Expendable

Part XVI Mania

My Attempts to Help (Part 1)

The next day, I tried to help with the spaceship. There was little for me to do; the ship was almost finished, and the few tasks outstanding were one-person jobs that required "technical sophistication" …which is to say, someone who knew what she was doing.

No matter where I went in search of something to do, people ribbed me for being a zoology specialist. Everyone brought it up. After a while, it took an effort to smile at the jibes. I told myself I was just new — oldtimers often tease new arrivals as a gruff form of welcome. It didn't help that I'd shown up after the hard work was done. "Oho, here's the animal lover, just in time to play inspector." They said it jokingly; I tried to hear it that way too.

I told myself there was no genuine resentment under the laughter: resentment for a woman who didn't look like an Explorer.

At meals, I felt people staring.

Three times Ullis told me, "You look really good, Festina."

The one time I saw Jelca during the day, he said nothing at all.

Stop imagining things, I told myself. They don't care what I look like… and even if they do, it's their problem, not mine.

Sure.

To pass the time, I outfitted another cabin inside the whale: carrying in a cot, bolting it to the floor, stashing unneeded equipment from my backpack into a locker. It was all for appearance's sake — I couldn't escape with the others. If I caught a ride in the ship, the League would stop my heart in flight, the same way they terminated any non-sentient creature trying to escape into space. They might even take retribution on the other Explorers for helping me. On the other hand, I had to go through the motions, or someone might start asking questions.

Anyway, another furnished cabin wouldn't hurt anything; the whale had plenty of space. Ullis said the life support systems could handle two hundred people indefinitely, and the food synthesizers had even more capacity. No one knew why the early generations of Melaquin had bothered making a ship so huge. Had they wanted to leave the planet en masse… maybe even return to Earth? Or had they simply fancied a jaunt into space; a sightseeing tour around the moon and back?

The other Explorers had no interest in speculation. Even Ullis excused herself after breakfast, saying she had programming to do — simulation tests and so on. No, she didn't need help… it would take too long to get me up to speed on what she was doing.

By midafternoon, I felt glumly extraneous: sorry for myself and irritated at that weakness. Rather than mope where someone might notice, I slipped away from the launch site and headed into the city. Athelrod and others were still going over the lark-plane; maybe they needed help carrying back salvaged components. I began to retrace the route Oar and I had taken in from the elevator… but I had only reached the point where we first saw Jelca when I came across Oar herself.

She sat huddled in the doorway of a glass blockhouse, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs and her face pressed against her knees. The skin of her glass thighs was rainstreaked with half-dry tears.

My Attempts to Help (Part 2)

I sat beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. For a while, neither of us said a word. Then she whispered, "I am very sad, Festina."

"I know."

"It is not fair to be so sad."

"No. It isn't."

"Nothing is the way it should be."

"I'm sorry."

She didn't speak again, but leaned in toward me. I let her rest her cheek against my chest. I could see straight through the back of her head to the tear-stains dribbled down her face.

"Eel is not here," she said at last.

"So I heard."

"And Jelca does not care. He does not care about Eel or me or anything."

I leaned over until my lips touched the hard glass hair on the top of her head. "Jelca is quite the shit, isn't he?"

"He is extremely much the shit," she agreed. "Shitty fucking Jelca."

"To hell with him," I said.

"A very deep hell. With flames and everything."

"That's the spirit."

I gave her shoulders a squeeze. She reached down and patted my knee. After a moment she said more softly, "I would like to punch him in the nose."

"Yes?"

"I would like to make him feel very bad."

"I know," I told her. "But civilized folks like us don't hit people."

"What do we do?"

We brood, internalize, and make ourselves miserable, I thought. Aloud I said, "We give ourselves permission to indulge. Like eating something rich, or buying something we can't afford, or making excuses to get out of work!…"

She looked at me without comprehension.

"Okay," I admitted, "maybe those things aren't right for you. Is there someplace you want to go, something you want to do?"

"We could go visit ancestors," she said with sudden interest. "They live next door."

"Really."

"Yes. It is very fitting that Jelca lives beside the ancestors of this place. They both have bad brains."

"And you want to visit…" I didn't finish my sentence. It would be rude to describe the ancestors as senile near-corpses.

"It is pleasant inside the ancestors' home," Oar said. "It is warm and good."

"Ahhhh," I nodded, understanding. "You realize I can't go in with you?" I asked.

