Chapter VI: What Palis Said

Entangled together beneath the sheet, Julian and Palis lay in the sweet satiation of love. The difference in their height, so dramatic when they stood side-by-side, was erased in bed, and her shoulder lay on his while he stroked the fallen coils of her hair. She, somewhat drowsier at the end of a long and active day, nuzzled her velvet cheek against his close-shaven one as she stretched her neck with feline grace, then turned her head just far enough to kiss the side of his nose. Julian smiled.

"Now who's tickling whom?" he asked, his voice a quiet rumble in his chest. He wasn't sleepy: in San Francisco it had just gone 1400 hours. But it was pleasant to lie still after their impassioned exertions. They were a couple of athletes, young, vivacious, and flexible. All of that was reflected in a technique honed over a year and a half of enthusiastic experimentation. The healthy scent of fresh perspiration mingled with the perfume of the night and the faint whiff of cherry blossoms.

"Ne sois pas impertinent," murmured Palis. "Tu es mon trésor, et je te chatouillerai si je veux."

"Ah, je suis impertinent, tu crois?" Julian asked, reaching across his lean stomach to tweak her flank just below her floating ribs, where he knew she was most ticklish. Palis squealed with delight, writhed away from his hand and then rocked back in towards him, rolling on top of him and pressing her lips to his. He drank her in, not merely her body and her sweet breath, but her affection. His hand slipped from her tresses to the small of her back, and he closed his eyes, perfectly at peace.

"Ready to go again?" Palis asked, her voice dropping an alluring octave like one of the stars of ancient cinema whose work she so enjoyed. Simone Signoret, Danielle Darrieux, Brigitte Bardot: alliterative icons of four centuries past, immortalized in shades of grey.

Julian laughed, enticed by the notion but also well aware of the physiology at play. "Oh, you're merciless!" he teased. He lifted his head off of the pillow to kiss her, briefly and playfully. "In a little while, all right? Let me catch my breath."

"Ça marche," said Palis amiably, rolling off again. She settled beside him, hip and thigh pressed close to his, and nudged herself up against the headboard so she was semi-reclined on top of Julian's right arm. She lifted the sheet, shaking out the wrinkles, and let it settle smoothly over both of them, folding it just below her small, perfect breasts. "Mind if we take a peek at the news? I haven't had a moment all day."

The warm delight of their closeness dispersed in a sudden chill of dread, like the plunge toward absolute zero when you jettisoned water into space. Julian felt everything that had been open and joyous within him suddenly scatter into a thousand fragile spheres of ice, waiting to shatter at the slightest touch. He knew what would be on the Federation News Service feed, and he didn't want to see it. He didn't want to learn what had transpired in the last fifteen or sixteen hours. He didn't want to know.

"Palis, no…" he began, but he spoke too slowly and not loud enough to make himself heard, his tongue made clumsy by his dismay. She had already wafted a hand at the viewscreen mounted in the wall at the foot of the bed.

"Computer," Palis commanded; "FNS. Today's top stories."

She nestled in against Julian as the screen sprang to life, and the room was suffused with a gentle purplish glow. Palis had the bedroom screen set to default to the video feed, instead of the written headlines Julian preferred, and she often liked to watch late at night. He had told her — repeatedly — that it wasn't advisable; that it was poor sleep hygiene, training her brain to think of the bed as a place to be alert. Docteur Delon had probably told her the same thing when she was a teen. She only laughed in the face of centuries of science and said it helped her to relax. Julian, not wanting to be a nag, always let it go at that.

Tonight, though, he had far more to fear than a little benign stimulation of the optic nerves. The now familiar image of the mullioned house in Ghent appeared, with the headline printed below it: Police Intervene in Eugenics Protest.

"Tensions in Belgium reached a breaking point today," the newscaster said with brisk dispassion; "when protestors speaking out against the placement of twenty-three genetically enhanced humans from the Genome Colony on Moab IV attempted to prevent one of the newcomers from leaving her lodgings."

