Expendable

by James Alan Gardner

“And you’ve trained your cadets to say Eloi with hatred? Very nice, Phylar. I love when Explorers spread enlightenment to the people they meet.”

  “The Morlocks hated the Eloi long before I got here,” he answered. “It’s a religious thing; but I’ve reined them in.” His words would have been more convincing if he hadn’t tossed a glance over his shoulder and added, “We’d better greet your friend before someone gets too upset.”

  He strode off quickly in the direction I had just come. I followed, saying nothing. It was tempting to take this chance to ask where the Morlocks got the skin for their faces; it was tempting to ask whether the Explorers who previously visited this town had really left in one piece. If, however, the Morlocks’ false flesh had come from flayed Explorers, Tobit was in this mess up to his bloodshot eyeballs. Calling him on it would bring the issue to a boil; and I preferred to delay any confrontation until I knew Oar was safe.

  When we were almost to the edge of the town, Tobit asked softly, “Your partner…who was it?”

  “Yarrun Derigha.”

  “The kid with the jaw?”

  “Without.”

  “Same thing.” He walked in silence a few more steps. “Oh well,” Tobit said at last, “that’s what ‘expendable’ means.”

  He gave me a sideways glance, as if trying to decide whether to pat my arm reassuringly; but he did nothing.

  Welcoming Oar

  “This will be the first Eloi I’ve seen down here,” Tobit said as we approached the door to the shark-machine dock.

  “Didn’t Jelca and Ullis pass this way?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Three years ago.”

  “They were traveling with my friend’s sister.”

  “Not when the sharks picked them up,” Tobit shrugged. “The sister might have dodged getting caught; but the other two didn’t mention traveling with another person. And they stayed a few days, like they weren’t in a hurry to make a rendezvous.”

  I had no chance to pursue the subject—we had reached the door to the dock. Tobit pressed the OPEN button…and I barely managed to pull him from the entranceway before Oar leapt out, her hands bunched into fists.

  It was a creditable imitation of my own response to surprise. These people certainly were fast learners.

  “Don’t worry, Oar,” I said, “no one’s going to hurt you.”

  “I did not like it inside the fish,” she said with an injured tone.

  Glancing into the dock area, I said, “No kidding.” Oar’s shark was more of a wreck than the one I’d blasted…except that the glass on hers was cracked from the inside, where she must have tried to punch her way out. “I see you found a way to amuse yourself on the trip.”

  Oar ignored me—she had noticed the town and was viewing it with a steely eye. “What is this place?” she asked. “Why is it so stupid?”

  “Stupid?” Tobit asked.

  “It is stupid to copy someone else’s home,” she sniffed, “and if you must create a copy, it is stupid to make so many mistakes.” She waved her hand dismissively. “It is too big. It has ugly things attached to it.”

  “Those are flags!” Tobit said. “My friends hung them to celebrate my birthday.”

  “Get smarter friends,” she told him, and turned her back pointedly.

  Home-Brew

  “What is a birthday?” Oar whispered to me.

  “A commemoration,” I replied. “A remembrance of the day a person was born.” I tossed a glance at Tobit. “Phylar remembers his birthday with great regularity.”

  “No need to be rude,” Tobit said. “I’ll have you know, this is my real birthday, Ramos…on some pissant planet whose name escapes me. I’ll look it up when I get back to my quarters.”

  “You brought your birthday calculator to Melaquin?”

  “I knew I’d get marooned here,” he answered. “I made sure to bring everything I need. Speaking of which…” He reached into a tightsuit pocket and withdrew a silver brandy flask. “Want a sip?”

  The thought made me shudder. “An Explorer never drinks on planet-down missions.”

  “Here’s some news, Ramos—this stopped being a mission as soon as the High Council choked you unconscious. And I stopped being an Explorer long before that.” He raised the flask and took a swig. When he lowered it again, he sighed with pleasure…a sigh that reeked of rotgut alcohol.

  “Home-brew?” I asked, trying to control my gag reflex.

  “My own recipe,” Tobit answered proudly. “You can’t get booze from the local food synthesizers, but they produce some superbly fermentable fruit juices. The only hard work was programming the maintenance-bots not to throw out what I produced: they thought it was lemonade gone bad.”

