“They couldn't!”
He held his hands up. “And I agree, the nomads are not likely to pursue action, legal or otherwise. But they don't have to.”
“Then—?” Dan asked.
“Minority representative groups from the Alliance could do it on their behalf.”
“What for?” Dan pushed back from the table. “It won't bring Tosh back to life.”
“They don't care about Tosh. They'd see our action as an erosion of the laws against cultural noninterference. Today, Tosh, tomorrow, any one of them. They'd want blood. A precedent.”
Dan put his arm around me.
“Amanda.” Lloyd leaned back in his chair. “Tomorrow, when we go out to the nomads’ place, we need to return the children.”
Dan looked up at him sharply.
Lloyd was right. But he was wrong, too. Letting the children die at the nomads’ hands was still letting them die.
And the thought of taking Julie back, seeing her bitten and slapped . . .
My stomach soured and I leaned into Dan's solid warmth for comfort. How could I give my sweet baby over to that?
Dan's fingers curled into a fist on his knee. “Lloyd, this is a bad decision. It's expedient for you, but you can't pretend none of this happened just by sending the other children back.”
“We don't know that the children will die if we put them back in the environment they came from.” Lloyd stood to leave. “I think we're pretty clear that they'll die if we keep them.”
Neither Dan nor I had a response.
Lloyd smiled grimly. “You know, for the most part I really enjoy my work here, in this little backwater.” He looked around the small, dimly lit kitchen. The rain continued to pour outside. “But right now, I'd rather be anywhere else. Doing anything else.”
* * * *
I don't recall that I ever experienced a worse day in my life than the one that followed. Lloyd drove. I sat in the front seat holding the baby. Jessica and Jason brought the boys. Michael stayed home with Karen, and Dan watched Sam and Jessica's little one.
The trip was endless. Streams had sprung up in all the usual spots, and we had to hunt for places to cross. We got stuck in the mud twice and had to winch our way out. Lloyd mumbled something under his breath about the damned delays at the quarkian fuel cell factory, but for the most part, we made the trip in silence.
We didn't have long to wait for the nomads to return. They hadn't gone far, foraging, and had apparently heard the winch whining as it dragged us out of the creek and into the clearing. This time there were about five families there.
We left the children sleeping in the vehicle and Lloyd and I took three of the adults aside to tell them about Tosh. One of the nomads said she knew Dot and would pass on the information. They were subdued and saddened; mute, with sorrow-filled eyes.
As we talked, one of them, a silver haired grandpa, shuffled off to one side of the clearing and lowered himself into the long, wet grass. He slapped his palm on the dampened earth and made a low sound, like a moan or a song. Slap. Slap.
The second man joined him.
The woman, head lowered, returned to the others, circulating about the subdued group with low words. One by one, they approached the old man and took up places about him, near or far, facing or away by some pattern I couldn't fathom, and took up the drumming and keening. Even the youngest child found his place in the grieving circle, and with each new voice, the death song grew in volume.
Before the woman could become part of the rite, I drew her aside. “We have others,” I told her.
Her eyes sharpened.
“The boy's brothers, and a baby sister.”
"Where?" But the woman's scrutiny had already flicked to the rover. She made a low yelp, and three women at the edge of the grieving circle lifted their heads and scrambled to their feet.
Lloyd opened the cab door and he and Jason lifted the boys out. Immediately, the adults growled, bit the children, slapped them and chased them toward the dwelling trees. The boys submitted to the beatings, too lethargic to run, but they whimpered and looked at Jessica and Jason, trying feebly to get back to them.
"Don't hurt them!" Jessica ran to one of the boys, but a nomad woman blocked her way. "It wasn't their fault!"
The woman kicked the boy until he dragged himself toward the tree.
Jason wrapped his arms about his wife, burying his face in her neck as tears streamed down her cheeks.
Julie cried and clung to me, her tiny body trembling in my arms.
