Chapter 18: An Interesting Specimen
Outside of the dome, back far enough that from where Naomi stood it looked like a toy, sat a white house. An Endless Ranchian flag flew in front of it. Naomi wondered what the house was doing there, sitting opposite the factory like that. Just beyond the white house, she saw what she thought was a long length of fence. Things moved behind the fence. She tugged on Sammy.
“Look,” she said.
“That’s a house,” he said.
“Yeah, but past the house.”
Sammy squinted into the distance. “That’s where they keep them?” She knew he could see the horses moving back there like ants.
“It makes more sense than locking them in the factory,” she said.
“Nothing here makes sense,” he said.
The white people stopped.
Naomi tried to figure out what they were doing when she realized they were surrounded by trees. Orange balls dotted the branches.
“What are the people doing?” she asked Sammy.
“Besides standing in the orange trees,” he said, “I don’t know.”
“Those are oranges?” she said.
“I think so.” Sammy squinted ahead. “I think there are apple trees, too.”
“Vegetables grow on trees?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he said, “but apples and oranges are fruits.”
“What’s the difference?” she asked.
“I don’t really know.”
The people parted. A big person Naomi had not seen before walked between the lines of people, inspecting each one. He looked at all of them and then approached Naomi and Sammy.
“Must be their leader,” she whispered.
“What do we do?” Sammy asked. His face was streaked with white and his skin was showing under the chalk. The mop strands stuck to his face like shattered cobwebs. Naomi knew she did not look better. She thought about hiding, but the idea of walking on planted white people was too much for her. Plus if the leader had already seen them, hiding would only further interfere with their disguise. And the disguises must have been left in the bathroom for some reason.
So far the gypsy symbol had shown her the right path. She had to trust it. Even though her every nerve vibrated like trees in an oncoming storm, she knew she had to bluff her way to the horses.
“We’re going to have to act like white people,” she said. Sammy nodded.
Naomi bent her back, dropped her shoulders. She slackened her knees. She loosened her face as though she were sitting in class on a spring afternoon nodding off at her desk. Sammy followed her example.
The leader was very much a man. His body was egg-shaped, and he wore a white coat with two square pockets at the height of his hands. He wore a white shirt under the coat, and a little brown tie with a sloppy knot. A pair of glasses hung on a string around his neck, the lenses as big as saucers. Another coat pocket was stitched next to the lapel, and pens poked out from it. A pair of tan pants, so light as to be almost white, floated down from the bottom of the coat. They ended in a pair of dirty white athletic shoes, fixed with frayed laces.
The man’s face reminded Naomi of the full moon. It had features, but they were so faint that they looked like nothing at all. Even his eyes were as small as pebbles. Wispy hair floated around his head, as faint as smoke.
He stopped, eye to eye with Naomi. A damp odor of mold came off him, reminding her of the bathrooms at school.
He gazed at her with his tiny eyes. “What sector are you supposed to be in?” It sounded like a question he was asking himself. Naomi stood as still as possible, which was hard because of the man’s awful breath. He exhaled the question again. “Mnnn, what is your sector?”
His hand went to his pocket and pulled out a tongue depressor.
“Let’s see, here,” he said. He grabbed Naomi’s jaw. It popped open and she stuck out her tongue. She didn’t know what else to do. The man set the depressor on her tongue. He took out a little flashlight, and shined it in her mouth.
He puffed, “Curious.” The depressor moved to the side. “Curious,” he puffed again. She shut her eyes against his breath. It was so bad that she thought she would cry. She didn’t know what to do, so she held her breath. The depressor left her mouth. The flashlight shined in her eye. “So curious,” the man said. The light shifted to the other eye. “Mnnn,” he puffed. Her body rocked backwards.
“Where are you supposed to be?”
She could not take it anymore. “I don’t know, sir,” she exhaled. The man jumped backwards.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I don’t know where we are supposed to be,” she said.
The man brought his glasses up to his face. His pebble eyes leapt out from underneath the lenses, magnified a hundred times, like looking at the moon in a telescope. Red lines slanted all around his pupils like lightning bolts, and in his left eye, there was a red stain like a pool of mud.
“You,” said the man, “you . . . aren’t supposed to talk.”
“I couldn’t help it,” she said.
“This is no good,” said the man. “This is no good at all.” Sammy made a face that expressed the exact thought going through Naomi’s mind: oops.
She took a step back. The smell of the man’s body was enough to make her want to throw up.
“Mnnn,” he said. “Moving on your own, too, I see. Not good at all.”
He grabbed Naomi’s arm. “Do you have a will?” he asked.
“A will. Like who gets my stuff if I die?” she asked, freaking out now.
“Desires. Do you feel any desires?” he said.
