Expendable lop-1

by James Alan Gardner

  The gathering shadows of sunset didn't make it easy to scan the scrub brush between me and the lake. However, the Bumbler showed nothing as warm as a human body on the cliffside or the shore below.

  I refused to consider the possibility that Yarrun's body was no longer warm.

  Carefully, I tracked along the bluffs a hundred meters in both directions. The Bumbler showed no significant heat signatures. Added to that, the face of the bluffs was sandy loam, and reasonably moist; if Yarrun fell over the edge, he would have gouged deep scuffs in the dirt on his way down.

  The soil showed no marks of any kind. Nothing human-sized had tumbled over since the last rain.

  Poison Ivy

  I could have continued searching along the bluffs; however, there was still the ravine on the opposite side of the meadow and I wanted to check it before daylight faded. Searching the ravine would not be easy — the trees were losing their leaves with autumn, leaving a layer of red and gold thick underfoot. I hoped the Bumbler was sensitive enough to discern Yarrun's body heat if he lay under a day's worth of fallen leaves.

  The weakening rays of sunlight didn't penetrate much distance into the woods. From the treeline, I could make out a spindly creek running along the bottom of the ravine, but beyond that was only shadow. The Bumbler saw farther, but not well; its effective range was a hundred meters, and the ravine was wider than that. For best coverage, I would have to trek to the bottom and follow the creek, scanning both sides as I walked.

  Grimly, I started down. The undergrowth was ankle-height and patchy-low-light greenery that could survive in the shadow of the trees. Given the Earthlike look of the vegetation, maybe the plants brushing my legs were poison ivy; I couldn't tell. With all my Explorer training, I had never learned what temperate-zone poison ivy looked like — the Academy could not imagine I would ever face genuine Earth flora.

  Not that I should fall into the trap of believing this world was terrestrial. The trees looked like maples, the worms looked like worms, the insects looked like bees and butterflies, but none of that meant anything.

  This was an alien world. A hostile alien world.

  IR Anomaly

  I reached the creek and stopped by the shore, briefly checking the water for dangerous lifeforms. There were only a few small fish, barely the length of my thumb and as slim as whispers; they darted away when the reflection of my tightsuit fell across the surface. I watched them go, then lifted the Bumbler, turning a slow circle in search of heat traces.

  Halfway around, I found exactly what I wanted: a human-sized blob of bright glowing warmth. The figure was crouched and working at something low to the ground — I didn't understand what he could be doing, but I was so relieved to see he was moving, I called, "Yarrun! Yarrun!"

  On the Bumbler's screen, the figure jerked its head around. Then it put on a spurt of effort shoving at something, pushing, heaving.

  Why?

  Suddenly fearful, I slung the Bumbler under my arm and set off at the fastest trot I could manage, the confinement of my tightsuit slowing me down… like the nightmare where you can't run fast enough to outrace the monster. Fallen leaves thrashed with the sound of surf as I barged through them. Shadows clustered thick under the trees, but the pale white of a tightsuit soon became visible in the twilight in front of me.

  A white tightsuit. A head of white hair.

  Admiral Chee stood and came quickly toward me. His face was red with exertion. He had the overly bold look of someone blocking something with his body.

  "Ramos," he said, with forced heartiness. "Glad to see you're finally awake—"

  I pushed past him without a word. He tried to grab my arm, but was neither fast enough nor strong enough to hold me.

  A few paces farther on, Yarrun lay motionless on the ground. Chee had been trying to hide him by stuffing the body into a hollow log. Yarrun's feet and legs were inside the log now, but his top half was clearly visible.

  His arms limp.

  His face drained of blood.

  His throat butchered.

  So dead he had not even been warm enough to show up on the Bumbler.

  No Weapons

  "I killed him," I whispered. Silence from the admiral. "Didn't I?" I insisted. "I killed him, didn't I?"

  "You were trying to help," Chee mumbled. "Emergency tracheotomy, right? And in the heat of the moment—"

  "I killed him because I tried hacking at his throat when I couldn't see straight. If I'd just left him alone, his implant might have burned out like mine."

