Just then, the building fire alarms went off. Not an individual room alarm this time, but the deafening whole-building alarm. Since earliest childhood we had all been drilled to think one thing at that sound: get out. I saw all the blands in the kitchen freeze as they realized they were trapped.
“This way,” I shouted, holding up the key-card and heading for the shipping door. They crowded after me, every thought gone but the one of fire. I shoved the card into the lock. With agonizing slowness, the huge metal door groaned and rose.
“Scatter!” I shouted to the blands. “Spread the alarm!” Then, as the door rose far enough for me to duck under, I shouted “Fire!” at the top of my lungs. The others took up the cry, and pretty soon the word was spreading outward at the speed of panic.
I looked around for Magister Galele, seized his hand, and dragged him after me down a broad bland-run. It was a major thoroughfare, wide enough for pallet-lifters and electric delivery trucks to pass, but today there was very little traffic. We came to a freight elevator, and I dodged inside, pressing the top button. When the door clashed shut and we rose, alone in the huge space, I turned to the Magister. “Keep your head down,” I said. “You’ll never pass for a bland.”
He fingered his mustache self-consciously. “Have you figured out where we’re going?”
“No,” I said.
“I thought you had. You seemed so confident.”
Ten floors up, the mood was much more normal, though in several spots I saw clumps of blands talking with an anxious urgency. Stepping out of the elevator, I spied a supervisor walking away down the hall, so I turned the other direction. Despite my warnings, Magister Galele was looking around in amazement. “It really is a parallel city, isn’t it?” he whispered to me.
“Yes,” I said. “Now keep your head down.”
I stopped to ask directions to the aircar port, but the blands could only tell me the general direction. I headed off down a corridor, trying not to move too fast and risk looking un-blandlike. We had not gotten far when beepers all around us started going off. A supervisor stepped through a graydoor only yards away and announced loudly, “Everyone report to your home base. All blands, return to your supervisors!”
There was a stir among the blands as they realized that something big was happening, something big enough to disturb all the routine life of the convergence. Pretty soon all the corridors would be clear, and two escaping refugees would be very conspicuous.
Down a cross-corridor I spied an electric cart loaded high with luggage, and raced to catch up with it. “Are you going back to the aircar port?” I asked the driver. It had stopped in mid-corridor, confused by the beeper. It was not a very intelligent bland. It said uncertainly, “Is that what I’m supposed to do?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re supposed to go back to where the aircars land. You can take us.”
I gestured Magister Galele to climb on the pile of suitcases, and pushed into the seat beside the driver. “Let’s go,” I said.
Obediently, it started off. The bland-runs were clearing out fast At last we turned through double doors into a big warehouse room full of crates and luggage. I jumped off, saying, “Thanks for the ride!” As the bland drove on, I snatched a leather traveling bag from the back of the cart and dodged behind a shelf unit. Magister Galele was close behind me.
I jerked open the suitcase and pulled out some human clothes. “Put these on,” I said. “You’ve got to be human again.”
He stripped off the bland uniform and pulled on the human clothes, while I stuffed the uniform into the suitcase and hefted it. It would be my disguise.
We emerged back into human space in the place where we had left our luggage on arriving at Magnus. I followed Magister Galele, carrying the suitcase and staring at the ground.
All the normal functions of the aircar port had come to a halt. No luggage could get loaded, no cars could get refueled, till the blands were back on the job. Magister Galele headed through the crowd of impatient, stranded travelers toward the nearest set of steps leading up to the glass doors of an aircar pad. Through them, I could see the overcast sky.
“Sorry, sir,” a woman said, holding out an arm to stop Magister Galele. “Nothing is taking off right now.”
He babbled something like, “That’s all right, I’ll just wait outside.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you that Capellan that was on screen?”
“No,” he said cheerfully. “We just all look alike to you.”
“Wait here, both of you,” she said, and turned away toward a terminal to make a call.
