Expendable

Part XV BEAUTY

My Blindness

It was my face. It was not my face.

I did not know how to look at myself when I wasn't disfigured.

Was I now beautiful? Was I now merely normal?

What would other people think?

What would Jelca think?

It was ridiculous to ask such questions. I refused to be so weak that my self-image depended on others.

But I didn't know how to look at myself. I didn't know how to see myself. I didn't know how to assess myself.

Not that the reflection in the glass was truly Festina Ramos. I was wearing a mask: an invisible mask, but underneath there still lurked my purple "pride."

The real me: damaged… deformed.

But I couldn't see the real me. I didn't know what I was seeing.

A woman with clear brown skin. Strong cheekbones. Green eyes you could actually look at, without your attention being dragged downward in guilty fascination.

I couldn't remember ever looking into my own eyes — not beyond searching for fallen lashes and my few attempts at using kohl.

Were they beautiful eyes? What does it mean to have beautiful eyes?

What does it mean to be beautiful?

Up Revisited

The lark gurgled forward. "Lights off," I said — partly so I could see outside, partly to hide my reflection. Prope and Harque might gaze dotingly on their faces; but I wouldn't.

I refused to think about it. I refused to acknowledge it. I refused to be changed by it.

The glow at the base of the cockpit faded, leaving a dim aftershine still rimmed across my vision. There was nothing outside but blackness — a blackness that bubbled as our jets churned the water. At some point we must have passed out of the airlock into open lake, but I couldn't sense the transition: just a steady motion forward that gradually assumed an upward arc.

Rising out of the waters… born again with a new face.

I dug my fingernails into my bare arm as punishment for such thoughts. How banal can you get? I chided myself.

When the light finally came, it arrived quickly: from a glimmer far over our heads to a diffuse glow, then rapidly looming down on us until we broke through into late afternoon sunshine. Like a jumping trout, the plane shot out of the water then slapped down hard on its belly, not flying fast enough yet to stay airborne.

The impact jarred my teeth together, and Oar gave a yelp; then both of us gasped in unison as our swivel chairs locked into forward-facing positions and the engines kicked in with full jet power. A hammer of acceleration slammed me back with at least five Gs, pressing on me with such ferocity it emptied my brain of all but one thought: This better not rip off the skin.

Water tore away beneath us as the lark skimmed the water surface; then we were climbing at a sharp angle, still accelerating, still crushed back by the force. The pain was worst in my knees — they were propped over the edge of the chair as both my thighs and feet pressed backward, making a straining, two-way stretch. It was only a matter of time before soft tissue tore under the stress… but before that happened, the engines eased and the wrenching ache subsided.

Lightly, I touched my cheek. The skin still seemed in place.

I let myself breathe.

Altitude

Below I could see a modest lake a few kilometers across — not much more than a widening in the long fat river that lazed its way from one horizon to the other. I tried to memorize the look of the area in case I had to come back: in case Tobit made such a nuisance that I had to talk some sense into him. With luck, he would simply retreat into wounded inebriation. He would poison the Morlocks with his rotgut and it would never matter to the world that somewhere under the lake was a dome housing sullen drunkards.

"Festina!" Oar said excitedly. "We are flying!"

"Yes we are."

"Like birds!"

"Yes."

"We are high above the ground!"

"Yes." In fact, we weren't far up at all: enough to clear any slight hill in the prairie, but at a much lower altitude than I was used to flying. For anyone below, the noise of our engines would punish the eardrums; however, there was no one down there but rabbits and gophers. From this vantage point, Melaquin looked pristine — an unspoiled natural world, devoid of messy civilization.

"Turn south," I told the lark. "Set whatever airspeed gives the most distance for the fuel we have. And let's gain some altitude, shall we? There's no point in scaring the animals."

Cruising

The plains rolled away beneath us. Oar had loosened her safety straps for more freedom to delight in the view — to squeal happily as we passed over a stampeding herd of bison or to ask why no river ever ran in a straight line. I responded as politely as I could, but my mind was elsewhere.

What would I say when I met Jelca? What would he say to me?

We had gone on a total of two dates, one real, one virtual. I paid for both.

The real date was the usual thing — four hours of volunteer patrol for the Civilian Protection Office. As Explorers, we were qualified for assignment in a tough neighborhood: tough enough that we got into two separate fights with the same Purpose gang. Like most gangs, they fought fists only; they dreamt of leaving New Earth one day, and were smart enough to know armed violence would ruin their chances. On the other hand, they couldn't ignore Jelca and me on their turf. They mistook my face and his scalp condition as evidence of "alien miscegenation"… genetically impossible, but then, the Purpose didn't ask for a C-level in biology as an entrance requirement.

I considered my evening with Jelca a bonding experience. How can you help but feel closer when you've protected each other's backs in a brawl? And we fought well. Like all civilian volunteers, we had a cloud of sentinel nanites watching that we didn't get in over our heads; but we never needed their help. Jelca had brought an Explorer stun-pistol with some customized enhancements he'd made for the occasion. With that and my kung fu, we held our own. We didn't break heads indiscriminately — at the end of the night, we received a commendation for staying completely within policy — but Jelca and I worked well together. We had a good time. We did something useful and demanding, after which we could smile at each other.

