Expendable

by James Alan Gardner

  The only plausible explanation was that humans had lived on Melaquin, either now or in the past. The planet had worms, killdeer, and monarch butterflies; why not Homo sapiens too? And for some reason, those humans had fabricated this new transparent race…transparent to human eyes, if not to the eyes of extraterrestrial species.

  Of course, I had no idea why they’d do such a thing. Why make yourself hard for your fellow creatures to see? Were they trying to hide from each other? But Oar still showed up on IR, UV, and other wavelengths. She couldn’t conceal herself from high-tech sensors…and surely her culture had such gadgets. They were sophisticated enough to engineer themselves into glass; they must understand basics like the EM spectrum.

  Maybe turning to glass was simply a fashion statement. Or a religious practice—implementing some teaching that glassiness was next to godliness. No, I told myself, that was too easy: too many sociologists threw up their hands and said, “It’s just religion,” when they found a custom they didn’t understand at first sight. An Explorer doesn’t have the luxury to dismiss anything.

  I had to be scrupulously honest: I didn’t understand why people would make themselves glass…and perhaps this whole train of thought was merely jumping to conclusions. Melaquin showed no roads, no cities, no signs of technology—scarcely consistent with a culture that could engineer people into near-invisibility.

  Unless…

  …at the same time they made a race so hard to see, they also removed all signs of their presence on the planet.

  Unless these see-through bodies and the dearth of development were all attempts to hide that this planet was inhabited. Even if they showed up on IR, glass bodies were still harder to see than normal flesh and blood.

  And if that was true, what were they hiding from?

  I shivered; and this time it had nothing to do with air temperature or damp clothes.

  Radio, Boat

  Oar walked twenty paces, then crouched beside a shadowed tangle of thornbush washed up on the sand. She glanced back and gestured that I should turn my head away. I complied, but tucked the Bumbler’s scanner behind me so I could watch while my back was turned.

  A few moments passed while she checked I wasn’t looking. Then she stretched her arm into the tangle, methodically pushing away one branch after another as she moved her hand inside. I played with the Bumbler’s dials, trying to see what Oar was reaching for; and suddenly, the image glowed with a flare of bright violet.

  Hmmm.

  On the Bumbler’s current setting, violet corresponded to radio waves. Somewhere in the bushes, a concealed radio transmitter had sent out a signal.

  Oar stood and began walking back to me. I clicked off the Bumbler’s display and pondered how long I should pretend to be unaware of her approach. Before I was forced to decide. I was saved by the lapping of waves offshore—the glass coffin had reappeared, and was slipping in toward the beach. I watched it a moment, then turned to Oar. “Your boat?”

  “Yes. It comes when it is wanted.” Her voice had a self-satisfied tone, as if I should be impressed by the boat’s “magical” response to her whim. The magic was surely the radio signal she’d just sent…but perhaps Oar didn’t know that herself.

  “It must be good to have a boat like that,” I said. “Where did you get it?”

  “I have always had it,” she replied, as if my question was nonsense. “Would you like to ride in it with me?”

  “Both of us?” The boat’s size was generous for a coffin, but getting two people inside would be a squeeze. “It’s a bit small,” I said.

  “Two can fit,” she started to say…then she stopped, suddenly stiff and distant. “You are right, Festina,” she said in a voice that was meant to sound casual. “The boat is very small.”

  Ouch, I thought: and I imagined Jelca and Oar enclosed there together, arms and legs entwined, sailing impassioned through the lake’s silent dark.

  Half of me was sick with jealousy. The other half pictured myself in the same position with Jelca; and that half was not sick at all.

  The Last of Chee

  Oar began to tell me her plan, and in a moment, I collected myself enough to listen. She would board the boat and I would drape Chee’s body over it. At Oar’s command, the boat would sail slowly out into the lake. When they were far enough out, she would tell the boat to submerge and let the admiral slump off into the water. I had a hunch the boat’s glass was so slippery, Chee might slide off sooner than expected. Still, if they only got a stone’s throw from shore, it would be better than I could do wading; so I nodded and complimented Oar on the cleverness of her plan.

