All this detail I had picked up in bits and pieces in our conversations over recent weeks. Teena's hyper-dimensional physicists had charted this portal carefully. It is a portal never before used for a variety of reasons. One reason is that it appears infrequently, with years between active cycles.
The mission to use this portal had been, as I said, planned for decades and if we had missed this opportunity it would again be decades before anyone could make another attempt along these lines. It is altogether too remote and inaccessible, too small and delicate to seem of much value in attacking the enemy, any conventional attack that is. Our strategy and approach planned to leverage precisely the factors that disqualified the portal from use in a more direct assault, in hopes of catching the enemy by surprise, making possible an attack the enemy was not prepared to counter. We hoped that by entering via this obscure and nearly inaccessible 'back door,' there would be almost no resistance.
The exact location was marked by a massive stone marker, not unlike the stone mile-markers along the highway, only larger. When you stood just in front of the stone, you were correctly aligned so as to pass the portal. You only had to be able to know when to do so. That too had been provided for, although I am unsure how. There was a 'portal detector' embedded in the stone. A small piece of quartz, merely a simple liquid crystal display, arranged so that if you stood directly in front of the marker at the precise, perfect angle to traverse the portal, then when it opened the quartz would subtly change color.
I was puzzled by this. Technology does not work on this planet, or so I've been told. How could the marker for the portal include a hyper-dimensional detector? The answer turned out to be relatively simple. The technology, I learned, would indeed not work in this world. But the marker stone was so aligned with the gateway in such a way that when the portal opened, the detector was within the field of the wormhole itself, effectively shielding it from this world's influence. Hence it could work its subtle magic as long as the gateway held open. The indication, the subtle color change, was intentionally designed so that it would not be likely to be noticed by a native. You had to know what you were looking for, or else be incredibly lucky. We couldn't risk an indication blatant enough to attract a native into the portal. A blinking light would be a dangerous temptation.
I came to understand that it had long been the practice to subtly mark locations where portals appear on every planet, particularly those frequently used by travelers. I learned that the portal pair in the city where I had watched Teena transit that day were, in fact, quite well marked to the trained eye. Who notices every faint mark or scratch on the street, or a wall, particularly amongst graffiti?
I also learned that someone well practiced in accessing portals could recognize an active wormhole visually, by the slight shimmer in the air and even feel the air movement across the open gateway. Of course, you still need to know precisely when it is supposed to appear and where. Teena and Petch are both well practiced at this. I was not. Between the aids placed for us by previous adventurers to this realm and their experience with and knowledge of the portals, we should be able to find it. Our very lives depended on doing so.
We arrived at the portal marker a little past noon. We had several hours to wait. We took up station in front of the portal where we could watch for its appearance. I decided we should take a nap for at least an hour or so before doing anything else.
Nap! Ha! Who was I kidding? We had just run 35 miles and were keyed up, ready for the opening salvo of a great fight with galaxy-wide consequences. Indeed, a battle in which we were quite likely to die. Yeah, we could nap! We could drift off while watching the winged pigs soar high above our heads!
Okay, so napping wasn't going to work. Resting was still a good idea. We did stretch out on the grass for a little over an hour and lie quietly. Sleep, not so much. After a while, conceding that actual sleep was not happening, we again sat up and began to chat as we waited for the zero-hour.
While waiting, we went over our battle plans, rehashed the previous afternoon's briefing, consumed what little remained of our supplies and in general prepared any way we could.
No doubt my timing was unfortunate, but rightly or wrongly, I decided that an issue was weighing on my mind, and sitting here in enforced idleness I just could not leave it alone. Unquestionably this was the wrong time to raise any issue, much less a highly problematic one, but we might not have another chance. I recognize I should have accepted that, and left it alone, but the engineer in me can never merely leave something broken. If something's broken, I honestly must fix it, even if doing so carries unintended consequences. Some have told me that this is a character flaw. Perhaps it is.