When the action was over, we did not leap into bed. That may be the usual pattern — get blazed on your own adrenaline, then burn off the aftershock of tension and triumph in the age-old way. But Jelca and I were Explorers. Partnering another person through danger touched deep feelings; it seemed cheap to exploit it as a mere stimulant for heavy breathing. Therefore we parted, feeling warm and close, but in control… despite (on my part at least) a ferocious urge to fuck and fuck and fuck until I passed out.

Two weeks passed after that first date. Jelca and I talked often, but made no plans. I wanted to; but I had to wait for him to make the next move. My home planet had an inviolable rule of etiquette: never force yourself on someone twice in a row. If Jelca didn't offer his own invitation, I should quietly accept he had no interest in further developments. Of course, different cultures have different customs; and I agonized whether he might be waiting for me just as I was waiting for him. Perhaps where he came from, women instigated every date… or perhaps whoever started the "courtship" was expected to initiate everything from then on. There's no database summarizing such customs — they're too vague to quantify. So, after many earnest conversations with myself, I (the freshman) timidly asked out Jelca (the senior) a second time.

He said yes.

This time we chose a fantasy walk through a haunted VR forest — a temperate forest, because Jelca said he liked those best. I would have preferred a rainforest like those back home, so I could show off my jungle-girl competence; but since Jelca was a city boy I thought I could still hold my own with him, even if I couldn't tell a sugar maple from a Lanark.

As always with fantasy walks, I had a panicked urge to rip off the interface helm as soon as it began extracting my archetype. Intellectually, I knew the scan only skimmed the surface of my subconscious; it avoided exposing too much of my psyche. Still, I shuddered at the thought of stripping myself spiritually naked in front of Jelca… of my subconscious vomiting up some loathsome dung-smeared monster to be my VR alterego.

Of course, that didn't happen. Fantasy walks are wish fulfillments: daydreams, not nightmares. I materialized in the virtual forest as a ghostly feline… my paws pale and terrible as I held them in front of my eyes, their milky ectoplasm translucent as smoke. My body faded in and out of existence, sometimes invisible, sometimes lethally solid. Strong and elusive, impossible to pin down — the archetype truly was an intimate personal fantasy, a reflection of deep desires. I felt a sexy kind of vulnerability to show myself this way. Not disguised, but revealed.

And Jelca… Jelca appeared before me as a whirlwind — a bodiless force of nature, a black funnel cloud stretching as tall as the trees. He could not talk; but his sound could sweep from the barest whisper to a deafening roar, uprooting giant oaks or slipping through the woods without rustling a leaf.

He excited me.

The programmed session was conventional fare: defeating a cadre of demons who gradually increased in power until we faced The Supreme Evil In Its Lair. It was a blessing my archetype couldn't speak any more than Jelca's; otherwise, I might have spoiled the mood with deprecating comments on the creators' lack of imagination. Without words, however — without the ability to remind each other this was only a simulation — we had no choice but to enter the spirit of the piece, to vanquish our enemies with wind and claw, until the final fiend lay bloody at our feet. Then…

Then…

Then the Supreme Evil's lair turned into a glittering palace; Jelca and I found ourselves in a sumptuous bedroom; the knowledge came into our heads that we could remain as we were or be transformed into the prince and princess we deserved to be. Crassly put, we were invited to celebrate victory with a virtual fuck, either as cat and tornado or human beings. All things were possible. Soft music filtered out of nowhere, the bedsheets pulled themselves back, candles lit themselves, the walls turned to mirrors…

And in that moment, I saw my archetype fully. The mirrors showed a phantom jaguar: evanescent and fierce, pure ghost white… except for a lurid purple disfigurement on the right half of its face.

That was the "fantasy" dredged out of my mind.

That was what Jelca had looked at all night.

I never asked him out again. I avoided him in the halls. I scarcely took an easy breath until he graduated and was posted into space.

Peaks

An hour after our lark had taken off, the southern mountains appeared on the horizon — grassy foothills first, then thickly treed slopes, and finally stony snow-capped peaks. It was a young range, geologically speaking: its crags were sharp, untouched by erosion. Good climbing if you had the right partner…

No. Stop that train of thought. I was tired of bleeding.

Fingering my cheek, I searched for the first landmark Chee and Seele talked about. The lark had been traveling blind, without charts; we could have been several hundred klicks off course. However, I sighted our target after only half an hour flying above the foothills — a steamy area of geysers and hot springs, simmering with enough vapor to be visible for thirty kilometers. After that, the route was easy to follow: up a winding river valley that snaked its way through the foothills and on into the mountains. Within minutes I ordered the plane, "Land wherever you can… as safely as possible."

For once, things went without a hitch. The lark had vertical landing capability; it touched down on grass beside the river we'd been following, only half a klick from the entrance to Chee and Seele's city. Not that we could see the entrance — like everything else on Melaquin, the doorway was hidden — but I was sure we were in the right place.

"This land is strange," Oar said as we clambered out of the cockpit. "It is very tall."

"You've never seen mountains before?" I asked.

