Expendable

Part IX ADAPTATION

Seamstress

I don't know how long I stood there; but I came to myself with a sudden shake, realizing I had been slipping into a daze that could not be healthy. Hypothermia is sly — it creeps in so gradually, you may never realize you're dying. "And wouldn't the other Explorers laugh?" I said. "Festina Ramos getting Lost so tamely."

Then I added, "Wouldn't my face be red?"

Getting giddy — definitely time for a campfire.

Tinder was easy to come by: brush from the bluffs, dead and dry as straw with winter coming on. Much of the driftwood was dry, too; I chose sticks from high up the beach, on the theory they'd arrived with the lake's spring peak and had baked in the sun ever since. The hardest thing to find was my jar of matches. They'd been in a pouch of my tightsuit… and since the suit lay in hankie-sized pieces all over the sand, it took time to track down the right hunk.

Five minutes later, I had a fire: warmth, light, salvation. I cuddled up to it till I'd steamed off my immediate chill, then began to make short forays out to retrieve more scraps of my tightsuit.

I had accumulated a pile of fabric beside the fire when I found the pouch I was looking for, impaled on the thorns of a bush whose species I didn't recognize. A brief struggle pulled the pouch loose, and I opened it immediately. I counted six plastic vials inside, all still intact. "Thank you," I said to the sky.

The Admiralty loved toys — people in positions of undeserved power always do. And since the Admiralty loved toys, the High Council allocated generous funds to the development of Explorer equipment. Not that the council gave a damn about Explorers themselves; but the demands of Exploration raised fertile engineering challenges that the research department found irresistible. As a result, ECMs were truly equipped to handle almost anything… like trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again after an emergency evac blew him to bits.

Three vials in the pouch contained solvents. The other three contained fixative.

With work, I could glue the tightsuit patches into a usable garment — not as strong as the original, but better than spending the rest of my life in my underwear. Creative tailoring might even give this new suit advantages over the old; I could, for example, remodel the pants to make walking easier. Blimp-shaped thighs might be best for maintaining positive pressure against incoming germs, but now that I'd been exposed to Melaquin's air…

I didn't want to think about that. Concentrate on being a seamstress.

First, the top — that was easy. The breastplate and back had come off as single pieces, simple to fit back together. With the torso reassembled, attaching the arms was no worse than gluing together strips of banana peel. The result was as bulky as a stiff cable-knit sweater, and had the same degree of blessed warmth. There were too many seams now to match the original suit's insulation to forty degrees below zero; but that didn't stop me from diving into the garment as soon as it was done, or shuddering with bliss as my gooseflesh started to recede.

The bottom part was more difficult. The basic delta of the crotch hadn't been damaged, but the individual pouches of the belt had blown away separately. Putting them back together used up most of my chemicals, because I wanted an arrangement that would fit my real waist, not the bulbous girth of the original suit. After much trial and error, I jury-rigged a two-tiered pattern that worked well enough; but that left me low on solvent and fixative, too low for constructing pantlegs. The path of least resistance was to glue my remaining scraps to the foundation of the crotch, building a skirt from a spiral patchwork of cloth until I exhausted my supply of adhesive. The result came just to my knee — higher than I liked with winter coming on, but I had flared the skirt wide to give my legs freedom of movement. Cold knees were one thing; not being able to deliver a good side kick was something else.

I had fabric left over when I ran out of glue, plus a lot of spare gadgetry — air tanks, pressure pump, life-sign monitors, etc. They could stay on the sand where they were; I doubted I'd need them again. Carting them around the countryside would just waste energy… unless, of course, Jelca could strip them down and use the parts for something.

Jelca. Jelca was here on Melaquin.

I might have thought about that for a long time if Oar's boat hadn't appeared again.

The Scalpel

Chee's body was no longer sprawled on the boat… and when the glass lid opened, Oar was gone too. The boat stood empty on the sand like a plundered sarcophagus. I could almost feel it waiting: waiting for me to get in so it could carry me away. It must have come back to take me to Oar's home — an underwater habitat like the ones on Attulpac, or perhaps something subterranean… a hidden place, undetectable from orbit.

