“Why not?” Sonja feigned indignation.
“You don’t like raspberry jelly. It’d never work.”
Snickers and giggles. Jebb guffawed with laughter. More urging for her to open it.
“I’m a little young for this,” Lachesis said, nervously flicking the envelope. Most females only had one child. It spread the hope around, and while parents were carefully chosen for the task based on a staggering number of factors, one of those factors was variety, so even if children were genetic siblings, they might be raised by completely different families, or in completely different Generations. Most females were bred for the first and only time around twenty-five or twenty-six, when their personalities had had a chance to fully mature, as well as being in their reproductive prime with enough time left to produce another child, although siblings were rare.
Crèche’s goals were not just to maintain genetic diversity and not overwhelm the ship’s resources, but also to maintain a healthy, functional society suitable to transition back to life on Earth.
For eons werewolves had lived in fearful secrecy and resentment of humanity, afraid of being burned, hunted, and experimented on, and only revealed themselves in the last years on Earth. Forged together by the need to save their mutual civilization, the two species had co-existed in relative peace until Year Twenty-Three.
Nobody knew exactly how Sunderer’s final days played out, but based on letters and limited comms in the months leading up to it, a serious divide emerged between the human Command staff and an Alpha werewolf.
Now Sunderer drifted in the asteroid belt, dead and silent.
The surviving Crèches compared notes and saw the same trouble brewing on all their ships. Changes were made. Packs were forbidden, formal etiquette to prevent inter-species confusion developed, and wolves with tendencies to extreme dominance or were deemed “feral” were not selected for child-rearing. If necessary, they were culled entirely as a danger to everyone. Crèche also mandated that all marriages had to be inter-species. While humans and werewolves could not interbreed, they could inter-marry, and create family bonds with the hope that in a few Generations, the two species would be emotionally and culturally entwined, if not genetically.
Lachesis’ biological sire was an Omega, one of the wolves who had sent along sperm but not left Earth, but her father was human. He’d been chosen and paired for her mother and her when she had been two, and she could not remember a life without him.
Civilization Management hadn’t been warning her. They’d just not wanted to break the news early that she couldn’t be running around hunting in wolf form while pregnant.
Lachesis snapped the wax seal. Inside the envelope was a single, thick card embossed with antique patterns. Everyone clustered around, fingers snaked out to touch the paper, patterns, inhale the scent of the wood pulp and ink.
RAINER OF NIGHTPIERCER
SHUTTLE: 3 days hence, 13:20, BAY 2.
PACK PERSONAL POSSESSIONS FOR TRANSFER.
No more text. No further directions.
Someone took the card. It was read, passed around, contemplated. She stood stunned and non-comprehending. The card should have told her when to report to Medical for the various necessary procedures. Then she’d be informed of the biological details of her future child, such as if she was having her own biological offspring, or was being implanted with an embryo.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” someone asked.
“It’s from the Crèche Council. Who would spoof Lachesis like that? They’d get spaced,” someone said.
“Who puts a female on a shuttle and transfers her?” someone else muttered.
Things like sophisticated comms or shuttles to make inter-ship runs had been afterthoughts. No one had expected any of the other ships to launch, much less survive the journey. The shuttles had been built for exterior repair work, not traversing thousands of kilometers in space.
Each ship was an island. Crew transfers never happened. Many people had penpals on other ships, but meeting those friends was impossible. Trading between ships happened occasionally. A certain type of sheep embryo, or asking for trades of seeds, or trying to negotiate a trade of a needed part, information, very occasionally genetic material. In the case of LightBearer, begging for help… it was without precedent.
Each ship had its own Crèche Council, although the three Councils did keep in contact with each other, and everyone knew what everyone else had in their DNA banks. Nobody could be sure, which, if any, ship would survive. So cross-ship breedings were somewhat routine, but it was the genetic material that was shipped. Not the actual living bodies.
And especially not the females.
She was leaving Ark? That sounded impossible. “Does anyone know who this Rainer is? Anyone have a penpal who has shared some gossip?”