"Oh, I have seen many, many mountains," she replied quickly. "I am not such a one who has never seen mountains." She affected an air of blase sophistication, waving her hand dismissively. "I have seen much better mountains than these. Pointier. Snowier. And ones that did not block the light so unpleasantly. These mountains are very gloomy, are they not, Festina?"

I didn't answer. Our landing site was shadowy, when contrasted with our flight in the bright sunshine — we were at ground level now, and the sun was low enough to be blocked by a peak to the west. Still, a little shade didn't mean the place was gloomy… or even very dark. Four nearby peaks still glistened with sun on their snow, filling our valley with a reflected light of heartbreaking quality. The world was clear and quiet: nothing but the murmur of the river and the tick-tick-tick of the lark's engines cooling.

Peace.

For ten seconds.

Then a man strolled out of the forest, wearing nothing but a red tartan kilt.

A human man. An Explorer.

We looked at each other for a long moment. Then we said in unison, "Greetings. I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples…"

We both broke up laughing.

One of the Family

He told me his name was Walton: Explorer Commander Gregorio Walton, but he disliked his given name and hated his rank. At first, I thought he'd become an Explorer because of his face — the most wrinkled face I'd seen on a human, a droopy deep-pile face with the jowls of a basset hound. It was only later I noticed that his fingers were webbed like duck feet. That was what made him expendable; the wrinkles were recent developments, the result of decades on Melaquin without benefit of YouthBoost.

Walton had been here twenty-six years. He was only eighty, but appeared twice that age. His general bearing looked healthy enough, but his webbed hands trembled constantly. I had to force myself not to stare.

He used one of those trembling hands to pat the lark's fuselage. "Nice plane," he said. "Noisy, though."

"You heard it coming?" I asked.

"Long before I saw it," he nodded. "Eyesight's not what it was."

"The lark's made of glass," I said. "Hard to see at the best of times."

He smiled. "I like a woman with tact."

"I have tact too," Oar announced.

"Good for you," Walton said.

"For example," Oar continued, "I will not talk about how ugly you are."

"I appreciate it," Walton answered with a smile.

"So are there others nearby?" I asked, to change the subject.

"I'm the only one who comes outside much," he replied. "Meteorology specialist. Put in a small weather station up the mountain a bit — thermometer, anemometer, simple things like that. I was tinkering with the equipment when I heard your engines." He gave me an appraising look. "Don't suppose you know anything about fuzzy circuits? I've got a glitch in my barometer."

"Sorry," I answered. "I'm a zoology specialist. The best I can do is identify the species if something's been nibbling your wires."

He chuckled. "Maybe I should go back and play with the equipment while there's still some light. Getting close to the big day, and we wouldn't want to launch our ship into the teeth of a blizzard."

"You have a ship ready for launch?"

"Depends who you ask," Walton said. "Some'll tell you it's been ready for months. Others say it needs months more testing. Damned if I know — only aviation I understand is weather balloons."

"Is it…" I paused to think of how to put my question. "Is it a big ship?"

"Don't worry," he replied. "There's room for everyone. Won't be long before you're heading for home."

Walton smiled. I'm sure he expected me to smile back, overjoyed at the prospect of getting off Melaquin. But I wasn't leaving — a murderer couldn't. I tried for a smile anyway, but it didn't fool Walton. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing," I answered quickly. "Just… bothered that I've dropped in at the last moment when the work's nearly all done."

"No one will hold that against you," he assured me. "You're one of us, Ramos. You're an Explorer." He took my hand and gave it a friendly shake. His skin felt grizzled against my fingers. "Welcome to the family," he said. "Whatever hard times you've had on Melaquin, you're not alone anymore."

I smiled… and felt alone anyway. Suddenly, I didn't know why I'd come here. To see other Explorers? To see Jelca? Walton's manner was sincerely warm, but I found I could not return it. Any day now, he'd be leaving. They'd all be leaving.

And what would I have then?

On the Ride Down

Walton gave directions to the city entrance, then headed back to his weather station. I couldn't help feeling I'd disappointed him: I was too clenched to respond to his calm cheerfulness. Still, I was not so numb that I didn't feel a stir of excitement as we left the lark and the river behind. We followed a short trail through pine forest, then came to an open area of rock and gravel, just as Walton described.

A concealed doorway lurked behind a rock outcrop. PRESS PALM HERE was scratched onto the stone. I pressed, and the door opened.

An elevator lay beyond the door. Someone had painted UP and DOWN beside two buttons embedded in the wall. I pressed DOWN.

The elevator began to descend.

"We're here," I said to Oar.

"And there are many fucking Explorers here?"

"I promise they'll treat you kindly."

"They will not whisper about me? They will not look at me as if I am stupid?"

"Walton didn't, did he? And if any of the others do, I'll punch them in the nose."

I smiled, but Oar didn't smile back. It occurred to me I'd barely paid attention to her since we boarded the plane. I had spoken more to the plane than to Oar.

Moving to her, I took her arm and patted her hand. "It'll be all right… really."

"I am scared," she said in a small voice. "I feel strange in my stomach."

"Don't be afraid. Whatever happened between you and Jelca—"

She interrupted. "Will he want to give me his juices again?"