  "Burnout!" Chee exclaimed. "Is that what you—" He stopped himself. "Yes, burnout," he said. "You were lucky."

  What did he mean by that? It was pure luck, wasn't it? Unless the implants weren't designed to kill us at all.

  I groaned as the truth came to me. Of course they couldn't have killed us. That would have violated the one unshakeable law of space travel: no lethal weapons on a starship. The League of Peoples never let such weapons through, no matter how well concealed. "The implants weren't made to kill," I said aloud. "Just to knock us out for a while."

  "You didn't have time to think that through," Chee said sharply. "You responded to an emergency, that's all."

  "I didn't respond to an emergency-I killed my partner!" My face felt hot. "And you were trying to hide the evidence, weren't you? Stuff him into a tree so I wouldn't find him. What were you going to tell me? That he'd been dragged off by predators?"

  Silence.

  "I don't know," Chee finally answered. "I just thought it would be better if you didn't have to confront… if you didn't have to wake up with him right there."

  "Right there," I repeated. "Lying in the grass. Where I killed him."

  And I began to cry.

  Hell

  Hell is weeping inside a tightsuit.

  I wanted to cover my face with my hands. The helmet was in the way.

  My nose ran. I could not wipe it. Dribbling and hot, untouchable tears poured down my cheeks.

  I hugged my arms across my chest. The suit's surface was like iron; no matter how hard I tightened my grip, I couldn't feel my own touch. My arms squeezed against unyielding fabric, never making contact with the me inside.

  Alone, alone, crying alone. I could not even reach myself.

  My Helmet

  In time, the sobs wore themselves out. The misery didn't. The taste of my running nose was salty on my lips.

  Chee had his arms around me, trying to give comfort. I couldn't feel him through the suit either.

  He was saying things, meaningless things. "You didn't know, how could you possibly think clearly, don't blame yourself…"

  Stupid things. I shoved him away. "Leave me alone."

  He was looking at me. I wanted so badly to turn away from him that I stared him straight in the eye.

  "Ramos," he said, "take off your helmet and wipe your nose before you drown."

  "I can't take off my helmet," I sniffled. "There are germs."

  "How much air do you have left?" Chee asked. "An hour? Two hours? We're going to be here longer than that."

  "I'm going to be here forever!" The words came out before I even knew what I was saying. "I'm a murderer now. A dangerous non-sentient. I'm no different from that Greenstrider you talked about — it doesn't matter what was going through my mind, I should have known."

  "Look, in the heat of the moment…"

  "No!" I almost screamed the word. "I should have figured it out. I should have. I don't deserve to be called sentient if I can kill my partner so stupidly."

  "Ramos…"

  "I can never go into space again," I said. "Even if a rescue ship arrived this minute, they couldn't take me away. The League would never let me leave Melaquin. They'll call me non-sentient, and they're right."

  "Take off your helmet," the admiral ordered. "I refuse to argue with a person who has snot all over her face."

  In another time and place, I might have been obstinate. I might have played the steely Explorer, sternly adheri
ng to Fleet policies no matter how runny her nose was. But just this once, I didn't have the energy for willpower. With two sullen taps of my finger, I hit the helmet release button and the safety catch. It took five more seconds for the interlocks to disengage and for the pressure regulator to equalize with external atmosphere. My ears popped just as the helmet swung back on its hinges and exposed me to extraterrestrial air for the first time in my life.

  Without a second's hesitation, I wiped my nose on my sleeve.

  "Good," said Chee, "you aren't an utter idiot after all."

  A Tomb

  We interred Yarrun in the log Chee had chosen — there was no better place for him to go. The miniature shovel in my pack was only adequate for skimming soil samples, not for burying bodies; it would have taken hours to dig a hole deep enough to hold my partner, hours of staring at his throat. I couldn't bear that.

