by Chogan Swan
“T does not trust me. I don’t know what she thinks or guesses.”
“I’ve told her nothing. It is not her concern. I ask that you not tell S either.”
“The last I assumed. I’ve wondered often why you made me as I am. I realize I’m an experiment, but I don’t resent that. I’m more than an experiment too. I don’t know if the questions that drove you to it will be answered, but I think you should hold on to hope.”
HumanaH studied her for a few moments. Her pen moved again. “There is something else you want to say.”
Una nodded. “I trust you enough to tell you that WE thank you for our life. Even though we realize someday we will remember great pain and tragedy—all of us agree on this. We are more than the sum of our parts.”
HumanaH face grew still, thoughtfulness holding her for a long moment. “And yet you chose Una for a name.”
Una nodded and tore the last sheet used from her notepad and rolled it into a tiny ball. Then put the ball of paper in her mouth. It was the only note she cared about keeping away from prying eyes. After swallowing it, she smiled.
“All for one and one for all was just too long,” she said.
CHAPTER 43 – MESSAGE
Una walked to the door of the ‘conference room’ and opened it. Her other branch-sisters and ShwydH stood in the hall. Ayleana was in front of the door with the others in tow.
Like a bus driver.
Tiana was fuming away on the side—the tailpipe. ShwydH was the one in the back of the bus … as usual.
Una stepped back, ushering them in.
“Oye, Una. ¿Que pasa? said Ayleana, stepping in and to the side, letting Tiana and ShwydH pass. Ayleana smiled down at Una. “You look just like me three years ago. Have you even passed threshold yet?”
“Why? Can’t you tell? Is something wrong with your nose? Oh, I get it. You want to be the BIG sister. Well, you’ve got that one covered, Sis.” She winked to show she was teasing and bore it with good grace as Ayleana patted her on the head.
“I like your hair.”
“I like your tall.”
Ayleana laughed and hugged her with one arm. “I think we’ll get along fine.” She threw a challenging look at Tiana who had taken the seat on HumanaH’s left.
ShwydH had planted himself on HumanaH’s right, and Ayleana walked to the table and sat next to him.
What the hell? Sitting next to ShwydH? What’s up with that?
Well, it looked as though she wasn’t outnumbered—at the moment. That was new. Not that she wanted to gloat about it.
You aren’t kidding anyone in here. Of course you do.
She smiled to herself. Everyone else inside was gloating for her … just a little.
Tiana tapped her fingernails on the table. “So what’s this all about?” she said in Nii.
HumanaH put the sound scrambler on the table and turned it on. “I have some things I need to say to everyone. Since I called the meeting, we will speak English as a courtesy to anyone who was not born to that language.”
“The only …” Tiana bit back on what she’d been about to say.
Una’s ShwydH personality shrugged a thought. Meaning only me as the only one not born to the dialect.
Una kept her face neutral. Not exactly diplomatic for a diplomat.
On her left, ShwydH spoke up. “Is anyone truly born to a language? I will have no trouble communicating in your tongue.”
“We will speak English,” HumanaH repeated. And Una knew her well enough through SwydH to be sure she had reasons, though not what they were.
HumanaH placed her phone next to the sound scrambler. “One of the last things I did in Valishnu was turn on the ship-to-ship communicator. When I connected the receiver through our satellite network, it triggered a shielded, automatic message beacon parked amid the trojans grouped at Neptume’s L4 Lagrange point. I recorded the part of the message in Nii so you could hear what it says for yourself. The time stamp on the message coincides with 1955 AD Gregorian. She tapped the phone screen.
A warbling attention signal tone rose and fell for a few moments then a recorded voice began to speak in Nii.
“Attention space-tunnel capable ship. Your ship has been scanned. The Alliance of Planets and the Nii Federated Systems have interdicted this star system and the inhabitants of the third major orbital due to ethical instability and dangerous societal structures. The Nii Federation is conducting an ongoing investigation to determine if this dynamic is due to external influence.
“Communicating with or revealing your presence to the inhabitants is prohibited. Keep all evidence of your existence shielded at all times within 50 light years of this system. If you have entered this system via a trans-space tunnel, proceed to a location in the blinding cone of the system star and depart immediately. To avoid prosecution, report accidental trespass to the Nii Federation ambassador closest to your tunnel exit point. Failure to comply will result in prosecution under Alliance of Planets treaty law.”
The recorded message ended.
HumanaH picked up her phone and placed it back in her pocket. “Can someone with a full memory of our trip here tell me how the Federation knows enough to conduct an ongoing investigation? The interdiction coming shortly after the Ivy Mike test of a massive thermonuclear fusion bomb I could understand. But if they were conducting an ongoing investigation, wouldn’t they have contacted us when Tiana decided to announce our existence?”
“It’s us,” said Ayleana. “We’re the ongoing investigation.”
