Most of the Abornie approached her with fear, lightly shielded animosity, and only when it was an absolute necessity. They were afraid of her, and they just flat and simple didn't like her. Which was probably just as well, because RJ had decided that she loathed them.
The Abornie loved Topaz and Levits, using any excuse to be near them, and avoided her—and therefore Poley—like the plague.
But then Topaz and Levits did nothing but praise and encourage them, while RJ gladly told them they were all worthless screw-ups, not worth the air they breathed.
RJ worked on her newest project and thought with a wry smile that it was rather like children with a strict parent and a lenient one.
The more lenient parent gives unconditional love and never demands anything from the child, praises the child on every small accomplishment, doctors their wounds without questioning how they got them, and rationalizes their shortcomings. The strict parent shows their love by trying to mold the child into a responsible and complete person, by setting necessary boundaries and demanding a certain amount of responsibility from the child for their own actions. The strict parent tells the child the unhappy truths the child doesn't want to hear, orders them to complete tasks they don't want to do, and punishes them when they screw up.
This was the role RJ had unwittingly taken on, the big difference being that she really didn't even care about the Abornie. Her only reason for getting involved with them at all was that she liked the planet, and didn't want them to screw it up again.
Although she had begun to believe that the planet's genetically engineered plant life wouldn't allow it to be destroyed. The plants were resilient, there was no doubt about that. You could cut a tree down, even pull it up, and within a week there would be a sapling in the spot. Give it six months and it was a full-sized tree again.
She had done extensive experiments, just tinkering around to see exactly how resilient the plant life was. She moved them into the ship into artificial light. At first they went through a little shock, and for about a week it looked like they weren't going to do as well as they did with real sunlight. Then they adapted, and you couldn't tell any difference between them and the plants growing outside.
On the planet's surface it rained an average of three times a week, so she tried removing them from water. After about a week they started to wilt. At the end of two they started to look really bad. But at the end of three weeks, the plants actually started to perk up again. What she found after running several years of experiments was that the plants could adapt to damn near anything and thrive.
They could resist temperatures as high as a hundred and fifty degrees, and as low as twelve degrees and still flourish. Above or below that range they went dormant, but the minute you lowered or raised the temperature they came right back again.
If forced, they could go as long as three months without water; after that they would again enter a dormant stage. But the minute water hit them they grew again. They would come back even after two years without water, but after that, some never recovered. They had an uncanny ability to adapt to almost anything you threw their way, so it would be hard, but not impossible, for the Abornie to trash out Frionia again.
RJ would let Topaz and Levits indulge the Abornie just so long, and then she would step in and do what was necessary to keep them from wiping themselves and the planet out, try to teach them some real values.
Of course since Topaz, and especially Levits, made it very clear that they just felt she was being over careful and mean, the Abornie mostly snuck around behind her back and did as they damn well pleased.
Just like a kid with a strict parent and a lenient one.
Over the years she had mostly given up. Maybe it showed a flaw in her personality that she couldn't even make herself care what happened to them. The one positive thing contact with the Abornie had done for RJ was to make her appreciate the human race a whole lot more.
The Abornie had a life expectancy of two hundred and fifty Earth years. For the first two hundred and twenty-five years they were usually completely ambulatory. They had all their health and all their senses, and it was only after two hundred and twenty-five years that their health started to fade at all.
Humans, even in the Reliance where medicine was highly advanced, only had an average life expectancy of a hundred years, and the last twenty of that was usually spent just trying to stay alive. Humans had short lives; they spent most of their short lives just trying to figure out what it was all about. About the time they finally figured it out it was way too late to enjoy it. If the Reliance had ever let you enjoy anything at all.
If humans had been given the life expectancy of an Abornie, there was no telling how they might have advanced and grown as a people. It is quite possible that the wisdom that humans would have gained from such long lives would have made it impossible for the Reliance or anything like it to have ever taken over.
But the Abornie wasted this gift. The only lesson they ever seemed to learn was that having more, and doing less to have more, was what it was all about. Even the equal sharing of chores she had noticed when she first observed them—that she had thought at the time showed how advanced they were—had turned out not to be an overriding air of fairness at all. Instead, it was a direct result of their absolute childishness, and she didn't mean in the good sense. If one Abornie sat down for whatever reason, they all sat down, because why should one Abornie do anything if even one other Abornie is not doing anything? If they hadn't gotten over this, they no doubt would have starved out. The Abornie picked leaders based solely on popularity and argued about everything. Getting them to actually work together was like pulling teeth. The only thing any of them seemed to have the smallest bit of talent for was spending copious amounts of time trying to figure out the easiest way to do something. For this reason, anything they were doing always took five times as long as if they had just done it in the first place.
They were the proof that breeding would tell, that environment could only effectively combat breeding if you changed someone's environment completely. Their ancestors had been a bunch of egg-headed scientists who had probably never shed a drop of sweat in their lives. To add insult to injury, these were people so selfish that they valued their own lives above that of their fellow beings.
To find out exactly what caliber of people had gone into the bunkers you only had to ask yourself a few simple questions. Would you want to live on a dead world? Do you think you deserve to live more than your family, your friends, your neighbors, or even the guy who runs the corner market? Could you really stand being alive knowing that by taking a place in the bunker you had ensured someone else's demise? How vain do you have to be to think you deserve to be the future of a race's gene pool?
