But how had Seele lost her birthmark? How had Chee lost those monstrous ears? And how had they both become admirals?
I could think of only one explanation. The two of them had resurrected a spaceship. They had escaped, returned home, and reached a deal with the Council. What kind of deal? I could only think of one: Chee and Seele wouldn't blow the whistle on Melaquin, provided they were boosted up the chain of command and got the medical treatment needed to make them look like real people.
What else could it have been?
"Bastards," I whispered. "Traitor bastards."
They'd sold out their fellow Explorers in exchange for an admiral's gray uniform and plastic surgery. They'd had a chance to expose the High Council, but held their tongues. Forty years later, Explorers were still getting tossed onto Melaquin like trash.
"Damn it!" I growled. "How could you do it, Chee? How could you treat us like we were… expendable?"
The screen gave no answer. In time, the faces were replaced by static.
A Selfish Thing
I felt a touch on my shoulder. "Why are you sad, Festina?"
Oar looked at me earnestly.
"I'm sad," I told her, "because someone I thought was my friend did a selfish thing."
"That is bad," Oar said, her hand still touching me. "It hurts when people just do, do, do, without caring. It is very wrong."
"Yes, well… I don't have all the facts." I took a grudging breath that immediately let itself out again in a sigh. "It's been a long day for me, Oar; and getting choked unconscious for a few hours isn't as restful as you think. Is there a place I can sleep?"
"Jelca's bed is in the next room," Oar replied. She pointed toward a door. I felt like saying no — refusing to spend the night under the same roof as the television, as if hostility could punish Chee and Seele from afar. But it couldn't. And if Jelca had a perfectly good bed within a stone's throw, why go someplace else?
Why not spend the night in Jelca's bed?
"Damn, I'm a basketcase!" I muttered. "How many emotions can you squeeze into a minute?"
"I do not understand the question," Oar replied.
"Just talking to myself," I said. Without waiting for her to respond, I walked into Jelca's bedroom.
The bed was clear and transparent — a water-filled sack on the floor, with a hard plastic frame around the outside to prevent you from rolling off the edge. I wondered if Jelca had made this himself or if the bed was standard issue for Oar's people. Did Oar need to sleep? The engineers behind her glassy genes may have designed her to stay awake twenty-four hours a day.
"Do you sleep?" I asked her.
"Yes, Festina… whenever I want to. I could sleep now, for example."
The hint in her voice was not subtle.
And so we slept the night together in Jelca's bed: chastely, but not apart. She was lonely for company. And I had lost so much in one day, I wanted to hold something warm and solid.
Sick
I do not remember dreaming that night; but I woke in a dreamlike state, hard-pressed to believe my surroundings were real.
My arm was draped over Oar's quiet back. On the other side of her body, my hand looked as big as an inflated glove, magnified by a lens effect from her breasts. The sight disturbed me, as if my flesh was bloated with native microbes. Flustered, I untangled myself from her and rolled away; the water bed gurgled as I moved. After a moment, I settled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, trying to force back a sense of reality.
Reality.
How could I grasp reality when everything had a see-through, not-really-there quality? The walls, the bed, the woman beside me… all so elusive. I was marooned on a planet too much like Earth, I had killed my partner, I had watched Chee die, I had slept in Jelca's bed — but all of it felt so disconnected: details of some other woman's life. My mind floated, unattached to my body or my past; closed up, walled off. The sensation was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. I had no interest in judging it; I simply let it wash past me.
After a while, a thought occurred: Maybe I'm sick.
Everything would be all right if I were sick. I could let the germs take responsibility for the coming hours… days… weeks. Sick people don't have to participate in their own lives.
I found myself visualizing the microorganisms that coursed through my bloodstream. Specializing in exobiology had its benefits; I could imagine some great microorganisms.
My favorite ones looked like eggs.
Metabolisms
Oar lifted herself on one elbow and asked, "Are you awake, Festina?"
"Hard to tell. Do awake people lie around, picturing needle-shaped microbes perforating their capillaries?"
"Perhaps you should ask my ancestors," she said. "You may have to tell them what a capillaries is, for they are not so wise as me."
"I think I'm sick," I said.
Oar put her hand on my forehead. "This is what my mother did when I was sick." She waited a moment, watching me solemnly. Then she removed her hand and asked, "Do you feel better now, Festina? Or shall I touch you again?"
I smiled. "I'll just lie here for a while."
"Are you sure? Would you like some food or water? Do you want to go to the bathroom?"
Hmph. If her goal was to get me out of bed, her words had more effect than a hand on the forehead. Suddenly, I was aware of intense hunger, thirst, and the urge to urinate. For a few seconds, I tried to return to my former comfortably dazed dislocation; but no matter how sick or emotionally overloaded I might be, I hadn't lost any basic bodily needs.
"Help me up," I muttered. "Please."
She rolled off the bed and held out a hand. As soon as I took it, she pulled me strongly to my feet, the water bed galumphing beneath me. Some part of me wanted to feel dizzy when I reached the vertical; but the clawing in my bladder focused my attention too effectively to allow light-headedness. "Show me the toilet," I growled.
There was a small one in the building's back room — a clear glass bowl with a conventionally-shaped seat. Oar entered the room with me and showed no sign of leaving… not that I'd have any privacy anyway, with walls of glass. I sat; I went; Oar wrinkled her nose. "It is yellow, Festina," she said.
"I suppose yours is clear?" Then I answered my own question. "Of course it must be — otherwise, I'd see your bladder floating inside your body. You have one hell of an eerie metabolism if even your wastes are see-through."
"I have a consistent metabolism," she sniffed. "And if you are finished…"
As I got up, I wondered if she had talked this same way with Jelca, three years ago in this very room. I didn't really want to know.
Three Days
When we were both finished in the bathroom, Oar volunteered to get food from the synthesizer. I warned I might be too sick to eat, but I knew it was a lie — I wasn't sick, I was merely wrecked. Shipwrecked, soul-wrecked, brain-wrecked.
And I stayed that way for three days.
Why did it hit me then — in those minutes when Oar was getting food? Why not earlier or later? I suppose it was being alone for the first time since landing on Melaquin: truly alone with nothing to do. No one to help, no bodies to bury… no orders, no mission, no agenda. It was the first time in years nothing was dragging me into the future — I had no duties to keep my mind off what I'd done. I could almost feel things letting go inside me: not the pleasant easing of burdens, but a dismaying loss of cohesion, bits of myself slipping out of place.
Alone, alone, alone. Alone in a colorless village, all the inhabitants as good as dead except for one childlike woman who could never understand my ugliness, my pettiness, my pain…