Uma and Doony immediately tightened their hold on her legs, sensing her affection was being directed elsewhere. They only came up to her hips now, so they couldn’t see through the window. She stroked them again, down the nape of the neck, the way they enjoyed most, and cooed reassurance at them, body posture reinforcing the feeling, I’m fine, and I’m relieved for my friend, too. Everything is going to be good.
The chief doctor emerged from the treatment room and came over to her. “You can go in now, if you’d like,” sie said. “You’ll need to be quick. The sedatives are already making him drowsy.”
“Thank you.” For a moment Yirella hesitated, then she shook her head at her own reluctance. After everything they’d been through, having to find courage to face Dellian now seemed ridiculous.
She flicked a finger up, indicating that Uma and Doony should wait outside. They pouted and hung their heads, but didn’t protest as she went in.
Dellian peered up at her and smiled in recognition amid his chemical-induced serenity. “Hey, you.”
“Hey yourself. How are you?
“Doing okay, I think.”
“Your poor arm.”
“ ’Sokay.”
“I hope the a-skin brings your freckles back. I always liked them.”
“We’re alone in a bedroom together…”
She twitched a smile. “So we are. Savi and Callum, together again.”
“You kissed me.”
“What?”
“Back there, when we were stranded all alone on the tippity-ippity top of the mountain. You kissed me.”
She took his hand and brushed the knuckles to her mouth. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Do I get another?”
“Maybe. If you’re good and do as the doctors tell you.”
“How’s that going?”
“The moroxes didn’t cut you too deep.” She arched her eyebrow. “How lucky was that? Unbelievable, in fact. I guessed right.”
“So am I boosting?”
“What?”
“This is my boost, right? I’m being implanted with all my super wooper fighting gadgets?”
“Wow, what are they giving you? I could do with some myself. We don’t start boosting until next week. That’s to give us time to recover from our test.”
He let out a long sigh, his head sinking deeper into the pillow as his muscles relaxed. “Are you testing me?”
“No. We never left, you know. Never got signed out of our training. The resort island, the fun we all had there, it was just the halftime break in another combat tactics game. That’s all. It’s never going to end, Dellian, not ever. Not for us.”
“All righty,” he mumbled as his eyes closed.
She gazed down fondly at the sleeping boy and kissed his forehead. “Get well. I need you.”
* * *
—
Principal Jenner’s office was at the top of the tallest building in the clan estate. Nothing as majestic as the skyscrapers in Afrata over the other side of the valley, but the view through the curving transparent walls was nonetheless impressive. The sight of the valley stretching away into hazy distance even roused Yirella from her mood as she stepped out of the portal door.
Alexandre was waiting for her and gave her a gentle embrace as soon as she entered. That was when she realized she was now a few centimeters taller than hir.
“How are you, my dear?” Alexandre asked, gesturing her to a couch.
“Absolutely fine,” Yirella replied stiffly. She gazed at Jenner, sitting behind hir desk. The principal was male cycling, dressed in a suit of some shiny ebony fabric with a slim white collar and scarlet piping, which made hir look more imposing than any head of a simple educational establishment should be.
“But then I was never in any real danger, was I?”
Jenner and Alexandre exchanged a glance.
“No,” Alexandre admitted with deep reluctance. “If you’ll indulge me: When did you work it out?”
“Why? So you can avoid making the same mistake with the next yeargroup?”
“That’s not quite as detrimental as you seem to think,” Jenner said. “We are all of us learning here. We simply wish to know if we should adapt our procedures and tell the girls in advance.”
“But not the boys?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“They are the point troops. You know this. They have to learn how to act together in a unit.”
“I think even the boys have got that by now,” Yirella growled. “Eighteen years of indoctrination tends to make that very clear.”
“We are not indoctrinating you,” Jenner said immediately. “This is a training facility, that’s all.”
“Training us to fight for you.”
“Humans are a hunted species, Yirella. Sometime, somewhere in this galaxy, we have to stop running and fight back. You have known that it is your destiny, to confront the enemy, from the very beginning. We never withheld that from you. Everything which has followed, everything we have taught you and trained you to do, is designed to give you the greatest chance of success.”
She arched her eyebrow. “Including the cougar?”
“No,” Alexandre said ruefully. “The cougar was a mistake. We didn’t know one was in the area.”
“But the moroxes, they’re not real, are they? They’re just genten remotes.”
“They used to be real,” Alexandre said. “Thousands of years ago in a star system light-years away. A traveler generation starship found a planet with indigenous biological life not dissimilar to terrestrial evolution, which is always a rare and wonderful surprise. They stopped and studied the xenobiology for a century before moving on. We replicated the basic morox form in molecular initiators. It provided you with a believable threat.”
“It nearly ripped Dellian’s arm off!”
“No, it never did that. They were deep scratches, that’s all. Plenty of blood, but no real damage.”
