy black mock-hair, and between the jungles, a pair of enormous, endlessly vigorous breasts complete with fat nipples that she paints a shouting red at the start of every shift.

  "I love looking at you," I tell the magnificent woman.

  She giggles, and in thanks, gives me a few good bounces.

  As I recall, Mollene fashioned herself around the partial Memory of an early love-- an insatiable older woman from His long-ago youth. By contrast, Tannie based herself on the wife of one of His current deputies -- the kind of woman who has said perhaps five words to Him in His life, if that.

  But of course everyone is important to Him.

  He treasures every face, no matter how small the person behind it.

  As I think, a sheet of hot white bone emerges from the oven, built of fibers and resins and a maze of finger-thick pores. Together, in a single motion, the women lift the bone and place it gently, gently onto the aerogel belt. It looks like perfect bone, at first glance. Mollene lifts a laser pen, ready to sign her name where it won't be too obvious. Every worker does it; a signature is a harmless way to leave a trace of yourself. But she pauses, noticing several coagulated masses of bugs clinging to the far side. To Tannie's side. Each mass looks like a drop of honey -- a gooey golden substance that I've seen only in His memories -- but unlike honey, the clusters are hard as jewels, and in a glancing fashion alive.

  "How's the bone?" Mollene calls out.

  Tannie is prying off the bugs. Sometimes they're just stragglers, and the bone beneath is fine. Is perfect. "It looks all right," says the old woman. But then she touches it, and shudders, jerking back her hand in pain.

  "What is it?" I ask.

  Tannie cradles the hand with its mate, her tiny brown eyes staring off into the distance. "The bone's bad," she says. "Something's wrong... In the oven..."

  Mollene curses enough for three people, and with a relentless strength, she jerks that sheet of bone off the belt, getting beneath it and carrying it to the pallet where she's been stacking Scrap, her substantial ass jiggling in time to her quick steps.

  I take her place, for the moment.

  The next bone is even worse. Instead of a seamless snowy white, it's a pissy yellow, and the pores are more like out-and-out holes. Something's very wrong in the bug oven. Which isn't new news, of course. Our plant is more than ten thousand shifts old, and over time these bugs acquire mutations. Subtle failures of control. And a nasty tendency toward laziness.

  With an iridium hammer, I smack the emergency kill switch.

  Diamond chains and matching gears come to a grudging halt.

  What next? I wonder.

  Maintenance should be told -- that's policy -- but Maintenance means slow solutions and acidic, accusing questions.

  Hanging beside the oven are a suit and helmet and boots. Each is made from antigen-free mock-bone. That's how we fool the oven and its bugs. And they have to be fooled, or they'll assume that an intruder is just another raw material -- a collection of soulless atoms waiting to be gnawed to nothingness, one atom at a time.

  Bugs can't recognize a helping hand.

  They're stupid, and dangerous, and I despise them.

  Mollene returns while I'm dressing. With her voice and a touch, she tells me "Darling, please be careful."

  You don't rise to foreman without knowing caution, at least now and then.

  The oven doors are gold-faced bone, heavy and slick. The chamber beyond is furiously hot and singing with bugs. Most of the mindless bastards are too small to see. Bristling with jointed arms and bucky-tube mouths, they build perfect fibers of proteins and plastics, ceramics and shape-memory metals. Other bugs larger by a thousandfold, knit the fibers together. Then the largest few extrude the resins that finish the bone, creating a simple perfect and wondrously strong skeleton worthy of Him.

  Duty grabs me, forcing me deeper into the oven.

  The closest sheet of new bone is gray-black and brittle, its corner shattering with a touch of my gloved hand.

  I crawl beneath the bone, then look up.

  Clinging to the oven's ceiling, to one of the oven's bug-wombs, is some sort of phage, round and jeweled with spikes and sucking mouth parts. Climbing onto the diamond belt, I reach high with one hand. But as I grab the phage, it strikes back, a stream of brownish fluid rolling thick down my arm, making it taste wrong. Making it seem dangerous.

  The oven panics, marshaling every defense against the intruder.

  My arm is the intruder.

  I wrench the phage loose, then I'm running in a cowardly stoop, fleeing across a dozen standards of tangled and rasping bug heaven.

  My suit is pierced. A burning begins on my hand and forearm, then the pain falls to nothing in the most terrible way. Glancing down, I see a ragged stump that's being gnawed shorter by the instant, an army of tiny sparkling flecks trying to kill me.

  The phage lies on the floor behind me.

  Using my good hand, I grab it. But more of that damned juice leaks out splattering wildly, the bugs launching a second assault, happily gnawing away my final hand.

  I have nothing left to hold with.

  The phage drops in front of me, and with more luck than skill, I kick it sending it flying through a gap in the doorway. Then I stagger out after it -- what is left of me -- my arms shrunk to wagging stumps and my helmet half-digested. But I see Mollene standing in the golden light, waiting for me with those lovely breasts; and if I wasn't half-dead and repulsive, I would kiss her breasts. And I'd kiss Tannie's tiny ones. That's how good and how awful I feel.

  Poor Jusk, I tell myself.

  Nearly murdered, and desperate for the saving taste of love...!

  "You'll like these arms," the man promises, not caring the slightest about what I like or don't like. "They're good arms, mostly."

  I don't know him. He wears extra-thick flesh like everyone in Maintenance, and a solid broad face, and judging by the smooth, unworn condition of his hands, he's very young. A novice, at best. No one else is free to work on me, what with the bug oven damaged and nobody sure how bad it is.

  "How do the arms feel?"

  "Wrong," I admit.

  "Lift them. And again." His careful adjustments make everything worse. "Now once more. Is that better?"

  "Much," I lie.

  He seems satisfied. "Yeah, they're good arms. We didn't need to refurbish them all that much."

  "What's important is you," says another voice. A tense, acidic voice. Stepping into view, the plant manager conjures up a look of haggard concern. To the maintenance man, she says, "They need help at the oven."

  He makes a grateful retreat.

  I gesture with my tight arms. "What do we know?"

  "About the phage? It was built for sabotage." She speaks in a confidential tone admitting the obvious. "Officially, we're reporting it as a contaminate from outside. The sloppiest bug ovens are making some free-ranging parasites...."

  "Why lie?"

  "Do you want to deal with Security troops? Do you, Jusk?"

  The obvious occurs to me: Who's in the best position to sabotage a bug oven? Its line foreman, of course.

  She watches as I flex my new arms, then she steps close to me, using a spare tool to make her own adjustments. I forgot that she began in Maintenance, back in that remote era when the plant was new. Her face belongs to His mother t a strong handsome face that was popular in the early shifts but isn't seen much anymore. She looks young, exactly the same as she looked when He saw her as a young boy, complete with the wise sparkle in the pale brown eyes.

  Leaning closer, her mouth to my ear, she whispers, "That new man. How exactly did you find him?" I tell, in brief.

  "Due? Due?" She keeps saying the name, softer and softer. Then finally, without hope, she asks, "Do you know where that wagon was taking him?"

  "No."

  The wise eyes are distant. Who can she contact, in confidence, who might actually know something? Who can help us without Security finding out that we're involved in an unthinkable crime?

  Again, I lift my arms. "They feel fine now. Thanks."

  Once more, she says, "Due?"

  "Good arms," I say, for lack of better.

  Then she looks at me, asking, "You know where they came from, don't you?"

  From the recent suicide, sure. But I was rather hoping to get away without having to mention that.

  I am Jusk.

 

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