James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 07

James Alan Gardner

Radiant

To Bill and Veronica

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thanks to the usual people: Linda Carson, Richard Curtis, Jennifer Brehl, and Diana Gill. Every writer

needs good feedback, and yours has always been great.

Some readers may ask, "Why all the Buddhism? Are you preaching something?" Not at all. First, you'll

see there are schemes afoot in the League of Peoples that are deliberately exploiting differences between

Eastern and Western viewpoints. (Yes, that's vague but I don't want to give too much away.) Second, I

thought it would be fun to confront Festina with a sort of mirror opposite, and "opposite" includes an

opposing philosophical outlook. Third, I'm tired of melting-pot futures where all the cultural differences of

our present day have been homogenized into some lukewarm vanilla snooze. As far as I can see, the

future will continue to contain Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Neo-Pagans, agnostics, atheists,

etc., as well as people who invent new belief systems, people who don't think about religion at all, and

people who try to change the subject when conversation turns toward uncomfortable topics.

I'd like the League of Peoples books to reflect that multiplicity. Each story in the series shows a different

slice of the universe by presenting a particular character's "take" on what's happening. All of the narrators

are biased and fallible... but by showing the world from many different viewpoints, I hope to give readers

a more varied, better rounded view of a complex future.

One last note: the narrator defines a number of Buddhist terms throughout the text. Most either come

from Sanskrit or Pali, two languages used in the Buddha's day. Loosely speaking, Sanskrit was Northern

India's "highbrow" language while Pali was a related language used by the common people (rather like the

relationship between Latin and Italian). The Buddha generally used Pali because he wanted to be

understood by the masses. However, the Sanskrit versions are often more familiar to English speakers

(e.g., the Sanskrit "karma" as opposed to the Pali "kamma"). My narrator follows the fairly common

practice of using Sanskrit for words that have already become part of English (karma, dharma), but Pali

for less familiar terms.

CHAPTER 1

Anicca [Pali]: Impermanence. The principle that all things change over time and nothing lasts forever.

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Seven days after I was born, my mother named me "Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl."

Such birth names were common on my homeworld—a planet called Anicca, first colonized by Earthlings

of Bamar extraction. Wisewomen swore if you gave your babies unpleasant names, demons would leave

the children alone. In Bamar folktales, demons were always gullible; a name like "Ugly Screaming

Stink-Girl" would fool them into thinking the baby was so flawed and worthless, there was no point

hurting her. Why bother making her sick or nudging her in front of a speeding skimmer? She was already

an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl.

Years later, when I'd learned the proper chants to protect against demons, I was allowed to choose a

new name. It happened during the spring festival: girls and boys, nine years old, giggled with their first

taste of adulthood as they officially discarded their baby names. We wrote our awful old names on bright

red pieces of paper, then threw the papers into a ceremonial fire.

Bye-bye, Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl. Unless, of course, the name stayed stuck in everyone's mind.

Most of the other nine-year-olds immediately announced what new names they were taking. Only a few

of us couldn't decide. We tried a succession of different names, switching every few days: trying this,

trying that, until we found one that made everyone forget we'd ever been called anything else.

Or until we realized we'd always be Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl, and it was time to stop pretending

otherwise. Just pick a name at random and stick with it.

I picked the name Youn Suu. Simple, meaningless, easy to pronounce: like Yune Sue. But it was a label

of convenience, nothing more. Like wearing a particular shirt, not because it was comfortable or

good-looking, but because it didn't have obvious rips or stains. I didn't feel like a Youn Suu, but I didn't

feel like anyone else either. Just a barefoot girl, anonymous.

Part of me still fantasized I'd find agood name—a name that wasme —but I tried not to think such

thoughts. The Buddha taught that wishful fixations were "unskillful." Wise people lived life as it was, rather

than frittering away their energies on pointless daydreams. My actions counted; my name didn't.

So I became Youn Suu.