  He laughed. I didn’t. “What do your skin-faced friends think?” I asked. “Do they like a lord and master who drinks himself into a stupor?”

  “Ramos,” he answered, still chuckling, “they adore a lord and master who shares his liquor. Like I said, their food synthesizers don’t make the stuff. They didn’t know what they were missing till I came along.” He gave me a leering smile. “How do you think I became their lord and master in the first place?”

  “If you are anyone’s lord and master,” Oar said, “they are very stupid people. You are ugly and you smell.” She slipped her arm into mine. “Let us go now, Festina.”

  “You ain’t going nowhere yet, girlie,” Tobit told her. He didn’t sound offended; calling Oar ‘girlie’ might have been his attempt at rakish charm. “The only way to leave is inside a shark…and frankly,” he waved toward the dock, “neither of those is seaworthy anymore.”

  “Can you summon other machines?” I asked.

  “Nope. They show up on their own when they need to refuel. One docks in every few days. In the meantime…you can both be guests at my birthday party.”

  I said nothing; but Tobit must have seen how undelighted I was. “Cheer up!” he said, giving my arm a light slap, “you’ll like my parties. I give presents to my guests, not the other way around. And I’ve just thought of a doozy for you.”

  HAPPY

  We walked back to the central plaza, Oar still holding my arm to keep me between her and Tobit. Every so often she sniffed pointedly; she could smell the liquor on him. In her mind, he must be the epitome of dirty.

  As we drew near the Morlocks’ building, I made sure my stunner was ready for a quick draw. Tobit might claim to control his “subjects” but I had my doubts; I had my doubts about everything Tobit said. If those Skin-Faces attacked, I had to be ready to knock them out….

  I stopped in the street as a thought struck me. What would sonics do to a glass person? They weren’t real glass…but the shark machine rang like a chime when I shot it. I wondered if the Morlocks would resonate too. That might be a vulnerability of people who were hard instead of soft. Could sonics from a stunner seriously injure them? The blasts had damaged the machine; or maybe I had just scrambled some sonar guidance system and the real damage happened when the shark ran into that log.

  Impossible to say—but I pushed the stunner back into my belt so I wouldn’t be tempted to use it. For a moment, I had imagined Oar’s body shattering, like a wineglass breaking under an opera singer’s voice. I couldn’t do that, even to a Skin-Face.

  No more killing. No more killing.

  Tobit led us into the building where I’d first seen him—a building smelling of booze mixed with vomit. Oar convulsed in a coughing fit as soon as the odor reached her. I held down my gorge with memories from the Academy: waking on the floor after an end-of-term bash, the arms of other Explorers draped over me, everyone’s breath so flammable the air purity sensors blinked yellow. Why had we done it? Because we were young and tongue-tied; getting drunk together was the greatest intimacy we would dare attempt.

  And the Morlocks? They were engineered to have the minds and openness of children; once Tobit brewed his booze, they didn’t stand a chance.

  I could see them now, through the glass walls ahead of us: the
same quartet as before, helping themselves to a brownish concoction that must be Tobit’s hootch. It ran down their throats and pooled darkly in their stomachs, sloshing slightly as they moved. Oar’s grip tightened on my arm—she had seen too, and for once her face showed none of the haughty superiority she usually assumed when confronted with the unfamiliar. More than anything, she looked hurt…like a sick little girl who can’t understand why pain exists.

  “Right this way!” Tobit boomed, waving us into the room with the drinking Morlocks. Oar moved forward mechanically; I went with her, squeezing her arm.

  Unlike most rooms I’d seen on Melaquin, this one had furniture: glass chairs, and a glass table supporting something like a cake. The cake must have come from a local food synthesizer, since it was clear and transparent; but someone had spelled the word HAPPY across the top, in scraps of grubby red plastic.

  Either there hadn’t been enough plastic to spell out BIRTHDAY, or nobody cared enough to bother.

  The Gift

  The Morlocks glared at Oar with the owlish blinks of drunks everywhere. They had not consumed much liquor yet—I could tell just looking at their stomachs—but already they showed its effects.

