At first, he thought that none of them would look, but they did. The weaving and spinning slowed and the fingers flickered sharply.
Defective. Defective units.
Not bad, no harm, we live here, too. They do not. And Maartin flung his fingers out to point at the miners, saw a faint ripple of shock at his terrible rudeness. But most of the fingers snapped and flickered discussion, too fast for him to follow, flashing and twisting.
Sharp-edge-alert brought his hands down in a slashing gesture, faced the miners. Maartin spun to face the settlers. “Stand back!” The air words came to him, his fingers spread stiff and still, silent, in front of him. “Stand back, the people are going to destroy the miners.”
At first, he thought they’d ignore him, although he saw Dad’s eyes go wide. Then they halted, murmuring, and fear shrilled the murmur, brought their hands up, pointing crudely.
He turned.
As one, the people pulled the woven fabric of the anger-hum from the air and …
… tossed it.
Lightly.
It drifted over the oncoming machines, over the miners trudging purposefully along on either side with energy weapons in their hands. Settled lightly, gently, over them.
They began to scream, backs arching, breathers ripped from their faces as they convulsed, limbs spasming, flopping like the pictures of fish that Maartin had seen on vids, pulled out onto a riverbank to die. The sickly veil dissipated, leaving twitching bodies and machines that lumbered slowly forward. One of the big earth-chewers ran over a body, grinding the man’s torso into the dust.
“Holy crap!” The mayor’s harsh voice rose above the machine rumble. “What the hell happened?”
“Get the machines stopped.” Dad ran forward, grabbed a handhold, and swung into the seat of the lead earth-chewer. He fumbled for a moment or two and it stopped, tracks grinding to a halt. Dad leaped clear as the machine behind it ground into it, slewing it sideways.
The mayor leaped onto that one, and now everybody was running—toward the machines or to the fallen miners or back to the settlement. In a few moments, all the machines had been stopped. None of the miners were moving. Settlers were standing up, shaking their heads, their eyes scared, faces pale.
“My God, storm …” “Dust devils …” “Nasty little twisters …” “Like little tornadoes, like they were … attacking …”
The settlers were all looking at Maartin.
The people were drifting away, heading back to the plaza or stepping up onto the spiderways. A few strolled in the garden and one man played a trio of twisted purple tubes that drifted lavender mist streaked with silver into the air.
“What did you do, son?” Dad’s voice was hushed.
They had gathered in a semicircle between him and the settlement. Scared of him. Looking around. For more dust devils? Maartin faced them, the air words playing hide-and-seek, his fingers weaving an explanation, flickering and twining.
“He sees the Martians. They live here. Right where your settlement is.” Jorge panted up, his wrists welted angry red from the too-tight restraints. “I can see ’em just a little when I hold a pearl. I guess they … they killed the crew.” He swallowed. “I … did you tell them not to kill us, too, Maartin?”
He flickered affirmative. Gave up on the air words.
“I think he means ‘yes.’ ” Jorge stayed back with the crowd, didn’t get too close to him. “I … I caught a few glimpses.”
Everybody wanted to know about the Martians. They asked him questions for a while but gave up when only his fingers explained, talked to Jorge instead. Jorge got things wrong, but Maartin didn’t bother to try to correct him. Dad put an arm around his shoulders and led him away, back to their rooms. Dad asked questions too, but Maartin kept his hands clasped, and, after a while, Dad stopped asking.
They reported the incident to the Planetary Council, and a few people came out. They listened, shook their heads at the evolving interpretation of hidden Martians and long-range energy weapons, and, for a while, everybody was afraid, looking out at the hills as they walked through the strolling musicians on the plaza or through the lower curves of the spiderways.
They were afraid of him, too, but that was actually better than before, since they no longer led him home when the plaza and the walls got tangled up and he walked into something.
And, after a while, they stopped looking for Martians they couldn’t see, and they stopped being afraid of him. The abandoned machines got hauled away and settlers grumbled in Canny’s that the settlement should have been able to claim salvage rights, not the Council. And they went back to planting new cyan beds, and Dad started talking about smelling the oxygen again.
