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Rae Denham presumed the time had finally come to meet with Earth’s leaders, to resolve issues about space and the solar system. Not that there weren’t endless rooms full of minds dedicated to just that, but the advisors she’d talked to couldn’t really decide and move forward on policy. The movers and shakers all resided near the top of their respective pyramids, and she reminded herself she was one of them.
Admiral Absen had invited her to the meeting on psychologically neutral ground: the Orion space station. A fitting location, it hung permanently between the heavens and Earth, bustling with activity as it rotated slowly on its long axis to produce pseudo-gravity.
Repaired and refurbished, the hulk of the battleship made an excellent base for administration and research. Heavy industry grew elsewhere, on the hundreds of relocated asteroids and comets that now crowded the Earth-Moon system.
She arrived in her old shuttle, since rejuvenated, and guided it in for docking at what was once the nose of Orion. Now the prow constituted merely one of two ends, each of which provided low-G access to the interior.
She’d left Alan Denham far out in space, continuing his mission of adjusting the locations and orbital paths of the solar system’s asteroids, but did not want to leave her newborns long. Logically she knew they would be fine; her presence there kept them no safer or healthier in the short term, but motherly instincts would not be denied.
She still felt better about leaving them out there, rather than, for example, bringing them with her on the shuttle. Even the thought of bringing them in this close to Earth frightened her in a way nothing else had. If normal humans met her progeny before they were physically adult, looking like kids and talking like mad scientists, they might react as humans always had with something that threatened them: with fear. Edens or not, she wasn’t willing to take that risk. Later, when they looked grown up and were ready to pass as much older, they could be carefully introduced to society.
Similarly, if people ever discovered Skull and his current state of being...well, since Meme were firmly in the bug-eyed-monster camp as far as the popular mind was concerned, she had little doubt that a fully intelligent Memetech ship would engender even more fear too, along with envy, jealousy and lust for power.
Best that they were all kept well away.
Rae put these thoughts out of her mind as she donned a skinsuit and a custom-grown outfit resembling business clothing. Dressing for the event was one way of minimizing the differences between herself and the average human; it put people at ease to see the half-alien goddess look like them. She also put her hair up and, with practiced biochemical techniques, subtly adjusted her other attributes to be less overtly attractive. This reduced her from stunning to merely pretty.
At the airlock she greeted two functionaries sent to meet her, a man and a woman, with a polite smile, and shut the living iris behind her. She had instructed her ship to stand off from the station, ensuring no one tampered with it and incidentally freeing the port for others. Then Rae activated the low-power encrypted bioradio within her body, keeping communication open just in case.
Motherhood had bred a certain distrust.
Perhaps the stakes just seemed higher now.
“Ms. Denham, the admiral sends his apologies. He was delayed. Come this way, please.” The woman speaking seemed officious, and slightly nervous.
Rae nodded. “Lead on.”
Used to her own organic vessels, Orion smelled to her like metal and volatiles, like a city. It made her want to seal her nostrils shut, but instead she merely reduced her olfactory sensitivity as she followed her escorts’ directions down a short corridor. Drawing to a halt before an open door, the man gestured her inside. Rae hesitated: the small room was brightly lit and seemed to have no function, with only one other portal directly across from the first.
In response to her upraised eyebrow, the female escort said reassuringly, “It’s just a body scan.”
“Ah.” Rae turned about to begin retracing her steps toward the docking port.
“Wait, uh, ma’am?” The two hurried after, but her long strides made them run to keep up. Exclamations and entreaties to stop followed her until she entered the antechamber to the personnel airlock.
Come get me, Rae sent to her shuttle, which acknowledged her instruction. Walking across the floor, she ignored the man and woman trailing to stand before a large crystal viewport, where she could observe the ships come and go in the dock. She watched as outside her shuttle nosed forward, waiting patiently for the facility’s current occupant, a light cargo transport, to finish unloading and clear.
The two with her eventually despaired of obtaining a response from the icy goddess she now embodied. It took little acting ability to project her offendedness. Having saved all of humanity at least twice over, it seemed an unbearable affront to be subjected to such treatment.
Shortly she heard the sounds of booted feet, and a voice she could respond to without loss of face. “Admiral,” she said as she turned, forcing warmth into her greeting.
“Ms. Denham,” Rear Admiral Absen responded. He held out his hand to clasp hers, seeming to ignore her imperious demeanor. She thought he looked tired, his grey hawk eyes sunken a bit.
Reaching out smoothly, she accessed biosensors in her skin that confirmed the taste of his DNA. Not that she expected anything different, but it was as much a habit as glancing at a face would be for a normal human. “What was the meaning of the body scan room?”
“It’s a precaution our counterintelligence has put in place, and the rules are ‘no exceptions,’ but when I approved the order I didn’t mean it to apply to you.”
“But why is it there at all?” she asked.
“There’s a growing anti-Blend movement on Earth. Conspiracy theorists and unfortunate minorities of the general populace are convinced there are secret agents of the Meme among us – Blends that are very hard to detect.”
“There almost certainly are,” Rae responded, and she could see the surprise on Absen’s face, mirrored on the visages of his steward and the two functionaries. “What does it matter?”
“Perhaps we should continue this conversation elsewhere?” Absen gestured back toward the corridor.
“Before or after the scan?” She couldn’t resist the little jab.
“No scan needed, although I would appreciate you submitting to it afterward. The security people really want to baseline their machine against your known Blend body.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Come on. The meeting’s not for a couple of hours. I wanted to talk to you first.” Without waiting, he turned on his heel and walked away.
