A Dubious Peace

by Olan Thorensen

  “Anyway . . . if I’d known I’d run into you two, maybe I would’ve picked Caedelli names or, if not those, how about David, Brian, Serena, Linda? And Mark, don’t tell me you didn’t name your daughter after Alice in Wonderland.”

  “You got me. It was too obvious a pick. If what’s happened to us hasn’t been going down the rabbit hole, then what is?”

  “Ah . . . speaking of rabbit holes,” said Heather, drawing their attention but then not continuing for several seconds as she hugged herself. “It’s something we already talked about back in Preddi City.” She stopped and shook her head. “I know the answer, but I’ve got to ask again. Are you sure there’s no way back to Earth?”

  “Sorry, Heather,” said Yozef. “I’ve long ago given up that thought. It would require the aliens grabbing us back aboard one of their ships. And why would they do it? They already told us why they dumped us here. We’re certainly not doing it on our own. Hell . . . even if we had our own spacecraft, we don’t even know where we are with respect to Earth. This is our life, and it’s up to us to make the best of it.”

  “We’ve been dealt bad cards,” said Mark. “It’s not our choice, but we have to deal with the ones we’re holding.”

  Heather broke into laughter again. They stared at her and each other until she choked it off enough to speak.

  “Really, Mark! The Kenny Rogers song, ‘The Gambler’?”

  Yozef and Mark joined in laughing enough that Maera appeared in the doorway, a quizzical expression on her face.

  “Just sharing the memory of a song from Amerika,” said Yozef.

  “Well, you’ll have to explain it to the rest of us later,” Maera said and went back inside.

  “One of the great philosophical songs,” asserted Yozef. “Our gaming group used it when one of us lost a game. The others would sing it at the loser. That song or ‘Born to Lose’ by Ray Charles. But ‘The Gambler’ was my preference.”

  “Every hand’s a winner,” Heather sang softly.

  “And every hand’s a loser,” Mark and Yozef joined in with the second line.

  They continued through the lyrics, Mark and Yozef stumbling at times, but Heather knew all the words.

  “Knowing what to keep and what to throw away,” whispered Heather, her eyes with a distant look. “A good lesson I have to learn. What happened before Caedellium are cards to be discarded. I’ve been dealt a new hand, and it’s up to me to make it a winner.”

  Her focus snapped back to her companions, and she grinned. “I think I agree with Mark about philosophy. I expect advice on how to live your life could be boiled down to some of that song’s phrases.”

  “Play the cards you’ve got the best you can,” said Mark. “That’s all any of us can aspire to.”

  Heather’s body quivered as if shaking off a thought before moving to another.

  “There’s something else I’ve wondered about,” said Heather, moving on to another topics. “Mark and I discussed it a bit, but Yozef, I’d like to hear your take on what the aliens did to us. You know . . . the healing and gene changes. I figured with you being a chemist, you’d understand more about genes and stuff than me and Mark.”

  “Maybe more,” said Yozef, “but that wasn’t my specialty. Oh . . . I took university courses in genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology, but I’d hardly call myself an expert.”

  Mark snorted. “Maybe not on Earth, but you’d qualify on Anyar. I had to have the aliens refresh me on what a mitochondrion is and does.”

  “Well,” said Yozef, “I can’t add all that much. They modified a few mitochondria genes to give us a little more energy to compensate for Anyar’s gravity being a little stronger than Earth’s. I don’t know about you two, but I suspect they overdid it a bit to our advantage. From when I recovered after arriving, I think I’m stronger and my reflexes better than they were on Earth. Not that it makes me a superman . . . just a little more of what I was. What about you two?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Mark. “I think I’m stronger and certainly leaner, but how much of that is a different lifestyle versus the aliens, I can’t be sure.”

  Heather raised both hands outward to signal doubt. “I didn’t have many chances to check differences. Of course, I started out smaller than you two. I suppose if I could play tennis, I might notice a difference. That was my only sport.”

