by T. J. Berry
“No.”
“That’s fine,” said Jim. “We’ll just go our own way without you.”
“The Human Experiment is approaching the two million year mark,” said Eon. “It may be time to declare the outcome a failure.” They looked to Cole.
Unamip let out a whinny that shook the water glasses. His nostrils flared. “I was there in the beginning, when the first humans stumbled across the face of their luscious Earth. They have it within them to coexist with others. They are simply in the adolescence of their evolution. Who among us hasn’t laid waste to a civilization in a fit of poor judgment?”
“I sure haven’t,” said Jim.
“They are small and petty most of the time,” continued Unamip, ignoring Jim. “But they are capable of immense kindness and self-sacrifice. At this very table sits a human who put herself in mortal danger so that seventeen others could survive. She offered a lifetime of pain in exchange for their lives.”
“It didn’t happen like that,” said Jenny. Her face burned. She hated when people characterized her in terms of her sacrifice. She was just doing her job. So many angry feelings came bubbling up that she took a huge mouthful of hot tea and choked it down to drown them.
“Humans know how to live in peace,” continued Unamip. “They know how to sacrifice for the good of all. Jim, your own wife offered her life in exchange for every other soul on the Jaggery.”
“That asshole stole her life,” said Jim, standing and pointing a finger at Gary. “We were only protecting ourselves from monsters like him. The necromancers who exploded our buddies’ heads. The unicorns who ate our wives’ bones. We have the right to protect ourselves from threats and right now you are our biggest threat.”
“I’m curious,” said Eon, “if you’re aware of what happened in Gary’s room the day your wife died.”
“Yeah. He ate her bones. I came in and she was a bag of skin on the floor. Case closed.”
“We shall see,” said Cole.
“Jenny, can you make us a flower,” asked Eon. Jenny’s heart skipped a beat when she realized what the Pymmie was asking.
“I can’t just–” she began.
“I’m confident you’ll find enough of what you call nullspace energy in this room for your purposes,” said Eon.
Jenny gathered up the energy around her. They were right, the air was charged with immense power coming off both of the Pymmie. A yellow blossom emerged from the center of the wooden table. Kaila cooed over it and caressed a petal with her fronds. It looked like a larger version of her own flowers.
Unamip chuckled and sniffed at the flower that draped over their plates.
“What an interesting ability. Are you part Bala?” he asked.
“She is all human,” said Eon.
“Very interesting indeed,” agreed Findae.
Jenny was uncomfortable with all of the attention, but it felt good to grow the flower and release the pent-up pressure. Unamip sneezed.
“Bless you,” said Gary.
“Bless us all,” said Cole as the walls closed in on them, shrinking down to the size of a cabin on the Jaggery. They were in Gary’s quarters, back when Jenny had the dwarves weld bars across the back half of the room and locked him in. Gary was pressed into a corner, seething with anger. His hair was long and slicked down with sweat. His eyes darted back and forth, wild with hunger.
A much younger Jenny sporting a ponytail sat in her old metal wheelchair on the other side of the cage. She’d pulled up close so her footrests hit the bars.
“I’ll give you water if you tell me where to find the horn,” she said. Her voice rasped as if she’d been yelling.
“Never,” Gary growled. He stank of concentrated urine and sweat.
Jenny wrapped her hands around the metal and pulled herself as far forward as she could get, coming dangerously close to the furious man within. She put her face between a break in the bars.
“There are fifty-two souls on board this ship. We’re in bad shape. We have no food, just like you. Water is nearly gone, even with recycling. You have to help me get the Jaggery out of here before we start losing people. Just let me know where you put your horn. Please.”
He looked up at her with fiery hate.
“You steal my ship, abduct my crew, imprison me, and starve me nearly to death. Now you want me to hand over my only leverage in exchange for a sip of water? You are a sad excuse for a captain and it was only luck that brought you a win at Copernica.”
“I’ll let you out,” she said. “Just tell me where to find your horn.”
