Catalyst

by Fletcher DeLancey

  “How?” her questioner asked when she stopped for a sip of water.

  I fell in love with an entire planet, she thought, but this was not the venue for a statement like that.

  Setting down her glass, she said, “I came to realize that we do both ourselves and the cultures we study a grave disservice when we prejudge them for not having the technology to travel faster than light.”

  A rumble filled the room, hundreds of whispers and murmurs from anthropologists who were most likely taking that as an insult.

  “Before Alsea, I would have been the first to say that I never prejudged a culture, and neither did my colleagues, because our entire lives are built around studying these cultures with as much intellectual dispassion and open-mindedness as possible.”

  The whispers quieted.

  “I really believed that. But here’s the proof of my self-deception: despite my suspicions and the mounting evidence, I didn’t truly believe that the Alseans could be empathic until I walked among them and had it proven to me through personal experience. Without that, I would have come to this meeting and never breathed a word about the most profound discovery in our lifetimes—perhaps in all of Gaian history—because everyone knows empathy is impossible. Right?”

  Now the room was silent.

  “How many other impossible things have we walked away from? How many other cultures have depths we can’t see into because we refuse to really study them? Because we hold ourselves apart from them, thinking we’re more advanced? We tell ourselves that technological proficiency equals sociological advancement, but that is just not true. We’re the ones who tried to sell an entire civilization for profit. The Alseans gave unquestioning aid and assistance to a crew of injured aliens. Alsea proved the lie of technology signaling advancement, and now I wonder how many other worlds out there prove it as well. How can we distinguish between the ones that do and the ones that don’t while we float above them and refuse to immerse ourselves in their culture?”

  “Speak it!” said someone in one of the front rows. A loud clap came from the same place, which quickly spread throughout the audience. Surprisingly, some of the attendees who had been frowning earlier were now applauding. Perhaps she had moved this debate a tiny distance toward resolution.

  When the applause died down, she pointed toward an older woman on the left side of the room.

  “Did any of the Caphenon crew have sexual relations with an Alsean? You were there for two stellar months. That’s a long time for Fleet types.”

  Lhyn was amused at the idea of Fleet types. The crew she had met ran the gamut from Lieutenant Candini’s stereotypical pilot-run-wild personality to Ekatya, who could not be paid to put a toe out of line.

  “Not as far as I know,” she said. “But I didn’t send out a survey.”

  The next questioner was stuck on the topic. “Can female Alseans even have sex with Gaians?” he asked. “Their anatomy doesn’t seem compatible. A larger-than-average penis wouldn’t fit.”

  The woman next to him turned and said, loudly enough to reach the microphone, “Did you grow up on an all-male planet? You do know there are other ways to have sex besides using a penis.”

  “Obviously, but we’re talking about reproductive sex—”

  “But that’s not what you said—”

  It took a full minute to reestablish order.

  “Well, I know which chapter of my book will be the one everybody reads,” Lhyn said, eliciting a swell of laughter as she pointed toward a well-dressed man in the third row.

  “Can you honestly say you have no concerns about unleashing empathic aliens on the citizens of the Protectorate?”

  She was so tired of this question, yet it followed her wherever she went. “Yes, I can honestly say that,” she said shortly, and pointed at the next person.

  But the man grabbed the microphone, refusing to let it go. “Then you’re deluding yourself and trying to delude us. The Alseans are dangerous, and you’re painting them as some sort of enlightened species second only to the Seeders. You’re as dangerous as they are.”

  “You’re not an anthropologist,” she said. “None of us would use the phrase unleashing empathic aliens. That’s a tag phrase from the Defenders of the Protectorate—a ridiculous name, by the way, because you’re not defending the Protectorate. You’re defending your own prejudice and fear. This is a scientific meeting. Your politics don’t belong here.”

  Murmurs of disapproval rose from the crowd, and the people nearest the man leaned away as if to disassociate themselves.

  He stared at her, unaffected. “It’s not politics. It’s a question of security. And the Battle of Alsea proved it’s a question of life and death. There are aliens on that world capable of killing with their minds, and you think they should walk among us.”

  Lhyn noted the security officers making their way down the center aisle and breathed a sigh of relief. By hijacking the microphone, this DOP plant had guaranteed his ejection.

  Pointing toward the officers, she said, “There are people working for this conference center who are probably capable of killing with their bare hands. No one seems to have a problem with them walking among us.”

  “That’s a facile argument, Dr. Rivers. Real Gaians can’t kill without anyone else noticing. There are defenses against someone who wants to kill you with their hands or a weapon of some sort. It’s physical. We can’t defend against the mental.”

  “And if you paid the slightest attention to what I’ve been writing and saying for the last year and a half, instead of shouting inside your own political bubble, you’d know we don’t need to defend against the mental. The Alsean culture is built around regulating empathic powers. Alseans who would commit the act you refer to are criminals, and they are punished.”

