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I turned and entered the arcology. I wasn’t strong enough to teleport twenty-three kilometers straight up in one jump, but the arcology’s portal system could handle it just fine. It had been a while since I’d been back; caution seemed called for. I chose a destination just outside the official Residence, and emerged into a brightly lit corridor. It wasn’t packed by any means, but there were people moving along it, moving with the air of those on their way somewhere. I left the receiving portal platform as I accessed Residence security and submitted my identity for scan.
Residence security agreed that I was cleared for the Residence and admitted me. I got about two steps before my perception said someone was there and I was swept up in a big bear hug by Scimtar himself.
“Welcome home, daughter!” Scimtar was the definition of larger than life – a full seven feet tall, wearing the uniform of his own family – gold trimmed with blue, reversing the Imperial colors. I’d never seen him anything other than in complete control of a situation. Scimtar was Asto’s grandfather, the head of the family, a legend throughout the Empire, and, at nearly thirty square (108,000 Imperial or 75,000+ Earth years) one of its oldest citizens.
I hugged him back, “Good to be home, grandfather!” then stepped back and saluted. He returned it, twinkle in his eye.
About then Anara – Asto’s mother – also zoomed in for a hug. “Congratulations! Asto told me you already started!” She was in civilian dress, but she was wearing the gray triangle of an Octus-in-fact. She was much younger than her father, barely past her first square (3600 Imperial years or 2500 Earth). My baby was her first grandchild. Not far behind, her husband Gilras was more restrained in his hug. I noticed he was wearing a uniform with three purple stars of rank – a First General – but white staff epaulets rather than the black of active command. Unusual as First General was a command grade, not staff, but I was no connoisseur of what went on at those exalted ranks.
Asto’s Aunt Anana was close behind, and Helene, Scimtar’s wife, his grandmother, then Ononi and Imre, Scimtar and Helene’s youngest children, screaming “Aunt Grace!” Well, technically, they were my aunt- and uncle-in-law, but they’d been children when I met them. Now, they were the family’s youngest adults. “Lady and More are waiting in your apartment!” they told me, a reference to the two dogs Asto and I had adopted. I was tempted to let the dogs out to greet me, but first I wanted to get the family under control. Parnit was the last of the adults to join the gathering, together with his brood of four children ranging from ten year old (7 Earth) Imar up to twenty-one year old (15 Earth) Anesto, with two girls, Urona and Anosha, in between the boys. Anesto had been just over a year old when Asto and I enlisted; we didn’t know the kids well. That would have to change. I had plenty of practice being ‘Aunt Grace’.
Earth natives wouldn’t have thought any of them were related to each other. Scimtar was tall, dark-skinned like some Earthly South Asians and hawk-faced, like his grandson Asto. Anara looked like a fair-skinned Celt with fiery red hair and was a foot and a half shorter, the same height as me. Anana could have passed for my sister, medium-dark brown hair and skin of that shade that can be found on tanned Anglos, Mediterranean people, or lighter-skinned Mexicans. I was slightly darker, but close enough. Helene always reminded me of a young Katherine Hepburn with the grace and dignity of the same actress much later in life. Imre was tall with skin the color of dark chocolate, while his fraternal twin Ononi was my height and fair, like her older sister Anara except blonde. None of Anana and Parnit’s kids looked especially like either one of their parents. But they were a family. Imperials, especially Guardians, could easily determine their own appearance. I was at the lower end of the modification scale – all I’d added was a couple inches of height and about sixty pounds of dense, augmented muscle. I think Scimtar himself was fairly close to what nature had given him, but there was no way to know other than asking him.
Scimtar’s two older sons, Iaren and Amras, Amras’ wife Corella, and the other four grandchildren were elsewhere. The family was one of the most active in both government and military circles, but they’d earned what they had. There were pictures in the family archives of all of them (except Scimtar) freshly graduated from initial military training, wearing the single black disc of a brand-new Trained Private. They had commercial interests and businesses that they all took turns running; Anana was about halfway through her sixty year turn, and Ononi and Imre were her current assistants. But Asto’s elder sister Anri was a Squadron Corporal somewhere, Amtre was a First Staff Corporal, and youngest brother Etonas (whom I mostly remembered as an overly brash teenager) was already a Squad Private, having served a little under three years of his first enlistment contract. Their cousin Anosh, intermediate in age between Asto and Etonas, was a Platoon Private, senior to me despite less time in service. But that was okay; he’d agreed to the longer hitch while I hadn’t, and he had a more capable mind.
“Grace, it’s good to have you back, but Gilras and I were in the middle of something,” Scimtar said, “I look forward to catching up over dinner.”
Most of the others followed suit pretty quickly. In a few minutes, I was left alone with Anara and Helene. “I have a performance in an hour and a half,” Helene said to Anara, “Make sure she knows what she’s letting herself in for.”