I had noticed a worrying tension between Petchy and Teena the last several days as if they had been fighting. At first, I considered it as none of my business and butted out. I suppose that having made that decision, I should have stuck with it, or else cleared the air days ago, to place it far behind us well before battle time.
Each time some minor incivility reared its head I gritted my teeth and turned away. It seemed to stay there, bubbling softly under the surface, popping up in sharp comments and curt, almost hostile exchanges between Petch and Teena. As we sat and talked about the upcoming battle, it surfaced again, with the two of them sniping at each other in subtle exchanges.
Finally, after about the third curt exchange between them, I decided that whatever the issue was, it was a threat to our mission. Given my self-appointed role as a de facto leader of our team, I stepped boldly up to the problem. Determined to bring it out into the open and air it, resolve it if possible, I confronted them. At first, they denied anything was wrong.
I refused to permit it. Some might suggest I acted like a leader. The less charitable might call me a busy-body. Teena was annoyed with me. Petch was downright surly. I pressured them anew, rejecting their position that it was not my business. Petch was upset about something, and Teena was acting guilty, and I worried it would endanger our mission. I insisted they come clean, and right now. I demanded we clear the air about whatever the problem is before we entered into battle.
That might have been a mistake.
Taboos
I could see Petchy was upset, clouding up for a severe blow and I was still wondering why. He paced back and forth, muttering and gesticulating incoherently for several seconds before settling down and confronting the question. Lowering his voice and pointedly excluding me from the conversation, Petchy asked Teena, “Are you going to tell him?” She shakes her head and motions him to shush.
He wasn't buying it. His voice elevated as his anger gelled. “He deserves to know. I mean it, Athena! Once you bedded him, the equation changed. You placed him in a situation of violating his taboos, but you violated your own taboos as well as his without giving him a chance to decide any of it for himself. By withholding the true nature of what was happening, you raped him as brutally as that act has ever been performed!”
Well! Now we know Petchy had not been so very sound asleep that night in the Dark Castle after all!
Petch continued, “He is in love with you. Probably has been since he first laid eyes on you. You well know your face is the perfect 'golden ratio' and your body sculpted, your every inch, your every curve carefully fine-tuned, even your pheromones are enhanced to have exactly that effect, instant arousal. Any human male is SUPPOSED to get an erection on mere sight of you. Shucks, it even affects women, even those not so inclined will swing into your orbit given half a chance.
“Look at how the fur-people gravitate to you! Those ladies are almost as eager to bed you as they are Fitz! Men are drawn to you like a moth to a flame. Even I am not immune, and I KNOW what an old witch you are. Even I get aroused when I see you if I don't keep a firm rein on my libido, and I well know why and that it's not real. Hell, I understand it inside and out. What chance does a child like him have?
“You have been using him shamefully. It's bad enough that you used your enhanced seductive powe
rs to sucker him into this suicide mission. We excused that because of the lives at risk. But, it was over the top to use those same powers to sucker him into gratifying your own sexual needs. That was rape, pure and simple, no matter that he enjoyed it too. It was rape because of the deception involved. We all have a very great chance of dying in the next few hours. He deserves to know the full truth before he dies.”
She burst into tears. My super-woman was suddenly, uncharacteristically reduced to tears over a sexual liaison with me. I was standing there looking at her, my mouth opening and closing with nothing coming out, unable to make the ostensible connection between my brain and mouth function.
After a moment she collected herself. “Fitz, Petch is right. I don't like that he says it, and it's painful to admit, but he is right. I am a shameless old harridan who has taken shameful advantage of a child. When you first came to this planet, you balked at what you thought was jailbait, refusing to violate a significant social taboo.”
So Petch had told her about that too! Must a man's errors always dog his every step?
