The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  Ullis blinked several times. Maybe she was doing it on purpose. Finally she said, “The hard thing for Jelca was being so close to normal. You understand? If he put on a wig, he was there. Not for long, maybe four hours before the lesions started bleeding, but for those four hours, he had it. He could walk down any street without stares. He could go on dates with real people. Yes, his scalp took weeks to heal, but if he wanted those four hours, he could have them. He could get clear. And that made him a little crazy—like he wasn’t in the same boat as the rest of us. He never said it in so many words, but I was his partner; I could tell. Jelca never identified himself as an Explorer. I think sometimes he wanted to. Maybe if things had gone differently between the pair of you…but that was all part of it anyway. He couldn’t bring himself to connect with another Explorer.

  “I know that makes him sound arrogant,” Ullis added hurriedly, “but it wasn’t that way. Not at first. He just felt out of place. Miscategorized. And then, when he learned he’d be marooned on Melaquin—treated like an Explorer, and like a criminal—he felt unjustly betrayed. Like someone had personally spit on him. That’s why he had the nerve to steal the Sperm-field generator. I’ve never asked what he did to get it, but I think he hurt someone. You know what it’s like in Ship’s Engineering; there’s always someone around. They wouldn’t let Jelca walk off with important equipment like that. I don’t know for sure— maybe he took down some people with that souped-up stunner of his. But he was just so wounded that the council would treat him like any other Explorer…just as worthless, just as expendable….”

  “Ullis,” I said, “didn’t you feel wounded and betrayed too?”

  “Sure. But I am an Explorer—and Melaquin is where Explorers end up. In a weird way, I feel fulfilled. I did my job. I stayed true. And because of that, I am fiercely connected with every other member of the corps.”

  I wanted to deny what she was saying; but I couldn’t. However furious I might be with the High Council, some part of my mind whispered it was fitting to get dumped into the disposal chute called Melaquin.

  An Explorer’s life has only one proper ending: Oh Shit. And Melaquin was the Oh Shit you could walk away from.

  Bad Times

  “So,” Ullis continued, “when Jelca woke up on Melaquin…no, I shouldn’t pretend I can see inside his head. I just know it was bad. He came close to killing Kalovski— that was the admiral we were escorting. I had to talk Jelca into going away for a few days, until he cooled off. In the meantime, I dealt with Kalovski…which means I watched him die. That was pretty awful.”

  “Yes,” I murmured.

  She waited for me to say more, but I didn’t.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “by the time I rendezvoused with Jelca, he’d already met Eel and Oar. You can imagine how I worried about that—not that I cared how he ran his love life, but two women, with minds like children…” She shook her head. “And back then, they couldn’t even speak our language. I tried to talk some scruples into him, but he wouldn’t listen. He said he was exploring what the planet had to offer. Whenever I could get the women alone, I tried to find out how they felt about the whole business; frankly, I may have taught them more English than Jelca did. But it was obvious they were infatuated with him. He was the first non-dormant male they had ever met. And they were so bored and lonely before he arrived, they were putty in his hands.”

  “Both of them?” I asked. “Oar tells the story differently now.”

  “She would,” Ullis replied, “considering how Jelca walked out on them. When we were ready to head south, I was willing to take Eel and Oar with us—not that I thought it was healthy for them to stay with him, but if they wanted to come, I wouldn’t leave them behind. Jelca wanted to disappear without a word…selfish bastard. So I grabbed Eel, told her what was happening, and left her alone with Jelca so the two of them could work it out. I would have done the same with Oar, but I couldn’t find her; she was probably out clearing fields to impress him.” Ullis shook her head morosely.

  “What happened between Eel and Jelca?” I asked.

  “I don’t know—I stayed down on the beach while they talked up on the bluffs. Eventually, Jelca came down alone and announced neither Eel nor Oar were coming with us. They preferred to stay in their home village. There had to be more to it, of course; he’d probably screamed at Eel until she let him go. But I decided the women were better off without him, and maybe it was best to leave before they changed their minds.”

  “So Eel didn’t go with you?”

  “No.” Ullis looked at me, puzzled. “Why would you think that?”

  “Oar said you took her. Oar believed the three of you went away together.”

  I pictured Eel and Jelca alone on the bluffs that day three years ago. Jelca spurning her. Eel no more than a brokenhearted little girl…and never seen again.

  Oh Shit.

  Part XVI

  Mania

  My Attempts to Help (Part 1)

  The next day, I tried to help with the spaceship. There was little for me to do; the ship was almost finished, and the few tasks outstanding were one-person jobs that required “technical sophistication”…which is to say, someone who knew what she was doing.

  No matter where I went in search of something to do, people ribbed me for being a zoology specialist. Everyone brought it up. After a while, it took an effort to smile at the jibes. I told myself I was just new—oldtimers often tease new arrivals as a gruff form of welcome. It didn’t help that I’d shown up after the hard work was done. “Oho, here’s the animal lover, just in time to play inspector.” They said it jokingly; I tried to hear it that way too.

  I told myself there was no genuine resentment under the laughter: resentment for a woman who didn’t look like an Explorer.

