Ascending

by James Alan Gardner

  A Clear Path To The Exit

  Together we headed for the exit. The route was unobstructed, which I found most odd: usually Ancestral Homes have dozens of elderly persons littering the floor, particularly near the front entrance. Those with brains on the verge of exhaustion have a deplorable habit of walking in from the street and flumping straight down on the closest patch of unoccupied ground. After several generations, there is no space at all in the first few rooms.

  But here, the clutter had been partly cleared. Though many senile persons still sprawled about, they were all shoved against the glass walls to make an open path up the middle.

  The path led straight to where I had lain.

  “Did you do that?” I asked Uclod. “Did you move these people out of the way?”

  “Not me, toots. It was like this when I got here.”

  “Then it is a Mystery,” I told him. “I enjoy solving mysteries. I am excellent at rational deduction.”

  “I can see that,” Uclod replied…though his gaze was directed at a part of my person that is seldom associated with intelligent thought.

  “Wait,” I told him. “Observe my methods.” Then I walked to the side of the path and kicked an old man so hard he flew off the floor and smashed into the wall.

  The secret is to get your toe underneath the body. Use a strong scooping action.

  “Whoa, missy!” Uclod cried. “Are you trying to kill that guy?”

  “Do not be foolish,” I answered. “My people cannot be killed. They seldom even feel pain—especially those whose brains are Tired. Look.”

  I pointed to the man I had kicked. Though he now lay awkwardly against the wall, he showed no sign of being roused from his stupor; he had slept through the whole thing. On the other hand, my kick had propelled him onto an old woman, and she was not nearly so lethargic. Indeed, she embarked upon a Storm Of Invective wherein she claimed to know all about my parentage, particularly how my mother became pregnant and what unusual measures she took there-after. The woman was wrong in almost every respect, but her ill-informed harangue proved her brain was not so Tired as those around her.

  “Hush, old woman,” I told her in our own language. “I wish to ask you a question.”

  “Who are you calling old?” the woman grumbled. “You’re likely older than I am.”

  “I am not!” I snapped.

  “What’d she say?” Uclod asked. He had not understood our words, but he must have recognized the anger in my tone.

  “She said I was old,” I told him. “Whereas, in fact, it is she who is elderly.”

  “How can you tell?” Uclod asked. “You look the same age to me.”

  “Of course, we look the same—my species ceases to change physically after the age of twenty. But mentally this woman must be older than I; she lives in an Ancestral Home.”

  “You’ve lived in this same home for the past four years. How do you know that lady didn’t come in after you?”

  “Because…” I stopped. I was going to say I would have noticed if someone new arrived; but perhaps that was not so certain. Especially if the woman had arrived while I was sleeping.

  But no, she could not be younger than I. I was Mentally Alert, whereas the woman before me was already starting to lapse back into slumber. Her gaze was losing intensity; the fire that had flared up while she cursed me was now turning to ash. I tucked my hands under the woman’s armpits, lifted her up, and slammed her back against the tower’s glass wall. Uclod grimaced at the crack of glass bones on glass bricks…but I knew the wall would break long before this woman suffered the least bit of damage.

  My people are more sturdy than walls.

  “Wake up!” I shouted in the woman’s face. “Do not go to sleep again.”

  “Why not?” Her collision with the wall had brought back the focus in her eyes, but her voice was sullen—like a cranky child who wants to remain in bed.

  “Because if you stay awake,” I told the woman, “you will be able to lead a rich life wherein you accomplish great things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…” I looked about me for inspiration; seeing the open path down the center of the room, I remembered why I had awakened her in the first place. “We shall solve a mystery, you and I. We can discover who cleared the space from me to the door.”

  “Oh, I saw that,” the woman said. “It was interesting. Sort of. I think…”

  Her voice was fading. “Wake up!” I cried. “Stay awake and talk to me.” With a burst of fierceness, I thrust my silver ax close to the woman’s face. “Stay awake or I shall cut off your wallabies.”