RJ had read everything she could find on the planet to read in the years she had been here, and the utter and complete selfishness of the Abornie's ancestors was abhorrent. It seemed that there had actually been room for hundreds of thousands more people in the bunkers, and enough supplies to sustain them. But the scientists, doctors and politicians had decided that they had no idea how long the "winter" would last, and that they were better off keeping their numbers to a bare minimum to ensure their own personal survival. Some of the occupants of the bunkers had actually decided to go to the bunkers while leaving their entire family on the surface to die. They had written what she was sure they thought were heart-rending accounts of how they'd been forced to go below and leave their loved ones to die. How hard the decision had been for them. RJ wasn't buying any of it. Their family, friends, homes, pets, everything would be destroyed, they knew it, and they chose to save their own asses.
The Abornie were the descendants of people who thought it showed great courage that they were willing to go below and leave everyone else to die to save their race. They'd had ice water for blood.
Even their on-going feud with the Ocupods had been their own damn fault. They had realized early on—because though they were selfish and self-centered, they were also incredibly intelligent—that the Ocupods attacked them only when they tried to use any kind of machinery, electricity, or basically any form of technology. But they just kept trying anyway, until the Ocupods eventually ran them out of the ruins where they had been living and into the jungles. Even then they kept trying, even though it had caused the death of many of their people, because they just wanted to have it all. They knew that technology existed, and they were willing to sacrifice lives—as long as it wasn't theirs, and no one ever thinks it's going to be them—just to have simpler lives.
Because they were just that incredibly lazy.
How much easier did they actually need it? The planet was always a balmy sixty to eighty degrees, they had lots of clean water, and food was everywhere. They could have just hung out and survived, but that wasn't good enough.
Assholes! The Abornie were, plain and simple, the largest group of assholes she'd ever encountered. She could find absolutely nothing redeemable about them as a whole.
Topaz and Levits kept treating them like hapless natives who had been forced into a horrible existence by cowardly, genetically engineered freaks. They guided them and were patient with their squabbling and bickering to an almost disgusting degree.
All RJ saw when she looked at them at all were worthless hunks of humanoids walking around hell-bent on having whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it, with no thought at all to the future, or each other, or the planet.
She didn't mince words when she bothered to talk to them at all. She told them just how she felt about them. Whenever she saw or heard them doing something she considered to be the next step to riding a rail into hell, she spared no feelings and no words telling them how stupid and short-sighted they were.
So, for the most part, the Abornie avoided her like a plague.
Except for Alan. From the time he'd been a tiny toddler, Alan had done everything in his power to be close to her and Poley. It was as if he'd figured out, almost fresh from the womb, that the Abornie were all assholes, and wanted to be as far away from them as possible. That place just turned out to be anyplace that Poley and RJ were. The fact that the child had hung around them all day, every day, from early in the morning till late in the evening, sometimes even spending the night on the ship from the time he was about three, and they didn't even know who his parents were, more or less told the whole story about Abornie parenting skills.
As a race they were lousy parents, no doubt because they lacked the capacity to care for anything as much as they cared for themselves. Of course, these lousy parenting skills had kept their numbers low and might just ensure the future of the planet.
Alan was highly intelligent and very good humored. He liked to play practical jokes on them, though most of them failed from the beginning because he couldn't quit smiling. She'd even caught him trying to mask his emotions from her, and doing it quite successfully, but he was still smiling, so his tricks just didn't quite work. Sometimes she pretended to fall for one of his gags just to humor him, but he always knew that she was.
By the time Alan was fourteen he had all but quit returning home. He had now been living with them almost constantly for ten years, and she still didn't know who his parents were. It was only at this point that RJ realized that one of the reasons he was so different from the others was that he had basically been raised by them, and not the Abornie. He had developed all the same facial expressions and speech patterns that they had. He even used their slang, and was practically bilingual, knowing at least as much Reliance as Levits had forgotten.
Alan moved forward to hold the piece of metal she was trying to weld into place, as always seeming to know what needed to be done without being told . . . Thus proving that he was nothing like the rest of his race. They would happily stand and watch you struggle with something and never offer to lift a finger to help. If you gave up and finally asked for their help, they would immediately start to argue over who was closer.
Again, like hateful children.
While Levits and Topaz had encouraged her in her gardening hobby, neither of them seemed to approve of her newest hobby, the reconstruction of two of the Ocupod "vehicles" so that she and Poley could get inside and operate them. It was a major undertaking, and they had to cannibalize one of the skiffs to accomplish the desired outcome. It would be well worth the effort and the lost skiff when they were through, though, and they were having a good time doing it. Six months ago when Levits had first seen what they were building in the hold area of the ship they all still lived in, he had been more than shocked. He'd been pissed off.
"Do you really hate them so much that you would bring their worst nightmare back to life?" he had said in outrage.
RJ hadn't missed a beat. "Oh, I hate them a lot, but this has nothing to do with them. I need something to do, and I've found something to keep me busy for awhile." She'd shrugged. "Scaring all hell out of your pets is only a happy little extra."
"They aren't animals, RJ . . ."
"We've had this argument before, and I have already said, way too many times to be happy to repeat it, that animals are more deserving of our nurturing and respect." She hadn't even bothered to look up at him from where she was working on the machine in question. She hadn't been able to really look at him lately. He was like some joke gone horribly wrong, a withered, bent caricature of the man who had been her friend, and whom she had once loved.