Her face fell. "Then maybe…"

"No," I stopped her, "you go. If it feels good, you deserve it. I'll wait outside."

"You will not go away?"

"I promise."

We got to our feet and walked arm-in-arm to the next building: an enormous tower, even taller than the sixty-story building where Ullis lived. Unlike other buildings in the city, this one had glass walls I couldn't see through; they had been opaqued to prevent the radiation inside from leaking out.

"I will not be long," Oar promised.

"Take your time," I called as she disappeared within. Oar looked eager for time in the tower; I didn't want her cutting the experience short because of me. It must be like a sauna, I thought — hot and steamy, the chance to lie around languidly…

Oar barreled out the door, mere seconds after she'd entered. "There is a problem, Festina. The ancestors are very upset."

"At you?"

"No. At you. Come inside."

Talking with the Ancestors

It took some time for Oar to understand that going inside would damage me. I doubt if she really believed it; but she grudgingly agreed to act as intermediary, carrying messages between me and the ancestors to learn what was wrong.

Me: Why are the ancestors upset?

[A pause while Oar ducked into the building, asked the question, and got the answer.]

Oar: Because a fucking Explorer is bothering them.

Me: Bothering them how? [Pause.]

Oar: Walking over them. Pushing them around. Stacking them against the walls.

Me: Deliberately trying to hurt them? [Pause.]

Oar: I do not think so, although some of the ancestors pretend they were grievously assaulted. Ancestors are stupid. I think the Explorer was merely clearing them out of the way. There is now a wide path down the middle of the room where the ancestors have been moved aside.

Me: Where does the path go? [Pause.]

Oar: I followed the path to the central elevator.

Me: Which means the Explorer was using the elevator for something. [Pause for me to think.]

What did the Explorer look like? [Pause.]

Oar: They say the fucking Explorer was shiny all over.

Me: I thought so. Look around inside, Oar… close to the door but maybe hidden. See if you can find a shiny suit.

[Pause. Oar returned with a bundle of silver fabric in her hands.]

Oar: How did you know this was there? What is it?

Me: A radiation suit.

I didn't mention that the glittery fabric looked like the same material as Jelca's silvery shirt.

Into the Tower

The suit was a sloppy fit on me. Tailored for someone taller: Jelca's size. It also had a holster attached to the belt. The holster was empty, but it looked like a perfect fit for Jelca's stun-pistol.

Unlike other radiation outfits I had worn, this one was comfortably light — no heavy inner lining of lead or one of the transuranics. Still, I had no doubt it would protect me from the tower's hot-bath of radiation. Jelca must have persuaded the local AI to construct the suit for him — a machine programmed by the League of Peoples would never endanger a life by building inadequate protective gear. Best of all, I knew Jelca was still alive; if he could go inside without being fricasseed by microwaves, I could too.

Radiation burns might not be a concern but vision was: the suit had no visor, no break at all in the hood covering my head and face. I could see very dimly through the semi-transparent fabric, like looking through a window bleary with rain. My view was at most three paces, and then just directly in front of me. I would have to move carefully and hope no one rushed me from the side.

For caution's sake, I checked the suit seals one last time, then stepped into the tower. The ancestors had indeed been moved to clear a path into the building — unlike the neatly ordered rows I had seen in Oar's village, these bodies were piled on top of one another, limbs dangling into each other's faces. No wonder they were annoyed.

"It is rude to treat ancestors like this," Oar whispered. I remembered that back in her own village, she had blithely kicked an ancestor in a fit of pique… but perhaps there was one set of rules for people inside the family and another for those outside.

"Ask them," I said, "how long they've been like this."

She spoke a few words in her native language, enunciating loudly and distinctly as if the ancestors were hard of hearing. Barely audible whispers drifted back from the clutter of bodies.

"They say a long time," she told me. "They probably do not know how long. Their brains are too tired to judge such things."

A long time… yet none of them had made an effort to move back to their original positions. And Jelca hadn't moved them back either. Sloppy, I thought — a conscientious Explorer would cover his tracks.

I turned to Oar. "Tell them we'll put them back properly in a little while. First, I want to investigate what Jelca was up to."

Oar conveyed my message. Meanwhile, I lumbered along the cleared path, wishing I could see better through the suit fabric. Glass bodies were difficult to discern; I worried about stepping on one I had overlooked. That, I supposed, was why Jelca hadn't dragged everyone back into place. He had unfinished business in the tower, and didn't want to trip over bodies every time he came in.

