Expendable

by James Alan Gardner

  “You speak their language?” I whispered in amazement.

  “I’ve been Grand Poobah to the Morlocks for eight years, Ramos. You think I let the glass glow under my feet?” He turned back to the ancestors and spoke again, his arms spread wide, his diction clear.

  In one corner of the room, a glass arm moved. Closer to hand, a glass head lifted, blinked and stared. Someone sighed. Someone else took a deep purposeful breath.

  “I thought their brains were mush,” I whispered.

  “Just bored,” Tobit replied. “You can catch their attention if you give them something they’ve never heard before.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “What I remember from Henry V—some asshole of an admiral forced every academy instructor to teach a Shakespeare course. Now I’m telling the glassies, ‘Once more unto the breach,’ and all that crap. Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, break down the door.” He paused. “I don’t know how the fuck I’m going to translate ‘Saint Crispin’s day.’”

  But he rose to the challenge. Tobit orated, and his audience answered. I can’t imagine the ancestors understood much of what he said—even if Tobit spoke their language, these people wouldn’t know what to make of a “muse of fire” or “Harry, England and Saint George!” Nor did I think Tobit could stir their souls with Shakespearean poetry…not translating off the cuff and from memory. More than anything, he was getting through to them on the strength of sheer novelty: they had never heard a man in silver lamé harangue them to attack France, and it was bringing them to their feet.

  Mouths twisted into smiles. After centuries of dormancy, something had changed—changed for all of them. Even those who had been slow to rouse themselves were sitting up with interest, their eyes glittering.

  Hands clenched into fists. Spines straightened proudly. Tobit pointed at the locked door.

  Ten seconds later, the door was no longer an obstacle.

  My Present

  “I can take it from here!” I shouted to Tobit. My ears still rang from the thunder of glass shoulders, strong as rhinos, smashing the metal door down.

  “You’re sure?” Tobit asked.

  “Get back to the ship before it blasts off.”

  “What if you need more help?”

  “Don’t be stubborn, Phylar. I’m giving you a ticket home…as a birthday present.”

  “Ooo—look who thinks she’s learned to manipulate people.” He snapped me a backward parody of a salute. “Get going yourself, Ramos. Do something non-sentient to Jelca before he does it to you.”

  He turned and lumbered away. I watched for a moment, then saluted his back. Call it another birthday present.

  In the Stairwell

  I had eighty storeys of ramps ahead of me. No matter how pressed for time I might be, running was out of the question; I settled for a light jog and wondered how long I’d be able to keep it up.

  Far above, the tower ramps clattered with the clack of glass footfalls. Tobit’s speech had inspired the ancestors so much, they hadn’t stopped after breaking down the door—they were still charging ahead, howling to spill French blood at Agincourt or whatever they thought they were doing. I didn’t try to keep up with them; not only were they stronger and faster than my mere flesh, they were less worried about running out of wind. The stairwell burned with the same radiation as the main tower rooms. Even as they raced along the ramps, the ancestors were recharging, keeping themselves powered.

  There was another reason I didn’t try to catch up with the ancestors: I needed time to decide how to handle Jelca. First, grab his stunner—that was obvious. And I had one strong advantage over him: I could see clearly through the tinted visor of Tobit’s helmet. Jelca, on the other hand, would be half-blind with the radiation suit covering his eyes…like looking through glittery cotton cloth. In a straight fistfight, the odds were stacked in my favor.

  As long as he didn’t shoot me first. One sonic blast, and I’d be unconscious for six hours…or until Jelca killed me, whichever came first.

  How could I avoid getting shot? Stealth if possible. If I could sneak up and take him down fast, I had nothing to worry about; but if he saw me first….

  “Idiot,” I said aloud. “Why didn’t you pick up your own stunner?” Yet the prospect of using the same weapon as Jelca filled me with revulsion. I knew I was being irresponsible—considering the stakes, I should have been ruthlessly willing to shoot Jelca in the back if that’s what it took. But some subconscious inhibition had stopped me from thinking about my own stunner until now—and I had no time left to go back for the gun.