Ouch. "Do you want him to do that?" I asked.

"I am not such a one as needs Explorer juices!" she snapped. "I just do not want him to think I am stupid."

"No one thinks you're—"

"They left without telling me! All of them: Laminir Jelca, Ullis Naar, and my sister Eel. I woke one morning and they were gone. They took Eel with them, but not me."

I studied her for a moment. "You're angry at Eel?"

"She was my sister. She was my sister but she went with the fucking Explorers and left me alone."

"Oar…" I wrapped my arms around her. "You aren't alone now. You're with me. We're friends."

She hugged me, crying, her head on my shoulder. That was how we were standing when the elevator opened… and damned if I didn't try to pull away, for fear Jelca might see us like that.

Oar's grip was too strong for me to escape. Anyway, there was no one waiting on the other side of the door.

Reflections on the City

Beyond the door lay a city.

A city.

Oar's home had been a village; Tobit's a town. Here, in a cavern hollowed out of a mountain, there was space for thousands of buildings, perhaps millions of people.

All glass. All sterile. All empty and sad.

Listen. When you think of a glass city, do you imagine a crystal wonderland, bright-lit and glittering? Or perhaps something more mysterious, a glass labyrinth dreaming in permanent twilight? Then you don't understand the ponderous monotony of it all. No color. No life. No grass, no trees, no gardens. No friendly lizards basking in the plazas, or pigeons strutting across the squares. No smells of the marketplace. No playgrounds. No butterflies.

Nothing but a vast glass graveyard.

I don't know what the League intended on Melaquin. To build a refuge? A zoo? How had those humans of four thousand years ago reacted when they saw this new home? They had food, they had water, they had medicine and artificial skin; they even had obedient AIs to help and teach them. With all those comforts, it would be hard to walk away… but it would also be hard to live here, eternally colorless and odorless.

Or perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps those ancient people filled these streets with music… held dances, played jokes, painted murals on every glass surface. They were finally free from fear and want; their beautiful glass children would never starve down to skeletons, or cough themselves bloody from TB. Those first people might have lived joyously and died in comfortable peace, convinced this was truly a paradise.

That was four thousand years ago: the early ages of what humans call civilization. If those first generations painted these walls, the paint had long since flaked away. If they sang and danced, the tunes were forgotten. Human roots ran shallow on this planet; when the people of flesh died, their works crumbled, leaving only immortal glass.

Glass buildings. Glass children. Children who seemed to make no artworks, no songs, no sloppy messy life.

Was the problem physical… some lack in their glands, something the League left out when making these new versions of humanity? Or was the problem social? When the fear of death was gone, when offspring were rare, did you lose the incentive to achieve something beyond yourself?

I still don't know. Whatever went wrong on Melaquin happened in every settlement on the planet — an astounding thing in itself — and it happened so long ago that no evidence remained of the loss.

All I saw was glass. A glass city.

Oar no doubt thought it beautiful. She too was glass.

Signs

The elevator was set into the outermost wall of the city: a wall of rough-hewn stone, striated with geological layers slanted twenty degrees to the horizontal. I have never liked caves — I can feel the weight of all that rock pressing down on my head — but the cavern was so huge, my misgivings were small. Besides, there were veins of pink quartz, green feldspar, and other tinted minerals deposited through the stone, providing welcome variations in the bleak color scheme.

Another variation was a sign painted in loose black letters on the nearest building:

GREETINGS, SENTIENT BEINGS

WE'RE IN THE CENTRAL SQUARE

WE'LL SHOW THEM WHAT EXPENDABLE MEANS!

"What does that say?" Oar asked.

"It says hello," I told her. "And that we've come to the right place."

"It is a very big place," Oar said, staring out on the forest of towers, domes, and blockhouses.

"Be brave." I gave her a squeeze, telling myself not to feel awkward about touching her "Walton said we should walk to the center now."

It was a long walk; it was a big city. I wondered how many ancient humans had been brought here… certainly not enough to fill the place. After living in grass huts or wattle-and-daub, the people must have been intimidated to have so much space at their disposal. Then again, they were used to living outdoors; maybe with a roof over their heads, they actually felt confined.

Our route led straight down a broad boulevard, its surface smooth white cement. A few buildings had words painted on their walls: KEEP GOING… NO U-TURN… BE PREPARED TO MERGE… the indulgent signs people write to amuse themselves in empty cities. SIGNAL YOUR TURNS… DEER CROSSING… ALL CARS MUST BE RUNNING ELECTRIC…

I didn't translate them for Oar. Some jokes aren't worth explaining.

Dirt

The closer we got to the center, the more dirt I saw. First it was just thin dust on nearby buildings; then bits of grit accumulated at the edge of the boulevard; then spills of grease or electrolyte darkening the pavement.

"This is a filthy place," Oar said with self-satisfaction. "My home would never become so dirty."

"Do you clean your home?" I asked.

"No." Her voice was offended. "Machines attend to such matters."

"This city has the same kind of machines. Otherwise the place would be buried in grime. The Explorers must have kicked up more mess than the systems could handle; either that or my friends have commandeered the cleaning machines for other things." Most likely for spare parts, I thought. Someone like Jelca wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice a janitor-bot in his drive to restore a spaceship.