“You are a liar. I can see it in your face. You will never let me out of here. You will all be rotting, stinking corpses in the cargo hold before I hand over my horn.”
Jenny backed away from the bars and turned to adjust herself in the chair. Gary flung himself across the cell in a flash, reaching for her ponytail. He grasped it and slammed her head against the bars. She screeched and clawed at his hands as he reached his other arm through and put his forearm across her neck.
“I will kill you, then I will eat you, and then I will murder every single human on board,” he hissed into her ear. She fumbled in her jumpsuit, searching for a weapon.
“Gary!” said Cheryl Ann in the doorway. He looked up and the anger drained from his face. He let go of Jenny and she hit the floor in front of his cage with a grunt. Cheryl Ann helped her back into her chair.
“You all right, hon?” asked Cheryl Ann, running her hand along the back of Jenny’s head.
“I’m fine,” said Jenny, rubbing her neck.
“Hey, there’s a problem with the pressurization in the cargo hold,” said Cheryl Ann. “I tried to run diagnostics, but the tablet isn’t getting the right readings. I think you’ll need to wire it up directly to the Bala controls in the hold and get the readings there. I’d do it myself, but you’re much better at electronics than I am.”
Jenny nodded.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll go check it out.” She kept talking as she rolled out of the room. “Go ahead and keep holding out on us, you wanker. And when everyone out here is dead and you find yourself stuck in this cell until the end of your long, long life, you can think back to this moment when I offered you freedom in exchange for your horn.” She slammed the door on her way out.
Cheryl Ann sat down cross-legged on the floor near the bars, unafraid. She was gaunt and her cheeks were sunken from dehydration. Her hands shook as she rubbed them together as if trying to get warm. She spoke in breathy little gasps. Gary moved closer to hear her.
“Jenny’s right, you know. It’s bad. Jim is wasting away in front of me. And it’s not just the food and water. The redworms are coming closer every day. This morning they got within five kilometers before turning. I thought we were done,” she said.
“Let me out and I’ll help you outrun the worms,” he said, sticking his arm through the bars. She was still slightly out of his reach. “No one can pilot this ship like I can.”
“No, Gary. You need to give us fuel. We’re stuck out here. Dead in the water with the lights off. No planets within a billion kilometers of here. We need something. The tiniest shaving would do.”
He leaned his head down and she looked into the crater in his skull.
“I have nothing. Jenny dug down deep into the bone already. There’s nothing left. Have you found any trisicles yet?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Give me your horn. It’s time. I know you don’t want Jenny to win, but people are going to die. Jim can’t get out of bed. He doesn’t make sense when he talks. Jenny told me to think about saying goodbye.” She said the last part so quietly that even in the silent room Gary had to strain to hear her.
“I told you the truth. I don’t know where to find my horn. My mother hid it so I would be safe,” he said.
Cheryl Ann put her face into her hands and sobbed. Her shoulders heaved and she made noise, but when she lifted her head, her face was dry.
“Then we’re all dead, Gary.”
>
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to help.”
Cheryl Ann pulled a knife out of her boot and unsheathed it.
“I told you, there’s nothing left. You can dig if you want.” He riffled his hair. The crater in the center was empty and crusted with dried blood.
Cheryl Ann rested the knife in her lap.
“Jim’s going to be the first one to go. I don’t think he has more than half a day left. And when he’s gone they’re going to feed him to you so you can get us out of here. And I know that’s the right thing to do, but I can’t live with myself knowing that I did nothing and just let him die.”
She scooted back away from the bars and pushed the knife into her arm, then dragged it upward. Gary threw himself against the bars, reaching for the knife.
“What are you doing? Stop!” he cried.
Blood dripped onto the floor – thick and dark. Cheryl Ann’s nose crinkled as if she smelled something bad. She bit her lip.
“It’s not so bad,” she said, her hand shaking so hard that she dropped the knife to the floor with a clatter. Gary strained to reach it, but it was too far.
