She stopped herself abruptly, and looked at me. "In a way, they're lucky. When we're sad, we carry it around with us forever. Most of us are still dragging around the dead bodies of our past." She looked sad for just the briefest instant, then buried it again under a facade of business-as-usual.
"Come on, this way-"
"Huh?"
She pointed.
Three huge trucks were grumbling slowly into the plaza. The herd began shifting toward them. I thought of cattle heading toward a pasture. The trucks came to a halt., The backs of the trucks opened, and out of each fell a dozen huge bales of... something yellow.
I glanced at Fletcher again.
"Lunch," she explained. "You want some?"
"Huh?"
"Come on." She took my hand and led me through the crowd. It wasn't difficult to push our way through the bodies. I noticed they had a strong rank smell to them and mentioned it casually.
"Herd odor," said Fletcher. "I think that's one of the ways they keep together. After a while, you get so you can find the herd by its scent alone."
We pushed up near one of the bales. It looked like it was made up of big pieces of yellow farfel. It smelled yeasty and buttery. "It's impregnated with vitamins and antibiotics and God knows what else," Fletcher said.
As we watched, the herd members gathered around the bale and began to pull chunks away from it like pieces of bread. They carried their food away with them, not eating until they found a quiet place. Then they sat and chewed quietly. Their expressions remained blank. The entire process was orderly and remarkably quiet.
Some of them sat with their mates or their companions and fed each other with their fingers. I saw a mother feeding her child-at least, I assumed it was her own child; but it might not have been. Two teenage girls shared their meal, giggling. An old man squatted alone and chewed thoughtfully.
A big bearlike man was carrying a piece of the loaf big enough to feed at least a dozen people. Another man came up to him and ripped part of it away. The bearlike man did not protest; in fact, he anchored himself to help rip the piece in half.
There was no hostility or greed or impatience anywhere in the herd. They moved like cattle. They chewed like cattle.
"Is that stuff drugged at all?" I asked.
She shook her head. "Not any more. We tried it once. It only made them crazy. Crazier. They don't need drugs."
One of the cowboys on the back of the truck waved to us then. "Hey, Fletch!" he called. "Are you here again?"
Fletcher grinned and waved back. "Howya doin', Jake?"
"I'm fine," he said. "But you better watch yourself, or your tits'll be hanging out in the sun with the rest of 'em."
Fletch grinned and waved back. "Not till the food gets a little better. I'm not ready to give up my steaks yet."
The cowboy pulled a big chunk off a bale. "Well, here-try it. We've changed the recipe again. Maybe you'll like this enough to join us." He tossed the breadlike mass across to us.
I stepped forward and plucked the stuff out of the air. I turned and offered it to Fletcher. She pulled a smaller piece off the mass and tasted it. "Not bad," she called, "-but it's still not sirloin." She held out the rest of the piece for me to eat; she practically pushed it into my mouth. It was soft, warm, fresh and buttery. And it required just enough chewing to be... pleasant. I took another bite.
"Be careful, Jim." Fletcher took the rest of the loaf away. "That's one of the ways people get started." She handed it to a sad-looking boy who'd been hanging back from the main mass of the feeders. He brightened immediately and scampered off to a deserted place to begin eating. "That's Weepy Willie," she said. "He prefers to beg. God knows what he was like when he was human."
She shook her head sadly. "There are a lot of ways to get sucked in. Mostly, you just get tired of day-to-day living. Just being responsible for yourself can be exhausting sometimes." She stopped and looked at me. "This whole thing is dangerous. It sucks energy. Even studying it is dangerous. Any attention at all we give to it just feeds it. It's a kind of social cancer. It grows and it eats. It turns healthy cells into sick ones-and then the sick cells have to be tended, so more healthy cells have to be exposed. It's a neverending process."
"I've seen the reports," I said.
"There's something else though. Something that hasn't been in the reports-because we don't know what to make of it. That's what I want you to see." Fletcher brushed her dark hair back from her eyes. She looked grim.
I asked, "All right, so when do I see this whatever it is?"
"Not too much longer. But come on, I want you away from the center. It can get a little... overwhelming." She led me back toward our jeep. "You're already a little glassy-eyed."
"Huh?"
"I said- Never mind. Stop here. Tell me a joke."
"Huh?"
"Tell me a joke-" she repeated.
"Um, why did the Chtorran cross the road?"
"Because it was shorter than going around. Tell me one I haven't heard."
"Why-?"
"I'm trying to find out if you're still home. Humor is a good test-it requires intellectual ability. Tell me another."
"Right. Uh, what does a Chtorran do when he wakes up in the morning?"
She shrugged, "What?"
"Says grace."
She chuckled once and nodded. "You're okay." She turned me to face the milling herd.
"All right. Now what?"
"We wait."
We didn't have to wait long. Lunch was over. Now, the herdmembers were beginning to play among themselves. Some of the younger members were playing a loose form of tag. They reminded me of puppies. Run and chase, tumble and wrestle. But they played in silence, only occasionally yipping or barking. There were no words.
The herd was beginning to be more active now. There was more pairing occurring-some of it was sexual, some of it was not. I noticed that the coupling was remarkably casual. There was little regard for age or sex. A middle-aged female was playing with a teenage male. A male who looked about twenty-five was holding hands with a girl about thirteen. There were several homosexual pairs too, both male and female.
But there were other gatherings that looked to be specifically nonsexual. A cluster of youngish children were milling together and babbling at each other, "Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. . . ." Other groups were beginning to form now, clusters of three or five or even more. Several of the bull males were circling the edges of the plaza, herding the straggling members inward.
"It's starting, isn't it?" I said.
"Uh huh."
I watched, fascinated, as the herd began to solidify as a mass. The couples who had been initiating sex play were breaking off now to join the clustering masses. I found it hard to see the herdmembers as people any more. They were ... pink apes. Animals.
I shuddered. I was getting the eeriest feeling. I touched Fletcher's arm. "This is ... weird," I said. "I feel like an alien here. I feel like they're the human race and I'm the outsider."
Fletcher nodded. "I know the feeling."
I didn't let go of her arm. I needed to be touching her. The herd was clustering thicker now. They were becoming a milling compact mass.
"Listen-"
The sound was formless at first. They were murmuring among themselves. Individual voices floated above the rest. But the murmuring was starting to blend now and all the myriad voices were disappearing into an all-pervasive atonal chorus. There was no pattern to it, no sense of harmony or rhythm. Nor even key. It was just a grand and powerful, all-consuming sound. And it was growing.