Until I left Anicca, people called meMa Youn Suu... "Ma" being the polite form of address for an

undistinguished young female. Women of high prestige and venerable old grannies warranted a better title:

the honorific "Daw." But I was sure I'd never be Daw Youn Suu. I'd never win prestige, and I wouldn't

live long enough to become venerable. I'd die young and unimportant, because by the age of nineteen my

full name had become Explorer Third Class Ma Youn Suu of the Technocracy's Outward Fleet.

At least, that's what it said on the ID chip burned into the base of my spine. In my heart, I was still Ugly

Screaming Stink-Girl.

My ugliness had a story. My life had no room for other stories—no "How I Won a Trophy" or "My First

Real Kiss"—because all my potential for stories came down to "Youn Suu Was Ugly, and Nothing Else

Mattered."

Like all stories, the tale of my ugliness had long roots. Longer than I'd been alive. The Bamar are a

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tropical people, originally from Old Earth's Southeast Asia. The British called our homeland "Burma,"

their version of our tribal name. Burma = the Bamar... even though the same region held hundreds of

non-Bamar cultures who raged at being left out of that equation.

But the story of Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl isn't about Old Earth history. It's about being beautiful.

Bamar skins are like burnished copper: red-brown protection against the sun. Even so, the searing

brilliance of equatorial noon could still damage our exposed skin. Bamar women therefore developed a

natural sunscreen from the bark of the thanaka tree—a paste that dried to yellow-white powder. It

prevented sunburn and kept skin cool. Even men wore thanaka sometimes, slathering their faces and

arms if they had to work in the fields on a blazing-hot day.

By the time my ancestors left Old Earth, science had created much better sunscreens; but that didn't

mean the end of thanaka. Thanaka was a symbol of our birth culture—our birthworld. On an alien planet

like Anicca, people clung to such symbols ferociously. Female Aniccans who didn't wear thanaka were

thought to be rejecting their Bamar heritage. They might even be trying to lookEuropean... which was

enough to get little girls slapped and grown women labeled as whores. On Anicca, decent girls and

women wore thanaka.

The makeup was brushed on in streaky patches thin enough that one's underlying skin showed through

the brushstrokes. A specific pattern of strokes was deemed "correct Anicca style": a single swipe of the

brush on each cheek, another swipe across the forehead, and a fine white line down the nose. Thicker

coatings all over the face might have provided more protection than localized daubs, but that would have

defeated thanaka'sother purpose. Thanaka makeup, shiny yellow-white on dark copper skin, was

excellent for catching the eyes of men.

Far be it from me to criticize my ancestors. But there's something askew in your priorities if you keep

your sunblock thin, risking serious burns, because a light dusting sets off your complexion better than an

effective full-face coat. On the other hand, women have done much more foolish things in the pursuit of

beauty than diluting their sunscreen and dabbing it on in dainty patches. Foot binding. Neck extension.

The surgical removal of ribs. Compared to our sisters in other places and times, women on Anicca were

paragons of restraint.

Even so: if a few pats of tree-bark powder hadn't become an indispensable element of beauty on my

homeworld, "Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl" would have been just a childhood nickname instead of a life

sentence.

Here's why. My mother was allergic to thanaka. She could never wear the tiniest beauty spot without

rashes and bloating. She tried a host of substitutes, but found fault with every one. My mother refused to

be satisfied—nothing but real thanaka was good enough. (Another of those fixations the Buddha called

"unskillful.")

So my mother went bare-faced and became a social outcast. Or so she told me years later. How can a

daughter know if her mother is telling the truth? Was my mother really treated badly for being different?

Or did she just blame the normal disappointments of life on the way she looked?

As a girl, I had no patience for Mother's tales of woe. She wearied everyone she knew, demanding

sympathy for the way her peers had ostracized her. At the age of fifteen, I finally had a frothing hysterical

fit, screaming, "People don't hate you because of your face. They hate the way you whine! Whine, whine,

whine, whine, whine. I hate it more than anyone. And I hate you. As if you knowanything about being

ostracized!"

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I was more emotional back then. Subject to outbursts.

Now I've got past the rage. I've changed. But I'll get to that. At the moment, I'm explaining about my

mother.