  “Something else,” said Yozef. “If I remember correctly, mitochondria are inherited through the mother, so none of Mark’s or my children have modified mitochondria. On the other hand, Heather, if you have children, they all will inherit your mitochondria.”

  Mark frowned. “Whoa! Does that mean that your and my children will suffer from the higher gravity?”

  “I doubt it. I’ve watched Aeneas, and Aragorn when I’ve seen him, and I haven’t noticed them acting like other than normal kids. One thing to remember is that we three grew up with Earth gravity. Children born on Anyar have developed under that higher gravity, so I suspect their bodies developed to handle it, just like every other human on Anyar. Remember, all the other humans have genomes that evolved on Earth, so our children will be the same as them. I’ll be curious to see what happens with Heather’s children. They will have grown up with Anyar gravity AND will have better energy efficiency from her mitochondria. Should be interesting.”

  “Well, don’t get too curious,” said Heather. “I’ve no immediate plans to start producing kids to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “How about the nanos or nanites or whatever the things are the aliens said they gave us to prevent disease or cancer,” asked Mark, “and with faster healing a neat side effect? From the stories we’ve told one another, we’ve agreed that none of us have been ill, not even a local version of a cold. Plus, the faster healing is definite, even if mine seems attenuated by the local poison that creature gave me.”

  “Ah . . . that’s another story,” said Yozef. “The aliens didn’t say anything about either the healing or the memory improvement, which I may have a little more of than the two of you. Another effect was that my hair was originally much lighter than it is now with the small streaks you see. I don’t think any of that was planned. The aliens were dealing with a foreign genome, so it’s hardly surprising that they didn’t anticipate all the side effects of what they did.

  “I assume you had other questions about these nanos,” said Mark.

  “Two big ones right off the top,” Yozef said. “Will they last our whole lives? We know they got passed on to Maera, Anarynd, and Maghen, and we’re pretty sure the mothers passed them to their children. What we don’t know is if the nanos are as effective with secondary and tertiary possessors as much as with the primary or if they last as long. If the nanos replicated themselves, then they might be endlessly transmissible. Yet if the total remains the same, then the effects would dilute with each passage. We just don’t have enough information.”

  Yozef intended to have more personal conversations with both Mark and Heather once they knew one another better. He worried about the nanos spreading because they were transmitted by sex. The story of Yozef’s situation with Bronwyn was initially confined to the merged family, probably at least until the new children were grown. However, he had had a brief affair with a tailor woman in Abersford. Buna Keller was past childbearing age but not past an interest in sex. Yozef wondered but never investigated whether she had other affairs after theirs. If she had, she might have passed the nanos on. He would talk with Mark and Heather later to learn if there might be multiple other centers of nano spread on Anyar.

  “I have another question,” said Mark. “We assume the nanos are in our body fluids because they’re in our—” He stopped suddenly and looked at Heather. “Uh . . .”

  She attempted a leer. “Just say it. Your semen. I assume that’s how you passed the nanos to your wives. Not likely it was saliva or sweat.”

  Suddenly she blanched. “Oh, shit! You think I might have passed them to Halari!? Maybe it’s just man to woman and n
ot the other way. Oh, God . . . I’d hate it forever if he benefited from what he did to me.”

  Yozef wondered what the story was, but Mark moved on without responding directly to Heather.

  “If they are in our plasma and not the cells, then what would happen if we spun out the cells and injected the plasma into someone here with cancer, a deadly disease, or a potentially fatal injury?”

  “You mean we could cure people?” exclaimed Heather, her voice rising a pitch in excitement.

  In contrast, Yozef’s face was grim when he said, “I’ve thought of that. Too many times. But before you say more, let me pose another question. What happens to our lifespans? By avoiding diseases, we reasonably expect to maybe live a little longer. I think I’m showing signs of aging since I got here—a stray gray hair or two—but I can’t be sure. What if we live to be a hundred and fifty or more?”

  “You make it sound like that would be a bad thing,” said Heather.