“You scared the living crap out of us to give us motivation? You bastards!”
Alexandre sat next to her and reached out to put hir arm around her shoulders. She shook hir off angrily. “Don’t. Not you. You were supposed to be the one we trusted, our almost-parent. You betrayed us.” She wiped her eyes, struggling to hold tears in.
“I would die before I would betray you,” Alexandre said. “I might not be your biological parent, but my love for you is just as strong.”
Yirella shook her head. “No parent would do this. Doesn’t matter what kind.”
“All of us who volunteered to stay behind while our families left for the safety of the generation ships did so willingly, knowing the suffering—this suffering—that we would face raising you,” Jenner said quietly. “We made that sacrifice freely because we not only love you, but we believe in you. You are destined to be our salvation.”
“We’re not your salvation. We’re your slave soldiers,” Yirella spat. “Why did you even birth us? Why not just use genten remotes?”
“Because of you, Yirella,” Alexandre said softly. “You are the reason.”
“What do you mean?”
“A genten is smart, fast, but ultimately has limits—in imagination, in intuition. You don’t. You are human.”
“That’s…stupid. I’m not as clever as a genten. It doesn’t matter how physically large my brain is. I could never match one of them.”
“Not in absolute processing power, no. But like all technology, Turings have plateaued. There is no ‘next level’ for them, no eleventh generation.”
“I’m not a next level of evolution,” she cried. “I’m the opposite. I’m a throwback, a binary human. You wanted us—the boys—for our aggression, for the primitives we are.”
“Yes, we wanted boys for their aggression. Us omnias don’t pos
sess their level of testosterone bellicosity—not permanently, because we cycle. But a constant male gender…that gives them the greatest advantage a human can have in a combat situation. We have to win, Yirella. The enemy will never stop; we know this. They haven’t stopped for thousands of years. We cannot send less than our best against them.”
“Then what do you need me for? I’m not the best of anything.”
“Deep down I think you understand perfectly well why. I know acknowledging what you are is difficult, and for that I am so very sorry. But you are what you are, Yirella: smart. Do you really think a genten would have worked out what was happening at the crash? A genten is not suspicious. Simply asking questions is not the same as possessing curiosity. Curiosity is a human trait, derived from emotion. A genten can analyze its situation and environment, but to believe what it experiences is fraudulent without prior knowledge—no. That was you. You worked it out, and not just because you were clever, but because you had feelings. To make the decisions you will be making…That is another flaw a genten cannot compensate for. You see, once you are out among the stars, face-to-face with the enemy, you will confront the final question—the very human question of trust. If you were to order Dellian and his yearmates into action, they would trust you because they know you would never, ever let them down; that whatever attack plan you come up with, it is the very best a plan can be. A genten’s plan of action might be equally good—possibly better—but there will always exist a tiny fissure of uncertainty in those required to carry it out. In those circumstances, hesitance can mean death. Trust is at the core of human nature, one of our greatest curses—and blessings.”
“You think you’re the pinnacle of sophistication and human culture, but you’re not. You are monsters,” she said coldly. “You bred us poor, backward animals for one purpose. We have no choice; you have taken it away from us. Our life is preordained, controlled by you. We are nothing. You have denied us a soul.”
“You are the salvation of the human race. That is not nothing.”
“I don’t want that!” she yelled. “I want a life! My life. I want to live in a culture where people respect each other, where we have the liberty to follow whatever goals we can find for ourselves. I want to be free!”
“We all do,” Jenner said sharply. “But we had that freedom taken from us when the enemy found us. Now, all that is left is for humanity to run. To fly between the stars and find a refuge world for a few hundred years where we can breathe for a brief sweet time before running again. I too want to live a life without fear. I want a home to go to. But there is none in this damned galaxy, not for humans. None of us have a choice anymore. So now we will join the Five Saints, and fight back. We have to. My part in this campaign is trivial. It is so small that it will never be known. But you, you and the boys—you will gather together with others like you, and you will win. You will liberate this galaxy. And humans will have a home again.”
* * *
—
Three days after they were rescued from the crash, the clan’s senior year finally moved out of their dormitory dome in the middle of the main campus complex. Genten construction remotes had built them a crescent of neat little bungalows in a fresh section of the clan compound. They all had the same basic layout of five rooms and a cohort den under a curving roof, with broad glass doors opening onto a terrace shaded by palms and vines. In the center of the crescent was a communal hall, with indoor and outdoor swimming pools and gyms and a dining room if they still wanted to eat as a group, as well as lecture theatres and design studios and all-body combat simulation eggs. There were also portals to various sites for combat exercises with live weapons and out to a skyfort for more zero-gee training.
After breakfast on the exodus day, muncs and remote wagonettes carried everyone’s belongings out of the senior dorm and across the compound to their new homes. Behind them, the new senior year swooped in on the vacated dormitories and started heated squabbles over who got which bed.