NightPiercer was the smallest ship, the most sophisticated and best supplied. There wasn’t a lot of unofficial communication between NightPiercer and Ark, and no crew transfers between the two ships she could remember. If they’d happened, it’d been before she’d been born.
She had a couple of penpals on LightBearer. She’d never seen a request from NightPiercer that had struck her interest. A stupid, silly worry jarred her: would they forward her next letters to NightPiercer? She’d had penpals die, she’d never had one move ships.
“I do,” Jebb’s friend piped up, “but I’ve never heard of this guy. We don’t talk about work.”
“I…” her voice trailed off.
“You’re having a baby, Lake!” Evie said with forced cheer. She grabbed Lachesis around the shoulders and shook her. “Be happy! And sad ‘cause you’re leaving, but you’re going to have a baby!”
Forever. She was leaving forever.
She’d never come home.
She’d never see any of them again.
We'll Meet Again
Her parents and sister had already been told the news.
“Why?” she asked her father.
“I don’t know.”
Her sister curled on the couch, hugging her arms around her tucked-up knees, and trying not to cry. Lachesis knew the feeling. Three days before she got shipped off with the mail and probably a couple of goat embryos across the void. Someone had to know at least a shred more than she did. “Does anyone know who this is? I’m guessing it’s not an Omega generation since he has a name and not a number.”
“It really doesn’t change anything,” her father said gently. “He’s just the donor.”
That was true. And it meant in the future, she’d be married off to a NightPiercer to raise the baby.
Her mother turned the precious card over in her hands. “If it’s the Rainer I’ve heard of, he’s Hade’s great-grandson. He’s an Engineer, I think.”
“So his sperm is too sacred to ship across the void?” her father asked, bristling. “Maybe if it was Hade himself.”
Hade. The werewolf version of Exodus-era history had said the reason he’d started to build NightPiercer was a vision his wife had, where the goddess Gaia had warned She was tired of Her ungrateful children exploiting Her. By all accounts he, his wife, and children, had been brilliant and ruthless. They had tried to warn the rest of the world not to ignore the warnings from Earth. By the time the evidence of Earth’s demise couldn’t be ignored, NightPiercer had been under construction for ten years, and Hade refused to help any other ark projects. He’d defended his own facilities with deadly force.
Hade had said that humans had ignored Gaia’s warnings too long, started too late, and he wasn’t going to imperil NightPiercer. The family was still legendary for its calculated and ruthless cruelty.
She snapped, “I don’t care who he is. Why do I have to go there? Is that why they told you to have Clotho? Because they knew I was getting shipped off?”
Her mother grabbed her arms and shook her once, hard. “You stupid pup! Don’t ever talk like that again! You’re going to NightPiercer to be a mother. You were only four when Crèche gave me another
baby. Crèche couldn’t have known anything about you.”
Nobody on Ark in her Generation had a sibling except for her. “Was I purpose-bred for Rainer’s seed? Am I disposable? I’m feral, aren’t I?”
“Stop it,” her father snapped. “You aren’t a feral. Ferals don’t breed.”
Lachesis seethed around the dirty word that stuck in her brain like a splinter. She looked at her little sister, curled up on the couch. Her heart broke. How was she supposed to get on that shuttle in three days and leave her entire family behind?
She shrugged off her mother’s grip. “Ark is packing me off to be someone else’s problem.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” her mother said sharply. “Nobody has been sent to another ship in a Generation. Nobody at Crèche is going to answer our questions, but you know better than we do that Crèche doesn’t answer questions.”
“Yeah, I know,” Lachesis muttered. Crèche Council—or Civilization Management—didn’t justify why they did what they did. It also wasn’t negotiable.
If she hadn’t constantly been chided about being short tempered or snappish or enjoying the Biomes a bit too much, she’d have been flattered. But why did she feel like she was getting sent away like a bad dog? “Write me and tell me how many embryos I’ve been traded for. Or spare parts. Whatever it is.”
