by Alma Nilsson
A young woman raised her hand.
Jane nodded, “Yes?”
She stood up and asked, “How can we reach you if you are off in the galaxy somewhere?”
“Good question. What’s your name?”
“Petra.”
“Thank you, Petra. The Alliance is more technologically advanced than we are, and their communications travel on gravitational waves through space so you can always reach me. Any other questions?”
Another women raised her hand and then stood when Jane nodded to her, “I’m Babette, and I want to know what happens if we don’t find an Alliance man we want to marry?” She thought this was just as good as time to ask if any. Babette fingered the small silver ring she had taken from her quarters in the Fira while she waited for Jane’s answer.
Jane nodded, “Unfortunately, Babette, in the contract that you all signed with the Alliance Empire, you must marry either by their choice or by yours. I’d hope for all of your sakes, it would be by your choice alone. I’m not sure what your experiences were like on your journey over but let me assure you that many eligible young men in the Alliance would make excellent husbands and are all desperate to have a wife, especially a human wife. As human women are more likely to give them a daughter. As you are all aware, this is mostly a matriarchal society. The Alliance Houses, especially of maximum class, have few women, which means fewer women to rule.”
“Do you represent us in the High Council?” another woman asked.
“Yes,” Jane said, taking a sip of water that the slaves had provided for her and Madame Bai. “House Human is not a permanent member of the High Council, but there are a few open days over two one-week periods twice a year when all the Head of Houses are invited to speak about individual issues concerning them.”
“When is the next meeting for all the Houses?” the same woman asked.
“This week actually. I’ll be attending a High Council reception later. Is there something, in particular, you would like me to petition for? It’s unlikely I could do anything now, but please let me know.” Jane had expected these women to be more complacent than some of them were. She had been under the impression from Doctor Anu that the Alliance had used advertisements on Earth with specific subliminal messages to recruit exactly the kind of human women that would most likely adapt to Alliance culture.
“I think it’s quite a coincidence that we were released from Space Port One Hospital on the same day that you happen to be on the Capital Planet.”
“The gods show us their kindness in many ways,” Jane replied, which in Alliance terms meant, ‘You’re a fool if you think I’m answering that question.’ Then when the woman said nothing more, Jane said, “Since you have been in the hospital, many things have happened. Captain Kara has taken command of the Zuin, which almost all the former female crew of the Dakota is serving on. If any of you are interested and have the right qualifications, we might have a place for you onboard as well.”
“And the other crew members from the Dakota?”
“One member, Junior Doctor Drusilla, now known as Doctor James of House Vo, remained in the Capital City and is now an Alliance doctor at the prestigious Capital City Hospital. Details of her wedding will be in the Day as she married an Imperial Doctor yesterday.” Jane did not want to encourage any of them to see James. She was worried that James would be able to see that their memories had been changed over the last weeks.
“And did this human doctor also think it was wise to wipe our memories?” another woman asked haughtily.
Jane was prepared for this question. “Doctor James was updated about all of your conditions, but when the decision to wipe your memories of the traumatic treatments for the Zoipli virus was made, unfortunately, Doctor James herself was very ill with the Uli virus, so she could not be consulted. However, I can assure you,” Jane touched her hand to her heart, “We made the best decision we could at the time. I hope that it is not too disconcerting that those terrible weeks when you all were ill are lost to you.”
“Is it possible to retrieve the memories?” someone else asked.
Jane shook her head, “I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”
“Who were you to decide for us? We are adults. We could have decided for ourselves.”
Jane shook her head and then spoke firmly, “You are adults, but you are now Alliance citizens and apart of House Human. As long as you are in this House, I have the final word on all of your choices. This was part of the deal you struck when you agreed to come here.” She let that sink in for the women for a minute, and then when no one else spoke, she continued, “As you know, I have petitioned for the High Council to allow humans to wear our own clothing some of the time. If you have other things you would like to see changed, please message me. If you have pressing matters, VM me. Otherwise, I will make a point to drop in every time I am on the Capital Planet and will personally get in touch with all of you to check on your individual progress. Are there any more questions?”