  “But what about the ones who aren’t?” He shook off the hands of the security guards now surrounding him, only to be swarmed. “What about the ones who aren’t, Dr. Rivers?” he shouted as they pulled him away and began marching him back up the aisle. “What about them?”

  The auditorium was deathly silent when he was finally dragged out the doors. Lhyn eyed the reporters lining the back wall—something she had never seen at an anthropology meeting before—and knew she could not let this stand.

  “Shall we get back to talking about interspecies sex?” she asked.

  It earned a laugh, but she could feel the discomfort in the air.

  “Given the increasingly visible activities of the DOP over the past year and a half,” she said, “I suppose it was inevitable that they would install plants in our meeting. But I’m not sure what they were trying to accomplish. Their only weapon is fear. They’re terrified of the unknown, just as children are. Children depend on their families and cultures to educate them on which fears are useful and which can be dismissed, but some reach adulthood without ever learning to distinguish. They fear anything they can’t understand, and they don’t want to understand. They revel in their childish terror because it’s a cultural tie—it gives them a strong connection to their chosen tribe. The tribe of fear.

  “But fear is not an effective weapon in this room. Fear shrivels in the face of knowledge, and every one of us has devoted our lives to the pursuit of knowledge. I can’t think of an audience less receptive to what the DOP is trying to sell.”

  The room burst into applause. When it died down, she indicated the back wall and said, “But given the media attention this meeting has drawn, I think we were not the target audience for this intrusion. The DOP is hoping this will be broadly disseminated. So let’s speak to that broader audience.”

  She took another sip of water and then faced the reporters.

  “In answer to the question: yes, the Alseans can be trusted to use their empathic powers in an ethical manner. This is not merely my opinion. The job of an anthropologist is to study a culture in order to answer just such questions
as that one. My research team gathered data from numerous sources—news, documentaries, entertainment programs, observation of political and court processes—the list goes on. And then I found myself on the planet with direct access to libraries and all of their historical texts, written laws, and popular literature. I conducted interviews with and observations of citizens from all walks of life.

  “What I learned from this vast amount of data—far more than we have ever gathered on any pre-FTL culture—is that the Alseans have built their culture around the ethical use of their empathy. They have a formal system of laws that govern its use, they have institutions that train the more powerful empaths to control and lawfully use their skills, and they have guiding principles, values, and moral structures around both the use and misuse of empathy. Alsean families are deeply connected by their shared empathy. Alsean doctors use empathy to help others heal.

  “Meanwhile, one of their greatest historical villains was a king who tried to seize power through the abuse of empathy. His punishment wiped out any legacy he hoped to leave. He was stripped of his name, erased from history, and is known today only as the Betrayer. The Alseans imposed that punishment because they never wanted an empathic abuser to profit from that abuse, even after death. There could never be any incentive for abuse.

  “So while it’s true that Alseans exist who break the law regulating the use of empathic powers, it’s also true that they are punished severely. On my home planet of Allendohan, there are people who break the laws and hurt others. They are also punished. I would not want my world, my culture, to be judged by the actions of the tiny minority who don’t represent us. If that were the criteria for being accepted into the Protectorate, I wouldn’t be here. Neither would any of you.”

  A hum of approval swept the auditorium, but she had one final message to convey, and this might be her last opportunity.

  “The DOP wants us to be afraid. Well, if I’m going to fear something, it won’t be the aliens who saved my life despite the danger my research exposed them to. I’ll fear the people who tried to sell a civilization into slavery and death for a set of mineral rights. I’ll fear the greed and immorality of some Gaians and the willful ignorance of others. Because fear does have a purpose. It shows us what we need to fight against. So let’s fight against the right thing.”

  As the applause began, she picked up her water and stepped back from the podium.

  She was done.

  CHAPTER 37:

  Mistake

  Lhyn had hardly been in her hotel room for five minutes when the door chimed.

  Her first thought, as she crossed the room she had only just entered, was an exasperated what now? She had spent the day either on stage or socializing with colleagues; all she wanted now was a quiet evening alone.

  Her second thought, when she tapped the pad by the door and saw the large man standing in the corridor with a bouquet of flowers, was curiosity as to who would have sent them. Flowers were not Ekatya’s style. Perhaps her former director, wishing her a happy new life even if it wasn’t at the Institute? Or maybe the conference organizers thanking her for the keynote.

  Her third thought, when she opened the door and was shoved backward so forcefully that she lost her balance and fell, was that she had just made a big mistake.

  Her last thought, when the injector bit into her throat and her vision darkened, was that Ekatya would never have been so stupid.

  CHAPTER 38:

  First lesson

  She awoke in a bed, lying atop the covers in a dimly lit room. She sat up abruptly, then held her head in both hands and tried desperately not to vomit. The sudden motion was a very, very bad idea. Whatever sedative had been used on her was the type with nasty side effects.

  When the intense pain in her head finally subsided, she opened her eyes and sighed with relief at the sight of her body. She was still fully clothed in the suit she had worn to the keynote speech. Even her dress boots were untouched. At least for the moment, sexual assault was not on the agenda.