HumanaH turned and motioned for her to explain.
“Shortly after you came here through the foldspace tunnel, Darmien reported that a drone had followed you through the tunnel with intelligence that a female niiaH was on the ship. As part of her duties, Amelie updated the drone with mission progress before pursuing the niiaH into the atmosphere and then again before scuttling the ship. It’s possible Naval Command tracked the drones last location, found the tunnel and followed it here. They would never have stopped checking back to follow up. They’ve been monitoring the planet from space ever since. The message we just heard is the just the latest iteration of Federation policy.”
Tiana made a low keen of deep distress. “We spent centuries here working to save this world from itself. Now Earth is under interdiction, and we can’t leave without abandoning our symbionts and friends. The drone will have recorded the signal when you turned on the transmitter. They’ll come back and discover from monitoring the transmissions that our mission has failed. We saved the Earth from the NiiaH, but now Earth will never be a Federation ally.”
“How did it fail?” ShwydH said. “You stopped DuGwaedH. You gave the Earth a chance. Billions of sentients were spared the horror of being eaten and enslaved by the NiiaH Empire. They may never be allowed loose in the galaxy, but they can still have a measure of autonomy under nii law, can they not?”
Tiana turned to look at him. “They will never be allowed outside their solar system. If the sun fails or another galactic conflict overtakes them, humankind will become extinct.”
ShwydH smiled.
Una’s ShwydH personality interpreted. He signals the comparison of his own short-lived fate to humanity’s, but I doubt Tiana will understand that.
“I fail to see the humor,” Tiana snarled.
ShwydH tilted his head, indicating an alternate viewpoint. “Though it may not line up with your hopes for them, perhaps some of them will treasure what life they do have. Someone more familiar with what would have happened to Earth otherwise might more fully comprehend the blessing of being spared from such things.”
Tiana tilted her head, answering his alternate viewpoint with another. “Spared from things like you?”
HumanaH growled a warning at Tiana.
But ShwydH held up his hand. “May I answer?” he said to HumanaH.
HumanaH turned to him and nodded.
Una stifled a laugh. Props for the courage of your convictions ShwydH.
Coura
ge is easier when you think you are near the end of your life.
She knew whose voice that was. The urge to laugh disappeared. How did I lose touch with what he is still going through?
ShwydH turned back to Tiana. “The short answer to that question is, yes, things like me. I understand why you are upset. You are torn between your love for those here and your hunger to see home again. But Jonah, your own symbiont, has pointed out that the dynamic between victims and oppressors is a shared subset.”
“So now you’re the victim?”
HumanaH raised herself partly from her chair and spoke in a soft, furious voice. “That is twice you have made ad hominem attacks instead of addressing valid points. You have not lived through the last century on this planet. You did not experience two world wars, Hitler and his Holocaust, Stalin, Lenin, Mao or the beginning of Earth’s nuclear nightmare. But our mother did not raise you to be a fool. Oppressors usually arise from the oppressed. The dynamic in the NiiaH Empire was the same as it is here, and its roots went back to a common heritage with ours. Our ancestors on both sides stood by and let it fester before the name niiaH was ever proclaimed. Are you then without sin?”
Tiana’s face had turned tight and set.
Una held her breath. What is going on with HumanaH? Her protective instincts are deeply invested in ShwydH. She wanted to use English because she knew she might need a blunt force when communicating.
Is another war about to start? The child personalities were afraid, but Una let the others handle that.
HumanaH sat down again. “Let’s focus on our problem, not attacking each other. The relevant conundrum is that humans will remain under interdict unless we can make a reasonable argument that their troubles were caused by outside influence.”
Una almost asked how, but ShwydH and an older version of Tiana intercepted the impulse.
No! Never reveal your ignorance when you don’t know the risk.
“I’ve had some time to consider this idea,” HumanaH said. “Ayleana, would you repeat what you told me about the time I interrogated the niiaH who was in the child’s body, please?”
Ayleana tipped her chin up. “You had been considering the probability that the niiaH had come to Earth before. When you interrogated a male in a prepubescent body about this, his words were … ‘Unknown, but this planet was on our oldest charts and marked as red.’ You realized then that niiaH might have come to Earth even thousands of years ago.”
Ayleana shrugged. “When I remembered this, I wondered why the Earth hadn’t already been turned into niiaH kibble. Do you have any ideas about that, ShwydH?”
“Possibly…. The niiaH had a custom of using low-level soldiers as cheap probes for conquest suitability. They would give soldiers parachutes and communicators then drop them from low orbit. Later the ship would come back. If the soldiers had survived and reported rich resources they would gain a promotion when the ship landed to begin conquest.”
Ayleana “So why do you think Earth wasn’t turned into a slave world?”
