Expendable lop-1

by James Alan Gardner

  "What about your sister?" I asked. "Did she eventually get bored too?"

  "I am sure she is very bored now," Oar answered haughtily. "She is bored and sad and stupid."

  "Oh?"

  "She went away with the fucking Explorers. They took her and not me."

  Oar loosed a furious kick at the body closest to her — a man who skidded across the floor with the force of the impact. He opened his eyes to glare at Oar, said a few unknown words in a grumbling voice, then shifted back to his former location.

  Oar immediately kicked him again. "Do not call me names, old man!" she snapped.

  He glared at her once more, but said nothing. He didn't try to move this time, but settled where he was, folding his hands across his chest and closing his eyes. I wondered if he would shift back to his original place after Oar left.

  "They all have tired brains," Oar told me. "They are old and tired — and rude," she added, raising her voice pointedly. "They have nothing else they want to do, so they lie here."

  "Don't they eat or drink?"

  Oar shook her head. "They absorb water from the air… and absorb the light too. My sister said the light in this building is nutritious — good enough anyway for people who do nothing. I do not understand how light can be nutritious, but my sister claimed it was true."

  Having lived with solar energy all my life, I had no trouble appreciating how light could "feed" an organism; but clear glass was not a good photo-collector. It's better to be opaque to the light you're trying to absorb… and then it occurred to me, these bodies were opaque to most nonvisible wavelengths. A quick Bumbler check confirmed it — the deceptively muted light inside this building was laced with enough UV to bake potatoes. I shuddered to think what other radiation might be flooding the air… say, microwaves and X-rays.

  "Let's go outside," I told Oar briskly. "You've probably never heard the word 'melanoma'… but I have."

  The Surrender

  The light outside was not so lethal — the Bumbler certified it fell within human safety limits. Obviously, the tower containing Oar's ancestors was shielded to keep all that juicy radiation inside… which only made sense. If you devoted so much wattage to feed solar-powered people, you didn't want energy spilling uselessly through the walls. Whatever the tower was made of, it certainly wasn't ordinary glass; it held in everything but visible light, making a high-band hothouse for photosynthesizing deadbeats.

  "They really just lie in there all day?" I asked.

  "Most have not moved in centuries. That is what my mother said her own mother claimed. As long as I have lived, only my mother and sister have moved."

  "But now your mother is dormant and your sister left with Jelca?"

  "Yes. I have been alone the last three years."

  I felt the urge to touch her — pat her shoulder, give her a hug, pass on comfort somehow. But I didn't; I didn't know the right thing to do.

  "It's hard being alone," I finally said. "It's a wonder you haven't laid down with the others."

  "I do sometimes," she told me. "Sometimes I go into the tower to be with people. Once in a while… once in a while, I see if I can lie with a man and get him to give me his juices; but it never works and I just get sad."

  She spoke in a halting voice. I didn't know how to answer. Finally I said, "You can't die, can you? Your species can't die."

  "We are not such things as die," she whispered. "We do not get damaged. We do not grow old and sick like animals. If you had left me in the lake, Festina, I would have lived and lived… under the water, too weak to move, but still alive.

  "Our bodies live forever," she continued, "but our brains slow down after a time. When people's brains grow tired and there is nothing else they want to do, they just lie down. It is called the Surrender. Some people surrender outside — in the grass, on the sand, or in the water — but most come home to this tower. It is pretty and comfortable here; and the light gives enough strength that you can always move if you want to. My mother said that was good: she felt she could get up any time she had a reason. She just couldn't think of a reason."

  I couldn't meet Oar's gaze. "I'm proud of you," I said, finding it hard to force the words out.

  "Why are you proud of me, Festina?"

  "Because you aren't in there with everyone else." I grabbed her arm to pull her away from the building… or rather to touch her in the only way I could justify. "Come on — you were showing me the sights. Let's keep going."

  And we did.

  By the Fountain

  We stood in the central square of the village, directly in front of the glass fountains that chattered in the middle of the plaza. Oar walked up to one, spreading her arms and watching her skin mist up in the humid air. The look she gave me, back over her shoulder, suggested she considered such behavior daring.

  "My mother called this The Fountain of Tomorrow" Oar said. "The other is The Fountain of Yesterday." She paused. "They look very much the same, do they not?"

  "Too much." I wondered if that was the fountain-builder's point. "Oar," I asked, "what do you do all day?"

  "Why do you ask, Festina?"

  "You don't have to work to survive. You can get food just by asking the synthesizer, you don't wear clothes, and this village clearly runs itself automatically. You must have done things with your sister while she was here; but how do you fill your days now?"

  Oar didn't answer immediately; she stayed motionless in the fountain's mist, water beading on her skin. It made her easier to see — like the glass of a bathroom mirror, fogged after a long hot shower. Finally, she turned and sat on the edge of the fountain. Her movement shook loose the larger droplets, sending them trickling down her body.

  "I clear fields, Festina. That is what I do."

  "Clear fields? Why? Do you grow crops?"

