Invasion

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I am becoming a heretic, Femala thought.

The weird thing, the worrying thing, was how little that thought bothered her. When she’d thought about it, the rare occasions before her capture that she had thought about it, she hadn’t expected to survive more than a week of captivity. As a sterile female, she had thought that it was likely — and would have happened in the Unification Wars — that she would have been treated as a honorary male and simply executed, along with the remainder of any male prisoners. It was true that in some cases, male prisoners would be enslaved, but they tended not to last very long if cut off from the possibility of reproduction. They could — and sometimes had — go for years without having children, if producing children was actually possible, but if they were prevented from meeting and courting females, despair overcame them and they just drifted away.

A female, on the other hand, would be treated differently. As a possible source of new children, any normal female would be accepted into the enemy clan… and treated as a mixture of junior wife and prisoner. She would become one of the enemy clan, expected to forget her old clan and become one of them, in heart and soul. Accepted into the comforting warmth and safety of a clan, treated with respect by the other females, thoughts of escape and the old clan quickly vanished, becoming nothing more than memories. Femala had read somewhere, when she had been studying biology in the hopes that she could escape the fate she had been condemned to, that their own biochemistry played a role in their submission and subversion. They literally brainwashed themselves into becoming one of the enemy.

The research hadn’t interested her as much as machines and the way they went together, but she remembered enough of it to understand the reason why. Human females, it seemed, couldn’t pick and choose their mates. Any human male strong enough could force himself upon them and into them, forcing the poor woman to bear his child, regardless of her opinion. It had happened, several times, in the occupied zone and the High Priest had been contemplating ordering a death sentence for the human male responsible, once he had been able to wrap his head around the concept. The idea was literally alien to the Takaina; Femala, like all females, couldn’t have sex unless she wanted to have sex, which was part of the reason why her biochemistry would push her into the enemy clan. Any male who tried to force himself on her would be unable to force his way into her… and even if he did, he couldn’t get her pregnant. When her condition was discovered, as it would have been pretty quickly, she would have been classed as useless and, if she was lucky, killed.

But she was becoming more… human.

The humans hadn’t treated her badly and hadn’t cared that she was sterile, although there was no logical reason for them to care, unless they wanted to breed more Takaina. Instead, they’d treated her well and given her plenty of books to read, although no access to their computers. She couldn’t blame them for that, even though it was much harder to use a computer for hacking and sabotage than most people believed, but… they had so many! Perhaps there were so many computers on their world that hacking was commonplace, while on the Guiding Star there were only a few hundred who really knew how computers worked and how to use them for their own purposes. It was an odd way of doing things, but studying the human race through the eyes of an engineer made her wonder just what the final outcome of it all would be.

And the warriors!

She’d expected — as had they — that they would simply be killed. Instead, they had been brought into the human clan, as she was coming to think of it. It was an odd clan, but one she was starting to associate herself with, and so was Fallon. The female researcher into humanity was rapidly becoming one of her own test subjects, something that was even moderating her attitude to Femala. She’d scorned the sterile female on the shuttle, but now they were almost friends, although there would always be that barrier between them. Fallon had the attention of all of the warriors, and probably always would, unless more females arrived and joined the clan… and she studied humans. She believed that the humans meant what they said when they’d offered to treat them well, and, in many ways, she had almost gone completely over to them. She couldn’t fight her own biology, while Femala, who had been brought up in a society where she was worthless, was on the verge of joining her. She almost welcomed the sight of new and different humans…

They were, she had decided, an odd race. What she had thought to be a disgusting skin disease was actually a change in skin colour that, she had been assured, covered the entire body. Their males actually did real work! She had seen a male-female pair and had addressed the female as the engineer, only to discover that it was the male who was the engineer and the female was a security guard. That had turned her world upside down; males didn’t have long-term professions. They were Priests or Warriors, not engineers or doctors. They didn’t have the mindsets to do more than rote work… or was she wrong? The human hadn’t known as much as she had about practical work in space, but he had known more of the theoretical side of space construction work… and even spacecraft design. The conversations had been productive and Femala felt the last of her doubts slipping away. She was one of them now.