The deliberately pleasant voice went on, narrating the scene as it unfolded, but Julian could not make sense of the words. The image itself was all-consuming. The protestors, much as they had over the last few days, stood on the pavement with their placards and their chanting. Their numbers had more than doubled since Thursday night, and there was an impassioned energy to the crowd that had not been there before. At the edge of the frame, a couple of people wearing a variation of the recognizable uniform common to most local police departments stood in the shade of the building next door. They had a portable table, laid with water and hermetically sealed snacks. That was the standard function of the police when civilians were demonstrating in public places: they made sure no one got dehydrated, called for medical assistance if anyone fainted, and generally just ensured no one was endangered. Protests on Earth rarely lasted more than a few hours, which made this one an aberration. They were uncommon, and almost never involved more than slogans, speeches, and the occasional theatrics. Impeding peaceable assemblies, even when they got a little obnoxious, was unthinkable.

Yet the words were right there at the bottom of the screen: Police Intervene in Eugenics Protest. Julian's dread deepened, because that could only mean the situation had turned violent.

The tag at the top corner of the screen read 1130 Hours, and as it ticked over to 1131, the door to the house opened. A woman stepped out: the same woman with the dark hair whom Julian had seen peering out of an upper window on the footage he'd viewed Thursday night. She was neatly dressed in strangely unfashionable clothes, and she wore a look of grim determination as she strode out onto the steps and pulled the old oaken door closed behind her. Head held high, she started down the half-dozen stairs that led to the cobbled street.

For a moment, the protestors didn't seem to know what to do. They'd been shouting at a shut-up house for days, with no outlet for their energy but the open air of the canal-front. They froze, stunned faces upturned towards the woman. Several of the signs and placards drooped, and the din of their voices — muffled to a low, background hum beneath the newsreader's commentary — dropped off to nothing. For a moment, it even looked like they were stepping back to part the crowd, clearing a path. That was certainly the courteous thing to do when you were thronged outside someone's home.

"…is when the protestors decided," the disembodied voice of the FNS reporter intoned; "to take matters into their own hands."

Her audio stopped, and that of the on-site holorecording swelled to full volume, providing one brief instant of ambient stillness: the murmur of the canal waters, the twitter of a nearby bird, the cumulative hum of dozens of startled lungs. The woman descended the last two stairs with brisk determination. As her lead foot hit the cobblestones, the hush was eviscerated by a single, hateful voice, harsh and vituperative and — to Julian's sensitive ears at least — absolutely damning.

"Augment filth!" a man roared. Suddenly a dozen voices were clamouring with like abuse. The Moab colonist's head whipped from side to side, startled by the sudden shift in the tide, her eyes now wide and frightened.

And then they fell upon her.

Julian had never seen anything like it. They didn't move like people, but like a mass of seething disgust. They swarmed and eddied, swallowing her from view in scant seconds, all the while shouting and howling and spitting. Carefully lettered signs were thrown carelessly in the gutter, the niceties of peaceful protest utterly forgotten as a flock of concerned and like-minded citizens degenerated into a mindless mob with one intention alone: to subdue the Other in their midst.

The police were at a loss. The two officers by the table stood dumbstruck, and three more came rushing into the frame from the other side of the street, palms outstretched helplessly. Then one of them started calling for order and the others took up the refrain, but they were barely audible over the din of vitriol and hate. One tried to nudge his way in towards the centre of the fray, but was pushed back. His colleague, smaller and nimbler, slipped through between a pair of enraged men. She disrupted the perimeter of the mob, and the person operating the holocam was jostled. A blur of disordered motion filled the screen: limbs and pavement and a flash of sky. When the camera righted itself, it had to sweep around back to the mob. By the time it had, the police officers had succeeded in breaking up the outermost couple of rings. They were ushering people to the sides, most of them using only their hands and their voices. One had to draw her phaser when a large man tried to lunge at her — Julian recognized the civilian model that only offered a moderate stun setting — but the mere sight of it was enough to bring the protestor to his senses.