“Amanda.” Lloyd's voice was low in my ear, just audible above the keening.
The baby's eyes were big and round and frightened, staring uncomprehendingly into mine. Salt ran from my nose to the corners of my mouth and my heart sagged as I lifted her, struggling, from my hip. Her little ribs seemed so fragile beneath my big hands. She gripped my shirt, screaming as though I was trying to submerge her beneath choppy waves. I had to pry her fingers from my hair.
The older woman who took Julie slapped her face, tore her diaper off, and bit her leg before carrying her up a tree. The ache in my core split me in half.
All the nomads turned their backs on us then, the worst insult they could make. We stood in the rain-soaked clearing, staring up into the screen of leaves, shivering, alone, lost.
One by one, the mourners abandoned us for the canopy, moving their grieving circle out of the taint of our presence.
We trudged back to the rover to begin the dismal journey home.
* * * *
The rainy season was quiet in Tumbling River that year. I told Lloyd I'd come to a decision; I wasn't going to bend the rules any more. Lloyd got mad, as if I'd suggested he was to blame for the entire affair. He said, “Oh, come on, Amanda. You bend the rules all the time, just like everyone else. Every time you get behind the wheel of that rover you're polluting this planet. Don't be so damned sanctimonious.”
He was right. The only way to do no harm would be to leave the planet. Even then, I would leave my footprint somewhere. And, hell, I wasn't going to abandon Dan or take him from his work. I wouldn't leave Tumbling River.
Lloyd didn't have a lot to say to me at the office after that, beyond what was necessary. Somehow, I didn't have much reason to visit Karen, either. I returned to my hobby of carving idyllic scenes into the antlers I'd collected over the years, trying not to wonder where Julie was, how she was growing and changing. If she was alive. With the rain, I didn't have a lot of incentive to leave the house.
Dan and I talked about the ordeal, but we couldn't make much sense of it. However, we heard nothing from off-planet. If the incident was going to blow up politically, it didn't do so right away. So all the preparation we made, arguments about why our actions were justifiable, drifted to nothingness.
Dan, though, was able to make use of the wealth of data he'd collected. It took him months to analyze.
One afternoon, toward the end of the second quarter, he came in from town and stood by the table where I was carving an imagined mountain scene in a particularly large antler. “Amanda.”
There was fear in his voice. I put down my tiny drill and turned off my safety shield.
He frowned at his hands, leaning on the table. “Karen's been charged with Lethal Xeno Intolerance.”
My skin turned to ice.
As though speaking the words made them real, he paled and put his hand on the back of the chair to steady himself. “And four counts of Endangering a Sentient. I just heard from Lloyd.” He slumped into the seat beside me and leaned on the table.
Lethal Xeno Intolerance. A capital crime. Punishable by execution.
I tried to wipe away the shakiness prickling my forehead. My mind couldn't begin to process it all. “—Us?”
“Not yet,” he whispered. “We could be accessories.”
“Jesus God.”
He slid his hand over my frozen fingers. There were years of red tape before any execution. We'd be imprisoned. Separated. The closest facility for women w
as two light years away.
I began to tremble. Alliance prisons housed dozens of species. A conviction of Xeno Intolerance—Lethal Xeno Intolerance—put a prisoner beneath the feet—beneath the contempt, beneath the excrement—of every other convict.
“Murderer, rapist, child molester, xeno butcher. That's the pecking order, isn't it?” he said bitterly.
“Michael?” I managed. “Jason? Jessica?”
“And Lloyd.”
“It's impossible. It's—”
“No.”
I blinked at him. “We didn't know!” I pleaded. “We thought we were doing the right thing! How can they—”
He couldn't meet my eye. “I . . . there's more.”
I could barely speak. “What?”
“For months, now . . .” he bit his lip.
I wanted to rip the words from his throat.
“I've been trying to find a way to explain what I saw in the data. I didn't want—”
“Goddamn it!”