It was easy to know what the humans were doing. They wanted — needed, desperately — to get back into space. They had the services of a tech expert, one of the foremost in the system, and they would be foolish not to use her. It gave her value and even a few bargaining chips; she’d traded her assistance for more human books and even entertainment. The humans seemed to be more imaginative than her own people, even though she’d watched several episodes of human science-fiction and couldn’t stop herself laughing, and yet… was it really something unique about them, or could her own people match it, under the right conditions? Her position had been permanently uncertain under the Theocracy… and yet, was that a natural law, or something invented? Had God really decreed that all sterile females were to die?

The thought blazed through her head. The High Priest had kept her alive… and, in doing so, had broken that law… if that law existed! He wouldn’t have got away with it, High Priest or no, not when there were hundreds of other Priests who wanted to be High Priest themselves. One of them would have used it against him, or the Inquisitors would have taken action; they couldn’t allow such open breaking of the rules, not by a High Priest. Femala’s existence and nature was hardly a secret either; it wasn’t something that could be covered up, so why had he been allowed to keep her? The only reason that made sense was that there was no such law!

And yet… it happened. Free, now, from restrictions, she wondered at her own society. The humans had so much and her own people so little, when it should have been the other way around. She knew how to extract wealth from asteroids, gas giants and comets; the Takaina should have been able to give each of their people a life-style they could only dream about, and yet… they didn’t. All resources were bent towards the task of expanding and spreading the faith across the universe. In time, Guiding Star or a replacement built on Earth would continue onwards, leaving a massive settlement behind. Earth would become part of the Theocracy… but for how long? What effect would it have on her society if this, the knowledge of how another race acted, became common knowledge?

They kept us down, she thought, and felt her delight at making the connection turn to rage. She hadn’t seen it because she had had nothing to compare it to. She hadn’t been part of society because society had shunned her… and even the one who had saved her hadn’t been able to give her what she needed. She’d been held down by her own society… and, she saw now, the same was true of all of them. The males went to become warriors, where they died, or priests, where they became part of the system, while the females were held down by the self-perpetrating clans. How could they escape when they were trapped in chains that held their minds?

Humans had escaped, in part of their history, and others had remained trapped. It was possible to escape, but how could she spread the word to the rest of her people? How could she get them to believe and change when there was no way that they would listen to a sterile female who was a prisoner? Everyone knew that someone who had been a prisoner could no longer be completely trusted… and she was honest enough with herself to admit that her mind might not be what it had been. The High Priest wouldn’t be able to spare her this time, even if he wanted to spare her; she would be burned alive by the Inquisitors.

And why had he spared her anyway? The humans had attributed it to unsavoury motives, but while the Takaina males had sex for enjoyment as well as procreation, they wouldn’t have it with a sterile female, one who was unable to join them fully in the act. Or was that, too, a part of their conditioning? The humans seemed to believe all kinds of silly things about sex and there was no reason, on the face of it, while the Takaina could not be the same. What possible use had he had for her?

She was still mulling over that question when the human, Paul James, was shown into her quarters. She’d grown to like him, along with the other humans, even though she wasn’t sure of his duties. A person who had been in charge of preparing for an alien invasion should be able to do more than the Takaina had faced, but if the humans had had the idea that an alien invasion should consist of massive flying saucers with impossible beam weapons and even more impossible force shields, they probably hadn’t been able to come up with a proper defence. Amazing special effects, though; the Takaina had never come up with anything like them.

“Hi,” she said, suddenly aware of her manners. He was, technically speaking, senior in the clan to her, although that had required some mental adjustment as well. No male was normally of any position within the clan. That was a female role. “How have you been?”

She was starting to recognise some human emotions, but the look on his face was beyond her. “Washington has been destroyed,” he said, grimly. The liquid that had appeared in one eye couldn’t be healthy. “Your people took out an entire city.”

“Mass slaughter is forbidden by the Truth,” Femala protested, honestly shocked. The High Priest had to have gone mad. The only justification for such slaughter was to prevent the spread of heresy. Earth, being largely unaware of the Truth, didn’t count as a legitimate target. “What happened?”

He explained, bit by bit. “The High Priest had to be more than a little worried about your sudden willingness to use nukes,” Femala said, when he had finished. “How many of your people were killed?”

“No one is sure, yet,” Paul admitted. “The preliminary figures are high, but they’re always high; all we know for sure is that there were several million people under the footprint of the nuke when it went off. Why did they hit Washington, of all places?”

