Expendable - James Alan Gardner [66]
The boat opened up as soon as it landed, and I hurried to unload the equipment I’d been lying on: my pack, the Bumbler, and Jelca’s food synthesizer. The last was a heavy brute—it took all my strength to wrestle it out of the boat, even using the carrying straps that I’d attached to it. If I carried the machine myself, I’d only manage a few klicks a day before dropping from exhaustion. Oar, however, claimed to have no trouble hauling such a weight. When her ancestors engineered themselves transparent and immortal, they’d obviously thrown in the strength of gorillas as a bonus.
And Oar felt inferior to me?
After two minutes, the boat closed itself and slipped back into the lake, returning underwater to pick up Oar. In the meantime, I busied myself testing the food synthesizer. If it didn’t work, we’d still press on with our trip—I could shoot game with my stunner, or forage for nuts and berries—but spending time as hunter-gatherers would reduce the distance we could travel in a day, and increase our chance of being caught by winter. Added to that, I preferred not to eat local flora and fauna. Everything might look like Earth species, but they still could turn out poisonous. Even if they were fully terrestrial, that was no guarantee of safety. What if I cooked a rabbit for supper and later found it had rabies?
Since the synthesizer was solar-powered, I set it in the sun and loaded the hopper with weeds from the face of the bluffs. Grinders whirred immediately, turning the plants to puree: a good sign. There was no way to guess how long the machine needed to do its job, breaking the weeds into basic aminos, then reassembling the components into edible blobs: maybe five minutes, maybe several hours. In the meantime, the day was fresh, and placidly warm outside the shadow of the bluffs. I took off my top to air after wearing it four days straight…or perhaps just to feel the autumn sun on my skin.
For a few minutes, I had the planet to myself.
Alone
I had never been alone before…not in this specific way. Often I had been one of only two sentient creatures on a planet—the other being Yarrun, of course. But a planet-down mission was different, with goals to accomplish, checklists to work through, and a shipload of Vac personnel listening to your transmissions. Even as a little girl, I never felt truly alone. I was constantly accompanied by responsibility: the schoolwork heaped upon potential Explorers from the age of three, plus the chores I had to do on the farm. Now and then, our family took vacations; now and then, I played hooky or ran off to sulk in “secret hiding places” my parents likely knew from their own childhoods. But wherever I went, I was shadowed by what was expected of me. You don’t free yourself from duty by running away. That only increases the weight on your shoulders.
Now, I was free—forcibly cut loose. If I stayed on this beach forever, what difference would it make? How would anything change? Jelca wasn’t expecting me. He might not even be glad to see me: just some kid who made a spectacle of herself, mooning after him at the Academy.
Ullis would be happy if I showed up—we got along well as roommates. Even so, I remembered one night in the dorm, when she complained after hours of study, “Who cares about zoology, Festina? Cataloguing animals is as pointless as stamp collecting. There’s only one classification system that interests me: things that can kill and things that can’t.” Even as Ullis hugged and welcomed me, she might be thinking, A zoology specialist…why couldn’t it be someone with useful skills?
Why force myself on them? It might be better just to lie in the sun. I could keep Oar company, and give her English lessons till she felt brave enough to use a contraction.
And then what, Festina? Help clear fields to prove you’re both civilized? Play “bed games” with her out of sheer boredom? Endure it as long as you can, then go lie down with her ancestors? That would be a vicious way to die: withering