The path led through one room after another, three rooms of blurred body heaps, until I reached a single elevator in the heart of the building. Its door was open, ready for business; I stepped inside and waited for Oar to join me.

"Which floor do we want?" she asked.

"Start at the top and work down." Whatever Jelca was doing, he seemed to be keeping it secret from the other Explorers. If so, he'd avoid floors near ground level — too much chance of passersby hearing any noise he might make. The city was quiet as death and filled with hard surfaces perfect for echoes; even a small sound carried surprisingly far.

The elevator closed and we began to ascend — slowly, as if anyone who took this ride had no reason to hurry. People came here to die — not literally perhaps, but that was only a technicality. Those who rode up almost never rode down.

Cheerful thoughts, Festina. To take my mind off the elevator's funereal pace, I said to Oar, "You can see better than I can. Could you please check the floor for marks?"

"What kind of marks?"

"Any kind. The path Jelca cleared was quite wide — more than he'd need just walking through himself. He might have brought in equipment. Maybe heavy equipment."

"Explorers are not strong enough to carry heavy things," Oar replied smugly.

"But Explorers can have the local AI build robots to do the work — I saw several suitable haulers at the launch site. Just check, would you?"

Oar got down on all fours and crawled around, sweeping her fingertips lightly across the floor. "There are some dents here," she reported. "Not very deep."

"Sharp-edged or rounded?"

"Rounded."

Wheels, I thought. That didn't tell me much; but the marks had to be recent. Like other machinery in the city, this elevator must undergo regular maintenance and rebuilding, courtesy of automated repair systems. Even small dents would warrant attention — otherwise, they might become starting points for rust.

"All right," I said, "Jelca brought something here. The question is what."

The Second Spare

The answer was a Sperm-field generator. We found it on the top floor, pushed tight against the wall of the building. I recognized it from a distance, even with my blurred vision: a black box the size and shape of a coffin.

"Holy shit," I whispered.

"Amen," Oar answered dutifully.

This had to be a second generator. The first was still installed in the orca starship — I had seen it mere hours before. Callisto had been running diagnostics on the device; it had actually spun a short thread of Sperm for her tests.

What was Jelca doing with another generator?

I had no doubts where the machine had come from — it was the second spare from Jelca's former starship. He must have stolen both generators from the engineering hold, then installed them into separate probes and sent both down to Melaquin. Ullis told me Jelca had flown one probe south by remote control. He must have done the same with the other probe, picking a time when Ullis was busy or asleep. Later, he had retrieved the first generator and turned it over to the Explorers… but he'd kept the other for himself, smuggling it here when the others weren't watching. (Jelca had been the one to instigate the day/night cycle in lighting. Clever. It ensured the Explorers would all sleep at the same time, thereby giving him a chance to fetch the generator under cover of darkness.)

But why did he need a second generator? Why did he want it badly enough to steal it, leaving his ship with no backup in case of breakdown? Of course, angry people do strange things; maybe Jelca liked the idea of the Vac crew drifting in space until someone answered their may-day. He might have thought it would give them something to think about after abandoning him on Melaquin — a few weeks of being stranded themselves.

But if that was his rationale, why hide this generator here? Why not load it onto the whale, as a replacement in case the first generator malfunctioned?

No. Jelca had plans for this second generator. I just couldn't guess what those plans were.

Hampered by my obstructed vision, I examined the black coffin. It was wired into another piece of equipment: a waist-high glass box with wing panels attached to the top. "Photo-collectors," I murmured. "Curiouser and curiouser."

"What is a photo-collector?" Oar asked.

"These panels," I told her, "soak up light and other radiation that hits them… which must be a hefty dose of energy, considering the output of this building. The panels obviously transfer power to a battery inside this case, and the battery supplies the Sperm generator; but damned if I know why. What's the point of generating a Sperm field on a planet?"

"Jelca is very very stupid about sperm," Oar answered.

I gave her a look she couldn't see through my suit.

Cursed with Hope

Minutes later, we were back on the street. Oar had replaced the suit where she found it, and my skin was rediscovering the joy of breathing; wearing the suit had been like being wrapped in plastic, close and sweaty.