  As quietly as she could, she got off the bed and prowled the room. It looked like a high-quality hotel room that had been denuded of all decorations and furnishings other than the bed. On the opposite wall was an enormous plexan window, which probably looked onto a beautiful view when it wasn’t opaque. She located the control for the window and tapped it.

  Nothing happened.

  She tried again. Nothing.

  Venturing through the open doorway to the left of the bed, she found an expansive bathroom with richly tiled flooring. On the stone counter, in a neat pile beside the sink, was a single towel, a bar of soap, and a small, unbreakable jar of dentifrice. There was no toothbrush. The bar of soap was lined up to exactly match the edges of the folded towel.

  A pale rectangle outlined by brackets showed where the mirror over the sink had been taken down.

  The sight of the toilet reminded her to be practical. She used it, then reentered the bedroom and considered her options. The bathroom had no window, while the bedroom window was a solid sheet of plexan, the type put into temperature-regulated buildings. The only exit from this room was the closed door directly across from the bathroom. It would surely be locked.

  She gave the lever a cursory tug and took a surprised inhale when it gave beneath her hand.

  Slowly, she opened the door a crack and squinted against the too-bright light. When her eyes adjusted, she found a blank-walled room empty of any furniture save an expensive wooden table, a matching chair, and a second, high-backed chair made of a black composite material. It was studded with built-in restraints.

  In the wooden chair sat a fit, handsome, well-dressed man, looking right at her. His blond hair was impeccably cut, his short beard and mustache were trimmed to perfection, and he wore a golden stud in one ear.

  “Good morning, Dr. Rivers,” he said in a calm, deep voice. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Who are you?”

  He smiled. “I can see that’s the first thing I’ll have to train out of you. You don’t ask the questions here. I do. Your job is to answer them the way I want you to.”

  She glanced to the left, where another door offered possible escape.

  “Oh, you’d like to leave? Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”

  It was clearly a trap, but what could she do? If she didn’t try, she would forever wonder if she could have saved herself by simply walking out. There was always a chance he was just insane.

  He did not move other than to turn his head and watch as she walked to the door.

  Like the first, it was not locked. With a burst of hope she swung it all the way open, getting a brief glimpse of an empty corridor with identical doors.

  Then a man stepped into the doorway, filling nearly all of it. She recognized him as the one who had pushed his way into her hotel room. He tilted his squarish, close-shaven head and regarded her as one would regard an insect.

  She would never have imagined that a man that large could move so quickly. Before she could take a single step back, he buried his massive fist in her stomach.

  Pain exploded through her, doubling her over and dropping her to the floor in a fetal position. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t do anything except scrabble her feet weakly against the smooth wood floor, as if somehow the movement would unlock her lungs.

  It did not. She was helpless, silently struggling, unable to lift a hand to defend herself should the man at the door choose to strike again.

  At last her diaphragm released from its paralysis, and she took in a gasping breath, then another and another. Tears ran down her face, an involuntary physical reaction to the shock and lack of oxygen.

  The well-dressed man knelt down in front of her. “I said I wouldn’t stop you. I didn’t say he wouldn’t stop you. He saw the coverage of your speech and your insulting comments about the organization we work for. He was a little irritated by that, s
o I told him he could teach your first lesson. Which is, your choices have consequences. So do your words. Think about that, Dr. Rivers.”

  Once again, an injector stung her throat.

  CHAPTER 39:

  Second lesson

  Her second awakening was identical to the first, with two exceptions. One, she knew not to sit up too quickly. Two, she was naked and under the covers.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered. “Please, no.”

  She tried to sit up, but even her attempt to move slowly failed. Her stomach muscles ached so badly that she could not use them and had to push herself up with her arms instead. Her mouth was desperately dry and tasted acidic.

  Bracing herself with one hand, she leaned over and tapped the wall control to increase the light. Then she threw the covers aside and looked down at herself.

  The fist-sized bruise looked horrific, but that was the least of her concerns. She examined her inner thighs, finding no abrasions, no stickiness or dried fluids. She felt no vaginal pain, and when she carefully got out of bed and leaned down to inspect the sheet, she could find no stains.

  Her legs buckled beneath her, and she dropped her forehead to the mattress, gulping in air. When she got herself under control and pushed up again, she found something new in the room: a suit rack, with her pants carefully folded over the bar and her jacket arranged perfectly on the hanger. Her belt hung from a tab on the side, while her boots were precisely lined up on the base. On the polished wood floor beside the rack were her shirt, socks, and underwear, folded and wrapped in the water soluble film that indicated they had been freshly laundered.

  She had not been raped, but someone had handled her body, undressing her and putting her to bed. The idea of either of those two men doing that—or Shippers forbid, both of them—made her nauseous. And she had a sinking feeling it had been both. The fastidious arrangement of clothing was almost certainly done by the man in the chair, but he wasn’t big enough to easily move her. Especially given that she would have been an unresponsive weight.