  At meals, I felt people staring.

  Three times Ullis told me, “You look really good, Festina.”

  The one time I saw Jelca during the day, he said nothing at all.

  Stop imagining things, I told myself. They don’t care what I look like…and even if they do, it’s their problem, not mine.

  Sure.

  To pass the time, I outfitted another cabin inside the whale: carrying in a cot, bolting it to the floor, stashing unneeded equipment from my backpack into a locker. It was all for appearance’s sake—I couldn’t escape with the others. If I caught a ride in the ship, the League would stop my heart in flight, the same way they terminated any non-sentient creature trying to escape into space. They might even take retribution on the other Explorers for helping me. On the other hand, I had to go through the motions, or someone might start asking questions.

  Anyway, another furnished cabin wouldn’t hurt anything; the whale had plenty of space. Ullis said the life support systems could handle two hundred people indefinitely, and the food synthesizers had even more capacity. No one knew why the early generations of Melaquin had bothered making a ship so huge. Had they wanted to leave the planet en masse…maybe even return to Earth? Or had they simply fancied a jaunt into space: a sightseeing tour around the moon and back?

  The other Explorers had no interest in speculation. Even Ullis excused herself after breakfast, saying she had programming to do—simulation tests and so on. No, she didn’t need help…it would take too long to get me up to speed on what she was doing.

  By midafternoon, I felt glumly extraneous: sorry for myself and irritated at that weakness. Rather than mope where someone might notice, I slipped away from the launch site and headed into the city. Athelrod and others were still going over the lark-plane; maybe they needed help carrying back salvaged components. I began to retrace the route Oar and I had taken in from the elevator…but I had only reached the point where we first saw Jelca when I came across Oar herself.

  She sat huddled in the doorway of a glass blockhouse, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs and her face pressed against her knees. The skin of her glass thighs was rainstreaked with half-dry tears.

  My Attempts to Help
(Part 2)

  I sat beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. For a while, neither of us said a word. Then she whispered, “I am very sad, Festina.”

  “I know.”

  “It is not fair to be so sad.”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  “Nothing is the way it should be.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t speak again, but leaned in toward me. I let her rest her cheek against my chest. I could see straight through the back of her head to the tear-stains dribbled down her face.

  “Eel is not here,” she said at last.

  “So I heard.”

  “And Jelca does not care. He does not care about Eel or me or anything.”

  I leaned over until my lips touched the hard glass hair on the top of her head. “Jelca is quite the shit, isn’t he?”

  “He is extremely much the shit,” she agreed. “Shitty fucking Jelca.”

  “To hell with him,” I said.

  “A very deep hell. With flames and everything.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  I gave her shoulders a squeeze. She reached down and patted my knee. After a moment she said more softly, “I would like to punch him in the nose.”

  “Yes?”

  “I would like to make him feel very bad.”

  “I know,” I told her. “But civilized folks like us don’t hit people.”

  “What do we do?”

  We brood, internalize, and make ourselves miserable, I thought. Aloud I said, “We give ourselves permission to indulge. Like eating something rich, or buying something we can’t afford, or making excuses to get out of work….”

  She looked at me without comprehension.

  “Okay,” I admitted, “maybe those things aren’t right for you. Is there someplace you want to go, something you want to do?”

  “We could go visit ancestors,” she said with sudden interest. “They live next door.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes. It is very fitting that Jelca lives beside the ancestors of this place. They both have bad brains.”

  “And you want to visit…” I didn’t finish my sentence. It would be rude to describe the ancestors as senile near-corpses.

  “It is pleasant inside the ancestors’ home,” Oar said. “It is warm and good.”

  “Ahhhh,” I nodded, understanding. “You realize I can’t go in with you?” I asked.

  Her face fell. “Then maybe…”

  “No,” I stopped her, “you go. If it feels good, you deserve it. I’ll wait outside.”

  “You will not go away?”

  “I promise.”

  We got to our feet and walked arm-in-arm to the next building: an enormous tower, even taller than the sixty-story building where Ullis lived. Unlike other buildings in the city, this one had glass walls I couldn’t see through; they had been opaqued to prevent the radiation inside from leaking out.

  “I will not be long,” Oar promised.

  “Take your time,” I called as she disappeared within. Oar looked eager for time in the tower; I didn’t want her cutting the experience short because of me. It must be like a sauna, I thought—hot and steamy, the chance to lie around languidly….

  Oar barreled out the door, mere seconds after she’d entered. “There is a problem, Festina. The ancestors are very upset.”

  “At you?”

  “No. At you. Come inside.”

  Talking with the Ancestors

  It took some time for Oar to understand that going inside would damage me. I doubt if she really believed it; but she grudgingly agreed to act as intermediary, carrying messages between me and the ancestors to learn what was wrong.

  Me: Why are the ancestors upset?

  [A pause while Oar ducked into the building, asked the question, and got the answer.]

  Oar: Because a fucking Explorer is bothering them.

  Me: Bothering them how?

  [Pause.]

  Oar: Walking over them. Pushing them around.

  Stacking them against the walls.

