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It hadn't always been Law; once it had merely been inconceivable, and so never thought to need a prohibition. The young, though, ever ready for the new and ever less accepting of a fact without a why, began to become aware of the exotic charms of the Others, and finally the first event took place and was discovered, too late to prevent, too late to be hidden
The Elders disputed for three days whether to destroy the one or the both along with the offspring, thus making clear for all time their abhorrence of the merging. It was in the midst of these deliberations that the new truths came to light,
~that their absolute control over their children was no more; this new world had granted a new vigor to those born to it, a strength of mind, of spirit and of power that meant that unquestioning obedience could no longer be simply compelled, and
~that their society here was not, after all, truly sufficient unto itself, and inferior or not, the thoughts and feelings of the Others must be taken into account.
The parents of both rebels refused to accede to the deaths of their offspring. Their friends supported them with varying degrees of stubbornness…and surprisingly few even among the Elders were willing to countenance the cold-blooded destruction of the child, even if they could have believed the Others would not have in some way retaliated.
Even so, authority must be maintained, at least in semblance; exile from the Domicile of the Exalted was decreed, and none could have foreseen how many of those supporting friends, likeminded or not, would choose to join their banished peers. This new world, the world of the Others, was neither unlivable nor unlovely, and the challenges it presented, hazards that their progenitors had walled away, served only to further enrich their new independence of spirit.
*****
“Try some, Tessi. It’s good.”
“You’re certain that it’s compatible with my metabolism?” Tessiaralia asked uncertainly, more alarmed by the spiky, aggressive appearance of the pineapple than with any real concern over the fruit’s edibility. Jason certainly seemed to be relishing the juicy yellow interior.
“My Love,” he replied patiently, pointing at the baby she still viewed with the awed amazement of the recipient of a miracle, “you’re holding all the proof you need; our very cells are compatible, so our sustenance certainly must be.” Jason knew better than to suggest again that the baby was actually proof that they were really the same species. Tessi’s people had been gone from Earth for a very long time before that nameless catastrophe had driven this small remnant to seek shelter in her arms once again; their own history denied their origins, and their silvery skin and willowy structure seemed alien enough to support their contention.
What weight could even a biologist of his accomplishments bring to bear against the certainty of their far more advanced science? What he knew for superstition and xenophobia, she had not yet ceased to see as sacred truth, but he’d been down that road, and it was an unfinished highway at this point; it went nowhere but to rough ground. He wanted smooth travels for now, for his wife and child. He cut her a slice of sweet/tart juiciness and enjoyed her surprised enjoyment.
He knew the hardest was yet to come.
*****
With Jason Stepanik on leave, much of the work in the LES was proceeding in an atmosphere of somewhat forced relaxation; his associates made a pretense of enjoying the cat being away, but the façade was wearing thin in many areas. The Laboratory for Exalted Studies might be his brainchild, but the scientists who had found themselves drawn to his side were no less intent on the answers the Lab sought. Since the forced landing had taken place on American soil, in the climate following the Patriation Dispute that had led to a broad-reaching amnesty for illegal immigrants from several nations, attitudes conducive to acceptance of strangers were already in place, carefully nurtured by a propaganda machine likewise ready-made. It was almost as if the United States had undergone a dress rehearsal for an alien encounter.
It had been a bone of contention quietly buried that one of the craft damaged in the Arrival had gone “unrecovered” and was even now the object of study in the Lab, at a location that the scientists could not quite believe was coincidentally located in a corner of Nevada that had for years been the focus of conspiracy buffs with reference to the old Roswell event. Mention of Fifty-One produced censorious glares from any officials in earshot and even the word ‘area’ was used in cautious whispers among the Laboratory crew. The outside grounds were referred to as ‘the surround.’
The craft was Carimé de la Cruz’ project and province and passion. An engineer of note (and once a reverse engineer of considerable notoriety before the government had co-opted her skills in that light out of her lucrative private-sector employment), Cari was finding the paired propulsion systems both frustrating and fascinating. Even the power source was defying her explorations; she was hoping that some of the rebels garnered by Jason’s ‘indiscretion’ might help to shed a little light. In the meantime, the lesser subsystems were offering leaps in technology beyond all expectation—leaps that she was parceling out in dribbles for several reasons quite aside from job-security.
She was also, for purely personal reasons, dying to meet his new bride. Cari had never been in the same room with one of the Exalted, as they insisted on being called. In vid, they always seemed aloof to the point of arrogance, so certain of their superiority that the very notion that they came here as refugees, émigrés seeking shelter, appeared outside their understanding. They were here, their attitude seemed to say, therefore they deserved whatever they required and it was beyond thinking that it might not be provided upon demand.
No wonder, she thought, that only strong measures by the government held back a tide of more-than-vocal resentment. She felt it herself in no small measure; Jason was one of the “most eligible bachelors” on the planet, or had been before eloping with this tiny interloper so white she might as well have been cast in platinum! Carimé had entertained her own hopes in that direction. Men of his good looks rarely added his intelligence to such wealth that he had privately funded the beginnings of the LES, and he’d seemed interested in her—once. She trod hard on the thought; a woman of her accomplishments had no call for jealousy, and Jason was welcome to his little alien for all of her!
The more honest side of her couldn’t help noting that her bitter tone gave the lie to that thought…so she trod hard on it as well.
“Tiroche, ch’prel mat’h,” she said, entering the ship’s forward control area. It had required an arduous study of the language of the Exalted just to be able to activate the ship’s most basic controls; they refused to respond to manual operation without initial verbal actuation. The core AI had already tried to actuate the ship’s self-destruct when its demand for an unknown code had been unsatisfied. Cari could only hope that it had been isolated from the rest of the ship’s circuits; she couldn’t be sure her frantic efforts had been entirely successful The AI hardware was inseparable from the superstructure, and Space only knew what circuitry ran through the hard-points.
Controls activated, she took her seat at what they had dubbed the sciences station, and called up the tactical display of the entry into Sol system. Already, study of this record had added reams of data unrecorded by Earth’s most advanced orbital telescopes. A planetesimal outside Pluto’s orbit had been recorded, travelling at a speed thought impossible in a non-cometary orbit, well within the Oort Cloud, and the advanced sensors of the Exalted ship had recorded a core rich in heavy metals beneath the icy mantle: refined metals. She filed this under ‘dribble’. It might be worth something later.
An oddity about the dwarf planet called Ceres, she tagged for imminent release. It was the first major object discovered in the asteroid belt, after all, and still one of the most commonly studied by beginning astronomers; someone else was likely to discover the new, measurable oblation to its shape and the no-doubt related increase in its rotational velocity, almost any day now.
She might as well have the credit as any of those amateur star-peepers. She made a note to book time on the relayed orbital telescope array soon (for credibility’s sake), reviewed the rest of the approach in fast-forward to see if she might have missed anything (“as IF!”) and then went back to the view of the anomalous body out in the fringes of the system, striving for greater definition of that core. It had a shape—an angular shape that she was becoming more and more convinced could not be naturally occurring. It was a relic, either of these “Exalted’s” original departure, or perhaps of some other visitor to this not-so-lonely-after-all backwater system. That—that would be a real find, but hardly one attainable in her lifetime.
Not unless she could unlock the secrets of this vessel. Yes, let Jason have his silver little alien ‘angel.’ There were other men, and other ways to a fortune.
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The Forbidding (updated 10/4) (Read 91 times)