She had realized when she couldn't quite forgive him for the incident with the slaughtered Ocupod that she didn't feel the same way about him that she had Whitey, that it wasn't the same kind of love. When the years started to slam into him hard and heavy, when his body became a graph of the ravages of time and his constant complaining was no longer cute, she realized the honeymoon was over. Her desire for him had ended way before his had for her, and she had been greatly relieved on the day that he was no longer able to perform.
He had completely aligned himself to people who hated her, constantly choosing them over her until it had eroded most of what she had felt for him. However, there was still enough there to keep her on this world.
It wasn't a real problem. Time was as always on her side, he had meant so much to her once, and he did still love her. For his sake she had promised to keep her project confined to the ship, and he had seemed to be appeased.
"How long till you leave now?" Alan asked her. She didn't know why Poley had told the boy that the ship was fully operational, fueled, and ready to launch, and that they knew the way home, but he had. Alan hadn't told anyone else, which really showed how much he had aligned himself with them.
She thought of Levit's condition. "Not long now," she said.
The boy nodded sadly, no doubt because he'd be left in the land of the flaming assholes. She was very tempted to take him with them, but what sort of life would that be for him? He was better off with the idiots than being slung across the universe with the GSH, the robot, and the crazy old man. He had someplace where he belonged, even if his people were all morons. If he went with them, he'd be as out of place as they were here, and everywhere else.
"Don't worry, Alan, you will find new friends," Poley said, reading the boy's body language—a feat which never ceased to amaze RJ, given what Poley was.
"No I won't." The boy let go of the piece he'd been holding and stomped off, which wasn't really very helpful at all.
"You upset him," Poley said accusingly.
"Me? I didn't do anything." RJ said.
"I'm going to go check on him," Poley said, and left her there to work on her project alone.
"Great." RJ sighed as she tried to do what she'd been doing with his help by herself. It wasn't really working. "I really do think I preferred Poley when I gave orders and he followed them, no questions asked," she mumbled. She gave up trying to do the work herself, and walked over to get a cup of water off the workbench where she'd left it. She took a long swallow, then crawled up on the workbench to await Poley's return.
Her mind unwittingly turned to Levits and his condition. He was now eighty-seven years old and sick, sick with something very human. Cancer, Topaz said, and something far beyond their ability to cure. He was wasting away slowly. His friends from the village came in a steady stream, bringing him different foods they said were cures, not knowing they didn't work with his physiology. They visited with him and took turns bathing and dressing him. These people who had so much trouble doing anything for anyone but themselves were bending over backwards for him, which showed how much they actually cared for him.
And what had he actually done for them? He'd played with their children. Told them stories about Earth. Fished with them. Taught them how to build vehicles and helped govern them.
She'd been the one who won the war for them, thereby making all these things possible. Her they hated. They hated her because she was different, because she was stronger than they were, and because she expected them to act responsibly.
Levits was no threat, his rotting carcass proved that. She might at any minute rise up in her anger and smite them. She didn't age, and they all knew what she was capable of. If they had been smart, they would have been kissing her ass. After all, Levits was dying, and then the only one they'd have to protect them from her wrath would be Topaz. They didn't know she was leaving as soon as Levits died, and she preferred it that way. Let them all squirm.
Simple-minded, selfish, chicken shits, and he prefers them to me. He loves me, even now when he's laying there dying, and knows I can't really stand to be near him. But he thinks they are somehow worthier than me. Whitey understood me, and I thought Levits did, too. He did, till they turned him against me. Till he started to become more like one of them than one of us. They stole him from me, and that's the real reason I hate them so much.
RJ wasn't at all sure she was happy to have discovered this about herself. It seemed petty, and she didn't consider herself to be petty.
She had to make herself check on Levits every day, and every day she hoped that it would be the day when he'd have the pride and dignity to ask her to do what needed to be done. But he seemed to be happy to live in any state. Topaz had used a pain blocker so that Levits felt basically nothing. His food had to be puréed and fed to him through a straw. He shit and pissed himself on a regular basis. He could barely breathe, and was only coherent about six hours a day, but even in those rare moments he didn't ask for what she would have demanded in his position.
She didn't know if this made him incredibly brave or incredibly weak, she only knew that she'd be glad when it was over. When it would finally all be over and she could leave this beautiful, amazing world inhabited by the worst form of parasites.
RJ finally realized that quite a bit of time had passed and neither Poley nor Alan had returned, so she decided she'd better go check on them. They had gone towards the interior rooms, so she headed that way. She had barely entered the hallway when she heard a horrible screaming coming from Poley's room. The door was closed, so she kicked it open and jumped through, blaster in hand. She stopped, for the moment frozen by shock.
"Ah . . . I'm, ah . . ." She started laughing nervously, holstered her blaster, picked up the door and backed out, propping it in the doorway as she went. "Sorry, really sorry, boys."
She kept laughing as she walked away shaking her head. The universe had just become an even stranger place than it had been a few short minutes ago.
"So," RJ looked up at Poley as he walked into the hold, "where's Alan?"
Poley looked puzzled. "He said he was embarrassed that you saw what we were doing. He went to the garden to get something for dinner." He shrugged.
"Poley do you . . . Well, do you enjoy doing that with Alan?"
