Princess of the Empire (JNC Edition)

by Hiroyuki Morioka

  “Yeah.” Jinto felt a childish compulsion to measure up against her. “I’ve got things to be proud of, too. I had to learn two different foreign languages at the same time, but I still got accepted to a quartermasters’ academy at 17.”

  “Yes, that is amazing,” said Lafier, genuinely impressed.

  Suddenly, a BREEE noise blared through the cabin. “What was that!?” It sounded to him like an alarm.

  “We’ve entered a sector where we can accelerate.” Lafier kept manipulating her control glove as though it were nothing.

  “Ah.” Jinto pushed down his embarrassment. “How long will it take?”

  “I’m afraid this ship isn’t equipped with anything nifty like a üameriac (WAHMREEA, gravity control system), so it depends on what level of acceleration you can withstand.”

  “I grew up on a planet’s surface,” bragged Jinto. An Abh’s daimon (DEHMOHN, standard gravity level) was said to be about half of Delktu’s. “If you can withstand it, then so can I.”

  “I see. In that case, it won’t even take seven minutes.”

  “Wow, that’s fairly fast.”

  “It’s not far at all.”

  “I hear you.” He realized he might need to flesh out his sensation of cosmic distances sooner rather than later.

  The seats automatically increased in length, becoming something akin to bunks. Because the ship’s direction and rate of acceleration could change at a dizzying pace in accordance with the exerted attitude control, it was easy to feel knocked around. That said, that only lasted for a fleeting moment.

  “Let’s go.” The instant Lafier said that, Jinto was pressed against the back of his seat.

  “Wha, what is this!?” His chest was ready to burst from the acceleration forces that had far exceeded his expectations.

  “Caïmcoth (KAEEMKOHTH, acceleration),” said Lafier nonchalantly. “You aren’t going to tell me you didn’t know about acceleration, I trust.”

  “I do! I know about it! But, not this fast...” He was finding it difficult even to move his lips. He could tell by the numbness in his extremities that his blood vessels were being crushed. He could probably endure a minute of this, but seven minutes would be well beyond him. “You, you’re fine!?”

  “I’m fine. Our ancestors didn’t have any gravity control systems, so we built out bodies to be able to work under both high gravity-forces and microgravity. I, too, have inherited those genes. It’s all in the skeleton and circulatory system. In other words...”

  He was in no mood to listen to an elaborate explanation. “Please, Lafier, shift the acc- acceleration down a little...”

  “It’ll take longer.”

  “Would that land us in hot water somehow!?”

  “Not particularly. The ship’s schedule was compiled to allow for extra time. For veteran navigators, allowing some leeway is practically a requirement. One can never know what’s coming, after all.”

  “Good. I’m begging you...”

  “Okay. It can’t be helped.” She stopped accelerating. “Now I have to change course. Can I accelerate just a little?”

  Jinto shook his head. “Yeah, you can go a little faster than that. Just enough so I can bear it a bit more easily than before.”

  “Mmm.” Lafier’s fingers flitted in the air.

  It began accelerating once again. It was still more severe than the planet Martin’s level of gravity, but it was no longer a trial to endure. He could probably even walk around if he wanted.

  “How is it now?”

  “This is good.”

  “But it’ll take a lot more time now.”

  “No other choice,” replied Jinto. “I’m not in a hurry anyway. What’s our gravity level?”

  “4 daimon. The standard for when Landers are aboard. For longer journeys, we drop it down to 2 daimon. That’s around where the gravity level of most terrestrial worlds is.”

  “You should have warned me that it’d be too much for a Lander,” said Jinto ruefully.

  “I thought you had intimated you were made of hardier stuff,” said Lafier, making it clear she had no malicious intent.

  “Honestly, I should thank you for overestimating me.”

  “Besides, you aren’t a Lander. You’re an Abh.”