She continued, “From where I sit, you are my jailbait, my taboo, and I cannot help myself. I can only plead that many of the same elements of my enhanced attractiveness extend to you too. You must recognize that you have never lacked for bedmates when you wanted them. Why do you think the ladies here are so very eager for your bed. True enough here they want your seed for very practical, very well-understood reasons. Those reasons are enough to ensure you had plenty of eager, furry bed-mates regardless if you had been entirely unattractive. That, however, is not the case. The ladies of this world are falling all over themselves for your attentions. Quite a few who had no possible hope of being fertile were guilty of deceiving themselves and their sisters to climb into your bed. Yes, my bed too for that matter, if that matters to you.”
I just stared at her, comprehending, yet not comprehending, in mute silence.
She went on, “Quite beyond that basic need for your y-chromosome, they find you utterly irresistible. As do I. Your entirely natural attractiveness to women is scarcely less than my carefully engineered attractiveness to men. Even though unlike them I well know, I understand intimately, the basis of that attraction, yet I still feel it. More than feel it, I am drawn to you against all of my judgment. Maturity, experience, and logic, even higher mission all too easily become pushed aside in pursuit of lust. Such is human nature, and I am as human as you.
“You have come to sense that we are very old by your standards. It is true. I was an old hag, well beyond my childbearing years when your father was born.”
I simply stared for several seconds, digesting all I had heard. My head was reeling from too much information, trying to decide which of the several broken taboos still mattered to me. After a struggle, I managed to engage both cerebrum and larynx at the same time and mount a semi-coherent response.
“Y-You may have a few years on me. I don't know when my father was born, or even who he was. I don't care. We have been through an awful lot together, and I have watched you fight, run, and face death. No other woman could ever live up to the standard you have set. If I am your jailbait, then you are my cougar. All that remains is to decide what we are to do about it.”
She took my arm. “Fitz, you do not know the whole story. Petch said my body; my very pheromones were enhanced to give me power over men. That is very true, as my role has often been that of seductress, getting my way using artificially enhanced feminine wiles. You said no woman could ever live up to the standard I set. That is literally true, and by design. I am a product of the same miraculous genetic engineering that now threatens the very universe. I tried very hard not to seduce you, but truly you had no chance, even without my consciously trying. I am as programmed to use the weapons of seduction as men are naturally engineered to fall for them.”
She sighed. I had a chance to interrupt, but I was too busy spinning. She collected her thoughts and went on, “You said you do not know who your father was. I do. I know him well. I was there when HE was born!
“Do you know the etymological meaning behind your name, the meaning of 'Fitz?'” I nodded, but she continued anyway, “Fitz is a prefix in patronymic Anglo-Saxon surnames. It means Son of. As in Fitzpatrick means son of Patrick, or Fitzjohn, son of John. But more than that, it means 'bastard son of' and is usually applied to royalty. Thus the illegitimate son of King James was called Fitzjames. This usage dates from the 1600s.”
I asked, “So, are you saying I am an illegitimate son of royalty. That sounds suspect. The royalty part, not the bastardy. The irony that I am leaving bastard babies all over this world, and somehow that's a good thing, desired by these people, is just too delicious!”
I gave way to raucous laughter as I digested the irony. For a few moments, the pain was nearly too much to bear.
“Who is this royal son-of-a-bitch who sired me. You used the present tense, so I assume he is still alive. Tell me who he is. I owe him a swift kick in the ass, at very least!” I got a little testy, I suppose, I seemed to have jumped up and raised my voice ominously.
Petchy and Teena looked at one another, surprised by my fierce reaction, I suppose. I was too. Then they looked at me. Then at each other again. Realization dawned. “YOU???” I exploded at Petchy. “You are my father?”
He dropped his eyes and shrugged.
“Why? How?” I demanded, “Explain this to me.”
She laid a hand on my arm. “Fitz, we have been on a critical mission for many decades. We needed a man of particular qualifications, who could fulfill a critical role in that mission. We spread our genetically enhanced chromosomes far and wide. We had over ten thousand possible candidates.