Other officers were still trying to pull the people at the core of the crowd off the fallen woman, shouting to be heard over the barrage of profanity and hateful recriminations. From the new angle, with the layers of attackers slowly being peeled away as uniformed reinforcements materialized in the street, Julian could see the Moab colonist, huddled on the pavement beneath the rapidly shifting shoes, the target of falling fists and swinging feet. He watched, unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to believe what he was witnessing.

"Mon Dieu!" Palis gasped, a fleeting little gulp of startled air. "Ce n'est pas possible!"

For a moment, Julian thought she was as horrified as he by the assault. Her head whipped towards him in an instant's glance of dismay, and then fixed her eyes right back on the screen, where two more officers had drawn their phasers. One fired harmlessly into the gutter, the sound of crackling energy startling several of the woman's attackers. Three more withdrew, palms upraised. The weapons were not lethal, but the show of authority was understood and — at least in some cases — respected.

"They can't just draw weapons in a crowd like that!" said Palis, finding her voice as her indignation mounted. She sat up a little straighter in bed, digging in a heel for leverage. Her warm, supple back lifted off of Julian's arm, and he was finally able to draw it across his ribs, hugging himself tightly as he tried to stave off the storm of hideous emotions swirling within him. He wanted to look away, but he could not. And he couldn't understand what Palis was saying, either. They hadn't drawn weapons: they were beating that poor woman with fists and feet like spectres out of Earth's troubled past.

"Julian!" she was clutching his arm now. On the screen, another deputation of six officers had materialized, and they were now placing some of the more obdurate attackers in wrist restraints. "They can't do that, can they? The police can't just fire on civilians!"

He could not believe she was fixating on that. Julian understood the natural reaction to such an unusual sight, but those civilian phasers were fundamentally harmless, a tool of temporary incapacitation that left the target to wake up gradually without so much as an aftershock headache. The blunt trauma battering the woman from Moab IV, on the other hand, was not only dangerous but potentially lethal. Someone had to intervene, or these half-crazed zealots would kill her!

Nor had the police even fired on anyone but the cobblestones: still more reinforcements had beamed in, and they were prevailing by sheer weight of numbers. One contingent was gathering together the protestors who were once again capable of reason. Others were keeping the more belligerent at bay. And a few were still trying to pull the last couple of assailants away from the woman on the pavement.

The image changed, and it was clear some time had passed. The people who had needed handcuffs were nowhere to be seen, and the municipal police officers stood with arms outstretched, fingertip-to-fingertip as they formed a ring to herd back the crowd. The holocam operator had managed to get inside the circle, and they had a remarkably good view of the emergency medical technicians rolling the badly-beaten woman onto a stretcher for emergency transport. She was breathing, but beyond that it was impossible for Julian to gauge her injuries. Her nose did not look broken, but it had clearly sustained trauma: the lower third of her face was obscured with blood that had poured from the nostrils. Her garments were torn, her hair disarrayed, and she appeared only marginally conscious. She tried to lift a trembling arm to shield her head, disoriented and defensive, but one of the responders caught hold of her hand and held it soothingly, murmuring something the recording had not picked up.

As the sled rose and they called for transport, the commentator resumed speaking. Through the tidal roar of his pulse in his ears, Julian forced himself to listen.

"The genetically engineered colonist was removed to an undisclosed medical facility. According to local authorities, she sustained no serious injuries in the incident, and no formal charges have been laid. A spokesperson for the anti-Augment protestors—"

"Palis…" Julian croaked, trying to make himself heard. Knowing there was no way he could make himself understood. Wishing, with all his heart, that he had the last five minutes to do over again. That he'd rallied more rapidly into the second wind of passion, or suggested they watch one of her old films instead, or something… anything at all, really, if it could have spared them both what they'd just seen.

"Computer, discontinue broadcast," Palis said, her voice clipped. She sank back against Julian, shaking her head. "Well, that's all right, then," she huffed.