  “Well, it’s annoying, but I really don’t feel like one, since genetically I’m 100% Lander. You must get that.” The law could call him an Abh all it wanted, it didn’t change his genetics. To raise an extreme example, obtaining legal recognition as a bird would not allow him to take flight.

  “Genetics aside,” said Lafier, “I think you ought to become Abh in terms of your attitude. An imperial noble wouldn’t lose their composure over something like high acceleration.”

  “I’ve taken your words of admonishment to heart,” he said, chastened. He’d anticipated that he wouldn’t be cut out to be an imperial noble, and now that feeling had morphed into a strong conviction. He contemplated having them send him back right now so he could ask Durin for a job.

  However, it’d be a bitter pill indeed to tell everyone he’d turned back.

  At last, there were several seconds of microgravity and attitude control, and the vessel shifted to decelerating. The planet Delktu, floating above them, had become an orb speckled with white and blue. Jinto was assailed by the illusion he was falling without end.

  “Hey,” said Jinto. “What’s your position in society?”

  “Why are you asking me something like that?” Lafier asked back chidingly.

  “I, uhh...” Jinto panicked. It seemed that she’d mistaken him as trying to flaunt his own position as a noble. “I was just wondering why someone so young joined the Star Forces, that’s all. I thought maybe you were planning to get your duties over with quickly like me. Was it rude of me to ask?”

  “It wasn’t, but I don’t want to talk about it. Until I become a fsœtdorariac (SEHDORAREEA, imperially certified pilot), and as long as I’m wearing this military uniform, I can’t wear anything that shows my family lineage.”

  “So you’re saying that within the Star Forces, your social standing doesn’t matter?”

  “Correct. In the military, this is what means everything.” Lafier pointed to the rank insignia on her left arm.

  “I understand. It’s just, I only wanted to ask you why you wanted to join. Was it out of obligation, or because you wanted to?”

  “I am obligated,” Lafier acknowledged.

  “Ah, I knew it.” Military service wasn’t imposed on mere gentry. To them, admittance to an academy was a right, not a duty. He took this as confirmation that Lafier must be a young maiden of none other than noble stock. “I thought as much.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing...” he said evasively. He had guessed she might be of noble birth, but since that hunch was based on his impressions of her — namely, that she seemed haughty even when not speaking, to say nothing of when she opened her mouth — he thought it wise to keep mum.

  Thankfully, she didn’t pursue the matter. “It’s not just out of obligation, though.”

  “Why actually, then?”

  “I wanted to come of age as soon as possible.”

  “Ah, I see.” If one received an appointment as a starpilot, they were summarily recognized as an adult. “Was there really any need to hurry past your childhood, though? Living a life of comfort as a kid’s pretty sweet, you know.”

  Lafier chewed it over, and then, at last, settled on a response. “Do you have any secrets regarding your birth?”

  “Secrets regarding my birth?” replied a disconcerted Jinto. “No, no secrets. I mean, my mom died when I was little, but apart from that...”

  “Your mother? I thought your parent is male. The Count of Hyde, Dreuc Haïder-lonh, is your father, no?”

  “That’s right, he’s my dad. Ah, I understand your confusion now...” Jinto recalled the structure of the Abh family unit.

  The Abh did not marry. In Abh society, lovers’ couples did sometimes live toget
her. It was not uncommon for these partnerships to last long enough to be quite like a marriage, and on very rare occasions, they even lasted “till death did them part.”

  However, this was not an institution. It was simply one of many ways to live one’s life. To burn with maddening passion, and then for that passion to go up in flames with nary a trace left — this was the typical form of Abh love. It was likely difficult for the Abh, who lived “forever young,” to latch onto the ideal of marriage, premised as it was on growing old together.

  As such, single parents were commonplace, and there was no concept of two-parent units. This, of course, would make an Abh’s one parent either male or female, lending the phrases “Mama’s boy (frucec saranr, FROOK SAHRAHN)” and “Daddy’s girl (frymec loranr, FRYOOM LOHRAHN)” altogether different meanings. They now meant “a boy with a female parent” and “a girl with a male parent.”