  “I think I see where Yozef is going,” said Mark to Heather. “Imagine word spreading that the blood of Amerikans can both heal and extend lifespans.”

  Heather’s forehead wrinkled as she sought to understand Mark’s meaning. Slowly the wrinkles flattened, her skin took on a paler sheen, her eyes widened, and a trembling hand moved to cover her mouth.

  “Oh . . . my . . . God,” sieved quietly from between her fingers. “It would be like some horror movie. People after us for our blood. I wish we hadn’t had this conversation. I’ll expect people to start looking at me with hungry expressions.”

  “That’s why I’ve decided not to explore plasma potential. I think our fast healing can be tolerated as a characteristic of Amerikans, but curing others goes too far. In the long run, it may not be a problem. If the nanos dilute with passage, time will solve it. Yet if they replicate and there’s no dilution effect, then it might be possible to eventually inoculate the entire planet. However, that’s if it can be kept secret until technology improves and the number of carriers increases enough to avoid a gold rush for a small number of us.”

  “And as for the longevity,” said Mark, “any problem is many decades in the future. We can worry about it then. What this does for now is make me think our positions here need to be even more unassailable.”

  Heather’s color had mainly returned, but her expression was somber. “All right. I can see that there’s no immediate crisis, but Yozef, have you already had instances when someone you cared about might have been saved by your plasma? How did you handle that?”

  “I’ve been lucky so far, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a bit of guilt about people I might have saved. However, that’s trying to take on guilt for something that would have happened if I weren’t here. Even if I were inclined to try using my blood with or without the blood cells, I don’t know enough about incompatibility reactions. It could kill the person if done wrong. I’d need who knows how much experimentation before risking it. And then how would I explain the experiments? Inaction is not a satisfying solution, but I think I’ve come to accept it.”

  “I think Yozef’s decision to put this aside is right, Heather,” said Mark. “In the face of so many negative possibilities for everyone involved, there’s simply nothing to do but accept the advantages we’ve been given, whether or not we asked for them.”

  Carnigan chose that moment to reappear. The conversation had been in English but now switched to Caedelli. Half an hour later, Elian Faughn and a teenage girl appeared to take the children away. The adults sat for an evening meal composed of roast beef, chunks of a starchy vegetable mix with what appeared and tasted faintly like onions, a reddish leafy vegetable that tasted like spinach, the fresh bread Carnigan had fetched, olives, and a red wine.

  Satiated, they moved back into the main room—what Mark and Heather automatically thought of as the living room. Anarynd and Gwyned excused themselves, only to rejoin the others minutes later, Anarynd holding Odysius and Xena, Gwyned holding Siston and Anida, and Alys leading the way.

  Without explanation, Anarynd sat with her twins, Gwyned sat after giving Anida to Maera, and all three women proceeded to breast-feed. Mark was initially nonplussed, but Maghen nodded approval and gestured to Alys, who ran to her mother. Alys jumped into her mother’s lap and assisted in opening the dress enough to expose her breast.

  “I would’ve weaned Alys earlier,” Maghen said, “but when we were traveling, we were never sure we would always have enough food or if we’d have anything she would or could eat. So I’ve kept breast-feeding. Now that we’re here, I’ve started weaning her, but I think it’s a bit much to worry about it tonight when she sees all the others.”

  Mark suppressed a grin, and Heather, startled, looked at Yozef. He shrugged and carried on conversations as if nothing unusual was happening . . . which was true.

  The next day, Maera went to the Puvey house after the men had left for Orosz City. She found Gwyned helping Morwena dress.

  “What did Carnigan say about the Amerikans when he got home from Preddi City?”

  “He thought it was clear how happy they were to meet one another, at least after Yozef and the man named Mark talked in English. I assume they were asking each other questions that only Amerikans would have the answers to. Carnigan wasn’t around them much after that, but Yozef spent many hours with them . . . especially the man. Oh, and he said the man was big and rough-looking. I asked how big and was told not as big as himself, but bigger than most men. He likes the little girl. But that’s Carnigan. He likes almost all children. As for the Amerikan woman, she’s supposed to look odd, but Carnigan says Synton knows more about her.”

