"My own recipe," Tobit answered proudly. "You can't get booze from the local food synthesizers, but they produce some superbly fermentable fruit juices. The only hard work was programming the maintenance-bots not to throw out what I produced: they thought it was lemonade gone bad."
He laughed. I didn't. "What do your skin-faced friends think?" I asked. "Do they like a lord and master who drinks himself into a stupor?"
"Ramos," he answered, still chuckling, "they adore a lord and master who shares his liquor. Like I said, their food synthesizers don't make the stuff. They didn't know what they were missing till I came along." He gave me a leering smile. "How do you think I became their lord and master in the first place?"
"If you are anyone's lord and master," Oar said, "they are very stupid people. You are ugly and you smell." She slipped her arm into mine. "Let us go now, Festina."
"You ain't going nowhere yet, girlie," Tobit told her. He didn't sound offended; calling Oar 'girlie' might have been his attempt at rakish charm. "The only way to leave is inside a shark… and frankly," he waved toward the dock, "neither of those is seaworthy anymore."
"Can you summon other machines?" I asked.
"Nope. They show up on their own when they need to refuel. One docks in every few days. In the meantime… you can both be guests at my birthday party."
I said nothing; but Tobit must have seen how undelighted I was. "Cheer up!" he said, giving my arm a light slap, "you'll like my parties. I give presents to my guests, not the other way around. And I've just thought of a doozy for you."
HAPPY
We walked back to the central plaza, Oar still holding my arm to keep me between her and Tobit. Every so often she sniffed pointedly; she could smell the liquor on him. In her mind, he must be the epitome of dirty.
As we drew near the Morlocks' building, I made sure my stunner was ready for a quick draw. Tobit might claim to control his "subjects" but I had my doubts; I had my doubts about everything Tobit said. If those Skin-Faces attacked, I had to be ready to knock them out…
I stopped in the street as a thought struck me. What would sonics do to a glass person? They weren't real glass… but the shark machine rang like a chime when I shot it. I wondered if the Morlocks would resonate too. That might be a vulnerability of people who were hard instead of soft. Could sonics from a stunner seriously injure them? The blasts had damaged the machine; or maybe I had just scrambled some sonar guidance system and the real damage happened when the shark ran into that log.
Impossible to say — but I pushed the stunner back into my belt so I wouldn't be tempted to use it. For a moment, I had imagined Oar's body shattering, like a wineglass breaking under an opera singer's voice. I couldn't do that, even to a Skin-Face.
No more killing. No more killing.
Tobit led us into the building where I'd first seen him — a building smelling of booze mixed with vomit. Oar convulsed in a coughing fit as soon as the odor reached her. I held down my gorge with memories from the Academy: waking on the floor after an end-of-term bash, the arms of other Explorers draped over me, everyone's breath so flammable the air purity sensors blinked yellow. Why had we done it? Because we were young and tongue-tied; getting drunk together was the greatest intimacy we would dare attempt.
And the Morlocks? They were engineered to have the minds and openness of children; once Tobit brewed his booze, they didn't stand a chance.
I could see them now, through the glass walls ahead of us: the same quartet as before, helping themselves to a brownish concoction that must be Tobit's hootch. It ran down their throats and pooled darkly in their stomachs, sloshing slightly as they moved. Oar's grip tightened on my arm — she had seen too, and for once her face showed none of the haughty superiority she usually assumed when confronted with the unfamiliar. More than anything, she looked hurt… like a sick little girl who can't understand why pain exists.
"Right this way!" Tobit boomed, waving us into the room with the drinking Morlocks. Oar moved forward mechanically; I went with her, squeezing her arm.
Unlike most rooms I'd seen on Melaquin, this one had furniture: glass chairs, and a glass table supporting something like a cake. The cake must have come from a local food synthesizer, since it was clear and transparent; but someone had spelled the word HAPPY across the top, in scraps of grubby red plastic.
Either there hadn't been enough plastic to spell out BIRTHDAY, or nobody cared enough to bother.
The Gift
The Morlocks glared at Oar with the owlish blinks of drunks everywhere. They had not consumed much liquor yet — I could tell just looking at their stomachs — but already they showed its effects.
Tobit gestured toward the Morlocks. "These are my faithful comrades: Mary, Martha, Matthew, and Mark. Perfect names for disciples, don't you think?"
The Morlocks didn't move to acknowledge their names. They continued staring at Oar.
"My name is Festina Ramos," I said to them, "and this is Oar."
In a whisper, she said, "An oar is an implement used to propel boats."
The Morlocks remained motionless. Tobit looked from them to us, then gave an exaggerated sigh. "Am I the only one on this goddamned planet who knows how to party? Fun! Festivity! Falling down dribbling spittle! You hear me?"
Every Morlock said, "Yes, lord." They didn't mean it.
Another tense silence. Tobit groaned. "All right. I was going to leave this till later, but we have to do something to get people in the spirit. Ramos… time for your present."
"I don't need a present."
"Everyone needs presents. And I have the perfect one for you. Something you could search for from one end of the galaxy to the other, and lucky me, I have some right here. Damned good luck, considering I didn't know you were coming. If you had any sense, of courtesy you'd have called ahead—"
"Phylar…" I sighed.
"All right, leave it be. No sense pissing you off when I can win your everlasting gratitude… not to mention showing how smart I am to think of this on the spur of the moment." He drew himself up with counterfeit dignity. "Explorer Ramos, have you noticed my disciples' bodily adornment?"
"The skin?"
"Yes, the skin. Have you wondered where they got it?"
"I'm hoping from animals."
"Wrong!" Tobit grinned in triumph. "It's artificiaclass="underline" comes straight out of a synthesizer down the block."
"Obviously not a food synthesizer."
"No," Tobit agreed. "This town has lots of different synthesizers, programmed with manifest goodies from the League of Peoples. You guessed that, right, Ramos? You guessed that the League relocated these folks to Melaquin from Earth?"
I nodded. "The League must have made the same offer they made us four hundred years ago — renounce violence and get a new planet."
"Right," Tobit replied. "I get the feeling they only made the offer to selected tribes… maybe those who were already peaceful enough to convince the League they were sentient. Anyway, your ancestors and mine stayed back on Earth while the chosen few got a free ticket to Melaquin. The League built these towns, the synthesizers, the communications systems… and they also arranged that all future generations would be strong and healthy." Tobit pointed at Oar. "God knows why the League decided to make them of glass, but I suppose people got used to it. This all happened about four thousand years ago; folks from those days must have been so glad their kids didn't die in infancy, they didn't care what the babies looked like."
"My mother was proud of how I look," Oar said defensively. "I happen to be extremely beautiful."
"Yeah, you're one in a million," Tobit sniggered. "Anyway," he turned back to me, "I was talking about my Morlocks' skin. The League whipped it up for the first generation to come here — the non-glass humans. It's a bandage materiaclass="underline" covers cuts, bruises, pockmarks… those people must have been a sorry-looking bunch when they came here, what with disease, malnutrition, and all the other crap of 2000 B.C. Artificial skin must have been damned popular with them.