by George Mann
Minya’s Astral Angels
Jennifer Pelland
WHEN MINYA BINT-ASTRID4 was just a little girl, her favorite thing in all the galaxy was to sit in her father’s office up on The Big Pearl and watch the Space Angels outside his window. They looked so playful as they worked, using their broad, multi-jointed wings to help them navigate outside the space station. She would smile and wave, and one would always swoop by the window and wave back.
“I want one, Pas!”
Her father would take her on his lap, his wild, fuzzy beard tickling her face, and say, “When you’re grown up, you can have them all.”
It was good to be the boss’s daughter.
Minya’s mother was Astrid bint-Astrid3, the biggest of the big bosses—the President, CEO, chief shareholder, not to mention the titular owner of Astrid’s Astral Emerald, the water world that Minya lived on and that the Angels worked above. Oh, they were so beautiful! Her sibs teased her, but she couldn’t stop thinking about them, about how elegant and slender they were as they danced through space, wearing nothing but the thinnest of space stockings to protect them. And the nightly cuddle piles! Could they be more cute? She watched holos of them nuzzling and stroking and nibbling each other and thought she would die from the adorableness. They were so much better than thick, slow, gravity-bound humans.
As she got older, she begged her father to let her start shadowing the Angel Wrangler up on The Big Pearl, and he did. She was there as the clones were mixed and grown in the special zero-g lab, and she was there as they flew out of their amniotic sacs for the first time, trailing beads of fluid behind them as they joyously circled the hatchery, already fully grown and fully intelligent. She studied them inside and out, and learned that they were even more elegant than she’d realized. Their bodies were perfectly engineered for space, with no wasted bone mass or musculature. With their long, delicate fingers and prehensile toes, they were so much more efficient and dextrous than humans could ever be. Their wings were marvels of genetic engineering, allowing them to create the perfect equal and opposite reactions to maneuver them through zero gravity. Their lungs were incredibly efficient, allowing them to work long hours in an airless vacuum with very little oxygen in the tanks strapped to their skinny backs. Each of their brains was carefully filled with just the right amount of knowledge and curiosity to love the work that they did so well, with no space left over for them to dream of things they couldn’t have. And none of their body was wasted on reproduction.
She only wished she could say the same about her own body.
Or, at least, she wished she wasn’t under so much pressure to use those parts.
Why did space have to be so crowded? Babies, babies everywhere! Their underwater apartment was full of them! She was glad when Mas took her second and third husbands and the fourteen (and counting) of Minya’s siblings with her to Astrid’s Astral Opal, a gas giant she was converting into a luxury resort, leaving Minya with just Pas and a deliciously decadent (and quite possibly illegal) amount of elbow room.
And with the Angels flying through space above them.
“I want one, Pas.”
“When you’re grown up, you can have them all.”
Pas was true to his word. When Minya bint-Astrid4 turned sixteen and became a full shareholder in her mother’s multi-world empire, her father put her in charge of all the Space Angels of Astrid’s Astral Emerald. She was given an office right next to his in The Big Pearl and was finally given a tour of the Angels’ facilities by the outgoing Wrangler.
“They’re good at keeping the place clean, but every now and then, you’ll need to hose the place out, just to be hygienic,” he said as they floated through the spartan zero-g hab. “And you need to be sure they’re eating their veggiepats. I swear, they’re like children when it comes to food. We keep trying to mix their sweet tooth right out of them, but it never seems to work.”
Minya just smiled and nodded and took the elevator up the tether that connected the stationary Angel hab to the spinning one-g Pearl, and made her way through the throngs of families crowding up the station’s corridors as they bustled between day care and dance lessons and Space Scouts and whatnot. Most groups had a single adult at the lead, and a cloud of bots swarming around the periphery, herding any stragglers back into the pack. So many children! What was the rush? Did people think that space needed to be filled up that quickly? She squeezed around a group of gawking tourists all dressed in identical Big Pearl souvenir maternity smocks and slipped through her office door into her oasis of calm, where she made her way through the daily reports, looking for ways to tweak the budget to get the Angels some healthy sweets to make everyone happy. Then, just before the Angels’ shift ended, she braved the crowds and went back to their hab to wait for them. They floated through the airlock, pulling off their space stockings and oxygen tanks, floating unabashedly nude through the main room, until they noticed Minya and fixed her with their identical black-eyed gazes.
