Jem (44 page)

The spinnerets of the females were working furiously now, spraying threadlike ova and pheronomes into the air. All around the swarm, the air was fragrant with the demand to breed. For Charlie, and for all the males, there was no question about what to do next: hive up, spray milt, soar back and forth through the stinging mist while their teats elongated, convulsed, spread their seed. The skins of their air sacs tightened, drawing the features of their tiny faces into caricatures. Behind the expressions that looked like pain was pain. The overtures to sex were no joy to Charlie. They were like being locked in an Iron Maiden with acid-tipped spikes. Only the relief that came when the semen squirted out made the pain end.

But it was wrong, wrong!

Charlie sang out his question and his fear, and the new flock sang with him. What breeding was this, with the flare coming from the enemy ground and not the sky? What was this heat that smote them like a fist, following on the thunder and the wild gales? Charlie could see that in the turbulence most of the silklings had been missed by the milt. They were all over the sky. Within his own body he could feel it was wrong. Where was the bubbling of hydrogen to replenish his sac, radiation-stung out of his body fluids? And what—what was this monstrous, bubbling cloud that was growing so fast it was drawing them all toward it?

And that was the question that answered all the others and put an end to questions forever for Charlie as the searing heat of the nuclear cloud burned out his eye patches, cracked his gas sac, touched off the hydrogen that spilled out, and ended his songs for always.

As NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS went, it was inconsiderable. Less than a kiloton, it would hardly have been noticed in the multi-megaton blasts that had scoured the surface of Earth. When the imploding grenades forced the bright plutonium needles out of their sheaths to mate, they were in contact for only a few microseconds before their own immense reaction drove them apart.

But by then the explosion had occurred. The needles, the shell, the walls of the tunnel around them had been vaporized to a hot gas, billions of atmospheres of pressure, irresistibly determined to escape. It escaped. Within a few thousandths of a second it had formed its pipsqueak fireball, fifty meters across, racing upward at five hundred kilometers an hour, brighter than Kung, brighter than Earth's sun, brighter than hundreds of them put together. The fireball grew and soared, first bright red with its burden of nitric acid, then whitening and losing its brightness as it began to cool.

Even through closed eyes that stark flare was visible to the people huddled in the cave, and the shock front that swept over them shook the cave and their bodies. The noise was immense. After it, over the echoes, Kris Kristianides was shouting, "Stay down! Don't open your eyes! Wait!" For nearly ten minutes she kept them there, and then, slowly, she peered through half-closed lids and the dark goggles and announced they could get up.

Tentatively they poked their heads over the ridge. Squinting, they saw what Marge Menninger had done.

The nuclear cloud boiled tall through the layers of stratus. It had punched its own hole in the rain clouds, but its mushroom top was out of sight. Nearer, the Greasy camp seemed hardly touched: a shed blown over, a couple of tents burning, people moving dazedly around.

"She—she missed the base!" cried Kris, and Danny Dalehouse could not tell whether her tone was angry or glad. But what she said was true. The bottom of the blast was half a kilometer away from the camp toward the Heat Pole. Marge had got herself lost. The half of the blast that went into explosive pressure had wasted itself on the sand and succulents of the steppe.

But the third that went into heat had done better. The nearest persons in the Greasy camp were staggering around, blind and in agony. No one had given them goggles. No one had warned them not to look toward the blast.

"Check your pieces," Kristianides ordered. She had taken the goggles off, and under them her eyes were red. But her voice was determined. "Put on your cloaks. Let's go. We're moving in."

Dalehouse stood up and pulled the plastic poncho over his head like an automaton. (Would that really protect against any fallout at all?) He picked up his recoilless and slapped a cartridge into the breech. (Why am I doing this?) He started off with the others in a ragged line of skirmish, all nine of them walking slowly toward the Fuel base.

At every step he was telling himself that it was wrong. Wrong tactically: the nuclear blast had knocked out no more than a few unfortunates, and they were likely to get their heads blown off by the survivors. Wrong strategically: they should never have allowed themselves to get into this position. And wrong, most wrong of all, morally. What kind of world were they fighting for when they killed people without warning?