“Are you married?” Babette asked cheekily.
“I am not. It is not in my contract with the Alliance.”
“How is it that you don’t have to marry?”
“I will only answer this question because it is your first day on the Capital Planet. I’m not married because I was already 38 years old when I came to the Alliance.”
“But not too old to still marry,” Babette commented.
Jane marked this one as a troublemaker. “No, but as I said, it was not a part of my contract with the Empire. We all have individual and unique contracts with our new galactic affiliation. Now, are there any more questions?”
Another woman stood up, “My name is Mara. Are we at risk of getting another galactic virus? It scares me that Doctor James caught the Uli virus here in the Capital City. I thought we would be safe here.”
“Mara, let me assure you, you are all in good hands now. It was rare and unlucky that you were all exposed to the Zoipli virus. Now you have all been vaccinated against any more viruses, and all men coming down to the planet when they have been abroad in the galaxy will be screened to keep you all safe.”
“I just don’t want to be so ill again. I don’t like having weeks of my life that are missing in my mind either.”
Jane could tell that they had all talked about this a lot. She spoke firmly to them, “I can promise you it will not happen again, and the Alliance has the best medicine in the galaxy. Nothing is going to harm you here. Understood?” when they did not answer her, she asked again, “I can’t hear you? Understood?”
“Understood,” they replied in unison.
Jane nodded, she hoped it was a while before they heard about James being challenged to a duel to the death. “Now, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Madame Bai and her assistants.” Jane waited for them to rise and bow. When they just sat there looking at her with blank faces, she remembered that they didn’t know what they were supposed to do and chided herself for already falling into the Alliance order so quickly and just expecting them to do the same. “Rise and bow again, I’m your Head of House. You will do this when I leave out of respect.”
The women all did as Jane bid, and then she left the dining room, followed closely by Madame Bai. One of Madame Bai’s helpers addressed the human women then explaining about their ID necklaces, ICs, and clothing.
In what was referred to as the Classroom, Jane spoke privately to Madame Bai, “Is everything going well so far?”
Madame Bai nodded, “Yes, they are much more pliable than any of you were. I don’t know if it is because I have experience with humans right off a spaceship now or if it was because they volunteered?”
“Or because their memories were replaced and who knows what else Doctor Anu and her team added?”
Madame Bai frowned, “Our doctors would never do that.”
Jane wanted to roll her eyes but refrained, “I’m only joking. I’m sure it will be easier this time around. You know what to expect from humans now. And as you said,
these women volunteered.”
“I hope so,” Madame Bai confided in Jane, “Two of the women already have bans on them, and I have let them know what that means so there won’t be any surprises. I still feel guilty about what happened with Drusilla, I mean, James.”
“Yes, I also feel responsible for what went wrong, but we cannot blame ourselves, she never asked for help and always put on a brave face. Still, we must learn from our mistakes and be more vigilant this time.”
“With these women, I’ll be tracking them in their rooms. Had I done that to you, I would have known James was so unhappy.”
“Don’t you think that’s taking it too far?” Jane would have definitely not wanted Madame Bai and her minions watching her every move in her private room.
“No, I think it is necessary. What if one of them becomes particularly sad, and I miss it again?” When Madame Bai realized Jane didn’t follow, she said straightforwardly, “I don’t want any suicides. There hasn’t been a suicide among women in the Capital City for over a century.”
“Oh,” Jane said, surprised she even thought something could get as bad as that. “I don’t think,” she began but then caught herself and said, “Fine, you do what you think is necessary for now. I understand there are a lot of women here, and I want you to feel that you have the situation under control.”
“Thank you. I think most of the women will be fine. Some of them, as you have seen, are a bit more difficult. She brought out a small list, I think Babette will be difficult. She seems to ask a lot of questions and not be content with the standard answers.”