  “Missy!” Uclod said, staring at the ax. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I am attempting to make a friend.” Without letting him interrupt further, I turned back to the woman. “Talk to me. Talk to me about…about this interesting thing you saw.”

  “There was an alien,” the woman replied with grumpy ill will. “A big white thing—like some animal, but bigger than a buffalo and it didn’t have a head.”

  “Then where did it put its ears?” I asked.

  “It didn’t have ears. Or eyes or a nose or a mouth. Because it didn’t have a fucking head. Have you heard a word I’m saying?”

  “I am listening most attentively. This headless beast picked you up to clear a path to me?”

  “It didn’t touch us,” the woman answered, “but we moved anyway. Everybody. We floated off the floor and out to the sides. Then the creature took away your body and when it brought you back, you were alive again.”

  “But I was always alive. I am not so weak as to die from a little tumble.”

  “You didn’t look alive,” the woman said. “But you got taken away and when you came back…”

  Her voice faded again. I gave her another smack against the wall. “Wake up! Is it not interesting that I appeared dead but then was alive? Do you not wish to find this headless beast and learn the reasons for its actions? I am clearly enmeshed in Portentous Events and if you accompany me, we shall both…wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

  I slapped her hard. She did not react. I lifted my hand to slap her again, but Uclod seized my wrist.

  “Enough, missy,” he said. “You’ve knocked her out cold.”

  I looked at the woman before me. She was beginning to slump to the floor—but not because I had battered her unconscious. I had not hit her hard enough to cause injury; in fact, I had not hit her hard enough to keep her awake.

  And through all this, none of the others within hearing had opened an eye to watch. Too lost to care. The woman had been the most awake of them all; but she had not been awake enough.

  Perhaps no one in this tower was. No one in this city. No one in the world.

  Uclod eased his grip on my wrist and took me by the hand instead. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  I let him lead me away.

  1 It is a custom of my people to suggest how others may remember our names: since our older citizens have Tired Brains, they need all the memory aids they can get. I was not actually named after a paddle—that would be very foolish, because I am a person, not a stick of wood—but the English word “oar” sounds much like my real name. (For those who wonder what Oar means in my own language, it translates to “extremely clever and beautiful person whom everyone envies even if they are too small-minded to admit it.” At least, that is what it means now.)

  2

  WHEREIN I BECOME AN IMPORTANT WITNESS

  Subterranean Snow

  Outside the tower, it was snowing. Only a few flakes trickled directly onto my shoulders, but many more were falling three blocks over.

  The snow came through a great hole in the roof. This city—and I do not know the city’s true name, so I shall call it Oarville—was built within a gigantic cavern dug deep under a mighty mountain. The place seemed empty and abandoned now, except for thousands or even millions of Ancestors who slept in their great bright towers. Apart from those towers, all other lights had been
damped down by the supervising machines that concern themselves with power consumption. The result was a permanent dusk, illuminated only by Ancestral Towers shining amidst the underground blackness.

  At one time, the whole cavern had been completely sealed off from the outside world; but then my friend Festina used Science to blow a great fissure in the stony roof so she could fly inside with an aeroplane. Although that happened four years before, the city’s repair machines had not yet patched up the damage…which disturbed me very much indeed. The purpose of machines is to work automatically: to mend breakage and to shield people from the Harsh Cruel World. Here in Oarville, the Harsh Cruel World was enjoying free rein—a blizzard gusted with arctic ferocity through the mountains outside, and its thick showers of white spilled in through the roof’s hole.

  Why had the damage not been fixed? Unless perhaps the city’s repair machines were becoming as Tired as the people: lapsing into torpor like the woman in the tower. But I did not want to think such a thing—I did not want to think about my whole world guttering out like a candle. Therefore, I tried to empty my mind of mournful thoughts, concentrating only on the here and now.