  "I just clear fields," she answered. "Jelca said it should be done. He said that civilized races always cleared fields on their worlds. When I asked why, he refused to tell me. He said he should not have mentioned it in the first place — that Explorers were not supposed to influence the people they met. He told me to forget it. But I did not forget. And if he ever comes back, he will see that I am a civilized person, not stupid at all."

  "So you… clear fields."

  "Yes." Her voice was proud. "In addition to the machine that makes food, this city has machines for making many other things… if you know how to ask. I asked a toolmaking machine for such a blade as could cut down trees. The machine gave me a good blade indeed. So now I cut down trees every night, when no one is watching. I cut the wood into pieces that I can carry away, then I cover the stumps with grass and leaves."

  "You've been doing that ever since Jelca left?"

  "Yes. It is hard work, but when he comes back, he will be sorry he did not understand how civilized I am."

  "I'm sure he will."

  Our probes had reported this area was too clear of trees. All the work of one woman? Could one person cut enough forest that it was noticeable from space? Amazing. And all on the strength of a slip of Jelca's tongue.

  Oar sat on the edge of the fountain, dribbles of water pouring down her arms, her shoulders, her face.

  "My sister has never cut a tree in her life," she said.

  "Which proves she isn't civilized?"

  "That is correct." Oar smiled. "Come, Festina. I will show you Jelca's house."

  Prototypes

  "This is where Laminir Jelca chose to live," Oar said. But she didn't have to tell me that.

  While touring the village, I had peeked into several glass buildings, all bare of any adornment except dust. The blockhouse we had just entered was different: strewn with discarded circuit boards, coils of wire, and stripped insulation. A small fraction of the material must have come from the Technocracy — I recognized a familiar D-thread chip, straight out of a tightsuit pressure monitor — but most of it was native to Melaquin.

  It was easy to tell the difference: all the Melaquin components were clear and tra
nsparent. Nudging a see-through cable with my toe, I wanted to growl, "Haven't you people heard of copper?"

  Jelca probably felt the same way — after all, he had to work with the stuff. Many of the glasslike parts were labeled in thick black letters from the marker pen all Explorers carry: RESISTOR, 10 OHMS… FUSE, AT LEAST 15 AMPS… BAD TUNNEL-TUBE, DO NOT USE. How he had identified these things, I couldn't imagine; but as I said before, Jelca came from a line of dabblers in electronics. With the aid of his Bumbler, he could analyze almost anything, given enough patience… and enough duplicate parts for the times he guessed wrong.

  "Did he explain what he was making?" I asked Oar.

  "Foolish things," she answered. "He claimed he could make a machine to talk to people far away… and a version of our food maker machine, only small enough to carry."

  Practical thinking on Jelca's part: a radio and a nutrient synthesizer. That gave him a way to contact other marooned Explorers, and the means to feed himself while he traveled to wherever the others were. After a moment, I corrected myself — the means to feed himself and Ullis, plus Oar's sister if she was traveling with them. It would take a big Synthesizer to produce enough food for three people… but if Oar's sister was as strong as Oar, she might have no trouble carrying heavy equipment for hours on end.

  Carefully I prowled the room, examining everything Jelca had made during his time here. I recognized several nutrient synthesizers, the kind that take leaves and other organic material as input, then produce compact food cubes: not fine cuisine, but enough to keep you alive. There seemed to be a progression of prototypes, from one that must have weighed a hundred kilos down to something much less bulky. Jelca had obviously worked to produce the smallest equipment possible so he and Ullis could travel light. Naturally, they'd taken the most compact version with them; but sizing up the best one they'd left behind, I thought I could stand hauling it five or six hours a day, if I built a good carrying frame.

  Thank you, I whispered to the air. Jelca had left me the means to follow him.

  The Picture Box

  "This box makes pictures," Oar said behind my back.

  She pointed to a crystal screen embedded in the wall… or more accurately, embedded in what was left of the wall. Jelca had ripped away much of the material around the screen so he could get in behind it — into a mass of fiberoptic cable and circuits feeding the screen. By the looks of it, this was a native Melaquinian television; and Jelca had either tried to repair it or plunder it for parts.

  "The screen showed pictures?" I asked.

  "Yes. Pictures of ugly Explorers."

  "Jelca and Ullis?"

  "No, different Explorers."

  "Different…" I forced myself not to lunge for the TV. If other Explorers could broadcast television signals, they must have developed a substantial technological base — either that or they had drawn upon existing Melaquin resources. Now that I thought about it, normal TV/radio waves could never reach here under the lake. The dome must have a concealed antenna or cable feed reaching up to the outside world. Perhaps the planet supported hundreds of hidden villages like this one, connected by a shielded cable network: a network that would allow communication from one village to another, but whose transmissions would not be detectable from space.

  And my fellow Explorers had tapped into that system.

  "Oar," I said, "I'd like to turn on the machine."

  "You may not see anything," she answered. "The pictures only come for a short while, then go away. And they are always the same stupid Explorers saying the same stupid things."

