Expendable - James Alan Gardner [117]
The whole damned atmosphere.
How big a tail could one generator make? A klick in diameter…maybe more. With one end at ground level and the other trailing off into space, the Sperm would be like a giant firehose, free end whipping back and forth, spraying air into the void.
The first result would be the biggest storm this planet had ever seen: a tornado centered on the base of the Sperm tail, sucking up wind. And the storm would never stop—not until it reduced the air supply to negligible pressure.
“How long,” I asked, “would it take to drain Melaquin’s atmosphere through an unanchored Sperm tail?”
Jelca looked startled. Then he answered, “18.6 years. But the surface will be uninhabitable long before that.”
Part XVII
CONFRONTATION
Ego
“Jelca,” I said, “there are people on Melaquin. You’ll kill them.”
“I’ll wait for the ship to take off,” he replied.
“I don’t mean Explorers!” I snapped. “You’ll kill people like Oar!”
“They’ll be all right,” he answered with a vague wave of his hand. “Their homes are safe underwater and in caves.”
“They don’t all stay in their homes! They come out for walks on the beach—you know that. And I doubt their habitats are so self-contained they can withstand the whole planet losing atmosphere. When the air pressure drops far enough, the lakes will boil away; what happens to underwater cities then? And how do you know the caves are so airtight they won’t leak? You don’t know. You can’t.”
“All right,” Jelca shrugged, “there may be problems. So what? This planet is dead, Festina; it may look viable, but it’s not. There’s no civilization here. There are no people. No one but glass zombies too stupid to know they’re extinct. The ancestors do nothing…even creatures like Oar do nothing. They don’t deserve to be called sentient. But Explorers are sentient, and it’s time to stop treating them like rotten meat.”
“Jelca,” I said, “ask the other Explorers if their lives are worth genocide. You know they’d never accept it.”
“They don’t have to,” he replied. “I accept it for them. I take the responsibility. If someone doesn’t do this, you know what will happen? When we reach Technocracy space, the Fleet will load us all onto a ship and send us straight back to Melaquin. This is where they send their embarrassments, and we’ll be the biggest embarrassment of all! For everyone’s sake, I have to make sure Melaquin is no longer an option.”
“You aren’t doing this for everyone’s sake,” I told him. “It’s only for your sake. The council was mean to you, and you want to hit them back. This is so unworthy of an Explorer, Jelca. Flamboyant gestures are for people who think life means beating the other guy. That’s not life, that’s ego. It’s what you do when you’re too scared or stupid to build a life on your own terms. Demanding revenge, Jelca…I’m ashamed of you. It’s just so adolescent!”
“Adolescent?” he roared. “Adolescent!”
“Juvenile. Revenge always is.”
And that’s when I hit him.
Fight or Flight
It was a simple punch, straight to the jaw—a sucker punch, and I had no qualms about using it. Now that I knew Jelca’s plan, I was dangerous to him; he may already have decided I would have an “accident” and topple off the mountain. One shot of his stunner would take me out, so I couldn’t give him a chance to draw.
The punch should have fazed him long enough to let me close for a few more strikes; but maybe I didn’t put all my strength into it. Maybe some subconscious softness balked at knocking out Jelca’s teeth…. I don’t know. I just know the impact didn’t completely rattle him. Before I could follow up, his emergency programming kicked in: he dove, tucked, and rolled, exactly the way I did when taken by surprise.
Pity he couldn’t have been trained with one of the other responses—freezing or backing off passively.
Before he stopped rolling, I was diving too: diving for the cover of the trees. I had no chance of crossing the ground between me and Jelca before he could draw his gun. My only chance was to get out of range, preferably with sturdy pine trunks at my back. Standard-issue