Heinlein's Finches Read online

  “But it did,” she shrugs. “I don’t know what kind of damage containment may be required. I would understand if you requested my resignation.”

  “Oh, it would never come to that!” The Chancellor seems to be struggling to change gears. “We are training future Patrolmen here, after all. It won’t do our cadets any harm to learn that our Professors can handle themselves when required. We’ll circulate a suitable story about the man in question. I will contact the family myself, assuming there is one.”

  “Thank you, Chancellor.” Gwen nods.

  “Oh, that dart gun of yours… We will have to change the relevant regulations. Effective last week, I mean. We couldn’t have our staff carrying weapons banned on campus, however useful they might be. And maybe, if you feel more comfortable wearing it, you could continue to do so. It did seem to serve you well today. Until we come up with a more suitable solution, that is.”

  We make our way back to our tower in relative composure. I mean, how composed should people be when they’ve just been through something like that? We must not look all that normal, I guess, because we manage to get all the way home without anyone trying to talk to us. People see us, flinch, and look away.

  We’re barely through the entrance door when Gwen says sharply to me “This was not your fault.”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “You did. You warned me. None of us expected anything that soon, and that clumsy and dramatic.”

  “It was so sudden. I hardly saw it coming. What if one day I’m too late?” I’m starting to feel a mounting, queasy agitation, and I realize I’m lying to myself. The real issue for me would be being just on time. Being in the perfect position to take the necessary actions. Although I’ve had the training, I’ve never taken a life, and I can’t imagine doing it. I can’t imagine being the person responsible for ending a person. I don’t think it’s morally wrong, not in self-defense, but at the same time I can’t picture myself in that situation without it feeling wrong.

  “Do you think less of me?” Gwen asks. Her question startles me.

  “No! No, of course I don’t. Why would I? Why would anyone?”

  “I did it. I did it, and you felt it. I saw your face, afterwards.”

  Asher puts a hand on my shoulder to encourage me on. Until then, I’d not realized I was frozen in my tracks, halfway up the stairs, and shaking.

  “What is the point in this so-called gift of mine? I can’t stop bad things happening. I never seem to help.”

  Hearing myself whining at a time like this makes me furious, but I can’t seem to stop. I can’t stop feeling that man’s passing. It just keeps replaying in my head: the screaming and the silence, the screaming and the silence, on and on. I’d give anything to be able to push it all away from me.

  By the time we reach my room, I’m crying so hard I can’t even tell if they’re crying, too.

  Proximity and intimacy can make it impossible for me to shield myself. That, or if people are feeling something about me; that’s hard to shield from, too.

  Later on, while Asher’s breath is ragged against my neck as he pounds into me, I feel his growing concern. We’re going so hard, and he doesn’t want to hurt or frighten me. I’m beyond coherent speech by then, but digging my nails into his thighs seems to make my point. As his concern fades, I feel his consciousness sink into those inches of him sinking into me. And I go from feeling his dick inside me, to feeling his dick inside me; feeling what his dick feels, the blessed tightness of it all, the arrhythmic contractions, the heat. As I move my hand down to grasp the base of the dick it’s a genuine shock when I find another dick in my hand; my hand around my other dick. And as my hand falls into sync with his body slamming into mine it all becomes too much and we both lose it.

  When I come round enough to be able to care, I’m horrified. I must have been projecting. But Asher’s teeth sinking into my neck, as he moans and shudders one last time, make me think that I’m forgiven. When I remember with a jolt that there were three of us in the room, I turn to see Gwen leaning back on her pillow, eyes semi-closed, mouth hanging open, her limp hand dropped between her legs over what could only be described as a puddle. Maybe, as curses go, mine isn’t a bad one.

  Sex can’t fix all of life’s problems, but it sure seems to make them more tolerable.

  Gwen says we’re all the product of our environment, to a greater or lesser extent, and that the less we realize it, the truer it often is. “We can’t escape the influence of the place we came from and the place we are. Either we go along with it, consciously or unconsciously, or we fight it. If we fight it, we become the product of that fight. It’s inescapable, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether we accept it, and what we do about it.” I guess I’m normal in that respect, at least. I am the product of my environment. Just not a product they anticipated, or sought out.

  As first colonies go, Arion, my home world, looked as if it had enormous potential. The atmosphere wasn’t breathable, obviously, but the radiation levels were safe and the soil had the right range of minerals and whatnots that could potentially, eventually, support Terran plant growth. On paper, it looked as if our bubbles could become self-sufficient relatively quickly. Scientists even believed that in the very, very long term it may have been possible to permanently alter the atmosphere to suit human needs. But then, in those days, scientific optimism and near-complete ignorance of terraforming requirements were evenly matched. Or maybe they knew it was bullshit all along, but the need to recruit enough volunteer colonists overcame the need for truth in advertising.

