Expendable - James Alan Gardner [116]
When I finished my story—when I had told him how I sliced Yarrun’s throat with my scalpel and spilled his blood over my hands…when I had reminded him that League of Peoples laws are more inescapable than entropy—after all that, Jelca laughed.
He laughed.
“What a wimp-ass murder,” he sniggered. “What a wimp-ass excuse for a homicide.”
I was speechless.
“You think the League will bar you from space for that?” He snorted in disgust. “You think surgeons are labeled murderers if they lose a patient? Wake up, Festina! You tried to help, and it didn’t work. That’s all.”
“He would have lived!” I insisted. “If I’d left him alone, he would have lived. But no. I tried to be a hotshot, performing emergency surgery when I couldn’t see straight. He died because of me!”
“Yes he did,” Jelca agreed. “So you think you should be punished. You want to believe the League regards you as non-sentient, that you deserve exile. But that’s just guilt talking, not common sense. You thought you were doing what had to be done to save Yarrun’s life. That’s blatantly sentient, Festina…and it would be ludicrous for you to stay on Melaquin and die because of it.”
Something in his tone caught my attention. “What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Nothing.” He looked me straight in the eye. “It’s just stupid to spend the rest of your life in this hellhole.”
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