“All right. Nomad neurology—there are lots of similarities with humans. But the differences, especially in child development—” He swallowed. “Brain growth in nomads is tied to their immune system. Cognition and immune responses are stimulated by cascading proteins—”
“From—” My God. “Injuries?”
He nodded. “Imunostimulation from bruises and cuts prompts—”
But that wasn't right. “Tosh—and Julie, and their brothers—they loved to be cuddled. They loved to be hugged.”
“Not at first. Remember?” He took my hand. “I think—I think they learned to crave the hugs like . . .” He shrugged. “Pain killers. The only physical stimulation they could get.”
“What?”
“I know. From our standpoint, it's counterintuitive.”
Visions of the baby in my arms, holding her, singing to her— “All that time—”
“All that time.” Dan took my hand. “We thought we were doing the right thing. But we were wrong.”
“If taking those children was wrong, does that make child abuse right?” My mind recoiled. “There is no right, Dan. No wrong. Not now.”
He hadn't followed the thought far enough.
“It isn't just Tosh,” I said.
He squinted in puzzlement.
“Not even just Alliance law, bending the rules. Or our complete disregard for—everything. This entire planet.” I tried to shake away the impotence I felt.
Dan's face cleared. “The Alliance.” His hand balled into a fist. “We're only scapegoats. Karen, you, me. Human sacrifice to assuage Alliance conscience. Let our guilt be spread across the media files, while the Alliance rapes a few more planets, a few more species—”
“No!” He still didn't see. “We can't blame the Alliance. Or the Corporation. It's us too. It's me.” I tried to soften the blow with gentle eyes. “It's you, Dan.”
His fingers stabbing the table, stopped.
“I relied on rules instead of . . . complexities.” Relief and wretchedness bloomed in my chest. “I even had the audacity to take away Fred's name, for God's sake. For my own convenience.” I hadn't seen the disrespect of that act.
But now, I hoped, I was beginning to. “I'm going with her.” My words promised courage I wasn't sure I could sustain. “Karen.”
“To court?”
“Yes.”
“You can't.” He licked his lips. “We're not charged yet.”
“I have to.”
“This is one you can't win, Amanda. No one can.”
The dread in my stomach at my own audacity was somehow mixed with . . . lightness. Conviction. Certainty. “The words have to be said, Dan. Regardless of the outcome, the mirror has to be shown.”
Grief turned to moisture in his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered. He nodded. Touched my cheek with his knuckle. “Then I'm coming, too.”
“You're sure?”
“We may be only two voices. But voices that must be heard.”
I took his hand. And maybe . . .
Maybe in that mirror's reflection, we'd see beyond the dichotomy of right and wrong. See the labyrinth that was truth.
Copyright (C) 2012 Susan Forest
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* * *
Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME
Our May issue features two big items: the powerful conclusion of Robert J. Sawyer's Triggers, and Daniel Hatch's novella “The End of Ordinary Life” (a title that, by the way, could apply equally well to Sawyer's novel!). Major events in history, like revolutions and first contact, are often thought of as dramatic, large-scale confrontations among world leaders and their armies. They can be much quieter—perhaps even unnoticed by most—until they're well underway, but in the end no less dramatic or significant. Hatch's revolution unfolds in a part of the country that most people probably view as too remote and empty to have anything to do with them, and his story has the bonus that it will make you feel as if you've been there, even if you haven't. It may even inspire you to go and look for yourself, especially after you see Bob Eggleton's cover. . . .
We'll also have stories by Tracy Canfield and recent Nebula winner Eric James Stone, and a science fact article by H. G. Stratmann on “Space Weather: The Latest Forecast.” Most of us usually think of weather as a fairly local phenomenon, the stuff that goes on in Earth's atmosphere. But, as anyone who's ever experienced an aurora or the other effects of a big solar flare knows, what happens here can be very much influenced by what happens elsewhere—the Sun, for instance—and we need to be aware of that, too.
