Expendable - James Alan Gardner [84]
“Ramos,” he answered, still chuckling, “they adore a lord and master who shares his liquor. Like I said, their food synthesizers don’t make the stuff. They didn’t know what they were missing till I came along.” He gave me a leering smile. “How do you think I became their lord and master in the first place?”
“If you are anyone’s lord and master,” Oar said, “they are very stupid people. You are ugly and you smell.” She slipped her arm into mine. “Let us go now, Festina.”
“You ain’t going nowhere yet, girlie,” Tobit told her. He didn’t sound offended; calling Oar ‘girlie’ might have been his attempt at rakish charm. “The only way to leave is inside a shark…and frankly,” he waved toward the dock, “neither of those is seaworthy anymore.”
“Can you summon other machines?” I asked.
“Nope. They show up on their own when they need to refuel. One docks in every few days. In the meantime…you can both be guests at my birthday party.”
I said nothing; but Tobit must have seen how undelighted I was. “Cheer up!” he said, giving my arm a light slap, “you’ll like my parties. I give presents to my guests, not the other way around. And I’ve just thought of a doozy for you.”
HAPPY
We walked back to the central plaza, Oar still holding my arm to keep me between her and Tobit. Every so often she sniffed pointedly; she could smell the liquor on him. In her mind, he must be the epitome of dirty.
As we drew near the Morlocks’ building, I made sure my stunner was ready for a quick draw. Tobit might claim to control his “subjects” but I had my doubts; I had my doubts about everything Tobit said. If those Skin-Faces attacked, I had to be ready to knock them out….
I stopped in the street as a thought struck me. What would sonics do to a glass person? They weren’t real glass…but the shark machine rang like a chime when I shot it. I wondered if the Morlocks would resonate too. That might be a vulnerability of people who were hard instead of soft. Could sonics from a stunner seriously injure them? The blasts had damaged the machine; or maybe I had just scrambled some sonar guidance system and the real damage happened when the shark ran into that log.
Impossible to say—but I pushed the stunner back into my belt so I wouldn’t be tempted to use it. For a moment, I had imagined Oar’s body shattering, like a wineglass breaking under an opera singer’s voice. I couldn’t do that, even to a Skin-Face.
No more killing. No more killing.
Tobit led us into the building where I’d first seen him—a building smelling of booze mixed with vomit. Oar convulsed in a coughing fit as soon as the odor reached her. I held down my gorge with memories from the Academy: waking on the floor after an end-of-term bash, the arms of other Explorers draped over me, everyone’s breath so flammable the air purity sensors blinked yellow. Why had we done it? Because we were young and tongue-tied; getting drunk together was the greatest intimacy we would dare attempt.
And the Morlocks? They were engineered to have the minds and openness of children; once Tobit brewed his booze, they didn’t stand a chance.
I could see them now, through the glass walls ahead of us: the same quartet as before, helping themselves to a brownish concoction that must be Tobit’s hootch. It ran down their throats and pooled darkly in their stomachs, sloshing slightly as they moved. Oar’s grip tightened on my arm—she had seen too, and for once her face showed none of the haughty superiority she usually assumed when confronted with the unfamiliar. More than anything, she looked hurt…like a sick little girl who can’t understand why pain exists.
“Right this way!” Tobit boomed, waving us into the room with the drinking Morlocks. Oar moved forward mechanically; I went with her, squeezing her arm.
Unlike most rooms I’d seen on Melaquin, this one had furniture: glass chairs, and a glass table supporting something like a cake. The cake must have come from a local food synthesizer, since it was clear and transparent; but someone had spelled the word HAPPY across the top, in scraps