“Your capital doesn’t mean much to them,” Femala said. Now she understood the system that she had been a slave to her entire life, she felt little in the way of loyalty towards it. “The intention was to settle your world and bring your people into line with their own.”

“We don’t want that to happen,” Paul said, rather dryly. It was so hard to pick out and understand human tones, but Femala was getting better at it. “We want to stop it.”

So did Femala — now. She needed the humans to awaken her own people. “It won’t be easy to stop,” she said. “They’ll have started the settlement by now — or they will soon start it, and that will bring lots of their people down to the planet. How is the shuttle-building program coming along?”

Paul started. “How did you know about that?”

Femala explained, unable to keep her disappointment out of her voice. The human probably didn’t notice. Why else would anyone ask her about them? She might have been a victim all her life, without even the very human consolation of knowing that she had been a victim, but she was far from stupid. The humans had to be working on ways to recover control of space.

“Yes, I see,” Paul said, finally. “The building program is fine. It’s getting up into orbit that’s going to be the problem.”

Femala thought about it. Anything boosting to orbit, unless they discovered something so completely out of the box that the High Priest wouldn’t have the slightest idea it was even possible, would be very hot. The orbiting sensors would detect the rocket flame and react at once. Missiles and spacecraft would be shot down as soon as they were identified as such. It wouldn’t be easy to build enough craft to get some into orbit in the face of such firepower… and failing to retake control of space would be fatal in the long run. She could help them build thousands of shuttles, if that was what they wanted from her, but it wouldn’t solve the overall problem.

She tossed it around in her mind. They couldn’t get into orbit, therefore they would lose… and that was unacceptable. She couldn’t allow the opportunity to pass, and yet, unless they could get into orbit, it would pass. They needed to clear space of hostile ships first, but even with the most powerful ground-based weapons, it wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it was probably going to be impossible. Unless…

“I want to make a deal,” she said. “I have, I think, a way of getting you into orbit, something that will give you a chance at victory. In exchange, I want something.”

Paul looked at her, his human face unreadable. “What do you want?”

“I want you to help me educate the remainder of my people,” she said, and explained her epiphany. She wanted, she needed, to share it with her fellows, male and female alike, and give the dissidents something to rally around. They could bring down the Theocracy, at least in one tiny system. “Will you help me?”

Paul leaned forward. “How do you intend to get us into orbit?”

Femala smiled and explained.

“Do you think we can trust her?”

Doctor Jones shrugged. “Intellectually, she’s probably the smartest person in this base and certainly among the captives,” he said. “The various Redshirts are comparable to us, but she is very definitely the smartest… and she has practical experience that no one on Earth can match. As for trust…

“We kept a close eye on them and watched, carefully,” he continued. “As far as we can tell, her conversion seems to be genuine, hers and the other prisoners as well. It’s impossible to be sure, but I suspect that she means what she says, which doesn’t mean that either of her plans will work. It’s quite possible that we’ll run into a security check she didn’t know existed, or another trap intended to snare heretics… and that’s exactly what they’re going to regard her as being.”

“But she’s becoming human,” Paul protested. It was an interesting concept, and, if it was true, a handle on her. “Surely…”

“No, she’s adapting,” Jones said, firmly. “She isn’t human; do not forget that. Such behaviour is not unknown among humans, but it is rather unreliable. Stockholm Syndrome can kick in at the oddest places, but it is also not unknown for captives to pretend to be converted, just to get lighter treatment and a chance at escape. You know how many people are capable of fooling parole boards?”

Paul nodded. “Point taken,” he said. The thought was a galling one. Time and time again, dangerous criminals were released because they fooled parole boards into believing that they were reformed. “Still, it’s the only plan we’ve got.”

“She’s very smart, yes,” Jones said. “I’m very smart as well, but I couldn’t build a spacecraft and she couldn’t perform surgery. Just because someone is smart doesn’t mean that they’re… street-smart, or even capable. How many soldiers do you know who look like total assholes and have a string of degrees longer than mine? Her very cunning plan could be a complete disaster just because we don’t know everything we need to know about her people.”

“The President will probably agree with you,” Paul said, remembering the threat of possible impeachment. “It could be that this plan is a complete fuck-up waiting to happen. It could be that she intends to betray us… but, like it or not, it’s the only plan we’ve got and I intend to recommend to the President that we proceed at once.”

“Of course,” Jones said. “Good luck.”