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* * *
Science Fact: PLANETS (OOPS, PLANETOIDS) X, Y, Z, AND W: WHAT THE KUIPER BELT TEACHES ABOUT THE DAWN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
by Richard A. Lovett
When Pluto was dethroned as a planet, many thought it silly. Where once there had been nine planets and a bunch of asteroids, there were now eight, the asteroids . . . and Pluto. What was the point?
But it turns out that Pluto isn't unique. Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies a shadowy zone of frozen worldlets orbiting so slowly that few have made complete circuits since the American Revolution.
This region, called the Kuiper belt, has fascinated science fiction writers since its existence was first suggested fifty years ago by astronomer Gerard Kuiper,[1] who proposed it as the source of the icy moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. In ensuing the billions of years, Kuiper presumed gravitational perturbations had caused most, if not all, of the belt's denizens either to fall inward and be captured as moons, or be completely ejected from the distant Sun's feeble hold.
But it turns out that Pluto (and its large moon, Charon) aren't the only survivors. At least a thousand such bodies are now known, and the tally is growing. Several, in fact, are large enough that any might have been dubbed Planet X, had astronomers stumbled across them decades ago, in a then-vain search for a tenth planet.
The largest is Eris, named for the Greek goddess of strife and discord. It orbits three times farther out than Pluto and, at 2,300 kilometers in diameter, is close enough to Pluto's size that it has indeed produced (mild) discord—over whether it is or isn't bigger than Pluto. (The latest estimates make Pluto monarch of the Kuiper belt, but not by much.)
Behind Eris, the list includes:
* * * *
* Haumea (shaped like an American football, 2,000 kilometers long). It's named for the matron goddess of the island of Hawaii, in honor of the Mauna Kea Observatory, where it was discovered;
* Sedna (another football, 1,600 kilometers long), named for an Inuit goddess of the sea, who dwelt below the frigid Arctic waves;
* Makemake (a 1,500-km sphere), named for the fertility god of Easter Island (because it was discovered shortly after Easter);
* Pluto's moon Charon (1,200 km);
* Orcus (950 km), named for an Etruscan/Roman god of the dead;
* Quaoar (890 km), named for the creator god of the Tongva (or San Gabriel) people, native
to the Los Angles area where it was discovered; and
* Ixion (650 km), named for an outlaw god of Greek mythology.
* * * *
From a science-fictional point of view such planetoids are intriguing because they're all considerably bigger than any asteroid but Ceres: a whole new array of worlds for exploration. But they're also intriguing to scientists because, like the asteroids, they're remnants of the early Solar System—leftovers from the planet-forming process, now frozen in time.
Finding more planetoids has become a priority for several astronomers, including Matthew Holman, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard University, whose team is using a new telescope called Pan STARRS-1, atop a 10,000-foot peak on Maui, Hawaii.
With an aperture of only 1.8 meters, Pan STARRS-1 isn't huge. What makes it unique is that it has an extremely wide field of view, capable of examining, in a single image, a swath of sky forty times larger than the full moon. It also has four 1.4-billion-pixel digital cameras, the largest ever built.
All this technology was designed to scan for potential Earth-impacting asteroids. But it's also ideal for spotting Kuiper belt objects down to 300 to 500 kilometers across. (Bigger telescopes can see much smaller ones, but only if they know where to look.)
In its first months of operation in 2010, Pan STARRS-1 had already found ten new Kuiper belt objects, Holman reported at a January 2011 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in Seattle, Washington. “This represents just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “I think we'll find several hundred to a thousand.”
Another telescope, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, is being planned for a Chilean observatory. It should be able to push the size limit down to 50 to 100 kilometers once it becomes operational in 2020. “We would expect about 30,000 objects,” says one of the project's leaders, Lynne Jones of the University of Washington.
But astronomers aren't content with counting planetoids. They also want to know their orbits. What they've found is that there are two basic populations of Kuiper belt objects.
Analog SFF, April 2012 Page 4