  Standing in the open air. Snowflakes falling down.

  The hole in the roof was high above us, higher than the city’s glass towers. Wind whistled across the gap, but did not reach all the way to the street; the gale sent snow swirling madly as it entered the cavern, but the furious spinning whiteness lost energy as it fell. By the time the snow brushed past my face, it had resigned itself to perfect calm. Even over by the central square, directly under the rupture in the roof, the snow floated quietly as it settled onto the pavement.

  “Whoa!” Uclod said, staring at the soft white tumble pouring onto the city. “Where did that come from?”

  “It is snow,” I told him. “Snow is a weather phenomenon.”

  “It wasn’t a weather phenomenon ten minutes ago,” he said. “But I guess things change fast in the mountains. Give me a sticky-hot beach any day.”

  “I will not give you anything,” I said. “I have heard about you aliens trying to obtain other people’s land. If you offer me beads and trinkets, I shall punch you in the nose.”

  “You got the wrong idea, missy. I’m not here to give you grief.” The little man grinned. “But maybe together, we can give grief to other people.”

  “Are these other people evil?”

  “Utter bastards.”

  “Then they deserve trouble. I feel no pity for bastards, especially utter ones.”

  I started toward the central square, where the snow drifted down the thickest. Snow is a fine thing indeed: it is pleasantly cool as it falls on your arms, and when the flakes melt against your skin, they leave attractive droplets of water. I am not such a one as wears clothes even in winter, but snowflake sprinkle is an excellent look for me.

  The short Uclod man trudged at my side, muttering about the snow; he was obviously a Warm-Weather Creature, un-prepared for a Melaquin winter. His skin, which had darkened in the tower, was now growing light again: turning from umber to orange, and onward to a bleached yellow jaundice reminiscent of dead grass. It could not have been that he was sickening from the cold, for the city was well-heated despite the hole in the roof. (All around us, the snow melted as soon as it touched the pavement.) But Uclod’s skin seemed intent on reacting in exaggerated fashion to every tiny change in the environment.

  “You were telling me about utter bastards,” I said, “and why you have come to Melaquin if you are not after our land. Are you another fucking Explorer, marooned against your will?”

  “Not me, missy,” he replied. “I’m what you might call a private entrepreneur. Working at the moment for Alexander York.”

  “Who is a friend of Festina’s.”

  “Friend isn’t exactly the right word.”

  “What is the right word?”

  “Uh. Victim.”

  Uclod’s tone suggested there might be an excellent story in how this York person became Festina’s victim. I asked him to disclose everything…and he did.

  The Sinister Admiral York

  Alexander York had been a very bad man. He was a high-ranking admiral in the Technocracy’s Outward Fleet, where he did many awful things to humans and a race called the Mandasars. York’s greatest villainy, however, was trying to kill my Faithful Sidekick, Festina. She tried to kill him right back, and with the help of some alien moss, she won. (I did not quite follow how that worked, but I believe she stuffed moss into the bad man’s stomach until he exploded. That is not how Uclod told the story, but his version was so strange and implausible that I chose to reconstruct his tale in a way that made more sense.)

  At any rate, Alexander York died horribly as all base villains should. Soon everyone in the human Technocracy learned of the admiral’s reprehensible deeds. It was a top-of-the-broadcast story for many days, and the Most Famous Actor In The Galaxy played York’s role in the news dramatizations. The producers even got a Reasonably Famous Actress to play Festina. Apparently, the actress invented a delightful accent in lieu of characterization…and even though Festina does not actually have an unusual accent, the critics unanimously agreed it was what a Fringe-Worlder named Ramos should sound like.

  In this way, York’s wickedness provided much wholesome family entertainment; but unbeknownst to the public, there was more to come.