  Me: Deliberately trying to hurt them?

  [Pause.]

  Oar: I do not think so, although some of the ancestors pretend they were grievously assaulted. Ancestors are stupid. I think the Explorer was merely clearing them out of the way. There is now a wide path down the middle of the room where the ancestors have been moved aside.

  Me: Where does the path go?

  [Pause.]

  Oar: I followed the path to the central elevator.

  Me: Which means the Explorer was using the elevator for something.

  [Pause for me to think.]

  What did the Explorer look like?

  [Pause.]

  Oar: They say the fucking Explorer was shiny all over.

  Me: I thought so. Look around inside, Oar…close to the door but maybe hidden. See if you can find a shiny suit.

  [Pause. Oar returned with a bundle of silver fabric in her hands.]

  Oar: How did you know this was there? What is it?

  Me: A radiation suit.

  I didn’t mention that the glittery fabric looked like the same material as Jelca’s silvery shirt.

  Into the Tower

  The suit was a sloppy fit on me. Tailored for someone taller: Jelca’s size. It also had a holster attached to the belt. The holster was empty, but it looked like a perfect fit for Jelca’s stun-pistol.

  Unlike other radiation outfits I had worn, this one was comfortably light—no heavy inner lining of lead or one of the transuranics. Still, I had no doubt it would protect me from the tower’s hot-bath of radiation. Jelca must have persuaded the local AI to construct the suit for him—a machine programmed by the League of Peoples would never endanger a life by building inadequate protective gear. Best of all, I knew Jelca was still alive; if he could go inside without being fricasseed by microwaves, I could too.

  Radiation burns might not be a concern but vision was: the suit had no visor, no break at all in the hood covering my head and face. I could see very dimly through the sem-itransparent fabric, like looking through a window bleary with rain. My view was at most three paces, and then just directly in front of me. I would have to move carefully and hope no one rushed me from the side.

  For caution’s sake, I checked the suit seals one last time, then stepped into the tower. The ancestors had indeed been moved to clear a path into the building—unlike the neatly ordered rows I had seen in Oar’s village, these bodies were piled on top of one another, limbs dangling into each other’s faces. No wonder they were annoyed.

  “It is rude to treat ancestors like this,” Oar whispered. I remembered that back in her own village, she had blithely kicked an ancestor in a fit of pique…but perhaps there was one set of rules for people inside the family and another for those outside.

  “Ask them,” I said, “how long they’ve been like this.”

  She spoke a few words in her native language, enunciating loudly and distinctly as if the ancestors were hard of hearing. Barely audible whispers drifted back from the clutter of bodies.

  “They say a long time,” she told me. “They probably do not know how long. Their brains are too tired to judge such things.”

  A long time…yet none of them had made an effort to move back to their original positions. And Jelca hadn’t moved them back either. Sloppy, I thought—a conscientious Explorer would cover his tracks.

  I turned to Oar. “Tell them we’ll put them back properly in a little while. First, I want to investigate what Jelca was up to.”

  Oar conveyed my message. Meanwhile, I lumbered along the cleared path, wishing I could see better through the suit fabric. Glass bodies were difficult to discern; I worried about stepping on one I had overlooked. That, I supposed, was why Jelca hadn’t dragged everyone back into place. He had unfinished business in the tower, and didn’t want to trip over bodies every time he came in.

  The path led through one room after another, three rooms of blurred body heaps, until I reached a singl
e elevator in the heart of the building. Its door was open, ready for business; I stepped inside and waited for Oar to join me.

  “Which floor do we want?” she asked.

  “Start at the top and work down.” Whatever Jelca was doing, he seemed to be keeping it secret from the other Explorers. If so, he’d avoid floors near ground level—too much chance of passersby hearing any noise he might make. The city was quiet as death and filled with hard surfaces perfect for echoes; even a small sound carried surprisingly far.

  The elevator closed and we began to ascend—slowly, as if anyone who took this ride had no reason to hurry. People came here to die—not literally perhaps, but that was only a technicality. Those who rode up almost never rode down.

  Cheerful thoughts, Festina. To take my mind off the elevator’s funereal pace, I said to Oar, “You can see better than I can. Could you please check the floor for marks?”

  “What kind of marks?”

  “Any kind. The path Jelca cleared was quite wide—ore than he’d need just walking through himself. He might have brought in equipment. Maybe heavy equipment.”

  “Explorers are not strong enough to carry heavy things,” Oar replied smugly.

  “But Explorers can have the local AI build robots to do the work—I saw several suitable haulers at the launch site. Just check, would you?”

  Oar got down on all fours and crawled around, sweeping her fingertips lightly across the floor. “There are some dents here,” she reported. “Not very deep.”

  “Sharp-edged or rounded?”

  “Rounded.”

  Wheels, I thought. That didn’t tell me much; but the marks had to be recent. Like other machinery in the city, this elevator must undergo regular maintenance and rebuilding, courtesy of automated repair systems. Even small dents would warrant attention—otherwise, they might become starting points for rust.

  “All right,” I said, “Jelca brought something here. The question is what.”

  The Second Spare