“I’m going to be blunt, Morriumur, the way you say that hurts my brain. You remember some things your parents knew, but not all of it?”
“Yes,” Morriumur said. “And the baby I become will remember the same: a mix of both parents, with many holes to fill in with my own experiences. Of course, that mixture might change, based on how many times we pupate.”
“You say that so . . . frankly,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of society modifying someone before they’re born.”
“It’s not society,” Morriumur said. “It’s my parents. They simply want to find a personality for me that will have the best chance for success.”
“But if they decide to try again, instead of having you, it’s kind of the same thing as you dying.”
“No, not really,” Morriumur said, cocking their head. “And even if it were, I can’t really be killed—I’m a hypothetical personality, not a final one.” They puckered their lips, a dione sign of discomfort. “I do want to be born. I think I would make an excellent pilot, and this program shows that we need pilots, right? So it’s not so terrible that maybe a dione will be born who likes to fight?”
“It sounds like something your people need,” I said, stepping around a flowing creature with two large eyes, but which otherwise looked like nothing so much as a living pile of mud. “See, this is the problem. If society is certain that unaggressive people are the best, only those kinds of children get born—and then they perpetuate that kind of thinking. So nobody ever gets born who contradicts the standard.”
“I . . .” Morriumur looked down. “I heard what you and Hesho said yesterday. On the Weights and Measures, while we were flying home?”
At first, I thought they meant the conversation about hyperdrives—and I panicked for a second—before remembering the earlier one where we’d complained about the Superiority and the diones. Their elite, snobby ways, presuming to be above us “lesser species.”
“I know that you dislike the Superiority,” Morriumur said. “You consider working with us to be a chore—a necessary evil. But I wanted you to know that the Superiority is wonderful too. Maybe we are too elitist, too unwilling to look at what other species give us.
“But this platform and dozens like it have existed for hundreds of years in peace. The Superiority gave my parents good lives—it gives millions of beings good lives. By controlling hyperdrives, we prevent so much suffering. There haven’t been any major conflicts since the human wars. If a species gets rowdy or dangerous, we can just leave them to themselves. It’s not so bad. We don’t owe them our technology, particularly if they’re not going to be peaceful.”
Morriumur led us down several streets, past a multitude of shops and buildings with signs that I couldn’t read. I tried not to be overwhelmed by it all, tried not to look like I was watching each and every one of these strange creatures. But I couldn’t help it. What secrets did they hide behind those faces that were trying, far too hard, to pretend to be pleasant?
“What about people who complain or don’t fit with your society?” I asked. “What happens to them? That person who was protesting out in front of the docks? Where are they now?”
“Exile is the fate of many who make trouble,” Morriumur said. “But again, do we owe species the right to live on our stations? Can’t you focus on all the individuals we’re helping, instead of the few that we can’t figure out how to fit?”
It seemed to me that the ones who didn’t fit were the most significant—the real measure of what it was like to live in the Superiority. Besides, I kept repeating to myself the most important fact: that these people had suppressed and tried to exterminate mine. I didn’t know the whole story, but from what Gran-Gran had said, my direct ancestors on the Defiant hadn’t taken part in the main war. They’d been condemned simply for being humans, and had been chased until they’d crashed on Detritus.
Brade hadn’t caused a war, but the Superiority treated her like cavern slime. It made it hard to think about the “good” the government did when I found the exceptions so very blatant.
We walked farther, and I kept my arms pulled tight at my sides, because if I bumped someone, they apologized to me. All this false kindness, hiding their destructive ways. All this strangeness. Even Morriumur themself