Dellian had been tempted to leave everything behind. After all, the only things in the boxes on the wagonette were relics of childhood. He considered that over now, obliterated by the resort island and subsequent ordeal on the wilderness mountain. But there were blankets the muncs were fond of, and books and old drawings that still managed to tug at a few sentimental strings deep inside. So he brought it all, telling himself he’d chuck most of it into his new home’s disposal chute. Somehow, he suspected the long line of his fellow yearmates had come to the same conclusion.
The door opened for him, and he stepped over the threshold. Everything’s so blank, he thought in dismay. The walls were tastefully colored, of course, in grays and reds and golds. The wooden floors in each room were dark polished hardwood, with simple furniture. Blank. Waiting for him to change it, to mold it into his own.
He didn’t have any idea what he wanted. Just…not this.
His arms were by his side. He lifted them slightly and wiggled his fingers. The muncs bounced about happily at the freedom he’d just bestowed and rushed around the bungalow to explore. There was an outbreak of happy squeaks and groans as they discovered their den, with its shelf beds, next to his bedroom. They liked that.
Dellian stared down at the boxes they’d abandoned and the remote wagonette waiting patiently for his instruction, and scratched his head in perplexity. Now what?
“Hello?”
He turned to see Yirella framed by the open door, her head only just below the lintel. “Hey, you. Come in. Welcome to my home. Saints, that is so weird saying that!”
“I know.” She walked in, looking around, her expression of dismay as deep as his. “Nice,” she teased. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“I can pull up some old files on décor if you’d like. Our ancestors seemed to have a much greater imagination than us, especially when it came to artistic flare. It may give you some ideas.”
“Sounds good. Have you done that already? Looked, I mean?”
“Yeah. These homes all have a good fabricator. They can produce just about any effect you want, and the remotes will fit them for you. I’ve already been trying some stuff out.”
Dellian realized he hadn’t seen her in the line of yearmates walking into the crescent. “How long have you been here?”
“A couple of days. My bungalow is next door.”
“Really? That’s great!”
“It wasn’t chance.”
“Yeah? Who made that happen?”
“I did.”
“How did you manage that?”
“We’re the brains of the outfit, us girls, remember?”
“I thought this is an equal society?”
“No, Dellian, it isn’t. It is very far from that.”
His good humor faded at how serious she’d suddenly become. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. We didn’t choose any of this. It’s not our fault.”
“Are you okay?”
“Sure. How about you? What did the doctor say?”
“Oh, that? The a-skin has peeled off. So I’m fine.”
“Dellian, you got attacked by a beast. That’s not fine.”
He grinned. “But I fought it and killed it. We won. That’s what matters.”
“I suppose so. Yes.” She came over to stand in front of him, and for the first time Dellian felt strangely resentful she was so tall. He didn’t want to have to tilt his head back just so he could look at her wide, enchanting face.
Her hand reached out and stroked his sleeve where the morox claws had sliced his arm. “Take your shirt off,” she said quietly. “I want to see.”
Dellian undid the buttons and slipped out of the shirt. He had no idea why, but standing in front of her bare-chested, he felt strangely vulnerable. His cohort were peering around their den door. He turned his hand, palm outw
ard, banishing them.
Yirella’s fingertip stroked down the streaks of pale skin where the medical skin had been. “No freckles,” she said sadly.
“They’ll come back.” He paused, uncertain. “Did you say…?”
“Yes. I like your freckles.”
“I wasn’t sure if that was real,” he said. “Those sedatives they gave me when we got back were quite something.”
“That was real,” she said. “The second most real thing about it.”
“Second? What was the first?”
She smiled and tipped her head forward so their noses touched. Her wild hair tickled his cheeks. “The cougar.”
“Oh. Right. Saints, that thing frightened me!”
“You put yourself in front of me,” she said huskily. “To protect me.”
Fingers stroked his chest muscles. Dellian couldn’t believe how such a delicate touch could light lines of fire across his skin. “I had to,” he confessed. “I couldn’t let it hurt you. Not you.”
“That’s the second time you’ve done that.”
The side of his mouth lifted in a fond smile. “The arena match against the Ansaru team. Yeah! I remember. We were, what? Thirteen?”
“Twelve.”
“Saints, we’re old now, aren’t we?”
Yirella kissed him. “Which room is your bedroom?”
* * *
—
“About time” was the most common remark among their yearmates.
They didn’t quite move in with each other, not like Orellt and Mallot, and a few of the other boys who were finally pairing up. But they certainly spent each night together. Some meals were taken in the dining room with their friends—after spending their entire lifetime in the company of everyone, no one wanted to be isolated. But they did take breakfast and sometimes dinner with each other in the solitude of a bungalow.