The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  “You are!” I shouted…not because my words could affect him but because I’d heard a sound behind me. “If you weren’t trying to impress me, you would have shot the second you saw me. But you want to gloat. You want to justify yourself. Or you want to act out some bubble you’ve seen where the villain acts menacing to pretend he’s more than a pissy little schoolboy. Honestly, Jelca…destroying a world because nobody likes you!”

  “You liked me once,” he retorted. “You adored me. And you weren’t the only one. Eel adored me. Oar adored me…”

  “I did not!” shouted a voice behind me. The next moment, an axe whizzed past my head.

  Battle Rejoined

  The axe was not balanced for throwing. It flew fast enough to take Jelca by surprise, but only struck his arm with its handle as it passed by. It glanced off the wall behind him and clattered to the floor.

  Jelca raised his pistol.

  Unlike the axe, my carefully prepared scalpel flew with perfect precision. I threw it with a simple flick of the wrist, in the instant before I dove out of the doorway. It slashed into Jelca’s fingers where they wrapped around the butt of his stunner. He screamed. The stunner fell.

  “Hah!” The laugh rang through the room. Oar leapt past me, heading for Jelca. “You killed my sister, fucking Explorer! You tried to kill me. Now we will see who is such a thing as can die.”

  She moved sluggishly, and there were smears of dried fluid tracked down her chin. Even so, she had been strong enough to wake from her coma, clearheaded enough to figure out what had happened, and stubborn enough to climb eighty storeys in search of vengeance.

  Now she plunged toward Jelca, her hands reaching for his throat. The attack was awkward, off-balance; her dizziness showed. Jelca dodged, deflecting her rush to one side. He took one quick glance in the direction of his stunner, but it was too far away. Instead, he turned the other direction: toward the Sperm generator.

  “No!” I cried. The maniac intended to turn it on. If it activated now, a Sperm-tail thousands of klicks long would establish itself in a single second—a tail waving out of control, lashing up out of the atmosphere and into space. The generator itself was bolted down securely, but those of us in the room weren’t. All three of us would make a very short cold trip into hard vacuum.

  With nothing else close to hand, I whipped off my helmet and heaved it across the room, catching him hard in the back of the head. The blow struck with a resounding crack. He pitched forward, sprawling onto the black coffin of the generator…but his hand was still moving, searching for the activation switch.

  “Stop him!” I yelled. “That machine will kill everyone!”

  Oar lashed out a foot and kicked Jelca in the side—not a skilled kick, but strong enough to lift him and flip him back half a meter. He dropped onto the coffin again, this time spreadeagled on his back. I couldn’t tell if he’d fallen closer or farther from the generator’s switch; but he was still conscious, still moving, still reaching out to turn on the machine.

  With no time to get to my feet, I slithered across the floor, straight toward the stunner. My eyes were on Jelca; his hand fumbled with something on the far side of the generator…probably the switch.

  I grabbed the gun and fired fast without aiming—even if I didn’t hit him full on, the edge of the sonic cone might stagger him. But I hadn’t appreciated the power of the amplified pistol. Hypersonics smashed against the glass wall over Jelca’s head and shattered it to crystal rain, exploding it outward in a shower that left a gaping hole in the tower.

  Air whistled outside as glass shards pattered onto Jelca’s radiation suit. He could ignore the shards; what he couldn’t ignore was the clumsily wielded axe coming at him.

  Oar tried to chop Jelca like she would chop a tree—a hard blow straight down toward his chest. If she had been at full strength, he never would have blocked the blow; but she was weak now and bleary. He caught the axe and stopped it, both arms extended as he seized the axe handle at the base of its head.

  For a moment, they both were frozen there: Jelca fending off the axe, Oar trying to force it down onto his sternum. Then Oar whispered, “Fucking Explorer. This is what expendable means.”

  She let go of the axe, grabbed his arms, and jumped with him, straight out the hole in the wall.

