Engineman - Eric Brown [165]
One evening as they watched the sun sink into the ocean, he asked, "Why are you here?"
"I was a xeno-biologist on Thallia, in the Persephone Cluster," she began.
She was a xeno-biologist - but she was also something more. She was born on Thallia and lived there until the time of her accident twenty years later. She was fifteen when she joined her father in the study of the alien natives, and they became the only humans the aliens would trust. She lived among them, learned their ways, was accepted by the arboreal, ape-like creatures as goyu, "One of us." When the Phoenix Line moved in on the planet, they used the father and daughter team as liaison officers between Head of Command and the native elders. The Line wanted to mine the planet's only island, and as the planet was protected territory they needed the Thallian's permission. The only humans with whom the aliens would consent to discuss the matter were the xeno-biologist and his daughter.
She told him this over the period of an hour, with no stress or inflexion, with no passion that might suggest she was on the side of the natives.
They watched the light die on the horizon.
She continued, "My father and I were in a shuttle accident, coming from the planet's surface to an orbiting starship for debriefing. My father did not survive; I did. They brought me to Earth and began to rebuild me. In one week I return to Thallia, to negotiate with the natives. I am a valuable commodity to the Phoenix Line."
He glanced across at her, but her face was expressionless, with no hint of grief or regret, or anger that she had become no more than a chattel of the Line.
He tried to imagine the shuttle accident, the extent of her resulting injuries. She had said that she had been rebuilt, and he wondered how much of her had survived the crash. The only indication of physical damage was the golden net that held her body together, the only hint of mental impairment her eternal distance.
Two days before she was due to leave for the Persephone Cluster, he led her to the bedroom of his chalet and undressed her as she stood perfectly still with a distant smile on her lips. Then he carried her to the bed and they made love - or rather he, overcome with lust, made love to her, and she moved her limbs with a semblance of passion but without conviction. It was as if the absent part of her disdained physicality, allowed her body only a token role in the experience.
Later he caressed her occipital computer, fitted flush to the back of her neck, and smoothed his hands over her body network, a filigree matrix slightly firmer than the flesh it underlay. She had said not a word during the whole encounter. She stared uncomprehendingly at his tears.
"Jonathon?"
He kissed her and said she was the only person he had ever loved.
"Did you not love your wife?"
"I was never married."
"Then the mother of your daughter?"
He had adopted his daughter when she was two years old, in an attempt to bring something into his life that he might love.
He told her all this now.
She was unable to make an adequate response, as Fuller had suspected. He wondered if this was the reason he had opened up to her; he had experienced the catharsis of confession without an adverse reaction, without the questions that would have accused him - which, he realised, was no catharsis at all. Through replying to criticism, attempting however futilely to defend himself, he might have come to understand more about the person who was Jonathon Fuller: he would have undergone the process of sharing personal pain and anguish which was all part of the exchange of human love but which he, in his cowardice, had never experienced.
She reached out and touched his cheek in a gesture so empty of affection that it was almost brutal.
"I think we are very much alike, Jonathon."
He told her that they were very much different. He thought that, despite the injuries that had left her unable to exhibit the