She thought her lack of thanaka had ruined her life. And before I was born, or even conceived, she

decided to create a corrected version of herself, a daughter who would be beloved and popular, never

suffering social rejection.

My mother found a man reputed to be an expert gene-splicer... even though human-engineering was

illegal on my home planet and every other planet in the Technocracy. For a fistful of rubies (passed down

as a sacred inheritance through ten generations and never touched until my mother spent them all), this

DNA doctor promised to produce a perfect daughter who was smart, fit, and beautiful. Extremely

beautiful. In particular, she would have vividpermanent thanaka-like beauty patches on her cheeks,

forehead, and nose.

You can see where this is going, can't you? But my mother couldn't. For a woman who claimed to know

suffering, she'd never learned much about the universe's love of irony.

It's no challenge to create a baby who's intelligent, robust, and exquisite. The technology is well

established. Building better babies has always been the driving force behind bioengineering, even if

proponents pretend otherwise. Since the earliest days of gene-splicing, scientists have muttered about

"improving agricultural stock" or "facilitating medical research," but those are just side issues. The primary

target was and is the production of superbabies; any other result is a lucky offshoot. Never mind that

manufacturing überchildren has been banned for five hundred years. Laws or no laws, money continues

to change hands to create gifted progeny who'll outshine their peers. DNA technicians have all the

equipment and expertise needed to produce smart, athletic, attractive offspring...

...provided one keeps to conventional notions of brainpower, fitness, and beauty. That's what the black

market does well. If, on the other hand, you make a special order—such as yellow-white streaks in

specific regions of a little girl's face—then the gene-engineers have to improvise.

They have to try untested genes and histones. They have to wing it.

Therefore:

I was born adequately bright. In the ninety-ninth percentile of human intelligence.

I was born an adequate physical specimen. Small but strong. Thin but not scrawny. By my teen years, I

excelled at five forms of solo dance. I even performed, to great acclaim... at least in Anicca's yein pwe

dances, where all the dancers wore masks.

I had to wear a mask because I wasnot born adequately beautiful. My hair was black and lustrous, my

skin resembled feather-soft silk, and my body had tastefully generous curves. But I was still an Ugly

Screaming Stink-Girl.

Sometime before birth, the yellow-white pigments intended to adorn my face congealed into a single

palm-sized blob glaring from my left cheek. A leprous puckered livid spongelike weeping mass of tissue.

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Mostly, it wept a thin, oily ooze. If I told gawking strangers the fluid was just sweat, they said they

believed me. But itwasn't sweat. I obsessively studied biochemistry till I could determine the fluid's exact

chemical composition... then obsessively fell into the habit of listing those chemicals under my breath,

reciting their names like a chant that could drive away demons. (I'd recite them for you now, but I've

given up being neurotic.)

The fluid from my cheek stank of gangrenous pus. At least it did to me. Others assured me they couldn't

smell a thing, so perhaps I just imagined the stench. A psychosomatic olfactory delusion. It's possible.

It's also possible people were lying when they said there was no putrid reek of necrosis. I accused them

of that many times, shrieking, "Admit it, admit it, admit it!"

As I've said, I was more emotional back then. Subject to outbursts.

Occasionally, when I was under stress or drank too much caffeine, my cheek wept blood. I still told

people the fluid was sweat; then I glared, daring anyone to contradict me.

Few did.

Inevitably, my face drew the attention of the Explorer Corps. Explorers are "brave

volunteers"—draftees—whom the navy sends into unknown situations. Or into known situations that are

too damned dangerous for unblemished personnel.

Explorers are expendable. If someone has to die, let it be an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl. Otherwise,

there might be repercussions. Measurable drops in morale and productivity.

In Explorer Academy, we were forced to read studies that showed just how badly navy personnel

reacted to the death of normal or attractive-looking crew members. Performance ratings plummeted;

clinical depression became rampant; people on duty made serious mistakes from shock and grief. Why?

