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never become so dirty."
"Do you clean your home?" I asked.
"No." Her voice was offended. "Machines attend to such matters."
"This city has the same kind of machines. Otherwise the place would be buried
in grime. The Explorers must have kicked up more mess than the systems could
handle; either that or my friends have commandeered the cleaning machines for
other things."Most likely for spare parts, I thought. Someone like Jelca
wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice a janitor-bot in his drive to restore a
spaceship.
"So the Explorers make this place dirty?" Oar asked. "Hah! Fucking
Explorers."
"Maybe you shouldn't use that phrase," I told her. "You want to get along
with the others, don't you?"
"I do not know them yet," she replied. "If they are very stupid, I may want
to kick them."
"Please, Oar; you're my friend, and they're my friends. It will make me sad
if you pick fights."
"I will not pick fights unless they deserve it." Her tone of voice suggested
theywould deserve it.
"Oar, if you get jealous that I have other friends "
"Festina!" shouted a voice behind me.
Jelca.
Changed
He had no hair. Wasn't that strange? Just the bald skull I remembered,
covered with the scabby patches that would grow inflamed and bleed if he tried
to wear a wig.
For some reason, I had thought he'd have hair. I don't know why I hadn't
said, "Melaquin tech helped me so it must have helped him too." I hadn't
thought about it logically at all; I had just assumed Jelca would have hair...
that he would be dashing and handsome and muscular.
I had assumed he would be perfect.
He was not perfect; he looked gaunt and twitchy. Jelca had always been thin,
but now he looked positively ravaged, as if he hadn't eaten or slept for days.
It didn't help that he was wearing a badly-fitted long-sleeved shirt... a
shimmery thing of silver fabric that probably came from the local
synthesizers: something like spun glass, but a fine enough mesh that it was
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opaque. I doubted Jelca wore it for the sparkle more likely it was the only
cloth the synthesizers would produce but the shirt was so glitzily out of
place, it looked like voluminous silver lame hung around the bones of an
anorexic.
"Festina?" Jelca said.
"Yes."
"You're here too?"
"Yes."
"You've changed."
"Have I?"
"Yes."
He spoke flatly no grin of welcome for an old friend, or even a courteous
smile for a fellow Explorer. Walton had been happier to see me, and Walton was
a complete stranger.
Jelca's eyes stared fixedly at my cheek. God knows, I was used to stares, but
this one unsettled me. I couldn't read his face. Was he simply surprised? Or
was he disappointed with me, maybe even repelled?
I noticed that his hand had dropped onto the stun-pistol holstered at his
hip not a purposeful gesture, I thought, just a reflex, just something he was
in the habit of doing. Everything about him seemed as tight as wire.
"You look good," he said at last. It did not sound like a compliment.
"You look good too," I responded immediately.
"You both look very ugly," Oar announced in a loud voice. "And you are so
stupid I want to scream."
"So scream," Jelca said. "Who's stopping you?"
"I am too civilized to scream," she answered. "I am very cultured, I have
cleared many fields, and I do not "
"You're Oar," Jelca interrupted, obviously making the connection for the
first time.
Oar shrieked. "You recognized ugly Festina but did not recognize me?"
"You all look alike," Jelca shrugged. There was no apology in his voice. "Why
are you here?"
"My friend Festina needed my help to come to this place! That is the only
reason. She wanted me with her so I came, because she ismy friend."
"Friend," Jelca repeated with pointed intonation. "Oh."
My face burned. I wanted to blurt,It isn't what you think... and I hated
myself for feeling that way. I hated Jelca too. Why didn't he smile? Why
didn't he run forward and sweep me into his arms?
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Why didn't he think I was beautiful?
"How's Ullis?" I asked, just for something to say.
"Fine," he said. "Busy. You haven't seen her yet?"
"We just got here. We saw Walton outside."
"Oh. Well." He took his eyes off my face long enough to look at his watch.
"It's almost suppertime. I'll show you where the others are."
He still didn't smile; but suddenly he held out a hand to me as if I remained
a silly little freshman who'd leap forward at the first opportunity. Maybe I
would have. I didn't run to him immediately, but maybe I would have given in
after a few seconds, telling myself that this was the start of whatever I
wanted.
Who knows?
Before I made up my mind, Oar darted forward and took the offered hand,
lacing her fingers with his. Jelca stared at me a moment longer, then
shrugged. "This way," he said.
Monstrosity
We walked to the central square. It was a huge space, several hundred meters
on each side... and almost completely filled with a giant glass whale.
"The spaceship," Jelca said.
I winced. A spaceship that looked like a whale? And a killer whale at that,
an orca, with lines etched into its exterior skin to suggest the usual pattern
of black and white coloration. It stood on its tail at the very center of the
city, as tall as any nearby skyscraper. Its bulbous body no doubt contained
living quarters, engines, and so on, but all of it was glass, glittering with
prismatic refractions.
Could it fly? Like any whale, it looked streamlined enough. Still, it was a
far cry from Technocracy starships. They were simply long cylinders with a
"Sperm head" at the front an oversized gray sphere that generated the
Sperm-field back along the hull. The orca had no such sphere: nothing more
than a huge glass parasol sticking out of its snout... as if the whale had a
beach umbrella clenched in its teeth.
"So that's our way home," Jelca said.
"You're going into space in a whale?" I asked.
"It's aship, Festina." His voice flared with hostility. "Why should
appearance matter?"
"It doesn't," I answered. "How are you going to get it out of here?"
"There are roof doors." He looked up briefly, then shook his head. "You can't
see them from here. Can't see them from outside either. A whole section of the
mountain just opens up."
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"And off you go in an orca."
I meant to sound lighthearted and teasing, but Jelca didn't take it that way. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]