Twin-Bred

by Karen A. Wyle

  Randy squeezed Jak-rad’s near hand. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Training had much reduced the Tofar traces in his speech, but when he spoke to Jak-rad they reappeared.

  Jak-rad squeezed back carefully. “It is frightening. But I would rather be afraid than trapped. Or bored. It may be some time before my life is boring. By which time it may be a relief.”

  “You smell different.” Jak-rad had stopped taking the chemical suppressant that kept Tofa Twin-Bred from processing Tofa seed cells. “Do you feel different?”

  “That is difficult to say. I may be imagining some changes. At this time, with my wishes being gratified in a manner I had thought unlikely, and with the consequences so uncertain, I would be experiencing varying emotions in any event.”

  Randy sighed. “I’ve hardly seen you for weeks.” Jak-rad had spent as much time as possible immersed in recordings of normal Tofa, and the rest around the Tofa Twin-Bred, while Randy had assiduously avoided both.

  “And here we wait to be parted for what may be the rest of our lives.”

  Randy grabbed Jak-rad’s arm. “Don’t you believe it! All our friends here — it won’t be long before everyone knows about the Project, and they’ll all be out there helping humans and Tofa understand each other and get along. Once that’s happened, no one will mind about us. We’ll be able to visit. The Project will know where I am. You just find a way to tell them where you are!”

  Jak-rad twitched one shoulder in what he hoped was typical Tofa fashion. “I hope they do not find out from some lurid account of my premature demise. But I will do what I can.”

  They heard the copter’s approach at the same moment. Jak-rad spoke quickly. “We are not to talk in front of the pilot. Goodbye, twin. Grow giant beets and carrots, wonders to behold. And be safe.”

  Randy nodded and wiped his eyes on his sleeve as the copter touched down.

  But most of the Twin-Bred remained eager to fill their predestined role. Eager, and impatient.

  Chapter 32

  Judy stopped and flattened herself against the wall, listening around the corner to the voices expressing varying amounts of agitation.

  “I thought our missing host mothers were out there stopping this kind of thing.”

  “Maybe they are, some of the time — but obviously, not enough.”

  “So what’s the current status in Campbell City?”

  “Most of the humans are holed up in their units, and a few are going around looking for something to break. Of course, the Tofa don’t care for big glass windows, so guess who’s taking the property damage.”

  “And the Tofa?”

  “They’ve restored power to the orchard barns, but not to the poultry barns. . . ”

  Judy ran quietly on her toes back to the room she shared with La-ren. They had moved into the compound when they became teenagers and cared more for the society of their peers.

  “Something’s happening! They’re fighting in Campbell City, and no one knows what’s going on, no one understands it!”

  La-ren showed frustration. “How did you find out?”

  “They were too upset to look for eavesdroppers. It’s a good thing I can hear nearly as well as you. La-ren, I want to do something!”

  “Agreed. We have a purpose. Collecting data and fine-tuning approaches has become a comfortable habit. Inertia has set in. We cannot depend on others to realize the appropriate moment for intervention.”

  “Who else is ready? I wish Jimmy and Peer-tek could come, but Melly might find out and say something. Or try to tag along! ”

  “Steven and Bon-tok will be willing. They are tall, like us. That will be useful. Rose and Fel-lar will want to come. Who else?”

  “Maybe Anna and Cra-set. Why don’t you go and sound them out. I’ll hack into the news feed and find out more about Campbell City.”

  The Campbell Crier story went planetary overnight.

  Secret Government Race-Mixing

  Experiment Revealed:

  Test Subjects Escape, Stunning Local Population

  Campbell City residents thought things were bad enough, after Tofa from the city’s north side appeared in the human section and cut power to several agricultural buildings. Small groups of angry human residents roamed the streets, and efforts to resolve this latest crisis proceeded slowly. That was before things took a turn for the truly bizarre.

  Thursday evening brought the sudden arrival of eight beings appearing to be human adolescents and Tofa of indeterminate age, but startlingly different from either. The apparent humans’ movements, facial expressions and accents were variously described as “alien,” “abnormal,” and “Tofa Lite.” The apparent Tofa displayed some movements reminiscent of human body language. Tofa officials arriving on the scene appeared to find these beings unsettling, although they did not display any reaction identifiable as surprise. All eight of these unexpected visitors spoke in both Terran and Tofar to the rapidly growing crowd.

  Human law enforcement officials dispersed the crowd and took the intruders into custody. After repeated demands for information from local authorities, and several requests for interviews from this paper and other news outlets, the Planetary Council issued a press release disclosing the existence, for more than fifteen years, of a secret research program . . . .

  Mara paced back and forth across her office. Some small detached part of herself wondered how long it would take to wear a trench in the floor. “Adolescents. You warned me. Restless, rebellious and romantic. This is our fault. The Project’s. Mine. We should have been talking to them more about the future, including them in the planning process — and damn it, we should have been further along! We’ve been studying and monitoring and report-writing, and politician-stroking, and just when were we going to get started on the mission the Project was created for?”