Did I want to board a glass coffin and ride off into dark water?

Yarrun was dead. The admiral was dead. For a moment, I couldn't think of a reason to move forward or back. Then reflex took over and I found myself packing things into the boat.

Always do the next necessary thing.

The Bumbler had to go, of course… and Chee's backpack, which I'd removed before sending him off forever. I'd also have to retrieve my own pack, still lying amidst the daisies on top of the bluffs. Oar would be impatient for me to join her, but I refused to abandon things I might need later.

Climbing the bluffs was easier than I expected — Chee's body had flattened a trail on its way down. The gloves of my tightsuit were still intact, so I could catch hold of weeds and pull myself up, without worrying about thorns and burrs. Apart from a run-in with stinging nettles on my bare right calf, I reached the meadow unscathed.

Everything was where I had dropped it: my pack, my stunner, Yarrun's helmet… and the scalpel, black now with Yarrun's dried blood. I didn't want to touch it. I wanted to leave it there forever, rusting in the rain.

But it was probably made of rustproof metal.

And it would be cruel to leave something so sharp where animals could injure themselves.

And a true Explorer doesn't abandon a useful tool just because she's squeamish.

Carefully, I wiped the blade on the grass.

Carefully, I put the scalpel away in the first aid kit.

Then I threw the kit into my backpack and fairly ran back down the bluffs.

Thunks

With so much equipment stuffed into the boat, I had to wriggle to get in myself. The boat waited motionless for me to settle; since Oar had given it voice commands before, perhaps I had to say something to get it started.

"Okay," I announced. "I'm ready to go."

The boat didn't react immediately; but after I'd lain still and silent for five seconds, the lid slowly lowered. It came to within a centimeter of my face — any jostling, and I'd bump my nose on the glass. I hoped we weren't going far… not just because the space was cramped, but because it wouldn't take long to exhaust the scant air inside the coffin.

Smoothly the boat moved out. Black water lapped on both sides, inching up the walls until it eased over the top: the craft was submerging. I had one last glimpse of the moon and stars — my sky, the night sky — and then they were swallowed by blackness. A hand's breadth of water above me was enough to cut off all light coming from the outside world.

Whatever propelled the boat worked silently. The only sounds were my careful breathing and my heartbeat. A drop of water fell against my cheek and I felt sudden panic — was the boat leaking? But it was only the moisture of my breath, condensing on the glass so close above me and dripping back down.

Something thumped against the boat near my feet. I jumped enough to clonk my nose on the glass, watering my eyes… but nothing else happened.

A fish — it must have been a fish, rudely surprised by colliding with a nearly invisible submarine.

And where there is one fish, there are many more.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Sometimes the hits were direct, sometimes soft glancing blows. The impacts had no pattern — whole minutes could go by in total silence, then two jolts one after another, like the proverbial water torture, never knowing when the next drop will come.

At least it kept my mind off the stuffiness of an unventilated coffin sailing with tons of water overhead.

I didn't think about that at all.

Austere

The ride ended in a sudden bloom of light, beginning at my feet and sliding swiftly up the length of my body as the boat glided into an illuminated space. I had not looked at my watch before starting out, so I can't say how long the voyage lasted… perhaps ten minutes, though it felt like an hour. It was lengthy enough that my eyes had adjusted to the total underwater blackness; even squinting, I could see nothing against the light now beating on my eyes.

The boat's lid opened and I heard Oar's voice. "Why did you take so long? Did you not understand to enter the boat? Are all Explorers stupid?"

Nice to see you again too, I thought. But the next moment I realized she must have stood there waiting, wondering if I had abandoned her the way Jelca had. In a conciliatory voice, I said, "Sorry — I needed time to pack my gear. Where are we now?"

"This is my home, Festina. It is the most beautiful home in the universe."

My eyes were beginning to adjust to the light… not the fierce light it seemed when I emerged from total blackness, but a grayish glow like an overcast day. Oar stood beside me, hands on hips, keen for me to stop squinting and admire her home.

