Expendable lop-1

by James Alan Gardner

  "Damn, I'm stupid!" I said, hitting my head with my palm.

  "No, just confused," Oar insisted generously.

  Duplication

  In all my time on Melaquin, my mind had been too lost in dismay and distraction to put the pieces together. The League of Peoples had already proved it could duplicate Earth — after the schism that divided humanity, the League had built New Earth as a refuge for those who agreed to respect the galactic peace. Humans who refused to give up armed violence were quarantined on their old planet, stuck with the legacy of pollution and war accumulated over the centuries; but those who abandoned their weapons were given a clean new planet: Earth without the garbage. New Earth was a "Welcome to the Universe" gift from the League of Peoples… along with star drives, YouthBoost, and other goodies no sentient race should do without.

  Why had it taken me so long to remember New Earth was artificially constructed? Stupid, Festina: very stupid. But now that my eyes were open, everything made sense.

  Some time far in the past — long enough ago that history didn't record it — members of the League must have visited Old Earth. They made the same proposal then that they made to humanity in the twenty-first century: prove your sentience by renouncing violence, and we will give you the stars. As in the more recent contact, some prehistoric people must have said yes while others said no… and those who agreed not to kill were given a new home elsewhere in the galaxy.

  Here on Melaquin.

  This planet must have been built by the League to duplicate Earth at that long-ago time… including the presence of passenger pigeons. Somewhere Melaquin must also have dodos, moas, and other species that hadn't survived recent times on our Earth; unless the humans who came to Melaquin had killed those animals all over again.

  No, I thought to myself. They didn't kill the animals, they killed themselves. Either they developed bioengineering on their own, or they received it as a gift from the League; and they had turned themselves into glass creatures like Oar — tougher, stronger, smarter, and a complete evolutionary dead-end.

  "Festina," Oar said, "are you becoming crazed again?"

  I must have been standing frozen, thinking it all through. "No," I answered, "I'm not crazed… although you may think I am when I tell what I want to do."

  "What?"

  "We're going to find rocks and look for creatures that probably aren't there."

  Paleontology

  There is one simple difference between Old and New Earth: the original planet has fossils; the duplicate does not. When the League gave New Earth artificial deposits of sandstone, limestone or shale, they didn't enliven the rock with simulated remnants of ancient life. For the sake of raw materials, they did create fields of petroleum, coal, and other fossil resources… but not the fossils themselves.

  I bet Melaquin didn't have fossils either.

  The most promising excavation site within view was the shore of a creek half an hour ahead of us. Water cuts down into soil, exposing stones that would otherwise require digging to bring to the surface. The creek bank should have a good sample of easy-to-pry-out rocks; if I checked a few dozen without finding fossils, I could be fairly confident my hunch was right.

  "We're going to that creek," I told Oar.

  "Yes, Festina," she answered patiently. "Going around it would take a long time."

  Creeks were plentiful in that part of the prairies. Most were a few paces wide and barely thigh-deep, so crossing them was no challenge — just cold and wet. The one we approached now was larger than average, but still too small to deserve the name "river": thirty meters across, sluggish and barely over our heads in depth. In spring, it might be deeper; but now the water level was low enough to leave a healthy sweep of gravel uncovered on the near shore.

  "Perfect," I said. "As good as we're going to find on short notice."

  "Do you want me to clap in admiration of the creek?" Oar asked.

  "No need." I climbed down the dirt bank to the gravel and stared around appraisingly. The top layer of stones were worn smooth by water action — whatever fossils they once contained could have eroded to invisibility. Still, I might find better samples underneath; and there were other places to look for exposed deposits.

  "Oar," I said, "can you please walk along the bank and see if there are any rocks sticking out of the dirt? I'm looking for rocks with edges… not smooth like these pebbles."

  "What shall I do if I find one?"

  "Bring it to me."

  She looked at me dubiously. "You want me to touch dirty rocks, Festina? That is not very nice."