"So the Explorers make this place dirty?" Oar asked. "Hah! Fucking Explorers."

"Maybe you shouldn't use that phrase," I told her. "You want to get along with the others, don't you?"

"I do not know them yet," she replied. "If they are very stupid, I may want to kick them."

"Please, Oar; you're my friend, and they're my friends. It will make me sad if you pick fights."

"I will not pick fights unless they deserve it." Her tone of voice suggested they would deserve it.

"Oar, if you get jealous that I have other friends—"

"Festina!" shouted a voice behind me.

Jelca.

Changed

He had no hair. Wasn't that strange? Just the bald skull I remembered, covered with the scabby patches that would grow inflamed and bleed if he tried to wear a wig.

For some reason, I had thought he'd have hair. I don't know why — I hadn't said, "Melaquin tech helped me so it must have helped him too." I hadn't thought about it logically at all; I had just assumed Jelca would have hair… that he would be dashing and handsome and muscular.

I had assumed he would be perfect.

He was not perfect; he looked gaunt and twitchy. Jelca had always been thin, but now he looked positively ravaged, as if he hadn't eaten or slept for days. It didn't help that he was wearing a badly-fitted long-sleeved shirt… a shimmery thing of silver fabric that probably came from the local synthesizers: something like spun glass, but a fine enough mesh that it was opaque. I doubted Jelca wore it for the sparkle — more likely it was the only cloth the synthesizers would produce — but the shirt was so glitzily out of place, it looked like voluminous silver lame hung around the bones of an anorexic.

"Festina?" Jelca said.

"Yes."

"You're here too?"

"Yes."

"You've changed."

"Have I?"

"Yes."

He spoke flatly — no grin of welcome for an old friend, or even a courteous smile for a fellow Explorer. Walton had been happier to see me, and Walton was a complete stranger.

Jelca's eyes stared fixedly at my cheek. God knows, I was used to stares, but this one unsettled me. I couldn't read his face. Was he simply surprised? Or was he disappointed with me, maybe even repelled?

I noticed that his hand had dropped onto the stun-pistol holstered at his hip — not a purposeful gesture, I thought, just a reflex, just something he was in the habit of doing. Everything about him seemed as tight as wire.

"You look good," he said at last. It did not sound like a compliment.

"You look good too," I responded immediately.

"You both look very ugly," Oar announced in a loud voice. "And you are so stupid I want to scream."

"So scream," Jelca said. "Who's stopping you?"

"I am too civilized to scream," she answered. "I am very cultured, I have cleared many fields, and I do not—"

"You're Oar," Jelca interrupted, obviously making the connection for the first time.

Oar shrieked. "You recognized ugly Festina but did not recognize me?"

"You all look alike," Jelca shrugged. There was no apology in his voice. "Why are you here?"

"My friend Festina needed my help to come to this place! That is the only reason. She wanted me with her so I came, because she is my friend."

"Friend," Jelca repeated with pointed intonation. "Oh."

My face burned. I wanted to blurt, It isn't what you think… and I hated myself for feeling that way. I hated Jelca too. Why didn't he smile? Why didn't he run forward and sweep me into his arms?

Why didn't he think I was beautiful?

"How's Ullis?" I asked, just for something to say.

"Fine," he said. "Busy. You haven't seen her yet?"

"We just got here. We saw Walton outside."

"Oh. Well." He took his eyes off my face long enough to look at his watch. "It's almost suppertime. I'll show you where the others are."

He still didn't smile; but suddenly he held out a hand to me as if I remained a silly little freshman who'd leap forward at the first opportunity. Maybe I would have. I didn't run to him immediately, but maybe I would have given in after a few seconds, telling myself that this was the start of whatever I wanted.

Who knows?

Before I made up my mind, Oar darted forward and took the offered hand, lacing her fingers with his. Jelca stared at me a moment longer, then shrugged. "This way," he said.

Monstrosity

We walked to the central square. It was a huge space, several hundred meters on each side… and almost completely filled with a giant glass whale.

"The spaceship," Jelca said.

I winced. A spaceship that looked like a whale? And a killer whale at that, an orca, with lines etched into its exterior skin to suggest the usual pattern of black and white coloration. It stood on its tail at the very center of the city, as tall as any nearby skyscraper. Its bulbous body no doubt contained living quarters, engines, and so on, but all of it was glass, glittering with prismatic refractions.

Could it fly? Like any whale, it looked streamlined enough. Still, it was a far cry from Technocracy starships. They were simply long cylinders with a "Sperm head" at the front — an oversized gray sphere that generated the Sperm-field back along the hull. The orca had no such sphere: nothing more than a huge glass parasol sticking out of its snout… as if the whale had a beach umbrella clenched in its teeth.

"So that's our way home," Jelca said.

"You're going into space in a whale?" I asked.

"It's a ship, Festina." His voice flared with hostility. "Why should appearance matter?"

"It doesn't," I answered. "How are you going to get it out of here?"

