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."
"You aren't doing this for everyone's sake," I told him. "It's only for your sake. The council was mean to you, and you want to hit them back. This is so unworthy of an Explorer, Jelca. Flamboyant gestures are for people who think life means beating the other guy. That's not life, that's ego. It's what you do when you're too scared or stupid to build a life on your own terms. Demanding revenge, Jelca… I'm ashamed of you. It's just so adolescent!"
"Adolescent?" he roared. "Adolescent!"
"Juvenile. Revenge always is." And that's when I hit him.
Fight or Flight
It was a simple punch, straight to the jaw — a sucker punch, and I had no qualms about using it. Now that I knew Jelca's plan, I was dangerous to him; he may already have decided I would have an "accident" and topple off the mountain. One shot of his stunner would take me out, so I couldn't give him a chance to draw.
The punch should have fazed him long enough to let me close for a few more strikes; but maybe I didn't put all my strength into it. Maybe some subconscious softness balked at knocking out Jelca's teeth… I don't know. I just know the impact didn't completely rattle him. Before I could follow up, his emergency programming kicked in: he dove, tucked, and rolled, exactly the way I did when taken by surprise.
Pity he couldn't have been trained with one of the other responses — freezing or backing off passively.
Before he stopped rolling, I was diving too: diving for the cover of the trees. I had no chance of crossing the ground between me and Jelca before he could draw his gun. My only chance was to get out of range, preferably with sturdy pine trunks at my back. Standard-issue stunners are only effective at close quarters, but with an amplified weapon like Jelca's, I wanted all the insurance I could get.
I reached the woods a split-second before he fired. My whole head buzzed for a second as if it were clamped in a vibrating vice; but momentum carried me forward, and I stayed on my feet for a few stumbling steps till the trees walled off the sound. Thank heaven they were pines — their needles rustled fiercely under the hypersonic barrage, absorbing the sound and muffling it. With each step my vision cleared, until I allowed myself to accelerate into a full run along the uneven trail.
"Festina!" Jelca yelled. "Come back. Let's talk."
What kind of idiot did he think I was? I didn't waste my breath answering. The trail had bends in it, but not many; there were long stretches where he would have a clear shot at me if I didn't stay far enough ahead. Silently, I cursed my lack of foresight for not bringing my own stunner… but I had never expected to need it. At worst, I thought Jelca might deny killing Eel; the idea that he might have a greater lunacy planned never crossed my mind.