I had decided not to move the ancestors away from the walls just yet. Oar assured me they were all getting enough light and air, and would scarcely notice a few more hours of overlapping each other. Putting the people back would tip off Jelca that he'd been discovered… and I didn't want that until I was ready to confront him. At the very least, I had to talk with Ullis first. Maybe the other Explorers needed to know too; but maybe not.

Maybe Jelca had a sensible explanation for everything.

I know. I was being foolish. How much more evidence did I need that Jelca had degenerated into a self-centered bastard? Toying with Eel and Oar, then callously discarding them… hiding the generator from his fellow Explorers… giving me the cold shoulder as if I were a Vac-head…

And yet…

Since Oar had first told me he was here, I had dreamt about him. Thought about him. Imagined us together. Even earlier, during my years on the Jacaranda, he had crossed my mind now and then… especially when I lay beside some snoring substitute I had taken to bed because desperation got the better of me. Alone with my eggs, I invented fantasies about Jelca: a fellow Explorer I could make love with, not just a convenient Vacuum crew member to slick myself down.

I had such hopes. Stupid hopes — I knew that. But I had hoped that maybe, losing myself to Jelca would sear off my guilt, burn it away with white heat for just a few seconds. Whom else could I turn to? If I threw myself on another Explorer, or Ullis, or Oar, it would be so hollow, nothing more than drugging myself with sex. But with Jelca it could be different… couldn't it? He was not just someone within arm's reach, he was someone I'd thought about, dreamed about…

I'd even dated him. Twice.

This sounds so banal now. It embarrasses me. I'd say I was lying to myself, but the lies were so obvious I didn't believe them, even at the time. Yet I wanted to believe. I wanted to have something with someone somewhere. Who else did I have but Jelca?

I wondered if Oar was thinking the same thing as we walked down the street in silence: patently false hopes, because the alternative was despair.

Transport Tunnels

We found Ullis in her cabin on the whale. She had jacked in to the ship's system and was programming with fervid intensity.

"Jelca's got a second Sperm-field generator," I said. "Did you know?"

She blinked without speaking for several long seconds. Then she shook her head.

It took some time to give her the full story. When I was finished, she could offer no explanation of what he might be doing. "There's no reason to generate Sperm tails on Melaquin," she said. "Even if he wanted to set up a transport tunnel… no. What would be the point?"

"What is a transport tunnel?" Oar asked.

"A way of sending things very quickly from one place to another," I answered. "A Sperm tail is a long tube of hyperspace… which means it's really outside our normal universe. Physical laws are very different there. If you stuck your arm in one end of the tube, it would immediately emerge at the other end, even if the ends were thousands of kilometers apart. If you anchored one end here on Melaquin and another on the moon, say, you could reach through, pick up a handful of moon dust, and bring it back just like reaching through an open window."

"I wouldn't reach through that window if I were you," Ullis said. "If you're standing with normal Earth air pressure behind you, and the moon's vacuum in front, you'd go shooting straight through mighty fast."

"Which is how we usually transport things along Sperm tails," I told Oar. "When we go from one ship to another, we drop the pressure at the receiving end so things shoot through from the sender. When we go from the ship to a planet, we increase the pressure in the Transport Bay so that it blows us down…"

"This is very boring," Oar interrupted. "Also irrelevant."

Ullis said. "If Jelca wants to use a Sperm tail at all, he has to anchor down the far end. Otherwise the tail whips around at random."

"We all carry anchors," I reminded her. Landing parties needed anchors to attract the tail when they wanted to leave the planet. Anchors were small enough to fit in the palm of your hand; I had one in my belt pouch, and no doubt Ullis did too.

"So Jelca has an anchor," Ullis conceded. "What's he going to do with it?"

"He brought the Sperm generator to this city with a remote-controlled probe drone. If the probe still has fuel, he could load an anchor on board, and fly the probe anywhere on Melaquin."

"So what?" Ullis asked. "Yes, he can set up a transport tunnel anywhere on planet, but what's the point? Why would he want to go somewhere else when he'll be going home anytime now?"

"Unless he's not going home." The words were out of my mouth before I gave them a second thought.

"Don't be crazy, Festina. We all want off this rock. Jelca may be a turd but there's no reason he wouldn't—"

"Shit," I blurted out. The light had dawned at last. "Shit, shit, shit!"

"What?" Ullis asked.

"She is worshiping," Oar told Ullis in a low voice.

