Halfway Human Read online

  The blands were beginning to come into the refectory for lunch, and we were pressed into service carrying huge pots of food out to serve them. It wasn’t till the last one left that we got to sit down ourselves and eat. When we came back into the kitchen afterwards, I saw all the dishes stacked dirty on the counter again, and groaned.

  “What did you think, that they were going to stay clean all day?” Hyper said.

  It went faster this time, since I knew the techniques, though I still didn’t do them to Hyper’s satisfaction. The dishes from the humans’ table upstairs were much more complicated this time—we had not only china, but silver, wood, crystal, and basketry to clean. Each material had to be handled in a special way. By the end of the day, I had learned more about dish care from Hyper than I had thought it was possible to know.

  I stayed on the dishwashing detail for five days, until I could do it in my sleep. On the last day, Hyper’s punishment was up, and I was left alone. By doubling my pace, I was able to accomplish the same amount of work it had taken two of us to do before. At the end I was exhausted, but the supervisor was impressed.

  “You’re a good worker, Tedla,” she said.

  I felt quite pleased with myself until the supervisor left and one of the older kitchen blands pulled me aside.

  “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again,” it said.

  Astonished, I said, “Why not?”

  “They’ll start to think it’s a one-bland job, and expect the rest of us to do it all the time.”

  I realized the sense in that. I had been so intent on pleasing the humans, I had forgotten who my real common interests lay with. The humans had all the power over me, but none of them would ever be my friends. At first, it was a bitter thought.

  When my five days of dishwashing were up, I was rotated to cook’s assistant, and I learned all about washing, peeling, and chopping vegetables, trimming meat, stirring and mixing, and all the other tedious jobs the cooks didn’t like to do. But what I was really learning was how to be a bland. I learned to slow my pace and cast down my eyes when humans were watching. I learned not to answer when humans spoke, unless it was a direct question, and then to answer in as few syllables as I could. But I also learned that the blands were an interlocked team, and if one of us sloughed off, all of us would suffer. We worked hard even when the humans weren’t there—in fact, especially when they weren’t there. We weren’t doing it for them, we were doing it for each other.

  There were some in my class of newbies who had a hard time adjusting. One, named Tick, was petulant and rebellious, and kept arguing with the supervisors. “Why should I do what they say?” it would tell us in the roundroom, when all we wanted was to sleep. “Why should we have to haul the garbage while they laze around all day?” After a week, when it became clear that Tick was not growing reconciled, they began to take it away for medical treatments. The next time I saw Tick, I recognized in its face the docile indifference of the tranquilizer drug they had given me. But unlike me, they didn’t stop medicating Tick after the first injection. They kept it drugged for weeks on end, and after a while it grew listless and stupid as well as content. Soon we all noticed that Tick was too easily confused to keep up with the training. Shortly after, it disappeared from our roundroom.

  “We decided that Tick would be happier somewhere else,” one of the supervisors explained.

  We never talked about it in the roundroom, but we all got the message. Strangely, though, I never imagined that the change in Tick was anything more than the speeding up of a natural process. I firmly believed that the same thing would be happening to the rest of us before long, as the neuter neurochemicals faded our initiative and leached away our ability to learn. Tick’s vacant stare had only been a harbinger of things to come. Of course the thought frightened me. I kept a close watch on myself and my age mates, trying to catch the first signs of the dumbing.

  I can see what you want to ask; Capellans think so individualistically. The answer is no, it never occurred to me to attempt escape. What would I have done if I had gotten away? In a few months, I knew I would be incapable of living on my own; I would need humans to take care of me. They were my only security. I had to learn to please them.

  In my mind, I was going through a process I can only describe as withdrawing from humanity. It was a relief, in a way. A bland’s life was so much more predictable than a human’s. I could count on being housed, fed, and clothed, and all I would have to give in return would be work and obedience. I would never again have to exert myself to do something beyond my abilities. I would never have to be worried or frightened. I would never have to justify my existence. I could simply turn my back on all the demands and rigors of humanity.

