Expendable

by James Alan Gardner

  “Don’t be crazy, Festina. We all want off this rock. Jelca may be a turd but there’s no reason he wouldn’t—”

  “Shit,” I blurted out. The light had dawned at last. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  “What?” Ullis asked.

  “She is worshiping,” Oar told Ullis in a low voice.

  “Oar,” I said, “stay here with Ullis. Ullis, I have to find Jelca for a chat. If I don’t come back in a reasonable time, tell the others everything I’ve told you. And whatever you do, don’t let Jelca onto the spaceship!”

  “What’s wrong?” Ullis asked bewildered.

  I threw a tense glance at Oar, then grabbed a scrap of paper from Ullis’s work area and scribbled a message.

  Ullis gaped when she read it. “What does it say?” Oar demanded.

  I didn’t answer; I was already running out the door.

  Out of the City

  No one working on the starship knew where Jelca was. Someone suggested he might have gone to help with the lark-plane.

  I jogged down the boulevard toward the elevator, each footfall echoing off nearby buildings. As I passed Jelca’s quarters—the place where Oar had been crying—I stopped to see if he was there. He wasn’t…but his room contained more clothes of the silvery fabric used in his radiation suit: shirts, pants, even socks and gloves. I wondered if he’d tried piece-by-piece radiation clothing before he made the full suit; or perhaps he wore these as a second layer of protection under the main suit. If nothing else, having “street clothes” made of the same material would help reduce the radiation he soaked up while putting on the full suit inside the tower.

  The temptation to search Jelca’s quarters was strong—a thorough search, ripping the place apart if necessary—but I doubted I’d find anything. Besides, I felt an urgent need to confront him. And give him one last chance, said a voice in my head…as if there was still hope he could explain away all his actions. I hadn’t figured out everything yet; the purpose of the second Sperm generator was still a mystery to me. However, I thought I had many of the answers I needed. I just hoped I was wrong.

  Athelrod and Walton met me as I approached the elevator to the outside world. They carried glass holdalls containing parts they must have removed from the lark-plane. “Too late!” Walton called cheerfully as he approached. “We’re all done.”

  “Not much there that we needed,” Athelrod said. “Still, we got a few design ideas….”

  “Have you seen Jelca?” I asked.

  “He came by the plane outside, maybe two hours ago,” Athelrod answered. “Didn’t stay long.”

  “So he came back down here?”

  “No,” Walton said. “I asked him to see if he could fix the glitches in my weather equipment. He’s very good at that sort of thing.”

  “So he’s up at your weather station now?” I asked.

  Walton nodded.

  “How do I get there?” After getting directions, I headed out at a run.

  Walton and Athelrod stared after me with bewildered expressions.

  The Coming Cold

  The air outside was cooler than the day before—enough to prick up goose pimples on my bare legs. At the west end of the valley, the sun had already dipped below the far peak, though the sky was still coldly bright. Trying not to shiver, I hurried up the forest trail that led to the weather station. The world smelled of damp pine and winter.

  I found Jelca sitting on a high rock looking down on the river that wound along the base of the mountain. The water ran fast and shallow; even though it was dozens of meters below us, I could hear the rattle of it running over its gravel bed. The sound was cold. The world was cold. In the forest behind us, each tree felt closed in on itself, withdrawing into its own thoughts as winter approached. The stone everywhere—under Jelca, under my feet, under the snow caps of the mountains—looked like it had been dark gray once but was now bleached pale with disappointment.

  Jelca turned to look my way. He said nothing. Behind him, a small anemometer rotated listlessly as its cups accepted the wind.

  I waited for him to speak.

  “Ullis told me it was artificial skin,” he said at last.

  “Yes.”

  “Really just a bandage.”

  “That’s right.”

  He stared at my cheek a few more seconds. “So that’s it then. You’ve made it.”

  “Made what?”

