Expendable - James Alan Gardner [57]
“I did not learn the names for Explorer dishes,” Oar answered. “I did not want to learn. When the fucking Explorers ate, I went away so I would not be sick. Explorer food is very very ugly.”
“What do you mean by ugly?” I wondered if Jelca and Ullis followed strange Fringe World diets—I couldn’t remember what either of them ate at the Academy.
“They ate sauces the color of animal blood. Grains as white as maggots. Vegetation that looked as if it was pulled straight from the ground!”
“Oh.” Marinara sauce, white rice, and salad…apparently not Oar’s kind of food. “Maybe I’ll come back later,” I said. “It’ll take time to experiment with what Ullis programmed.” I was not ravenous yet; and if worst came to worst, I could nibble on rations when Oar wasn’t looking.
“Then let us go,” Oar replied, starting toward the door, “and I will introduce you to my ancestors.”
Oar’s Ancestors
She led me into one of the central towers. It was twenty storeys tall. Each storey was filled with bodies.
The bodies were all clear glass, lying placidly in rows on the floor. Some were male; some were female. The women looked like Oar—perfect copies as far as I could tell, though my eyes may have missed tiny distinguishing characteristics. The transparent glass made it hard to see the faces at all, let alone make out subtle differences from one woman to another. The same went for the men: they were clean-shaven, with hair and facial structures similar to the women. If not for their breastless chests and demure genitalia, I could scarcely have told male from female.
Not that it mattered in a functional way: male or female, all of these people were dormant. Breathing and warm to the touch, but comatose.
Oar stood in the midst of those unmoving bodies, waiting for me to say something. I botched it. “Are they…what happened…is this some…so, Oar, these are your ancestors.”
“Yes,” she said. “Not all are direct ancestors; but they have lived in my home from the beginning.”
“And, uhh…what do they do here?”
“They lie on the floor, Festina. They do not want to do anything else.”
“But they could get up if they wanted to?”
“When the other Explorers came,” she said, “my mother and sister got up. They were curious to meet strangers, even though the Explorers were so ugly. After a day, my mother grew bored and came back here—that is her, lying over there.” She gestured in the direction of a glass wall. At least five women lay in that neighborhood, all of them twins to Oar. If one was truly Oar’s mother, she showed no sign of being older than Oar herself…nor did any of the women show evidence of motherhood. Glass stomachs must not get stretch marks; glass breasts must be immune to the demands of nursing. And gravity.
“What about your sister?” I asked. “Did she eventually get bored too?”
“I am sure she is very bored now,” Oar answered haughtily. “She is bored and sad and stupid.”
“Oh?”
“She went away with the fucking Explorers. They took her and not me.”
Oar loosed a furious kick at the body closest to her—a man who skidded across the floor with the force of the impact. He opened his eyes to glare at Oar, said a few unknown words in a grumbling voice, then shifted back to his former location.
Oar immediately kicked him again. “Do not call me names, old man!” she snapped.
He glared at her once more, but said nothing. He didn’t try to move this time, but settled where he was, folding his hands across his chest and closing his eyes. I wondered if he would shift back to his original place after Oar left.
“They all have tired brains,” Oar told me. “They are old and tired—and rude,” she added, raising her voice pointedly. “They have nothing else they want to do, so they lie here.”
“Don’t they eat or drink?”
Oar shook her head. “They absorb water from the air…and absorb the light too. My sister said the light in this building is nutritious—good enough anyway for people who do nothing. I do not understand how