Mostly, Maartin weeded the garden because he liked the smell and feel of the soil, and Seaul Ku had decided he was still the same old Maartin, and he liked that, too. And when he got tired, he strolled in the plaza with Soft-sweet-happy or Firm-thoughtful. Sharp-edge-alert didn’t follow him anymore; he hadn’t seen him since the attack on the miners.
One day, Jorge came into the garden. He’d been working with Dad planting the new bed and had rented a room a few doors down from Canny’s. He squatted down in front of Maartin. “I’m leaving. Gotta stakeholder grant in a new one just going in, over a day’s ride south of City.” His dark eyes held Maartin’s. “I can’t mine anymore.” He fumbled in his pocket, drew out his pearl. “I need to put this back. Where does it go?”
He reached for it and lifted it from Jorge’s palm before he could pull it away. Soft-sweet-happy was crossing the plaza and he called her over with a flick of his fingers, offered it to her. She touched it, vanished it back to its place, and smiled as they both felt the tiny ripple of its return.
“What did you just do?” Jorge was staring at his empty palm. He raised his head. “I hope you’re happy.” He said it softly. “I hope they’re friends with you.”
Pity, Maartin thought. Did he need pity? He thought about it. What needed pity was gone, he decided. His fingers flashed and flickered as he told Jorge about how, even now, his every action, every vibration of every molecule in his flesh was feeding into … a pearl. He would stroll this plaza, share the mist-music, wander the cities and spiderways forever, once it was done.
No. No pity.
“We. Will. Protect.” He managed to find those three words.
Watched the fear creep back into Jorge’s eyes. “The story’s got around among the miners.” He expelled the breath-words on harsh puffs of air. “But stories get ignored. When there’s money.”
Maartin shrugged. Sharp-edge-alert had learned what he needed to know. About imperfect units.
Jorge headed for the lock, taking his fear with him.
It did not matter. The transfer completed.
He stood, stretched, and strolled through the dome and across the plaza, savoring the drift of mist from the fountain, heading for the spiderway where Soft-sweet-happy flickered him a greeting.
No longer imperfect.
Behind him, very faintly, he heard the harsh sound of breath-words.
MIKE RESNICK
Mike Resnick is one of the best-selling authors in science fiction, and one of the most prolific. His many novels include Kirinyaga, Santiago, The Dark Lady, Stalking the Unicorn, Birthright: The Book of Man, Paradise, Ivory, Soothsayer, Oracle, Lucifer Jones, Purgatory, Inferno, A Miracle of Rare Design, The Widowmaker, The Soul Eater, A Hunger in the Soul, The Return of Santiago, Starship: Mercenary, Starship: Rebel, and Stalking the Vampire. His collections include Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut Off the Sun?, An Alien Land, A Safari of the Mind, Hunting the Snark and Other Stories, and The Other Teddy Roosevelts. As editor, he’s produced Inside the Funhouse: 17 SF stories about SF, Whatdunnits, More Whatdunnits, Shaggy B.E.M. Stories, New Voices in Science Fiction, This Is My Funniest, a long string of anthologies coedited with Martin H. Greenberg—Alternate Presidents, Alternate Kennedys, Alternate Warriors, Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, Dinosaur Fantastic, By Any Other Fame, Alternate Outlaws, and Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, among others—as well as two anthologies coedited with Gardner Dozois, and Stars: Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian, edited with Janis Ian. He won the Hugo Award in 1989 for Kirinyaga. He won another Hugo Award in 1991 for another story in the Kirinyaga series, “The Manamouki,” and another Hugo and Nebula in 1995 for his novella “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge.” His most recent books are a number of new collections, The Incarceration of Captain Nebula and Other Lost Futures, Win Some, Lose Some: The Complete Hugo-Nominated Short Fiction of Mike Resnick, and Masters of the Galaxy, and a new novel, The Doctor and the Rough Rider. He lives with his wife, Carol, in Cincinnati, Ohio.