Inheritance

by Malinda Lo

  “These things occur when you are not touching another person, right?” Eres asked. “This is not susum’urda—not the way I’ve been teaching you.”

  “No, it’s not susum’urda,” David said. “That sort of makes sense to me now. But this other stuff… it still feels random. Like I don’t really know how it works.”

  “Why do you think we can do it?” Reese asked. “You can’t do it, can you?”

  “No. None of the Imria have this ability. Susum’urda is predicated on physical connection. This is certainly different.”

  “So this wasn’t meant to be part of the adaptation,” David said.

  “No.” Eres looked pensive. “I suppose we could have suspected this was possible. There have always been humans who exhibited signs of being able to do things like this. You’ve called them psychics or mystics. And telepathy has always been a source of fascination for your people. It would make sense that humans were fascinated by it because some of you have been able to do it.”

  Reese was skeptical. “So the adaptation procedure has turned us into psychics?”

  “Not exactly. For a long time, we attempted to analyze the DNA of so-called psychic humans and compare it to our own, to determine why certain genes were turned on and others weren’t, but it was very slow, painstaking work. Those psychic abilities turned out to be mutations that were usually irreproducible in offspring—or at least so random in occurrence that it was impossible to predict. Our scientists stopped testing psychics decades ago, believing that those psychic skills were side effects of the fact that humans did have the ability to share consciousness in their genes, but that ability was never properly developed. The adaptation procedure was supposed to correct that. It was supposed to awaken your latent abilities and to make them heritable so that they will be passed on to your descendants. Apparently the adaptation procedure has awakened abilities we did not expect.” Eres leaned forward. “Will you show me how it works?” The teacher extended a hand to Reese.

  “How?” Reese asked, confused.

  “Take my hand, and David can send you a thought. Allow me to experience it as it happens to you.”

  Reese glanced at David, who nodded. She took Eres’s hand and immediately felt the focus of the teacher’s attention like a lens trained on her. Reese took a breath. David? She sensed Eres in the background of her consciousness like a shadow presence.

  Yes, David thought. I’m right here.

  Eres’s consciousness seemed to flash in surprise. Again, Eres told her.

  Got any other thoughts? Reese asked David.

  What should I say? Testing, testing?

  Reese smiled. Ten four.

  Eres dropped Reese’s hand and said, “I have never encountered that before.” The teacher sounded unusually breathless. “This afternoon when we meet with Akiya Deyir and the others—you will tell them, won’t you?”

  “We were planning to,” David said.

  “Good. They should know. It is right that they learn it from the two of you.” Eres studied them, as if seeing them for the first time.

  Reese shifted uncomfortably. “Is it totally weird?” she asked.

  The teacher looked astonished. “It is not weird. It is… beyond what we had ever dreamed of. I only hope that Akiya agrees.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Akiya Deyir’s offices were on the second level of the ship, and as Reese stepped into the foyer, she felt as if she were truly entering another world. The wall screens depicted a landscape that Reese knew must be Kurra. There was a cliff of red-and-purple rocks angling over an aquamarine sea. Buildings that resembled crystal formations clung to the top of the cliff, some of them secured by steel wires that looked like cobwebs. The ocean waves moved below, licking against the base of the cliffs, and as the water turned, it changed color, showing a flash of gold beneath the aquamarine.

  The door slid shut behind them and someone called, “Please come in.”

  Reese and David followed the sound of the voice through the open doorway in the foyer and into the main office. It was a wide room with screens that ran the length of the longest wall, showing a forest of trees with black trunks and moving, bluish-green leaves. At one end of the room was a curved, glossy black desk, behind which a display cabinet held various items suspended on wires. Reese saw stones or jewels of different colors; a sphere that looked like a miniature planet; and a black statue that resembled the fertility goddesses that had been carved by ancient humans, with a round belly and heavy breasts. In the center of the room was a long, oval table made of the same glossy black material as the desk. Four people were seated already: Akiya Deyir, Dr. Brand, Eres Tilhar, and Amber. Two black chairs, carved to resemble waves like the ones in Eres’s room, remained empty.

  Akiya Deyir gestured to the chairs. “Please sit,” he said. He was as elegant as Reese remembered from the press conference, but today he was dressed in clothing that was clearly not from Earth. He wore a jacket made of deep violet cloth; it had narrow lapels and long, billowing tails, almost like a gown. He had dark blue trousers on that made Reese think of jodhpurs, tucked into shiny boots of the same color with a stripe of silver running up the side. It was an ensemble that Reese might expect on a Japanese pop star, but there was nothing frivolous about the ambassador. As Reese sat down, she surreptitiously studied Deyir’s dark, smooth skin. He was so extraordinary looking, like a film star from the 1930s, all cheekbones and shadows. She wondered if his beauty was natural, or if he—or his parents—had engineered it.

