“She wanted soldiers.” There was a trace of sympathy in Adam’s simmering anger.
“By your definition . . . yes.” Sal’s jaw tightened. “Unfortunately for her, my Male Giver valued the . . . creativeness . . . of a volatile emotional climate, and so he selected traits which ensured that I would never docilely accept authority.”
“Which is why you protected Lila and Eileen.”
“That is a reason, yes.”
The two men stared at each other until I cleared my throat.
Man and alien, Lila.
“So y’all aren’t here to invade, or colonize or whatever . . . that’s great. What was that mission statement you quoted us? Salvaging our existence or something? Is that what y’all call stewardship? Doesn’t sound so bad . . . ”
“You said you were a research and development group tasked with identifying, categorizing, repairing and ultimately salvaging this existence.” Eileen rattled it off as if reading from a notecard. “Sorry, Adam. Guess I forgot that part, too.”
Sal grinned at her. “In time you will forget nothing.”
“Cool.”
“What . . . ?” I exchanged a worried look with Adam as I scrambled to find an innocuous meaning for Sal’s words.
“Perhaps we should return to the big picture, as you called it . . . ?
“Sure . . . ?” One more question to ask later. In private.
“As I told you previously, thirty of us traveled here—”
“Plus a hundred slaves,” Eileen interjected.
“Plus one hundred Servants,” he insisted. “And I should point out that I—along with seventeen others—were in controlled development, so the endeavor was actually undertaken by twelve Givers.” At Eileen’s indignant huff, he hurried to add, “And the Servants.
“As you are aware, most planetary bodies—most stellar systems, in fact—are unable to support any type of complex lifeform, so the Givers provided the Servants with instructions and went into stasis to await our arrival in an appropriate system. What they did not anticipate, however, was that the Servants would follow their instructions exactly, without deviation, even when logic would have dictated otherwise.”
“Revenge of the Slaves . . . ” Eileen stage-whispered to Adam.
“We do not know exactly how long we journeyed, only that your galaxy was not previously identified.”
“You’re lost?” My kid had a knack for cutting to the chase.
“Technically, yes. But as I developed and was educated on our situation, it became apparent to me that traveling back to our planet was never a viable option.”
“You mean if you knew where you were, you still couldn’t get home?” I asked.
“Our vessel had aged beyond its designed functionality and we were ill-equipped to repair it. The data storage systems had partially decayed, and our working knowledge was limited to what was previously mastered for our own specialties.”
“So . . . you lost the instruction manual and didn’t have a Scotty on board?”
Adam leaned over and mouthed Star Trek to my bewildered daughter, while Sal, Mr. Pop-Culture-Alien-Nerd-Meister, rewarded me with a grin.
“Just an Ensign, unfortunately. She was in her nascent state and some of the knowledge that she would have assimilated had been lost. But beyond that, the first planet with forms of life similar to ours was too primitive to have the industrial capabilities of manufacturing the materials we would need—even if we knew how to manufacture all of them, which we did not—and even if your planet had all of the same elements as those we required, which it does not.
“You have to imagine what it was like for the Givers when they awakened. Entering an unknown system in an unknown galaxy in an unidentifiable region of the Universe with twelve adults, one hundred Servants, and eighteen children. Hardly enough laborers to mine for ores and build factories. So they . . . re-evaluated . . . and made the decision to . . . dynamically . . . interact with the indigenous population.”
“You were seen as gods,” I pointed out.
“We created the deity personas, yes.”
“That’s repulsive.”
“I agree. And so do most of the others. I had been honest with you when I said that it was complicated, and . . . here is where it gets complicated.” He gave me a rueful smile. “Some of this I believe you have already guessed.”
“That you guys beamed down and started messing with human DNA?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He trailed a finger through the puddle of condensation pooling under his juice glass, watching it evaporate before he continued. “At first, our intentions were merely to assure our own survival. We were unprepared to provide for ourselves, and our Servants were not physically capable of laboring in your atmosphere.”
“Why? Y’all breathe oxygen, don’t you?”
Good point, Eileen.
“Yes, but our world did not have as high of a concentration of what you refer to as noble gases. Servants can only function for a short time before . . . ”
“You didn’t have spacesuits?”
“You did not have spacesuits until the past century.”
“Duh. But we weren’t traveling in space.”
Sal opened and closed his mouth twice as Eileen’s left eyebrow arched. That’s my girl.
“The point is that we made decisions based on our available options. However, after several thousand years and several hundred of your generations, it was decided that your evolutionary pace was too slow.”
“Ergo, you screwed with our DNA,” I chimed in.
He winced, and I cringed at my tacky word choice.
“Some of your DNA in some of your ancestors.” He enunciated carefully as if qualifying what they had done made a difference. “Your species were evolving, just not as quickly as we needed. At that time most of us still had hopes of returning home, or at least of finding a better planet. No offense intended.”
Adam made a strange noise in the back of his throat, but Sal continued, slowly now, as if the effort was painful.
“But once we began manipulating your species’ genome, another . . . unintended consequence occurred.” Shame dimmed his beauty as he spoke, pulling his body in on itself as he looked down at the empty table space between us.
Apparently another of the theories I’d read was true. “Y’all developed god complexes.”
“Yes. Most of us.”
“You admit it?” Adam was shocked.
“I have had an exceptionally long time to reflect on my choices, and the choices of my team . . . my family, and our . . . my . . . failings.”
“Your failings.” Adam’s face twisted in disgust and he gripped the edge of the table. “Is that