  "You can wash your hands after — the creek's right there."

  "Is the creek water clean?"

  "Clean enough," I said, stretching a point. It was actually a bit muddy, thanks to silt washed down by the previous day's rain. No doubt, it also contained the usual disease — causing microbes one finds in untreated water: typhoid perhaps, and a cornucopia of viruses for intestinal flu. However, Oar had little to worry about — along with the other improvements in her body, she probably had a nigh-impregnable immune system. Why not? Her designers had built in everything else.

  I envied her for that. Since the start of our trip, I'd carefully purified the water we drank, boiling it on the campfire and filling enough canteens to last us through the next day. I also had water purification tablets if the canteens ran dry, but I preferred to use those sparingly, since I could never replenish my supply. Still, I worried about infection. If this planet really was a duplicate of Earth from millennia ago, it might have smallpox, diphtheria, pneumonic plague: famous diseases, extinct in the rest of the galaxy, but possibly still thriving here on Melaquin.

  Maybe Oar was right to worry about getting dirty.

  With the air of a woman who hopes she doesn't find anything, Oar started walking slowly along the water's edge. I turned my attention to the gravel flat and began to dig down. Sure enough, the stones were not so eroded a few centimeters below the top surface. I was just beginning to examine them for fossil evidence when the Bumbler's alarm went off.

  EM Anomaly

  I did my programmed roll-and-tuck, having the good fortune to dive in the direction of the Bumbler rather than throwing myself into the nearby creek. With fists ready for trouble, I kicked the Bumbler's SHUT-UP switch and scanned the area.

  I saw no threat, but standing on the creek-bed, I was three meters lower than the main level of the prairie. Anything could be up there, lurking just out of sight.

  Not far away, Oar opened her mouth to say something. I held up a hand and held my finger to my lips. She closed her mouth and looked around warily.

  Think, I told myself. What could the Bumbler detect from here? It might be a false alarm — Bumblers did make mistakes — but Explorers who dismissed such warnings soon had their names entered on the Academy's Memory Wall.

  Maybe the Bumbler had suddenly decided to complain about Oar again: unknown organism, help, help. Still, I had programmed the machine's tiny brain to accept her as a friend; her presence hadn't bothered it for days. Best to assume the problem was something else… something I couldn't see.

  What could the Bumbler detect that I couldn't? It had a small capacity for peering through the creek banks, but not well — its passive X-ray scans could only penetrate ten to fifteen centimeters of dirt. Naturally, it could see farther if something was emitting large quantities of X-rays… or radio waves…

  Radio. Someone nearby might have transmitted a radio message. Quickly, I backtracked the Bumbler's short term memory and looked at the radio bands. Yes: it had picked up a coherent short-wave signal lasting only fifteen seconds. Did that mean an Explorer in the neighborhood? Or someone else? Silently, I turned to Oar and pointed to the creek. Without waiting to see if she understood, I hefted up the Bumbler and headed for the water. We could hide there, just to be on the safe side — the middle of the creek was deep enough to be over our heads. My pack had a tiny scuba rebreather, only two minutes of air, but enough to stay submer
ged in an emergency. I'd give that to Oar; for myself, I'd have to make do with…

  Shit. I'd have to snorkel with the same esophageal airway I'd used on Yarrun.

  The Peeper

  After whispered instructions to Oar, I lowered myself into the water. It was cold; it was also murky, but that was good. The slight cloudiness would make it hard for someone to see me poised just under the surface. Oar, of course, was invisible as soon as she submerged.

  I found a depth where I could stand on the bottom and keep the tip of the airway just above the surface. The taste of it was sour in my mouth. I had washed it since the Landing, washed it over and over again; but I still imagined I could taste the rusty flavor of blood on the plastic.

  Trying to refocus my thoughts, I aimed the Bumbler's scanner straight up at the outside world. In the muddy water, I had to amplify the Bumbler's brightness before I could make out the screen; but my eyes adjusted soon enough to give me an adequate view above the surface.