"There are roof doors." He looked up briefly, then shook his head. "You can't see them from here. Can't see them from outside either. A whole section of the mountain just opens up."

"And off you go in an orca."

I meant to sound lighthearted and teasing, but Jelca didn't take it that way. "The whale was all we had to work with," he snapped. "A remnant of the Melaquin space program, whenever that was. This city has all kinds of ships, each stupider than the last. Birds, bats, insects… even a rabbit, for Christ's sake. The people here didn't care. They scarcely worried about trivialities like aerodynamics, or tradeoffs between weight and strength of materials. Ninety-nine per cent of each ship was built by the city's AI, using League of Peoples technology. Oh no, the AI wouldn't actually build a working starship; but if you ask for a hull as strong as steel and a thousand times lighter, there's no problem with that! So the locals built a whale, probably because it was romantic."

"It is an excellent whale," Oar said approvingly. "I have seen pictures of such animals, but I did not know they were so large."

"It's a ship, that's all," Jelca replied. "And it happens to be the biggest in the city — the only one with enough room to house all the Explorers here." He turned to me. "Sixty-two Explorers now, counting you."

"Sixty-two?"

"And five non-Explorers," he went on, "who haven't got around to dying yet. Admiralty officials who got 'escorted' here — two embezzlers, two addicts, and a pedophile, all of whom the High Council preferred to have disappear rather than go through the messy embarrassment of a trial." He gave me an angry look. "Isn't that great? Getting banished here with the likes of them? The admiral Ullis and I came down with was a total piece of shit… took bribes from a contractor so the guy could keep selling shoddy equipment to the Fleet. God knows if anyone was hurt because of it; the admiral never asked. Never tried to learn what damage he'd done. And the council condemned Ullis and me to the same fate as a man like that!"

I said nothing. Jelca's words sounded like a rehearsed speech: a sore that had festered inside him so long, he was happy to have a new listener to hear. I knew the feeling. On the other hand, it had never occurred to me that most Explorers came to Melaquin in the company of criminals and other genuine undesirables. Somehow, I'd thought the exiles would all be people like Chee — out of control but not vicious. Naive, Ramos, I thought; too quick to romanticize the High Council as tyrants and their victims as heroic political prisoners. No one was as good or as bad as I might like to believe.

"What happened to your admiral?" I asked.

"YouthBoost meltdown," Jelca answered with a shrug. "The usual fate of the scum who are sent here — they're old and fat and ready to fall apart as soon as they're cut off the teat. They keel over and problem solved… except for us Explorers, stuck in this hellhole."

"It is not a hellhole," Oar growled. "Melaquin is an excellent planet!"

"Sure," Jelca said. "Everything a man could want." He gave me a sideways glance. "That's why the council gets away with it, you know… why the League lets them get away with it. To an alien, there's nothing wrong with dropping Explorers on Melaquin; what other planet in the galaxy is better suited for human life? Depositing us here is damned safer than assigning us to explore a subzero ice-world or thousand degree inferno. Melaquin is a paradise for our species. When the council maroons us here, the League probably thinks it's a favor. Forget that we're cut off from civilization, forget that we'll never see our friends and family—"

"Your friends and family are probably very stupid," Oar interrupted. "Festina is very bored with the way you complain and wishes you would talk about something else."

Jelca gave a humorless laugh. "Sorry to bore you, Festina." He turned to Oar. "What do you think Festina would rather talk about?"

"She would rather talk about my stupid sister, Eel."

"What about her?" Jelca asked.

"Where is she?"

"She's your sister," Jelca said. "If you don't know where she is, why should I?" Before Oar could react, he gave her hand an ungentle tug. "Enough talk. I can smell supper and it's making me hungry."

The First Supper

The next few hours were an exhausting jumble.

I met the other Explorers — some familiar to me, but many stranded on Melaquin long before I was drafted into the Fleet.

I let people go through my pack: the candy rations I hadn't yet touched, the entertainment bubbles I'd brought because I had room, the odds and ends of equipment that might be used in the spaceship. There are no words to describe the joy of the female Explorers when they found my first aid kit contained two dozen menstruation swatches.

I told my story: the parts I wanted to tell anyway. I did not describe how Yarrun died; besides, the others were more interested in the lark-plane we'd left outside. One of the older men, a gray-haired Divian named Athelrod, headed out immediately to inspect the craft… on the hunt for spare parts he could cannibalize.

I vacillated between the urge to distance myself from Oar and the desire to keep her in close check. She was the only Melaquin native now in the city, apart from numerous towers of dormant ancestors. All other natives had left years earlier, peeved at some unspecified quarrel with the Explorers. ("You don't want to hear about that," scoffed a woman called Callisto.)

I asked about Chee and Seele. None of the other Explorers had been in the city that long ago, but they'd learned from the glass populace that two "uglies" had flown away in a glass bumblebee.

Lastly, I toured the orca ship. As Walton said, it was close to completion, especially if my lark-plane contained the parts they were looking for. "Then again," said Callisto, "it's been close to completion for the past twenty-eight years."

Or for the past four thousand years — the sticking point was what you required as an acceptable level of safety. No one doubted the ship could successfully take off; the only question was how far it would get. Out of the atmosphere? Certainly. But far enough into space to be rescued by a League vessel? That was the crucial point of debate.