  She smiled like a queen acknowledging the adoration of her subjects.

  After Oar got into the coffin, I was left alone to heave Chee onto the lid. The rocks made him damnably heavy…and he was beginning to stiffen as well. Getting him into position took all my strength, plus leverage from sticks of driftwood; but at last I spreadeagled him face down on the glass, his arms dangling on either side of the coffin and his toes hooked over the forward edge. I wanted to send him out feetfirst, hoping he would stay in place longer—headfirst, there would be nothing to stop him from sliding backward, and the open collar of his suit would catch spray as the boat glided forward.

  Oar could never be described as a patient woman. I had scarcely arranged Chee’s limbs when the boat pulled away, backing into the lake. This was the first close view I’d had of the coffin while it was moving; I saw nothing that looked like a propulsion system, nothing that told me how it pushed itself through the water. Whatever engines it had were completely silent. With no exhaust, no bubbling of hidden propellers, the boat quietly withdrew and glided off along the surface.

  Soon I could see nothing but Chee’s tightsuit glistening in the moonlight. He lay quite still, his head toward me as he moved away. His thin white hair was slick with lightly splashed water; and I thought of Oar inside the boat, looking up through the glass at Chee’s lifeless face. He was just a stranger to her…. And yet, his death seemed to mean something profound to her.

  The moon went behind a cloud and I lost sight of the body. Was that it? Was Chee gone forever? But the cloud passed and the moonlight sparkled again on white fabric far out on the water.

  I raised my hand in the only heartfelt salute I ever gave an admiral, and held it there till he was out of sight.

  Part IX

  ADAPTATION

  Seamstress

  I don’t know how long I stood there; but I came to myself with a sudden shake, realizing I had been slipping into a daze that could not be healthy. Hypothermia is sly—it creeps in so gradually, you may never realize you’re dying. “And wouldn’t the other Explorers laugh?” I said. “Festina Ramos getting Lost so tamely.”

  Then I added, “Wouldn’t my face be red?”

  Getting giddy—definitely time for a campfire.

  Tinder was easy to come by: brush from the bluffs, dead and dry as straw with winter coming on. Much of the driftwood was dry, too; I chose sticks from high up the beach, on the theory they’d arrived with the lake’s spring peak and had baked in the sun ever since. The hardest thing to find was my jar of matches. They’d been in a pouch of my tightsuit…and since the suit lay in hankie-sized pieces all over the sand, it took time to track down the right hunk.

  Five minutes later, I had a fire: warmth, light, salvation. I cuddled up to it till I’d steamed off my immediate chill, then began to make short forays out to retrieve more scraps of my tightsuit.

  I had accumulated a pile of fabric beside the fire when I found the pouch I was looking for, impaled on the thorns of a bush whose species I didn’t recognize. A brief struggle pulled the pouch loose, and I opened it immediately. I counted six plastic vials inside, all still intact. “Thank you,” I said to the sky.

  The Admiralty loved toys—people in positions of undeserved power always do. And since the Admiralty loved toys, the High Council allocated generous funds to the development of Explorer equipment. Not
that the council gave a damn about Explorers themselves; but the demands of Exploration raised fertile engineering challenges that the research department found irresistible. As a result, ECMs were truly equipped to handle almost anything…like trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again after an emergency evac blew him to bits.

  Three vials in the pouch contained solvents. The other three contained fixative.

  With work, I could glue the tightsuit patches into a usable garment—not as strong as the original, but better than spending the rest of my life in my underwear. Creative tailoring might even give this new suit advantages over the old; I could, for example, remodel the pants to make walking easier. Blimp-shaped thighs might be best for maintaining positive pressure against incoming germs, but now that I’d been exposed to Melaquin’s air…

  I didn’t want to think about that. Concentrate on being a seamstress.