  “Synton?”

  “Yes. He seems to have become fascinated by her.”

  Later that day, Maera found Synton.

  “Well . . . the first thing you notice is the eyes,” said Synton. “They kind of . . . I don’t . . . maybe squint. Not on purpose. Just the way they’re shaped. At first, I thought it looked ugly, but the more I saw her, the less it looked so. I guess my opinion might have been changed by Wyfor. He says he’s seen people from other lands in the far east that look similar. I think he said especially from Krinolin. All I know about the place is it’s on the opposite side of Anyar.

  “And yes, don’t look at me. How would Wyfor know why a woman from Amerika looks similar to people from Krinolin? Maybe that means Amerika is near Krinolin. Maybe Amerika is Krinolin, and Yozef is the exiled emperor. Maybe all Amerikans exist just in our imaginations. I don’t worry about things that aren’t important to me. I let others do that kind of thing.

  “Anyway, she’s supposed to be a singer/musician. I can believe it. I heard her singing one day. She was sitting outside where they were staying and didn’t think anyone else was nearby. I have no idea what the words were. I assume it was in Amerikan or maybe Sulakoan. Whatever it was sounded . . . well . . . I don’t know, just something I didn’t want to stop. I think Yozef expects her to do something with music here on Caedellium.”

  CHAPTER 16

  SECRETS

  A sixday passed before Yozef found time and an opportunity to talk again with Mark and Heather about a sensitive topic. He was giving them a tour of the growing government complex when Heather asked a question.

  “So, you say this is where the Caedellium Senate meets, but what exactly does that mean? Do they pass laws, hold hearings, spend all their time raising money for the next reelection campaign, or what?”

  Yozef ignored the sarcastic final comment. “Each clan is supposed to have at least one of its two senators here in Orosz City at all times. That’s in case some decision is needed, and there’s no time to poll the hetmen. For the major issues, I still think hetman input is a good idea, and they’re called to Orosz City.”

  “Sounds like the All-Clan Conclave you described,” said Mark.

  “Pretty much, and not what I intended. However, I think that will change over time and when the island’s economy develops. The clans will slowly accept the idea that a central
government has advantages over independent clans. Again, in time, I’m hoping the advantages of the union will become so ingrained that the clans will want a more active part in the governance.”

  “I assume you haven’t had a serious discussion with any of these hetmen about them getting voted out of office,” jested Heather.

  “I think they would take that far worse than finding out their Paramount is not even from this planet. My position is too new for me to push too fast. For one example, women will get more opportunities, but I’m not expecting to change long-standing customs overnight. That will also help people accept the union. I think women are less attached to clan independence than the men. Improving conditions with will help, as will mandating education for all girls as well as boys.”

  “Do you get tired or confused at times with all the secrets you carry around?” asked Mark. “I know for me, I mainly just had myself to worry about.”

  “I think I did pretty well adjusting to what I was keeping secret,” said Yozef, “at least until the two of you showed up to complicate things.”

  Yozef reflexively checked that no one was within hearing distance. “Which brings up the topic I’ve wrestled with about sharing. Starting the first year after I arrived, I’ve written in a series of journals that I’ve kept under lock and key. Even Maera doesn’t know about the journals, although she’s aware of something I’ve kept secret in my workroom wherever we’ve lived. That changed a couple months ago when I moved the journals to a small building that I call the Paramount’s personal workshop.

  “I have three sets of journals, though with different numbers of volumes. In one set, I’ve been writing everything I can remember about science and mathematics. I’ve pretty much exhausted everything I know about math, so that set can be considered finished, at least by me. A second set is what I remember about Earth—history, nations, how I got to Anyar . . . hell, even sports and entertainment. I still dabble occasionally. Finally, the third set is an English grammar and small dictionary in Caedelli for the day the journals are opened for reading, and they need a translation guide.”