Expendable - James Alan Gardner [3]
Of course the others laughed…and wanting them to understand, I tried to explain how beautiful some eggs can be. Every color of the rainbow, pale blues and soft oranges and golden yellows. All sizes, all shapes. Some with shells as fragile as tissue paper, some so hard you can squeeze with all your might and not harm them. Insect eggs, small and black like pepper. Amphibian eggs, chains of jellied eyes suspended in water. Eggs from extraterrestrial lifeforms, unique as snowflakes, perfumed, cylindrical, clear as glass, red-hot to the touch….
The other crew members didn’t understand. Most of them didn’t try. One or two put on intelligent expressions and said, “That’s interesting.” They were the ones who most made me feel like a fool.
After that, I never discussed my collection in public. I didn’t try to describe it, because I knew I couldn’t. I refused to show it to the crew because I would only be infuriated by their politely unappreciative attention. Why should I watch them feign interest?
Eggs are self-contained worlds, perfect and internally sufficient. On every planet that supports life, there are eggs. Whatever alien paths life may take, there are always eggs somewhere along the trail. My fellow Explorers found this time and time again.
If I heard an Explorer’s report state that eggs had been found on this or that planet, I transmitted a personal request asking for a specimen. I almost always got what I wanted—Explorers help each other.
When I received an egg, I spent several days deciding how to display it. Some I mounted on wooden stands; some I set in china dishes; some I swathed in cotton.
Receiving a new egg was cause for celebration. I took it out of its packing case and cradled it in my hands, cherishing its fragility or its toughness or its warmth. Sometimes I could hold an egg for a full hour, dreaming I was in touch with the mother who laid the egg or the child who called it home.
But all the eggs in my collection were sterile. They never hatched. Some were never fertilized. The others had been irradiated by the Admiralty to kill whatever was inside them—transport of alien organisms is dangerous.
On nights when I couldn’t sleep, I sat amidst them and listened to their silence.
The Call
It was on a night like that, a silent night, that I sat in my quarters, staring at a list of reports I ought to study. It was late at night, as time was reckoned on the ship. I took great pride in working late hours. Admittedly, time is an arbitrary convention in space; but I still enjoyed knowing I was awake while the rest of the ship slept.
The message buzzer hummed softly in the quiet of my cabin. I turned a dial on my desktop. “Ramos here.”
The face of Lieutenant Harque, the captain’s aide, sprang to life on the screen. Harque had an easy smile and curly good looks, a boy-next-door handsomeness that let him win over people without having a speck of true charm in his self-important body. “The captain would like to see you, Explorer.”
“Yes?”
“In the conference room. As soon as possible.”
“Does she want me to bring Yarrun?”
“I’ve already contacted Yarrun. Harque out.” The picture went blank.
Typical. I had come to expect that sort of thing from Harque. If I confronted him about it, he would claim he was saving me trouble by calling my subordinate for me. I slid back my chair and sighed as I headed for the door.
The light over my desk turned off behind me. It did that automatically. The quick return to darkness always made me think the lamp was eager to see me go.
My Subordinate
Yarrun was waiting for me outside the door. His eyes were bleary—he must have been asleep when Harque buzzed him. Yarrun preferred an early bedtime. To compensate, he got up hours before anyone else was awake. He said he enjoyed the quiet of the ship in the early morning.
I don’t know what he did with the time he had to himself. Perhaps he just tended his own collection—he collected