Expendable

by James Alan Gardner

  “Close, damn it,” I told the door. “Close.”

  The lark moved: an unhurried circle to aim its beak toward the airlock. I swiveled my chair to keep watch on the other door. If it closed before Tobit arrived, he would never figure out what had happened—he would shrug it off and take another swig from his flask. But if he saw a previously hidden door in the side of the dome….

  He was a drunk, but he was also an Explorer. He had a good brain, no matter how many neurons he’d pickled. In time, he’d find the truth…especially since the solution was as easy as detaching his prosthetic arm. The AI would acknowledge him as completely flesh and kowtow to him, laying the town’s resources at Tobit’s feet.

  Tobit with an air force.

  If he came to the door now, he might even catch sight of the missiles. It wouldn’t matter that the weapons were disarmed. He could just instruct the AI to make more.

  Maybe the next Exploration Team to visit Melaquin wouldn’t find the surface quite so unspoiled.

  The Second Farewell

  Languidly, the lark wheeled forward. The light of the hangar gave way to the darkness of the airlock area. At least we’re clear, I thought. No matter how angry Tobit may be that I kept this a secret, he can’t catch us now.

  The airlock door started to close.

  We might make it, I thought.

  Stupid.

  Tobit and his disciples raced into the hangar. A Morlock pointed her finger at our plane—the source of the noise. Tobit’s face twisted with fury. I had let him believe Oar and I were leaving in sharks, not a flier. He fumbled out his stun-pistol and pointed it in our direction.

  His hand shook. I couldn’t tell if it was a meaningless tremor or if he had pulled the trigger.

  I remembered what my stunner did to the shark.

  The lark vibrated. It had been vibrating all along, trembling with the roar of its engines.

  Had he fired? Had we been hit?

  The airlock door squeezed shut, cutting off the light from the hangar. We were in darkness.

  The jet noise choked to burbling as water flooded into the airlock chamber. The roar in my ears faded to a damp hiss—not a real sound but an aftermath of the aural onslaught, my eardrums stunned into a bruised sensation of white noise.

  I lay back in my seat panting. Behind me, Oar moaned; my hearing was so battered, I couldn’t tell if her whimpers were loud or soft.

  Should I unbuckle myself and go to her? That was dangerous…especially if the lark suddenly shot forward when the other airlock door opened.

  “Please,” I said aloud to the plane. “Can we have some light? I want to see how Oar is.”

  A soft blue glow dawned around the edge of the floor—a ribbon of illumination barely the width of my finger.

  It was enough; tears trickled down Oar’s glass face, but she gave me a look of determined bravery. I almost laughed—she sat bolt upright in her chair, strapped in so tightly she could only move her head.

  She would be all right. She was built to be immortal.

  I turned away. With dim light inside and blackness out, I saw my reflection in the cockpit’s glass.

  My face was perfect. My cheek was perfect.

  I was whole.

  Part XV

  BEAUTY

  My Blindness

  It was my face. It was not my face.

  I did not know how to look at myself when I wasn’t disfigured.

  Was I now beautiful? Was I now merely normal?

  What would other people think?

  What would Jelca think?

  It was ridiculous to ask such questions. I refused to be so weak that my self-image depended on others.

  But I didn’t know how to look at myself. I didn’t know how to see myself. I didn’t know how to assess myself.

  Not that the reflection in the glass was truly Festina Ramos. I was wearing a mask: an invisible mask, but underneath there still lurked my purple “pride.”

  The real me: damaged…deformed.

  But I couldn’t see the real me. I didn’t know what I was seeing.

  A woman with clear brown skin. Strong cheekbones. Green eyes you could actually look at, without your attention being dragged downward in guilty fascination.

  I couldn’t remember ever looking into my own eyes—not beyond searching for fallen lashes and my few attempts at using kohl.

  Were they beautiful eyes? What does it mean to have beautiful eyes?

  What does it mean to be beautiful?

  Up Revisited

  The lark gurgled forward. “Lights off,” I said—partly so I could see outside, partly to hide my reflection. Prope and Harque might gaze dotingly on their faces; but I wouldn’t.