Julian's throat felt tight. He wanted to hold her close, but his arm would not obey him. His whole body felt numb. The viewscreen was black, but he could not tear his eyes from it. It was as if he could still see the look of terror on the woman's face in the instant before the crowd devoured her. "Do you believe it?" he asked feebly. He wasn't sure he trusted the claim that she'd suffered no major injuries. They had been kicking her, for God's sake!

Palis twisted to look at him, mildly perplexed. "That they haven't filed charges just because it got out of hand? Of course! You can't hide something like that: court proceedings are a matter of public record."

"You…" Julian began, but it was as if someone had tangled cotton wool about the cogwheels of his brain. He knew he wasn't putting the pieces together here, but he was too shell-shocked from what he'd just seen to understand why. "The woman…"

"The Augment?" Palis snorted, nestling comfortably against him and rolling her eyes to the airy ceiling. "What did she expect, going out in the street like that? She should know she's not wanted."

He had not flinched. Julian told himself desperately that he had not flinched at that loathsome word. She certainly hadn't reacted if he had. But he felt like he was falling, falling from some terrible height down into an endless pit of perdition. Don't say it. Palis, Palis, please don't say it, he pleaded silently, half-hoping that she would hear and understand. So often, they seemed to finish one another's thoughts. Perhaps she'd finish his now, and comprehend.

At the same time, he knew it would be disastrous if she did.

"This whole business!" Palis scoffed, flapping one delicate hand at the screen. "Who do they think they are, these colonists? They think they can just turn up after two hundred years of doing whatever they want, regardless of nature, regardless of the laws, regardless of common decency, and be welcomed back to Earth like long-lost children? They're genetically enhanced! Programmed, right in their DNA, to be something other than human! And they think they can come back here? Live in a lovely old house? Take places at prestigious universities? C'est absurde!"

Julian could not stop her. He would not have dared, even if he'd had mastery over his tongue. His chest twitched and heaved unexpectedly, and he realized he was still breathing after all, though he thought he had forgotten how. Palis, her head still resting on his shoulder, was warming to her theme.

"That's the reason those people are barred from decent society," she said. "Because they think they're entitled to live among normal, natural humans, just as if they're like us. Because they think they're entitled to things they haven't earned. That fellowship at Oxford one of them's been offered: how many promising young astrophysics students have worked their whole lives, studied and competed and struggled and strived, to win that position, only to have it snatched away from them by someone who's never even had to try?"

But we do try. I do. We work. Genetic enhancements don't mean you don't have to work! a part of Julian's brain protested. He thought of his years of study, his efforts always to stay at the top of his class, the pressure of every exam, the labour poured into every project from third grade geology presentations to the paper he was currently writing on pancreatic atresia in Tellarites. He thought of the strain of the gruelling Starfleet entrance tests, of the series of endless qualifying rounds he had worked through to win his place at the Medical Academy, of the hours he put into studying every night. Yes, somethings came easier because of the enhancements — easier by far than they would have ever come to Jules, that was certain — but he did work. He feared failure, just like anyone else. He knew he was capable of failure. And if he failed, it was not just his career or his reputation at stake, but his intrinsic worth: only by succeeding, by doing his utmost to help others with his unnatural gifts, could he possibly hope to redeem the crime of his own existence.

Had his accomplishments been handed to him? Had his place at Starfleet Academy? His current position? The prestigious internships, the residency postings that had been his for the asking… surely they hadn't been handed to him, not like Palis meant. They were the fruits of dedication and ceaseless labour. Weren't they?

"They don't belong here," Palis said vehemently. "They should go back to that border world where they belong! Genetic engineering is vile, and the thought of its products, here on Earth…" She shuddered against him and reached to draw his arms around her. They felt like they were made of wood, and Julian had no choice but to let them go. Palis hugged them to her like a bony shawl, her pert breasts warm against his forearms. "I don't know what they think they are, coming here like they have some kind of right to be on this planet! Honestly, what do they expect? We're just supposed to tolerate creatures like that? It's vile. It's foul. Genetic enhancement is obscene! You're a doctor, Julian, or nearly. You know how foul it is, talking of changing people's nature like that!"

