Inheritance

The door slid shut behind them and someone called, “Please come in.”

Reese and David followed the sound of the voice through the open doorway in the foyer and into the main office. It was a wide room with screens that ran the length of the longest wall, showing a forest of trees with black trunks and moving, bluish-green leaves. At one end of the room was a curved, glossy black desk, behind which a display cabinet held various items suspended on wires. Reese saw stones or jewels of different colors; a sphere that looked like a miniature planet; and a black statue that resembled the fertility goddesses that had been carved by ancient humans, with a round belly and heavy breasts. In the center of the room was a long, oval table made of the same glossy black material as the desk. Four people were seated already: Akiya Deyir, Dr. Brand, Eres Tilhar, and Amber. Two black chairs, carved to resemble waves like the ones in Eres’s room, remained empty.

Akiya Deyir gestured to the chairs. “Please sit,” he said. He was as elegant as Reese remembered from the press conference, but today he was dressed in clothing that was clearly not from Earth. He wore a jacket made of deep violet cloth; it had narrow lapels and long, billowing tails, almost like a gown. He had dark blue trousers on that made Reese think of jodhpurs, tucked into shiny boots of the same color with a stripe of silver running up the side. It was an ensemble that Reese might expect on a Japanese pop star, but there was nothing frivolous about the ambassador. As Reese sat down, she surreptitiously studied Deyir’s dark, smooth skin. He was so extraordinary looking, like a film star from the 1930s, all cheekbones and shadows. She wondered if his beauty was natural, or if he—or his parents—had engineered it.

“I’ve been informed that you both know about our long history with your people,” Deyir said. “And that you are concerned about the fact that we have not yet revealed this. While I understand your concern, the two of you are not qualified to make that decision. You do not have the benefit of the full context of our situation.” Deyir’s tone was mild, but there was an authority to his presence that did not invite challenge. “Your people—humanity—are our greatest concern. We did not always feel that way, it is true. Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, my people were careless. We had great scientific knowledge and we had great ambition, and that combination resulted in many mistakes. We were never violent; that was not our pleasure. We have been, always, connected to each other through susum’urda. What we wanted was to create life. To create intelligence. Unfortunately, our eagerness to create life was not tempered by consideration for the responsibility that would bestow upon us.”

There was a hypnotic quality to Deyir’s voice, and though dozens of questions raced through Reese’s mind, she did not ask them. She watched him speak, transfixed by the movements of his mouth and the fluid gestures of his long-fingered hands.

“We were much younger then, and less experienced. We only thought: Look at this new world—Earth—and see how similar it is to ours. Look at these creatures here; they could become us. We were enraptured with that idea. Our science, however, was not perfect. We had not created humans from nothing; we changed what already existed. That meant that humans did not turn out exactly the way we had hoped. Your people could not share consciousness. You were fixated on violence, on war. We did not know what to do, and to our great disgrace, we simply abandoned you. We thought: Humans can find their way out of this on their own; we have interfered too much.

“But we could not entirely leave you behind. We watched as your populations grew and your technology developed. We came to understand that you are our greatest responsibility. We were poor creators; poor guardians of what we made. We cannot allow you to destroy your planet and to destroy yourselves. That is why we have returned. We have come here to correct the mistakes we made before it is too late. The adaptation procedure, which Evelyn developed with her team, is finally a success. Our goal is to adapt all of humanity, bit by bit, using this procedure. There are many of you now, and we cannot adapt all of you; that is why the adaptation is heritable. Your children will inherit the same abilities, and your children’s children will as well. Over several generations, humanity will become what we had initially intended. You will become true Imrians.”

That is exactly what Charles Lovick told us, David thought to Reese. Akiya Deyir is just putting a different spin on it.

The ambassador sat back, crossing his legs. The silver on his boots gleamed. “In order to implement our plan we have moved cautiously. That is why we haven’t yet revealed all of this to your people. The two of you are different now. Because you’ve been adapted, you are more like us. You are better able to understand us. Humans who haven’t been adapted will not have your ability to empathize with us. They need to be adapted first; that’s why we haven’t told them.” He paused, his eyes flickering toward Dr. Brand. “I understand that Evelyn has given a sample of Imrian DNA to your human scientists, and they have questioned how closely we are related.”

“It’s not a question,” David said. “They know.”

Deyir nodded. “You will need to ask them to refrain from sharing their knowledge. It is in your best interests to delay this. To give your fellow humans time to accept us.”

Reese finally spoke out loud: “But you’re wrong.” Deyir’s gaze turned to her, and she straightened up, clutching the edges of the slippery black chair as she faced him. “We aren’t true Imrians. What you’ve done to me and David—it’s not what you expected.”

“What do you mean?” Dr. Brand asked. Both she and Amber looked startled.

Reese suddenly felt the weight of what she and David were about to do. There was no one else here to speak for humanity. It was their responsibility: hers and David’s. At that moment, she saw her future stretching out before her. She had never given much thought to what she would do with her life; maybe she’d go to journalism school, or maybe she’d become a lawyer. She hadn’t had to decide yet, and now she knew she never would. The decision had been made for her.

She remembered her conversation with Amber about coincidence. Choice has nothing to do with it, Amber had told her, and Reese hadn’t understood then. Now she did. She was in this position, and it was a privileged one. She had told her mother that she wasn’t a child anymore. The only option was to take the responsibility that had been given to her, even if she hadn’t wanted it to begin with. To refuse would be an insult not only to humanity but to herself.

“What you did to us changed us, but not into Imrians,” she said to the ambassador. “We have other abilities now.” She looked at David, and he began to explain what they could do.

When he was finished, Dr. Brand said, “We can’t be sure that other humans will also have your abilities.”

“You can’t be sure they won’t,” Reese said.

Dr. Brand smiled as if Reese had said exactly what she wanted. “That’s true.” She turned to Deyir. “We must reconsider our plans. You must contact home and tell them.”

Deyir had listened to David, Reese, and Dr. Brand without interrupting. Now he turned to Eres. “What is your opinion?”

“Their abilities need further study,” Eres answered. “We don’t know exactly what they can do yet, but the telepathy alone is extraordinary. At the very least, I think we do need to discuss changing the implementation of our plan.”

Deyir looked at Reese and David, his expression sober. “This does change things, but I cannot see the utility of modifying our plan. If anything, we should be even more cautious now about revealing your abilities. I know that your government will be especially interested in using your abilities for their gain, not for the advancement of humanity.”

“But that’s why you need to tell the whole truth,” Reese said. She couldn’t see why Deyir wasn’t grasping this. “The more people who know, the more difficult it will be for the government to take advantage of it. The problem is in keeping things secret, not in telling the truth.”

“Besides, it’s not your job to manage the way humanity deals with this,” David put in.

“It is our job,” Deyir said. “We have failed you. It is our task to right your course.”

This was the first time Reese had heard him speak with such emotion, and it surprised her.

“No, it’s not,” David said. “Maybe you were there at the beginning, however many thousands of years ago, but you left. We kept on without you.”

“Humanity’s problems are humanity’s problems,” Reese said. “It’s our job to fix our own problems. You can offer support, but if you secretly try to turn us all into Imrians—which isn’t going to work anyway because apparently the adaptation procedure doesn’t turn us into Imrians—you’ll be exactly what all those freaked-out protesters say you are: colonizers.”