“Oh, that kind of will,” she said. She thought of the kiss Sammy planted on her forehead and the horses. She thought about the taste of the tomato, and the green of the apple she saw at the market. But mostly she thought about her dream of the gypsy and how her heart ached to know her father. “Yeah,” she said, “I guess I have desires.”
He looked at her wrist and Naomi could see flakes of skin on top of his smoky head. “Not good,” he said. “You aren’t coded.”
“Coded?” she said. Sammy shook his head.
“We have got to get you pastified and coded. What department are you in?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Mnnn.” The man bent down and looked at Sammy. “Huhhhhhhhh.” He exhaled right under Sammy’s nose. A single tear welled in Sammy’s right eye and trickled down his cheek. “Production, I would think,” the man said. He backed away as to take them both in. “Production gets the new ones. Must have missed the coding. Sometimes things mess up with the coding. No wonder you’re way out here. Just following along, are you? You are not pasty enough. No, not pasty at all. We’ll have to get you to Pastification.”
“What is Pastification?” she said.
“It’s a process I invented,” he said. “The patient is fed paste so as to numb their cerebral cortex. Cutting edge. Could have made a lot on that patent, if it didn’t belong to the paste company.” Like the moon going behind a cloud, he looked like he was thinking about something else. “Oh well, that is neither here nor there. A great thinker can’t worry about money.”
“What’s a patent?” Naomi asked.
“A patent is the right to produce a machine or process or idea. Businesses use the patents to make a machine or a process or an idea, then the other businesses cannot use the machine or process or idea. The first company makes money off selling the machine or process or idea to people or other companies. When you own patents, you have the exclusive right to use the machine or process or idea however you see fit.”
“You own the Pastification patent?” she asked.
“You are a curious one, you are,” he said. “How long ago did you start having desires?” he asked.
“Since I was little, I guess.”
“How curious. And how long ago did you start asking so many questions?” he asked.
“Since I was little,”
she said again.
“You are an interesting specimen,” said the man. “Definitely not pasty enough. I may have to study you.”
The man had begun to sweat in the heat, which only made him smell worse. He took off his glasses and his eyes became pebbles again. He pulled out a handkerchief with stains and bits of things stuck to it. He began to clean his glasses. Then he used the handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his face. Finally he blew his nose into it, turned, and walked away back the way he came.
Sammy said, “Who the heck was that?”
Naomi said, “I think he’s a scientist.”
“Why you say that?” Sammy asked.
The man turned around. “Come along!” he shouted. Naomi and Sammy looked at each other.
“Might as well see where this goes,” said Naomi.
“He smells like an outhouse,” said Sammy. “I hope he isn’t taking us there.”
They followed. The scientist flicked his wrist, revealing a black plastic watch. He said, “Now.”
The field shivered. Dirt shot into the air. Then the ground shifted as plant rows moved around. Bushes took the places where the orange trees had once stood.
“What was that?” said Sammy.
Without looking at him, the scientist answered, “Crop rotation. Paste company holds the patent.”
It occurred to Naomi to ask, “What do you do with all these vegetables?”
“Feed them to horses,” he said. “High in energy. And some we put in the paste.”
“But why does everybody eat paste if there are vegetables?”
“Paste company holds the patent,” said the scientist.
“You patented vegetables?” she said.
“And paste,” he said.
“But why do people eat paste and not vegetables?” she said. “Paste is disgusting.”
“It’s fortified with vitamins,” he said.
“It’s made from horse poop!” she yelled.
“And vegetables. A very complex process. Paste company holds the patent.”
“Patented paste?” she said.
“And vegetables,” he said.
“How did they patent vegetables?”
“The paste company patented it at Town Hall,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
He looked at his watch. “It’s almost time,” he said. He started walking again.
“Look,” Sammy said. He pointed to the plants that had replaced the orange trees. “Strawberries!”
Careful not to step off the path, he pulled some berries off of a bush. He held them in his open palm. There were three.
Just as Mrs. Fitzpatrick had described, the strawberries looked like tiny hearts. The flesh looked ripe and moist, and in a weird way, almost fuzzy. Sprigs of green leaves adorned their tops like little hairdos.
“Open,” he told her. She opened her mouth and he popped a strawberry onto her tongue. She pressed it against the roof of her mouth. Oh, if only there were words to describe the taste of those strawberries! To someone who had eaten paste her entire life, the strawberry was like a dream. Or, better, like waking from a dream into the real world.
Sammy ate one too. A smile crossed his face. “Wow,” he said. He reached inside his jumpsuit and put the last strawberry in his overalls. “For mom,” he said.
“Come along.” The scientist called back to them. “It’s about time.”
Sammy said, “We better follow.”
Naomi chewed the strawberry, tasting the last of its juice. Compared to that one taste of strawberry, she thought, her life had been absolutely boring.