Rae sent updated instructions to her shuttle and followed. When the two civilian escorts made to come along, the Admiral waved them off. Chief Steward Tobias reinforced his boss’ instructions with a stern look, and then brought up the rear. Soon the craggy admiral and the tall Blend matched stride down the corridor together. This time they bypassed the scan and entered a well-appointed conference room with an unfamiliar logo on its wall opposite the main display screen.
“Something new?” Rae asked as she reached for a pot of coffee on a tray to pour herself a cup. The smell tantalized her; it never came out quite right aboard a Meme ship.
“What do you think? It’s not official. Call it a tryout. A rough draft.”
Upon the traditional shape of a knight’s shield was painted a stylized blue-green Earth, the Moon with a symbolic orbit ring, and a spaceship resembling Orion lifting off in heroic scale. Deep navy blue formed the background, with a sprinkling of stars.
“Hm. Needs work, but I’m not the best judge of art. What’s it for?”
“A new organization. Something to bring the world together. A true multinational force in space. It has the Free Communities Council’s blessing.”
“What about greater China and the Neutral States?” Rae sipped her coffee with evident satisfaction.
Absen poured one of his own. “Right now the FC owns almost every fusion engine on the planet. The Neutral States and China are being hopelessly left behind in space. They’ll have to join, just so they have a seat at the table. But it doesn’t matter. If I can pull this off, no one will own us. We’ll be a separate entity, at least in theory.”
Rae nodded. “And you think you can slowly make that fiction into fact.”
“Yes.”
“The non-FC nations won’t be happy. It still looks like an FC power grab.”
Absen nodded. “I’m well aware of that. I also know they won’t have much choice. Faced by the option of leaving the FC with all the goodies or being part of the process, I believe they will want their people in place to remain in place. The key is guaranteeing that we are not just an extension of the FC, or of anyone at all.”
“Pretty ambitious. What are you calling this new organization?” She chuckled. “Star Fleet?”
Absen’s smile turned wry. “That one’s taken. But close.” He took a deep breath. “I’m calling it EarthFleet. To remind people of why it’s there. Not to explore stars, but to defend Earth. To defend our home.”
“I like it.” Her smile was genuine. “Is that why you called me here?”
“Yes, actually. I was hoping to get you on board with it. Hoping you will back me up in the meeting.”
“I am. I will. It’s brilliant, in theory. In practice...good luck.” She raised her cup in toast.
“Thanks. A moment. Tobias, lock this room down, will you?” Once that was done, and no one but the two of them and Absen’s bodyguard remained, he went on. “So, tell me more about these possible spies.”
“I have no idea. I haven’t wasted any effort on even finding any out. I just assume that some might be here.”
“How? As I understand it, the scout ship we beat was the first Meme visitor in four thousand years.”
“Perhaps. The Empire also sends out tiny seedships, with one individual in each, somnolent between the stars. These auto-land on any world with higher life, and the Meme blends with whoever it can find, usually some kind of creature with sufficient dexterity and brain to make rudimentary tools. Then the Blend begins to build a civilization and advance it rapidly, or take over what is already there. If it finds something it can’t handle, it remains hidden.”
Absen gently rapped the table with his knuckles in thought. “So we could have some among us – even in positions of power.”
“Could? Most definitely. Some of my siblings might even have survived the cataclysm that wiped the rest out. Because Blends are long-lived, they may have incorporated themselves into the populace and been here all this time.”
“Yet you don’t seem worried.”
Rae smiled. “My research indicates that blended Meme always go native, especially with no contact with the Empire. Life as a Blend is simply too seductive – the pleasures of the senses, the natural desire for power – and within a few hundred years out of contact, beings such as they will not want to return to the fold.”
“So if there are any, they will long ago have adopted their own agendas.”
“Correct. And they won’t want the Empire to win any more than we do, for then they would be found out and subjugated. Every one of the pure form Meme, no matter how low, is automatically superior in their hierarchy to any Blend.”
“So they have a hard class division within the Empire. Pure forms, Blends, and...”
“And the lower creatures. Masters, overseers, and slaves, in common parlance. Meme that blend step down permanently, and they can never become pure again.”
Absen stroked his chin. “Yet you chose to do it.”
She nodded, and smiled wider. “Yes, I did.”
“I’m finally beginning to see, I think, what that meant. I wondered at first whether you were biding your time, hoping to regain some kind of position within the Empire. Then, when you helped us defeat the scout ship, I changed my mind...and now I realized that to the Meme, you sold out. You’re a traitor, no matter what you do.”
“I would have thought that was obvious,” she replied a bit testily.
“Perhaps it is, but I prefer to look beyond the obvious.”
“In this case, things are just as they seem.”
Absen stared at her. “No, they never are. But I do trust you, which is a different thing entirely.”
A chill went through Rae then, and the constant fear returned: fear for her unnatural children and the response they would provoke if they were ever fully understood. A race of superior human beings, a leap forward, not of evolution, but by design – the dream of many, made real not by the race of mankind, but by an alien intelligence. No matter how benevolent, some would fear, and want to destroy what they feared.
“No one is entirely free of secrets, Admiral. Not me, not you, not the people you work with. Life is full of them. The best we can do is decide to trust each other.” Rae smiled, a heartbreaking sad thing.
Absen’s eyes veiled, and she knew that his trust extended only so far. Perhaps he thought she was trying to manipulate him.
“So, bottom line,” he went on after a moment, “there’s no point in hunting down unknown Blends.”
Rae rubbed her face with one hand. “I think that it might be interesting and useful to identify them if you can, but after hundreds or thousands of years, they will just be people – long-lived and wise, but no longer unique, now that humanity has gained effective immortality. Perhaps the best thing would be to quietly put out the word that the ‘powers that be’ do not care, and would welcome their help – if they exist.”
Absen nodded. “I’ll spread that word. Quietly. Now, let’s talk about our strategy for the meeting.”