  Part XVIII

  EGGS HATCHING

  Cleaning Up, Sweeping Away

  I walked halfway across the room, intending to look out the window. Then I stopped. There was nothing outside I wanted to see.

  Before my eyes took too much damage from the radiation, I picked up the helmet and put it back on. The smell of it sickened me. A lot of things sickened me.

  With a few sharp jerks, I yanked out the wires between the Sperm generator and its battery. I wanted to damage the machines more permanently, but didn’t know what would be safe. There were people in this tower; if the generator contained nuclear materials or antimatter, smashing it might set off an explosion.

  I didn’t want to hurt anybody, did I?

  It was easy to unlock the elevator—Jelca had simply attached an override chip to the control panel. Once I disengaged the chip, I rode to the bottom floor and carefully moved back all the ancestors Jelca had disarranged. It allowed me more time to put off going outside.

  I still had to go out eventually.

  Jelca was dead, of course—no mere human could survive such a fall.

  It didn’t help that he’d been holding Oar’s axe.

  I sometimes think Oar might have lived if she hadn’t been so broken already. But she was half-dead before she fell, and now she’d finished the job. She did not breathe; her heart was silent.

  Oar was such a thing as could die. According to her beliefs, that made her holy…sacred.

  Sure. Why not.

  I carried her into the tower and laid out her body again, axe by her side. Maybe the light could bring her back, even from this; but I didn’t wait to see.

  Jelca I left in the street.

  Barren

  The central square was empty, except for the eagle-plane off to one side. I shouted, “Phylar!” several times, but the only answers I got were echoes. He must have made it to the ship in time.

  The city was silent. Barren. I couldn’t face it. Suddenly I found myself in the eagle, shouting, “Take off, now, up!”…a fierce panic to get out. The plane rose in a whine of engines, through roof doors that were still open from the whale’s launch. With no one in the city to close them, the doors might stay open forever.

  The sky outside brooded in gray melancholy, but the open air was not as oppressive as the abandoned city below. My panic ebbed; and I realized it was foolish to leave so hastily. There was still a wealth of Explorer equipment down in the city—things I would need if I was going to live on this planet the rest of my life.

  And I was.

  But I didn’t need to go back down right away. I could stay outside…watch the birds…see if I could find any eggs to start a new collection….

  I told the eagle to land beside the remains of the lark; it seemed like appropriate symbolism. For a while after touching down, I just sat inside the plane, listening to the engines cool and watching the overcast clouds wisp around the distant peaks. Getting out of the cockpit required more energy than I possessed. Eventually though, I forced myself to move: down to the ground where I took off Tobit’s helmet and breathed the still air.

  Behind me, a bootstep scraped across stone.

  I turned slowly, too burnt out to bother with defensive reflexes. If there was someone here, it could only be another Explorer…perhaps one of the old ones, stranded on Melaquin for decades and turned coward at the last moment, too fearful to return to an outside world that had surely changed.

  The newcomer was a woman, wearing the gray uniform of an admiral. “Festina Ramos?” she blurted in surprise.

  I saluted. “Admiral Seele,” I said. “Welcome back to Melaquin.”

  Chee’s Partner

  Seele didn’t
answer. For a moment, I thought she was staring at my cheek; then I wondered if she was seeing anything at all, even though her gaze was on my face.

  “You left me your egg collection,” she said at last.

  “Yes.”

  “It was my first hint you’d been sent to Melaquin.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?”

  “I suppose so,” she nodded. “I got to thinking….” Her voice trailed off.

  “You remembered you were once an Explorer,” I said. “That you once looked like me and were marooned here too. So you came to rescue me?”

  “I don’t know what I came to do,” she answered. “I came…I came to see. The city. I didn’t know anyone was here. Our sensors picked up the starship launch; I thought everyone would be gone.” She paused. “The High Council would have a collective attack of apoplexy if they knew I was here.”

