"And now you're a murderer," I said. "A dangerous non-sentient being."
"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. "But it was just an accident. Sometimes I think it'll be all right if I get on the starship with everyone else. I didn't mean to kill her. And if I don't go on the ship, I'll be stuck on Melaquin, won't I? No better than the criminals and other scum the council banished here…"
"I won't be leaving either," I said. "I'm a murderer too."
And I told him everything.
Releasing Pressure
I confessed because of the pressure to tell someone. I confessed because he was Jelca. I confessed because we were both unforgivable.
He had killed a sentient woman for the sole reason that she was inconvenient. Don't think I was deceived by Jelca's excuses. He shot Eel because he didn't want to face the fallout from exploiting her for six months. Maybe he hadn't expected the stunner to kill her. He should have considered the possibility, but maybe he didn't. Instead, he blasted her again and again until her glass vitals cracked into shards.
Jelca was a murderer and so was I. I had butchered my partner and left him to rot in a log. That was a fact, and intentions be damned.
I told Jelca the facts as clearly as I could without choking up. Neither of us could possibly leave. I didn't know how I felt about staying with him, but we owed it to the others not to jeopardize their escape.
When I finished my story — when I had told him how I sliced Yarrun's throat with my scalpel and spilled his blood over my hands… when I had reminded him that League of Peoples laws are more inescapable than entropy — after all that, Jelca laughed.
He laughed.
"What a wimp-ass murder," he sniggered. "What a wimp-ass excuse for a homicide."
I was speechless.
"You think the League will bar you from space for that?" He snorted in disgust. "You think surgeons are labeled murderers if they lose a patient? Wake up, Festina! You tried to help, and it didn't work. That's all."
"He would have lived!" I insisted. "If I'd left him alone, he would have lived. But no. I tried to be a hotshot, performing emergency surgery when I couldn't see straight. He died because of me!"
"Yes he did," Jelca agreed. "So you think you should be punished. You want to believe the League regards you as non-sentient, that you deserve exile. But that's just guilt talking, not common sense. You thought you were doing what had to be done to save Yarrun's life. That's blatantly sentient, Festina… and it would be ludicrous for you to stay on Melaquin and die because of it."
Something in his tone caught my attention. "What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"Nothing." He looked me straight in the eye. "It's just stupid to spend the rest of your life in this hellhole."
I met his gaze. It was the first time he'd looked at me and not my cheek. I knew it meant he was lying. Some people are like that — naturally evasive until they put on an act of being forthright.
"What are you up to, Jelca?" I asked.
"Nothing," he repeated… again, looking straight into my eyes.
"Whether or not I'm a murderer," I said slowly, "I don't know that I want to leave Melaquin. It's pleasant here. Peaceful."
"Stagnant," he sneered. "Comatose."
"If I go back, I'll have to be an Explorer again." I watched Jelca's face closely. "They'll assign me another partner — how could I live with that? And I'll be sent on one mission after another until I go Oh Shit. Frankly, Melaquin sounds like a better life. Safer."
"I wouldn't recommend it," he said evenly. Why? Something to do with the second generator. What did he have in mind? Something that would make it dangerous to stay on Melaquin…
"You're going to do something to the planet, aren't you?" I said. "Something that makes it impossible for the council to maroon people here."
"How could I possibly damage something as big as a planet?" he asked.
"I don't know," I replied, "but that has to be it. You said it yourself — the League lets the council send people to Melaquin because the planet is hospitable to human life. We have as good a chance of surviving here as anywhere else in the galaxy. But suppose Melaquin stops being a paradise. Suppose it becomes deadly. Then the council can't use it as a dumping ground anymore because that would be real murder. The League wouldn't allow it… and you'll be able to say you beat the council at its own game."
"That would be nice," he admitted. "That would be a good revenge." He growled out the last word.
"But it's too ridiculous to contemplate. If I worked hard I might pollute some land… but how much? A few hundred square klicks at most, even if I spent my whole life spilling radioactive waste on the ground. That's hardly hurting the planet as a whole. What do you think I could do, Festina? What's my nefarious plan?"
He was playing a game now — taunting me. Maybe he wanted me to think it was lighthearted teasing; maybe he saw my unblemished face and forgot I had the brains of an Explorer.
All right, think: he had a Sperm-field generator. It generated Sperm tails. What was a Sperm tail? A tube of hyperspace; a ship riding inside the tube could circumvent the limitations of relativity. The tube could also be used for instantaneous transport — as I'd told Oar, it was window from here to there. A window…
Then I thought of what Ullis had said. If one end of the window was open to the planet's surface and the other ten thousand klicks straight up into the sheer vacuum of space… everything would go flying out the window.
The whole damned atmosphere.
How big a tail could one generator make? A klick in diameter… maybe more. With one end at ground level and the other trailing off into space, the Sperm would be like a giant firehose, free end whipping back and forth, spraying air into the void.
The first result would be the biggest storm this planet had ever seen: a tornado centered on the base of the Sperm tail, sucking up wind. And the storm would never stop — not until it reduced the air supply to negligible pressure.
"How long," I asked, "would it take to drain Melaquin's atmosphere through an unanchored Sperm tail?"
Jelca looked startled. Then he answered, "18.6 years. But the surface will be uninhabitable long before that."
Part XVII
CONFRONTATION
Ego
"Jelca," I said, "there are people on Melaquin. You'll kill them."
"I'll wait for the ship to take off," he replied.
"I don't mean Explorers!" I snapped. "You'll kill people like Oar!"
"They'll be all right," he answered with a vague wave of his hand. "Their homes are safe underwater and in caves."
"They don't all stay in their homes! They come out for walks on the beach — you know that. And I doubt their habitats are so self-contained they can withstand the whole planet losing atmosphere. When the air pressure drops far enough, the lakes will boil away; what happens to underwater cities then? And how do you know the caves are so airtight they won't leak? You don't know. You can't."
"All right," Jelca shrugged, "there may be problems. So what? This planet is dead, Festina; it may look viable, but it's not. There's no civilization here. There are no people. No one but glass zombies too stupid to know they're extinct. The ancestors do nothing… even creatures like Oar do nothing. They don't deserve to be called sentient. But Explorers are sentient, and it's time to stop treating them like rotten meat."
"Jelca," I said, "ask the other Explorers if their lives are worth genocide. You know they'd never accept it."
"They don't have to," he replied. "I accept it for them. I take the responsibility. If someone doesn't do this, you know what will happen? When we reach Technocracy space, the Fleet will load us all onto a ship and send us straight back to Melaquin. This is where they send their embarrassments, and we'll be the biggest embarrassment of all! For everyone's sake, I have to make sure Melaquin is no longer an option."