  Was there anything else I could use as a weapon? I took a mental inventory of my belt pouches, now tucked under the radiation shirt and pants. What was I carrying? Things for taking soil samples, a small disk camera, my first aid kit…

  …which contained the scalpel….

  I laughed out loud. There in the stairwell, I leaned against the wall and laughed. Unable to stop giggling, I untucked my lamé shirt tail, opened a pouch, and pulled out the knife.

  The scalpel.

  “Fair’s fair,” I said to the walls. “Fair’s fair.”

  I didn’t know what I meant by that.

  To give the blade some weight, I taped some mineral sample tubes to its handle. The tubes were only the size of my fingers, but they were lead-lined in case they had to hold radioactive materials. When I was finished, the knife was well-balanced and heavy, suitable for stabbing or throwing. I found myself tempted to hold it up and say, “Yarrun, I owe you this.” But I didn’t do it. There comes a time when we outgrow dramatic gestures.

  At the Top of the Ramp

  Halfway up the tower, I passed the first glass body: an ancestor with no sign of injury. There were two more another floor up. I stopped briefly to examine them. They muttered something and turned their backs on me.

  “Tired of going up ramps?” I asked. “You and me both.”

  Their initial enthusiasm had eroded. Who wouldn’t get bored, racing up storey after storey, with no change of scenery? The closer I got to the top, the more bodies I found…until on the eightieth floor, I came to the last ancestor, lying in the open doorway that led out of the stairwell. He must have disciplined himself to stay with the task, all the way hoping to find some stirring amusement at the end of the trip. When he reached the finish, only to find a room exactly like the ones downstairs, he had sunk to his knees in disappointment.

  Welcome to the Explorer Corps, I thought.

  I didn’t charge out onto the floor. Jelca might have heard the door open; even now he might be lying in ambush, ready to blast me into unconsciousness. I waited, listening. I listened for five whole minutes by my watch, and might have waited longer if I hadn’t heard something.

  A rumble.

  A roar.

  A vibration under my feet.

  The whale was taking off.

  The Launch

  It would have been a sight to see: the roof doors opening and the glass orca soaring out on plumes of smoke and flame. With luck, Tobit had made it back in time. I breathed a prayer for those aboard, then moved cautiously out of the stairwell. There would never be a better time to sneak up on Jelca, with the sound of blast-off loud enough to cover my approach.

  Scalpel in hand, I stole forward.

  The building’s glass rattled as the launch continued. The ancestor lying in the stairwell lifted his head with one last show of interest…then pouted and lay down again.

  Three rooms between me and Jelca.

  Room 1: the roar outside increased, moving upward. I could swear the ship was sliding straight past the building, scorching the tower’s exterior with belches of fire.

  Room 2: with a roar, the sound of engines swept past the building, up, high up, heading for the roof, as echoes banged off every building in the city.

  Room 3: the noise suddenly eased, and I knew the ship had cleared the roof doors, out into open sky where its sound could spread through the mountains. The echo
es were still loud enough to cover my soft approach to the last room, if only Jelca was looking in some other direction.

  But he was looking straight at the door. His pistol pointed straight at the door too.

  “Don’t move a hair,” he said with theatrical calm. “I can pull the trigger faster than you can move out of the way.”

  I knew he was right.

  The Laying of Blame

  “So who are you?” he asked conversationally. “Ullis? Callisto?”

  His question confused me. Then I realized my helmet had opaqued itself enough that Jelca couldn’t see my face.

  “It’s me,” I said. “Festina.”

  He inhaled sharply under his radiation mask. “Festina? Of course.” He gestured with the pistol toward my hand. “I should have recognized you by the scalpel. Still your weapon of choice?”

  Ouch. “You really are a shit, aren’t you?”

  “Thanks to you,” he answered. “You backed me into a corner. If you hadn’t left me with no other options….”

  “Spare me the excuses.”