  For the first month and more they rotated us newbies through the more menial jobs, so we would learn good work habits and grow accustomed to the routine. After the kitchen, they transferred me to Maintenance. There I worked on building repair—painting, revarnishing, caulking—and learned about the mechanical systems like plumbing, electricity, ventilation, recycling. Brice’s naturally had a chapel on the top floor, and I spent one blissful five-day period as gardener’s assistant—watering, repotting, and trimming growing things. I loved being in the chapel, and this was my only chance. As neuters, you see, we didn’t go to chapel because there was no point. We had no gods inside us. That is, we were like animals and plants—part of the overall sacredness of life, but incapable of becoming aware of it. Humans who didn’t search for their gods were often said to become like neuters—unaware, unconscious.

  Too soon, I was transferred to Cleaning. It was then I got to know the human spaces in a way even the humans never knew them—down to every cranny where a dustball could hide. On night shift, we shined brass reliefs on the doors with tiny brushes and polished marble floors till we could see our reflections. By day, we changed the humans’ linen and scrubbed their bathrooms. The hardest part of cleaning was staying out of the humans’ sight. Human space was interwoven with a hidden web of service corridors for us, called bland-runs. In some places, we had peepholes to see whether a human was about; elsewhere, the rooms had infrared detectors. Every suite of human quarters had graydoors to give us access—and escape. To be caught in a human’s space was horribly shaming for us. The whole skill lay in never letting them guess we were there.

  By the end of my introduction to Brice’s, I understood why it took sixty blands to keep a dozen humans comfortable.

  The month of rotations had sorted us out in the supervisors’ minds. They had identified our attitudes and abilities. Our numbers had decreased by five, including Tick. We were now ready for our permanent assignments.

  On the day before the assignments were handed out, I was working in Laundry. One of the newbies in Cleaning came down with a rolling bin of towels and sheets, and whispered to me, “Quee says they’re all meeting in the big vocatory, arguing about who gets which of us.”

  We blands had the means to know virtually everything that went on in human space. We rarely paid any attention, because so little that went on concerned us. This was different.

  “Do you know where I’ll be assigned?” I asked. I was desperately hoping to be trained for gardening.

  My friend shook its head. “We’ll try to find out.”

  By refectory, the whole list of assignments was circulating in whispers around the tables. Quee told me, “You’re going to be a Personal.”

  “What’s a Personal?” I asked.

  “Canto and Laki are Personals,” an older bland told me. I didn’t know either of them well. No one did. They spent more time with the humans than any of us, and seemed to hold themselves a little aloof, with a proud, aristocratic air. I was disappointed, but stoical. Doubtless the humans knew what was best for me.

  The next morning the supervisor read us the list of assignments, and we all pretended to be surprised. There were four of us to be trained as Personals. Only one lucky bland had gotten gardening. I went over to the corner of
the room where the other Personals had gathered near Canto and Laki. They were looking us over critically.

  “What’s a Personal do?” one of the others, a redheaded bland named Mallow, said.

  Laki answered. “When you leave Brice’s you’ll get assigned to a guardian—one of the important humans, like a mattergrave or elector. Your job will be to make that human’s life comfortable.”

  “How?” I said, unable to imagine what a human might need a bland for.

  “You’ll see,” Laki said.

  When the supervisor dismissed us to go to our places, Canto and Laki led the rest of us upstairs to a wide place in the bland-run where some lockers stood. As we stood there, they stripped out of their gray jumpsuits and began to put on layer after intricate layer of clothing from the lockers—underwear, stockings, shirts, pants, coats, cravats, and gloves. We watched, dumbfounded. When they were done, the two of them looked transformed. They were in tailored black uniforms with gold buttons, wide cuffs, and white fabric gloves. The rest of us exchanged glances, unable to imagine how they would perform any work in those costumes. They combed their hair carefully, then led us straight through a graydoor into human space.

