Grail - Elizabeth Bear [35]
“We navigated for this system believing it uninhabited, but my Angel has uncovered evidence that other vessels from Earth reached it before we did. You have the previous claim, and we acknowledge that. Yet, in the name of charity, we beg assistance.
“Our lives are in your hands.
“We will await your reply on every channel. Thank you for listening.”
She glanced at her First Mate—Tristen, she’d called him—and he shook his head slightly. Nothing to add, Danilaw presumed. The transmission ended. There was a moment of silence, and then it began to loop, flickering live from the beginning.
Danilaw took a breath. “That,” he said, “is going to be interesting.”
Captain Amanda let it play through completely once more, leaning forward in her intentness. Then she passed a palm over the light and paused it. She translated from memory—accurately, as far as Danilaw could tell—while Jesse and Gain frowned and nodded, occasionally trading speaking glances.
“Well,” Gain said. “I guess that’s pretty unambiguous. How on earth are we going to make it work—I mean, taking them in?”
Captain Amanda, who had been staring at her hands since she finished speaking, looked up. “That’s illegal engineering. Those aren’t even human beings anymore.”
“Unsurprising that they would have gone that way.” Danilaw poured himself more water. “The crew and passengers of the Jacob’s Ladder were made up of a neo-Evolutionist cult. They believed that trials and tribulations strengthened the species, forced it to adapt.”
“Are made up,” Captain Amanda said. “Do believe.”
“Possibly do believe.” Jesse set down his infothing. “It’s been a long time for them too. Is it even illegal engineering if it’s legal in their society?”
Gain said, “Jesse is right. We must be careful of cultural relativism.”
Captain Amanda’s tone remained uncompromising. “Criminals or not, we still can’t let them on-planet without scrubbing their genes. Which, from the look of them—”
“We’ll table that for later discussion,” Danilaw said, making a note in the minutes for a reminder. “Other points of discussion?”
“Angel,” Gain said. “She said that? Her angel told her something? A mythological creature spoke to her?”
“Well, that’s what the word meant a thousand years ago,” Captain Amanda said. “In this context, I’m assuming she means some sort of majordomo or servant. That’s speculation, but based on what we know of the cultural antecedents of the sophipaths who sought refuge on the colony ship, I would guess that that might be a term they use for the Captain’s servants—since angels were the servants of God.”
Danilaw watched Jesse’s nose wrinkle and felt empathy. It was uncomfortable to consider such hierarchical distinctions, but it was also an important reminder that the crew and passengers of the Jacob’s Ladder had traveled across a gulf of distance and experience that seemed insurmountable. If he allowed them to land, there would be cultural conflicts. Some of them might escalate into violence—a concept that unsettled him as deeply as contemplating unleashing a few thousand (or perhaps a few hundred thousand) rampaging invaders on his intricately carbon-balanced and socially engineered colony world.
As an Administrator, Danilaw had viewed historical documents that most citizens were not subjected to, and he had vivid and visceral memories of the violent images associated with those documents. Public beheadings, state-mandated torture, maimings in war, violence—perhaps most horribly—between family members and spouses.
What might seem quaint and yet disturbing when it appeared in a folk song was absolutely horrific in old flat-page photographs or—worse—“film” reels. The art and entertainments of the ancients had been full of carnage, and while Danilaw found it difficult to comprehend, he also found it a rich source of inspiration and catharsis. Human beings had been so animal, so at the mercy of their inheritance of endlessly reworked evolutionary hand-me-downs, until so very recently.
And here those atavistic