Beyond her lay a village of glass. Why should I have been surprised?

We stood near the edge of a space two hundred meters in circumference, covered with a hemispherical dome. The dome was either jet-black itself or transparent to the light-less water of the lake. Underneath the dome stood two dozen buildings, all glass: high Moorish towers where the dome offered enough headroom, and squat rectangular blockhouses out on the periphery. Boulevards separated each structure from its neighbors; and looking to the middle of town, I saw a plaza where two glass fountains sprayed water high into the air.

Clear water. Clear glass. I found myself searching for any hint of color, a tint to the glass or a prism-effect that broke light into spectra; but the glass was as pristine as crystal, and the sky too muted for rainbows. I couldn't even tell where the lighting came from — it was simply there, so pervasive it didn't allow my eye the relief of shadows.

"Is my home not beautiful?" Oar asked.

"Austere," I replied.

"What does that word mean?"

"Pure," I said. "Clean."

"Yes." She sounded pleased. "Very very clean."

Clean of everything — the streets were empty. Oar and I were the only people in sight.

A Tour

"Do you live here alone?" I asked.

"Do not be foolish," Oar answered. "I have many many ancestors."

"And they're here?"

"Yes."

I looked around. Certain Fringe Worlders believed their ancestors remained participants in their lives — ghosts who walked beside them unseen. The living would leave an empty seat at dinner so great-great-grandma could sit among them; and on Sitz, they took water spritzers with them into the bath, to squirt phantom uncles who might sneak in for a peek. Did Oar believe the same thing? I could think of no tactful way to ask. Oar was easy enough to offend without opening the topic of religion.

"Why don't you give me a tour?" I suggested. "Show me the things I should see."

"You should see everything, Festina. And I will show you everything."

I nodded and put on a smile. Mentally, I reviewed my repertoire of facile compliments for all occasions — enthusing about architecture and other curios did not come naturally to me. Entertainment bubbles may portray Explorers as zealous to investigate alien cultures, but that wasn't our job; we only established a secure foothold, after which the Fleet unloaded an army of xeno-ethnologists to do the true fieldwork. Right now, Oar's tour was a chore, one more job between me and thinking about…

I had killed Yarrun.

I had watched Chee die.

"Lead on," I told Oar. "I'm sure I'll enjoy this."

Food

"This makes food," Oar said.

We stood in a one-storey blockhouse, not far from the access port where I had entered the city. The blockhouse consisted of a single room, with no furniture, no decorations… just a single glass pillar in the center of the floor, as thick as the trunk of a redwood. The surface was smooth, but dusty — all except a spotlessly clean niche half a meter deep, cut into the pillar at waist height.

"How does it work?" I asked.

"You say what you want, and the machine makes that for you." She didn't call me stupid this time, but her tone implied it.

"I doubt if your food synthesizer understands my language," I said. "Unless the machine learned from Jelca and Ullis the same way you did."

"The woman taught it some of your dishes," Oar answered. "She said it was not hard to…" Oar paused, straining to remember an unfamiliar word. After a moment, it came to her: "Not hard to pro-gram."

Good old blinky Ullis, I thought. Like many Explorers, she had been a superb programmer — the result of feeling more comfortable with machines than humans. I sympathized; I too had been a teenage hermit. As a farm girl, however, I had passed the solitary hours working with our livestock, not tinkering with circuit boards. At the Academy, Ullis tutored me in computing, and I helped her with exobiology.

"So," I asked Oar, "what did Ullis program this machine to make?" I hadn't eaten since leaving the Jacaranda that morning; my pack contained emergency rations, but their taste was so cloying no one would eat the stuff except in an emergency.

"I did not learn the names for Explorer dishes," Oar answered. "I did not want to learn. When the fucking Explorers ate, I went away so I would not be sick. Explorer food is very very ugly."

"What do you mean by ugly?" I wondered if Jelca and Ullis followed strange Fringe World diets — I couldn't remember what either of them ate at the Academy.

"They ate sauces the color of animal blood. Grains as white as maggots. Vegetation that looked as if it was pulled straight from the ground!"

