Candidate (Selected Book 4) (51 page)

"Yes," she said. "And you're right. That is a good example. You also have trophy wives."

I laughed. "Yes."

"Well, most of the sentient species have this concept. Some no longer practice it. For some, it is considered entirely acceptable. There are species, including two in the Federation, that actively enslave other species. Neither of those is near human space, which is a good thing for humanity."

She let me think about that before continuing.

"Sometimes the relationship is entirely voluntary, such as a Catseye vassal or a Tutor third. Sometimes there is a level of coercion. Sometimes there is a great deal of coercion. Sometimes the relationship carries balance. You understand that there is mutual benefit in being a vassal to a Catseye."

"There is mutual benefit to being a slave in that you receive food and clothing."

"But the two are world's apart. If you were to become the vassal to a Catseye, she would expect a great deal of loyalty, and she would feel free to use you to her own ends. But she would also protect and nurture you and your career, and give you opportunities you wouldn't otherwise find on your own. There is great mutual benefit, and you can walk away at any time whereas a slave cannot. Even a human servant may not be able to walk away, as she probably has little economic standing. But if you are vassal to a Catseye, you can walk away and suffer setback but still come out ahead in the end, having been her vassal."

"I understand," I said. "And do Kitsune have this concept."

"We do. I wish to speak with you hypothetically. This is an intellectual conversation, and I want your honest reaction."

"I'll try."

"First, there is no human word that exactly fits this relationship in a Kitsune household. It is a little like a Tutor third, but of course without the biological requirement of maturity gained through adversity."

"What word should we use, then?"

"Let us use the Tutor word, I believe, but cautiously."

"All right. So, a Kitsune third."

"Yes. So, hypothetically, let us say I wished a human for a third, what do you think?"

"I think I would want to know what you expect," I said. "Are we talking about me specifically or a human woman in general?"

"Perhaps both."

"Well, you can find women who are easily bought. There are many different ways you could pay her. How easy is it to walk away from being a Kitsune third?"

"More difficult than being a Catseye vassal, and it depends upon timing."

"Humans have a concept of indentured servant."

"Ah. Yes. There is this element, I suppose."

"So she stays until she pays her debt?"

"There is an element of that, and there is an element of duties that cannot be interrupted."

"We're talking a surrogate mother, aren't we?"

"That is one portion, yes."

"So she can't leave when pregnant. Is she also responsible for raising them?"

"Yes, although releasing her once her youngest reaches a certain age is easier."

"Are we talking two years old or twenty?"

"She could be released when the child stops nursing."

"So there are two year cycles, or about, during which she could not leave. And you could keep her pregnant and never allow her to leave."

"We would not make her pregnant without her consent. On the other hand, as you have said, we can find women who are easily bought."

"I am not easily bought."

"Not true. If your mother were sick, and I offered to cure her, you would pay, wouldn't you?"

I sighed. "Yes."

"Human lift expectancy is currently less than one hundred years. Kitsune life expectancy is forever, although we tend to go a little mad after four or five hundred years. The memories grow to be too much."

"I am not sure I can be bought that way."

"I could roll your apparent age back ten years."

"That certainly wouldn't do it."

"I could roll your mother's back by thirty." I didn't say anything to that. "Tell me, Andromeda. Are you sure you are difficult to buy?"

"I don't know," I whispered.

"Yes, you do."

"You could tell me Mom's thirty years cost me a hundred. And I'd want you to do both parents, and you could tell me that was two hundred."

"One child each," she said. "You would be paid after you bear the corresponding child."

"One child each," I said, "Paid after I bear the first, but I still owe you the second. Do them together."

"That would be a fair arrangement," she said.

"Please tell me this is a hypothetical conversation. I didn't just agree to something, did I?"

"So far."

"So, hypothetically speaking... Am I just a surrogate mother?"

"No. There is more. Let's come back to that. You have a bigger question. Do you know what it is?"

"How many children do you really want from me, and how long do you intend to keep me? And what happens afterwards?"

"Ah, yes. There we go. I don't know. If you stayed for two children and left, then I would find another third for more children. I do not know if I could keep you bought. If I could, and I were pleased with you, I would potentially keep you for a very long time, if you let me."

"Decades?"

"Centuries. But you could leave, if you were unhappy."

"Would you drug me like an Octal queen?"

"No. Nothing like that."

"How many children?"

"I don't know. Dozens."

"You want dozens of kids?" I asked, doing my own squeaking. "Weren't you the one disparaging humanity for reaching seven billion?"

"Ah, but I do not want seven billion. Kitsune are rare in this region of space. Humans seem to be willing to share. There is room for some of us on this planet. There is more room away from this planet. And there are other stars in this region. It would take countless millennia to fill them."

"To the best of my knowledge none of the nearby stars have habitable planets."

"Several have planets. They may not be in the habitable range, but that is a small problem to solve."

"Wait. You can move planets?"

"It is not hard. Humans know how."

"I don't think so."

"Of course you do. You use the same concept when you send your probes into space."

"What concept?"

She paused. "All right. We'll come back to our discussion of thirds. There are two categorizations of energy: kinetic and potential."