  It must be a looped signal saying, "Hello new arrivals, here's where everyone else is." With clumsy fingers, I clicked the TV's switch. The screen lit with a display of static. For some reason, I had convinced myself it would show a picture immediately; but ten minutes passed (Oar tapping her toe impatiently) before a picture snapped into view.

  "Greetings," said a man on the screen. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples and I beg…"

  I was too shocked to pay attention to the words. The man on the screen was Chee.

  Part X

  COMMUNICATION

  Ears

  The Chee on the screen looked younger — not so many lines on his face and only a few gray streaks in his black hair. He wore the hair down to his shoulders; but it couldn't hide the huge misshapen ears sticking out from his head like purple-veined plates.

  Those ears looked like botched engineering: some ill-conceived project to achieve God knows what. Even though it was illegal, there were always fools who tinkered with their offspring's genes, failing to understand that a change in enzyme A might affect how the body used proteins B, C, and D. Most of the time, such alterations killed the child in utero; but occasionally, the fetus lived to full term, emerging from the womb with deformities like the man on the screen.

  A man with the ears of a cartoon caricature. Or an Explorer.

  Yes. Those ears would make him a prime candidate for the Academy… if he could still hear. If the malformed ears handicapped his hearing, Technocracy medicine would leap to the rescue: reconstructive surgery, prosthetic replacements, targeted virus therapy — whatever it took. But if the ears were merely grotesque, and the child was intelligent, healthy, psychologically pliable… on to the Academy.

  Chee. An Explorer.

  Was it really him? Could it just be a close relative, a brother, or even a clone? All were possibilities; but I could feel in my gut this was the real Chee.

  Chee had known more about Exploring than any normal Vacuum admiral. When suiting up, for example, he had known to empty his bladder during Limbo.

  An Explorer. An Explorer who somehow became an admiral.

  How long ago had this recording been made? The signal could have looped for decades if it ran off a reliable power source. If Chee had been one of the first marooned here, some forty years ago… yes, I could believe it. The Explorer on the screen was a veteran, probably taking YouthBoost every few months. Forty years would bring him almost exactly to the Chee who had died a few hours ago.

  Forty years.

  Plus ear surgery.

  And some way to escape from Melaquin.

  Chee's Speech

  With an effort, I forced myself to concentrate on his words, not his appearance. (Chee's voice — it was definitely Chee's voice.)

  "…fully expect that more of us will get shanghaied here over time. If you are in that position, I invite you to join my partner and me in the enclave we've found. It's an underground city, fully automated and self-repairing… centuries old. The people are humanoid but glassily transparent; all seem dormant, though we cannot guess the cause. We have had no success in rousing them to consciousness for more than a minute at a time.

  "We've had better luck with the technical facilities here: this broadcasting station, for example. If we've analyzed its structure correctly, our transmissions should be going out over a high-capacity network, perhaps reaching all around the world. We have also discovered very old machines capable of space flight… or at least they were capable of flight centuries ago. If we can restore one of these ships to working condition, we might use it to get off the planet. We have yet to find a ship with FTL capacity, but we don't need to get as far as another star system — we just have to escape the restricted airspace around Melaquin, then send a mayday.

  "Therefore, fellow ECMs, I invite you to help us with this project. We may not be space-tech engineers, but we're smart and resourceful. In time, we can rebuild a ship and get out of here — if we work together."

  Chee suddenly grimaced straight to the camera. "Shit, that sounded pompous, didn't it? But you know what I mean. We can get our asses out of here if we don't fuck up. Some of you must have landed way to hell the other side of the ocean and you'll never make it here under your own steam; but look around, see what you can scrounge up. This civilization had sophisticated goodies before it went to sleep. Maybe you can find a starship of your own… if not, maybe a boat or a p
lane that'll bring you to us, even if you're thousands of klicks away.

  "And where is here, you might ask? To answer that, I'll turn the floor over to my partner who's drawn up a map to show exactly where this city is…"

  Chee reached toward the camera, his hand looming in front of the lens before the shot swivelled to a new angle. In a moment, a woman came into view. She was holding a map, but that wasn't what I was looking at.

  Her left cheek had a fierce purple birthmark, twin to mine.

  And beneath that birthmark was the face of Admiral Seele.

  My First Admiral, Again

  Admiral Seele. My first admiral. The one who spent several days with me on the Jacaranda.

  The one who paid me so much attention, I thought she wanted into my bed.

  "Shit," I whispered. "Shit, shit, shit."

  "What is wrong, Festina?" Oar asked. She glanced at the screen. "Are you angry this woman has copied your ugliness?"

  Yes, that's why I'm angry, I thought. I'll sue her for stealing my trademark.

  Admiral Seele. No wonder she took such interest in me. My mark was on the right, hers on the left; we were mirror images. On screen, as she pointed to her map and blathered about landmarks, she even looked the same age as me… but the recording was made forty years ago, give or take. I could well imagine those forty years had aged the woman I saw now into the admiral who cried for me.

  But how had Seele lost her birthmark? How had Chee lost those monstrous ears? And how had they both become admirals?