  As it turns out, disturbing in any way what passed for soil – by farming, building, mining, even scuffing the dirt – caused the release of a microscopic organism. The organism entered the respiratory system, travelled into the circulatory system, and settled on the muscle tissue it found there. It seemed particularly fond of the heart muscle and the larger blood vessels. Once settled, it lived parasitically, filtering nourishment from the blood stream. That caused no major problems; in fact, scientists are currently studying its potential to help with some of those ancient Terran diseases still present in our genome. Some of our first class families carry circulatory diseases, and they’re hardly likely to apply strict eugenic criteria to their own bloodlines in order to wipe them out. Our endemic critter, duly modified, could be worth a lot.

  In its natural form, however, it makes for a poor companion. In attaching itself to the body, the organism causes tiny lesions. The lesions are so small as to be insignificant, unless there are too many of them and a person exerts themselves beyond a certain point. In which event, their heart and major blood vessels can just give way under the strain.

  It took eight months for the colony medics to work out what was happening. During those months, all the early colonists knew was that people could be happily engaged in work one minute, and keel over dead the next. The disease seemed to target the strongest and fittest; oh, and the most hot-tempered. Overwhelmingly, it took the men. First colonies are always started with a balanced male-to-female population rate, all established couples. By the end of our first year, the women outnumbered the men 4 to 1. We also lost all pregnant women and their babies.

  Once our medics discovered and explained the problem, the rate of male-to-female deaths evened out, but the deaths continued. Although people knew what they needed to avoid, doing so wasn’t always practical or possible. Overexertion, stress, strong emotions; anything that raised your blood pressure significantly or suddenly could kill you. Knowing the risk actually increased it in susceptible individuals. Fear of the disease could kill you.

  An emissary was sent back to the nearest Fed base with a stack of scientific papers and a sample. Fed representatives listened to him talk from an isolation chamber, thanked him somberly, took the sample, and sent him back home. Then they proceeded to slap a total, indefinite quarantine on our planet.

  That’s the thing with alien life forms: unless you know how they function, you don
’t know how to kill them. We didn’t know much back then, but a few horrible examples had thought us that, at least. The Fed wasn’t going to risk any microspores leaving the planet. Not until there was a cure, anyway.

  We were completely cut off from the Fed, cut off from all sources of help and supplies. We could receive incoming goods, but nobody was inclined to send us any. Our founders were, obviously, third classers, apart from the techs and medics. They had nobody at home with the resources to help them out. The Fed didn’t see any future in us, so they didn’t bother. The colony had to become self-sufficient there and then. That they managed to survive is a testament to their determination and their luck.

  Colonists reorganized into communal homesteads. Labor-sharing became the norm; using individual brute strength to solve problems became highly counterproductive. Those who couldn’t adapt died off.

  The male-to-female ratio might have caused all kinds of problems if every aspect of natural childbirth, including conception, hadn’t been potentially deadly. We still needed to breed, though, so we adapted. Willing women deemed to be in the optimum of health would be artificially inseminated with the sperm of men who demonstrated the ideal combination of characteristics: smaller in size, with mellow temperaments, and least affected by symptoms. It wasn’t real science, but it was the best we could do at the time. All births were by caesarean.

  Parenthood became largely a communal effort. During the entire pregnancy, expectant mothers would be exempt from physical work in order to minimize their risks. We didn’t have the luxury to let them do nothing, though. Instead, they became the teachers of our children, who were brought up to be uniformly well-behaved and even-tempered. Children who weren’t even-tempered often died as toddlers, anyway; tantrums are hard on the cardiovascular system. The rest of the colonization work proceeded slowly but steadily – everything on Arion always proceeds slowly but steadily, if it proceeds at all.

  Meanwhile, the search was out for a medical solution to the issue. It took 32 years for Fed scientists to find an answer to our problem. It took another four years for the answer to reach us; either we’d been deprioritized so much by the department in question that the cure lay forgotten on someone’s shelf, or the scientists involved in the research decided to keep drawing their wages. When a solution was finally found, it wasn’t really a cure. It was more of an inoculation. It could reduce the damage new patients incurred, but it couldn’t cure those already affected.

  It took another three decades of on-colony trials and errors to perfect the inoculation. The quarantine was partially lifted before then, allowing one-way immigration into the colony. That was just as well, because a way to prevent mother-to-fetus infection hasn’t been found yet. Mine is the first generation of Arionites to enjoy normal health, because we’re all cross-bred. Our mothers came from offworld as glorified breeding stock.

  The quarantine lift didn’t mean that we just allowed anyone to immigrate, though. New colonists had to be vetted not only for the skills they brought to us, but for their temperaments. We couldn’t risk admitting colonists who couldn’t co-operate, couldn’t get along, or were prone to emotional outbursts or acts of physical force. The stress of their presence would pose a deadly risk to the existing colonists. We also mostly allowed women. We needed them more. They could do everything the men could do, and they could breed children.

  In a very short space of time, Arion became famous as a haven for those seeking calm, steady, communal toil and quiet contemplation. I’d consider it a more valid point of pride if it was a choice, rather than a requirement for survival. I know that it sounds idyllic, but as far as I’m concerned Arion is the most boring place I’ve ever been to, and I spent most of my life at a Fed lab. If a more boring place does exist, I hope I never end up there.