  “Full human status.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  He said nothing for a moment. He wasn’t even looking at me. Then: “You know what the strange thing is? When I thought of you, I pictured you this way. Without the birthmark. I would have said it wasn’t part of my mental image of you; the birthmark made no impression on my mind. But I was wrong. When I saw you yesterday, you looked like one of them. The bastards who banished us here. It was like they’d stolen one more thing from me.”

  He thought of me, I told myself. I wanted to ask him a hundred questions about what he’d thought, when it happened, everything that had passed through his mind.

  No. I refused to let down my guard with him. Not now.

  Probably never.

  “I’m being ridiculous,” he said. “Why should I mind that you look so beautiful?”

  Beautiful. He found me beautiful.

  “Jelca,” I said. “Did you kill Eel?”

  He was silent a moment, then nodded.

  Accidents and Reality

  “It was an accident,” he said.

  I sat down on the rock, separated from him by only an arm’s length. The stone was cold beneath me…very cold, despite its exposure to the long day’s sun.

  “An accident,” he repeated. “A mistake right from the beginning.” He glanced at me. “You probably think I’m shit.”

  I didn’t trust myself to say yes or no.

  “There’s no point trying to justify myself,” he said. “When I met Eel and Oar, I was just looking to vent myself. Vent everything I felt about being heaved into exile with a piss-hole like Kalovski…and there were Eel and Oar. Looking so perfect it made me furious. Artificial people—like all the artificial people in the Fleet and everywhere. So I….”

  When he didn’t finish his sentence, I said, “You either raped or seduced them.”

  He shrugged. “I either raped or seduced them. Couldn’t tell you which. They didn’t put up a fight, but they didn’t understand what was going on either. It happened, the two of them together that first time, because I couldn’t stop myself. Well, no—because I couldn’t bother to stop myself. I couldn’t think of any reason that made it worth the trouble.”

  “Eel and Oar themselves should have been enough reason.”

  “You’d think so,” he admitted. “But the truth is, they weren’t real women. None of them are real human beings. They’re glass models of human beings…or what the League of Peoples believes humans should be. Beautiful dead ends, just as most people in the Technocracy are beautiful dead ends.

  “You know what I once thought?” he went on. “I thought the whole Explorer Corps was a training program for real people. Everyone else was pampered and spoiled, but we were real. The Admiralty wouldn’t let doctors cure our problems because they wanted us to develop strength of character; they needed a small band of individuals who had to fight for respect so that we’d gain depth. Then one day someone would tap us on the shoulder and say, ‘Congratulations. You’ve made it. Everyone else is useless, but you’ve learned all the painful lessons of life. You’ve won. Now we’ll cure your trivial little scalp condition and make you someone important, because you’ve earned it.’ You see? I had this daydream that everything was planned. That all the crap we’ve suffered had a point, and we’d be properly compensated in the end. Not dumped on a planet populated by empty people with nothing to contribute.”

  “You’re underestimating the people of Melaquin,” I said. “They may be different from humans, but—”

  “Save it,” he interrupted. “I know all the arguments.
And you’re right, I shouldn’t dismiss them. Eel and Oar deserved better than I gave them. But I didn’t have it in me. They kept reminding me of all the shallow ‘beautiful people’ who make the Fleet a hell. So I used them and used them and used them until I couldn’t stand the sight of them anymore.”

  “Then you killed Eel,” I said.

  “That was Ullis’s fault,” he replied. “If she’d just let me leave quietly…but she grabbed Eel and forced me to explain things. I tried rational discussion, I really did. I told Eel that Ullis and I had a duty to join the other Explorers; I told her that she and Oar would feel out of place if they came with us. Eel wouldn’t listen. She had the mind of a child. She didn’t want to be left out. Finally, I had no option but to….”

  He lapsed into silence, so I finished the sentence for him. “You shot her,” I said. “And even though the regs made you carry a standard-issue stunner when you landed, you must have amplified the pistol as soon as you knew you were stuck on Melaquin.”

  “True,” he admitted. “Everyone knows the guns are underpowered….”

  “They’re underpowered because anything more could be deadly,” I snapped. “I can imagine what high intensity sonics did to a woman made of glass.”