  “And you wouldn’t dare risk their displeasure,” I said, “or they’d send you back here. Like they sent Chee. Did you know about that?”

  “I heard what happened to Chee after the fact. Exiling you here with Chee…possibly the council thought that would send me a message.”

  “That’s all we were? A message for you?”

  She shook her head. “Chee was always a thorn in their side. That spy network of his—rubbing their nose in the incompetence of the bureaucracy. The smart councillors knew they needed him, but the ones who just liked wielding power…. Some people hate interference, even when it saves their asses. Eventually, they caught Chee with his guard down, and away he went.”

  “Away he went,” I repeated. “I watched him die.”

  Admiral Seele bowed her head.

  Understanding

  After a while, Seele murmured, “We should get out of here.”

  “Don’t hurry,” I told her.

  “Festina,” she said, “ever since Chee and I escaped, the High Council has stationed two picket ships in this system, to make sure no one leaves again. Do you think this is the first time I’ve tried to land on Melaquin? I’m an admiral; I have a ship at my disposal. Every now and then, I try to come, but the pickets always turn me away. When I received your egg collection, I came once more, wondering if this would be the time I’d defy the pickets. I lurked in this system’s Oort cloud for more than a day, trying to make up my mind. Then, suddenly, you Explorers launched a ship; a ship with Sperm capability.” She smiled. “That sure as hell caught the pickets napping. The two of them bolted after the Explorer ship and must be in deep space by now.”

  Seele grabbed me by the arm. “I saw my chance and I took it, Festina. The first time in forty years I’ve been able to land on Melaquin. I came to see my old city. I came to see some glass friends…” She shook her head. “Never mind. I’ve found you instead. Our sensors picked you up while your plane was flying. And now you have a chance to escape! The others won’t succeed—the pickets will snare them with tractor beams and drag them back to this planet. But while the pickets are gone, you and I can get clear. Let’s go, Festina. This chance may never come again.”

  “So I should save myself and leave the others in the lurch? That’s what you and Chee did all those years ago.”

  Seele looked stricken. “We don’t have time to discuss this….”

  “I have all the time in the world,” I told her. “The way I see it, you found a working spaceship in the city below….”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you took off without worrying about other Explorers banished on the planet….”

  “It was a small ship, and we had no way to locate the other—”

  “Then,” I kept going, “you got back to Technocracy space and cut a deal with the High Council to save your hides. You’d keep your mouths shut, and in exchange, the council would make you admirals. Isn’t that it? So you and Chee got cushy positions while other Explorers kept disappearing.”

  “Festina, you have to understand—”

  “No, Admiral,” I interrupted, “you’ve picked the wrong day for me to be understanding.” I turned away from her in disgust. “And you’ve picked the wrong woman to save,” I shouted over my shoulder as I stomped back to the eagle. “Just because I remind you of your damaged young self—”

  “Festina,” Seele said.

  Something in her tone made me turn around. She was aiming a stunner at me.

  “I’m like a magnet for those guns,” I told her.

  Then she shot me.

  My New Quarters

  I woke up in bed. The bed was in a standard officer’s cabin on board a starship. My head throbbed with all the leaden pain that comes from a stun-blast. In a way, that was a blessing—I couldn’t focus my mind on other ugly thoughts that threatened to devil my conscience.

  Much as I wanted just to lie there, wincing each time my pulse bludgeoned my frontal lobes, I faced a physical imperative—after hours of unconsciousness, I urgently needed to empty my bladder. Groaning, I made myself vertical and sat on the edge of the bed until purple things stopped exploding behind my eyes. Then I staggered to the toilet, did my business, and continued to sit on the seat, staring dully at the wall.

  My head throbbed. I counted sixty blunt pulses of pain, then stumbled back toward the bed. As I passed the desk, I noticed a plain white pill sitting on top Of a card that read, this might help. I swallowed the pill immediately, on the theory it couldn’t possibly make things worse.