  “When the politicians would let you. Although given the recent obstruction from those quarters, we should have been working on some more devious alternative. That’s my failure, Mara mia. Devious is my department.”

  “Your failure, my failure. It’s no time to fool ourselves, Levi. To fool myself.”

  “It’s no time to make things harder on yourself, either. Leaning on me does you no harm, and it does the twins no harm. Whatever helps you go forward, that’s what you’ll do.”

  “Forward, then. We’ve got to go on the offensive. We’ve got to use the public’s interest, try to redirect it, to intrigue them and make them want to see more, instead of wanting to crush the scary new thing crawling around. We’ll give interviews, leak tantalizing details to friendly sources, find pilot projects for the kids to work on. We’ve got to see whether things can go any better than they did this time. Whether the Project is actually going to help this planet, or prove to be an academic exercise that ate up the lives of a lot of good people.”

  “Boldly she rode and well. Charge!”

  “But first I have to get our twins back.”

  “Let’s think about that for a second. You need a demonstration project. The kids are on site — and it may be very hard to arrange that a second time. You’ve already got attention. They probably can’t make things too much worse — did I really say that?”

  “Yes, but go on.”

  “And if they do any good at all, and if you do have any friendly press to help you, you can spin it big time. And that, sister mine, is as optimistic as I get.”

  “Campbell City, then.”

  Chapter 33

  Judy, Rose, and Anna took turns sitting or lying on the two cots at ground level. None of them felt like perching on the upper cots. Steven was in the next cell, with a sleeping drunk and a talkative pickpocket. The guards had taken care not to put these strange new prisoners in cells with any of the townspeople arrested for rioting. The girls were cold: while they had dressed for the cooler weather, the guards had confiscated their jackets.

  Anna got up and leaned against the bars to listen to the pickpocket’s tales of lifting the mayor’s phone a
nd a beauty queen’s diary, the narrative frequently drowned out by the drunk’s snoring.

  Rose paced the short width of the cell and back again. “Where are the others? How do we know they’re safe?”

  Judy turned away. “They have to be safe. I won’t think about anything else.” She covered her ears as if it would stop her thoughts.

  Anna turned back toward them. “As they were bringing us here, I saw another corridor with tall ceilings. They’re probably down that way. I imagine human prisoners would be difficult about being locked up with Tofa.”

  Judy let her hands drop and tried to smile. “Maybe, when we’ve changed things, human and Tofa can sit happily together in the same cells.”

  Rose sat down and pounded her fists on her thighs. “Why did we just rush off like that? Why didn’t we find out more about how people dressed and talked and wore their hair in the city? Why didn’t we try to be less — different?”

  Judy sighed. “I don’t know if looking like the local residents on the outside would have made us blend in more, or just seem that much stranger.”

  Anna came over and massaged Rose’s neck. “We acted quickly because events were moving quickly. If we had waited, we might be sitting back at the compound, wishing we had intervened while there was still time.”

  Rose started to cry. Judy tried not to join in. “But at least, our twins would be there with us.”

  They all heard the footsteps approaching. A guard jingled keys in the hallway. “All right, you four! I don’t get it, but you and those Tofa buddies of yours have a meeting with the mayor.”

  La-ren and Fel-lar stood in the visitor’s room of the Campbell City jail. The rioters and petty criminals who should have had visiting hours were loudly protesting the way the room had been taken over by assorted aliens and freaks. Across the room stood a single Tofa.

  They had agreed that Fel-lar would speak first. “Do you know that the humans in this city are angry?”

  “Yes. We understand that the destruction of human property is the result of this anger. We did not anticipate that. We had taken precautions against any violence against ourselves.”

  “You disconnected the power to several agricultural facilities?”

  “Yes. We have also removed the contents of certain agricultural storage sites. We have not been informed whether that action has been discovered.”

  In the observation room, Rose spoke softly to Judy in Tofar. “Do we inform the authorities immediately, or await an explanation?”

  “We wait. Without an explanation, we make things worse. With one, we may make things worse, or we may not.”

  Back in the visitor's room, La-ren asked, “Are all these actions related?”

  “Yes. We have been waiting until the unrest had ended to discuss the matter with the human authorities.”

  La-ren repressed the urge to whistle. “There is a temporal problem with your intentions. The unrest is unlikely to end until the explanation is delivered.”

  “We had assumed that the unrest was inevitable and would end as fatigue disabled its participants.”

  “If the humans are able to understand the explanation, further unrest may be avoided.”

  Four sets of twins sat at the conference table, across from the mayor, the police chief, and the city attorney. Judy and Anna, in particular, had urged the Tofa twins to sit. “When we can do something they see as normal, we should take that opportunity.”

  Judy smiled at the officials. The stiffening in the police chief’s posture suggested that her smile was somehow disturbing. She forged ahead. “We have learned the Tofa’s intentions, and we believe you will find them reassuring.”

  “Isn’t that great. They had good intentions!” snarled the mayor. “And can they make the trees grow new fruit? Do the Tofa have a few hundred chickens to spare? Are they going to return the supplies they stole? Or maybe they have a few more intentions to go before they’re done?”