“I’m your new boss,” she said. “Can I join the cuddle pile?”
They met in a group snuggle, with Minya in the middle, and she was in heaven.
“I love you,” she said to the one whose face was closest to hers.
“I love you too, boss.”
She knew they had to agree with everything that she said. She didn’t care. She really did love them, and they would learn to genuinely love her back, given time.
Or maybe she’d just focus on one. The one in front of her seemed nice enough. Yes, they’d do.
That night, back in her underwater apartment on the Emerald itself, Minya stood by the window and watched a lone blowped swim by. A Space Mermaid followed closely, trying to coax the animal away from the apartments.
“I love them,” she murmured. “I love my Space Angels.”
The window’s view opaqued into the face of her mother, Astrid bint-Astrid3, calling from her latest discovery-slash-acquisition, Astrid’s Astral Sapphire—a retro-Earth-style planet. “I can’t believe your father gave you that job,” she said. “It’s beneath you.”
“Have you been spying?”
“I own your planet and everything on it,” her mother said. “It’s not spying if it’s yours. Space Angels? Really, darling, Angels are so outdated. Your father should have retired all his Mods years ago.”
“Mods built your empire, Mother.”
“Mods built my mother’s empire. The only reason AAE still has them is because of your father.”
Astrid bint-Astrid3 was not the original owner of this planet. That honor went to her Pas’s own mother, Enaji bint-Twinkles. Enaji left the planet to Pas when she died so he’d have a dowry, and Mas took it, then gave him the governorship as a wedding present. And Mas was right—Mods were no longer building empires. Back in the early days of space colonization, they’d been essential. It had been so much easier to engineer humans to adapt to vacuum (or high gravity, or radiation, or breathing liquid) than it had been to protect regular humans from those conditions. But now, intelligent bots could do all those things and more for so much less money.
Shareholders loved that last part.
“Most girls grow out of their Angel phase by the time they get breasts,” Mas said. “You know, when they start thinking about fucking.”
“Go away, Mas.”
“You can’t fuck an Angel, darling. They have nothing to fuck. And they certainly won’t give you babies. I was pregnant with your oldest sister at your age, you know.”
“And I’m sure Astrid bint-Astrid4 is very happy for that, Mas. That must be why she has four boys.”
“Oh, there will be an Astrid bint-Astrid5. Your sister’s hips just aren’t ready to squeeze out the legacy yet. Get fucking, Minya. My planets need more bint-Astrids. They’ve got altogether too much empty space on them.”
The window returned Minya to her regularly scheduled view.
More bint-Astrids.
Minya shuddered.
Surely her eighteen (and counting
) siblings could provide Mas with all the grandchildren she needed. What was the rush?
She folded herself into her sleep taco and imagined the floating snuggle pile of snoozing Space Angels above.
How could babies compare with that?
WITHIN A MONTH, Minya was dating her favorite Angel. Their name was AAEA TenTwentyBee, but she called them “Bee” for short. Even though she knew it was impossible, when she looked at them, she could swear that their eyes were just a shade blacker than the other Angels’, their limbs just a millimeter more willowy, their wings just a touch more iridescent, their voice a whisper more breathy. And they didn’t mind when she asked if they could cuddle alone instead of with the group.
“Whatever you say, boss!”
“You’re so sweet.”
“That’s because you own them!” Mas’s image shouted from a nearby window.
Minya responded by slapping a blanket over her mother’s face. The blanket hovered in the zero-g of Bee’s tiny private cubby, and Minya laughed as she saw her mother try to peer around it before giving up and winking off the connection, most likely so she could go harass one of her other children who was disappointing her in some other way.