Because modern society resembles a character from Bamar sacred stories... a young prince named

Gotama. The prince was brought up by his royal father in a luxurious pleasure palace where he was kept

unaware of old age, disease, and death. He grew up knowing only the joys of his harem, and parties and

feasts and games. But the gods refused to let Gotama waste his life in superficialities. Through trickery,

they showed him the ugly truths his father had concealed. When Gotama finally learned that the world

had a dark side, he was devastated—affected so deeply that the experience set him on the road to

enlightenment. Prince Gotama became a Buddha:our Buddha, the most recent in a long line of

Awakened teachers who've pointed the way to wisdom.

But normal Technocracy citizens aren't ready for Buddhahood. They're not emotionally equipped to

leave the pleasure palace. When confronted with anything that suggests their own mortality, they don't get

stronger—they crumple.

They've never learned to live with untimely death. How could they? Old age has been alleviated by

YouthBoost treatments. Disease can almost always be cured. As for fatal accidents, they're virtually

nonexistent thanks to the League of Peoples. The League, headed by aliens billions of years more

advanced thanHomo sapiens, regards willful negligence as equivalent to deliberate homicide; and the

League never hesitates to punish those responsible. If, for example, a corporate executive approves the

design for a vehicle, or a body implant, or a nanopesticide that hasn't been sufficiently tested for

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safety—sufficient to satisfy the League, not just human inspectors—the negligent executive will be

exterminated the next time he or she enters interstellar space. It doesn't matter if the productis safe; failing

to test it thoroughly shows callous indifference toward the lives of others. Therefore, the League

considers the culprit a "dangerous nonsentient creature"... and the League instantly kills any dangerous

nonsentients attempting to leave their home star systems. There's no escape, no appeal, and no sentence

but summary execution.

One has to admit it's an elegant way to keep lesser beings in check. The League doesn't directly govern

humankind or the other alien species at our level of development. The League has no courts, no

bureaucracies; it doesn't tell us what we should or shouldn't do. It simply kills anyone who isn't sufficiently

considerate of sentient life. The onus falls on us to intuit what the League will accept. We receive no hints

or guidelines—we just get killed when we don't do our best.

Which means every commercial product in the Technocracy is as safe as imperfect humans can make it.

Also that human communities are built with the finest possible protections against fires, floods, etc. And

that police forces are provided with all the facilities they need in order to apprehend criminals who might

otherwise jeopardize innocent victims.

So, like Prince Gotama, people of the Technocracy are shielded from life's cruel grind-wheel. The only

exceptions are the few men and women whose duties take them outside the pleasure palace, to places

that haven't been "sanitized."

Men and women who land on unexplored planets.

Men and women called Explorers.

The navy's Explorer Corps takes in freaks from every corner of the Technocracy. People who can die

and not be missed. People whose messy demise won't paralyze ship operations, or make normal-looking

personnel think, "Someday I too will suffer and die."

Because if the person who dies has a weeping reeking cheek, those inside the pleasure palace are less

likely to identify with the victim. When an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl gets killed, the death won't affect

real people's performance. Why should it? She wasn't quite... quite. And the news services won't report

her decease to the world at large, because then they'd have to publish her picture.

Nothing hurts a newswire's circulation figures like pictures of Explorers.

At least that's what we were told in school. Even back then, I wondered if there might be more to it: if

perhaps somebody in the back rooms of government or elsewhere recognized that the Technocracy's

pleasure palace culture was a dead end. Prince Gotama couldn't achieve his potential until he walked

away from his harem and feasts.

Could it be the Explorer Corps was intended to follow Gotama's example? That we'd been sent down

our difficult path because we alone were worthy? Or that the corps had been created for some

as-yet-unrevealed purpose, and the popular belief that "ugly deaths don't hurt morale" was simply a

cover-up for the truth?

The pampered mobs in the pleasure palace were too weak to become wise. Only those marked by

adversity—running sores, deformed jaws, bulging eyes, angry birthmarks—had the strength to become

fully free. Perhaps the Explorer Corps had been created so there'd always be a few of us who weren't

sedate cattle. Perhaps some unknown bureaucrat, blessed with the stirrings of enlightenment, was offering

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Explorers the chance to Awaken.

