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 semi-transparent 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 single 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 — more 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
The answer was a Sperm-field generator. We found it on the top floor, pushed tight against the wall of the building. I recognized it from a distance, even with my blurred vision: a black box the size and shape of a coffin.
"Holy shit," I whispered.
"Amen," Oar answered dutifully.
This had to be a second generator. The first was still installed in the orca starship — I had seen it mere hours before. Callisto had been running diagnostics on the device; it had actually spun a short thread of Sperm for her tests.
What was Jelca doing with another generator?
I had no doubts where the machine had come from — it was the second spare from Jelca's former starship. He must have stolen both generators from the engineering hold, then installed them into separate probes and sent both down to Melaquin. Ullis told me Jelca had flown one probe south by remote control. He must have done the same with the other probe, picking a time when Ullis was busy or asleep. Later, he had retrieved the first generator and turned it over to the Explorers… but he'd kept the other for himself, smuggling it here when the others weren't watching. (Jelca had been the one to instigate the day/night cycle in lighting. Clever. It ensured the Explorers would all sleep at the same time, thereby giving him a chance to fetch the generator under cover of darkness.)
But why did he need a second generator? Why did he want it badly enough to steal it, leaving his ship with no backup in case of breakdown? Of course, angry people do strange things; maybe Jelca liked the idea of the Vac crew drifting in space until someone answered their may-day. He might have thought it would give them something to think about after abandoning him on Melaquin — a few weeks of being stranded themselves.
But if that was his rationale, why hide this generator here? Why not load it onto the whale, as a replacement in case the first generator malfunctioned?