The Dragon and the Bear: The Consequences of Playing God
By Matthew W. Quinn
As thousands of Draka and serf loyalists were tried for crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity, another major debate was brewing-what to do with the Draka's genetic creations?
Nobody particularly cared about the steakberries or other products that did not think-in fact, Alliance capital was pouring in to revitalize the prized Draka biological industry under more humanitarian leadership-but the Draka creations that had conscious minds were an issue.
First on the agenda were the Draka's post-human creations, Homo drakensis and Homo servus. Some advocated these beings, created to replace Draka and non-Draka humanity, be exterminated as inhuman and dangerous. Many went so far as to refer to these new hominids as "it," not "he" or "she."
The weight of popular opinion was against killing off the Homo servus, who most people pitied as slaves deliberately built to be defenseless against their masters.
It was decided fairly quickly that all servii-who were extremely disproportionately children, even more so than the drakenses-be evacuated from the South African Federation (where Draka were being deported) and settled across the other post-Domination states and even the Alliance territory. Most were adopted out to Alliance families, particularly those who had lost children to the war; those who were adults were set up on their own with some supervision, primarily to ensure nobody took advantage of their meek, trusting natures. There were no servus on Luna or Mars, so no problems there.
The issue of the drakenses was a thornier problem.
Pope John Paul II had already spoken ex cathedra-meaning for devout Catholics, he had spoken as God's representative on Earth-that they were not to be killed off, and the Catholic Church had been against sterilization (and other forms of birth control) for centuries. However, he was but one man, and many Catholics questioned the wisdom of this decision, particularly the ones who had suffered Draka depredations in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and the Middle East.
Plus he was very busy overseeing the reform of ex-Domination Catholic territories-although the Draka allowed Catholic clergy tied in with the Holy See, they strictly limited Catholic education, bugged confessionals, and interfered in other ways. The stress was gnawing away at his health and he could not often meet directly with his critics, meaning that opposition could not be nipped in the bud. There were mutterings of calling a Church council on the matter, or even a full-blown schism.
The Jewish community also had a lively internal debate on the matter. Many Jews spoke out against the possibility of genocide or sterilization, raising the specter of the aborted Nazi Holocaust that nevertheless claimed over one million Jewish lives. Others pointed out the Draka attacks on New York killed many Jews and how Jews in the Middle East had already been tarred as pro-Draka. Standing too strongly in favor of mercy for the drakenses could provoke the same anti-Semitic feelings in the Alliance countries. Some Jewish leaders went so far as to claim the drakenses were mamzrim and should not be allowed to marry or reproduce.
The Alliance's military-scientific complex carried more weight with the Alliance governments than any clergyman, however influential they might have been with voters. The drakenses could be useful-some scientists proposed using them as living vaccine factories due to their advanced immune system, while others thought that due to their long lives, they could be useful crewing the generation ship whose concept had been kicking around the space industry for the last decade. Others thought that they could be used as a template for human genetic engineering-not to the degree of creating a post-human species, of course, but removing genetic diseases, improving the immune system, etc.
The population was divided-pretty much everyone hated the Draka for the evils they'd done and many viewed the drakenses as essentially predatory monsters, particularly after hearing accounts of them hunting "long pig." On the other hand, dealing with the "drakensis threat" involved killing or forcible sterilization of a population that was disproportionately-even after the famines-children.
As the 2003 presidential election in Russia and the 2004 presidential election in the United States drew near, the drakensis issue became a big deal.
Carmen Hiero had decided not to run again due to health and stress of having served four terms-even more than Roosevelt-due to the crisis situation. Her chosen successor, Manuel Rodriguez, faced a charismatic challenger in William Kensington, who advocated a hard-line policy against the drakenses and made remarks some could interpret as anti-Catholic (he said unlike his opponent, he would not face a crisis of conscience if the American public demanded the drakensis threat be obliterated).
In Russia, there was a massive battle for the presidency between the Socialist Revolutionaries (who had absorbed the Mensheviks, who had suffered for their association with the Bolsheviks and were the weakest party to start with) and the Cadets. The SRs took a harder line with the drakenses-who they viewed as an attempt to write social class into the genetic code-while the Cadets took a more individualistic approach.
The election was a close one and ended up being decided by the Duma. The Cadets won, barely, and that was due to a lot of horse-trading-the SRs would be allowed to use the former Domination territories under Russian influence as an experimentation-ground for their various ideas.
Though the terms of surrender guaranteed individual Draka their properties, there were plenty of plantations where no heir could be found or where the heirs were in hiding or in Alliance internment camps and the Combines were state-owned entities to begin with. If the SRs wanted to indulge in collective farming (to a much greater degree than in Russia) or worker cooperatives controlling the factories, now was their chance.
In the United States, Kensington's snarking backfired on him-many Catholics leery of the Pope's attitude towards the drakenses were even more leery of the specter of political anti-Catholicism returning from what people thought was its grave. Rodriguez won, barely.
The Alliance leadership met and decided that all drakenses above the age of six on Earth would be implanted with tracking microchips and deported with their human kindred to the South African Federation, where the Alliance would keep a close eye on them for decades. All below the age of six, however, would be taken away from their parents and raised by suitable Alliance parents. Drakenses raised according to Alliance values would serve as a suitable check on any incorrigibles over and above the military government of the South African Federation and could serve in certain capacities that older, more indoctrinated drakenses could not.
And so 300,000 drakenses were deported along with their millions of human kin. Of those, 180,000 had been sterilized by French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and sympathetic German or Russian troops-nobody told them they could not and it was relatively easy to hide due to the fact radiation had sterilized many people anyway.
Meanwhile, 200,000 drakenses were spread out through the Alliance countries, adopted by families selected for their resistance to pheromone manipulation and their proper belief systems.
The drakenses on Luna and Mars were left to the Alliance authorities there to deal with. The Lunar authorities deported theirs to Earth, where they were subject to the policies there, while the Martian authorities-who had found them useful during the aftermath of the war there-microchipped them and otherwise left them alone.
Dealing with the ghouloons was an easier issue-though they could talk, they looked like hairy monstrous creatures and people did not empathize with them to the degree they might with servus and drakensis. All surviving ghouloons were sterilized and the old, very badly wounded, and sickly were put down. The remainder was drafted into the Alliance militaries to serve out the remainder of their lives in a military capacity. The production of Russian "war cats" and the German ghouloon-knockoffs was ended as well, with similar steps being taken. The last transgenic war-animals on Earth died out in 2025.
(The production facilities were mothballed but not dismantled. One never knows what could prove useful in the future.)