  “You think she shattered like crystal?” He shook his head. “Nothing so dramatic. These people aren’t real glass; you know that. Eel stayed on her feet a long time. I kept shooting and shooting and she wouldn’t fall down. And I swear I didn’t believe the gun would really damage her; she was so tough, you could pound her with a sledgehammer without making a dent. But something inside her body was vulnerable to sonics. Something must have…cracked. Maybe her brain, maybe her heart, I don’t know. But the instant she fell, she was dead.” He shook his head as if this was an incomprehensible mystery. “So I dragged her into the woods and stuffed her under a pile of brush.”

  “And now you’re a murderer,” I said. “A dangerous non-sentient being.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “But it was just an accident. Sometimes I think it’ll be all right if I get on the starship with everyone else. I didn’t mean to kill her. And if I don’t go on the ship, I’ll be stuck on Melaquin, won’t I? No better than the criminals and other scum the council banished here….”

  “I won’t be leaving either,” I said. “I’m a murderer too.”

  And I told him everything.

  Releasing Pressure

  I confessed because of the pressure to tell someone. I confessed because he was Jelca. I confessed because we were both unforgivable.

  He had killed a sentient woman for the sole reason that she was inconvenient. Don’t think I was deceived by Jelca’s excuses. He shot Eel because he didn’t want to face the fallout from exploiting her for six months. Maybe he hadn’t expected the stunner to kill her. He should have considered the possibility, but maybe he didn’t. Instead, he blasted her again and again until her glass vitals cracked into shards.

  Jelca was a murderer and so was I. I had butchered my partner and left him to rot in a log. That was a fact, and intentions be damned.

  I told Jelca the facts as clearly as I could without choking up. Neither of us could possibly leave. I didn’t know how I felt about staying with him, but we owed it to the others not to jeopardize their escape.

  When I finished my story—when I had told him how I sliced Yarrun’s throat with my scalpel and spilled his blood over my hands…when I had reminded him that League of Peoples laws are more inescapable than entropy—after all that, Jelca laughed.

  He laughed.

  “What a wimp-ass murder,” he sniggered. “What a wimp-ass excuse for a homicide.”

  I was speechless.

  “You think the League will bar you from space for that?” He snorted in disgust. “You think surgeons are labeled murderers if they lose a patient? Wake up, Festina! You tried to help, and it didn’t work. That’s all.”

  “He would have lived!” I insisted. “If I’d left him alone, he would have lived. But no. I tried to be a hotshot, performing emergency surgery when I couldn’t see straight. He died because of me!”

  “Yes he did,” Jelca agreed. “So you think you should be punished. You want to believe the League regards you as non-sentient, that you deserve exile. But that’s just guilt talking, not common sense. You thought you were doing what had to be done to save Yarrun’s life. That’s blatantly sentient, Festina…and it would be ludicrous for you to stay on Melaquin and die because of it.”

  Something in his tone caught my attention. “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” He looked me straight in the eye. “It’s just stupid to spend the rest of your life in this hellhole.”

  I met his gaze. It was the first time he’d looked at me and not my cheek. I knew it meant he was lying. Some people are like that—naturally evasive until they put on an act of being forthright.

  “What are you up to, Jelca?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he repeated…again, looking straight into my eyes.

  “Whether or not I’m a murderer,” I said slowly, “I don’t know that I want to leave Melaquin. It’s pleasant here. Peaceful.”

  “Stagnant,” he sneered. “Comatose.”

  “If I go back, I’ll have to be an Explorer again.” I watched Jelca’s face closely. “They’ll assign me another partner—how could I live with that? And I’ll be sent on one mission after another until I go Oh Shit. Frankly, Melaquin sounds like a better life. Safer.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said evenly.

  Why? Something to do with the second generator. What did he have in mind? Something that would make it dangerous to stay on Melaquin….

  “You’re going to do something to the planet, aren’t you?” I said. “Something that makes it impossible for the council to maroon people here.”

