The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  “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 hand-sized 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 the 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 tiger-claw 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.

  That assumed the skin didn’t turn magenta to duplicate my birthmark.

  “How fast does it change color?” I asked, not looking at Tobit.

  “About an hour.”

  “I’ll see you in an hour,” I said, and left the room.

  Punch Gently

  Oar trotted at my heels. I didn’t really want company, but it was safer this way—if the Morlocks turned belligerent with liquor, she’d be in trouble on her own.

  Once we had left the building, I set a fast pace across the plaza toward the outskirts of the town. “Where are we going?” Oar asked.

  “To find a mirror.” As if I needed one, surrounded by so much glass; if necessary, I could put on the patch using my slight reflection in Oar’s own body. But I wanted to put distance between me and Tobit, to leave his leers behind. If this worked, his smugness would be obnoxious; but if I didn’t even try, he’d be utterly unbearable.

  If I didn’t even try….

  Listen. My stomach had the same nervous flutters as the night I decided to lose my virginity: balancing on a razor’s edge of desire and fear. I wanted to see myself whole. I yearned for that. Yet I was afraid of being disappointed, and even worse, of being changed. My life sometimes felt like a war to hold on to what I was; to remain me. I was terrified of turning into something different—of losing my definition.

  It sounds childish. It sounds glib. I only have words to describe the superficial issues. Even to myself, I can’t express the depths of my fear. Nor can I express the depths of my longing. You’d think it would be easy to explain why I wanted to cure my disfigurement; that’s obvious, yes? Obvious why I’d want to look like Prope and Harque and everyone else whose glances of fascinated revulsion had humiliated me all my life. Why should I feel ashamed of wanting to look like them?

  And Jelca…pathe
tic to think of him at a time like this, but how would he react? Would he be delighted to find a real, unblemished woman on Melaquin? Or would he regard me the way Explorers always regarded the unflawed: as shallow and vain, pretty objects but unworthy of deep attention.

  “You look sad,” Oar said. “Why are you sad, Festina?”

  “Because I’m foolish,” I replied. “Very foolish. I want to be me, but I also want to be some other woman I’m afraid I won’t like.”

  “That is foolish,” Oar agreed. “If you turn into an unlikable woman, I will punch you in the nose; then you will know you have to turn back into my friend.”

  Laughing, I kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks. But punch gently, okay? My face has enough trouble without a broken nose.”

  In Front of the Mirror

  We found a blockhouse, much like the one where Jelca had made his home in Oar’s village—the same layout anyway, but without the clutter of cannibalized electronics. The bathroom had a mirror. After asking Oar to wait outside, I stared at my reflection.

  Memorizing a face I’d often wanted to forget.

  “This may not work,” I said.

  “I can always take it off,” I said.

  “This patch may be too small,” I said.

  It was big enough. In fact, it needed some trimming. I used the scalpel from the medical kit, but I spent a long time washing the blade first.

  My Appearance Revisited

  The skin eased down onto my cheek. I patted it into place. For a moment I could feel its light touch, but the sensation slowly vanished—like the residue of water after washing your face, disappearing as it dries into thin air.

  When I first laid out the patch, its edges were visible. I spent a minute trying to smooth them down; but as I watched, I could see the outer fringe knit itself into my own skin, bonding, becoming part of me. I brushed the intersection with my finger: it was barely discernible. It was still possible to see where the patch ended and my own cheek began—the patch was darker—but within minutes all trace of a join was gone.

  Like a parasite affixing itself to a newfound host.

  Yet I did not feel any revulsion. My cheek had the texture of smooth, perfect skin. When I looked closely, I could see fine hairs peeking out of it. Were they my own hairs, protruding through the mesh? Or did the material have hairs of its own, mimicking real tissue?

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember if hairs had grown up through my birthmark. After only three minutes, I was forgetting what my birthmark looked like.

  I shivered.

  With sudden energy, I snapped myself away from the mirror and strode into the next room. “Let’s go for a walk,” I told Oar.

  “May I touch it?” she asked.

  “No. Walk.”

  Hard

  We began to stroll the circumference of the habitat dome—keeping to the edge of town let me avoid being surrounded by glass buildings. In an hour, I would look at my face; before then, I didn’t want to catch any chance reflection. Therefore, my gaze was turned toward the black dome wall as we walked. There was nothing to see, and that was good.

  From time to time, I could feel Oar glancing at me. I was deliberately walking on her right, so she could only see my good cheek; her furtive peeks were attempts to watch the new skin change. Or perhaps she was only trying to gauge my mood. After minutes of tentative silence, she finally asked, “How are you feeling, Festina?”

  “I’m fine.” The words came out automatically. “I’m always fine,” I said.

  “You are not fine, you are troubled. Must I punch you in the nose so soon?”

  I gave her a rueful grin. “No.” It was tempting to face her, but I didn’t. I could feel nothing special in my cheek, yet it seemed to be the center of all my consciousness. “This is just hard,” I said.

  “Why is it hard? Either you will stay the same, or you will look less ugly. You cannot lose.”

  “I might have an allergic reaction.”

  “What is an allergic reaction?”

