The writing on the bench’s top was indecipherable to Jordan, but he looked from it to her face, smiling hopefully.
“It did a good job,” he said, smiling back at her.
Aditi broke into tears. Leaning her head against his chest, she sobbed, “You don’t think I’m a monster?”
“I know you’re not.”
“You can accept me, knowing how I was created? How different I am?”
Folding his arms about her, Jordan said, “I love you, Aditi. I don’t care how you were created; that doesn’t matter.”
He wasn’t being entirely truthful. Jordan felt a slight shiver of apprehension as he looked past her tousled head to the row of artificial wombs standing silently on the bench, waiting to be used again to create new aliens.
Return to Camp
“I’ve got to go back to the camp, tell the others about this,” Jordan said, as they walked back toward the entrance of the biolab.
“I understand,” Aditi said.
The door opened again at her touch and they stepped out into the sunshine and bustle of the late-afternoon street. The slanting rays of sunlight felt warm, soothing, on Jordan’s shoulders. Squinting against the brightness, he felt a cooling breeze that rustled the trees planted along the sidewalk.
“Will you come back tonight?” she asked.
As they walked along the street, back toward the city’s perimeter, Jordan shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. This will be a lot for Meek and the others to digest. I’ll have to stay with them, I’m afraid.”
“I understand,” she repeated. Reluctantly, Jordan thought.
“Will you come with me?” he asked. “Spend the night in my cubicle?”
Without hesitation, Aditi replied, “I’d like to, Jordan, but I don’t think it would be best. I don’t want them staring at me as if I’m a freak.”
“I understand,” he said. “I should have known.”
They walked to the city’s edge in silence, each wrapped in their own thoughts. Jordan knew that Aditi was right. Let Meek and Longyear and the others absorb this new information. It’ll stun them, I’m sure. I don’t want Aditi to be there when they find out about it. I don’t want them staring at her, whispering about her. Let her stay here in the city, where she’ll be safe.
Safe? He wondered why he thought about it that way. Surely she’d be safe in our camp. No one’s going to harm her. Not Longyear and certainly not Meek. They’re frightened of her, but they wouldn’t harm her. Yet he had instinctively felt concern for her safety.
And he realized that what men are frightened of, they often lash out against. It was a very human reaction.
By the time Jordan reached the camp, Sirius was setting, turning the sky into a blazing bold vermillion and painting the low-lying clouds deep violet. Higher above he saw the pinpoint of the Pup, bright as a laser, riding above the horizon-hugging cloud deck.
To his surprise, Brandon and de Falla had returned. They were at the rocketplane they had traveled in, out at the edge of the camp, while a pair of robots unloaded their gear. De Falla was watching the robot; Brandon stood nearby, all smiles, with Elyse clutching his arm happily. Jordan thought that she must have come in from the observatory once she learned that Bran was returning.
“Finished your survey so soon?” he asked de Falla, as one of the robots drove their tractor down the plane’s cargo bay ramp and out onto the grass.
“That sector, yes,” the geologist replied. “We’ve mapped it down to a centimeter scale and sampled its rocks and soil.”
“We ran out of clean clothes,” Brandon joked.
Jordan said, “Bran, I want you and all the others to gather at the dining area at seventeen hundred hours. I have some important new information to share with you. Tell the others, will you?”
Brandon nodded. “Okay, Jordy, I’ll spread the word.” He started off toward the cluster of bubble tents, Elyse at his side, leaving de Falla and the robots to finish unloading the rocketplane.
Jordan personally told Meek about the meeting, then went looking for Longyear and Thornberry.
Precisely at seventeen hundred hours Jordan stepped into the bubble tent that housed the camp’s kitchen and dining area. All eight of the others were there, sitting at the longest table in the place, heads together in buzzing conversations. On the wall-sized display screen at the end of the table, Hazzard, Trish Wanamaker, and Demetrios Zadar looked on from the wardroom of the orbiting Gaia.
Jordan went to the head of the table. The talk stopped and they looked at him expectantly.
“I’ve learned something about our aliens that’s both very interesting and … well, frankly, rather unsettling,” he began.
“They’re evangelists and they want to convert us to their religion,” Brandon wisecracked.
A few titters ran along the table. Meek shot Brandon an annoyed glare.
With a tolerant smile, Jordan said, “No, it’s not that bad.”
“Then what is it?” asked Yamaguchi.
Jordan hesitated a heartbeat, then plunged, “They aren’t born naturally. They aren’t conceived and carried in a woman’s womb. They’re gestated in apparatuses in a laboratory.”
Absolute silence for almost half a minute. Then Meek said, “I knew it! They’re not real. They’re constructs. Biological constructs.”
“They’re as real as you and I, Harmon,” Jordan countered. “They simply were created in a different way.”
Brandon asked, “Adri, too? All of them?”
“All of them.”
Yamaguchi said, “But they’re fully human. For all intents and purposes, they’re identical to us.”
“Down to their DNA,” Longyear added.
“They were constructed,” Meek insisted. “By whom? And for what purpose?”
“Yes,” said Elyse. “If they were constructed in a laboratory, who built the laboratory?”
“Earlier generations, I suppose,” Jordan answered.
“No, no, no,” said Meek. “This is all part of a plan. A consistent plan of deception. Those people, their city, this entire planet … they’re all part of a gigantic scheme.”
“A scheme to do what?” asked Hazzard, from the screen. “What’s the point behind all this? What are they after?”
“There’s no deception,” Jordan said firmly. “They’ve been completely honest with us.”
“You’ll pardon my saying so,” Meek retorted, “but it seems to me that you’ve been sleeping with the enemy.”
Jordan felt his innards turn to ice. He smiled coldly at the astrobiologist. “They’re not our enemy, Harmon. And I can tell you that, no matter how they’re created, they’re as human as you or I.”
Meek looked as if he were going to retort, then thought better of it and closed his mouth. Jordan looked to his brother for a word of support, some sign of understanding, but Brandon was silent, and he avoided Jordan’s eyes.
“Contrary to any conspiracy theory,” Jordan went on, trying to sound more certain than he felt, “Adri and his people have answered all our questions.”
Thornberry spoke up. “Without telling us much at all. I’ve never had such lovely runarounds as their engineers have been giving me.”
“Adri’s policy,” Jordan tried to explain, “is to answer our questions with absolute honesty, but not to go any further than our questions require.”
“Now what kind of mischief is that?” Meek complained.
“He feels that contact between two alien races is a very delicate matter. He wants to be open and aboveboard with us, but he won’t feed us more information than we’re ready to accept.”
“So how in blazes do those energy shields work?” Thornberry demanded.