"Oh." Marinara sauce, white rice, and salad… apparently not Oar's kind of food. "Maybe I'll come back later," I said. "It'll take time to experiment with what Ullis programmed." I was not ravenous yet; and if worst came to worst, I could nibble on rations when Oar wasn't looking.

"Then let us go," Oar replied, starting toward the door, "and I will introduce you to my ancestors."

Oar's Ancestors

She led me into one of the central towers. It was twenty storeys tall. Each storey was filled with bodies.

The bodies were all clear glass, lying placidly in rows on the floor. Some were male; some were female. The women looked like Oar — perfect copies as far as I could tell, though my eyes may have missed tiny distinguishing characteristics. The transparent glass made it hard to see the faces at all, let alone make out subtle differences from one woman to another. The same went for the men: they were clean-shaven, with hair and facial structures similar to the women. If not for their breastless chests and demure genitalia, I could scarcely have told male from female.

Not that it mattered in a functional way: male or female, all of these people were dormant. Breathing and warm to the touch, but comatose.

Oar stood in the midst of those unmoving bodies, waiting for me to say something. I botched it. "Are they… what happened… is this some… so, Oar, these are your ancestors."

"Yes," she said. "Not all are direct ancestors; but they have lived in my home from the beginning."

"And, uhh… what do they do here?"

"They lie on the floor, Festina. They do not want to do anything else."

"But they could get up if they wanted to?"

"When the other Explorers came," she said, "my mother and sister got up. They were curious to meet strangers, even though the Explorers were so ugly. After a day, my mother grew bored and came back here — that is her, lying over there." She gestured in the direction of a glass wall. At least five women lay in that neighborhood, all of them twins to Oar. If one was truly Oar's mother, she showed no sign of being older than Oar herself… nor did any of the women show evidence of motherhood. Glass stomachs must not get stretch marks; glass breasts must be immune to the demands of nursing. And gravity.

"What about your sister?" I asked. "Did she eventually get bored too?"

"I am sure she is very bored now," Oar answered haughtily. "She is bored and sad and stupid."

"Oh?"

"She went away with the fucking Explorers. They took her and not me."

Oar loosed a furious kick at the body closest to her — a man who skidded across the floor with the force of the impact. He opened his eyes to glare at Oar, said a few unknown words in a grumbling voice, then shifted back to his former location.

Oar immediately kicked him again. "Do not call me names, old man!" she snapped.

He glared at her once more, but said nothing. He didn't try to move this time, but settled where he was, folding his hands across his chest and closing his eyes. I wondered if he would shift back to his original place after Oar left.

"They all have tired brains," Oar told me. "They are old and tired — and rude," she added, raising her voice pointedly. "They have nothing else they want to do, so they lie here."

"Don't they eat or drink?"

Oar shook her head. "They absorb water from the air… and absorb the light too. My sister said the light in this building is nutritious — good enough anyway for people who do nothing. I do not understand how light can be nutritious, but my sister claimed it was true."

Having lived with solar energy all my life, I had no trouble appreciating how light could "feed" an organism; but clear glass was not a good photo-collector. It's better to be opaque to the light you're trying to absorb… and then it occurred to me, these bodies were opaque to most nonvisible wavelengths. A quick Bumbler check confirmed it — the deceptively muted light inside this building was laced with enough UV to bake potatoes. I shuddered to think what other radiation might be flooding the air… say, microwaves and X-rays.

"Let's go outside," I told Oar briskly. "You've probably never heard the word 'melanoma'… but I have."

The Surrender

The light outside was not so lethal — the Bumbler certified it fell within human safety limits. Obviously, the tower containing Oar's ancestors was shielded to keep all that juicy radiation inside… which only made sense. If you devoted so much wattage to feed solar-powered people, you didn't want energy spilling uselessly through the walls. Whatever the tower was made of, it certainly wasn't ordinary glass; it held in everything but visible light, making a high-band hothouse for photosynthesizing deadbeats.

"They really just lie in there all day?" I asked.