"Oar," I said, "stay here with Ullis. Ullis, I have to find Jelca for a chat. If I don't come back in a reasonable time, tell the others everything I've told you. And whatever you do, don't let Jelca onto the spaceship!"

"What's wrong?" Ullis asked bewildered.

I threw a tense glance at Oar, then grabbed a scrap of paper from Ullis's work area and scribbled a message.

Ullis gaped when she read it.

"What does it say?" Oar demanded.

I didn't answer; I was already running out the door.

Out of the City

No one working on the starship knew where Jelca was. Someone suggested he might have gone to help with the lark-plane.

I jogged down the boulevard toward the elevator, each footfall echoing off nearby buildings. As I passed Jelca's quarters — the place where Oar had been crying — I stopped to see if he was there. He wasn't… but his room contained more clothes of the silvery fabric used in his radiation suit: shirts, pants, even socks and gloves. I wondered if he'd tried piece-by-piece radiation clothing before he made the full suit; or perhaps he wore these as a second layer of protection under the main suit. If nothing else, having "street clothes" made of the same material would help reduce the radiation he soaked up while putting on the full suit inside the tower.

The temptation to search Jelca's quarters was strong — a thorough search, ripping the place apart if necessary — but I doubted I'd find anything. Besides, I felt an urgent need to confront him. And give him one last chance, said a voice in my head… as if there was still hope he could explain away all his actions. I hadn't figured out everything yet; the purpose of the second Sperm generator was still a mystery to me. However, I thought I had many of the answers I needed. I just hoped I was wrong.

Athelrod and Walton met me as I approached the elevator to the outside world. They carried glass holdalls containing parts they must have removed from the lark-plane. "Too late!" Walton called cheerfully as he approached. "We're all done."

"Not much there that we needed," Athelrod said. "Still, we got a few design ideas…"

"Have you seen Jelca?" I asked.

"He came by the plane outside, maybe two hours ago," Athelrod answered. "Didn't stay long."

"So he came back down here?"

"No," Walton said. "I asked him to see if he could fix the glitches in my weather equipment. He's very good at that sort of thing."

"So he's up at your weather station now?" I asked.

Walton nodded.

"How do I get there?" After getting directions, I headed out at a run.

Walton and Athelrod stared after me with bewildered expressions.

The Coming Cold

The air outside was cooler than the day before — enough to prick up goose pimples on my bare legs. At the west end of the valley, the sun had already dipped below the far peak, though the sky was still coldly bright. Trying not to shiver, I hurried up the forest trail that led to the weather station. The world smelled of damp pine and winter.

I found Jelca sitting on a high rock looking down on the river that wound along the base of the mountain. The water ran fast and shallow; even though it was dozens of meters below us, I could hear the rattle of it running over its gravel bed. The sound was cold. The world was cold. In the forest behind us, each tree felt closed in on itself, withdrawing into its own thoughts as winter approached. The stone everywhere — under Jelca, under my feet, under the snow caps of the mountains — looked like it had been dark gray once but was now bleached pale with disappointment.

Jelca turned to look my way. He said nothing. Behind him, a small anemometer rotated listlessly as its cups accepted the wind.

I waited for him to speak.

"Ullis told me it was artificial skin," he said at last.

"Yes."

"Really just a bandage."

"That's right."

He stared at my cheek a few more seconds. "So that's it then. You've made it."

"Made what?"

"Full human status."

"Don't be stupid."

He said nothing for a moment. He wasn't even looking at me. Then: "You know what the strange thing is? When I thought of you, I pictured you this way. Without the birthmark. I would have said it wasn't part of my mental image of you; the birthmark made no impression on my mind. But I was wrong. When I saw you yesterday, you looked like one of them. The bastards who banished us here. It was like they'd stolen one more thing from me."

He thought of me, I told myself. I wanted to ask him a hundred questions about what he'd thought, when it happened, everything that had passed through his mind.

No. I refused to let down my guard with him. Not now.

Probably never.

"I'm being ridiculous," he said. "Why should I mind that you look so beautiful?"

Beautiful. He found me beautiful.

"Jelca," I said. "Did you kill Eel?"

He was silent a moment, then nodded.

Accidents and Reality

"It was an accident," he said.

I sat down on the rock, separated from him by only an arm's length. The stone was cold beneath me… very cold, despite its exposure to the long day's sun.

"An accident," he repeated. "A mistake right from the beginning." He glanced at me. "You probably think I'm shit."