We exchanged a look. Without a word, I dropped the suitcase and we both dashed up the stairs and out the glass door.
It was a drab and chilly day outside, and rain was coming on. We raced across the pad, under the extended wing of a parked aircar. There was a whole circle of them around us, but Magister Galele didn’t seem to recognize any of them. “It’s not here,” he said.
“Where does it land?” I said.
“There was a runway. There’s no runway here.”
Shouts broke out behind us. We dashed across a paved area toward a long maintenance shed. When we rounded the end of it, a new part of the landscape came in view. There, down in a slight valley, was the runway. Still there was no sign of a shuttle.
Another aircar was parked nearby, its wings retracted. A group of human pilots was clustered under it, talking. I automatically shied away from them; but Magister Galele stopped dead and shouted, “Nadkarni!”
One of the pilots looked up. I saw he was an alien, though dressed like one of us. Magister Galele hurried over to him. “Where’s the shuttle?” he said breathlessly.
“Over there, in its bay,” the pilot said.
“Is it ready to leave?”
“Yes. They’re just not authorizing—”
“To hell with authorization! I’ve got to get to the ship.”
I saw an eager gleam of mischief in the pilot’s eye. He knew something was up, and couldn’t resist getting involved. “Alair, are you—”
“Quick! I’ll explain later.”
Nadkarni turned to one of the other pilots. “Can I borrow your car for a second?”
“Sure,” the other pilot said.
Nadkarni waved the Magister toward the door of the aircar. As I started to climb in, the pilot caught my arm. “Hold it. You’re not coming.”
“Yes, I am!” I said to him furiously, in Capellan. “I’m going to attend UIC, and I’ve got a visa, so take your hands off me.”
Dumbfounded, he backed away. “All right, all right, you’re coming.” He then jumped into the control seat and started the engine.
I was not even belted in when the car sprang into the air like a cat and twisted round. Seconds later, we were down again, and the pilot threw the door open. Outside stood a much bigger vehicle. I recognized the very alien shuttle I had seen so many years ago on the viewscreen in the creche. It looked a little scorched and worn now, but obviously still in use.
“Your shuttle, Magisters,” the pilot said, with a wink at me.
The inside of the shuttle had none of the scuffed-up appearance of the outside. When the automatic airtight door hissed shut behind me, I found myself surrounded by silence and subdued lights. Everywhere gleamed the reflective surfaces of inscrutable control panels. Nothing I looked at seemed familiar, or even recognizable. It came home to me then: These people truly were aliens. And I had just thrown myself into their world.
In the strange, indirect lighting, calculated to a redder spectrum than I was used to, even Magister Galele looked unfamiliar. I watched him settle into a chair that moved and adjusted around him to cushion his body. A musical tone sounded, and a calm voice said in Capellan, “Please take your seat.”
Gingerly, I lowered myself into a seat and felt it move sensuously under my weight, like something live. It was even warm, like skin. As a cushioned arm pressed me back, my nerves jangled with claustrophobia. My heart raced; I was t
rapped.
In the seat beside me, Magister Galele gave a relaxed sigh. “We made it,” he said. “Thank god.”
For him, it was the end of fear; for me, it was just the beginning.
In the next hour, I watched on screen as the planet of my birth receded beneath us, a bright foam of clouds on a turbulent atmospheric sea. I was pressed back by the kick of acceleration, then drifted in the weightlessness of space. The horizon became a bright hoop against the utter black. Then we saw the ship—a massive thing, despite all Magister Galele’s complaints, a cluster of hexagonal crystals, giving off prismatic gleams as it turned in the sun. When we docked and climbed out into the microgravity, the air smelled sterile, and I was surrounded by small brown aliens, talking very fast. I had thought I spoke the language well, but now I learned otherwise. All I managed to gather was that communication with the emissarium had been abruptly cut off, and they were very concerned about their people on the surface. Magister Galele laughed and teased them for worrying, then conducted a number of shrill arguments, then dragged me with him as he bullied and charmed his way into the lightbeam waystation. There, he called up documents and authorizations on a viewscreen till the flustered technicians gave in and led us to the translation cylinder. Magister Galele pushed me forward. “Tedla goes first,” he said. “I’ll come after.”