"He seems to enjoy it very much, and I find that gives me a certain excitement. He says I'm the best at it, but of course I would be, because I'm perfect."
"So you keep saying," RJ said and added under her breath, "to think all these years I thought the boy had a crush on me."
"No, Alan doesn't find females sexually pleasing," Poley said, having of course heard her.
"Well, obviously not," RJ laughed. "Poley, does Alan understand what you are?"
"I believe so. He says I'm gentle, handsome, gallant and very wise, and I am all of those things."
"You're also a robot, Poley."
"And you're a GSH. You weren't supposed to be able to have sex, but you can. I, on the other hand, was programmed to be fully sexually functional." He had an almost defensive tone in his voice.
She decided to let it drop. They'd be leaving soon, and then what would it matter if the boy had a warm memory of an encounter with something that wasn't actually flesh and blood?
She went to Levit's room as she did every day. They hadn't shared a room since he'd become impotent. He had contended that it was just too hard for him. She had thought if it was hard it wouldn't have been a real problem, and had hidden her joy at being able to distance herself from him without it having been her decision.
Today his breathing seemed even more labored than usual. She ignored the now ever-present smell of shit and disinfectant that seemed to permeate the room.
He was just lying there, wheezing and gasping and making horrible bowel sounds that he couldn't control. For a second she saw him in her mind's eyes, a happy memory of him young and beautiful and full of life, reminding her of why she had cared for him so much.
But the present slapped her in the face, even as the tears ran down her checks.
This was how it was supposed to be. How awful. She could learn from her mistakes and experiences and live to use the knowledge. If she ever died it would be in the middle of some horrible blast, it would be quick and clean. Yet this fragile, almost dead creature had once saved her life. He'd fought at her side, would have given his short life for her. He'd loved her, and he'd loved these stupid-assed Abornies that she had no use for.
Now his body was eaten up with disease and very little of humanity remained, and yet still he clung to life.
"RJ?" he croaked out. She moved up where he could see her and forced herself to take his hand.
"I'm here, Levits."
He almost laughed, then coughed.
"Maybe you shouldn't try to talk," she suggested.
"Why, because I might die?" he smiled. "You don't understand, do you?" he asked.
"Understand what?"
"Why I care for them so much."
"No, I really don't. You were never one to suffer fools until we came here. You were basically selfish and self-centered, yet you opened your heart to them, and they didn't deserve a second thought from you."
"You never gave them a chance, RJ. They are flawed, just like humans are flawed, but they aren't the hopeless parasites you make them out to be. Quit separating yourself from them, become part of the community. They can be warm, loving, gracious."
"If you give away your life in service to them," RJ said, and didn't even try to keep the resentment from her voice.
"I didn't give away my life in service to them, RJ. They became my life, my reason to live."
She realized what he was doing. He was saying good-bye. So she didn't tell him that he had wasted his life. Instead she asked in a low tone. "What's your reason for living now?"
He laughed again and then coughed again. He shook his head. "Could you hand me that glass of water?" She let go of his hand, grabbed the water and held it to his lips, knowing he couldn't actually hold the glass himself anymore. He shook his head, indicating that he'd had enough, and she took the glass away and set it down. "To answer your question, my one true love, I'm afraid of dying. Scared to death of it, actually."
"Then why are you choosing to make it last?" she asked in a low sad voice.
"Because I love life, even this life. Every minute of it is precious."
RJ just didn't see it that way. Perhaps his brain is just so far gone that he can't think clearly.
"Do you remember the day we first made love? It was in the ship after David had pelted us with shit."
She nodded silently, thinking it was no wonder he was thinking of that, smell being such a strong trigger for memories. "Of course we did shower first," she clarified with a smile.
"I'm laying here thinking about that. About that and sticking your heart back in your chest and getting you out of Alsterase, because that was truly my finest hour. I'm thinking about all of the people I've known, Sandra and Whitey, and Mickey and even that idiot David Grant. I'm thinking about all the Abornie children I've played with over the years, and mostly I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking how all those people, everyone I've ever met, how each encounter changed my life, and I'm hoping that when I'm gone people are going to think about me and think about how I changed their lives."
"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you," RJ said quietly.
Levits frowned. "Ah, but I don't always get the feeling that you're glad that you're alive."
RJ laughed. "I'm not always, but I'll always remember you."
"Yes, but then you don't have much choice, do you?"
"I'd remember you anyway."
He was silent, struggling for the moment just to breathe. When he spoke again his voice came in gasps. "So, have you lost the last vestiges of respect you had for me?"
"No," she lied.
"But you won't miss me when I'm gone."
"I already miss you, because the man I knew is already gone. That's why I don't understand, Levits," RJ said sadly. "I've had to watch you die in stages over the years, and I understand that that's just the way it is for normal humans. I understand that just because your eyesight dims doesn't mean you want to die. Just because your legs hurt and don't want to work and you move more slowly . . . But this, I will never understand why anyone would want to hold on in this state. How many times can you play over memories of things you can never do again, people who are gone, places you'll never see again, and . . ."
"I am tired of it, RJ. Finally. Tired of fighting it," he said quietly. "It won't be long now. I can feel it. Please, RJ, take me out to your garden and let me die in that beautiful place, not in here in all this sterility, with the stink. Let me die looking at you. Listening to you talking about the old days."