  The Unscrupulous York’s Protection Policy

  The evil Mr. York had always suspected he might suffer violence from his enemies on the High Council of Admirals. (The council is a place where everyone schemes against everyone else, and people talk incessantly about Power with a capital “Pow.”) For insurance against his council colleagues, York kept meticulous records of every scandalous thing the high admirals did, individually and as a group: every foul trick, every breach of the law, every secret betrayal. In fact, Uclod said, “York collected enough dirt to send the whole damned council to jail till the next millennium. Enough to get them chopped into giblets and fed to ugly dogs.”

  (I asked if that was the type of thing one could watch. Uclod told me it was only a metaphor.)

  As York accumulated this damning evidence, he placed it in the keeping of a family named Unorr: Uclod’s relatives. According to the small orange man, his uncles and aunts and cousins were reputably disreputable…which meant they were dreadful criminals who would do many dishonest things for a price, but once you bought them, they stayed bought.

  “It’s quite the profitable market niche,” Uclod explained. “You’d be amazed how few crooks actually keep their word…and the same with so-called honest people, lawyers and banks and all. Lawyers will always buckle under to something, whether it’s bribes, violence, court orders, or the weight of their own bullshit. Same with banks—they turn tail and run the instant something upsets the stockholders. But we Unorrs do what we’re paid to do, even when things get hot. Especially when things get hot. Which is why York hired us to take the High Council down.”

  As soon as the Unorrs heard York was dead, they assembled the information they had received from the admiral and prepared to deliver it to the most irresponsible journalists they could find. But they also delegated junior family members (such as Uclod) to collect extra evidence of misdeeds that were not perfectly documented.

  Therefore the small orange man had come to Melaquin. Until four years ago, my planet was used as a dumping ground for individuals the Admiralty wished to make disappear—Persons Who Knew Too Much, Persons Who Broke The Unwritten Code, and Persons Who Did Not Do Anything Specifically Wrong But Were Strongly Disliked Anyway. My clever Festina had forced a stop to this practice, but part of her agreement with the High Council was that she would keep the matter a secret. Everything had been hushed up and nobody breathed a word…except Alexander York, who wrote down the story and passed it to the Unorrs.

  “The sticky point,” said Uclod, “is that York’s only evidence about Melaquin was Festina Ramos’s statement. He didn’t bother getting sub
stantiation—no footage of folks actually marooned here, no outside corroboration, no smoking gun…”

  “The gun did not smoke,” I said, “it whirred.”

  “What gun?”

  “The one with which I was shot. Repeatedly. By a wicked man.” (This was the same wicked man whom I later killed—he had a Pistol Of Inaudible Sound that wreaked hypersonic mayhem on the crystalline parts of my body. He thought his weapon would shatter me, but I am not real glass, so I survived. Shortly thereafter, I shattered him. Hah!)

  “Right,” Uclod said, “I read about that in Ramos’s report—the one she gave the High Council. But that report was the only documentation we ever got on Melaquin, and our family didn’t think it was enough. Even as we speak, my Grandma Yulai is back on New Earth, revealing the dirt York gave us. Next thing you know, the Admiralty and the media will send crews blasting toward Melaquin; but the navy flies faster, and by the time reporters arrive, there’ll be nothing to see. This place’ll be swept cleaner than the prick on a long-tongued dog. That’ll damage the credibility of the Melaquin story, which’ll damage the credibility of everything else in York’s exposé.” He gave me a grin. “So, missy, my grandma decided we needed more evidence before the navy had a chance to mop up. And that’s why I’m here.”

  Evidence Lying All Over The Place

  Uclod had come to Oarville with something called an Honest Camera, a complicated recording device invented by an advanced race called the Shaddill. The camera used clever scientific tricks to prevent people from tampering with the pictures it took; it also had built-in clocks and locator devices for proving exactly when and where its pictures had been taken. Lesser species like humans had not yet pierced the complexity of most Shaddill technology. In particular, they did not know how to circumvent the Shaddill’s protective measures, so the camera’s photographs would be accepted in Technocracy courts as Unfalsified Truth.