Expendable - James Alan Gardner [48]
Out of the corner of my eye, I studied her: sleek and elegant, even when coughing up lake water. I could see right through her to a gnarl of driftwood on the beach beyond her; everything about her was transparent except for her eyes. As she turned toward me, I saw they were silvered like mirrors.
“You can’t understand me,” I told her, “but you have nothing to worry about. I saved you, didn’t I? I mean you no harm.”
The woman gazed at me for a moment, then let her head slump back onto the sand. “Fucking Explorers,” she said. “Always Greetings, greetings, I mean you no harm. But you only make people sad. Go away, fucking Explorer. Go away now.”
And she covered her eyes with her hand.
Part VIII
ACQUAINTANCE
Shocked and Hurt
Without a millisecond’s pause, I spun away from her, rolling across the sand and tucking up to my feet in a fighting stance. My mind was scarcely aware what I was doing; the reaction had been programmed into me along with so much else.
It was an ongoing experiment by the Admiralty. In situations of total shock, when the conscious brain was too surprised to make a rational decision, some Explorers were trained to assume an aggressive posture, some to become passive, and some to freeze in whatever position they happened to be. The Fleet wanted to determine if any of the three approaches offered better survival prospects than the others.
If the study had drawn any conclusions, no one bothered to tell us Explorers.
With an effort, I forced myself to lower my fists. The woman’s hand was over her eyes—maybe she hadn’t noticed my reaction…although if I could see through her hand, why couldn’t she? I looked carefully through her glass fingers and saw that her eyelids were an opaque silver, shut tight and trembling.
“You’ve met Explorers before,” I said after a moment. “How else would you know my language? And since dozens of Explorers have come here over the past forty years, it’s not completely improbable that an earlier party landed in this neighborhood. They may have followed the same chain of reasoning as we did.” I was talking to myself, not her. “But what did they do to you? Why are…how did they upset you?”
She opened her eyes and raised herself on one elbow so she could look at me; she didn’t lift her gaze high enough to meet my eyes. “They made me sad,” she said. “Fucking Explorers.”
“Did they hurt you?” I knelt in the sand so I wouldn’t loom over her. “If they hurt you, it must have been an accident. Explorers are programmed…Explorers are taught very strictly never to hurt the people they meet.”
“Yes,” the woman said, “they are taught many things.” This time her gaze met mine for an angry second before dropping away. “Explorers know so much, and it is all stupid!”
I stared at her, trying to decide how to read her. She looked like a grown woman, perhaps in her early twenties; but she talked with the words of a child. Did she only have a primitive grasp of English? Perhaps she learned the language as a child and hadn’t used it since. A team of Explorers might have passed through this area when the woman was young, spent a few months, then moved on. Children learn languages quickly…and they form crushes quickly too. Maybe the Explorers had done nothing worse than leaving an overfond child who wanted them to stay.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “that the other Explorers made you sad. I’ll try not to do the same thing. If I ever make you sad, you tell me and I’ll try to fix it.”
“Fucking Explorers.” She turned away and tucked up her knees, hugging them to her chest. “Your face is very ugly,” she said.
“I know.” I told myself I was speaking to a sulky five-year-old. “And I look even worse in daylight.”
“Why do fucking Explorers go places when they are so ugly? Other people do not like seeing ugly things.” She took a deep breath that was bordering on a sob. “Fucking Explorers should just stay home.”
“No argument from me,” I murmured. In a louder voice I said, “If you want,