I clutched at him fearfully. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” he hissed in my ear. “Quick, before they reestablish contact and ask Ptanka-Ni’s permission.”
If I had known what the machine did—that it would, in fact, kill me by disassembling my body into an information beam—I might have broken down right there. But I didn’t know, and my drilled-in obedience took over. At the technician’s instructions, I lay down on the slab. When it retracted into the cylinder, and I saw the rings of emitters aimed at me, the claustrophobia came back at double force. I opened my mouth to beg them to let me out again, when I felt, vaguely, the shock they used to get my heart restarted. I drew in breath to call out, and realized I was no longer in the cylinder. An alien woman bent over me and said, “Tedla?”
“Yes?” I said, groggily.
“Welcome to Capella Two.”
Chapter Eleven
Val let out a breath and leaned back, the studium chair creaking beneath her. She glanced at Max; he looked like he was still taking it all in. Deedee was fast asleep on Tedla’s bed.
“And you wanted to go back?” she said at last.
Tedla hesitated, then said, “If you had left your family on a place like Gammadis, you would want to go back and join them, no matter what. As long as I had a guardian, I belonged with him. But now, my only family—the people I share things with and owe things to—is the other blands. All this education I’ve gotten—it’s pointless unless it’s for them.”
Max said, “It’s also pointless if you waste it in slavery.”
Tedla looked away, reddening as if Max had said something too personal.
Val turned to the terminal and hit the time key. It was very late. “We’d better get some sleep. We’re going to need our wits tomorrow.”
When they were in bed and the room was dark, Val lay staring at the ceiling, thinking. She could tell Max was no more asleep than she. She turned her head toward him and whispered, “Do you think we deserve to be human?”
“God knows what the test is, if Tedla couldn’t pass it,” Max murmured. “I’m glad we didn’t have to take it.”
“Me, too,” Val said. She turned toward him and put her hand on his chest, feeling the little line of coarse hair down the middle. “I like being human, Max. Even if we couldn’t pass the Gammadian test, I’m glad we can have children. I’m so glad I’d be willing to do it all over again.”
He looked at her, then raised up on one elbow to study her in the darkness. “You mean it?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You always said one was the limit. What if there’s an expedition—?”
“To hell with the expedition,” Val said, and hooked her leg around his hips to draw him close.
***
Early the next morning, while Val was struggling to pull on Deedee’s purple playsuit against the passive resistance of limp limbs, she heard Max talking to his father on screen. When Val and Deedee came out to the dinery, he said, “Joansie wants to talk to you.”
“What did E.G. say?” Val asked.
Max had a smug look. “He knows a good legal consultant. She’s coming over this morning to assess the case.”
“Some sort of radical?” Val said suspiciously.
“Of course. That’s what we need.”
Val rolled her eyes and activated the screen. “Hi, Joan,” she said. “Deedee, stop standing on the chair.”
Joan said, “Val, you remember how we sent a message to C4D when Tedla first showed up? Well, we just got a reply by PPC from a Magister Delgado.”
“Tedla’s advisor,” Val said.
“Right. He talks as if Tedla were one of his star students. Apparently, our friend was on the brink of graduating when it just walked out without a word. Delgado was very concerned, and wants us to send information. Should I?”
“Might as well,” Val said. “Tedla can use all the friends it can get right now.”
They had barely gotten Deedee settled down and eating her breakfast when Tedla came in, and she asked loudly, “Can we go to the playroom today?”
“We’ll see after breakfast,” Val said. She turned to Tedla. “When is your hearing?”
Tedla took out the paper and scanned it. “Tomorrow morning.”