  I refused to think about it. I refused to acknowledge it. I refused to be changed by it.

  The glow at the base of the cockpit faded, leaving a dim aftershine still rimmed across my vision. There was nothing outside but blackness—a blackness that bubbled as our jets churned the water. At some point we must have passed out of the airlock into open lake, but I couldn’t sense the transition: just a steady motion forward that gradually assumed an upward arc.

  Rising out of the waters…born again with a new face.

  I dug my fingernails into my bare arm as punishment for such thoughts. How banal can you get? I chided myself.

  When the light finally came, it arrived quickly: from a glimmer far over our heads to a diffuse glow, then rapidly looming down on us until we broke through into late afternoon sunshine. Like a jumping trout, the plane shot out of the water then slapped down hard on its belly, not flying fast enough yet to stay airborne.

  The impact jarred my teeth together, and Oar gave a yelp; then both of us gasped in unison as our swivel chairs locked into forward-facing positions and the engines kicked in with full jet power. A hammer of acceleration slammed me back with at least five Gs, pressing on me with such ferocity it emptied my brain of all but one thought: This better not rip off the skin.

  Water tore away beneath us as the lark skimmed the water surface; then we were climbing at a sharp angle, still accelerating, still crushed back by the force. The pain was worst in my knees—they were propped over the edge of the chair as both my thighs and feet pressed backward, making a straining, two-way stretch. It was only a matter of time before soft tissue tore under the stress…but before that happened, the engines eased and the wrenching ache subsided.

  Lightly, I touched my cheek. The skin still seemed in place.

  I let myself breathe.

  Altitude

  Below I could see a modest lake a few kilometers across—not much more than a widening in the long fat river that lazed its way from one horizon to the other. I tried to memorize the look of the area in case I had to come back: in case Tobit made such a nuisance that I had to talk some sense into him. With luck, he would simply retreat into wounded inebriation. He would poison the Morlocks with his rotgut and it would never matter to the world that somewhere under the lake was a dome housing sullen drunkards.

  “Festina!” Oar said excitedly. “We are flying!”

  “Yes we are.”

  “Like birds!”

  “Yes.”

  “We are high above the ground!”

  “Yes.” In fact, we weren’t far up at all: enough to clear any slight hill in the prairie, but at a much lower altitude than I was used to flying. For anyone below, the noise of our engines would punish the eardrums; however, there was no one down there but rabbits and gophers. From this vantage point, Melaquin looked pristine—an unspoiled natural world, devoid of messy civilization.

  “Turn south,” I told the lark. “Set whatever airspeed gives the most distance for the fuel we have. And let’s gain some altitude, shall we? There’s no point in scaring the animals.”

  Cruising

  The plains rolled away beneath us. Oar had loosened her safety straps for more freedom to delight in the view—to squeal happily as we passed over a stampeding herd of bison or to ask why no river
ever ran in a straight line. I responded as politely as I could, but my mind was elsewhere.

  What would I say when I met Jelca? What would he say to me?

  We had gone on a total of two dates, one real, one virtual. I paid for both.

  The real date was the usual thing—four hours of volunteer patrol for the Civilian Protection Office. As Explorers, we were qualified for assignment in a tough neighborhood: tough enough that we got into two separate fights with the same Purpose gang. Like most gangs, they fought fists only; they dreamt of leaving New Earth one day, and were smart enough to know armed violence would ruin their chances. On the other hand, they couldn’t ignore Jelca and me on their turf. They mistook my face and his scalp condition as evidence of “alien miscegenation”…genetically impossible, but then, the Purpose didn’t ask for a C-level in biology as an entrance requirement.

  I considered my evening with Jelca a bonding experience. How can you help but feel closer when you’ve protected each other’s backs in a brawl? And we fought well. Like all civilian volunteers, we had a cloud of sentinel nanites watching that we didn’t get in over our heads; but we never needed their help. Jelca had brought an Explorer stun-pistol with some customized enhancements he’d made for the occasion. With that and my kung fu, we held our own. We didn’t break heads indiscriminately—at the end of the night, we received a commendation for staying completely within policy—but Jelca and I worked well together. We had a good time. We did something useful and demanding, after which we could smile at each other.