“You are not Petchy's only progeny, not by a long shot. You are the most successful end-result of a long, complicated and often painful eugenics program. It is not for no reason you were raised as an orphan. You were not born, so much as built to specification, engineered to exacting tolerances and honed for a specific task.
“I have watched over you since your birth.
“Recognize that over the months here you have developed from a stereotypical 'computer nerd' into a super-athlete. Didn't you wonder how that came to be?” She held up a hand to forestall my response. “I know Petchy gave you some nonsensical tripe about nutrition in the root vegetables and you have been religiously drinking that foul-tasting 'Grow-Juice' that the fur-people use.
“But didn't you ever wonder why, if those things were so powerful, the natives didn't develop huge muscles? Yes, the root vegetables as Petch called them, are indeed powerful and nutritious, but that's not the whole story. You became strong and fast when pushed, you responded spectacularly to aggressive training not just because of a magic elixir, but because it was always in your genes. Some of it was naturally there from birth, some of it was the result of a final touch of genetic tweaking in our lab before you came to this planet. True, the nutrition was beneficial. But we cannot exceed that which is in our genes. Sometimes we can manipulate those genes to stimulate the full expression of specific characteristics, which is what we have done, but if the genes for intelligence, or strength, or speed, or endurance aren't in you, no amount of training or nutrition will make you strong, fast or smart.
“You are not even aware of how much you exceed Earthly norms. Again, that was a part of the plan and a reason for training here, where it would be difficult for you to objectively measure your performance. You can out run, out climb, out fight, and out endure any man ever to have lived on planet Earth before now. You also have a better memory and quicker mind than anyone, including even ourselves. You see now why Petchy referred to himself as coming from 'Krypton.' You are literally a Superman on Earth, exceeding not only Earth norms but your progenitor's as well. We built you that way to be our weapon, just as I was engineered the way I am to be a different kind of weapon. We need these weapons far more than you could possibly have grasped.
“There are many others similar to you, but you
r results were the best. That silly game we played back on Earth with the goofy advertisement was a calculated trap to bring in our carefully nurtured crop of potentials. Carefully loaded with keywords designed to draw our flock and be ignored by the un-genetically-enhanced sons of Earth. Those who responded were overwhelmingly your siblings, drawn by carefully orchestrated psychological cues. Not all, but most. The promise of a job in hard times is a powerful magnet. But you had no choice. We had a larger mission of evaluating their progress and potential to be used in our mission or other future missions. A great many of the warriors assaulting the citadel to draw fire to allow us to cross today are your genetic brothers. For this mission, the direct penetration, you were and still are our best hope.”
I stared blankly at her. For a moment I thought about the transexual I had met in the waiting room. Was he a brother of mine too? Is he, or she, out there now, cannon fodder to mask our penetration? Was his gender identity issue caused as a side-effect of this mysterious genetics program? Was he/she a genetic failure? Do I lean toward such gender-identity issues too? Or is that factor completely unrelated, merely another aspect of being human? I need to think about this.
“So where does that leave us. You came into my bed. We were lovers. I have fantasized about you endlessly. I burn for your touch even at this very moment!”
She looked at her feet, “and I you. Even I am not immune to the very instincts I unconsciously exploit. I truly meant it when I said you were my jailbait. And worse. You see, not only is Petch your father, genetically, he is my grandson.” She paused about two heartbeats to let that sink in. “I am your great-grandmother! Your taboos are not my taboos, true, but Petch is right when he says I have abused you shamefully and you deserve to know!
“My fear now, by being weak and needy, by being unable to resist a trap I myself set and baited, I have torpedoed our mission. By not being able to stay out of your bed I have played with your emotions and messed with your mind and heart. That the act itself technically constituted incest is just one more minor plot twist in this matrix of social taboos.”
Chromosome Quest- a Hero's Quest Against the Singularity Page 19