  In a few minutes, the pain did ease a little: enough to let me take stock of my surroundings. Yes, I was in officer’s quarters, almost exactly like my cabin on the Jacaranda but a mirror image—on the port side instead of starboard. The room had no decorations, but standing near the door were three packing crates, lined against the bulkhead. I opened the lid of the closest one and saw many small objects wrapped in wads of cotton.

  My eggs.

  My eggs.

  Tears came to my eyes. I was too scared to touch a single egg; I just looked at the cotton-wrapped bundles, counting them over and over again…only the ones I could see at the top of the open box.

  My eggs.

  “This is stupid,” I said aloud. “I lost Yarrun and Chee and Oar, and I’m oveijoyed over some eggs?”

  But I was. I had not quite lost everything. Not quite.

  The Stars

  The door chittered and Admiral Seele walked in. Doors open for admirals, even if you don’t give permission to enter.

  “You’re awake,” she said. “Sorry for being abrupt, but we were wasting time.”

  “So you shot me. Just what I’d expect from an admiral.”

  “No,” she replied. “A true admiral would have ordered someone else to shoot you. I’m still an Explorer at heart.”

  I had to smile in spite of myself. Then a sobering thought hit me. “You don’t really intend to take me back to the Technocracy?”

  “If you prefer,” Seele said, “I can drop you off at a Fringe World. Admirals can order course changes on a whim.”

  “You can’t drop me anywhere but Melaquin. The League will kill me if I try to enter interstellar space. I’m a murderer.”

  She lifted her eyebrows.

  “I am,” I insisted. “I killed my partner. And I would have killed Jelca if Oar hadn’t beat me to it.”

  “Festina, I can’t believe—”

  “Believe it,” I snapped. “I’m a dangerous non-sentient. And now that I’ve told you, your life is on the line too. If you let this ship leave the Melaquin system, we’ll both be snuffed out.”

  “Then we’d better go to the bridge,” Seele said quietly.

  She led me out the door and down the hall, up a companionway and through the hatch leading to the bridge corridor. There, we passed a man wearing Social Science green and he saluted…first the admiral, then me, although I only wore the skirt and top built from my tightsuit. He must have thought I was a civilian, and civilians on Fleet vessels were almost always dignitaries of some kind.

  “Admiral on the bridge!” someone barked as
we entered the bridge proper. A few people snapped to attention; most remained at their posts. Protocol is one thing, but duty is something else—even vacuum personnel knew that.

  “Captain Ling,” Seele said to the man occupying the captain’s chair, “could you please activate the view screens?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He twirled a dial and the main screen brightened to reveal a starscape. It was no different from any other starscape you might see. That’s why view screens are almost always turned off, except to impress visitors. No FTL ship navigates by sight. Running with the screen active would simply distract the crew from watching more important things: the gauges and readouts that gave solid information instead of useless scenery.

  “Now, Explorer Ramos,” Seele pointed to the screen, “what do you see?”

  “Stars,” I answered.

  “Captain Ling,” Seele said, “what is our current distance from Melaquin?”

  Ling gestured toward the navigator. The navigator said, “9.27 light-years, ma’am.”

  “Are we in interstellar space?”

  The navigator’s eyes widened slightly. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Out of any star’s local gravity well?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” Seele said. “As you were.”

  She turned and stepped back into the corridor. A moment later, she took me by the dumbstruck arm and pulled me after her.

  “You see?” Seele said in a gentle voice. “Whatever you did, you aren’t non-sentient. The League is never wrong about these things. We’re alive and we’ve reached interstellar space; therefore, Festina, you are not a murderer.” She gave the ghost of a smile. “It’s almost as if God has personally declared you innocent.”

  The Admiral’s Story

  Back in the cabin, I told Seele everything. This time was different from when I confessed to Jelca. Then, I was trying to connect with him, partly to reach his sanity and partly to reach mine. Now, I was trying to connect the facts: to see the chains of cause and effect, to understand why the League had incomprehensibly given me a reprieve.