  When the action was over, we did not leap into bed. That may be the usual pattern—get blazed on your own adrenaline, then burn off the aftershock of tension and triumph in the age-old way. But Jelca and I were Explorers. Partnering another person through danger touched deep feelings; it seemed cheap to exploit it as a mere stimulant for heavy breathing. Therefore we parted, feeling warm and close, but in control…despite (on my part at least) a ferocious urge to fuck and fuck and fuck until I passed out.

  Two weeks passed after that first date. Jelca and I talked often, but made no plans. I wanted to; but I had to wait for him to make the next move. My home planet had an inviolable rule of etiquette: never force yourself on someone twice in a row. If Jelca didn’t offer his own invitation, I should quietly accept he had no interest in further developments. Of course, different cultures have different customs; and I agonized whether he might be waiting for me just as I was waiting for him. Perhaps where he came from, women instigated every date…or perhaps whoever started the “courtship” was expected to initiate everything from then on. There’s no database summarizing such customs—they’re too vague to quantify. So, after many earnest conversations with myself, I (the freshman) timidly asked out Jelca (the senior) a second time.

  He said yes.

  This time we chose a fantasy walk through a haunted VR forest—a temperate forest, because Jelca said he liked those best. I would have preferred a rainforest like those back home, so I could show off my jungle-girl competence; but since Jelca was a city boy I thought I could still hold my own with him, even if I couldn’t tell a sugar maple from a Lanark.

  As always with fantasy walks, I had a panicked urge to rip off the interface helm as soon as it began extracting my archetype. Intellectually, I knew the scan only skimmed the surface of my subconscious; it avoided exposing too much of my psyche. Still, I shuddered at the thought of stripping myself spiritually naked in front of Jelca…of my subconscious vomiting up some loathsome dung-smeared monster to be my VR alterego.

  Of course, that didn’t happen. Fantasy walks are wish fulfillments: daydreams, not nightmares. I materialized in the virtual forest as a ghostly feline…my paws pale and terrible as I held them in front of my eyes, their milky ectoplasm translucent as smoke. My body faded in and out of existence, sometimes invisible, sometimes lethally solid. Strong and elusive, impossible to pin down—the archetype truly was an intimate personal fantasy, a reflection of deep desires. I felt a sexy kind of vulnerability to show myself this way. Not disguised, but revealed.

  And Jelca…Jelca appeared before me as a whirlwind—a bodiless force of nature, a black funnel cloud stretching as tall as the trees. He could not talk; but his sound could sweep from the barest whisper to a deafening roar, uprooting giant oaks or slipping through the woods without rustling a leaf.

  He excited me.

  The programmed session was conventional fare: defeating a cadre of demons who gradually increased in power until we faced The Supreme Evil In Its Lair. It was a blessing my archetype couldn’t speak any more than Jelca’s; otherwise, I might have spoiled the mood with deprecating comments on the creators’ lack of imagination. Without words, however—without the ability to remind each other this was only a simulation—we had no choice but to enter the spirit of the piece, to vanquish our enemies with wind and claw, until the final fiend lay bloody at our feet. Then….

  Then….

  Then the Supreme Evil’s lair turned into a glittering palace; Jelca and I found ourselves in a sumptuous bedroom; the knowledge came into our heads that we could remain as we were or be transformed into the prince and princess we deserved to be. Crassly put, we were invited to celebrate victory with a virtual fuck, either as cat and tornado or human beings. All things were possible. Soft music filtered out of nowhere, the bedsheets pulled themselves back, candles lit themselves, the walls turned to mirrors….

  And in that moment, I saw my archetype fully. The mirrors showed a phantom jaguar: evanescent and fierce, pure ghost white…except for a lurid purple disfigurement on the right half of its face.