"Most have not moved in centuries. That is what my mother said her own mother claimed. As long as I have lived, only my mother and sister have moved."

"But now your mother is dormant and your sister left with Jelca?"

"Yes. I have been alone the last three years."

I felt the urge to touch her — pat her shoulder, give her a hug, pass on comfort somehow. But I didn't; I didn't know the right thing to do.

"It's hard being alone," I finally said. "It's a wonder you haven't laid down with the others."

"I do sometimes," she told me. "Sometimes I go into the tower to be with people. Once in a while… once in a while, I see if I can lie with a man and get him to give me his juices; but it never works and I just get sad."

She spoke in a halting voice. I didn't know how to answer. Finally I said, "You can't die, can you? Your species can't die."

"We are not such things as die," she whispered. "We do not get damaged. We do not grow old and sick like animals. If you had left me in the lake, Festina, I would have lived and lived… under the water, too weak to move, but still alive.

"Our bodies live forever," she continued, "but our brains slow down after a time. When people's brains grow tired and there is nothing else they want to do, they just lie down. It is called the Surrender. Some people surrender outside — in the grass, on the sand, or in the water — but most come home to this tower. It is pretty and comfortable here; and the light gives enough strength that you can always move if you want to. My mother said that was good: she felt she could get up any time she had a reason. She just couldn't think of a reason."

I couldn't meet Oar's gaze. "I'm proud of you," I said, finding it hard to force the words out.

"Why are you proud of me, Festina?"

"Because you aren't in there with everyone else." I grabbed her arm to pull her away from the building… or rather to touch her in the only way I could justify. "Come on — you were showing me the sights. Let's keep going."

And we did.

By the Fountain

We stood in the central square of the village, directly in front of the glass fountains that chattered in the middle of the plaza. Oar walked up to one, spreading her arms and watching her skin mist up in the humid air. The look she gave me, back over her shoulder, suggested she considered such behavior daring.

"My mother called this The Fountain of Tomorrow" Oar said. "The other is The Fountain of Yesterday." She paused. "They look very much the same, do they not?"

"Too much." I wondered if that was the fountain-builder's point. "Oar," I asked, "what do you do all day?"

"Why do you ask, Festina?"

"You don't have to work to survive. You can get food just by asking the synthesizer, you don't wear clothes, and this village clearly runs itself automatically. You must have done things with your sister while she was here; but how do you fill your days now?"

Oar didn't answer immediately; she stayed motionless in the fountain's mist, water beading on her skin. It made her easier to see — like the glass of a bathroom mirror, fogged after a long hot shower. Finally, she turned and sat on the edge of the fountain. Her movement shook loose the larger droplets, sending them trickling down her body.

"I clear fields, Festina. That is what I do."

"Clear fields? Why? Do you grow crops?"

"I just clear fields," she answered. "Jelca said it should be done. He said that civilized races always cleared fields on their worlds. When I asked why, he refused to tell me. He said he should not have mentioned it in the first place — that Explorers were not supposed to influence the people they met. He told me to forget it. But I did not forget. And if he ever comes back, he will see that I am a civilized person, not stupid at all."

"So you… clear fields."

"Yes." Her voice was proud. "In addition to the machine that makes food, this city has machines for making many other things… if you know how to ask. I asked a toolmaking machine for such a blade as could cut down trees. The machine gave me a good blade indeed. So now I cut down trees every night, when no one is watching. I cut the wood into pieces that I can carry away, then I cover the stumps with grass and leaves."

"You've been doing that ever since Jelca left?"

"Yes. It is hard work, but when he comes back, he will be sorry he did not understand how civilized I am."

"I'm sure he will."

Our probes had reported this area was too clear of trees. All the work of one woman? Could one person cut enough forest that it was noticeable from space? Amazing. And all on the strength of a slip of Jelca's tongue.

Oar sat on the edge of the fountain, dribbles of water pouring down her arms, her shoulders, her face.

"My sister has never cut a tree in her life," she said.

"Which proves she isn't civilized?"

"That is correct." Oar smiled. "Come, Festina. I will show you Jelca's house."