“Yes,” Jane smiled, “but she is beautiful, so maybe she will find a husband quickly who likes to answer a lot of questions. I hope a lot of them actually find husbands after their first Assembly, and then their new Alliance families can deal with them. There are so many.”
“I will pray to the gods for it. Expect my first report at the end of the week. May the gods light your path.”
“May the gods show you mercy,” Jane replied and then returned to the Zuin.
Weeks passed by uneventfully as the Zuin tracked space anomalies throughout the galaxy and occasionally had to check in on some of the Alliance’s colonies. Adhering to Admiral Jei’s advice, Jane had let her hair grow. This morning she looked at her longer brown shoulder-length hair in the mirror and put it behind her ears. She had never had such long hair in her life, and she had never expected to have it now, at the age of 39 years old. She sighed and said out loud to herself, “I’m going to have to figure out how to wear it in a braid like the rest of the Alliance soon.”
“Jane, would you like me to recommend a hairstyle?” her mirror asked congenially switching on.
“No, mirror off,” she replied, and the little mirror light in her bathroom went off. She had become accustomed to most of the technology onboard the Zuin, but some things, like her interactive mirror, still annoyed her.
Jane went into her bedroom, a good-sized room that matched her status as Lieutenant Commander and the Chief Engineer. She took off her silver Alliance ranking jewelry, black Alliance uniform with mandarin collar, and put on her blue silk pajamas with a conservative matching robe she had bought for an extravagant amount of UCs from the Earth Store on the Capital Planet. Jane loved these pajamas not just because they were made of silk but also because they matched her eyes and in the evenings when she was going through her messages mostly from humans either from House Human or her friends or family from back home, she could at least feel entirely at home wearing something beautiful and human-made.
Jane sat at her desk and began looking at her personal messages. And there was a VM from Jim still there at the top of her list. She had avoided it for days. As it was titled, ‘I’m sorry.’
Jane and Jim had been together for decades, they had known each other since they were toddlers, but when she had been taken by the Alliance, she had told him to move on, that she was never coming home. It had been over one Earth year now, as one Alliance year was roughly 1.3 Earth years, and she knew that he finally believed her. She knew by the title of this message that this was going to be the end. Jane always knew this day would come, and she wanted Jim to move on with his life, but it still didn’t make it any easier. She still loved him, and if she could return to Earth, there was no question in her heart that she would be with him. However, the reality was unfortunately that she couldn’t return to Earth. The human government had marked them all as traitors after Captain Kara’s trial last year. Jane had resigned herself to this Alliance destiny after that judgment, she was not a big enough player in the galaxy to have that ever overturned personally just for her. The human government had made a deal with Admiral Tir and had basically sold them to the Alliance for breeding. However, of course, no one could say that, so it was easier to simply say that all the female crew of the Dakota were traitors. She had wondered afterward if James had had a premonition about that as she tried to warn Jane about looking too comfortable in the Alliance before Captain Kara’s trial. But it didn’t matter. From that moment, Jane’s destiny had been altered from a human trajectory to an Alliance one, and she had resigned herself to die alongside Captain Kara somewhere out in the galaxy, on an adventure for the Alliance Empire, and nothing more.
Jane took a deep breath and opened the message from Jim. He was at home in the afternoon, in what used to be their living room. It looked unchanged. A few of the children’s things were scattered on the floor, and the throw blanket her grandmother made unfolded on the sofa. Every time she saw this room across the galaxy, her heart longed to be there, and she regretted all the times she yelled at the children to clean up their toys or for Jim to fold the blanket after he used it. Every time this scene hit her like it was the first time, she realized she wasn’t ever going to set foot in that house again, smell those familiar house smells of humans and Earth things, hug her children or kiss Jim. She wiped some stray tears from her eyes and breathed deeply while continuing to watch the message. Jim looked handsome, as he always did, with his sandy blonde hair, longer than it should be, sun-kissed skin with a million lines of laughter and light blue eyes. He wasn’t smiling now, though. “Jane. I don’t know what to say. I know we’ve talked about this again and again,” he ran his hand through his hair, something she knew he did when he felt guilty for something, “and I said that I would never abandon you, but now, with well over a year gone since Kara’s trial and your status as a traitor unchanged… I’ve come to believe that you’re right, and I must accept this situation as it is,” he paused, looking guilty. “Let me just come out and say it now,” he hesitated. “I’ve begun seeing someone else.”