  That was the “fantasy” dredged out of my mind.

  That was what Jelca had looked at all night.

  I never asked him out again. I avoided him in the halls. I scarcely took an easy breath until he graduated and was posted into space.

  Peaks

  An hour after our lark had taken off, the southern mountains appeared on the horizon—grassy foothills first, then thickly treed slopes, and finally stony snow-capped peaks. It was a young range, geologically speaking: its crags were sharp, untouched by erosion. Good climbing if you had the right partner….

  No. Stop that train of thought. I was tired of bleeding.

  Fingering my cheek, I searched for the first landmark Chee and Seele talked about. The lark had been traveling blind, without charts; we could have been several hundred klicks off course. However, I sighted our target after only half an hour flying above the foothills—a steamy area of geysers and hot springs, simmering with enough vapor to be visible for thirty kilometers. After that, the route was easy to follow: up a winding river valley that snaked its way through the foothills and on into the mountains. Within minutes I ordered the plane, “Land wherever you can…as safely as possible.”

  For once, things went without a hitch. The lark had vertical landing capability; it touched down on grass beside the river we’d been following, only half a klick from the entrance to Chee and Seele’s city. Not that we could see the entrance—like everything else on Melaquin, the doorway was hidden—but I was sure we were in the right place.

  “This land is strange,” Oar said as we clambered out of the cockpit. “It is very tall.”

  “You’ve never seen mountains before?” I asked.

  “Oh, I have seen many, many mountains,” she replied quickly. “I am not such a one who has never seen mountains.” She affected an air of blasé sophistication, waving her hand dismissively. “I have seen much better mountains than these. Pointier. Snowier. And ones that did not block the light so unpleasantly. These mountains are very gloomy, are they not, Festina?”

  I didn’t answer. Our landing site was shadowy, when contrasted with our flight in the bright sunshine—we were at ground level now, and the sun was low enough to be blocked by a peak to the west. Still, a little shade didn’t mean the place was gloomy…or even very dark. Four nearby peaks still glistened with sun on their snow, filling our valley with a reflected light of heartbre
aking quality. The world was clear and quiet: nothing but the murmur of the river and the tick-tick-tick of the lark’s engines cooling.

  Peace.

  For ten seconds.

  Then a man strolled out of the forest, wearing nothing but a red tartan kilt.

  A human man. An Explorer.

  We looked at each other for a long moment. Then we said in unison, “Greetings. I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples…”

  We both broke up laughing.

  One of the Family

  He told me his name was Walton: Explorer Commander Gregorio Walton, but he disliked his given name and hated his rank. At first, I thought he’d become an Explorer because of his face—the most wrinkled face I’d seen on a human, a droopy deep-pile face with the jowls of a basset hound. It was only later I noticed that his fingers were webbed like duck feet. That was what made him expendable; the wrinkles were recent developments, the result of decades on Melaquin without benefit of YouthBoost.

  Walton had been here twenty-six years. He was only eighty, but appeared twice that age. His general bearing looked healthy enough, but his webbed hands trembled constantly. I had to force myself not to stare.

  He used one of those trembling hands to pat the lark’s fuselage. “Nice plane,” he said. “Noisy, though.”

  “You heard it coming?” I asked.

  “Long before I saw it,” he nodded. “Eyesight’s not what it was.”

  “The lark’s made of glass,” I said. “Hard to see at the best of times.”

  He smiled. “I like a woman with tact.”

  “I have tact too,” Oar announced.

  “Good for you,” Walton said.

  “For example,” Oar continued, “I will not talk about how ugly you are.”

  “I appreciate it,” Walton answered with a smile.

  “So are there others nearby?” I asked, to change the subject.

  “I’m the only one who comes outside much,” he replied. “Meteorology specialist. Put in a small weather station up the mountain a bit—thermometer, anemometer, simple things like that. I was tinkering with the equipment when I heard your engines.” He gave me an appraising look. “Don’t suppose you know anything about fuzzy circuits? I’ve got a glitch in my barometer.”