I didn't trust myself to say yes or no.

"There's no point trying to justify myself," he said. "When I met Eel and Oar, I was just looking to vent myself. Vent everything I felt about being heaved into exile with a piss-hole like Kalovski… and there were Eel and Oar. Looking so perfect it made me furious. Artificial people — like all the artificial people in the Fleet and everywhere. So I…"

When he didn't finish his sentence, I said, "You either raped or seduced them."

He shrugged. "I either raped or seduced them. Couldn't tell you which. They didn't put up a fight, but they didn't understand what was going on either. It happened, the two of them together that first time, because I couldn't stop myself. Well, no — because I couldn't bother to stop myself. I couldn't think of any reason that made it worth the trouble."

"Eel and Oar themselves should have been enough reason."

"You'd think so," he admitted. "But the truth is, they weren't real women. None of them are real human beings. They're glass models of human beings… or what the League of Peoples believes humans should be. Beautiful dead ends, just as most people in the Technocracy are beautiful dead ends.

"You know what I once thought?" he went on. "I thought the whole Explorer Corps was a training program for real people. Everyone else was pampered and spoiled, but we were real. The Admiralty wouldn't let doctors cure our problems because they wanted us to develop strength of character; they needed a small band of individuals who had to fight for respect so that we'd gain depth. Then one day someone would tap us on the shoulder and say, 'Congratulations. You've made it. Everyone else is useless, but you've learned all the painful lessons of life. You've won. Now we'll cure your trivial little scalp condition and make you someone important, because you've earned it.' You see? I had this daydream that everything was planned. That all the crap we've suffered had a point, and we'd be properly compensated in the end. Not dumped on a planet populated by empty people with nothing to contribute."

"You're underestimating the people of Melaquin," I said. "They may be different from humans, but—"

"Save it," he interrupted. "I know all the arguments. And you're right, I shouldn't dismiss them. Eel and Oar deserved better than I gave them. But I didn't have it in me. They kept reminding me of all the shallow 'beautiful people' who make the Fleet a hell. So I used them and used them and used them until I couldn't stand the sight of them anymore."

"Then you killed Eel," I said.

"That was Ullis's fault," he replied. "If she'd just let me leave quietly… but she grabbed Eel and forced me to explain things. I tried rational discussion, I really did. I told Eel that Ullis and I had a duty to join the other Explorers; I told her that she and Oar would feel out of place if they came with us. Eel wouldn't listen. She had the mind of a child. She didn't want to be left out. Finally, I had no option but to…"

He lapsed into silence, so I finished the sentence for him. "You shot her," I said. "And even though the regs made you carry a standard-issue stunner when you landed, you must have amplified the pistol as soon as you knew you were stuck on Melaquin."

"True," he admitted. "Everyone knows the guns are underpowered…"

"They're underpowered because anything more could be deadly," I snapped. "I can imagine what high intensity sonics did to a woman made of glass."

"You think she shattered like crystal?" He shook his head. "Nothing so dramatic. These people aren't real glass; you know that. Eel stayed on her feet a long time. I kept shooting and shooting and she wouldn't fall down. And I swear I didn't believe the gun would really damage her; she was so tough, you could pound her with a sledgehammer without making a dent. But something inside her body was vulnerable to sonics. Something must have… cracked. Maybe her brain, maybe her heart, I don't know. But the instant she fell, she was dead." He shook his head as if this was an incomprehensible mystery. "So I dragged her into the woods and stuffed her under a pile of brush."

"And now you're a murderer," I said. "A dangerous non-sentient being."

"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. "But it was just an accident. Sometimes I think it'll be all right if I get on the starship with everyone else. I didn't mean to kill her. And if I don't go on the ship, I'll be stuck on Melaquin, won't I? No better than the criminals and other scum the council banished here…"

"I won't be leaving either," I said. "I'm a murderer too."

And I told him everything.

Releasing Pressure

I confessed because of the pressure to tell someone. I confessed because he was Jelca. I confessed because we were both unforgivable.

He had killed a sentient woman for the sole reason that she was inconvenient. Don't think I was deceived by Jelca's excuses. He shot Eel because he didn't want to face the fallout from exploiting her for six months. Maybe he hadn't expected the stunner to kill her. He should have considered the possibility, but maybe he didn't. Instead, he blasted her again and again until her glass vitals cracked into shards.

