"Shit."

"Oh Shit," he corrected.

At Chee's age, two weeks was the longest he could go between Boosts. Without a shot, he'd go downhill fast… and it didn't help that he'd been drugged into unconsciousness, then wasted his strength carrying Yarrun a couple hundred meters. His entire metabolism must be stressed to the limit — a metabolism that would soon start feeling its full century and a half.

"How can they do this to you?" I demanded. "Sending you here in this condition was… sorry, but it was a death sentence."

"The League won't permit outright killing," Chee answered, "but they accept the principle of letting an organism die when its time has come. Not much of a difference for someone in my position; but the League are experts at splitting hairs. Obviously, they do let the High Council get away with this. Otherwise, Melaquin wouldn't be such a time-honored dumping ground for used admirals."

"And now you're here."

"Now you see me, soon you won't." His hand, lying across my shoulders, ruffled my hair for a moment. "Sorry to leave you on your own."

"I'll survive," I said lightly.

"Make sure you do," he answered, with full seriousness. "Make sure you do."

"Do you think I'm going to kill myself? I can't — I'm programmed not to. In the early years of the Explorer Corps, the Fleet had too high a suicide rate. Isn't that a surprise? Explorers becoming depressed just because they're unloved freaks, shunned by the regular crew and as expendable as toilet paper. Why would that bother anyone? So the Admiralty started protecting its investment by indoctrinating us. It made sure we died on official missions rather than choosing our own place and time."

"I know how you're programmed," Chee said. "And I know people can overcome their programming. Maybe not the first time you try and maybe not the second; but eventually, you wear down the mental blocks. Determination is a powerful thing. But I want you determined to live, not determined to die."

"Why?" I asked. "Living well is the best revenge?"

"No. The best revenge is getting back to New Earth and cramming the council's misdeeds down its throat."

"I'm a murderer. I can't leave Melaquin."

"God damn it, Ramos!" Chee roared. "You may feel guilty, but you are not a—"

That was when he had his stroke.

Suh

We were almost to the top of the ravine. A few paces ahead, the trees gave way to the meadow where we had landed. Off to the west, I could see the last thin yellow of sunset fading into the purple of night.

Chee slumped like deadweight, slopping off my shoulders and falling into the crackle of forest leaves. I was so busy looking at the sky, I didn't react fast enough to catch him.

"Suh," he said, face down in the leaves. "Suh."

I knelt quickly and turned him over. Already, the left half of his face was dead. The Explorer paramedic course had talked about this, but it had just been words: Loss of control over one side of the body… a telltale symptom of stroke. But now it wasn't a symptom, it was something that had happened to someone sprawled in my arms.

The right half of the face still had Chee in it. The left half was empty — unoccupied flesh, controlled by nothing but gravity.

"Suh," he said urgently. His right hand grabbed my arm. "Suh!"

Last Wishes

"Admiral," I told him, "try to be calm. I might have something in the first aid kit—"

He slapped his palm over my mouth… a fumbling clumsy swipe that would have hurt if he'd had any strength left. "Suh!" he shouted. "Suuuuh!"

I leaned back, just far enough to dislodge his hand. It fell limply across his chest. "Admiral Chee," I said with choked self-control, "you have had a stroke. It has affected your left side, so it probably happened in the right lobe of your brain. Most people have their speech nodes predominantly in the other lobe, so there's a good chance you can still speak if you relax." I didn't know if that was true, but I said it anyway. "Imagine you're speaking with the right half of your mouth. Maybe that will help you focus."

"Suhhhh… suuuhhh…" He pursed his lips with great effort, then tried again. "Suhhhhh…"

"Something about the sun?" I asked. "Sand? Soil? You're sorry?"

His hand flopped across my mouth again. If he hadn't done it, I would have stopped myself in another word or two. This was not the time for guessing games. The man had suffered a stroke thirty light-years from the nearest med-center. That was bad enough; but this was the start of YouthBoost meltdown — it would only get worse. And what could I do about it? Grab my scalpel and see if I could make it two-for-two?

"Suhhhh…"

He lifted his hand to point. For a moment, it aimed toward the ravine — south. Was that it? But then his whole arm spasmed and pointed the other way: toward the lake.

The lake? Or did his confused brain think it was the sea?

"The sea?" I said. "Is that it? Do you want to be buried at sea?"

His whole body sagged. I couldn't tell if he was relaxing because he'd got his message across or collapsing because his strength had ran out. His grip on my arm went slack, and he sank back into the leaves.

One leaf drifted over his face, covering his nose and eyes. He didn't even twitch.

More Expendability

It took Chee another hour to die.

I sat with him, his head cradled in my lap as I stroked his hair with my hand. His eyes fluttered open now and then, but I don't think he was really seeing anymore. Occasionally he would grimace and grunt; then his face would relax once more into apparent calm.

From time to time, I used the Bumbler to check his vital signs. Eventually, the readings came up negative. No heartbeat. No EM activity in the brain.

As planet-down deaths go, it was more gentle than any Explorer expected.

More gentle than Yarrun.

To take my mind off that, I asked myself why it had been so important for him to be buried at sea… if that really was what he wanted. I knew some religions believed strongly in the practice — the Last Baptism, they called it, a return to the mother of us all. Did Chee belong to one of those faiths? Or had he perhaps come from a waterworld, an oceandome, a sargasso habitat… some birthplace near the sea, that would now gather him home?

I never found out.

I never found out.

I never learned why he had asked to be buried at sea… or if he had been trying to say something entirely different, and had died in frustration at not being understood.

For a while, I continued stroking his hair. "That's what 'expendable' means," I whispered, over and over again.

Then I began dragging his body toward the lake.

Moons

I stood at the edge of the bluffs and looked down at the water. The sky was clear and perforated with stars; to the southeast, a large white moon hung a hand's breadth above the horizon.

The moon was the color of Old Earth's moon. Ancient and melancholy.

I liked white moons — they had a subduing effect on their planets. When a world has a red moon in the sky, nights tend to be desperate… you're fighting angry, or you scramble for someone, anyone, to lie sweat-slick entangled with you, till the morning comes and you're exhausted enough to sleep. Greenish moons can make you happy on the right day in spring, but any other time they look fetid and sickly; when a planet's dominant moon is green, the people are whiners, filled with petty resentments. As for blue moons…

Blue moons are rare for populated worlds. The only one I'd ever seen loomed in the skies over Sitz, the planet where all cadet Explorers got sent for inoculations that everyone knew were pointless. To avoid reactions with the shots, you had to abstain from all other medications… which meant that my memories of Sitz were centered on fierce menstrual cramps, unaided by the usual swatch. I passed my single night on Sitz huddled on the floor of the cadet hostel, staring at the bluish glow in the sky and outraged that something so mundane could hurt so much.