How much food and air would you need to get to the nearest trade lanes? How much fuel would it take? No one knew. So the Explorers had passed their time tinkering: an enhancement here, an increased efficiency there, but no breakthrough so overwhelming that they could state with confidence, "Now we stand a good chance of making it."

Then came Jelca: resourceful, angry Jelca. Like other Explorers, he had received what Tobit called "the tip" — a hint he would soon be marooned on Melaquin and a suggestion of which continent he should choose for a Landing. Jelca hadn't wasted time in brooding or futile attempts at mutiny. Instead, he had taken direct action. While other Explorers reacted to the tip by packing more supplies or personal keepsakes, Jelca had stolen a Sperm-field generator.

Every ship carries two extra generators, in case of malfunction. They are not large as ship equipment goes — black boxes the size of coffins, each weighing two hundred kilos. With the aid of a robot hauler, Jelca smuggled a spare generator out of the engineering hold and into a planetary probe drone. Of course, he had to remove most of the drone's sensing equipment to make room for the generator; but he considered that an unimportant tradeoff. He barely finished the work in time; almost immediately, he and Ullis received orders to escort the bribe-taking admiral on an "investigative mission" to Melaquin.

From that point on, Jelca's theft was easy: he sent out the rigged probe as part of the preliminary survey; and he arranged that the probe landed softly in a spot he could find later. Some time after the Landing, when he had reached Oar's village and heard the looped message about the city in the mountains, Jelca reactivated the probe and flew it south by remote control. He and Ullis still had to travel to the city by foot, but when they got there, the stolen generator was waiting for them.

As easy as that. A Sperm-field generator meant FTL flight — it meant the difference between limping out of the system after five to ten years of relativistic travel, or getting home in two weeks. It was still an engineering challenge to mount the generator on the whale; but with so many Explorers in the city, they had ample brainpower to focus on the problem. They also had an AI here like the one I'd met in Tobit's town: a source of tools and components, even if the AI occasionally decided the Explorers had to manufacture particular pieces of equipment themselves.

Three years had passed since Jelca arrived with the generator; now the ship was ready. Some people talked as if it might take off tomorrow. Others contended the ship needed months of shakedown before departure. Within a few minutes, both camps were appealing to me as a disinterested party: someone who hadn't talked herself hoarse in the go-now-or-wait debates that had dominated every mealtime for a dozen weeks. Before I could say stop, I was barraged with measurements and test results, pages of figures and diagrams which both sides claimed would prove their point…

Then Ullis said, "She's a zoology specialist," and the debaters lost interest in me.

Ullis

Unlike Jelca, Ullis Naar had greeted me warmly when I arrived at the Explorers' mess. She hugged me; she recognized Oar immediately and hugged her too. Since Jelca looked like he wanted to run off and eat by himself, Ullis took me around to meet everyone. "This is Festina Ramos and yes, she's one of us even if she looks gorgeous."

(I had explained about the artificial skin. She said she was happy for me, and she meant it. Her own problem was still much in evidence: blink, blink, blink every second or so, some blinks so heavy they twitched all the way to her shoulders. I found myself feeling sorry for her… feeling pity. It was a patronizing, "Oh the poor dear" kind of pity, and it scared me. I'd never before felt condescension for another Explorer.)

Ullis was the one who described how Jelca had obtained the Sperm-field generator; Jelca stood by silently as she spoke, as if the story were about someone else. Later, when lights throughout the city dimmed to dusk, Ullis explained that the dimming was Jelca's work too. He wanted a true day/night cycle rather than the city's eternal glimmer, so he had tracked down the control center and rewired some circuits. Perhaps, I thought, that change had been the impetus which spurred the glass populace into leaving. People who photosynthesize may not take kindly to strangers turning the lights off.

The arrival of night didn't quiet the Explorers' mess. The others were eager for news from home, gossip about the Fleet, updates on the lives of friends they had once known… but at last Ullis said, "Enough. Festina needs sleep. We all do."

I agreed. With good-nights all around, Ullis and I detached ourselves from the company and went into the silent city. I might not have been so quick to go if Oar and Jelca had been there, but they had left much earlier — Oar bored with Explorer talk, and Jelca because Oar took his hand and pulled him away. I had not been able to read the expression on Jelca's face as he walked out with her: neither happy nor sad, neither fearing time alone with her nor looking forward to it. Whatever Oar wanted from him, I doubted she would get it.

Ullis led me away from the central square, a few blocks' walk to a tower where she had claimed an apartment on the sixtieth floor. The city was dark now — only a few distant lights showing where Explorers had staked territory in other buildings. The lights were widely spaced from each other: people who live in glass houses don't want close neighbors. On the other hand, solid glass walls give a breathtaking view from sixty storeys up.

Ullis came in beside me as I stood on her glassed — in balcony, looking out over the city. "So," she said. "Home sweet home." She paused. She blinked. "You're welcome to stay here if you like. Roommates again."

"I don't want to put you out."

"No trouble." She blinked, then laughed. "I may get sick of you eventually, but at the moment I'm nostalgic for Academy days."

