I wondered if Oar was thinking the same thing as we walked down the street in silence: patently false hopes, because the alternative was despair.
Transport Tunnels
We found Ullis in her cabin on the whale. She had jacked in to the ship's system and was programming with fervid intensity.
"Jelca's got a second Sperm-field generator," I said. "Did you know?"
She blinked without speaking for several long seconds. Then she shook her head.
It took some time to give her the full story. When I was finished, she could offer no explanation of what he might be doing. "There's no reason to generate Sperm tails on Melaquin," she said. "Even if he wanted to set up a transport tunnel… no. What would be the point?"
"What is a transport tunnel?" Oar asked.
"A way of sending things very quickly from one place to another," I answered. "A Sperm tail is a long tube of hyperspace… which means it's really outside our normal universe. Physical laws are very different there. If you stuck your arm in one end of the tube, it would immediately emerge at the other end, even if the ends were thousands of kilometers apart. If you anchored one end here on Melaquin and another on the moon, say, you could reach through, pick up a handful of moon dust, and bring it back just like reaching through an open window."
"I wouldn't reach through that window if I were you," Ullis said. "If you're standing with normal Earth air pressure behind you, and the moon's vacuum in front, you'd go shooting straight through mighty fast."
"Which is how we usually transport things along Sperm tails," I told Oar. "When we go from one ship to another, we drop the pressure at the receiving end so things shoot through from the sender. When we go from the ship to a planet, we increase the pressure in the Transport Bay so that it blows us down…"
"This is very boring," Oar interrupted. "Also irrelevant."
Ullis said. "If Jelca wants to use a Sperm tail at all, he has to anchor down the far end. Otherwise the tail whips around at random."
"We all carry anchors," I reminded her. Landing parties needed anchors to attract the tail when they wanted to leave the planet. Anchors were small enough to fit in the palm of your hand; I had one in my belt pouch, and no doubt Ullis did too.
"So Jelca has an anchor," Ullis conceded. "What's he going to do with it?"
"He brought the Sperm generator to this city with a remote-controlled probe drone. If the probe still has fuel, he could load an anchor on board, and fly the probe anywhere on Melaquin."
"So what?" Ullis asked. "Yes, he can set up a transport tunnel anywhere on planet, but what's the point? Why would he want to go somewhere else when he'll be going home anytime now?"
"Unless he's not going home." The words were out of my mouth before I gave them a second thought.
"Don't be crazy, Festina. We all want off this rock. Jelca may be a turd but there's no reason he wouldn't—"
"Shit," I blurted out. The light had dawned at last. "Shit, shit, shit!"
"What?" Ullis asked.
"She is worshiping," Oar told Ullis in a low voice.
"Oar," I said, "stay here with Ullis. Ullis, I have to find Jelca for a chat. If I don't come back in a reasonable time, tell the others everything I've told you. And whatever you do, don't let Jelca onto the spaceship!"
"What's wrong?" Ullis asked bewildered.
I threw a tense glance at Oar, then grabbed a scrap of paper from Ullis's work area and scribbled a message.
Ullis gaped when she read it.
"What does it say?" Oar demanded.
I didn't answer; I was already running out the door.
Out of the City
No one working on the starship knew where Jelca was. Someone suggested he might have gone to help with the lark-plane.
I jogged down the boulevard toward the elevator, each footfall echoing off nearby buildings. As I passed Jelca's quarters — the place where Oar had been crying — I stopped to see if he was there. He wasn't… but his room contained more clothes of the silvery fabric used in his radiation suit: shirts, pants, even socks and gloves. I wondered if he'd tried piece-by-piece radiation clothing before he made the full suit; or perhaps he wore these as a second layer of protection under the main suit. If nothing else, having "street clothes" made of the same material would help reduce the radiation he soaked up while putting on the full suit inside the tower.
The temptation to search Jelca's quarters was strong — a thorough search, ripping the place apart if necessary — but I doubted I'd find anything. Besides, I felt an urgent need to confront him. And give him one last chance, said a voice in my head… as if there was still hope he could explain away all his actions. I hadn't figured out everything yet; the purpose of the second Sperm generator was still a mystery to me. However, I thought I had many of the answers I needed. I just hoped I was wrong.
Athelrod and Walton met me as I approached the elevator to the outside world. They carried glass holdalls containing parts they must have removed from the lark-plane. "Too late!" Walton called cheerfully as he approached. "We're all done."
"Not much there that we needed," Athelrod said. "Still, we got a few design ideas…"
"Have you seen Jelca?" I asked.
"He came by the plane outside, maybe two hours ago," Athelrod answered. "Didn't stay long."
"So he came back down here?"
"No," Walton said. "I asked him to see if he could fix the glitches in my weather equipment. He's very good at that sort of thing."
"So he's up at your weather station now?" I asked.
Walton nodded.
"How do I get there?" After getting directions, I headed out at a run.
Walton and Athelrod stared after me with bewildered expressions.
The Coming Cold
The air outside was cooler than the day before — enough to prick up goose pimples on my bare legs. At the west end of the valley, the sun had already dipped below the far peak, though the sky was still coldly bright. Trying not to shiver, I hurried up the forest trail that led to the weather station. The world smelled of damp pine and winter.
I found Jelca sitting on a high rock looking down on the river that wound along the base of the mountain. The water ran fast and shallow; even though it was dozens of meters below us, I could hear the rattle of it running over its gravel bed. The sound was cold. The world was cold. In the forest behind us, each tree felt closed in on itself, withdrawing into its own thoughts as winter approached. The stone everywhere — under Jelca, under my feet, under the snow caps of the mountains — looked like it had been dark gray once but was now bleached pale with disappointment.
Jelca turned to look my way. He said nothing. Behind him, a small anemometer rotated listlessly as its cups accepted the wind.
I waited for him to speak.
"Ullis told me it was artificial skin," he said at last.
"Yes."
"Really just a bandage."
"That's right."
He stared at my cheek a few more seconds. "So that's it then. You've made it."
"Made what?"
"Full human status."
"Don't be stupid."
He said nothing for a moment. He wasn't even looking at me. Then: "You know what the strange thing is? When I thought of you, I pictured you this way. Without the birthmark. I would have said it wasn't part of my mental image of you; the birthmark made no impression on my mind. But I was wrong. When I saw you yesterday, you looked like one of them. The bastards who banished us here. It was like they'd stolen one more thing from me."
He thought of me, I told myself. I wanted to ask him a hundred questions about what he'd thought, when it happened, everything that had passed through his mind.