“Can we go to the cuddle pile now?” Bee asked.
“No, let’s stay a cuddle pile of two just a bit longer.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“Don’t call me ‘boss,’ call me ‘Minya.’ “
Bee frowned at her, clearly puzzling over the conflict between Minya’s request and the etiquette that had been uploaded to their brain. She’d have to adjust the mix of the next batch of Angels to make them a little more flexible about formality.
“Do you want me to snuggle you in the special human way?” Bee asked. Their hands and prehensile toes started inching toward her breasts and groin.
She wondered how they’d learned about that. They must have done some research. How lovely of them. “That’s very sweet of you to offer, but I want to cuddle like an Angel.”
“You’re the boss!”
Mind you, she couldn’t really cuddle like an Angel. She knew there was no way she wouldn’t crush Bee’s impossibly delicate bones, no matter how careful she tried to be. So she curled into a ball, and they cuddled up behind her. And it was good enough for her.
The Church of the Stellar Wanderer, of course, would not approve of their relationship. The main purpose of the church was to go to new planets and find God in them. In the Emerald, they claimed to have found The Great Turtle, who slumbered beneath the crust of the planet, waiting for the right moment to break through and rise to the surface to bring land above the water for the first time in hundreds of millions of years. But when they weren’t busy trying to get the Turtle to rise, they were agitating to free all Mods. Their reasoning went that since humans had souls, and humans had created the Mods, then the Mods had pieces of human souls in them, and therefore shouldn’t be property.
Minya, like most people, found this to be nearly as ludicrous as The Great Turtle.
One morning, several weeks after Minya became the Angel Wrangler, Bishop ibn-Magdalene, the head of the AAE congregation, was waiting for her outside her office. He was dressed in his customary turtle yarmul-ke and shelled vestments. “I must talk to you urgently about the Mods,” he said, his vestments clacking.
“I’m only in charge of the Angels,” Minya replied, pressing herself back against her door to let a crowd of toddlers race by, a cloud of bots zooming after them in a futile attempt to keep them under control. “But I can give you the contact info for the Dragon, Devil, and Mermaid Wranglers if you’d like to talk to them too.”
“You’re the only Wrangler who’s the daughter of both the CEO and the governor,” ibn-Magdalene said.
Minya squirmed. “I’m really quite busy.”
“I intend to ask the CEO to emancipate all the Mods. It’s not right for humans to enslave ensouled creatures.”
“Ah, no, I see your confusion. They’re not slaves, they’re genetic client organisms. To be slaves, they’d have to be an actual species, and for that, they’d need to be able to self-replicate, and since they’re all neuters—”
“They share 99.7% percent of our DNA.”
“Believe me, I know more about their DNA than you do. However, corporate law is remarkably consistent in ruling that all Mods are property. It’s not just a bint-Astrid thing.”
Ibn-Magdalene clutched her hands and said, “Help us change your mother’s corporate law. Help us free them.”
Minya pulled her hands out of his. “They don’t want to be free.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because they can’t. It’s not a part of their mental make-up. Don’t you understand? They’re happy! If you gave them the freedom to do what they wanted, they’d just keep doing what they’re already doing. So what’s the point?”
“The point is that it would be their choice. And you would have to pay them, just like any other worker.”
Minya laughed. “You know my mother would never do that. Look, I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” She escaped into her office, locking the door behind her, and looked out the window at the Angels flying by. They loved their work. They were made to love it. It was beautiful. Why couldn’t humans be more like them? Why did humans have to spend so much time struggling to find happiness and fulfillment in their lives when their creations were gifted with perpetual happiness? Well, providing they kept performing the work they were created to do.
Besides, if the Mods were freed, who would take care of them? Feed them? Give them meaningful work? When they got old, who would lovingly euthanize them? And who would authorize the Mods banks to grow a replacement for them? Never mind authorize, who would pay for it?
Bee swooped to her window and waved at her.