She cradled him in her arms and carried him out to the garden. A group of Abornie tried to stop her at the door, but she easily shoved through them.
"Stop for a minute," Levits said in gasps. She did, and he said to the oldest Abornie man there, a man who Levits had been close to for years, "My friend, please, I wish to die outside and alone with my love."
The man nodded and started to cry like a baby. If she'd been the one on her way to die, they'd no doubt have created a dance of joy to do in celebration.
She set him down on a bench in the garden and sat down beside him. Without waiting, she started talking. "Remember when we first met?"
"Yes, I was all out of luck then, just like I'm out of time now."
She held his hand and kept talking to him till he interrupted her asking, "Why?"
"Huh?"
"Why did you stay?"
"Stay where?"
"I know, RJ. He told me."
She didn't have to ask which he. Topaz was never very good at keeping secrets. Unless of course they were his.
"I couldn't leave you here, and I couldn't take you with me," she said simply.
"Thank you," he said. He slumped against her then, silent. His breath came in three quick, shuddering breaths that moved his whole body, and then all was quiet.
The Abornie buried their dead as the humans did when there was no crematorium close by. Except that they had a strange habit of stuffing the dead person's mouth with food and taping it shut. No doubt some ritual left over from a long forgotten religion, because none of them seemed to know why it was done, just that it was proper.
She didn't go to see him put in the ground. She saw no reason to do so. She was walking through her garden one last time. With Levits gone she saw no reason to linger even one more day on the planet's surface. She'd already said good-bye to Alan, the only Abornie she gave one damn about, and as soon as Topaz got back, they would lift off. Poley was even now preparing the ship for takeoff. RJ sighed and leaned against a tree, listening to the small stream she had diverted to run through her garden. She would miss this, but of course she was taking as much of it as she could with her.
"It's beautiful here," Topaz said, walking up behind her.
"Yes it is."
"It was a wonderful service, quite colorful. Many people said very nice things about him."
"Uh huh," RJ said noncommittally.
"When I was a kid, way before I found the secret to ultimate rejuvenation and promptly lost it, there was this character called Superman. Ran around in tights and a cape doing good deeds. Saving the innocent from evil with his super powers. He could jump tall buildings with a single bound, he had x-ray vision, and he could fly and shoot laser beams out of his eyes . . ."
"That's ridiculous . . ."
"Shut up and listen for a minute. He wasn't real, he was a made-up character," Topaz said impatiently. "He could do all this really cool shit, and when I was a kid it was a big deal to watch him on TV or read the comic book, because no one had superhuman abilities. I, of course, lived to see the creation of people with super powers." He saw the incredulous look on her face, growled and said quickly, "Except for flying and shooting laser beams from their eyes. Anyway, once there were real super humans, once I was one myself, the shows and books lost all appeal to me. I had loved that character because he was so righteous, so perfect. When they created the first GSH's I realized how naïve I had been. Nothing could contain Superman, but the Reliance had easily harnessed the GSH's. I stopped believing in super heroes.
"Then you came along, and I believed again. You were better than any comic book hero I could have conjured up, because you weren't perfect, and you weren't perfect because you were real."
She turned around and smiled at him. "Where is this going, old man? It's time to go."
Topaz took a deep breath and let it out. "I'm not going with you."
She had felt doubt coming from him for weeks, but couldn't figure out to what it applied. She wished she could have said she'd seen this coming, but she just hadn't. "What the hell!"
"I want to stay here," he said.
"What on earth for?"
"I like it here, RJ. I have friends here, respect, purpose."
"Screw that. I know you, old man. You just want to continue to play god."
Topaz shrugged, seeming not to be concerned by her accusation or her anger in the slightest. "So what if I do? I'll make a good and decent god."
"By doing what? Continuing what you and Levits have started? Teaching them how to make bigger and better machines so that they can clear-cut, slash and burn the land? I know, you can help them get one of the old power plants working so that they can get in a fight over whose turn it is to drench the reactor core and blow the planet up? Or just make life so simple for them that they breed like flies and kill every other thing on the planet till they ultimately wind up killing even themselves off in a big cluster-fuck of stupidity?"
"You know, RJ, you have this doom-filled attitude about every civilization. Remember that you had similar qualms about the New Alliance before we left Earth. I know what you're worried about. That we'll start out very well meaning, and before you know it there will be pollution and war and people calling on the phone to sell you aluminum siding and life insurance, and you'll be like, 'No thank you, I'm not interested,' but they just won't ever stop talking, till you feel like your head is going to explode and you just rip the damn thing right out of the wall, and . . ."
"I have no clue what any of that last part even is or what it means. You are completely nuts, and yet you think you can actually help this planet full of rejects who are hell-bent on destruction. Get a woman to take with you. Get two if you need to, but get your crazy ass on the ship, we're going."
"No . . . I'm not going . . . Oh, I suppose you could make me go, but if you do I promise to make your life an absolute living tormentuous hell. Besides, Superman would never force someone to do something against his wishes."
"I'm not freaking Superman! I'm not any sort of man. Why? Why would you do this?" RJ pulled at her hair. "Why would you choose them over me? They're going to die, you know. They aren't like Poley and me. They're going to get old and die."