  “How could I possibly damage something as big as a planet?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, “but that has to be it. You said it yourself—the League lets the council send people to Melaquin because the planet is hospitable to human life. We have as good a chance of surviving here as anywhere else in the galaxy. But suppose Melaquin stops being a paradise. Suppose it becomes deadly. Then the council can’t use it as a dumping ground anymore because that would be real murder. The League wouldn’t allow it…and you’ll be able to say you beat the council at its own game.”

  “That would be nice,” he admitted. “That would be a good revenge.” He growled out the last word. “But it’s too ridiculous to contemplate. If I worked hard I might pollute some land…but how much? A few hundred square klicks at most, even if I spent my whole life spilling radioactive waste on the ground. That’s hardly hurting the planet as a whole. What do you think I could do, Festina? What’s my nefarious plan?”

  He was playing a game now—taunting me. Maybe he wanted me to think it was lighthearted teasing; maybe he saw my unblemished face and forgot I had the brains of an Explorer.

  All right, think: he had a Sperm-field generator. It generated Sperm tails. What was a Sperm tail? A tube of hyperspace; a ship riding inside the tube could circumvent the limitations of relativity. The tube could also be used for instantaneous transport—as I’d told Oar, it was window from here to there. A window….

  Then I thought of what Ullis had said. If one end of the window was open to the planet’s surface and the other ten thousand klicks straight up into the sheer vacuum of space…everything would go flying out the window.

  The whole damned atmosphere.

  How big a tail could one generator make? A klick in diameter…maybe more. With one end at ground level and the other trailing off into space, the Sperm would be like a giant firehose, free end whipping back and forth, spraying air into the void.

  The first result would be the biggest storm this planet had ever seen: a tornado centered on the base of the Sperm tail, sucking up wind. And the storm would never stop—not until it reduced the air supply to negligible pr
essure.

  “How long,” I asked, “would it take to drain Melaquin’s atmosphere through an unanchored Sperm tail?”

  Jelca looked startled. Then he answered, “18.6 years. But the surface will be uninhabitable long before that.”

  Part XVII

  CONFRONTATION

  Ego

  “Jelca,” I said, “there are people on Melaquin. You’ll kill them.”

  “I’ll wait for the ship to take off,” he replied.

  “I don’t mean Explorers!” I snapped. “You’ll kill people like Oar!”

  “They’ll be all right,” he answered with a vague wave of his hand. “Their homes are safe underwater and in caves.”

  “They don’t all stay in their homes! They come out for walks on the beach—you know that. And I doubt their habitats are so self-contained they can withstand the whole planet losing atmosphere. When the air pressure drops far enough, the lakes will boil away; what happens to underwater cities then? And how do you know the caves are so airtight they won’t leak? You don’t know. You can’t.”

  “All right,” Jelca shrugged, “there may be problems. So what? This planet is dead, Festina; it may look viable, but it’s not. There’s no civilization here. There are no people. No one but glass zombies too stupid to know they’re extinct. The ancestors do nothing…even creatures like Oar do nothing. They don’t deserve to be called sentient. But Explorers are sentient, and it’s time to stop treating them like rotten meat.”

  “Jelca,” I said, “ask the other Explorers if their lives are worth genocide. You know they’d never accept it.”

  “They don’t have to,” he replied. “I accept it for them. I take the responsibility. If someone doesn’t do this, you know what will happen? When we reach Technocracy space, the Fleet will load us all onto a ship and send us straight back to Melaquin. This is where they send their embarrassments, and we’ll be the biggest embarrassment of all! For everyone’s sake, I have to make sure Melaquin is no longer an option.”

  “You aren’t doing this for everyone’s sake,” I told him. “It’s only for your sake. The council was mean to you, and you want to hit them back. This is so unworthy of an Explorer, Jelca. Flamboyant gestures are for people who think life means beating the other guy. That’s not life, that’s ego. It’s what you do when you’re too scared or stupid to build a life on your own terms. Demanding revenge, Jelca…I’m ashamed of you. It’s just so adolescent!”