Jane paused the VM. She had tears in her eyes, even though she had told him to do precisely this it still hurt like a blow to the stomach. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know how she was going to go on with her own life now. Despite the fact that she had told him to move on over the last year, always saying things like, “Forget me. I’m never going to be allowed back. Don’t waste your time or the children’s pining for me. I’ll be okay, and you’ll be okay too. You have got a chance at another romance, don’t waste it on a memory of me.” But the truth was she had never recovered. For a time, she thought she might just marry an Alliance man and have a hybrid child, if only to be able to see Jim and her own children again, as she missed them so much at one point she thought she might die of the pain of separation, but when it came down to it, Jane could not be so cold-hearted to do that to someone she didn’t love, not even to an Alliance man. She wiped her tears and began the message again.
Jim was looking directly into the camera and said quietly, “And the children know her. It’s all gone very smoothly, almost naturally, you could say,” he looked incredibly guilty now.
Jane stopped crying and wondered, Who?
“Sandra has been so good to us since you have been away,” he said sheepishly.
Jane stood up and threw her black ceramic water cup across the room, it shattered, an
d water went everywhere, “My best friend, Jim?” she yelled at the screen.
“We didn’t want to say anything to you until we were certain about our feelings and our plans for the future. We’ve told the children, and that seemed, well, natural too. Sandra has been here for us. Had it not been for her, Ellie would have signed up to become an Alliance bride to be with you. I caught her trying to go to the Embassy in Paris after she saw the advertisement. It’s been terrible times for us all,” he wiped some tears away himself, “I know it’s difficult to hear, but it was time I let you know that Sandra and I are more than friends. We all miss you so very much, you know that.” He paused then and ran his hand again through his hair and said, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry for everything, Jane. And you know, I’ve cried so much for you and I’ve no tears left, you took part of my heart with you. I’m half dead inside, but I must live for the children and I need to rekindle what I still have of my heart. Sandra helps with that. I wish things would have been different, but you are never coming back to us. We’ve both said it and known it, and now we must start living it. I will always love you, Jane Johnson. You were my first everything, and the years we shared were the happiest of my life, but the hole you left, I can’t leave it empty and survive. I must do this now for myself and the children, or else I can’t go on, and no one understands better than Sandra. It’s the thing that is holding us all together, our understanding of the loss of you. All I can say is, I am so sorry, but I hope that we can both begin to find peace again in our lives. I wish you nothing but the best, and I always will.”
Jane stood up suddenly but didn’t know what to do with herself. She just stood there thinking, How could my best friend and Jim do this to me? Had they always liked each other? How long had this been going on? How are the kids really taking this?
Jane’s three children were teenagers already. She and Jim had known each other almost their entire lives. Jim and Jane had been approved for three children by the human government from the age of 18 years old when they had applied for procreation privileges. She had their first child at 21 years old, and then one followed every couple years shortly afterward. Her eldest daughter, Ellie was already 20 years old, McKenzie was 18 years old, and Brad was 16 years old. Jim and Jane were both engineers, but Jim worked on Earth building the fleet’s starships, whereas Jane had always wanted the adventure of being on them. As a consequence of her choice to be on starships, in her children’s lives, she had always been away for long periods of time, but now she was gone forever, a prisoner to the Alliance Empire.