"Bloody hell," I murmured. "Where did those come from?"
"Fashioned at behest of the first generations," the AI-man answered cheerfully.
"That's hard to believe," I snapped. "The first generations must have been primitive hunter-gatherers. They didn't wake up one morning, saying 'We'd like some war-planes, please.' "
"You have the right of that," the man conceded. "But the League took in hand the education of those who came to this place. One generation followed hard on another; and within a handful of centuries, they advanced to devices like these."
He waved proudly at the killer birds.
"You actually built them weapons on demand? Of course, you did," I went on without letting him answer. "The synthesizers made that axe for Oar. As long as no one took weapons off-planet, the League didn't care."
"They cared, O queen," the man replied. "All violence cuts them to the very quick. Yet they grant each species the right to choose its course, within the containment of its proper sphere."
"So you helped this town build… wait a second. I thought you only followed instructions from people with skin. After the first generation, wasn't everyone made of glass?"
"By no means," he answered. "Though many firstcomers chose to be so altered that their children gleamed with health, others held to the frailty of flesh. That path was hard; what mother can watch her child ravaged by fever without vowing her nextborn shall not suffer? What father can bear the bitter spectacle of his children continually bested by those swifter of mind and foot? Pricked by such thorns, more chose the way of glass with each passing year; yet not all. Not all. And those who walked with hollow-eyed Death bedogging their steps like a shadow, those stubborn folk of deliberately mortal flesh… why, they saw devils in every dust mote and knives in every open hand. What wonder that they demanded fearsome engines of war? Death was the currency of their lives: the only coin they had to spend, the only coin they could demand of their enemies. And so it continued until the last such purse was emptied."
I stared at him. "You mean the people of flesh warred themselves into extinction?"
"That overstates the matter," he replied. "They fought but little, for their numbers were small. Yet they forged their arsenals with the diligence of fear; and fear, more than all, became their undoing. Frighted people yearn to protect their families. What better protection could they find than immortality? Wherefore, as voices of war grew clamorous, more among their number claimed the gift of alteration… until there came a day when every child was glass, and no new flesh was born. The drums of anger fell into silence; and if the crystal children wished to continue their parents' hates, I stopped mine ears to their cries. I and my kind do not serve them — they need no such service. But you, milady… you shall I serve and right gladly."
My mouth was open, ready to snap back a retort — as if I wanted an AI to put killer jets at my disposal! — but I stopped myself from hastiness. With a flier, Oar and I could reach the southern mountains in short order: no long days carrying packs, no frigid river fords, no confrontations with wolves.
And (my stomach fluttered) I might be face to face with Jelca before nightfall.
"Which plane can I take?" I asked.
The AI-man beamed. "The lark, milady; the herald of the morn."
The First Farewell
Short minutes later, I stole past the dirt-worn banners of Tobit's home, hoping I could sneak in and back without being noticed. Through the glass wall ahead, I could see our equipment: my pack and the food synthesizer. I could also see the four Morlocks and Tobit, sprawled in comatose luxuriousness, passed out from drinking. It was just the way I wanted to leave them.
Not that I expected them to stop us from getting away — they'd let the other Explorers go — but I didn't want them to know how we went. The AI had kept the hangar secret because its planes were only intended for flesh-and-blood human use. But Tobit was as much flesh-and-blood as I was; if he detached his prosthetic arm, he could command the AI like a despot. Melaquin had enough troubles without a souse in charge of a fighter squadron.
My pack was close to the door of the room; also close to a Morlock woman with a slosh of booze in her stomach. Tendrils of brown extended threadlike through her abdomen, the alcohol slowly becoming part of her, diffusing into the background transparency. The zoologist in me felt fascinated, curious to stay and watch the complete process of digestion — but the prospect made me queasy. How could these people watch such a thing happen to themselves?
But they didn't watch it. They were out cold.
Or so I thought.
"Leaving so soon?" asked Tobit as I lifted my backpack.
He lay spreadeagled on the floor. He had not moved a muscle except to open his eyes.
"I have the chance to go," I told him. "I thought I might as well."
"Another shark came in?" he asked. "Or is it two sharks: one for you and one for your… friend."
"Something like that," I said.
"You can keep the sharks from leaving if you want to spend more time resting from the road. There's a toggle-switch on the airlock door; flip it and the machines won't go till you're ready."
"Still…" I said.
"You want to leave," he finished my sentence. "Of course you do. There's nothing that interests you here."
He lowered his gaze to the floor. A good actor could have made the moment poignant, but Tobit was too drunk for that. The line between tragic and maudlin is too thin.
"You can leave too," I told him. "Hop a shark. Go south. The other Explorers will be happy to see you."
"You think that, do you?"
"Phylar," I said, with a trace of anger, "don't blame the world for your own sulkiness. If you're feeling lonely or hard done by, it's because you deliberately choose to isolate yourself. There's nothing genuinely wrong with you. You're perfectly all right. Stop bitching about your lot in life if you never make an effort to fix things."
He stared at me for a moment. Then he broke into deep gut-busting laughter, not mean or forced, but sincerely spontaneous. "What?" I demanded; but that just sent him into fresh gusts, long and loud — as if this was the first time in his life he'd been totally delighted.
I couldn't understand it. With burning cheeks, I heaved up my pack and stormed out the door.
Essential Maintenance
By the time I returned to the hangar, the place buzzed with service drones of all types: everything from an automated fuel truck filling up long-dry tanks to a bevy of chip-checkers no bigger than my thumbnail, crawling like beetles over the lark's hull in search of structural flaws. A gray haze around the craft showed there were nanites at work too, microscopically reconstituting any systems that had rotted or corroded since the last time such repairs had been made.
I wondered how often this flurry of maintenance had taken place over the past four thousand years. Once a decade? Once a month? High-tech equipment has a half-life comparable to fast-decaying radioactive elements — even in a sealed, climate-controlled storage chamber, components willfully break down as soon as you turn your back. Still, the AI in charge must have done its best to keep the craft functional over the centuries: replacing a circuit here and a rivet there, until each plane had been rebuilt completely several dozen times. The service checks taking place before my eyes were a matter of form, not necessity… I hoped.
(In the back of my mind, I couldn't forget how the AI's holographic projection had flickered that once. There were glitches in the system. I crossed my fingers that the nanites clouding around my plane were repairing faults, not causing them.)