  “I’ve been informed that you both know about our long history with your people,” Deyir said. “And that you are concerned about the fact that we have not yet revealed this. While I understand your concern, the two of you are not qualified to make that decision. You do not have the benefit of the full context of our situation.” Deyir’s tone was mild, but there was an authority to his presence that did not invite challenge. “Your people—humanity—are our greatest concern. We did not always feel that way, it is true. Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, my people were careless. We had great scientific knowledge and we had great ambition, and that combination resulted in many mistakes. We were never violent; that was not our pleasure. We have been, always, connected to each other through susum’urda. What we wanted was to create life. To create intelligence. Unfortunately, our eagerness to create life was not tempered by consideration for the responsibility that would bestow upon us.”

  There was a hypnotic quality to Deyir’s voice, and though dozens of questions raced through Reese’s mind, she did not ask them. She watched him speak, transfixed by the movements of his mouth and the fluid gestures of his long-fingered hands.

  “We were much younger then, and less experienced. We only thought: Look at this new world—Earth—and see how similar it is to ours. Look at these creatures here; they could become us. We were enraptured with that idea. Our science, however, was not perfect. We had not created humans from nothing; we changed what already existed. That meant that humans did not turn out exactly the way we had hoped. Your people could not share consciousness. You were fixated on violence, on war. We did not know what to do, and to our great disgrace, we simply abandoned you. We thought: Humans can find their way out of this on their own; we have interfered too much.

  “But we could not entirely leave you behind. We watched as your populations grew and your technology developed. We came to understand that you are our greatest responsibility. We were poor creators; poor guardians of what we made. We cannot allow you to destroy your planet and to destroy yourselves. That is why we have returned. We have come here to correct the mistakes we made before it is too late. The adaptation procedure, which Evelyn developed with her team, is finally a success. Our goal is to adapt all of humanity, bit by bit, using this procedure. There are many of you now, and we cannot adapt all of you; that is why the adaptation is heritable. Your children will inherit the same abilities, and your children’s children will as well. Over several generations, humanity will become wh
at we had initially intended. You will become true Imrians.”

  That is exactly what Charles Lovick told us, David thought to Reese. Akiya Deyir is just putting a different spin on it.

  The ambassador sat back, crossing his legs. The silver on his boots gleamed. “In order to implement our plan we have moved cautiously. That is why we haven’t yet revealed all of this to your people. The two of you are different now. Because you’ve been adapted, you are more like us. You are better able to understand us. Humans who haven’t been adapted will not have your ability to empathize with us. They need to be adapted first; that’s why we haven’t told them.” He paused, his eyes flickering toward Dr. Brand. “I understand that Evelyn has given a sample of Imrian DNA to your human scientists, and they have questioned how closely we are related.”

  “It’s not a question,” David said. “They know.”

  Deyir nodded. “You will need to ask them to refrain from sharing their knowledge. It is in your best interests to delay this. To give your fellow humans time to accept us.”

  Reese finally spoke out loud: “But you’re wrong.” Deyir’s gaze turned to her, and she straightened up, clutching the edges of the slippery black chair as she faced him. “We aren’t true Imrians. What you’ve done to me and David—it’s not what you expected.”

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Brand asked. Both she and Amber looked startled.

  Reese suddenly felt the weight of what she and David were about to do. There was no one else here to speak for humanity. It was their responsibility: hers and David’s. At that moment, she saw her future stretching out before her. She had never given much thought to what she would do with her life; maybe she’d go to journalism school, or maybe she’d become a lawyer. She hadn’t had to decide yet, and now she knew she never would. The decision had been made for her.

  She remembered her conversation with Amber about coincidence. Choice has nothing to do with it, Amber had told her, and Reese hadn’t understood then. Now she did. She was in this position, and it was a privileged one. She had told her mother that she wasn’t a child anymore. The only option was to take the responsibility that had been given to her, even if she hadn’t wanted it to begin with. To refuse would be an insult not only to humanity but to herself.

  “What you did to us changed us, but not into Imrians,” she said to the ambassador. “We have other abilities now.” She looked at David, and he began to explain what they could do.

  When he was finished, Dr. Brand said, “We can’t be sure that other humans will also have your abilities.”

  “You can’t be sure they won’t,” Reese said.

  Dr. Brand smiled as if Reese had said exactly what she wanted. “That’s true.” She turned to Deyir. “We must reconsider our plans. You must contact home and tell them.”

  Deyir had listened to David, Reese, and Dr. Brand without interrupting. Now he turned to Eres. “What is your opinion?”

  “Their abilities need further study,” Eres answered. “We don’t know exactly what they can do yet, but the telepathy alone is extraordinary. At the very least, I think we do need to discuss changing the implementation of our plan.”

  Deyir looked at Reese and David, his expression sober. “This does change things, but I cannot see the utility of modifying our plan. If anything, we should be even more cautious now about revealing your abilities. I know that your government will be especially interested in using your abilities for their gain, not for the advancement of humanity.”

  “But that’s why you need to tell the whole truth,” Reese said. She couldn’t see why Deyir wasn’t grasping this. “The more people who know, the more difficult it will be for the government to take advantage of it. The problem is in keeping things secret, not in telling the truth.”

  “Besides, it’s not your job to manage the way humanity deals with this,” David put in.

  “It is our job,” Deyir said. “We have failed you. It is our task to right your course.”