“I can get a shaving for you,” he said. “Just stop. Give me your arm, Cheryl Ann. We can still fix this.”
She flexed her fingers and the blood dripped faster.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’ll work.”
“Cheryl Ann, come over here. You don’t need to do this. We’ll find another way. We’ll find my horn together. Just move a little closer.”
He pushed himself through the bars as far as he could go, getting his shoulder most of the way through, but she was beyond his reach.
“Cheryl Ann, stop now and no one will know. We can still fix this. Just come here. Please.”
“He has to live,” she said, as she tried to pick up the knife with her cut arm. She’d severed tendons and it fell back down. She picked it up with her good hand. She laughed, a high and giddy sound.
“I can’t do it.” She looked up at him and a moment of panic flashed across her face.
“Give me the knife. Please.” He extended his palm.
“Jenny’s going to be back pretty soon. When she finds me, you tell her to look in my top pocket. There’s a note about what I want. You make them do it, Gary. Promise me you’ll make them.”
“No, I don’t promise. You have to tell them yourself,” he said.
“I’m so sorry. You have to trust me, bud.”
She held the knife up to the side of her throat and pushed. It was sharp enough to pop through the skin. She jumped and dropped it. Blood poured down onto her jumpsuit.
“Oh,” she said, ineffectually trying to cover the wound with her hand.
Gary threw himself into the bars over and over, yelling her name, demanding that she stop. He called for Jenny and Jim. He called for Boges. No one came.
“I’m scared, Gary,” said Cheryl Ann, eyes wide. Gary stretched his fingers into the empty air between them.
“Good. That’s good. All of this can be undone. There’s still time,” he said.
“I love you,” she said, making a drunken smile at him.
“I love you, too. Please come here.”
“Help my Jimmy. Save them all.”
She put her head down on the floor. Her hair fell into the spreading puddle of blood. She closed her eyes.
“Wake up, Cheryl Ann. Please wake up. Jim! Jenny! Anyone!”
He reached for her. Pushing so hard that his shoulder came out of its socket, then popped back into place.
He called to her several more times, begging her to come closer, until she stopped moving. He sobbed against the bars, telling her he was sorry over and over until the minutes stretched to hours. The blood on the floor became tacky.
The door opened and Jenny wheeled back into Gary’s room.
“Cheryl Ann, there’s no problem with the pressurization. I ran through all the diagn–”
She stared at the body on the floor.
“What the bloody hell did you do?” she asked, her fingers covering her mouth in horror.
Jenny wheeled up to her best friend and pushed herself onto the floor. Blood soaked into her jumpsuit. She pulled Cheryl Ann up and felt for a pulse.
“Baby, wake up.”
“She did this,” said Gary. “She wanted to save Jim and the rest of you.”
“Shut up,” yelled Jenny, setting Cheryl Ann down and starting chest compressions. Gary talked over her counting.
“She’s been gone since you left. You’re not going to get her back,” he said. “There’s a note in her pocket for you.”
Jenny kept pushing on Cheryl Ann’s chest.
“She’s been gone for hours,” he said, louder.
“Fuck off,” Jenny said between puffs into Cheryl Ann’s mouth.
She worked until her arms were sore and Cheryl Ann’s ribs crunched under her fingers with every compression.
“Stop.” It was that commanding unicorn voice again. Jenny let her hands drop. She picked up the knife and reached through the bars for Gary’s arm.
“You can heal her. Give me your hand. You can bring her back.”
“Not now. It’s too late. It wouldn’t be her any more.”
Jenny dropped the knife and covered her mouth again with a bloody hand.
“She left you a note. In her pocket,” said Gary.
Jenny carefully opened the flap of Cheryl Ann’s jumpsuit pocket and pulled out a note. She read it and dropped the paper as if it had burned her.
“She wants me to let you eat her bones,” she said. They were both quiet for a long time before Jenny spoke again. “Will they be enough to get us back to an inhabited planet?”
“Yes.” Gary leaned back against the wall of the cell and closed his eyes.