  First, the top—that was easy. The breastplate and back had come off as single pieces, simple to fit back together. With the torso reassembled, attaching the arms was no worse than gluing together strips of banana peel. The result was as bulky as a stiff cable-knit sweater, and had the same degree of blessed warmth. There were too many seams now to match the original suit’s insulation to forty degrees below zero; but that didn’t stop me from diving into the garment as soon as it was done, or shuddering with bliss as my gooseflesh started to recede.

  The bottom part was more difficult. The basic delta of the crotch hadn’t been damaged, but the individual pouches of the belt had blown away separately. Putting them back together used up most of my chemicals, because I wanted an arrangement that would fit my real waist, not the bulbous girth of the original suit. After much trial and error, I jury-rigged a two-tiered pattern that worked well enough; but that left me low on solvent and fixative, too low for constructing pantlegs. The path of least resistance was to glue my remaining scraps to the foundation of the crotch, building a skirt from a spiral patchwork of cloth until I exhausted my supply of adhesive. The result came just to my knee—higher than I liked with winter coming on, but I had flared the skirt wide to give my legs freedom of movement. Cold knees were one thing; not being able to deliver a good side kick was something else.

  I had fabric left over when I ran out of glue, plus a lot of spare gadgetry—air tanks, pressure pump, life-sign monitors, etc. They could stay on the sand where they were; I doubted I’d need them again. Carting them around the countryside would just waste energy…unless, of course, Jelca could strip them down and use the parts for something.

  Jelca. Jelca was here on Melaquin.

  I might have thought about that for a long time if Oar’s boat hadn’t appeared again.

  The Scalpel

  Chee’s body was no longer sprawled on the boat…and when the glass lid opened, Oar was gone too. The boat stood empty on the sand like a plundered sarcophagus. I could almost feel it waiting: waiting for me to get in so it could carry me away. It must have come back to take me to Oar’s home—an underwater habitat like the ones on Attulpac, or perhaps something subterranean…a hidden place, undetectable from orbit.

  Did I want to board a glass coffin and ride off into dark water?

  Yarrun was dead. The admiral was dead. For a moment, I couldn’t think of a reason to move forward or back. Then reflex took over and I found myself packing things into the boat.

  Always do the next necessary thing.

  The Bumbler had to go, of course…and Chee’s backpack, which I’d removed before sending him off forever. I’d also have to retrieve my own pack, still lying amidst the daisies on top of the bluffs. Oar would be impatient for me to join her, but I refused to abandon things I might need later.

  Climbing the bluffs was easier than I expected—Chee’s body had flattened a trail on its way down. The gloves of my tightsuit were still intact, so I could catch hold of weeds and pull myself up, without worrying about thorns and burrs. Apart from a run-in with stinging nettles on my bare right calf, I reached the meadow unscathed.

  Everything was where I had dropped it: my pack, my stunner, Yarrun’s helmet…and the scalpel, black now with Yarrun’s dried blood. I didn’t want to touch it. I wanted to leave it there forever, rusting in the rain.

  But it was probably made of rustproof metal.

  And it would be cruel to leave something so sharp where animals could injure themselves.

  And a true Explorer doesn’t abandon a useful tool just because she’s squeamish.

  Carefully, I wiped the blade on the grass.

  Carefully, I put the scalpel away in the first aid kit.

  Then I threw the kit into my backpack and fairly ran back down the bluffs.

  Thunks

  With so much equipment stuffed into the boat, I had to wriggle to get in myself. The boat waited motionless for me to settle; since Oar had given it voice commands before, perhaps I had to say something to get it started.

  “Okay,” I announced. “I’m ready to go.”

  The boat didn’t react immediately; but after I’d lain still and silent for five seconds, the lid slowly lowered. It came to within a centimeter of my face—any jostling, and I’d bump my nose on the glass. I hoped we weren’t going far…not just because the space was cramped, but because it wouldn’t take long to exhaust the scant air inside the coffin.