  This was the first time Reese had heard him speak with such emotion, and it surprised her.

  “No, it’s not,” David said. “Maybe you were there at the beginning, however many thousands of years ago, but you left. We kept on without you.”

  “Humanity’s problems are humanity’s problems,” Reese said. “It’s our job to fix our own problems. You can offer support, but if you secretly try to turn us all into Imrians—which isn’t going to work anyway because apparently the adaptation procedure doesn’t turn us into Imrians—you’ll be exactly what all those freaked-out protesters say you are: colonizers.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Deyir said.

  “No, you don’t understand,” Reese insisted, growing increasingly frustrated. “You can’t just come here and say, ‘Oops, we fucked up a million years ago, let us fix things.’ You may have had a hand in creating us, but we have been doing fine here this whole time. We have created our own cultures and our own technologies. Your plan doesn’t take account of that. Your plan just says humans need to be changed, so we’ll change them without their permission.”

  “Humans might not be able to do susum’urda,” David said, “but we’re not idiots. We’ve managed to survive this long without your abilities. We’re not going to roll over and say, ‘Sure, adapt us, we don’t know any better.’ ”

  “Besides, the truth will come out,” Reese said. “It always does. If you don’t tell the truth from the beginning, you’re just asking for a war. You said yourself that humans are prone to violence. Don’t you see what you could be starting?”

  For the first time since they arrived in his office, Akiya Deyir seemed rattled. Amber leaned forward and said, “She’s right. David’s right too. I don’t think humanity is going to go for it. You can’t just expect them to fall in line. They don’t know us. We’re strangers to them, and we’ve already started off on the wrong foot by lying about who we are.”

  “You have to tell the truth on Monday at the UN,” David said.

  “If you really want us to change, you have to change too,” Reese said. “You have to start treating us as your equals.”

  Deyir’s gaze flickered around the table. His face gave away nothing. Finally he said, “I’ll think about what you’ve told me. That’s all I can promise you. I’ll think about it.”

  CHAPTER 32

  When David and Reese returned to the living quarters after their meeting with Akiya Deyir, the door to Reese’s mom’s room was open. Reese paused in front of her own room and asked David, “What are you up to now?” She was anxious and impatient, and she wished that Deyir had given them a more concrete answer.

  “Homework?” he said, grimacing. “How long do you think it’s going to take for him to decide?”

  “I hope not too long.”

  Reese’s mom came out of her room, followed by her dad. “While you’re waiting,” her mom said, “I think it’s time for you two to come clean about everything.”

  David gave Reese’s parents a nervous grin. “Hi, Ms. Sheridan.” He paused as Reese’s dad’s name seemed to escape him, but was saved when his own parents came into the corridor too. Reese had the distinct impression that the four adults had been waiting to ambush them.

  “Why don’t you all come into our room,” David’s mom suggested. “We have a little more space.” Reese glanced at David. We do have to tell them about our abilities, and your dad has more info about the test results, right?

  Yeah. I guess now’s as good a time as any.

  Beats doing homework?

  David smiled slightly. “Okay,” he said out loud, and walked down the corridor toward his parents’ quarters. Reese and her parents followed.

  At 6:15 PM, Reese was seated in the dining hall with David and their families, eating a perfectly acceptable but rather boring meal of chicken, salad, and crusty bread that seemed as if it had been ordered out of a nearby Whole Foods. “I apologize for the absence of my colleagues,” Nura Halba said as he sat down with them in the nearly deserted roo
m. “They are in discussions, and I believe they will be there all night.”

  Dealing with what we told them, Reese thought. She took a sip of her water and pushed the cherry tomatoes around on her plate. She wondered how long it would take Mr. Hernandez to figure out that neither she nor David was coming to their meeting.

  “That’s fine,” her mom said. “We’re grateful that you’ve allowed us to stay here on such short notice.”

  Halba smiled, and he looked more Asian than ever. Reese still hadn’t figured out how she could broach that subject with any of the Imria. “Tomorrow night we’ll have a proper dinner,” he said. “Everyone on board will come. It will be a belated welcome banquet.”

  “Will there be actual Imrian food?” Reese asked.

  Halba seemed amused by her question. “Well, we do have to buy local. We can’t bring fresh groceries all the way from Kurra, but yes, we’ll have some Imrian-style dishes.”

  The door slid open and Amber came into the dining hall alone. She gave them a smile before she went to serve herself from the dishes on the buffet. Reese glanced across the table at David. He had tensed up every time Amber was nearby, and tonight was no different. She got out of the meeting, he thought. Do you think it’s over?

  I don’t know, Reese told him. When Amber came to the table, she slid into an empty seat at the end next to Halba. “Hi,” she said to everyone. “I don’t think I’ve met you all?” After the introductions, Halba excused himself, leaving a gap at the table where he had been sitting next to David. Amber did not move over to close up the space, and Reese saw David turn away from her slightly while he spoke to his sister in low tones.

  “Amber,” Reese said, “are they still in their meeting?”

  Amber glanced up from her meal. “Yeah. They have to talk to Kurra, and there’s sort of a time lag. It’s going to take a while.”