"So if Oar’s brain survived…" Nimbus said thoughtfully.

"It did survive," I told him. "It survived just fine. I am quite as clever as I have ever been."

"Maybe," Uclod said, "that’s because you ain’t human, toots. Your brain cells might not rot as fast as the average Homo sap. Maybe that’s how you stayed intact till the Pollisand picked you up."

"Or maybe," Nimbus suggested, "the drug was injected ahead of time. While you were still alive. Before you took the fall."

"No one injected me with drugs! I would know!"

But I was not so certain as I pretended. Only a short time before my fall, I had been lying unwatched in a state of unconsciousness. This was the result of being shot repeatedly with a whining noise-gun, causing such horrendous damage that I blacked out. When I eventually awoke, I located the villain who shot me and plunged with him from the tower… but during the period I was insensate, there was no way to tell what someone might have done to me.

"It does seem far-fetched," Dr. Havel said, "that the Pollisand injected Ms. Oar with Webbalin in advance. There’d be no reason to do that unless he knew she was going to take a swan-dive, ha-ha, onto bare cement. And the only way he could know that is by…"

"Foreseeing the future?" Nimbus said. "Isn’t that what the Pollisand is noted for? Being in exactly the right place when things go wrong?"

No one spoke for a moment. Then Uclod muttered, "Bloody hell."

Unpruned Anomalies

A time passed without conversation… which is to say, Dr. Havel talked and nobody paid attention. What he talked about was me as a "specimen" — his first "marvelous chance" to examine an "alien life-form never before seen by medical science," and he was "thrilled, absolutely thrilled" to have the opportunity.

But the foolish thing was, he did not examine me at all: he examined my picture on the table, while I stood bored at his elbow. And instead of praising my beauty and grace, he was forever blathering about Chemicals: substances with long complex names that my body contained, in lieu of other substances with long complex names that it did not. For example, it was apparently most remarkable that my blood did not include Hemogoblins (which I believe are little trolls that live in human veins); in place of those, I had Transparent Silicate Platelets (which, as the name suggests, are miniature plates that carry food from one cell to another).

Moreover, though I appeared visually similar to Homo sapiens, my composition was entirely different. I had numerous glands not found in humans; my basic internal organs (heart, lungs, and stomach) were arranged differently from Earthlings; even my bones were unique, and their attachments to various muscles deviated greatly from the Terran standard. I was, Havel said, a vastly different species from humans, structurally as well as chemically… but my nonhuman parts were assembled in such a way that I looked "morphologically human" on the outside. "Like a cat," said the doctor, "who’s been engineered to resemble a dog. Except that cats and dogs have a lot more in common with each other than you do with humans — your body chemistry is utterly extraterrestrial."

Finally, it seemed my brain had never undergone a process the doctor called pruning. He said this was something that happens to all known intelligent races by mid-adolescence: a large number of existing connections between mental neurons wither away in the interest of "efficiency." The theory goes that during childhood, the brain has many surplus linkages between neighboring nerve cells, because there is no telling which will eventually prove necessary. By adolescence, however, a person’s day-to-day experiences have established which connections are actually used and which are superfluous fripperies — links that never get activated in everyday life. The brain therefore discontinues low-use links as a means of streamlining the most common thought processes… making sure that essential mental activity is not slowed by extraneous clutter.

The doctor claimed pruning is good and desirable: a pruned brain is more quickly decisive, less plagued by needless doubts and uncertainties. After pruning, your brain knows conclusively that objects always fall down instead of up, that it is a poor idea to stick your hand into fire, and that animals never really talk; indeed, a pruned brain is resistant to, and even threatened by, any notion it has come to regard as absurd. The "mature" mind shuts the door on the impossible, so it can concentrate on The Real.

Or at least, that is what Havel claimed.

For myself, I did not think The Real deserved such drastic sacrifice. If pruning is the price of adulthood, is it not more courageous to remain a child? Of course one knows animals speak infrequently (and it is hard to believe ugly animals such as lizards will ever become engaging conversationalists); but it seems most high-handed to reject the possibility entirely. I tried to argue this point with the doctor, but because his brain had been pruned, he exhibited nothing but galling condescension toward my "naive" views… which meant I was close to choking him when Festina entered the room.

This was indeed a welcome interruption. "Hello, hello!" I said in great happiness. I wondered if she would want to hug again, and if I would be so foolishly self-conscious as before, and if maybe I should start the hugging this time to prove I was not standoffish… and none of that happened, because I saw my friend’s face was grave.

"Uclod," Festina said quietly, "our communications came back on-line: either the Shaddill have stopped jamming or we’re out of their range. Anyway," she took a deep breath, "I received a message from my staff on New Earth — your Grandma Yulai has been killed."

What Expendable Means

In a quiet voice, Uclod asked, "How?"

"Electrocuted by a faulty VR/brain connection. Several thousand volts to the cerebellum. Supposedly an accident." Festina rolled her eyes in disgust. "And the rest of your family is missing. I hope to God it means they’ve gone into hiding; my people haven’t collected enough details to know if that’s what happened, or if somebody got them too…" Her voice trailed off. "I’m sorry."

Uclod appeared frozen. Lajoolie had moved in behind him as soon as Festina began speaking; the big woman’s arms wrapped around her husband, holding him tight. She seemed made of stone… but Uclod was made of ice.

"What is that phrase you Explorers say?" he asked Festina. "Uncle Oh-God told me once — when somebody dies in the line of duty. What is it?"

Festina pursed her lips. "We say, That’s what ‘expendable’ means. Because the navy has always treated Explorers as expendable baggage."

Uclod stared at her a moment, then shook his head. "No. I can’t say that. Not for my own grandmother."

He turned around and buried his face against Lajoolie’s strong body.

The Utter Truth Of Death

Through all of this, I had not said a word. Indeed, I could not speak.

I did not know this Grandma Yulai personally, and the few things I had heard about her were bad. She was a criminal who dominated a family of other criminals.

And yet-

She was dead. She had died. She was no different now from the animal corpses one finds in the forest, the fresh ones covered with flies or the old ones as dried and withered as bread crusts.

Let me tell you a thing: my mother taught me death was holy, a blessing bestowed only on natural creatures. Rabbits and squirrels and fishes could die, but my own glass people could not. We were artificial beings; the Hallowed Ones refused to take us to the Place Beyond because we were not worthy of progressing to the life after life. Our species was cursed, spurned by death… or so my mother said.