Val clicked her tongue. “That doesn’t give us much time.” Which was doubtless what Nasatir wanted. Val studied Tedla across the breakfast table, thinking of all she had learned the night before. “Do you have any idea why they want you back so badly?”
“No,” Tedla said. “You’d think they’d want to forget the whole thing. I’m not causing any trouble here. No one even knows who I am. They’re the ones stirring it all up again.”
“It’s your story,” Max said, leaning across the table to pour coffee. “They want to gag you, so the Capellan public won’t be prejudiced against their planet.”
“But I’ve been quiet for twelve years,” Tedla said.
“Yes, it’s your damned discretion that’s made you such a valuable commodity. You’re a secret, and they want to keep you that way.” He was on a roll now. “Do you know what your best defense is, Tedla? Expose it all now. Make everything public. Then they’ll have no reason to take you back. You’ll have no value to them.”
He was almost beginning to convince her, Val thought. She said, “There would be a big backlash if people found out about the eugenics part.”
“I knew you would react to that,” Tedla said. “Capellans always do, as if there is something immoral about it.”
Val and Max both stared. “You don’t think so?” Val said.
“No. There is no good solution to an overpopulation crisis. My ancestors chose the most humane path open to them. Doing nothing would have destroyed us all.”
“But you’re the victim of their decision,” Max said. “Don’t you have as much right to reproduce as anyone?”
“No,” Tedla said stubbornly. “No one has a right to reproduce, any more than they have a right to live. It is a privilege that ought to be earned. Only the best ought to merit it.”
Unable to contain himself, Max burst out, “Don’t you have any anger, Tedla? Any indignation at what was done to you?”
Tedla gave him a sharp look. “What do you mean, done to me? Nothing was done to me. I’m perfectly natural the way I am. Why can’t you humans ever understand that I might not want to be afflicted with gender?”
Max looked as if he wanted to protest, but apparently he thought better of it.
Val bit into her breakfast pierogie. “I wonder why they petitioned in K-Court,” she said. “You’d think that with WAC’s resources backing them up, it would be to the delegates’ advantage t
o use Capellan court.”
“Isn’t K-Court Capellan?” Tedla asked cautiously.
“Not exactly,” Val said. “About ten years ago, the enclaves and convocations all rebelled against our system of law—it was astonishing; no one thought they would ever agree on anything. You see, Capellan law is based on precedent and legislation, and our history had gotten so messy and arcane that you could more or less win a case by paying more than the other side to access and sift the records. So they established the Court of a Thousand Peoples to be more sensitive to cultural differences. We call it K-Court for short. Now even native Capellans have begun to use it. But I didn’t expect WAC’s lawyers to take the Gammadians’ case there.”
“Maybe they didn’t want to wait ten years for a decision,” Max said.
When the legal advisor showed up, she had another theory. “They want to use Gammadian law,” she said.
She was not Val’s picture of a radical lawyer. Dag Sorno was a lanky woman in a hand-knit sweater, with waist-length gray hair braided in a long rope down her back, and a face pebbled with long-gone acne. She shook Tedla’s hand with a curious, assessive look, then settled down in the gathering room with a cup of herb tea and a slate for taking notes.
“Can they use Gammadian law?” Tedla said, leaning forward nervously.
“In K-Court, you can try a case under any legal system you’re willing to pay royalties to use. We can challenge, of course. What’s your status under Gammadian law?”
“None at all,” Tedla said. “I have no rights, not even to testify.”
“Then my guess is, they’ll try for it. You’ve got to argue against it.”
“Me?”
“Yes. There are no proxies in K-Court. The participants argue their own cases. I can give you advice, but I can’t speak for you.”
Tedla blanched. It occurred to Val that this was yet another reason for the delegates’ choice of courts. Nasatir doubtless felt no qualms about his ability to out-debate a bland. Val said, “You’ll do a terrific job, Tedla. It’s no harder than oral exams.”
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