Dalehouse looked uneasily back and forth at the others in the line. All were staring straight ahead at the Fuel camp. Didn't any of them feel the way he did?

He stopped in his tracks. "Kris," he said, "I don't want to do this."

She turned slowly so that the muzzle of her gun covered him. "Move your ass, Dalehouse."

"No, wait, Kris. Let's—"

She said tightly, "I was expecting that from you. We're going in there. All of us. Colonel Menninger set this up, and I'm not going to let it go to waste. Now move it."

The others had stopped to look at them. None of them spoke; they only waited while Dalehouse watched the barrel of the GORR come into line with the bridge of his nose. He sighed deeply and said, "No, Kris." And then he stood there as her expression changed and hardened and he realized that, yes, she was going to pull the trigger—

"Put down your rifle, lieutenant," Ana called.

She was behind Kris and a little to one side, and she had her own gun pointed firmly at the lieutenant's back. "I do not wish to kill," she said, "but I, too, do not want to attack this camp."

Dalehouse didn't wait to see what would happen. He stepped forward and took the GORR from Kristianides's hands. He threw it back over the crest of the hill they had just crossed and then followed it with his own. After a second Ana did the same, and so, one by one, did the others.

"You fucking fools!" Kris raged. "They'll shoot you down like rats!"

Dalehouse did not answer. He stared toward the Greasy camp, where a few persons who were not blind or incapacitated had begun to appear. They had weapons, and they were gazing at the drama on the hill.

Dalehouse raised his hands over his head and began to walk steadily toward them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ana doing the same thing. Maybe Kris was right. Maybe one of those armed people kneeling in the shelter of a smoldering tent would begin to shoot. But it was out of his hands. Whatever guilt there was, it would not anymore belong to him; and for the first time in months he felt at peace.

AND SO, AT THE LAST, what can one say of them? What is to be said of Marjorie Menninger and Danny Dalehouse and Ana Dimitrova—and of Charlie and Ahmed Dulla, or of Sharn-igon and Mother dr'Shee? They did what they could. More often than not, they did what they thought they should. And what can be said of them is what can be said of all persons, human and otherwise, at the end: they died. Some survived the fighting. Some survived the flare. But in the long run there are no survivors.

There are only replacements. And time passes, and generations come and go.

And then, what can one say of that beautiful and powerful woman named Muskrat Greencloud An-Guyen?

One can say that she bears the traces of Margie and Nan and some of the others. Some through the passage of chains of DNA, some only because of what they did or who they were.

She never knew any of them, of course, because they are all six generations dead; she is a replacement.

Like all of us, she is not a single person. She wears three personas, or six, or a hundred if you count the subjective memories and stereotypes other persons carry around that bear the label "Muskie An-Guyen." To a former lover, she is the sweetly sweaty companion of a weekend at Lake Hell. To her grandchildren, she is the docent who leads them through the museums and the zoo. To your average registered Republicate lot-caster of the Boyne-Feng Metropolitan Area, she is the selection judge who supervises the machineries of government. Or, actually, of nongovernment. Muskie is one hundred percent solidly behind the Six Precepts of the Jemman Republics, and
No strong central government
is the last and maybe most important of them. "Government" is a dead wickedness to Muskie, burned out in the Blast and starved in the Desperation. It has been gone from Jem this century and a half. No one wants to see that pawkish horror back, least of all Muskie. It is as obsolete as armies and indolence and waste. Muskie will keep it so, if it demands her last drop of blood as well as the utmost sacrifices by her militia volunteers and gift acceptors.

But to see who Muskie is, let us look at the three principal faces she wears to show the sultry and satisfied world of Jem.

The first of these is Muskie the nurturer. She provides more than a tenth of the food for Boyne-Feng, and nearly all of it that comes from underground. She does not do it by herself, of course. See her as she stands in the gallery gate. The morning shift is coming on duty. The bad old days of "owners" died when government did. Muskie is not an owner. She is only one among equals. But she is a special one.

