Read Online Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg - Free Book Online

(such as the Compacturon DT9) which might be jettisoned to conserve power; all critical systems require diagnosis for fatigue and potential parts failure. Any breakdown would be disastrous. But Itubi relishes the responsibility of command. After an inert century in the Depository, with the memory-file his only outlet for escape, every small task, each trivial detail, is a source of the most extreme pleasure. Itubi has been reborn. The Amco-pak’s throbbing power center provides a new heartbeat; structural steel tubing his muscles and bones; sleek pneumatic fingers await his discretion; the lucid unblinking scanner stares straight ahead into the unknown.
    Many summers ago, in another lifetime, Vera Mitlovic had been thrown from her horse. The young stableboy who held her while she regained consciousness was as surprised by her passionate kisses as is Skeets when a living titillating tongue interrupts the serious business of resuscitation. The naked girl fastens to him like a lamprey, arms around his neck, lips eagerly nibbling his lifesaving mouth, the tips of her hard wet breasts performing open-heart surgery on his hairless chest. Unlike Skeets, the stableboy had not been without experience and he quickly took full advantage of Vera’s concussive eroticism. But the virgin Boy Scout, for whom even handholding is still a novelty, interprets the girl’s voracity as simple gratitude and attempts to disengage from her embrace as she pulls him down next to her in the cockpit.
    “Hey, it’s okay, I mean, anybody would’ve done the same as me if—”
    Vera stops his protest with her probing tongue. Her clever hands generate waves of goose flesh as she caresses his suntanned shoulders and back. Giddy with excitement, Skeets returns her kisses in gape-jawed approximation of a matinee idol’s wide-screen technique. The girl whimpers with pure animal pleasure. Skeets crosses his legs but Vera, never one for coyness, reaches into his trunks and declares her intentions without saying a word.
    Maintenance and Repair wants a full report. Every year, for almost a century, Center Control has turned down requisitions to replace the outmoded Amco-pak series and this is the inevitable result, a runaway maintenance van. To make matters worse, a decanted resident is on board and an emergency-level power drain has been left unattended in Aisle B. The safety of the entire subdistrict is in jeopardy. Center Control will certainly hear about this.
    Maintenance and Repair does what it can under the circumstances. Although it means calling in machines off regular assignments, three Amco-paks are immediately dispatched to deal with the trouble. A Mark X is sent to Aisle B and two Mark IXs at the outer edge of the subdistrict are ordered to intercept the runaway. The fugitive Amco-pak is under scanner surveillance, a computer plots its probable course, and the twin Mark IXs wait in ambush, instructed to proceed cautiously and not imperil the captive cerebromorph.
    The folds of the mainsail enclose the lovers like a tent. Sunlight glows through the Dacron and, within the radiant cocoon, Skeets and Vera lie entwined like caterpillars, tasting each other’s breath. A stormy petrel perches on the port gunwale, intrigued by the mysterious rocking motion of the boat. All around, the sea is gently rolling, yet, every few minutes the frail sloop will lurch and pitch as if tossed by a violent gale.
    Today Skeets has earned another merit badge, one not awarded by the Boy Scouts. The glazed look in Vera’s eyes is his citation, her sated moans his only testimonial. Nothing in the girl’s actual past can compare with the absolute bliss occasioned by this electronic dream. For in spite of his elaborate boasting afterward in the village tavern, the stableboy had been no better than a hit-and-run artist, parting Vera from her maidenhead with all the style and grace of a Cheyenne brave collecting a victim’s scalp.
    Skeets receives the adulation due any