  “You’ve heard of ‘the institution of marriage,’ right?” asked Jinto.

  “Yes, I have. Ah, I was being absent-minded. You were raised a Lander, so of course.”

  “Yep, I’m the product of a marriage. The son of both a father and a mother at the same time.”

  “I see.” Lafier cocked her head. “What is it like to have two parents? When your mother died, were you sad?”

  “Well...” Surprised by the bluntness of the question, Jinto nevertheless searched his memories. What met him wasn’t the mother he’d only ever seen on holovision, but the face of Lina Clint. “Yeah. Yeah, it was sad.”

  “Forgive me. It was a foolish thing to ask.” Lafier cast down her eyes.

  “It’s fine, honestly. It happened when I was so young, I don’t really remember much, to tell you the truth.”

  “However,” said Lafier with palpable envy, “that means you can’t have any secrets regarding your birth.”

  “Huh? Why’s that?”

  “If both of your larlinec (LARLEEN, gene donors) were in your house, then how could there be anything hidden about your birth?”

  “You’ve got it wrong.” Jinto was stumped as to how to correct Lafier’s misunderstanding. “I don’t know what it’s like on other terrestrial worlds, but on planets like Martinh and Delktu, a child can be born without one or both of the parents wanting it that way. Plus, in the past, there were people who wanted to be parents but couldn’t. So that’s how there can be some secrecy regarding birth. I’m sure there are more examples of how that can come about, too.”

  “Such as?” Lafier didn’t hide her bewilderment.

  “That, you can look into yourself. It can get really complicated. What is all this about ‘birth secrets,’ anyway? What does it have to do with you joining the military?”

  “I do have a ‘birth secret.’ I had no idea whether I was a frymec négr (daughter of love). You can imagine how ill at ease that made me.”

  “A ‘daughter of love’...” It sounded like some religious term to him. Despite the fact the Abh were areligious, that is. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

  “You don’t know?” Lafier looked startled.

  “I’m beginning to realize my education was lacking in certain aspects...” said Jinto, but it smelled of making excuses.

  Though it was technically an Abh linguistic and cultural institute, the lessons centered mostly on the Baronh language. As for how they conducted their cultural instruction, they settled on briefly touching upon general manners and the like. There were no lectures on the core tenets of Abh culture.

  He’d asked his teachers questions, and hit his books, but he never found anything too concrete. The information circulated by official documents on matters such as political organizations and the law was fine, but any information that looked closely into the daily lives of the Abh was a confusing tangle. Jinto had had no clue which claims he ought to believe.

  Half of the blame for that fell on the Abh themselves. It was not as though they deliberately concealed the particulars of their culture, but there was a distinct dearth of enthusiasm to explain any of it to the uninitiated.

  All in all, because the teachers had only worked alongside Abhs temporarily, they had done nothing more than look upon their world from the outside. The books had been published by former imperial citizens, not by Abhs. Some authors who had never even left Delktu got what amounted to irresponsible speculation and yellow journalism published as legitimate sources of information in those books.

  Abhs hardly ever spoke about themselves to Landers.

  “...And that’s why there are still some things I still don’t get about the way family works in Abh culture. Everybody knows Abhs don’t marry, but so how do they have children?” Fearing he might have touched on a sensitive topic, Jinto scanned Lafier’s expression.

  Lafier seemed quite unfazed. “I see. So you don’t know anything about how we’re born...”

  “Yeah, that is, uhh...” Jinto struggled for words, his face red. Just his luck; he’d somehow stumbled into asking her the age-old question, ‘where do babies come from?’ He thought he’d grown past needing to ask that particular question. To think he’d end up posing the question to a girl. A girl younger than him, at that. “I know you people don’t conceive in the womb...”

  “There are some who choose to do so.”

  “Really? But what about the gene donors, then?”