Her father released her and stepped back. “And so what if that’s true? You’re in Crèche. What if you are being traded for something so important that NightPiercer wants a womb in return? We’d never know if our ship needed something that badly. It’d be hushed up to prevent panic. We don’t get told everything.”
“Yes, Dad, I know all about secrets Command keeps from us little wolves.”
He frowned at her.
“Forget I said anything,” she said just as quickly. “But if NightPiercer wants a womb, there are surrogate volunteers already in the Pool.”
Her fingers itched to shift into claws and rake holes in the wall. The tattoo on the side of her neck tingled like a burn. She could still shift into her war-form. Many of her Generation had lost the ability. Probably that Omega breeding that made her a little more bitchy than Civilization Management would like.
“Think about this,” her father urged her. “Lachesis, you’re… temperamental—”
Oh, temperamental. That’s what she was. Sounded like a nice way to say something else. “Feral. Say it. Feral.”
Her father folded his arms across his chest. “Don’t growl at me, pup. I’ll put a switch across your snout.”
“Just say it. I’m feral. You’ve never admitted it, isn’t it time? That’s what everyone’s been trying to tell me without saying the word. Well, say it!”
His face compressed into an exasperated scowl. “Think about the rest of the family before you make a scene.”
Her dark anger dropped and shattered. Shame rushed up to replace it. If she left Ark and made a scene, it’d reflect badly on Clotho, and her little sister had everything going for her: a musical genius, beautiful, intelligent, and less temperamental than her sister. Then again, Clotho had been sired by a Generation Two wolf, and didn’t need the tattoo.
Lachesis ran her hands along her tight braid, feeling the length of her hair. She probably should have cut off her hair instead of indulged herself.
“You’ve always chafed a bit more than you should at authority,” her mother said gently. “Even when you were a pup.”
“Are you accusing me of being an Alpha?”
“I’m telling you you’re willful,” her mother said. “It’ll serve you well in your new ship if you let it. Or it will be your undoing. And ours.”
“I know you want an explanation,” her father said, “and I’m sure you’re going to get one, eventually.”
She walked over to her baby sister, but Clotho hunched up and tucked herself deeper into the crook of the couch.
“Come on, Clotho, I don’t get a choice in this,” Lachesis said.
“You could not be so special,” Clotho spat.
“What are you talking about?” Lachesis asked, baffled. “This is not special. This is the opposite of special.”
“Crèche Sheep by twenty-three.” Clotho simpered.
“The only reason I got that promotion is because everyone else with more seniority than me knew what a cluster it was, and I was dumb enough to sign on for it,” Lachesis said.
“Yeah, exactly,” Clotho said bitterly. “You’ve always crawled to the top of any heap you’re in. You don’t do any of it because you want to, you do it to get ahead. Nobody’s going to tell you what to do. Fucking feral.”
“Clotho!” their mother barked.
“Come on, Clotho,” Lachesis said, ignoring the sting. Clotho had always dug that particular needle into her. “Look at my hobbies and Dying Art. Command doesn’t approve of the first, and the second is useless. If I really wanted to get ahead, you’d think I’d do something like join a sport, and then I don’t know… be like you and Dad and play an instrument. They’re keeping you. They’re shipping me out. You’re the one they want.”
“That is not true,” her mother said, curling her arm around her eldest’s shoulders. “They were so impressed with you they wanted me to have another. It’s that simple. Now we have a navigator and another musician in the family.”
Dying Arts didn’t contribute to the functioning of the ship, but were things everyone figured would be useful to have Earth-side and shouldn’t be allowed to die. Most Dying Arts had day-to-day value. People liked to buy pottery, or have rugs, or listen to musical compositions, or watch plays, or admire paintings. Everyone was required to choose a Dying Art, and Lachesis had chosen the one nobody else from her Generation had picked: navigation and cartography.