“I will, mother.” Anara said, and Helene strode out, saying, “Welcome back, Grace. We’ll do more catching up over dinner, but make certain to listen closely to what Anara has to say.”
“Well, mother, I’m all ears,” I told her. She wasn’t my mother, but she was a wonderful mother-in-law, and we had a great relationship. Plus she had been one of my legal parents when I came to the Empire, which was how I’d met Asto. Mother was a title she’d earned, and I was happy to grant her.
“Before I start, I want you to know that I think you can do this, and that I will support whatever decision you make. I just want to make certain you understand what you’re getting into. Operant babies are difficult at best to control in the womb. Strongly operant babies take that to an entirely different level.”
“Mother, Asto and I read everything on the subject that’s publicly available.” To her credit, she at least credited me with the elementary sense to do it anonymously. “I understand that they start to have a perceptible mind around the twentyfive day mark. And I understand that the minds of children are pure ‘I want!’ It’s my job to educate and civilize them. I may have been the youngest of five, but I helped with all of my nephews and nieces from the time when they were born.”
“Are you aware that with artificial gestation, you’re a lot less vulnerable to what they might do? You know children kick. Operant babies do a lot more than that. Furthermore, with artificial gestation, they don’t have to be monitored every second of every day until they’re ready to be born, and other people can give you assistance. If you’re doing it natural style, that assistance becomes harder, because they’ve got to be inside your defenses to help.”
“That’s in accordance with my understanding.”
“Now, imagine your child has a mind as strong as Asto. Can you keep them under control?”
“As strong as Asto, but untrained. Unfocused. Also, I’ll be having a rapport with him that lasts until he’s born. I’ll feel what he does, but he will also feel what I do. By the time he’s able to focus, he’ll also be awake enough to be aware of the consequences.” Guardian minds began developing in the womb, if you let them. By the time they were born, they would be as mature as any twelve year old Earth human, and more so than some alleged adults.
“Finally, imagine what happens if your son starts manifesting the full range of his abilities. Our family masquerade is exposed, with all of the consequences.” Since Iaren had been born, Scimtar’s descendants had been pretending to be Fifth Order, rather than Seventh. It insulated them from the worst of the strife of the inter-family rivalries. Let the other Great Houses vent upon one another. By pretending to be less than they were, Scimtar’s heirs were exempted from the worst of it.
“I understand, mother. My plans were to do some commercial piloting while I was pregnant, but I can restrict myself to the Residence if I have to. You all taught me that I am in control of my body, but I realize I have no right to endanger the rest of you.”
“Just be clear on the dangers, Grace. You’ll be more of a target, also, once news of your pregnancy spreads, and we’d all be upset to lose you.” I wasn’t important as a Second Order Guardian. Even as Asto’s wife, my value was mostly theoretical, and Scimtar had made the costs of striking at his family quite clear in the past. Rival families had bigger fish to fry. But give them a Fifth Order Scimtar in infancy with only Second Order defenses, and that might strike someone as a risk worth taking. Especially if anyone knew the younger Scimtars were Seventh Order, not Fifth.
“I understand the risk that concerns the family,” I told her. We both knew that the real risk was that my Second Order abilities might not muffle the power of a Seventh Order Guardian’s naked ego well enough, and it would be discovered that the family was Seventh Order. “I’m going to make a visit to Earth, but after that, I can confine myself to the Residence if you think it would be wise. Or I can build a new graycode and buy a new pilot module, and move freight anonymously. Actually, I think that would be even safer. The other Great Families can look into the Residence if they try hard enough, and they know exactly where it is and what it contains. Out there, I’d be just another pilot Vectoring stuff from system to system, and there would be nobody else with us to see what was going on.”
“If you’re sure that you want to do this, Grace, I’m on your side. It’s just that Helene uses artificial gestation, and Corella did, too.” Helene and Corella were the other female spouses with children. “For that matter, so did Anana and I.” Anana I knew about, Anara I suspected, but their time was ungodly valuable, both economically speaking and politically. I made a fair chunk piloting, but nothing in their league.
“I’m sure. My sisters did it this way, as did my parents. We both know how hard pregnancy is on natural state mothers. If they can do that, I can get through this, especially as I’m a Guardian.”
“You have considerations they don’t know about. The other Great Families have no reason to come after them.”
I clamped down hard on my frustration. Asto was amused. I knew Mother wanted the best for me and her grandchildren, but we’d been over that. “Agreed, Mother. Do you think we’ll be safer from discovery in the Residence or in an anonymous pilot module nobody has any reason to suspect hides anything unusual?”
“Put a gestation chamber in your ship, just in case,” she said, “And don’t be too proud to change your mind if something happens.” She’d picked up on my frustration despite my attempt to hide it.
Copyright 2016 Dan Melosn. All Rights Reserved.
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