  The room we entered was a lounge: beautifully veined lignis walls polished to a sheen by the industrious cleaners, a deep red carpet, two fireplaces with shining fenders and andirons, and upholstered furniture arranged informally for conversation. The room had a snug and woody atmosphere, with opulent glints of metal and glass, and a lingering smell of firesmoke. We newbies, feeling uncomfortably like intruders where we were not meant to be, fidgeted. But Canto and Laki stood by one wall with their hands clasped at their backs, their posture very erect in their elegant uniforms, their faces completely blank. Mallow mimicked them, but looked silly, and we broke out in a nervous giggle. Just then the door opened on silent hinges, and a human entered the room. We crowded together, afraid we would be scolded for getting caught in human space.

  The man who crossed the room to take a look at us was named Supervisor Mondragone. Up to now, we had seen little of him. He was an older man with a strict and critical expression, who always dressed as precisely as a diagram. One by one, he asked our names, studying us as we stared at the floor and fidgeted. At last he sighed. “Dear me,” he said. “What material. We have a long way to go.”

  He raised his voice to the tone humans used when giving us instructions. “You blands are going to have to learn some new rules. As Personals, you are going to be spending a good part of your lives among humans, and you will have to learn the rules of human space. Unlike other blands, you will need to know how to talk to us, and listen to us, and move among us without attracting attention by your neuterish behavior. By the time I’m through with you, I will expect you all to be completely invisible and completely indispensable to your guardians.”

  He turned to Canto and Laki. “Find them some uniforms before bringing them back tomorrow. You know where they’re kept. Teach them how to dress. I’ll need to see some progress in their manners soon.”

  “Yes, sir,” Canto said expressionlessly.

  “You may go to your duties now.”

  The two older blands bowed and left through the human door, as if it belonged to them. We all stared after them.

  “Now,” Supervisor Mondragone said, “let’s start with your carriage.”

  He spent the morning teaching us how to move. “Imagine there is a string attached to the top of your skull, and it’s pulling you toward the ceiling,” he said. We learned to stand without slumping, and walk without shuffling. He made us practice graceful movement, and gave us exercises to do in our own time. We even learned to hold our heads up while humans were near, and cast down only our eyes.

  Shortly before lunch, he took us to the dining room, where Canto and Laki were at work setting the table, and he left. The two blands then took over our instruction, explaining the purposes and placement of all the dishes I had once learned to wash. There were strict rules about where every piece of silver went, and which dishes were used for which course, and how the linen napkins were folded. Each of us practiced by setting a place; then Canto and Laki shooed us away into grayspace, but instructed us to watch the meal carefully through the peephole.

  I had never seen humans eat like this before. Unlike us, they seemed almost as interested in how they ate as what they ate: They held their bodies stiff, handled the eating tools in a particular order, and seemed to be saying ritualized things to each other. Canto and Laki served them from the sideboard, moving silently around the table with the serving dishes and pitchers of drink, always removing used plates or silver, brushing the crumbs from the tablecloth, proferring silver basins to wash in. The point seemed to be to remove all evidence that food had been eaten, and leave only evidence that food remained to eat.

  After the humans left, we came back in, and Canto and Laki discussed what had happened like critics after a performance, dissecting what had gone wrong and right. Things I had not even seen loomed large as mistakes in their eyes: carrying the linen towel on the wrong arm, forgetting to place the candied violets on the jelly mold. I had never dreamed that anyone worried about such things, least of all blands.

  But the most astonishing thing was how they spoke of the humans’ behavior.

  “Supervisor Calder didn’t eat much of the ragout,” Canto said. “Is she still dieting?”

  “I don’t think she likes the fruit-meat combination,” Laki answered. “She didn’t go for the orange duck last week, either.”

  “Do they mind you watching them like that?” I asked nervously.