She waved back and hugged herself in a cuddle pile of one, wishing her arms didn’t feel so thick and meaty compared to theirs. It made it difficult to imagine that their arms were the ones around her.
The window filled with her mother’s face again.
“Must you keep doing that?” Minya snapped.
“I’m your mother. I care about you. You know, I think the bishop has a point. I’ve indulged you and your father long enough. It’s time to switch over to bots. Well, not planet-side. I like the Mermaids. They give the ocean character. And no one ever sees the Dragons or the Devils, so we might as well keep them too. But the Angels? No. The shareholders don’t like having such embarrassingly old-fashioned tech swooping around in front of all the tourists and prospective tenants. They’ve got to go.”
“Mas, you’re only doing this to make me get pregnant, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m doing it because you’d rather let a Mod jill you off than seek out the company of your own kind.”
“They don’t touch me that way. You know, life doesn’t have to be about sex.”
“Of course it has to be about sex! Your body was made for sex. Human beings are nothing but complicated, self-replicating organisms. Once you finally get knocked up, you’ll understand. How I managed to give birth to such a late bloomer, I don’t know. Look, I wouldn’t mind if you had a small family. I could live with you only giving me seven or eight grandkids.”
“Someday, we’re going to run out of planets to fill up.”
Mas scoffed. “Please. You’ve seen how much room is left on my Emerald. We’ve barely filled half the ocean with apartments, and we haven’t even started floating cities on the surface yet. And as soon as I’m done setting up the Sapphire, I’ve got my eyes set on this lovely little Tourmaline. Or maybe it’ll be a Jasper. I’m not sure yet. I’ve got more space than I’ve got colonists, thanks to people like you. It’s time to pry you away from the Angels, and it’s time to pry your father away from pointless nostalgia. The Emerald’s orbit is switching to bots.”
“But you can’t just emancipate them. What will they do?”
“You’re right. Emancipation makes no sense. Just junk ‘em. The bots
will be there in three days. I want the Mods gone by then, all of them.”
No. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t!
Minya raced out of her office, elbowed her way through a family of fourteen that was doing some sort of circle dance in the middle of the hallway, and burst into her father’s office. “Mas wants me to kill the Angels!”
He stroked his beard and looked out the window as two Angels flew by carrying a bushel of nanotubes. “Well, it’s your job to make sure it’s humane. You know, your predecessor always held them as they went down.”
“This is an outrage! How can she just throw them away? Look at them! They’re so happy! I won’t allow it. They’re mine—you said so. I won’t kill my Angels.”
“You only manage them, dear. Your mother owns them and everything else around here. Corporate law is very strict on this point.” He held out his arms for her to bury herself in his beard, but for the first time in her life, she turned her back on him. She could almost hear his heart break as she fled for the Angels’ tethered home, where she curled into a tight ball, floating through the empty apartments, waiting for her beauties to come home.
Damn it, she needed a snuggle.
When the Angels came back in, they could tell something was wrong. They cuddled up around her, purring and cooing, and she burst into tears.
Bee pressed their face in close to hers and delicately licked the tears from her cheeks. “What’s wrong, boss?”
“Mas wants to replace you with bots. In three days.”
Bee looked at her, puzzled. “Then what will we do?”
“She wants me to... get rid of you.”
“You mean sell us to another planet?”
“No.”
She felt all the Angels shudder as one.
Yes, they understood.
“I’m not going to do it,” she said. “I won’t. It’s not right. But I don’t know what else to do.”
She couldn’t sell them. Her mother wouldn’t authorize it. She couldn’t run away with them, because that would be corporate theft, and her mother would just have her arrested and kill the Angels anyway. Besides, there was nowhere she could take them. Oh, sure, there were plenty of competing planetary conglomerates who would love to have a piece of Astrid’s Astral Empire, but taking in the Angels that Astrid didn’t want anymore was hardly a coup. The only option open to her was to help them sneak away with the Church of the Stellar Wanderer, but she just knew in her thick, gravity-bound bones that the bishop’s solution would involve taking them somewhere far away from here.