Jelca was a murderer and so was I. I had butchered my partner and left him to rot in a log. That was a fact, and intentions be damned.

I told Jelca the facts as clearly as I could without choking up. Neither of us could possibly leave. I didn't know how I felt about staying with him, but we owed it to the others not to jeopardize their escape.

When I finished my story — when I had told him how I sliced Yarrun's throat with my scalpel and spilled his blood over my hands… when I had reminded him that League of Peoples laws are more inescapable than entropy — after all that, Jelca laughed.

He laughed.

"What a wimp-ass murder," he sniggered. "What a wimp-ass excuse for a homicide."

I was speechless.

"You think the League will bar you from space for that?" He snorted in disgust. "You think surgeons are labeled murderers if they lose a patient? Wake up, Festina! You tried to help, and it didn't work. That's all."

"He would have lived!" I insisted. "If I'd left him alone, he would have lived. But no. I tried to be a hotshot, performing emergency surgery when I couldn't see straight. He died because of me!"

"Yes he did," Jelca agreed. "So you think you should be punished. You want to believe the League regards you as non-sentient, that you deserve exile. But that's just guilt talking, not common sense. You thought you were doing what had to be done to save Yarrun's life. That's blatantly sentient, Festina… and it would be ludicrous for you to stay on Melaquin and die because of it."

Something in his tone caught my attention. "What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"Nothing." He looked me straight in the eye. "It's just stupid to spend the rest of your life in this hellhole."

I met his gaze. It was the first time he'd looked at me and not my cheek. I knew it meant he was lying. Some people are like that — naturally evasive until they put on an act of being forthright.

"What are you up to, Jelca?" I asked.

"Nothing," he repeated… again, looking straight into my eyes.

"Whether or not I'm a murderer," I said slowly, "I don't know that I want to leave Melaquin. It's pleasant here. Peaceful."

"Stagnant," he sneered. "Comatose."

"If I go back, I'll have to be an Explorer again." I watched Jelca's face closely. "They'll assign me another partner — how could I live with that? And I'll be sent on one mission after another until I go Oh Shit. Frankly, Melaquin sounds like a better life. Safer."

"I wouldn't recommend it," he said evenly. Why? Something to do with the second generator. What did he have in mind? Something that would make it dangerous to stay on Melaquin…

"You're going to do something to the planet, aren't you?" I said. "Something that makes it impossible for the council to maroon people here."

"How could I possibly damage something as big as a planet?" he asked.

"I don't know," I replied, "but that has to be it. You said it yourself — the League lets the council send people to Melaquin because the planet is hospitable to human life. We have as good a chance of surviving here as anywhere else in the galaxy. But suppose Melaquin stops being a paradise. Suppose it becomes deadly. Then the council can't use it as a dumping ground anymore because that would be real murder. The League wouldn't allow it… and you'll be able to say you beat the council at its own game."

"That would be nice," he admitted. "That would be a good revenge." He growled out the last word.

"But it's too ridiculous to contemplate. If I worked hard I might pollute some land… but how much? A few hundred square klicks at most, even if I spent my whole life spilling radioactive waste on the ground. That's hardly hurting the planet as a whole. What do you think I could do, Festina? What's my nefarious plan?"

He was playing a game now — taunting me. Maybe he wanted me to think it was lighthearted teasing; maybe he saw my unblemished face and forgot I had the brains of an Explorer.

All right, think: he had a Sperm-field generator. It generated Sperm tails. What was a Sperm tail? A tube of hyperspace; a ship riding inside the tube could circumvent the limitations of relativity. The tube could also be used for instantaneous transport — as I'd told Oar, it was window from here to there. A window…

Then I thought of what Ullis had said. If one end of the window was open to the planet's surface and the other ten thousand klicks straight up into the sheer vacuum of space… everything would go flying out the window.

The whole damned atmosphere.

How big a tail could one generator make? A klick in diameter… maybe more. With one end at ground level and the other trailing off into space, the Sperm would be like a giant firehose, free end whipping back and forth, spraying air into the void.

The first result would be the biggest storm this planet had ever seen: a tornado centered on the base of the Sperm tail, sucking up wind. And the storm would never stop — not until it reduced the air supply to negligible pressure.

"How long," I asked, "would it take to drain Melaquin's atmosphere through an unanchored Sperm tail?"

Jelca looked startled. Then he answered, "18.6 years. But the surface will be uninhabitable long before that."