  “It’s our job to watch them,” Laki said. “How else would we know what they want? If they have to ask for anything, we’ve already failed. That’s the first rule of being a Personal.”

  We were to hear that instruction over and over in the next few months: know what they want before they even want it.

  We ate what was left over in the serving dishes, sitting right there at the humans’ table, though it made us newbies nervous. “We don’t have time to go downstairs,” Laki said. “There’s too much to do.”

  When we finished, I expected to have to clear off the table, but Laki said, “That’s the scullions’ job.” We left the table as it was.

  I had already figured out that Laki was the stricter one, with higher standards. Laki was an attractive bland with curly black hair, pale skin, and dark eyes with long lashes; but it always had a tense and anxious look that kept us from really relaxing. When they decided to split us up, Mallow and I ended up assigned to Laki. I knew we would get a workout.

  Laki led us through the bland-runs to the humans’ private quarters. Now the focus turned from food to clothing. Laki took us into one man’s closet, lined with dozens of different outfits, and explained to us what sort of clothing was appropriate for different occasions. Humans, it seemed, wore different colors and styles depending on the time of day, season of year, purpose of the occasion, and relative status of the others at a gathering. Some outfits were elaborate with sashes, ties, cuffs, collars, and medals; others had a studied simplicity. There were a dozen different types of shoe, hat, belt, and undergarment, all with a different purpose.

  “Why are there so many rules?” I asked, overwhelmed.

  “Because knowledge of the rules shows the quality of the person,” Laki said. “There are plenty of people who don’t pay any attention to what they wear. That just shows they’re not the best class of human, and the others look down on them. Your job is to make sure no one ever looks down on your guardian.”

  Laki demonstrated by choosing a dinner outfit to hang out on a wooden clothes-form in the bedroom. The bland carefully inspected every piece of clothing, and taught us how each material needed a different kind of cleaning, and you couldn’t trust the laundry to get it right without specific instructions. Shoes and metal ornaments needed to be polished before each use. The laundry had delivered a load of freshly cleaned clothes, and Laki taught us how to wrap the
m in scented tissue and fold them for storage in the drawers.

  After we had taken care of one man’s clothing needs, we moved on to a woman’s quarters. The outer clothes were much the same, but the undergarments and “informals,” as Laki called them, were different. When we had arranged her clothes, Laki announced we were done.

  “What about the rest of the humans?” I asked.

  “There’s only four of them with high enough status for a Personal,” Laki said.

  It was the first inkling I had had that even our humans, who seemed so monolithic from downstairs, were divided into ranks.

  We met the other Personals in the bland-run by the lockers, and Canto and Laki argued about how to get all their work done before dinner. In the end they decided Laki would do grooming, and Canto would get uniforms for us and teach us how to wear them. Laki didn’t seem pleased. “You owe me now,” it said to Canto.

  As we headed down the bland-run, Canto told us, “When you’re really a Personal, you’ll have to do grooming three times a day, when your guardian has the time: first thing in the morning, just before dinner, and before bed. They all have different tastes about grooming. Some of them want baths, others want showers. Some use cosmetics. Some want to be shaved twice a day. You have to learn what each human wants.”

  We came to an equipment room where a dozen uniforms were stored, in all their many pieces. We rummaged around till we each found a complete set. Most of them had missing buttons, stains, and ripped seams from hard use. “You’ll have to fix those tonight,” Canto said. “You can’t show up looking like ragamuffins.”

  Canto drilled us in putting on the uniforms, and we practiced walking in them. It felt strange and tight; yet somehow, in the uniforms it was easier to move with the haughty, human air Supervisor Mondragone had taught us that morning.

  “Let me give you some advice,” Canto said to us. “Keep the manners they teach you for human space in human space, and don’t bring them into grayspace. Take them off with the uniform. Otherwise the rest of the blands will think you’re holding yourselves above them, and trying to be human.”