  It was idyllic, in a way. I didn’t hear a raised voice, let alone see a raised fist, until I was taken off world, shortly after my eighth birthday. Learning to get along with other children at the lab was a rather steep learning curve. Learning not to be scared of my own emotions took even longer than learning not to fear theirs.

  They whisked me off-planet just on time for me to miss the 100 year anniversary of our Landing Day. I’m sure it must have been the dullest celebration ever.

  The results of my year eight Fed tests came as a huge surprise. Nobody had the least inkling that I had any psi-bilities. I can see emotions; when they are subdued, constant, or uniform within a population, there’s nothing much for me to see. If there is no discrepancy between someone’s body language and feelings, my reactions can be chalked down to simple human empathy. And if that was all there was to my gift, the Fed official who tested me would have probably left me on-planet, rather than put me through a rather excruciating decontamination and quarantine process.

  Emp-projection is rare, though, and potentially useful. So, when I tested positive for it, the Fed arranged for me to be transferred to a ‘Center for the Education of Psi-Gifted Children’. A lab, in essence, where psi-gifted children are studied, as well as trained to explore and control the limits of their gifts.

  My emp-projection tipped the balance; it made me useful. It also made me a threat. Learning to control it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s not that I can’t stop myself projecting; it’s no harder than stopping myself talking. The difficulty lies in feeling someone suffering with an emotional pain I could erase and letting them suffer. I understand that it’s the moral thing to do, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I still don’t feel right about it, even though I fully realize the horror most people feel when they understand that I could manipulate their emotions.

  Not everyone at my homestead was immune to that horror. The Fed rewarded my family handsomely for losing me, but I’m not sure that they needed to. Once my folk realized what I could do, not all of them saw my departure as a loss. Some of them would have probably paid to have me shipped me off-planet. All and still, my air was more than paid for.

  The unintended consequence of my wiring and upbringing is that I don’t understand the Terran fuss about gender. I understand the physical differences, but I don’t really understand Terran Traditionalism’s belief in what those physical differences are supposed to mean. I don’t understand division of labor by gender; once you take physical strength out of the equation, it just doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why the shape of people’s genitals should limit what they are supposed to do and to be. I just don’t get it. I grew up feeling how men and women felt, and I couldn’t tell the difference.

  When it comes to me and my identity, it’s not that I don’t know if I am a man or a woman. It’s that I don’t understand the question. I’m not trying to be both, either. I’m just trying to be me. And I find no difficulty whatsoever in doing that.

  What I still cannot understand is why this is a problem for so many people, when it doesn’t affect them in the least. They seem to have a need to pigeon-hole me somehow. They require some kind of officially-sanctioned handle telling them how they should treat me. Given that our honorifics are not gender-specific and that I couldn’t care less about pronouns, I don’t understand what the issue is.

  Gwen told me that in the early twenty-first century of Terra there was a whole movement of people much like me, and people very much unlike me but who also didn’t fit the traditional gender labels. I looked up some of the writings from that period thinking that it may make me feel part of something, but it didn’t. It made me feel even more isolated. A lot of the writers seemed to be just as invested in non-traditional gender identities as Terran Traditionalists are in the traditional ones. Anyway, the movement didn’t survive. Gwen reckons that gender duality was just too entrenched in the Terran culture of the time. The backlash against those who spoke out was severe, and then everyone got a bit too busy dealing with the end of the world.

  Overt individualism seemed to die with Terra. These days, people who are truly, radically different from the norm tend to keep quiet about it. I don’t fe
el special, but I have never met anyone like me. As far as I know, I could be in a minority of one. Given that every individual is, that doesn’t bother me much. My friends don’t care. The rest of the world will have to take me or leave me.

  Following the assassination attempt, we try to re-enter into our normal groove. Some of the new cadets are badly stunned by the recent turn of events, but being stunned is fairly normal for new cadets. It can take them a while to acclimatize to a completely different routine and culture from what they are used to, and to living with a whole bunch of people with entirely different customs. Our colonies and tubes can be called many things, but havens of diversity they are not. The first couple of weeks at least are chaos here, even under normal circumstances.

  The second year cadets know that these are normal circumstances. Assassination attempts have been aimed at Gwen ever since her theories started to get circulated outside of the Academy. Nobody likes to be told that their supreme holy being is the result of a combination of misunderstood ancient texts, some fictional, and the effects of some alien environmental factor; that their holy book (or stone, or star, or bug; people’s ability to find objects of worship is astounding) came about because one of their ‘prophets’ suffered from colonial psychosis; that their deeply-held mores are nothing more than the codification of habits required for survival in a hostile environment – habits with no intrinsic moral value, and which might have ceased to be useful generations ago.

  People want to know that their culture is right; that it has an inherent worth and value. Gwen is the ultimate anti-prophet. She doesn’t pit belief against belief. Instead, she deconstructs the logical, pragmatic reasons behind beliefs. She doesn’t try to change cultures. She just tries to understand them. Most cultures don’t stand up to that close an examination, is all.