"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.