The scalpel.
"Fair's fair," I said to the walls. "Fair's fair."
I didn't know what I meant by that.
To give the blade some weight, I taped some mineral sample tubes to its handle. The tubes were only the size of my fingers, but they were lead-lined in case they had to hold radioactive materials. When I was finished, the knife was well-balanced and heavy, suitable for stabbing or throwing. I found myself tempted to hold it up and say, "Yarrun, I owe you this." But I didn't do it. There comes a time when we outgrow dramatic gestures.
At the Top of the Ramp
Halfway up the tower, I passed the first glass body: an ancestor with no sign of injury. There were two more another floor up. I stopped briefly to examine them. They muttered something and turned their backs on me.
"Tired of going up ramps?" I asked. "You and me both."
Their initial enthusiasm had eroded. Who wouldn't get bored, racing up storey after storey, with no change of scenery? The closer I got to the top, the more bodies I found… until on the eightieth floor, I came to the last ancestor, lying in the open doorway that led out of the stairwell. He must have disciplined himself to stay with the task, all the way hoping to find some stirring amusement at the end of the trip. When he reached the finish, only to find a room exactly like the ones downstairs, he had sunk to his knees in disappointment.
Welcome to the Explorer Corps, I thought.
I didn't charge out onto the floor. Jelca might have heard the door open; even now he might be lying in ambush, ready to blast me into unconsciousness. I waited, listening. I listened for five whole minutes by my watch, and might have waited longer if I hadn't heard something.
A rumble.
A roar.
A vibration under my feet.
The whale was taking off.
The Launch
It would have been a sight to see: the roof doors opening and the glass orca soaring out on plumes of smoke and flame. With luck, Tobit had made it back in time. I breathed a prayer for those aboard, then moved cautiously out of the stairwell. There would never be a better time to sneak up on Jelca, with the sound of blast-off loud enough to cover my approach.
Scalpel in hand, I stole forward.
The building's glass rattled as the launch continued. The ancestor lying in the stairwell lifted his head with one last show of interest… then pouted and lay down again.
Three rooms between me and Jelca.
Room 1: the roar outside increased, moving upward. I could swear the ship was sliding straight past the building, scorching the tower's exterior with belches of fire.
Room 2: with a roar, the sound of engines swept past the building, up, high up, heading for the roof, as echoes banged off every building in the city.
Room 3: the noise suddenly eased, and I knew the ship had cleared the roof doors, out into open sky where its sound could spread through the mountains. The echoes were still loud enough to cover my soft approach to the last room, if only Jelca was looking in some other direction.
But he was looking straight at the door. His pistol pointed straight at the door too.
"Don't move a hair," he said with theatrical calm. "I can pull the trigger faster than you can move out of the way."
I knew he was right.
The Laying of Blame
"So who are you?" he asked conversationally. "Ullis? Callisto?"
His question confused me. Then I realized my helmet had opaqued itself enough that Jelca couldn't see my face.
"It's me," I said. "Festina."
He inhaled sharply under his radiation mask. "Festina? Of course." He gestured with the pistol toward my hand. "I should have recognized you by the scalpel. Still your weapon of choice?"
Ouch. "You really are a shit, aren't you?"
"Thanks to you," he answered. "You backed me into a corner. If you hadn't left me with no other options…"
"Spare me the excuses."
"But you're the one to blame," he insisted. "You forced me to shoot Oar when you knew it would kill her. You made it impossible for me to be an Explorer… So now I'm something else."
"A dangerous non-sentient," I said.
"Exactly. And if I'm going to be damned forever, the least I can do is live up to the title."
I sighed. "You're quoting some bubble, aren't you? And a bad one at that. Since you can't impress me as a human being, you try it as a villain. That's pathetic."
"I'm not trying to impress—"
"You are!" I shouted… not because my words could affect him but because I'd heard a sound behind me. "If you weren't trying to impress me, you would have shot the second you saw me. But you want to gloat. You want to justify yourself. Or you want to act out some bubble you've seen where the villain acts menacing to pretend he's more than a pissy little schoolboy. Honestly, Jelca… destroying a world because nobody likes you!"
"You liked me once," he retorted. "You adored me. And you weren't the only one. Eel adored me. Oar adored me…"
"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.