  Smoothly the boat moved out. Black water lapped on both sides, inching up the walls until it eased over the top: the craft was submerging. I had one last glimpse of the moon and stars—my sky, the night sky—and then they were swallowed by blackness. A hand’s breadth of water above me was enough to cut off all light coming from the outside world.

  Whatever propelled the boat worked silently. The only sounds were my careful breathing and my heartbeat. A drop of water fell against my cheek and I felt sudden panic—was the boat leaking? But it was only the moisture of my breath, condensing on the glass so close above me and dripping back down.

  Something thumped against the boat near my feet. I jumped enough to clonk my nose on the glass, watering my eyes…but nothing else happened.

  A fish—it must have been a fish, rudely surprised by colliding with a nearly invisible submarine.

  And where there is one fish, there are many more.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  Sometimes the hits were direct, sometimes soft glancing blows. The impacts had no pattern—whole minutes could go by in total silence, then two jolts one after another, like the proverbial water torture, never knowing when the next drop will come.

  At least it kept my mind off the stuffiness of an unventilated coffin sailing with tons of water overhead.

  I didn’t think about that at all.

  Austere

  The ride ended in a sudden bloom of light, beginning at my feet and sliding swiftly up the length of my body as the boat glided into an illuminated space. I had not looked at my watch before starting out, so I can’t say how long the voyage lasted…perhaps ten minutes, though it felt like an hour. It was lengthy enough that my eyes had adjusted to the total underwater blackness; even squinting, I could see nothing against the light now beating on my eyes.

  The boat’s lid opened and I heard Oar’s voice. “Why did you take so long? Did you not understand to enter the boat? Are all Explorers stupid?”

  Nice to see you again too, I thought. But the next moment I realized she must have stood there waiting, wondering if I had abandoned her the way Jelca had. In a conciliatory voice, I said, “Sorry—I needed time to pack my gear. Where are we now?”

  “This is my home, Festina. It is the most beautiful home in the universe.”

  My eyes were beginning to adjust to the light…not the fierce light it seemed when I emerged from total blackness, but a grayish glow like an overcast day. Oar stood beside me, hands on hips, keen for me to stop squinting and admire her home.

  Beyond her lay a village of glass. Why should I have been surprised?

  We stood near the edge of a space two hundred meters in circumference
, covered with a hemispherical dome. The dome was either jet-black itself or transparent to the lightless water of the lake. Underneath the dome stood two dozen buildings, all glass: high Moorish towers where the dome offered enough headroom, and squat rectangular blockhouses out on the periphery. Boulevards separated each structure from its neighbors; and looking to the middle of town, I saw a plaza where two glass fountains sprayed water high into the air.

  Clear water. Clear glass. I found myself searching for any hint of color, a tint to the glass or a prism-effect that broke light into spectra; but the glass was as pristine as crystal, and the sky too muted for rainbows. I couldn’t even tell where the lighting came from—it was simply there, so pervasive it didn’t allow my eye the relief of shadows.

  “Is my home not beautiful?” Oar asked.

  “Austere,” I replied.

  “What does that word mean?”

  “Pure,” I said. “Clean.”

  “Yes.” She sounded pleased. “Very very clean.”

  Clean of everything—the streets were empty. Oar and I were the only people in sight.

  A Tour

  “Do you live here alone?” I asked.

  “Do not be foolish,” Oar answered. “I have many many ancestors.”

  “And they’re here?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked around. Certain Fringe Worlders believed their ancestors remained participants in their lives—ghosts who walked beside them unseen. The living would leave an empty seat at dinner so great-great-grandma could sit among them; and on Sitz, they took water spritzers with them into the bath, to squirt phantom uncles who might sneak in for a peek. Did Oar believe the same thing? I could think of no tactful way to ask. Oar was easy enough to offend without opening the topic of religion.

  “Why don’t you give me a tour?” I suggested. “Show me the things I should see.”