Expendable - James Alan Gardner [110]
Me: Deliberately trying to hurt them?
[Pause.]
Oar: I do not think so, although some of the ancestors pretend they were grievously assaulted. Ancestors are stupid. I think the Explorer was merely clearing them out of the way. There is now a wide path down the middle of the room where the ancestors have been moved aside.
Me: Where does the path go?
[Pause.]
Oar: I followed the path to the central elevator.
Me: Which means the Explorer was using the elevator for something.
[Pause for me to think.]
What did the Explorer look like?
[Pause.]
Oar: They say the fucking Explorer was shiny all over.
Me: I thought so. Look around inside, Oar…close to the door but maybe hidden. See if you can find a shiny suit.
[Pause. Oar returned with a bundle of silver fabric in her hands.]
Oar: How did you know this was there? What is it?
Me: A radiation suit.
I didn’t mention that the glittery fabric looked like the same material as Jelca’s silvery shirt.
Into the Tower
The suit was a sloppy fit on me. Tailored for someone taller: Jelca’s size. It also had a holster attached to the belt. The holster was empty, but it looked like a perfect fit for Jelca’s stun-pistol.
Unlike other radiation outfits I had worn, this one was comfortably light—no heavy inner lining of lead or one of the transuranics. Still, I had no doubt it would protect me from the tower’s hot-bath of radiation. Jelca must have persuaded the local AI to construct the suit for him—a machine programmed by the League of Peoples would never endanger a life by building inadequate protective gear. Best of all, I knew Jelca was still alive; if he could go inside without being fricasseed by microwaves, I could too.
Radiation burns might not be a concern but vision was: the suit had no visor, no break at all in the hood covering my head and face. I could see very dimly through the semitransparent fabric, like looking through a window bleary with rain. My view was at most three paces, and then just directly in front of me. I would have to move carefully and hope no one rushed me from the side.
For caution’s sake, I checked the suit seals one last time, then stepped into the tower. The ancestors had indeed been moved to clear a path into the building—unlike the neatly ordered rows I had seen in Oar’s village, these bodies were piled on top of one another, limbs dangling into each other’s faces. No wonder they were annoyed.
“It is rude to treat ancestors like this,” Oar whispered. I remembered that back in her own village, she had blithely kicked an ancestor in a fit of pique…but perhaps there was one set of rules for people inside the family and another for those outside.
“Ask them,” I said, “how long they’ve been like this.”
She spoke a few words in her native language, enunciating loudly and distinctly as if the ancestors were hard of hearing. Barely audible whispers drifted back from the clutter of bodies.
“They say a long time,” she told me. “They probably do not know how long. Their brains are too tired to judge such things.”
A long time…yet none of them had made an effort to move back to their original positions. And Jelca hadn’t moved them back either. Sloppy, I thought—a conscientious Explorer would cover his tracks.
I turned to Oar. “Tell them we’ll put them back properly in a little while. First, I want to investigate what Jelca was up to.”
Oar conveyed my message. Meanwhile, I lumbered along the cleared path, wishing I could see better through the suit fabric. Glass bodies were difficult to discern; I worried about stepping on one I had overlooked. That, I supposed, was why Jelca hadn’t dragged everyone back into place. He had unfinished business in the tower, and didn’t want to trip over bodies every time he came in.
The path led through one room after another, three rooms of blurred body heaps, until I reached a single elevator in the heart of the building. Its door was open, ready for business; I stepped inside and waited for Oar to join me.
“Which floor do we want?”