"That's what makes them so damned interesting. Just when I get bored with them they'll die and new ones will be born. That's what I learned from being here, don't you see? You are right, of course, because you always are. These people are stupid, and yes, they would destroy this world. I want to see if I can keep them from doing that. I want to see if I can make a difference. It's all about me, don't you see? Me, me, me. I'm not choosing them over you, I could never love anyone or anything the way that I love you, except of course me." He walked over and took her into his arms. She hugged him, and he could feel her tears wet on his shoulder as they soaked through his thin shirt. "I'm choosing to stay here instead of going with you because this world needs me and you don't."
"Yes I do, Topaz." She cried loudly then; no doubt these were in part tears she hadn't cried for Levits.
He let go and stepped away to look at her. She dried her eyes and held his gaze, and said again, "I do need you, Topaz, you're the only one who knows me, understands me."
He laughed then, his own tears spilling onto his checks. "But I'm a nut job, remember? Crazier than a shithouse rat."
"But you know me."
"And you know yourself. You have Poley. You have each other. You long for adventure. Gardening was nice and you enjoy it, but it's not enough for you. A simple, quiet life could never be enough for you, because it isn't what you were built for. You're Superman, kid. I've lived my great adventures and enjoyed them all, and now I want to live this adventure here with these people. It's not like it's forever. Eventually we'll meet again. Here or on some faraway world. What's a couple of hundred years to either of us?"
She hugged him again, this time so hard it was uncomfortable. "I'm going to miss you, old man."
"I'll miss you too, brat."
She let him go, turned and marched towards the ship. He watched her back as she walked away, and then ran to catch up. "RJ, wait a minute."
She stopped and turned, the look on her face saying that she hoped he was changing his mind. Her face clouded again when she felt that he hadn't.
"I have to tell you something." He looked nervously at his feet, then losing his nerve looked up and blurted out, "I am your father, Luke."
RJ laughed and hugged him again. She whispered in his ear, "I'll always remember you just like this, old man . . . Crazy."
He nodded, suddenly very sober. "Super heroes . . . they always wound up alone, RJ. They always wound up alone because in reality the writers realized that people so different would always be on the outside. You and I, we have corporeal lives, we feel and are felt, our actions have consequences, and yet we're never really quite part of it, are we?"
RJ closed the bay doors as she walked in and headed for the bridge. She took her seat beside Poley silently.
"Where is Topaz?" Poley asked.
"He has decided to stay," RJ said.
Poley's eyebrows arched. "And you let him do that?"
"I could have made him leave, kicking and screaming the whole way I suppose, but he promised to make our lives a living, tormentuous hell if I did."
"That would suck," Poley said. "We're ready to lift off on your word."
RJ thought about it for only a split second. "OK, let's go," she ordered.
The ship's thrusters fired, and in mere minutes they had lifted off the surface of the moon/planet they'd called home. When they had landed there had been four of them, and now there were only two. It sort of sucked the joy out of the moment for her.
Being in space again, in flight, almost made her feel like she was already home, though from their calculations they were at least five years away from their own space. Maybe it was all the different emotions going through her head, accompanied by the myriad of noises the ship made on takeoff, but she hadn't heard him come in, and when he spoke she almost came out of her seat, belt or not.
"Wow, this is great!"
"What in hell's name are you doing here!" RJ screamed, spinning in her seat to look at the boy where he stood clinging to the doorway for dear life.
For answer he just smiled and looked lovingly at Poley, and that's when she knew. Alan wasn't a stowaway, he was a passenger. She glared at her metal brother. So this was why he'd been so hot to lift off.
Poley smiled at her and shrugged. "He wanted to come."
"And I didn't want him to come. I told you, Poley, I told you all the reasons why."
"But none of those were really very good reasons, RJ."
How had this happened? When had Poley started making decisions that went against hers? Was he supposed to be able to do that? She didn't think that he could. It was rather like having a toy that you thought would do one thing, and finding out that it didn't do that at all, but something completely different that wasn't nearly as cool. Still, she had to admit that in a strange way she was glad to see the boy.
"You better strap yourself in," she said with a sigh.
"I had strapped him in, in the crew's quarters," Poley said, obviously wanting RJ to know that he hadn't been at all negligent with the lad's safety, "and I've treated him for the space sickness, formulating the medicine for his specific race."
"Freaking beautiful," RJ said, as she unstrapped herself and went to get the Abornie, who was bouncing all over the bridge trying to make it to a chair. She helped him sit in one, and then strapped him in before returning to her own seat. She glared at her brother. "So, knowing I would disapprove, you stuck him in crew's quarters where I wouldn't hear or feel him till we were off the planet and I wasn't likely to make you take him back."
"Well, I'm not stupid, am I?" Poley said defensively.
"No, you aren't stupid," RJ said, thinking of the absolute irony of her being without a mate and the robot bringing his along. It was going to be a long flight. She hadn't planned to go into cryogenic sleep. The fuel core they had taken from the planet meant they had very little fear of ever running low on fuel again. She had decided that years in space would give her time to meditate and reflect. Now she wondered whether that was such a good idea, even for her.
As soon as they cleared the planet's gravitational pull all turbulence ended and the ship smoothed out. RJ breathed deeply, unbuckled her belt, and got out of her seat. She looked at Alan, then at her brother. "Should we put him in a cryogenic chamber?"