  Tobit gestured toward the Morlocks. “These are my faithful comrades: Mary, Martha, Matthew, and Mark. Perfect names for disciples, don’t you think?”

  The Morlocks didn’t move to acknowledge their names. They continued staring at Oar.

  “My name is Festina Ramos,” I said to them, “and this is Oar.”

  In a whisper, she said, “An oar is an implement used to propel boats.”

  The Morlocks remained motionless. Tobit looked from them to us, then gave an exaggerated sigh. “Am I the only one on this goddamned planet who knows how to party? Fun! Festivity! Falling down dribbling spittle! You hear me?”

  Every Morlock said, “Yes, lord.” They didn’t mean it.

  Another tense silence. Tobit groaned. “All right. I was going to leave this till later, but we have to do something to get people in the spirit. Ramos…time for your present.”

  “I don’t need a present.”

  “Everyone needs presents. And I have the perfect one for you. Something you could search for from one end of the galaxy to the other, and lucky me, I have some right here. Damned good luck, considering I didn’t know you were coming. If you had any sense of courtesy you’d have called ahead—”

  “Phylar…” I sighed.

  “All right, leave it be. No sense pissing you off when I can win your everlasting gratitude…not to mention showing how smart I am to think of this on the spur of the moment.” He drew himself up with counterfeit dignity. “Explorer Ramos, have you noticed my disciples’ bodily adornment?”

  “The skin?”

  “Yes, the skin. Have you wondered where they got it?”

  “I’m hoping from animals.”

  “Wrong!” Tobit grinned in triumph. “It’s artificial: comes straight out of a synthesizer down the block.”

  “Obviously not a food synthesizer.”

  “No,” Tobit agreed. “This town has lots of different synthesizers, programmed with manifest goodies from the League of Peoples. You guessed that, right, Ramos? You guessed that the League relocated these folks to Melaquin from Earth?”

  I nodded. “The League must have made the same offer they made us four hundred years ago—renounce violence and get a new planet.”

  “Right,” Tobit replied. “I get the feeling they only made the offer to selected tribes…maybe those who were already peaceful enough to convince the League they were sentient. Anyway, your ancestors and mine stayed back on Earth while the chosen few got a free ticket to Melaquin. The League built these towns, the synthesizers, the communications systems…and they also arranged that all future generations would be strong and healthy.” Tobit pointed at Oar. “God knows why the League decided to make them of glass, but I suppose people got used to it. This all happened about four thousand years ago; folks from those days must have been so glad their kids didn’t die in infancy, they didn’t care what the babies looked like.”

  “My mother was proud of how I look,” Oar said defensively. “I happen to be extremely beautiful.”

  “Yeah, you’re one in a million,” Tobit sniggered. “Anyway,” he turned back to me, “I was talking about my Morlocks’ skin. The League whipped it up for the first generation to come here—the non-glass humans. It’s a bandage material: covers cuts, bruises, pockmarks…those people must have been a sorry-looking bunch when they came here, what with disease, malnutrition, and all the other crap of 2000 B.C. Artificial skin must have been damned popular with them.

  “Of course,” he continued, “the glass kids were next to undamageable, so the skin wasn’t used once the first generation died; but a few hundred years ago, some wise man from this town—”

  “The Prophet!” one of the Morlocks shouted. For a moment I thought she sounded angry, but then she raised her drink and chugged it in a toast.

  “Yes, the Prophet,” Tobit agreed, then turned my way, rolled his eyes, and mouthed the word whacko. “The Prophet,” he said, “received a revelation that the Morlocks should return to the ways of their ancestors: hunting animals and living off the land.” He lowered his voice. “Once every few years anyway—most of the time they just sponge off the food dispensers like everyone else.”

  Raising his voice, Tobit went on, “The Prophet also had an insight about the ideal state of the human body: covered with skin like the first generation. Skin good, glass sinful. You see, Ramos, being invulnerable and immune to disease is ignoble. Far better to suffer and bleed and get bitten by insects….”

