The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  ECMs. Essential crew members. I liked the sound of that.

  Flightworthy

  Oar stood against one wall of the hangar, her eyes wide at the sight of so much hustle and bustle. I walked over and said, “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  “I do not like machines that move,” she answered. “Especially the small ones. They are like stupid little animals.”

  “They aren’t so stupid,” I told her. “They’re making sure we can fly.”

  “We will fly inside that bird?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far can we fly, Festina? Can we fly to your home in the stars?”

  “These craft look strictly atmospheric,” I answered, “but you bring up an interesting question.” I motioned to the hologram man. “If I asked you to build a starship, could you do it?”

  “Nay, good queen. That is forbidden me. Those who dwell on this planet are rightly granted dominion over their native land and seas; but to step beyond, into the vasty deeps of night, you must make your own way.”

  “Pity,” I said, though his answer didn’t surprise me. The League views interstellar space as sacrosanct—closed to undeserving races. If you weren’t advanced enough to reach space on your own, it was only logical that the League wouldn’t help you. Transporting ancient humans to a safe haven on Melaquin was one thing; giving them the means to gad about the galaxy was something else.

  “How much longer before the bird can take off?” I asked.

  “But a moment’s time,” the hologram replied. “Mayhap you would care to enter now, that your departure can be more swift.”

  I gave Oar a look. “Ready to get in the plane?”

  “Will we truly fly?” she asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “Milady,” the hologram said with a chiding tone, “how can you doubt me? My heart beats to the rhythm of the League of Peoples; shall I then place sentients in harm’s way?”

  I didn’t answer. An AI of the League would never invite a sentient to board a plane that wasn’t safe…but did that really guarantee anything? The AI was not in perfect repair. Would it even know if the aircraft was flightworthy after four thousand years? Or would the sculpted glass wings fall off before we hit cruising speed?

  As if you ever expected to die in bed, I told myself. “Come on,” I said to Oar. “Let’s board.”

  Straps

  The cockpit had two swivel seats, with enough space between them that passengers wouldn’t block each other’s view through either side of the glass fuselage. To aid in sightseeing, there were no clunky controls to get in the way: no steering yoke, no pedals, no levers or dials or switches. That lack disturbed me; voice operation was one thing, but no manual backup was something else. I had no skill flying aircraft, but if we were crashing, I wanted the chance to wrestle blindly with the controls.

  It would give me something to do.

  Oar plopped into the right-hand seat; I helped buckle her in before I took the other chair. “These belts are interesting,” she said, plucking at the X-shaped bands crisscrossing her chest. “Can I make them very tight?”

  “If they’re too tight, you won’t be comfortable.”

  “How tight is too tight?” She yanked on the drawstrap hard enough to jerk her back against the seat. “Is this what wearing clothes feels like?”

  “Depends on the type of clothes,” I answered diplomatically.

  “Perhaps I should have some clothes. The other fucking Explorers said that clothes were a sign of civilization.” She gave another yank on the drawstrap.

  I swiveled my seat away. Although I tried to concentrate on the activities of the maintenance bots outside, from time to time I heard a soft grunt as Oar jerked the straps tighter.

  Ventilation

  The hologram man suddenly appeared beside me, hovering a centimeter above the floor. Bad sign, I thought: evidence that the AI hadn’t accurately calibrated the image to match the height of the cockpit.

  “Gird ye for takeoff,” the man said. “All is in readiness.”

  “How is this going to work?” I asked.

  “Thy carrier bird will ride chariotlike to the next chamber,” he answered, pointing toward the far end of the hangar. A set of doors had begun opening down there; the room beyond was pitch black. “From thence you will pass into the waters that surround this, mine abode.”

  Obviously, the far room was an airlock—a staging point before plunging into the river beyond. “How well does the lark work underwater?” I asked.

  “It was fashioned for that very purpose. Your craft will ascend full fathoms five ’til, cresting the surface, it cleaves the air and soars on high. Once safely borne upon the wind, you may speak to it, guide it, wheresoever you will.”

  “Good,” I nodded. “You’ll shut the door to the main dome once we’re gone?”

  “As you have commanded.”

  “You can’t close up any earlier?”

  “Alas, no. This your conveyance exhales fierce vapors which must be allowed exit into the larger space beyond.”

  “Ventilation—fair enough.” I glanced out the window and saw maintenance bots scurrying away. “Looks like we’re ready to launch.”

  “Just so,” the man bowed, “Now prepare thyself. The lark is ready and the wind at help, thy associate ’tends, and everything is bent for the Southland.”

  He winked out instantly. The next moment, the room erupted with the roar of engines.

  An Open Door

  The sound was enough to deafen granite. Instinctively I slapped my chest, right where the mute dial was on a tight-suit. If I’d been wearing my helmet, it would have begun generating a similar roar 180 degrees out of phase with the original, canceling the thunderous noise. Without that protection, all I could do was cover my ears and yawn in an attempt to equalize pressure.

  Oar had her mouth open too. I think she was screaming, but I couldn’t hear.

  I prayed for the lark to start taxiing toward the airlock chamber. Once we were surrounded by water, the din would be muffled to a more tolerable level.

  But the lark didn’t move.

  It’s just warming up, I told myself. I tried to remember if jets had to reach a certain heat to operate or if that was some other type of engine. Too bad the Academy avoided giving us even a rudimentary introduction to aviation. Vacuum personnel wanted to keep their monopoly on aeronautics knowledge.

  The roar continued. It must be raising an unholy ruckus in the main part of the habitat—a booming clamor echoing off the dome, reverberating in the closed space.

  “Shit,” I said without hearing my voice. “Tobit will wake up for sure.”

  I faced the main door, my hands pressed hard against my ears. Maybe Tobit would dismiss the sound as a delusion—some DT nightmare, to be avoided, not investigated. But the Morlocks would wake too, asking, “What’s that noise?” in whatever language they spoke. Tobit would know he was missing something.

  “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 la
rk 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 se
ntinel 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.