  “It’s…” I shook my head. “Never mind, I was just being difficult.” I turned my gaze to the crisp white cement beneath our feet. “This is hard,” I said again.

  We walked another minute in silence. Then Oar said, “I know how to stop you being sad. We can find the Tower of Ancestors in this place.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “And that would cheer me up?” I asked.

  “It feels good inside the Hall of Ancestors.”

  “Only if you feed off UV and X-rays,” I told her. “I’ll pass.”

  “But if we go to the Tower of Ancestors,” Oar insisted, “we can find the foolish Prophet those Morlocks follow. Then we will walk up to him and say, ‘Pooh!’ Just like that: ‘Pooh!’ Someone should have spoken to him a long time ago. ‘Pooh!’”

  I smiled. “You have a knack for theological argument. Good thing you didn’t try it with the Morlocks themselves.”

  “The Morlocks are all very foolish,” she replied. “It does not make sense to wear skin when it only looks ugly. Ugliness is bad. You know that, Festina. You will never be beautiful, but you are trying to look better. That is wise. That is correct.”

  “Thank you,” I answered drily. “But even if the new skin works, I may not wear it forever. I just put it on for curiosity’s sake. An experiment, that’s all. No self-respecting woman places much value on mere appearance…”

  Such babble. Even Oar knew I was talking for my own benefit. She gazed at me with gentle pity…and perhaps I would have prattled on to greater depths of humiliation if a naked man hadn’t materialized two paces in front of us.

  The Naked Man

  He didn’t step from behind a building. He didn’t rise out of the ground or appear in a puff of smoke. One moment the space in front of us was empty, and the next it was occupied. As instant as a scream.

  The man was short and brown and hairy. His head was thatched with crinkly salt-and-pepper hair, and his mouth surrounded with a bushy silver beard. Graying curls dappled his chest, arms, and genitals. Beneath all that hair was a wiry body marked liberally with scars—wide slashes of whitened tissue, the kind you see on Opters fanatical enough to refuse stitches, no matter how serious the wound. His eyes had a yellow tint to them, but were still bright and alert. He looked straight at me for a moment, then slammed his fists on his stomach and spoke in a melodious language I didn’t recognize.

  I looked at Oar to see if she knew what he was saying. She returned my gaze in bewilderment.

  “Okay,” I sighed to the little man. “Greetings, I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples, and I beg your Hospitality.”

  “Why do Explorers always say that?” Oar muttered. “It is very annoying.”

  “Blame it on boundless optimism,” I told her. “Someday I’ll say it to someone who doesn’t run screaming or try to kill me.”

  The man did neither. Instead he spoke again, this time guttural words with phlegmy rasps in the throat. It sounded so different from his first speech, I guessed he had changed languages in an attempt to find one I understood. Good luck, I thought to myself. No Explorer bothers with linguistic training; it’s taken for granted we’ll never understand the native tongues of the beings we meet. If they don’t understand our “Greetings” speech, our only recourse is to play charades…very careful charades, trying to avoid gestures that would be misunderstood as hostile.

  Accordingly, I lifted my hands, palms out, facing the man. “Hello,” I said, more for Oar’s benefit than his. “I am unarmed and friendly.” To back my words, I smiled, making sure to keep my mouth closed: for many species, baring the teeth means aggression. The man in front of me appeared to be one hundred percent Homo sapiens—the kind with real skin, not glass—but it would still be a mistake to assume too much cultural common ground.

  Before the man could respond to my gesture, Oar took her own stab at communicating: a gush of words in her own native language, a flood of syllables that went on for more than
half a minute before she paused for breath.

  The man blinked once, then turned back to me. His attitude said he didn’t understand Oar, and had no interest in trying. He ventured another smattering of syllables, this one a type of singing that reminded me of Gregorian chant. The words, however, weren’t Latin—I don’t speak the language, but a zoologist knows enough scientific names for animals to recognize Latin when she hears it.

  “Listen,” I said, keeping my voice soft and friendly, “we aren’t going to understand each other this way. Maybe if we…”

  I didn’t finish my sentence. At that moment, the man flickered in and out of existence like heat lightning.

  Flicker

  The effect only lasted a second: his image breaking into a moiré pattern of optical interference, then righting itself again into a seemingly solid man. It didn’t matter how brief the disruption was—it told me two things.

  First, the man was a hologram: a good hologram, since it’s extremely difficult for projections to fool the eye at a range of three paces. Nevertheless, I knew he was just a constructed image…something I half-expected already, since corporeal men don’t appear out of nowhere. (Some members of the League are rumored to have perfected teleportation, but no one with that technology has ever contacted humans.)

  The second thing I knew was that Melaquin had started to live on borrowed time. The flicker in this image could only mean some machine somewhere had acquired a fault. It might only be a small malfunction in a nonessential system—the hardware for projecting pictures of naked men was unlikely to be crucial for survival—but even a tiny glitch meant things had begun to break down. No one, not even the League of Peoples, could build equipment that lasts forever; all the automated repair systems in the universe can’t hold back the patient creep of entropy. If four thousand years was the lifetime for the systems here on Melaquin…