Prototypes

"This is where Laminir Jelca chose to live," Oar said. But she didn't have to tell me that.

While touring the village, I had peeked into several glass buildings, all bare of any adornment except dust. The blockhouse we had just entered was different: strewn with discarded circuit boards, coils of wire, and stripped insulation. A small fraction of the material must have come from the Technocracy — I recognized a familiar D-thread chip, straight out of a tightsuit pressure monitor — but most of it was native to Melaquin.

It was easy to tell the difference: all the Melaquin components were clear and transparent. Nudging a see-through cable with my toe, I wanted to growl, "Haven't you people heard of copper?"

Jelca probably felt the same way — after all, he had to work with the stuff. Many of the glasslike parts were labeled in thick black letters from the marker pen all Explorers carry: RESISTOR, 10 OHMS… FUSE, AT LEAST 15 AMPS… BAD TUNNEL-TUBE, DO NOT USE. How he had identified these things, I couldn't imagine; but as I said before, Jelca came from a line of dabblers in electronics. With the aid of his Bumbler, he could analyze almost anything, given enough patience… and enough duplicate parts for the times he guessed wrong.

"Did he explain what he was making?" I asked Oar.

"Foolish things," she answered. "He claimed he could make a machine to talk to people far away… and a version of our food maker machine, only small enough to carry."

Practical thinking on Jelca's part: a radio and a nutrient synthesizer. That gave him a way to contact other marooned Explorers, and the means to feed himself while he traveled to wherever the others were. After a moment, I corrected myself — the means to feed himself and Ullis, plus Oar's sister if she was traveling with them. It would take a big Synthesizer to produce enough food for three people… but if Oar's sister was as strong as Oar, she might have no trouble carrying heavy equipment for hours on end.

Carefully I prowled the room, examining everything Jelca had made during his time here. I recognized several nutrient synthesizers, the kind that take leaves and other organic material as input, then produce compact food cubes: not fine cuisine, but enough to keep you alive. There seemed to be a progression of prototypes, from one that must have weighed a hundred kilos down to something much less bulky. Jelca had obviously worked to produce the smallest equipment possible so he and Ullis could travel light. Naturally, they'd taken the most compact version with them; but sizing up the best one they'd left behind, I thought I could stand hauling it five or six hours a day, if I built a good carrying frame.

Thank you, I whispered to the air. Jelca had left me the means to follow him.

The Picture Box

"This box makes pictures," Oar said behind my back.

She pointed to a crystal screen embedded in the wall… or more accurately, embedded in what was left of the wall. Jelca had ripped away much of the material around the screen so he could get in behind it — into a mass of fiberoptic cable and circuits feeding the screen. By the looks of it, this was a native Melaquinian television; and Jelca had either tried to repair it or plunder it for parts.

"The screen showed pictures?" I asked.

"Yes. Pictures of ugly Explorers."

"Jelca and Ullis?"

"No, different Explorers."

"Different…" I forced myself not to lunge for the TV. If other Explorers could broadcast television signals, they must have developed a substantial technological base — either that or they had drawn upon existing Melaquin resources. Now that I thought about it, normal TV/radio waves could never reach here under the lake. The dome must have a concealed antenna or cable feed reaching up to the outside world. Perhaps the planet supported hundreds of hidden villages like this one, connected by a shielded cable network: a network that would allow communication from one village to another, but whose transmissions would not be detectable from space.

And my fellow Explorers had tapped into that system.

"Oar," I said, "I'd like to turn on the machine."

"You may not see anything," she answered. "The pictures only come for a short while, then go away. And they are always the same stupid Explorers saying the same stupid things."

It must be a looped signal saying, "Hello new arrivals, here's where everyone else is." With clumsy fingers, I clicked the TV's switch. The screen lit with a display of static. For some reason, I had convinced myself it would show a picture immediately; but ten minutes passed (Oar tapping her toe impatiently) before a picture snapped into view.

"Greetings," said a man on the screen. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples and I beg…"

I was too shocked to pay attention to the words. The man on the screen was Chee.