  The admiral couldn't do the work either. Whatever strength let him carry Yarrun into the woods had dissolved the moment I arrived. Now his face looked like brown chalk; his breathing sounded too deliberate, as if he was forcing himself to keep control. I gave him some excuse about wanting to deal with Yarrun myself and he didn't object. He simply sat against a tree and watched with weary eyes as I did what had to be done.

  Pushing Yarrun into the log.

  Forcing his helpless body inside, among the ants and beetles and fungus.

  Smelling the odor of punky wood strong in my nostrils, the scent mixed with the tang of Yarrun's blood and my own stink.

  Toward the end, it occurred to me to lock my own helmet onto Yarrun's tightsuit, encasing him completely so that carrion-eaters would not sniff him out. Then I finished cramming the corpse into the shadows, stuffing the end of the log with dead leaves until I could no longer see him.

  When it was all over-when I had done what I had to, and what I could — I turned away and threw up.

  "That's what fucking 'expendable' means," I said as I wiped my mouth. "That's what it really means."

  Impeccable Timing

  Chee took my arm as we walked back to the landing site. I thought he was going to try to comfort me again; but he simply needed the support.

  "You shouldn't have carried him all that way," I said.

  "It seemed like a good idea at the time," he said. "The kindest thing."

  "But it took too much out of you."

  He shrugged. "It gave me something to do. I woke up hours before you did."

  "You got knocked out too? How? You don't have a throat mike."

  "They must have planted something on me earlier," he answered. "Maybe they slipped it into my food back on the Golden Cedar. A little radio-controlled capsule no bigger than a grain of salt — the High Council loves to develop crap like that. Those bastards desperately need toys; and if the League of Peoples won't let them build guns, they build nonlethal junk instead. Same time they triggered your throat-set, they put me to sleep too."

  "Mm." Of course, the Admiralty would have to silence all of us at the same time; otherwise, there would be calls for help… demands for rescue. The Jacaranda would not be able to refuse a direct mayday, but if we all went off the air at once, Fleet policy was clear and precise. Don't send more people into unknown danger. Report the situation and let your superiors decide what to do. Our wonderful, benevolent superiors. Chee's grip around my neck tightened. "Ramos? I've been thinking of a lot of things since I got here. Old times." He shuddered. "Maybe the council was right to dump me. My memory comes and goes — a lot of the time, when I'm making a spectacle of myself, it's because I suddenly can't remember who I am. It's not like I forget my name, but I forget… important things in the past. You know? Things I sure as hell should have told you. But sometimes the memories just weren't inside my head; and sometimes the memories were there, but the courage wasn't."

  "Courage?" I thought he was rambling.

  "It's hard admitting past… failures. Ignoble surrenders. The times you should have been smarter, or braver…"

  He stumbled over a stick hidden by leaves. I kept him from falling, but it took all my strength — he hadn't made any effort to save himself. "Are you all right?" I asked. He didn't reply.

  A thought struck me. "When was your last YouthBoost?"

  "Two weeks, Ramos. One thing you can say for the council, they have impeccable timing."

  "Shit."

  "Oh Shit," he corrected.

  At Chee's age, two weeks was the longest he could go between Boosts. Without a shot, he'd go downhill fast… and it didn't help that he'd been drugged into unconsciousness, then wasted his strength carrying Yarrun a couple hundred meters. His entire metabolism must be stressed to the limit — a metabolism that would soon start feeling its full century and a half.

  "How can they do this to you?" I demanded. "Sending you here in this condition was… sorry, but it was a death sentence."

  "The League won't permit outright killing," Chee answered, "but they accept the principle of letting an organism die when its time has come. Not much of a difference for someone in my position; but the League are experts at splitting hairs. Obviously, they do let the High Council get away with this. Otherwise, Melaquin wouldn't be such a time-honored dumping ground for used admirals."

  "And now you're here."

  "Now you see me, soon you won't." His hand, lying across my shoulders, ruffled my hair for a moment. "Sorry to leave you on your own."

  "I'll survive," I said lightly.

  "Make sure you do," he answered, with full seriousness. "Make sure you do."