  The sky. The creek banks.

  Thirty seconds after we had hidden ourselves, a head peeked over the south bank.

  At first, it looked like a fully human head: smooth brown skin; darker lips. But as I stared more closely, bile rose in my mouth. The head had no hair — or rather it had an abstracted glass simulation of hair, like Oar's but a slightly different style… and the eyes were also like Oar's, silvery globes with mirror surfaces.

  The lips drew back in smile… or maybe a grimace. Inside the mouth, the teeth were clear as glass.

  Sickened, I realized what I was seeing. This was a glass person just like Oar; but he or she had glued strips of skin onto cheeks, forehead, and throat.

  Strips of human skin.

  Part XII

  SKIN

  Hiding

  The skin-covered face peered down a few seconds more, then withdrew. I stayed put, hoping Oar would do the same — she was under orders not to come out until I gave the okay. Still, she had only a brief supply of air, and was inexperienced using a scuba breather; I gave the signal to surface at the two minute mark, even though I would have preferred to stay under much longer.

  Oar emerged silently and kept her mouth shut. Good; no matter how she might be given to outbursts, her cultural heritage placed priority on not being noticed. They built their villages underwater, they made themselves transparent, they cleaned all trace of their presence from the environment… no wonder Oar had the instinct to stay quiet when strangers were near.

  I wondered if Skin-Face was the reason Oar's people were so good at hiding.

  For five minutes we remained in the water with only our heads showing. All that time, some devil's advocate in my mind kept asking why we should cower. The skin on that glass face was probably just animal hide — perhaps leather from a buffalo carcass, scraped clean of fur and worn for harmless adornment. Believing it was human skin was morbid imagination… that and the blurriness of looking at the Bumbler screen through muddy water.

  But if it had been human skin, it came from an Explorer, not someone with a glass body. And perhaps the accompanying radio transmissions had come from Explorer equipment: equipment stolen from my fellow ECMs along with their skins.

  I made myself get out of the water when I could no longer control the chattering of my teeth — not fear, but the physical chill of a creek in waning autumn. For a while I shivered on shore, until the sun warmed me back to a tolerable temperature. Thank heavens R D made the tightsuit from quick-dry fabric; I would only stay soggy for half an hour, after which the material's natural insulation would be as good as a dry parka. In the meantime, I had to hug myself for warmth and wonder if Skin-Face would reappear.

  He didn't… or possibly she didn't, although I was inclined to think of the stranger as male. Some atavistic prejudice in my subconscious still believed men were scarier than women.

  Say it was a man, a glass man of Oar's species: he must have heard the Bumbler's alarm beeping and came to investigate. It had taken him more than a minute to arrive, so he hadn't been nearby… close enough to hear it, but far enough away that he hadn't recognized the sound as unnatural. When he saw nothing out of the ordinary, he must have decided the noise was just bird cry. One quick look, then he went back about his business.

  What was his business? It was time to find out.

  It was also time to get the stunner out of my pack.

  Three Spears

  Motioning Oar to stay put, I swam the creek with the stunner in my mouth, in case I might need it quickly. The afternoon continued quiet and undisturbed — the chirp of birds, the light hiss of breeze ruffling the prairie grass. On the far side of the water, I climbed the dirt bank: steep, but only three meters high, the damp earth providing plenty of purchase. When I was almost at the top, I dug my feet firmly into the soil and did a quick scan with the Bumbler, X-raying through the last few centimeters of bank to make sure Skin-Face wasn't lurking above. The screen was clear except for pebbles and roots; so with straining caution, I lifted my head over the edge for a look.

  No Skin-Face close at hand; but a kilometer downstream, three humanoid figures tracked along the bank, walking away from me. The Bumbler gave me a telescopic view of the trio: three males, all carrying spears and shoulder bags, all wearing strips of skin on their faces. They had skin on their genitals too, carefully wrapped around penis and testicles. One also had a patch of skin on his chest — I could see it through his transparent back.