  “Would you like us to explain their intentions?”

  The city attorney nodded.

  “You realize that the Tofa do not fully understand the scope of human technologies. They underestimated your ability to deal with biological threats. The Tofa became aware of an infectious agent affecting this region. The Tofa specialists in charge of containing damaging biological agents are largely autonomous. They are not accustomed to providing prior notice of their actions. They moved to isolate and destroy —”

  “The grain, the root vegetables — they’re all destroyed?!?”

  “Fortunately, the process had barely begun. It has been arrested and the material will be returned to you as soon as the appropriate Tofa are assured that your biofilters have eliminated the infectious agent.”

  The police chief snorted. “I don’t care a whole hell of a lot whether they’re assured or not. We’re talking grand theft here.”

  Judy looked at Anna. Anna’s voice was the most soothing and well modulated among the human twins present. Anna turned to the city attorney, as the only official who had made no impatient outbursts. “The need to take prompt action against biological infestations is understood in both human and Tofa society. The lost resources are an unfortunate casualty of the existing communication difficulties. We believe the Tofa are willing to explore procedures for reducing such difficulties. We would be concerned about how such efforts might be undermined by treating recent events as a law enforcement matter.”

  The city attorney looked thoughtful, while the police chief let out a harsh burst of laughter. “Are we supposed to care whether a bunch of teenage science projects are ‘concerned’? Who do you think you are, anyway?”

  La-ren wished he could answer that question. They had agreed that discussing their greater purpose would be impolitic at present. He would not say that they were there to save the world.

  “All right, people. This joint meeting of the Planning and Tofa Relations committees will come to order. Let’s sum up how our impromptu trial run went.”

  The head of the Planning Committee pulled up a file. “Summing up may be premature. The kids are home, but they may be going back if the loose ends keep dangling.”

  Mara glanced down at her tablet. "I gather the kids were about to start learning how to set up some kind of communication and problem-solving system that'd keep working after they left. If they go back to Campbell City, that's what they should go back to do. Next time -- assuming we're heading for next times -- we'll have to make it clear up front that the twins are there to start a process, not to handle it indefinitely."

  That got a laugh from psychologist Carla Horn, whom Mara had dragooned into attending. “If you’re expecting to get around the basic human tendency to blame any remaining problems on the ones who tried to help, good luck to us. Maybe it’ll work on the Tofa.”

  "Speaking of which." Mara turned to the contingent from Tofa Relations. "We've heard about the initial human response. What about the Tofa's?"

  One of the younger members spoke up, drawing a disapproving glance from his superior. “We’ve finished our initial debriefing, and so far it seems the Tofa took at most a mild interest in the twins’ involvement.”

  Mara scrolled through a list on her tablet. “Overall, things are looking a lot less apocalyptic than they did a few days ago. I think it’s worth starting to plan what we’ll do next if the Campbell City situation is resolved. Do we actively seek out situations for the kids to tackle, or just wait for them to pop up?”

  Carla motioned to speak. “If we sit and wait, we have no opportunity to control the timing and make it work for us. Let’s troll for opportunities. We’ll need to tread delicately — we don’t want our inquiries to stir up dissatisfactions that haven’t really surfaced. But I’m sure we can find a few situations that people have been grumbling about.”

  Mara looked around the table. “We started out with a team of four twins, simply because that’s how many turned out to be sufficiently hot-headed and full of themselves. . . . What is the optimal size and com
position of a mediation team?”

  The second-in-command of the Planning Committee hesitated as if waiting for someone else to speak, then weighed in. “The minimum will be one twin pair, always. We can’t tell in advance where the explanation lies. And it’d be best to have most of the contact be same-species.”

  “Are we sure of that?" asked Carla. "After all, neither human nor Tofa Twin-Bred are exactly species-normal. Their mannerisms and speech habits — we’ve yet to see how much of an obstacle they’ll be, in dealing with their own kind.”

  Mara cleared her throat to draw their attention. “We’ll play it by ear. Whether it’s best for contact to be human-human and Tofa-Tofa, or otherwise, we’ll need at least one of each. We can compare the reactions and results when we send one pair and when we send two. What about security?”

  The head of the Tofa Relations committee drummed his fingers on the table. “This will tend to be delicate. All our security is human. That means dominance games with the human officials and who knows what with the Tofa. And the security people aren’t trained mediators. We’ll have to start some crash courses in how not to muck things up further. I doubt we’ll be able to send them with much in the way of weapons — probably nothing lethal to either species. It’ll depend on what kind of invitation we can extract, but I’m guessing one security man per twin is the most we can manage. If the twins divide up, at least one member of the security team should stay with each one.”

  Mara pushed back her chair. “Carla, please work with the Tofa Relations team on sending the feelers out. Then show Planning what you’ve come up with. Please, everyone, keep the bureaucratic dancing about to a minimum. And keep me posted. Thoroughly.”

  Randy contacted the Project right after the events in Campbell City, asking for news of Jak-rad. He called every week, still asking. But from Jak-rad, they heard nothing.