  "Do you think I'm going to kill myself? I can't — I'm programmed not to. In the early years of the Explorer Corps, the Fleet had too high a suicide rate. Isn't that a surprise? Explorers becoming depressed just because they're unloved freaks, shunned by the regular crew and as expendable as toilet paper. Why would that bother anyone? So the Admiralty started protecting its investment by indoctrinating us. It made sure we died on official missions rather than choosing our own place and time."

  "I know how you're programmed," Chee said. "And I know people can overcome their programming. Maybe not the first time you try and maybe not the second; but eventually, you wear down the mental blocks. Determination is a powerful thing. But I want you determined to live, not determined to die."

  "Why?" I asked. "Living well is the best revenge?"

  "No. The best revenge is getting back to New Earth and cramming the council's misdeeds down its throat."

  "I'm a murderer. I can't leave Melaquin."

  "God damn it, Ramos!" Chee roared. "You may feel guilty, but you are not a—"

  That was when he had his stroke.

  Suh

  We were almost to the top of the ravine. A few paces ahead, the trees gave way to the meadow where we had landed. Off to the west, I could see the last thin yellow of sunset fading into the purple of night.

  Chee slumped like deadweight, slopping off my shoulders and falling into the crackle of forest leaves. I was so busy looking at the sky, I didn't react fast enough to catch him.

  "Suh," he said, face down in the leaves. "Suh."

  I knelt quickly and turned him over. Already, the left half of his face was dead. The Explorer paramedic course had talked about this, but it had just been words: Loss of control over one side of the body… a telltale symptom of stroke. But now it wasn't a symptom, it was something that had happened to someone sprawled in my arms.

  The right half of the face still had Chee in it. The left half was empty — unoccupied flesh, controlled by nothing but gravity.

  "Suh," he said urgently. His right hand grabbed my arm. "Suh!"

  Last Wishes

  "Admiral," I told him, "try to be calm. I might have something in the first aid kit—"

  He slapped his palm over my mouth… a fumbling clumsy swipe that would have hurt if he'd had any strength left. "Suh!" he shouted. "Suuuuh!"

  I leaned back, just far enough to dislodge his hand. It fell limply across his chest. "Admiral Chee," I said with choke
d self-control, "you have had a stroke. It has affected your left side, so it probably happened in the right lobe of your brain. Most people have their speech nodes predominantly in the other lobe, so there's a good chance you can still speak if you relax." I didn't know if that was true, but I said it anyway. "Imagine you're speaking with the right half of your mouth. Maybe that will help you focus."

  "Suhhhh… suuuhhh…" He pursed his lips with great effort, then tried again. "Suhhhhh…"

  "Something about the sun?" I asked. "Sand? Soil? You're sorry?"

  His hand flopped across my mouth again. If he hadn't done it, I would have stopped myself in another word or two. This was not the time for guessing games. The man had suffered a stroke thirty light-years from the nearest med-center. That was bad enough; but this was the start of YouthBoost meltdown — it would only get worse. And what could I do about it? Grab my scalpel and see if I could make it two-for-two?

  "Suhhhh…"

  He lifted his hand to point. For a moment, it aimed toward the ravine — south. Was that it? But then his whole arm spasmed and pointed the other way: toward the lake.

  The lake? Or did his confused brain think it was the sea?

  "The sea?" I said. "Is that it? Do you want to be buried at sea?"

  His whole body sagged. I couldn't tell if he was relaxing because he'd got his message across or collapsing because his strength had ran out. His grip on my arm went slack, and he sank back into the leaves.

  One leaf drifted over his face, covering his nose and eyes. He didn't even twitch.

  More Expendability

  It took Chee another hour to die.

  I sat with him, his head cradled in my lap as I stroked his hair with my hand. His eyes fluttered open now and then, but I don't think he was really seeing anymore. Occasionally he would grimace and grunt; then his face would relax once more into apparent calm.

  From time to time, I used the Bumbler to check his vital signs. Eventually, the readings came up negative. No heartbeat. No EM activity in the brain.

  As planet-down deaths go, it was more gentle than any Explorer expected.