  Perhaps that was the chieftain: the man who could commandeer the largest share of a kill.

  Still hoping I was wrong, I magnified the view a few notches higher. Maybe the skin strips were some kind of harmless ornamentation…

  No. In extreme close-up, there was no mistake. It was brown human skin, complete with wisps of hair, fastened to the underlying glass flesh.

  One man lifted his hand and pointed at the creek ahead of them. The chieftain nodded, and all three started down the bank toward the water. My guess was they had reached a point shallow enough to ford; they were obviously reluctant to cross where the creek was over their heads. That gave me useful intelligence about the enemy… and already I was thinking of them as enemies, although they had showed no sign of hostility toward me or anyone else.

  Explorers habitually regard strangers as threats. Shaking hands is for diplomats.

  Simple Prairie Hunters

  The men appeared on the far side of the creek a short time later and continued north. On their present path, they would run into the buffalo herd we had seen that morning… and that might be their goal. They might be simple prairie hunters, searching for food to feed their families.

  Simple prairie hunters who carried radios.

  I shook my head to clear it. Explanations would come eventually… or else they wouldn't. Unsolved puzzles were a permanent frustration of the job.

  At last the spearmen disappeared behind a copse of trees and I waved for Oar to join me. She crossed the creek with the scuba breather in her mouth, even though it couldn't have much air left in it. I didn't say anything — if she was happier to get air from a machine rather than holding her breath for the few seconds the water was over her head, so be it. The little tank was self-charging, given enough solar energy and access to air; in twenty-four hours it would be usable again.

  From the top of the bank, I led us straight to the nearest clump of trees, to make sure we were shielded from the spearmen's eyes — even though they were more than a klick away, the prairie allowed for long sight-lines. The men had come from this direction; we found their footprints in the dirt when we stopped to collect ourselves.

  One good thing about people as dense as glass: they leave deep, clear footprints.

  "Who were those people?" Oar blurted when we were safely under the trees.

  "I was going to ask you the same question," I answered. "You don't know who lives in this area?"

  "No. I thought…" She stopped herself. "I thought something very foolish."

  Her face was troubled; I s
uspected I knew why. Oar might have believed she and her ancestors were the only people in the world. She had seen the transmission from Chee and Seele talking about another city to the south, but she had dismissed that as an Explorer lie. The three Skin-Faces may have been the first strangers she'd seen… the first non-Explorers anyway. Their presence upset her more than they upset me. They were proof she wasn't unique.

  I didn't belabor the subject. "You said you came this way once before… when you decided to follow the other Explorers. You didn't see the Skin-Faces?"

  "No."

  "But you did get this far?"

  "Yes, Festina. The great river where I stopped is still ahead."

  I frowned. Why hadn't she seen Skin-Faces on her last trip? Had she just been lucky? Or were the three spearmen outside their usual territory? Maybe they were the only people of their kind here on the plains; or maybe there was a tribe of thousands, but they usually stayed south of the great river Oar talked about.

  Maybe we were walking straight into the arms of a horde who had already killed one set of Explorers and now wore their skins.

  Jelca? Ullis?

  I gritted my teeth. "Let's get moving," I said. "But keep your eyes open for trouble."

  "I am ready, Festina."

  She swung her silver axe to her shoulder. I couldn't tell if the gesture was meaningful, or if she was simply getting ready to move out. Did she understand that her axe could be a weapon, or did she only see it as a tool for clearing trees?

  I shivered. Spears. Axes. Weapons.

  Feeling the weight of the stunner in my hand, I headed off at Oar's side.

  Night on the Plains

  The footprints of the spearmen had come from the southwest; therefore I headed southeast, setting a brisk pace until the depths of dusk. We camped for the night in a stand of a dozen trees — large enough to conceal us from prying eyes, but small enough that we still had a clear view in all directions.