"Not unless he becomes unstable. He will keep us company," Poley said quickly, his mechanical origin being more apparent in the quality of his voice when he was annoyed or panicked. He didn't want the man to be put into cryogenic sleep. The robot was attached to him, the way he had always been attached to RJ, maybe even more.
RJ felt as if the whole universe had abandoned her. She nodded silently and left the bridge. She went to check on her plants. They were fine, nothing spilled or knocked over in takeoff. She was half disappointed—it would have been nice to have something to do. She left the "green house" and started towards her quarters. Suddenly she drew up short, stopping to stare at a picture of Topaz etched onto the wall. Gone, they were all gone now, except Poley.
RJ wound up walking up and down the hallways and into the different rooms of the ship, just looking at all of Poley's artwork. When she had first come out of cryo-sleep and seen it, she had been overwhelmed by Poley's "hobby." Then, like anything else, as she saw it every day it had just blended into the background, something she took for granted. Now she took time to really look at them again. Her father, Whitey, Sandra, Topaz, David, Mickey . . . Levits, she smiled, always screaming.
Alone. She had been alone for most of the first part of her life. Surrounded by other soldiers, but separated from them, she had to be careful they didn't find out that she was a GSH, but it hadn't been very hard to keep most of them at bay because part of her nature was obvious. She was obviously an Argy hybrid, and humans didn't want to be around someone who could read their emotions. It made them feel raw and exposed, so usually they kept their distance.
Of course occasionally one of the men would let his sexual curiosity beat down his better judgment, and he'd try to make time with her. It wasn't usually very hard to get them to back off, and if they didn't she promptly beat them to a pulp.
A picture of herself caught and held her attention. She was standing on top of a transport truck, her chain in hand, her face a picture of passionate rage as she flung her favorite weapon out at some unseen foe from some past battle. She started to just walk past and then stopped dead in her tracks. She turned slowly around and went back to look at the picture.
Where did she go? RJ thought. Look at me. I used to have such passion, such purpose. How long have I just been going through the motions? One day after another. I remember every word I've ever read, or heard, everything I've ever seen. But when did I change? When did I stop being that woman? I don't know, I . . . I can't put a time on it or even link it to an event. Did it happen slowly over the course of the years or all at once? Did everyone else notice and they just didn't say anything? Everyone else is gone, maybe they took little pieces of me with them when they went and left this thing that I am now.
Suddenly she found herself running all over the ship looking just at the pictures of herself. Pictures of her smiling and radiantly happy. Crying, and obviously tattered and left in ruins by her grief, but that hadn't done it, either. Looking at the pictures she saw not who she was, but only who she had been. Not one of these pictures was who she was now.
Yet she hadn't aged, she hadn't changed, she was physically the same.
But her soul, her mind, knew that she was approaching her second century.
Knowledge, horrible, terrible knowledge had stolen away the spark of humanity she had worked so hard to acquire. There were beautiful things, wonderful things, everywhere she had ever been, but they were always dwarfed when compared with the harsh truths of life. The really good times, the happy times had been short. The agony, despair and loneliness had stretched out for year upon year, till the only happiness in her life was memories.
People you loved and put your trust in would betray, forget and abandon you just when you least expected it. They would use you as long as it served them and then forget you and toss you aside till they needed you again.
They would die. Some quickly and without warning, ripping your heart from your chest and leaving you in agony. Some died slowly in stages until their death was nothing but a huge relief. Some killed themselves to keep a secret. But they all died.
And when they were gone what had it really mattered that they had ever lived? Levits hoped to be remembered, and he would be, by her. But to the selfish Abornie that he had put so much store in, his memory would fade quickly. His face would only occasionally flash through their thoughts till eventually they wouldn't even remember his name. They would, in fact, remember her longer, because they had hated her, and people tended to remember their enemies long after they had forgotten their friends.
And somewhere along the line, in her mind, everyone had become an enemy. She had vilified the Abornie because she didn't trust them, and she didn't trust them, she realized only now, because she didn't want to. It was easier to just not trust in people, because they would always let you down in some way, shape, or form. Keep them at a distance and then they couldn't hurt you.
"No good deed goes unpunished," Topaz had been known to say. She had stayed on Abornie for Levits' sake, and Topaz had wound up staying, too. She had to wonder if they'd left twenty years ago if Topaz would have stayed. But worse than losing Topaz was what she'd lost of herself. The entire experience had done nothing but drain her spirit dry.
She hadn't realized it till now, but that was why she'd become so involved with the gardening, because it was the only thing that ever seemed to give anything back. She put out effort, and it gave back beauty and tranquility. It asked nothing of her that she couldn't easily give.
Everything else she had ever put her effort into had left her emotionally bankrupt. She had given huge amounts of herself to any number of people, a multitude of causes, and what had she received for all her trouble? What had been the big payoff for her?
She'd sacrificed her own happiness for others more than once, and though a million theologians, poets and scholars would try to tell you otherwise, there simply was no reward. You gave everything you had, and people gave back only what they felt like giving, with little or no thought to your needs. Eventually you wound up like she had, with nothing left to give anyone, not even yourself.
She suddenly felt like a puppet whose strings had been dropped; she went with the feeling and dropped to the floor in a pile. And what are you doing now, freak? Going back to what? To finish what you started. For what reason? What purpose? Will it make you feel better? Will it make you happy? Do you even remember how to be happy? Do you really believe anyone will care?