Or was that wishful thinking? Given the stupidity displayed by people in power, why should I believe

secret wisdom was at work? More likely, the Explorer Corps resulted from age-old hatreds against

those who looked different, disguised as a branch of the navy because the League didn't allow the

outright slaughter of pariahs.

Or perhaps it was the ultimate deterrent to discourage bioengineering: don't gene-splice your children, or

we'll force them to become Explorers.

CHAPTER 2

Klesha [Sanskrit]: Poison. Used to describe any mental attitude that leads to disruptive fixations.

I graduated from the Explorer Academy four days after I turned nineteen. A week later, I was assigned

to the frigatePistachio. The name made me laugh when I heard it; but tradition dictated that all vessels in

the Outward Fleet be named after Old Earth trees, and only big ships got majestic titles likeIron-wood or

Sequoia. Little ships like ours (a crew of thirty-five plus a handful of cadets-in-training) had to settle for

names of less grandeur... and just be thankful we weren'tSassafras, Kumquat, orGum.

For two months after my arrival, I did nothing except "button-polishing"—the mundane chores required

to keep my equipment in top condition.Pistachio didn't have anything else for me to do. Explorers on a

starship filled the same niche as marines on old seagoing boats: while the regular crew ran the ship, we

did whatever else was necessary. Landing on hostile planets. Boarding civilian craft suspected of

breaking safety regulations. Helping to evacuate vessels in distress.

ButPistachio never had any such missions. We were just a utility ship, running straightforward errands in

the tamest regions of space—mostly transporting personnel and materials.Pistachio's uninspiring work

never demanded an Explorer's specialized skills. Therefore, I idled away my days like a firefighter in

monsoon season, filling the time with preventive maintenance: inspecting the tightsuits we'd use for

landings, calibrating my Bumbler (an all-purpose scanning/analysis device), checking the charge in my

stun-pistol, and generally inventing work to keep myself from self-destructive boredom.

Despite years of rejection and being an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl, I was still "unskillful" at finding things

to do on my own. In the Academy, I'd had classwork every waking moment. I'd also had fellow students

who knew how it felt to watch pleasure-palace people reel away from you in disgust. OnPistachio,

however, I'd entered a social vacuum with no friends and no pressing duties. No mother to fight with. No

coping skills.

I thought I would die from loneliness—not the sharp, aching kind but the dull, ongoing blur. It can feel

like fatigue that never goes away; it can feel like dissatisfaction with everything around you; it can even

feel like lust, as you lie alone in the dark and pretend someone else is there.

But it's loneliness. Deep, helpless, hopeless.

I tried to clear my head with meditation, but never managed more than half an hour at a sitting. Not

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nearly enough to ease my restlessness. If I'd been back home, I'd have asked a spiritual master what I

was doing wrong... but no one onPistachio could help me, and I certainly couldn't help myself.

I found myself prowling the ship corridors at night, hoping something would happen. The engines

exploding. Falling in love. Having a mystic vision. Getting a nice piece of mail.

Now and then, I contemplated becoming a drunk or nymphomaniac. Wasn't it traditional for bored,

lonely people to plunge into petty vice? But that was more Western than Eastern; when Bamars went

stir-crazy, they usually shaved their heads, stopped bathing, and starved themselves into oblivion. Which

I might have done, except that head-shaving, etc. were favorite tricks of my mother when she wasn't

getting enough attention. I swore I wouldn't go that route.

For a while, I tried to exhaust myself dancing: in my cabin, in the Explorer equipment rooms, in the

corridors when I was alone. But every place onPistachio felt cramped, except a few big areas like the

transport bay, which always had people around. I couldn't bring myself to dance with regular crew

members watching. Anyway, I hadn't danced much since I'd entered the Explorer Academy. My ballet

was rusty, my flamenco lacked rhythm, my yein pwe had no grace, my derv just made me dizzy, and my

freestyle... every time I started something loose and sinewy I ended up as tight as wire—stamping my

feet and shedding hot tears, though I couldn't say what I was crying about.

Maybe I cried because I'd lost the flow. Once upon a time, I'd had the potential to be a dancer. Now

I'd never be anything but an Explorer.