"Isn't everyone."

She turned to look at me. Her shoulder leaned against the exterior glass; beyond her, the city was as black as space. "I'm sorry about Yarrun. I liked him."

"Me too."

She waited. I said nothing more.

Finally she said, "I'm also sorry about Jelca."

"What about Jelca?"

"That he's become such a prick. I know you used to like him."

"That was just a schoolgirl thing," I muttered.

"He liked you too," she said. "When he and I were partners on the Hyacinth, he talked about you. A bit. He never opened up, but I think he regretted… you know, not seeking you out. But he didn't understand why you ran from that second date, and he was too proud to chase after a freshman… Well, too proud, too shy, what's the difference? Testosterone, one way or the other. But he did think about you after."

I shrugged. "That was a long time ago."

"Sure." She regarded me sympathetically. "I saw the look on your face when he and Oar left together…"

"I didn't have a look on my face."

Ullis blinked several times. Maybe she was doing it on purpose. Finally she said, "The hard thing for Jelca was being so close to normal. You understand? If he put on a wig, he was there. Not for long, maybe four hours before the lesions started bleeding, but for those four hours, he had it. He could walk down any street without stares. He could go on dates with real people. Yes, his scalp took weeks to heal, but if he wanted those four hours, he could have them. He could get clear. And that made him a little crazy — like he wasn't in the same boat as the rest of us. He never said it in so many words, but I was his partner; I could tell. Jelca never identified himself as an Explorer. I think sometimes he wanted to. Maybe if things had gone differently between the pair of you… but that was all part of it anyway. He couldn't bring himself to connect with another Explorer.

"I know that makes him sound arrogant," Ullis added hurriedly, "but it wasn't that way. Not at first. He just felt out of place. Miscategorized. And then, when he learned he'd be marooned on Melaquin — treated like an Explorer, and like a criminal — he felt unjustly betrayed. Like someone had personally spit on him. That's why he had the nerve to steal the Sperm-field generator. I've never asked what he did to get it, but I think he hurt someone. You know what it's like in Ship's Engineering; there's always someone around. They wouldn't let Jelca walk off with important equipment like that. I don't know for sure — maybe he took down some people with that souped-up stunner of his. But he was just so wounded that the council would treat him like any other Explorer… just as worthless, just as expendable…"

"Ullis," I said, "didn't you feel wounded and betrayed too?"

"Sure. But I am an Explorer — and Melaquin is where Explorers end up. In a weird way, I feel fulfilled. I did my job. I stayed true. And because of that, I am fiercely connected with every other member of the corps."

I wanted to deny what she was saying; but I couldn't. However furious I might be with the High Council, some part of my mind whispered it was fitting to get dumped into the disposal chute called Melaquin.

An Explorer's life has only one proper ending: Oh Shit. And Melaquin was the Oh Shit you could walk away from.

Bad Times

"So," Ullis continued, "when Jelca woke up on Melaquin… no, I shouldn't pretend I can see inside his head. I just know it was bad. He came close to killing Kalovski — that was the admiral we were escorting. I had to talk Jelca into going away for a few days, until he cooled off. In the meantime, I dealt with Kalovski… which means I watched him die. That was pretty awful."

"Yes," I murmured.

She waited for me to say more, but I didn't.

"Anyway," she went on, "by the time I rendezvoused with Jelca, he'd already met Eel and Oar. You can imagine how I worried about that — not that I cared how he ran his love life, but two women, with minds like children…" She shook her head. "And back then, they couldn't even speak our language. I tried to talk some scruples into him, but he wouldn't listen. He said he was exploring what the planet had to offer. Whenever I could get the women alone, I tried to find out how they felt about the whole business; frankly, I may have taught them more English than Jelca did. But it was obvious they were infatuated with him. He was the first non-dormant male they had ever met. And they were so bored and lonely before he arrived, they were putty in his hands."

"Both of them?" I asked. "Oar tells the story differently now."

"She would," Ullis replied, "considering how Jelca walked out on them. When we were ready to head south, I was willing to take Eel and Oar with us — not that I thought it was healthy for them to stay with him, but if they wanted to come, I wouldn't leave them behind. Jelca wanted to disappear without a word… selfish bastard. So I grabbed Eel, told her what was happening, and left her alone with Jelca so the two of them could work it out. I would have done the same with Oar, but I couldn't find her; she was probably out clearing fields to impress him." Ullis shook her head morosely.

"What happened between Eel and Jelca?" I asked.

"I don't know — I stayed down on the beach while they talked up on the bluffs. Eventually, Jelca came down alone and announced neither Eel nor Oar were coming with us. They preferred to stay in their home village. There had to be more to it, of course; he'd probably screamed at Eel until she let him go. But I decided the women were better off without him, and maybe it was best to leave before they changed their minds."

"So Eel didn't go with you?"

"No." Ullis looked at me, puzzled. "Why would you think that?"

"Oar said you took her. Oar believed the three of you went away together."

I pictured Eel and Jelca alone on the bluffs that day three years ago. Jelca spurning her. Eel no more than a brokenhearted little girl… and never seen again.

Oh Shit.