  I tried to silence him with a sharp look. The Morlocks were drunk, but they still might recognize sarcasm…and I could guess their reaction if someone mocked their prophet.

  “Sure, okay,” Tobit said grudgingly. “The point is, the Prophet found the synthesizer that could make artificial skin; and he devised a scheme for bestowing skin on Morlocks who deserved it. Like merit badges. You get skin for your face at birth—that’s a freebie—then on your crotch when you pass puberty rituals, on your chest for killing a buffalo, on your hands if you kill a mountain lion…that sort of thing. And if you are worthy and brave, eventually you get to look like…” Tobit did a mock curtsy. “Me. Skin from head to toe. I’m their fucking ideal.”

  “They are fools,” Oar said.

  A male Morlock tried to struggle to his feet, but Tobit waved him down. “Stay! Sit!” The Morlock slumped again. “You see what having skin means?” Tobit smirked at me. “I have clout. I’m fucking elevated. And that means I can bestow certain honors on my friends.”

  He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a handsized scrap of brown tissue: thin and limp, like a cloth bandage.

  “Skin, Ramos,” he said. “Do you think this chunk is big enough to cover that splotch on your face?”

  Part XIV

  TRANSITION

  Camouflage

  For a moment, my mind went blank. I wish I could say I wanted to hit him, kick that stupid grin off his face; but I was too stunned even for anger. The limp flap of skin lay in his dirty glove like a rag of brown linen…and he thought I should put that on my face?

  “I can see you’re pleased,” he said. “And I promise, it’s everything you hope for. Self-adhesive…porous to let sweat out and air in…even designed to adapt to your skin color like a chameleon.”

  “My…” I swallowed hard. “Yes, Phylar, that’s just what I want. A scrap of synthetic I can put on my cheek and watch turn purple. The height of entertainment.”

  “Ramos, the League designed this stuff to hide crap like that shit on your face. Hiding is what Melaquin’s all about. Let me tell you, I had one fuck of a lousy scar as a memento from an old exploration mission. Now it looks as smooth as a baby’s bottom.” His voice was loud with booze, and he must have realized it. In a softer voice he said, “Listen—Festina—maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. Who knows how t
he skin will respond to your…condition. But when I use it to cover a bruise, it doesn’t turn the color of the bruise. And I’ll tell you a secret: I put some of this fake skin on my nose. It hides the….”

  He waved his hands vaguely—too squeamish, I suppose, to say that his nose had once been the ravaged red of a drunkard, florid with prominent blood vessels. Now that I looked, Tobit’s nose was a healthier color than at the Academy: smooth, not pitted or flushed. It was still unnaturally bulbous, but the skin itself looked…good.

  “See?” he said, proudly turning his head to show off his physiognomy. “Maybe the skin can help you too.”

  He pushed the pathetic brown tissue toward me. I didn’t take it.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “You aren’t the sort of woman who uses her face as an excuse, are you? The kind who blames every little problem on an accident of birth, and won’t try to fix things for fear it might work. You can’t be worried that without the birthmark, you won’t have reason to bitch and moan—”

  “One more word,” I told him, “and the skin I take off you won’t be that piece in your hand.”

  The Morlocks roused themselves stewishly and made a show of brandishing their spears. Their attempt to look threatening was pathetic. I felt like showing what a tigerclaw strike could do to someone’s face, fake skin or no. But Oar put her hand lightly on my arm, and said, “Do not be foolish, Festina. This man says you can be less ugly. It would be better if you were less ugly. People would not feel so sad when they look at you.”

  “Do you feel sad when you look at me, Oar?”

  “I am not such a person as cares how others look,” she answered. “But there may be people who see you and feel like crying, because it is wrong for the only nice Explorer to look so damaged.”

  Ouch.

  Ouch.

  “All right,” I said, holding out my hand to Tobit. “Give me the skin.”

  Shading

  It felt like a scrap of silk stocking—a mesh so fine and smooth, I wanted to stroke it with my fingers. The color was close to my own skin already: a shade darker, that was all. Even if it stayed the same color when I put it on, I could have a whole face; I’d just have to darken the rest of my skin with a modest amount of makeup.