The ship computers handled navigation. Even the course back to Earth had been plotted years earlier. Every once in a great while someone had to go make an adjustment to maneuver the ship out of range of some magnetic shift from Jupiter, or a clump of rock drifting their way. But before being called on to assist LightBearer, most of her Dying Art had been mapping the starfield using antique instruments and running strange simulations slingshotting Ark out of the solar system or assuming southern polar orbit of Saturn or other Absurd Things that would Never Ever Happen because none of the ships (not even NightPiercer) had been designed to cruise the solar system.
The biggest perk of the Art had been becoming a shuttle pilot. Fertile females were never allowed to take that track, but she’d have been a lousy navigator if she didn’t know how to fly a shuttle. She’d maintained her willing-to-fly status and usually flew an exterior repair mission every few months. Probably another mark against her, since most pilots lost their nerve after three years.
Right now the current “hobby” side of her Art—when she and the other much older Navigators needed a break from LightBearer—was trying to figure out how to slingshot Ark through all the Jovian moons before getting torched by the planet’s radiation belts or smacking into a moonlet. They called it Jovian Moon Hopscotch.
“Yeah, Mom, I’m sure that was it.” Clotho rolled her eyes. “They really wanted to get someone like Lachesis.”
Lachesis glared. “Nobody pursues Crèche because they want to manage oyster vats their entire lives. The reason you get into it is either civilization management or higher livestock. You know why I joined? Because I want to know if we’re all going to die I’m not some bleating sheep who sat by and let it happen. I want to know I did everything I could. I don’t want to make it to Judgment and have to say I had to let it happen.”
“Enjoy your prize,” Clotho muttered.
Their mother waded between them, shoved Lachesis back and gave Clotho a cuff behind one ear. “Both of you knock it off. We’re not going to spend the next three days chewing each other into bloody bits.”
Lachesis pulled her braid over her shoulder and stroked it for comfort like she was a kid again. Her father put his arm around her shoulders. She willed herself to not cry. In a few days sh
e’d be all alone, sent into the abyss. “I’ll never see any of you again. We won’t even speak again.”
“Let’s not talk about it. Your father can read to us. You too, Clotho.”
Clotho glared at them both.
“Yes, you too,” was the stern order.
A short time later Lachesis, in wolf form, curled up on the couch against her mother’s furry side, and her sister on the other, just like when they had been pups. She tucked her snout under her mother’s ruff, and let herself keen a whimper while her mother licked her ears affectionately, smelling of love and grief and comfort and hope. Lachesis tried to imprint every scent into her memory, and the sound of her father’s voice while he read the daily ship’s news.
Her mother whispered in the lupine tongue, “Have faith in Gaia, Lake.”
In the lupine tongue her mother translated her name as Lake, since they obviously could not pronounce Lachesis. Would Rainer translate his name as Rain?
“Gaia hates us.” Lachesis snuggled closer to her mother and slicked her ears against her skull. Her mother’s maddening faith had never wavered, even as she kept it hidden away, and they only whispered about it in the lupine tongue.
Gaia being real was a horror too vast to contemplate. She tried to reject it all as fairy tales and old myths, but her brain dangled the usual terrible piece of logic in her mind: she existed.
Werewolves in human form were genetically identical to humans, including having the same mt-haplogroups. In wolf form, they were genetically identical to wolves, and had those mt-haplogroup. Yet despite this, werewolves produced hybrids if mated to wolves or humans. No biological explanation for their ability to change forms and DNA sequences had ever been determined, nor how mass wasn’t conserved between forms, nor why an increasing number of wolves had lost the ability to shift into war-form. Werewolves simply were.
She still had the ability to achieve war-form, but her sister did not. Crèche believed the werewolves were suffering some kind of micro-damage to their DNA, even though no evidence existed that form-shifting was genetic. The same micro-damage that stole fertility from both sexes, and caused unique vision, cardiovascular, and bone malformations in both species. Science had yet to determine if it was due to artificial gravity, radiation, or some factor of living off-Earth that had not been discovered before Exodus.
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