“It will kill Jim to know that she did this to save him,” said Jenny. “It will break him.”
“He doesn’t have to know,” said Gary. “It can be my gift to her.”
“They’ll put you in jail,” said Jenny. “The bad one, back on Earth.”
“I’d do it for her,” he replied.
Jenny folded the note and slid it into her pocket, then pushed Cheryl Ann’s body closer to the bars. She rested a hand on her friend’s face and ran a thumb across her cheek. “Bye, bud.” Gary made a snorting sound that might have been a sob. By the time Jenny had climbed back into her chair, the hard veneer of captain had come back down over her face. “Do it fast, before Jim comes in and finds her like this. I’ll try to stop him from coming for you until you can grow some horn.” She wheeled out of the room.
Gary wrapped his arms around Cheryl Ann through the bars and buried his head in her hair. He cried over her for a minute, then lifted her arm and bit down with a crunch.
The memory faded. Jenny had listened to the scene unfold with her head down on the table. She didn’t need to see it again. She’d been there. Around the table she heard sniffles and coughs. Fingers snaked through her hair. For half a second she thought someone was trying to comfort her. Then the fingers yanked up and pulled her off the table.
“You gave her to him,” hissed Jim, barely an inch from her face. Gary was up in a flash, but he couldn’t disentangle Jim’s fingers from Jenny’s hair fast enough. Kaila whipped her branches at him as well, but Jim slammed Jenny’s face down onto the table before anyone could stop him. Bits of cooked pumpkin and blood came out of her nose. She coughed and clawed at his hands. The Pymmie lifted their arms and Jim collapsed to the floor.
Eon slid over and put their hands on Jenny’s cheeks. Her throbbing face was immediately fine. They gave her a pat on the cheek and bent to kneel next to Jim, who was curled up on the floor.
“All I ever wanted was my Cheryl Ann,” he said. Eon rested a hand on him and he quieted.
“Will you sit without harming anyone else?” Eon asked.
“Yeah.” Jim crawled into his chair, subdued.
Jenny felt sick. She was tired of fighting. Her heart pounded so hard that she he
ard the whoosh of blood in her eardrums. Kaila rubbed her back. Gary looked pale and tired. She wanted to climb into bed and sleep forever.
“Dear Jenny, who has shown so much strength in the face of adversity, you love both Bala and humans with the breadth of an ocean. What do you say to the question? Can humans live in cooperation with others?” asked Cole.
Jenny rubbed her forehead. She sensed the weight of the question and everything that rested on the answer. She wanted to assure them that they should get another chance, but after Copernica, and Cheryl Ann, Jim and Gary, and Kaila, she couldn’t lie to the Pymmie.
“No.” She flicked bits of bloody pumpkin off her face. “We can’t.”
Findae let out a great sigh.
“Is this some kind of Judgment Day?” asked Jim.
“Some kind of that,” said Cole.
“And we’ve been found wanting,” Jim continued.
“Most certainly,” said Unamip.
“We must choose the right remedy for the ills of man,” said Eon.
“Exceptions notwithstanding, the best option is to simply eradicate humans from the universe. They’re a scourge,” said Unamip, as if he’d proposed something as simple as taking out the trash.
“Then we would be as guilty as them, committing genocide with a flick of a Pymmie wrist,” said Findae.
“No one is safe with even one human in existence,” said Unamip. “Apologies, Jenny, but you know it’s true. They multiply past the ability of their habitat to sustain them. Then they fan out and subsume everything they encounter. I have heard one hundred years of desperate Bala prayers begging for respite from the humans. I can catalogue them all if you like. They fall under six main categories.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Cole.
“I have a proposal,” said Gary. All heads turned toward him. “Most Bala worlds have been overrun and stripped of their resources. Exterminating humans will not bring back our clean water or our fertile farmlands. The Bala need a new world upon which to start again. Humans can stay here and reap what they have sown.”
“Fine by me,” said Jim. “Get out of here.”