You might think she looks like a Virginia planter overseeing slaves, or perhaps like a Shensi landlord accepting squeeze from the tenant farmers in her paddies. This would be deceiving. There is no ownership. There is not even any compulsion. The tokens the Krinpit laborers give her one by one as they scuttle past to the underground farms are not extorted. They are gifts. They are freely given. If Muskie is not pleased with the gift of one of them, she does not reproach him or order him to give more. She simply refuses it. Then the Krinpit chooses to go back to his village, where he may freely starve. A meter or two past Muskie's station the Creepie overseers spray the Krinpit with anti-allergen lacquer. No force is employed here, either. If the Krinpit do not choose to make gifts to the overseers, they need not turn back. The overseers will then choose not to spray them. The Krinpit will then itch or molt or die as a consequence of exposure to the terraborn crops they handle. It is the Krinpits' right to choose this if they wish. There is absolutely no compulsion, by anyone, of anyone, at any time. That is part of the Six Precepts.

The Krinpit know this and rejoice in their freedom—not to mention rejoicing in the radios, the gaily raucous drums and zithers, the chemical intoxicants, beads and metal tools that they prize. These are freely given to them when they freely give up the tokens that Muskie has freely given to them at the end of each voluntary work shift. The Creepies also know that this is true. They are also grateful, especially for the Two-Legs' improvements on their savage old burrows, and they freely assist the stronger, bigger Krinpit laborers by instructing them in where to plant the floor crops of mushrooms and the roof crops of potato and yam. They too now rejoice in the possession of beads, devices, and intoxicants their rude progenitors never knew. The balloonists know it—what fun they have with their taped music and their repeated orgasms! And, of course, Muskrat Greencloud An-Guyen knows it really well. She has everything she wants. Perhaps the best part of what she has is the certain knowledge that the Six Precepts are always followed, and so justice is always served, and everybody else on Jem—and that means everybody, Krip or balloonist, stranger or son—has everything, too. Though not usually as much of everything as she.

Then there is Muskie the civil volunteer. Not merely a discussant or a participator, like everyone else. She is a selection judge who gives freely of her time to serve the whole community, even at holidays.

She leaves the agricultural galleries and goes aboveground into the warm, bright dome of Fat City. Muskie is still a sturdily beautiful woman. She is tanned by the ultraviolet lights of the pool-grotto, tall, solid rather than plump; she weighs sixty standard kilos, but she has a fifty-centimeter waist, and her lovers prefer her to partners half her age. Eyes follow her as she comes smiling into Remembrance Hall, removes her slacks and slicks for comfort, gives Ring-Greeting to all, and reclines on a foam couch. "I would like to begin," she says sunnily. The other six volunteer selection judges agree that they, too, would like to discuss the issues of the day.

Most of the issues are routine, and consensus appears at once. (They are all saving themselves for the big one.) From his place under the bust of Mother Kristianides, wide-browed and serene as she looks down on them, Roanoke t'Schreiber describes the progress in cleaning up Lake Hell. All the city's sewage is being pumped there. The native aquatic life is being satisfactorily killed off, since
Escherichia coli
is antibiotic against most forms of Jemman life. "Another two million bowel movements and we'll have it sparkly clean," he comments. Sod House Flareborn looks up from inspecting her ten-centimeter fingernails to wonder if the militia should be freely given extra tokens, since so many of them have unfortunately (though voluntarily) given up their lives in the exploration of additional Creepy burrows and the liberation of distant camps of Krinpit. All agree that this seems desirable. The woman in militia fatigues who has been hovering by the door leaves with a smile of satisfaction.

Then Muskie's face clouds and she observes, "I have heard that there has been another tactran from Alphabase."

There is silence in the chamber. This is the issue that holds the seeds of dissent, and even change. No one really wants to get into it. All the judges stir uncomfortably on the couches under the busts of the ancestors, each waiting for the others to speak.

At last t'Schreiber offers an opinion. "I, for one, think it was unwise of our predecessors to attempt to resume space exploration. They freely gave much value to put new tactran satellites in orbit. What have we gained? Sorrow and confusion." He lists the contacts made: a garble that
might
have been from the Martian colony; pitiful pleas for help from old Earth itself; a dozen cocky messages from the base at Alpha Centauri suggesting an attempt at an actual flight to and from Jem. From the rest of the universe, nothing.