"Kinetic is when something is moving."

"Yes. You can think of it as energy actually doing something. A planet is moving and so has a great deal of kinetic energy. An automobile on the road is moving. And heat is a form of kinetic energy."

"All right."

"Potential energy is due to a difference in two states. For this conversation, we will use altitude. If I take, oh, say this glass." She reached and picked up her water glass. "If I drop it from this height, just a few centimeters, it will make a noise, and if I am not careful, it may tip over." Then she lifted it much higher. "If I drop it from this height, it will make a great deal of noise. It will certainly tip over and if it were a breakable material, easily break. It may also damage the tabletop, and if it bounces off the table, it could land on your foot, causing damage."

"Right."

"This is potential energy caused by altitude. Or more exactly, caused by gravitational pull."

"All right."

"A planet is in orbit around its sun. That is kinetic energy. A planet is also at a distance from the sun, and the two exhibit gravitational attraction. A planet in a higher orbit has a greater potential energy. However, to maintain the orbit, it actually is traveling slower, so it carries less kinetic energy."

"Okay," I said slowly.

"Now, when you send your probes deep into space, you do a gravity slingshot. You send the probe towards another planet. That planet's gravity pulls on the probe, causing it to accelerate."

"Okay, but then after it passes, the reverse happens."

"Except you can do it in such a way that the probe leaves the planet much faster than it approached, and so the distance falls off. What happens is that the probe speeds up and the planet slows down by a microscopic amount. A portion of the planet's orbital velocity is transferred into the probe."

"Okay," I said slowly.

"You can also do the same thing in reverse. You can slow down the probe and speed up the planet."

"All right."

"Well, let us say that I came to this solar system. And let us say, for the sake of this discussion, Earth did not exist, but the other planets did. Let us say I wished to make a home here. I have several possibilities, but if I want a comfortable planet, I really only have two. That's not entirely true, but for this conversation, let us discuss two."

"You could move Venus or Mars."

"Right. I could lift Venus further from the sun, putting it into a more comfortable orbit, or lower Mars. To do so, I would shoot asteroids at the planet I choose. I would send as massive of asteroids as I could control. I would do this over and over, and each one would change the orbital velocity of whichever planet I chose. Let us say I chose Venus. I would bend Venus's orbit so it began moving away. As it did so, it would slow down, eventually settling into a new, far more elliptical orbit. But if I sped it up just a little at the right point, I could settle Venus into an orbit where Earth is. It would take time, a fairly large amount of time. But I could do it."

"Wow."

"Now, I'm not sure I'd use Venus. I do not care for the atmosphere that Venus carries. I am more likely to use Mars. Once Mars is where I want it, or maybe as part of getting it where I want it, I would also select asteroids, and maybe a few comets or other objects, and bombard Mars, giving it water and oxygen."

"How long are we talking?"

"Millennia. But I can do it."

"You said 400 years."

"I wouldn't see the end of the project. But I could start it. I could start it tomorrow. Humans could start it sometime this century or early in the next, although it will be longer than that before you are traveling to the nearby stars."

She let me think about that, too.

"All that being said, it is easier to colonize planets that are already receptive to life. You can move in much sooner. You need to deal with the atmosphere, which is probably poisonous, if there is any at all. But that is easier than moving a planet."

She caressed my back. "There are stars not too far that could be colonized. We have not decided if we are going to do it or leave them for humanity. Your current methods of detecting planets is to watch for a planet to transit its sun. You detect the decrease in emitted light. But that means if the axial tilt is not right, you may never find a planet in even the closest star systems. There are planets nearby you have not found."

"Are you going to tell us where?"

"Not yet."

"Our system?"

"It is possible there are large bodies far outside the orbit of Pluto, but if so, we'll leave you to discover them."

"Why not just tell us?"

"You have a right to make these discoveries about the world about you. We would not steal that from you."

"So, the reasons for humanity to control our population do not apply when discussing the hundreds of children you want me to mother for you."

"We manage our population on planets where we are many. We are not many here. And I do not know if I want hundreds. I want more than two."

"You said you have children."

"I have a daughter living in the system. I have a daughter and a son who immigrated off our home world, I believe to put as much distance from me as they could. The joke is on them, because now I am here, and it would be difficult to be much further away. Of course, it would have been an even bigger joke if either of them had come along on this mission."

"Your children didn't think being on the other side of the same planet was far enough away?"

"My two oldest didn't. I am more mature now, and my youngest daughter has a very different outlook. I learned to let her grow up."

"Humans can have that problem."

"Not as much as Tutors."

I laughed. "So I understand."

"I was almost as bad as a Tutor with the first two. When they left, with some hateful words, I took the lesson to heart."

"How old is your youngest?"

"A little older than you. In Earth years, hmm. Not yet 40. I'm not sure exactly. We tend to stop counting, and then I would have to translate besides."

"So, we're still having a hypothetical conversation."

"Yes."

"If it weren't hypothetical, I would want to meet your daughter before making a decision."

"And if your mother were sick, and I offered this price, and no one else were offering?"