  “But you’re the one to blame,” he insisted. “You forced me to shoot Oar when you knew it would kill her. You made it impossible for me to be an Explorer…. So now I’m something else.”

  “A dangerous non-sentient,” I said.

  “Exactly. And if I’m going to be damned forever, the least I can do is live up to the title.”

  I sighed. “You’re quoting some bubble, aren’t you? And a bad one at that. Since you can’t impress me as a human being, you try it as a villain. That’s pathetic.”

  “I’m not trying to impress—”

  “You are!” I shouted…not because my words could affect him but because I’d heard a sound behind me. “If you weren’t trying to impress me, you would have shot the second you saw me. But you want to gloat. You want to justify yourself. Or you want to act out some bubble you’ve seen where the villain acts menacing to pretend he’s more than a pissy little schoolboy. Honestly, Jelca…destroying a world because nobody likes you!”

  “You liked me once,” he retorted. “You adored me. And you weren’t the only one. Eel adored me. Oar adored me…”

  “I did not!” shouted a voice behind me. The next moment, an axe whizzed past my head.

  Battle Rejoined

  The axe was not balanced for throwing. It flew fast enough to take Jelca by surprise, but only struck his arm with its handle as it passed by. It glanced off the wall behind him and clattered to the floor.

  Jelca raised his pistol.

  Unlike the axe, my carefully prepared scalpel flew with perfect precision. I threw it with a simple flick of the wrist, in the instant before I dove out of the doorway. It slashed into Jelca’s fingers where they wrapped around the butt of his stunner. He screamed. The stunner fell.

  “Hah!” The laugh rang through the room. Oar leapt past me, heading for Jelca. “You killed my sister, fucking Explorer! You tried to kill me. Now we will see who is such a thing as can die.”

  She moved sluggishly, and there were smears of dried fluid tracked down her chin. Even so, she had been strong enough to wake from her coma, clearheaded enough to figure out what had happened, and stubborn enough to climb eighty storeys in search of vengeance.

  Now she plunged toward Jelca, her hands reaching for his throat. The attack was awkward, off-balance; her dizziness showed. Jelca dodged, deflecting her rush to one side. He took one quick glance in the direction of his stunner, but it was too far away. Instead, he turned the other direction: toward the Sperm generator.

  “No!” I cried. The maniac intended to turn it on. If it activated now, a Sperm-tail thousands of klicks long would establish itself in a single second—a tail waving out of control, lashing up out of the atmosphere and into space. The generator itself was bolted down securely, but those of us in the room weren’t. All three of us would make a very short cold trip into hard vacuum.

  With nothing else close to hand, I whipped off my helmet and heaved it across the room, catching him hard in the back of the head. The blow struck with a resounding crack. He pitched forward, sprawling onto the black coffin of the generator…but his hand was still moving, searching for the activation switch.

  “Stop him!” I yelled. “That machine will kill everyone!”

  Oar lashed out a foot and kicked Jelca in the side—not a skilled kick, but strong enough to lift him and flip him back half a meter. He dropped onto the coffin again, this time spreadeagled on his back. I couldn’t tell if he’d fallen closer or farther from the generator’s switch; but he was still conscious, still moving, still reaching out to turn on the machine.

  With no time to get to my feet, I slithered across the floor, straight toward the stunner. My eyes were on Jelca; his hand fumbled with something on the far side of the generator…probably the switch.

  I grabbed the gun and fired fast without aiming—even if I didn’t hit him full on, the edge of the sonic cone might stagger him. But I hadn’t appreciated the power of the amplified pistol. Hypersonics smashed against the glass wall over Jelca’s head and shattered it to crystal rain, exploding it outward in a shower that left a gaping hole in the tower.

  Air whistled outside as glass shards pattered onto Jelca’s radiation suit. He could ignore the shards; what he couldn’t ignore was the clumsily wielded axe coming at him.