ShwydH shrugged. “The word you left out was ‘yet’. Something might have come up that made it inconvenient to land, or the population level at the time might have made it less profitable. A ‘red’ designation just meant ‘come back later’. If your source said the charts were their oldest, it could have been over two thousand years ago. But the probe process might be a basis for the Earth legends of ‘fallen angels’.”
Ayleana nodded. “Or vampires.”
ShwydH inclined his head, conceding her point.
Tiana looked from Ayleana to ShwydH and back again. The smell of her struggle for clarity was clear.
Una was just as confused.
When did Aylie stop hating me? Una considered her ShwydH personality’s question and made a mental shrug.
“So you’re on good terms with him now? Why?” Tiana said.
“Look, Auntie Tiana, I grew up and buried the hatchet. You don’t need to dig it up again.”
“Fine, but can you answer my question? Why?”
Ayleana shrugged one muscular, boldly striped shoulder. “Well, he did risk his life to save me from being eaten by a shark then fed me his own blood to keep me from death. I suppose that was a contributing factor.”
“Can that be enough for a truce, ambassador?” HumanaH said, quietly. “We need to work together. It would go easier without the wrangling.”
Tiana lifted her chin in agreement.
“Thank you.”
Tiana held up a finger. “HumanaH?”
HumanaH signaled her attention to Tiana.
“Will you please take over the leadership of our association? You see the problems we face and what we need to do now to face them better than I do. And your relationships with everyone here are open. I’ve been too focused on the job of Earth’s ambassador to be the leader we need as an organization. I insist you replace me.”
“I agree, but not for those reasons.”
Tiana moved her fingers, asking for clarification. Ayleana tapped the table in agreement. Una kept out of it—as did ShwydH.
HumanaH gave the nii equivalent of a sigh, rolling her fingers in a wave.
“I am the only one here whose symbiont partnerships have always met nii qualifications for purity from taboo. I will need to be the one to make the argument for Earth. The rest of you, if you came before an inquiry panel would fail as witnesses. Even if you could hide the organic markers of your bonding, none of you could lie to a full panel under oath.”
ShwydH signaled a lack of comprehension, holding his palms toward HumanaH.
“I’ve never had sex with a human,” she said.
Oh! That was always a taboo, but it was never made a qualification for citizenship during my memory. Must have been a later development.
“It was an accident,” Tiana said, raising her voice defensively.
“For you, maybe the first time,” Ayleana muttered. “I didn’t even know the law. Besides, I never had a selection of nii partners for passing threshold anyway.”
Tiana sighed—the human sound seemed to echo in the room. “I thought we’d never be able to go back.”
Ayleana turned to her. “Do you really regret it? I don’t.” She gestured to her body. “I was never going to fit in that world like this anyway.”
Tiana rubbed her face then shook her head. “I guess we are tied to Earth now.”
“To your human partners, yes,” HumanaH said. “But not necessarily to Earth.”
“You aren’t going to wait for the Federation. Are you, branch-sister?” Ayleana said.
“No.” HumanaH said. “I think it would be better to go and face the music sooner.”
“What are you talking about?” Tiana yelled. “The fucking USP blew up Valishnu. How are we going anywhere?”
She sounds like she’s about to cry. Una felt almost awed at the thought.
How human she has become. The ShwydH mind agreed.
“I’m sorry, branch-sister.” HumanaH reached out and took Tiana’s hand. “I had to decide what to tell you first, and I decided the interdict message should take priority. This is the first time we’ve been in a secure place to talk since I left Puerto Peñasco. Alex is holding Valishnu on a shallow spot on the ocean floor not far from Vera Cruz. She’s sealed against seawater and about two months away from being spaceworthy. We used a decoy under a tarp to fool the USP.”
A tear dropped from Tiana’s eye to the table. “Well, I suppose bad news before good news is usually a good idea, but I might not have been so grumpy if you’d told me sooner.”
CHAPTER 44 – VALISHNU RISEN
Aslight roiling of the gentle waves of the Bahía de Campeche presaged Valishnu’s arrival at the surface. Like a whale breaching, her back rose out of the deep, sluicing off water and seaweed. Una watched from the west, standing on El Salvador’s deck. Behind Valishnu’s graceful bulk, the sun rose, and the sparkling waters surrounded her like light from the galactic core.
“She’s so beautif
ul,” chorused all fifteen of the Rodriguez sisters. Abedabun sat atop Una’s shoulders, and the rest of them surrounded her like a robe.
The girls parted for Amber as she approached Una from the stern. “Take good care of my baby girls,” Amber said.
The Rodriguez collective had decided to send seven of their members with Valishnu. According to them, the opportunities to learn from an interstellar journey far outweighed the risks. Since Valishnu mostly used foldspace tunneling for crossing interstellar distances, the relativistic effects would not cause much issue in their differing age changes when they returned. At this point, nobody even knew exactly what their expected lifespans might be, but it would probably be at least as long as Amber’s.