  “The embryo gets taken out temporarily. Usually it’s transferred to a ïanh (YAHNYUH, artificial womb), but some women who want an exotic experience have it returned to the womb.”

  “I see.” And so he learned a hidden truth of the Abh. The rumor on Delktu had it that Abh women had no wombs.

  “But conception using artificial wombs is the norm, yes.”

  “Gotcha.” Jinto shrugged. “Now you must understand why even if I tried acting like an Abh, it’d be a waste of effort. It’s like your entire race has ‘birth secrets.’ I tried looking into it, but there were so many dodgy, ridiculous accounts. Some said that you make offspring out of your own ‘branches,’ or that you mix together complete strangers’ genes, or that you combine your genes with someone of the same gender, or that you even mate with relatives. Seriously, how do they come up with this stuff...?”

  “We do all of those things,” Lafier butted in.

  “Wha?” Jinto’s jaw dropped.

  “Some people simply clone themselves, or else edit only a few genes. Some gather the genes of other people. It’s up to each individual’s free choice.”

  “For real?” Jinto was flummoxed. “But don’t you put a premium on family lineage? From what you just said, I’d be of half a mind to think you ignore blood ties altogether.”

  “What’s held in highest importance in each household is the inheritance of its family traditions, not the inheritance of genes.”

  “Wait, but—”

  “A parent becomes a parent by polishing their child’s genes and raising them up.”

  “Hmm. I understand.” After a moment’s contemplation, he looked convinced. It may be only natural for the Abh, who practiced gene alteration on an everyday basis, to slight blood relationships.

  “That being said, the most common way to have a child is by combining your genes with the genes of someone you love.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that,” said Jinto.

  “Of course, there are times when someone loves another of the same sex, or a close relative, or more than one person at a time. I’ve heard that when people from terrestrial worlds are told this, it agitates them for some reason.” Lafier cast Jinto’s face an inquisitive look.

  “It’d agitate them all right,” Jinto assured her. “I’m in a pretty big tizzy myself.”

  “I find that strange. It’s not as though we have a monopoly on genetic engineering.”

  “I can’t speak for others,” said Jinto with discretion, “but at least on the terrestrial worlds I know, it seems people wouldn’t really think tampering with people’s genes is a praiseworthy pastime.”

  “So it would seem.” Lafier
suddenly shot Jinto an angry look. “Let me warn you that I’m not dispassionate about it, either. If you give it a moment’s thought, you’ll come to my realization that this isn’t a discussion two people in a sealed space should be having.”

  “I’m sorry.” So the Abh felt that way, too. Jinto did his best to retain his composure.

  “In any case, telling someone that you want their genes is the one of the most earnest ways to confess one’s love.” There was something dreamy in her tone.

  “Interesting.” It was like the “will you marry me?” of the Abh.

  “A child born under those circumstances is called—”

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Jinto interrupted. “She’s called a daughter of love, right?”

  “Yes. And a boy is called a frucec négr (FROOK NEG).” Their awkward yet fascinating conversation had seemingly come to an end. The tension in Jinto’s body released.

  “But couldn’t you just ask your father?” Then he got a start. “Hold on, your father isn’t...”

  “Hmm?” Those deep, jet-black eyes pointed his way. “Ah, no, my father is still alive. And at this rate, he’ll be hale and healthy for another 200 years. Is that what you were thinking?”

  “You got me.” It seemed she’d read into his little pause. “Then why haven’t you asked him?”

  “Do you think it didn’t cross my mind?”

  “Well, no...”

  “My father wouldn’t tell me!” she raged. “He was obsessed with the notion that birth secrets lead to the child developing a ‘fuller personality’!”

  “And there was no way to look it up?”

  “Once you become an adult, you can browse your genetic record, and no one can interfere. But until then, you need your parent’s permission.”

  “Aha, so that’s it.” It finally made sense now. He put the pieces together: She wanted to come of age as quickly as she could in order to discover the origins of her genes.