  Oar tried to chop Jelca like she would chop a tree—a hard blow straight down toward his chest. If she had been at full strength, he never would have blocked the blow; but she was weak now and bleary. He caught the axe and stopped it, both arms extended as he seized the axe handle at the base of its head.

  For a moment, they both were frozen there: Jelca fending off the axe, Oar trying to force it down onto his sternum. Then Oar whispered, “Fucking Explorer. This is what expendable means.”

  She let go of the axe, grabbed his arms, and jumped with him, straight out the hole in the wall.

  Part XVIII

  EGGS HATCHING

  Cleaning Up, Sweeping Away

  I walked halfway across the room, intending to look out the window. Then I stopped. There was nothing outside I wanted to see.

  Before my eyes took too much damage from the radiation, I picked up the helmet and put it back on. The smell of it sickened me. A lot of things sickened me.

  With a few sharp jerks, I yanked out the wires between the Sperm generator and its battery. I wanted to damage the machines more permanently, but didn’t know what would be safe. There were people in this tower; if the generator contained nuclear materials or antimatter, smashing it might set off an explosion.

  I didn’t want to hurt anybody, did I?

  It was easy to unlock the elevator—Jelca had simply attached an override chip to the control panel. Once I disengaged the chip, I rode to the bottom floor and carefully moved back all the ancestors Jelca had disarranged. It allowed me more time to put off going outside.

  I still had to go out eventually.

  Jelca was dead, of course—no mere human could survive such a fall.

  It didn’t help that he’d been holding Oar’s axe.

  I sometimes think Oar might have lived if she hadn’t been so broken already. But she was half-dead before she fell, and now she’d finished the job. She did not breathe; her heart was silent.

  Oar was such a thing as could die. According to her beliefs, that made her holy…sacred.

  Sure. Why not.

  I carried her into the tower and laid out her body again, axe by her side. Maybe the light could bring her back, even from this; but I didn’t wait to see.

  Jelca I left in the street.

  Barren

  The central square was empty, except for the eagle-plane off to one side. I shouted, “Phylar!” several times, but the only answers I got were echoes. He must have made it to the ship in time.

  The city was silent. Barren. I couldn’t face it. Suddenly I found myself in the eagle, shouting, “Take off, now, up!”…a fierce panic to get out. The pla
ne rose in a whine of engines, through roof doors that were still open from the whale’s launch. With no one in the city to close them, the doors might stay open forever.

  The sky outside brooded in gray melancholy, but the open air was not as oppressive as the abandoned city below. My panic ebbed; and I realized it was foolish to leave so hastily. There was still a wealth of Explorer equipment down in the city—things I would need if I was going to live on this planet the rest of my life.

  And I was.

  But I didn’t need to go back down right away. I could stay outside…watch the birds…see if I could find any eggs to start a new collection….

  I told the eagle to land beside the remains of the lark; it seemed like appropriate symbolism. For a while after touching down, I just sat inside the plane, listening to the engines cool and watching the overcast clouds wisp around the distant peaks. Getting out of the cockpit required more energy than I possessed. Eventually though, I forced myself to move: down to the ground where I took off Tobit’s helmet and breathed the still air.

  Behind me, a bootstep scraped across stone.

  I turned slowly, too burnt out to bother with defensive reflexes. If there was someone here, it could only be another Explorer…perhaps one of the old ones, stranded on Melaquin for decades and turned coward at the last moment, too fearful to return to an outside world that had surely changed.

  The newcomer was a woman, wearing the gray uniform of an admiral. “Festina Ramos?” she blurted in surprise.

  I saluted. “Admiral Seele,” I said. “Welcome back to Melaquin.”

  Chee’s Partner

  Seele didn’t answer. For a moment, I thought she was staring at my cheek; then I wondered if she was seeing anything at all, even though her gaze was on my face.

  “You left me your egg collection,” she said at last.

  “Yes.”

  “It was my first hint you’d been sent to Melaquin.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?”

  “I suppose so,” she nodded. “I got to thinking….” Her voice trailed off.