Ruins

large numbers.”

“So the facemasks learned guilt,” said Loaf. “They still killed all the uninfected humans.”

“They didn’t!” said Vadesh. “Why do you think they did? They defended themselves.”

“Until the last normal human was dead,” said Loaf.

“No and no and no,” said Vadesh. “It was the uninfected, as you call them—I think of them as invaders from Earth—”

“Like you?” suggested Umbo.

“Invaders from Earth,” repeated Vadesh, “who returned to the city again and again until they murdered every man, woman, and child of the native people.”

“They were not native,” said Umbo. “They were captives.”

“They were a new native life form, half human, half facemask,” said Vadesh. “It was a beautiful blending— painful and frightening at first, for both, but then a fruition of both. As if they were trees that could not bear until they pollinated each other.”

“You’re a poet of parasitism,” said Rigg. “Are these the stories you told the possessed people, to convince them they were even better than humans or facemasks alone?”

“It’s the simple truth,” said Vadesh.

“And yet the people without facemasks were not persuaded,” said Rigg.

“Here’s a thought,” said Umbo. “What if the facemasks let go of the people they possessed, so the people could see how much better it was when they had the parasite? Then they could take them back by their own free choice. Or not.”

“Impossible,” said Vadesh.

“So you admit they would never choose to take the facemasks back,” said Loaf.

“Impossible to detach them. Both would die.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Rigg. “I think the facemask would die, but the human would return to health.”

“Both would die,” repeated Vadesh. “The bond cannot be undone. It was fatal to both. Always. Do you think we didn’t try, at first?”

“I’d think that the ability to detach would be the first civilizing virtue you’d get the facemasks to acquire.”

“They tried,” said Vadesh. “As they incorporated the genes they harvested from their human hosts, each new generation was more compatible. They needed humans more, preserved more of human nature. But the one thing they could not do was make themselves less effective as parasites.”

Rigg looked at Loaf, Umbo, Olivenko. “Finally, an honest sentence—Vadesh admits that the facemasks are parasites.”

“Of course they’re parasites,” said Vadesh. “I was the one who warned you not to drink from the stream, wasn’t I? I didn’t want you infected.”

“Where is all this leading?” asked Loaf. “What do you want from us?”

“I want you to bring humans back to my wallfold,” said Vadesh.

“So you can infect them again?”

“No,” said Vadesh. “Do you think I failed to learn the lesson of the past? Humans do not respond well to seeing other humans parasitized. They think of them as monsters, they destroy them to the last man, and then die out themselves, for fear of becoming infected.”

“They died out?” asked Loaf.

“They killed each other,” said Rigg bitterly. “When they were sure they had killed the last facemask-controlled person, they killed themselves—”

“Each other,” said Vadesh.

“Collectively killed themselves,” said Rigg, “so there was no chance that their keeper here could breed them with more facemasks.”

“They didn’t understand that I would never do that,” said Vadesh. “I am incapable of harming human beings.”

“But you can let them come to harm. Goad them to it, trap them. Aid their enemies.”

“Humans must be free,” said Vadesh. “It is deeply ingrained in my programming. I cannot defy that. All choices are to be made by humans. I merely help them carry out their plans.”

Rigg could not let that stand. “You are such a liar,” he said. “I was raised by one of you, and he was certainly not carrying out anybody’s plan.”

“He wasn’t carrying out your plan, you mean,” said Vadesh.

“Nor mine,” said Umbo.

“Nor the plans of General Citizen and Hagia Sessamin,” said Olivenko. “So whose plan was he carrying out?”

“Neither of us controls the other,” said Vadesh. “But we started out with the same directives—given to us by humans. Our original programmers, and then Ram Odin. He gave us a great work to do. The expendable Ram pursued it his way in your natal wallfold, and I pursued it as best I could here in this wallfold. I made mistakes. I misunderstood the depth of the human fear of the strange and new. They could not be reasoned with.”

“Meaning you couldn’t find them all and kill them,” said Rigg.

“I killed no one,” said Vadesh.

“But you found them,” said Umbo. “And told the facemask people where they were, so they could kill them.”

“I wanted them reconciled!”

“But ‘killed’ was almost as good,” said Rigg. “They were waging a war of extermination, and you weighed in on the side of those who were only half human.”

“There are safeguards now,” said Vadesh. “I’ve worked hard. Ten thousand years I’ve been breeding facemasks until all the obnoxious traits are gone. Humans would remain fully human, in charge of themselves.”

“We are never going to put on your facemasks,” said Rigg.

“But you haven’t even seen them!”

“What we need from you,” said Rigg, “and what I order you to give us, is information about the jewels. How do they work? How can we use them to shut down the Walls?”

Vadesh looked away—a gesture Father often used, to give the illusion of thinking things over. But it was only an illusion, Rigg understood that now. The mechanical mind made its decisions very quickly, and all this business of “thinking” was part of the pretense that the expendables were similar to humans. But they were nothing like humans.

“It seems to me,” said Rigg, “that you want us to think this is all about two species—facemasks and humans. But there’s a third species involved.”

Rigg’s friends looked at him, confused.

Vadesh understood him, though. “Expendables are not a species,” he said.

“Aren’t you?”

“We are not alive. We do not reproduce.”

“No, but you replace any parts that wear out,” said Rigg. “You don’t have to reproduce if you never die.”

“We are here to support and enhance human life,” said Vadesh.

The others laughed or hooted bitterly.

“Maybe that was your original law,” said Rigg, “but you proved that enhancing human life is the opposite of what you actually have in mind.”

“The facemasks eventually did enhance human life,” said Vadesh. “That was my great insight, when I finally understood it.”

“Humans are the only fit judges of what enhances our lives,” said Olivenko.

“I see that now,” said Vadesh. “I’ve learned. Do you think I don’t understand that I failed here? All the humans preferred murder and death, do you think I regard that as success? That’s why I beg you to bring humans back here, so I can undo my terrible mistakes.”

“You have the power to bring down the Wall,” said Rigg. “You expendables put it there, didn’t you?”