She had landed in a sitting position, but found that even that wasn't giving her the "worthless puddle of goo" sensation she suddenly wanted to imitate, so she lay all the way down and stared up at the ceiling, where Poley had carved a picture of Stewart.
How appropriate.
Was he to blame for having created her? Was this horrible empty feeling something that happened to everyone, or was it something that only happened to her because of what she was?
She wasn't immortal, but she was damn close. She didn't fear death, at times she would have welcomed it, but maybe that was because somewhere deep down inside her she knew that unless she was willing to actually work at the whole dying thing it wasn't really an option. She had only ever come close to dying twice; once Whitey had saved her, and once Levits had. Now they were both dead, and she was not only still alive, but physically she was as healthy now as she had ever been.
Almost dying had made her vulnerable for a moment, made her almost human. When she hadn't died, when she had in fact made a full recovery—as good as new—it had left her feeling . . . What?
She thought about it a good long moment and had her answer. It had made her feel separated from the others. More different than ever. She was a GSH, and GSH's had been created for one thing and for one thing only, to serve humans. RJ wasn't like other GSH's, of course, because she hadn't been programmed. Because all her emotions were fully, painfully intact, and she had no expiration date. Yet with all this free will what had she done?
All the things I did, everything I've ever done, so little of it was actually just for me. Why? I enjoyed fighting, admittedly, even fighting for the Reliance. It made me feel important, alive. I enjoyed all the planning and strategizing that went into our attacks on the Reliance, but all that changed when Alsterase was attacked. I changed then, but even then I wasn't the useless shell I am now. Something made me worse.
Suddenly she knew the exact moment when the little piece of her spirit that had remained had departed. It was the damned Ocupod incident.
When that happened, I knew. And once I knew there was no going back. I was no different in the minds of any of them that day than the Ocupods. We had all been created, and therefore our feelings didn't matter. It would have been so easy for Levits to just let me kill the bastard to make a point. But no, he chose the Abornie over me. He chose to make me look like a moron rather than let the Ocupods have the killer. Because he never understood that the Ocupods had as much right to thrive as the Abornie did. I knew then that I was still just a freak in the eyes of the masses, and that was when I reached the shit saturation point. I just couldn't take the crap anymore. Everyone seemed more interested in everyone else's needs, in their feelings than mine. Because I'm bulletproof they treat me like I can't be hurt, and the only one who ever really understood that I could be was Whitey.
I just shut down. I didn't even know I'd done it, but I just shut myself off from everyone else. I was tired of being used when I was handy and forgotten when I was no longer necessary or entertaining. Tired of playing second fiddle, as Topaz would say. I was sick to death of everyone else's needs being more important than mine. So I just moved myself to a place where they couldn't hurt me, and now . . . I'm barely even alive. That's why Topaz decided to stay. Why Poley's found a new friend, because I wasn't really there for them anymore.
She started to blame herself for the way she felt, but it wasn't all her fault. How much could one person, even her, be expected to put up with, before something inside them said enough?
Still she hated the way she felt, or rather the way she didn't feel.
She started to get up several times and found that she simply didn't have the will to do it. At one point Poley walked up to her. "RJ, are you having a malfunction?" he asked, standing at her feet and looking down at her.
"Yes," she hissed.
"Do you need medical attention?"
"No!" she snapped.
"Would you like me to help you up?"
"No . . . I just want to lie here. Why don't you go play with your new friend and leave me be?"
"Are you mad at me because of Alan?"
"I'm not capable of working up mad. In fact, I can't even seem to work up an 'I don't give a shit'."
"You are depressed," Poley said, nodding his understanding, "because of Levits and Topaz."
"And about a billion other things," she said.
"I could give you a shot . . ."
"To make me believe that I'm happy? No thanks."
"Alan is making dinner, would you like to eat?" Poley asked. No doubt this was why he'd come looking for her in the first place.
"No, I'll just lay here staring at Father, wondering why he ever bothered to make me."
"He made you because he needed you."
"What do you mean?"
"You and your siblings were his key to eternal life."
"Freaking beautiful."
"RJ, staring at father will not help your depression," Poley said matter-of-factly.
"Well what would . . . short of drugging me up?" RJ asked flippantly.
"Perhaps if you went to work with your plants," Poley suggested.
He was trying to be helpful, so maybe he hadn't totally replaced her in his personality chips. Problem was she didn't want to be helped. "I don't want to work with my plants."
"What's wrong exactly?" Poley asked.
"Everything, Poley. Think about it. I'm ancient, so I should have it all figured out by now and I don't. I'm not even close. I don't know how to feel anymore. I've forgotten what it's like to be truly alive. You're just learning, and I'm forgetting." She rolled over and lay her face on the cool steel floor. "Sometimes it's not that life is bad, it's just that it isn't good. Do you know what I mean?"
"Not really."
"It's like nothing's really wrong but it isn't right either."
"That doesn't make any sense RJ . . . Perhaps you should go into the cryogenic chamber. I could wake you up when we reach our space."
"And I can be in this same great mood, five years older and covered in goo, no thanks," RJ said to the floor. "I've got to figure out what's missing and how to get it back before we get home, or what's the point of going home at all?"
"I've promised Alan that he can see Marge."
RJ banged her head on the floor.
"That won't help, either," Poley said.
"Maybe not, but it feels so good when I quit."