So in the end, like most Explorers, I took up a hobby. My choice was sculpture. Making figurines out of

clay, wire, copper leaf, and the small industrial-grade gems thatPistachio's synthesizer system could

produce. I found myself constructing male and female "Gotamas": princes and princesses trapped in

ornate palaces that resembled Fabergé eggs. I molded expressions of horror on my Gotamas' faces as

they looked through windows in their eggs and caught their first glimpses of the world outside.

After a while, I found myself spending so much time on art that I skimped on bathing and eating. I didn't

shave my hair off, though—just cut it short to keep it out of my eyes.

I said I had no friends. That was true. I did, however, have a partner: a fellow Explorer. Unfortunately,

he was insane.

He was a lanky loose-limbed twenty-four-year-old beanpole who called himself Tut: short for King

Tutankhamen, whom Tut resembled. More specifically, he resembled Tutankhamen's funerary mask. Tut

had somehow got his face permanently plated with a flexible gold alloy at the age of sixteen.

Before being metallized, he'd lived with a facial disfigurement as severe as my own. He wouldn't

describe the exact nature of his problem, but once he told me, "Hey, Mom"—he always called me

"Mom" because I'd introduced myself as Ma Youn Suu and "Ma" was the only syllable that stuck in Tut's

brain—"Hey, Mom, I decided I'd rather soak my face in molten metal than stay the way I was. Paint

your own picture."

I doubted that Tut had truly immersed his face in liquid gold (melting point 1063°C), but I couldn't rule it

out. He was one of those rare individuals—always perfectly lucid, yet thoroughly out of his mind. If Tut

had found himself in the same room as a vat of molten gold, he might well take one look at the bubbling

metal, and think, "I could stick my face in that." Two seconds later, he'd be ears deep in yellow magma.

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That was the way Tut's brain worked. Odd notions struck him several times a minute, and he couldn't

judge whether those notions were merely unusual or utterly deranged. For example, he was obsessed

with keeping the gold on his face "shiny-finey clean," so he constantly experimented with different kinds

of polish—not just the usual oils and waxes, but also materials like ketchup, the ooze from my cheek,

pureed mushrooms in hot chocolate, and his own semen. Once while we were talking in my cabin, he

began going through my things, trying every garment I owned to see how well it buffed up his

complexion... all while we were discussing a complicated technical bulletin on new procedures for taking

alien soil samples. Every now and then, after he'd finished rubbing his metal forehead with my panties or

the toe of my ballet shoe, he'd turn from the mirror and ask, "What do you think? Shiny-finey?" I'd say I

couldn't see any difference, he'd nod, and we'd go back to debating the niceties of separating

extraterrestrial worms from extraterrestrial loam.

In Tut's defense I'll admit he was a skilled Explorer. He'd graduated from the Academy five years before

I had, and his grades had been excellent. He'd even won an award in microbiology, his field of

specialization. (My specialization was biochem... a natural choice after all the hours I'd spent analyzing

the fluid from my cheek.)

Tut was the sort to throw himself unreservedly into whatever he chose to do. He was a quick learner

and possessed a high degree of patience—anobsessive degree of patience. I never had cause to criticize

his handling of equipment or his knowledge of operating procedures.

But Tut was as mad as a mongoose. Not violently so—since he was still alive after five years in space,

the League of Peoples obviously didn't consider him a threat to others. I often enjoyed his company, and

found him helpful as a mentor: he'd had five years' on-the-job experience, and he taught me many things

my academic training hadn't covered.

But none of that mattered. How could I trust a lunatic in life-or-death situations? Why was Tut on active

duty when anyone could see he wasnon compos mentis?

I asked him that once. Tut just laughed. "They don't need us sane, Mom. They just need us ready to

bleed." He chucked his finger under my chin like a fond uncle amused by his young niece. "If they

rejected head cases, Mom, you wouldn't be here either."

