Expendable - James Alan Gardner [58]
Having lived with solar energy all my life, I had no trouble appreciating how light could “feed” an organism; but clear glass was not a good photo-collector. It’s better to be opaque to the light you’re trying to absorb…and then it occurred to me, these bodies were opaque to most nonvisible wavelengths. A quick Bumbler check confirmed it—the deceptively muted light inside this building was laced with enough UV to bake potatoes. I shuddered to think what other radiation might be flooding the air…say, microwaves and X-rays.
“Let’s go outside,” I told Oar briskly. “You’ve probably never heard the word ‘melanoma’…but I have.”
The Surrender
The light outside was not so lethal—the Bumbler certified it fell within human safety limits. Obviously, the tower containing Oar’s ancestors was shielded to keep all that juicy radiation inside…which only made sense. If you devoted so much wattage to feed solar-powered people, you didn’t want energy spilling uselessly through the walls. Whatever the tower was made of, it certainly wasn’t ordinary glass; it held in everything but visible light, making a high-band hothouse for photosynthesizing deadbeats.
“They really just lie in there all day?” I asked.
“Most have not moved in centuries. That is what my mother said her own mother claimed. As long as I have lived, only my mother and sister have moved.”
“But now your mother is dormant and your sister left with Jelca?”
“Yes. I have been alone the last three years.”
I felt the urge to touch her—pat her shoulder, give her a hug, pass on comfort somehow. But I didn’t; I didn’t know the right thing to do.
“It’s hard being alone,” I finally said. “It’s a wonder you haven’t laid down with the others.”
“I do sometimes,” she told me. “Sometimes I go into the tower to be with people. Once in a while…once in a while, I see if I can lie with a man and get him to give me his juices; but it never works and I just get sad.”
She spoke in a halting voice. I didn’t know how to answer. Finally I said, “You can’t die, can you? Your species can’t die.”
“We are not such things as die,” she whispered. “We do not get damaged. We do not grow old and sick like animals. If you had left me in the lake, Festina, I would have lived and lived…under the water, too weak to move, but still alive.
“Our bodies live forever,” she continued, “but our brains slow down after a time. When people’s brains grow tired and there is nothing else they want to do, they just lie down. It is called the Surrender. Some people surrender outside—in the grass, on the sand, or in the water—but most come home to this tower. It is pretty and comfortable here; and the light gives enough strength that you can always move if you want to. My mother said that was good: she felt she could get up any time she had a reason. She just couldn’t think of a reason.”
I couldn’t meet Oar’s gaze. “I’m proud of you,” I said, finding it hard to force the words out.
“Why are you proud of me, Festina?”
“Because you aren’t in there with everyone else.” I grabbed her arm to pull her away from the building…or rather to touch her in the only way I could justify. “Come on—you were showing me the sights. Let’s keep going.”
And we did.
By the Fountain
We stood in the central square of the village, directly in front of the glass fountains that chattered in the middle of the plaza. Oar walked up to one, spreading her arms and watching her skin mist up in the humid air. The look she gave me, back over her shoulder, suggested she considered such behavior daring.
“My mother called this The Fountain of Tomorrow,” Oar said. “The other is The Fountain of Yesterday.” She paused. “They look very much the same, do they not?”
“Too much.” I wondered if that was the fountain-builder’s point. “Oar,” I asked, “what do you do all day?”
“Why do you ask, Festina?”
“You don’t have to work to survive. You can get food just by asking the synthesizer, you don’t wear clothes, and this village clearly runs itself automatically. You must have done things with your