Expendable - James Alan Gardner [24]
“So the Greenstriders knew what contact would do to us. Or more accurately, the knowledge existed somewhere in Greenstrider society. The strider who shook Fewkes’s hand didn’t personally know what would happen, but the cloud of red smoke said that was no excuse. A warning should have been conveyed to all striders who might come in contact with humans. Anything else was homicidal negligence on the part of the Greenstrider government as a whole.”
“Harsh,” Yarrun murmured. “If the strider who shook Fewkes’s hand really didn’t know…”
“The tribunal said he should have known,” Chee answered. “When the Explorers died that first time, it was truly an accident. But after that, someone should have passed the word. I agree with the League on this. Someone in the chain of command was blatantly non-sentient if the information wasn’t deemed important enough to be conveyed through channels. Not even the Admiralty is that sloppy; every Explorer in the Corps is meticulously instructed in how to interact with known alien races for maximum mutual safety. Right?”
“We hope so,” I replied.
“You are,” Chee said. “If only because the High Council wants to avoid what happened to the Greenstriders. Their entire governmental system was declared non-sentient: negligently careless. The whole damned race was grounded—barred from interstellar travel until they reorganized into a more conscientious society. A few of them tried to defy the ban…and for the next few years, our fleet kept finding strider ghost ships drifting through space, every strider aboard killed the second they tried to leave their home star system. Not a mark on the bodies. Just dead. The League has no qualms against exterminating non-sentients to protect the rest of the galaxy.”
Chee paused to let that sink in.
“One question,” I said. “If the red smoke knew the handshake would kill Fewkes, why didn’t the smoke do something? Even if it had just shouted ‘Stop!’ before the strider made skin contact….”
“The high echelons of the League prefer not to interfere with the actions of lower species,” Chee replied. “They say it has something to do with free will.”
“Or,” Yarrun murmured, “giving us enough rope to hang ourselves.”
The Admiral Volunteers
“So,” Chee started again, “we were talking about Melaquin…and I was saying the High Council has to tread carefully. They can order us to explore a planet where there’s only a slim chance of survival, but they can’t send us on a total suicide mission. That’s why they use Melaquin so often: they’ve found they can get away with it. And they can’t get away with ordering a ship to refuse aid to the injured. That’s a blatant non-sentient act. The League would never let another Outward Fleet ship into interstellar space.”
There was a long silence. I thought about Chee’s suggestion: deliberately getting hurt as an excuse to abort the Landing. It would have to be a real injury; faking or lying was dereliction of duty and we’d all be exiled back to Melaquin. But a genuine life-threatening wound was reasonable cause to cut short a mission…as was the death of a party member, for that matter. Whether or not Yarrun and I could save Chee’s life was immaterial.
I turned to Chee. “Are you really volunteering to take the risk? It’s much greater than you may realize. Infection, for instance. Any wound exposed to alien microbes….”
“Nice of you to care,” Chee replied, “but I have nothing to lose. If we stay too long on Melaquin, we’ll end up dead like the others. Even if we’re just stranded no-comm, I can’t survive long without YouthBoost—in case you were wondering, I’m fucking ancient. On the other hand, if I take a wound three minutes after we land, there’s a chance we’ll get back to the ship and I’ll pull through. I’d get a kick out of that…not just living but thumbing my nose at the High Council. Think of the looks on their faces when I come back from Melaquin again. I’d give ’em a raspberry so loud