I was so affronted by his insinuation I stormed out of the room, stomped back to my cabin, and made

thirteen statues of little gold-faced men being disemboweled by tiger-headed demons. When I showed

Tut the results, he said, "Shiny-finey! Could I eat one?" I told him no, but later I noticed my favorite

demon was missing.

Two months and fifty-four statuettes later, we finally received a distress call.

At the time,Pistachio was transporting twelve dignitaries to the planet Cashleen: six officers from the

navy's Diplomatic Corps and six civilian envoys from the Technocracy's Bureau of Foreign Affairs. Since

Tut and I had no immediate duties, we always got assigned to play host for any honored guests who

came aboard... but this particular group of VIPs took one look at my face and instantly became

self-sufficient. My cheek had the wondrous power to make the mighty say, "No, no, I can do my own

laundry."

So I'd had little contact with the diplomats on that flight. I didn't even know what their mission was.

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However, Cashleen was the homeworld of the Cashling race—longtime allies of the Technocracy—so I

assumed this was just the routine diplomacy that goes on between friendly powers.

The team of envoys certainly didn't behave as if their trip was important. Instead of preparing for the

work ahead, they spent most the voyage getting drunk and trying to seduce the better-looking members

ofPistachio's crew. For the entire week of the flight, Tut never went to bed alone. He told me, "Hey,

Mom, everyone loves to lick gold. Did you think it was just on my face?" I consoled myself with the

observation that people might be eager to sleep with him once, but nobody did it a second time.

I'd never slept with Tut myself. I'd never slept with anyone. An honest-to-goodness virgin. Not literally,

of course—I'd manually ruptured my maidenhead within twenty-four hours of learning what it was...

mostly to spite my mother, who'd given me an infuriating lecture on remaining intact. Only afterward did I

stop to think:Yes, I've done it, but how will my mother know? Any "discovery scenario" I could

imagine made me nauseated. Later on, I found that the thought of sex made me nauseated too. How

could anyone want to do that with somebody who looked like me? Pity? Depravity? A lust so intense it

didn't give a damn what it fucked? I couldn't conceive of a single acceptable reason why someone would

sleep with me, so I fled every situation where the possibility might arise.

I was in my cabin, gouging a little hole in a Princess Gotama's cheek so I could plant a pearl there, when

the message buzzer sounded from my desk. Most likely, I thought, the diplomats wanted me to fetch

another case of Divian champagne. They never wanted to see me in person, but they were quick to ask

for booze to be left outside their doors. Without looking up, I said, "What is it now?"

The ship-soul's metallic voice spoke from the ceiling. "Explorer Youn Suu. Captain Cohen requests your

presence on the bridge. Immediately."

I nearly threw my figurine across the room. "Is there a response code?" I asked as I rushed to the door.

"No." Which meant the captain hadn't yet decided how to resolve the impending crisis. I had no doubt

therewas a crisis—not just because I'd been called to the bridge "immediately" but because the call came

straight from the captain to me.

I was a wet-behind-the-ears Explorer Third Class. Tut was not only more experienced than I, but he

outranked me: as an Explorer Second Class, he was my superior officer. Protocol demanded that the

captain address all Explorer matters to Tut, who would then bring me in if he chose. Going over Tut's

head to call me directly meant the captain thought the situation was so serious it couldn't be left to a

madman.

(Cohen knew Tut was crazy. Everybody knew. They just pretended otherwise until their backs were to

the wall.)

Pistachio'sbridge was small, made smaller by two diplomats who filled the space with bustling

self-importance. One was a woman no older than I. Black skin, no hair, scalp bleached paper white and

covered with complex abstract tattoos in royal purple. With flawless skin and bone structure, she was

almost certainly a test-tube baby like me... but from the boutique end of the black market. Tall. Strong.

Amazonian. Beautifully proportioned, but with muscles like a giant panther. She wore the gold uniform of

a commander in the navy's Diplomatic Corps, plus three nonregulation diamond-stud pierce-bars

mounting the bridge of her nose—a perfect example of the privileged thoroughbreds who pranced their

way through the Outward Fleet's DipCor. For centuries, our military diplomats had made themselves rich

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James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 07 - Radiant

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