He did know. He knew better than she could possibly imagine. But he could not reconcile the truth that eugenics was repugnant with the conclusion Palis and the protestors and the FNS staff all seemed to take for granted: that the Moab IV colonists themselves were repugnant as well. They hadn't chosen this: their society had ordained it for them, just as Julian's parents had ordained it for him. He couldn't bring himself to believe it was true that these colonists were just as loathsome as the process that had created them. Didn't want to believe it. Not only because discrediting the fundamental personhood of twenty-three sentient beings was horrifying, but because of what it might say about him. He couldn't face that.

But wasn't that one of the arguments against genetic enhancement? That it produced people who were incapable of thinking of anyone but themselves? Devoid of compassion, devoid of morality, serving no higher philosophy but that of personal advancement at any cost?

"And settling them here! In Europe! Not three hundred kilometres away!" cried Palis, kicking the mattress with one heel to express her outrage. She was still caressing his arms, the tenderness in her hands a shocking counterpoint to the disgust in her voice — as if she did not realize she was levying both at the same person, at the young man pinned naked beneath her. She made a noise of utmost revulsion, and spurred on in French. "Ça me dégoûte! she exclaimed. "Pourquoi est-ce que l'Office planétaire du Logement permet cela? Ils sont une abomination, des Augments!"

"Palis…" Julian said again. Her name fell like ash from his lips. His heart felt constricted as if by an iron fist. His insides were writhing. He was trapped. Cornered. There was no escape from this, and yet… and yet he had to escape, now, immediately, before he betrayed himself. "Palis, would you… could you…"

She whirled on him, launching off of his body, flinging aside his arms, and turning as she sprang onto her knees, back suddenly to the computer interface that had been the catalyst for all of this, face suddenly to the head of the bed. She grabbed hold of the sheet as she went, gathering it indignantly round her, not caring how that left Julian exposed. And why should she care? They had never been shy in their nudity before, not in the privacy of the flat. Yet now he felt vulnerable as he never had before in her presence, denuded before the ferocity of Palis's absolute conviction.

"They'll never actually allow it, will they?" she demanded. "Starfleet? These colleges? Surely they won't abide by these… these agreements. These arrangements that never should have been made in the first place? It's all a mistake, isn't it? I know the Federation likes to be tolerant and welcoming — but tolerance has a limit!"

It certainly seemed to. Her tolerance, anyway. Julian stared at her, stricken dumb by this woman he loved, whom he had trusted, whom he thought had loved and trusted him — when all this time, unbeknownst to her, he was what so repulsed her. He was the product of genetic enhancement, no different from the colonists she was so adamant had no right to walk the surface of the planet that was their ancestral home.

No. He was different. The Moab colonists, at least, had never hidden the truth. They had never lied. They had never let others — teachers, classmates, senior officers, friends, lovers — believe them to be what they were not.

Out of the pandemonium of bleak, tangled emotions, one rose to claim primacy. Shame, vast and monstrous, as monstrous as the legacy of eugenics that stretched back four hundred years to a subterranean laboratory and a glass pipette, rose like a behemoth to choke Julian where he sat, half-reclined, against the bedstead of a woman who despised what he was and all he represented. A woman who was looking at him right now with her sweet face open and trusting, anxious for reassurance in the face of what she saw as the first step onto the slippery slope that led to… what? To the rise of the next Khan Noonien Singh.

God help him, but Julian could not even remember her question.

"I don't know," he managed, his mouth as dry as the desert that had hidden the Chrysalis Project.

Palis sighed and flung herself back around again, mercifully onto her pillows instead of Julian's shoulder. "No, I suppose not," she sighed. "You're only a cadet: how could you know what Starfleet intends? Much less the other schools. I suppose we just have to hope that sanity prevails! Qu'est-ce qu'on peut y faire?"

"Huh…" Julian managed feebly, the vaguest sound of assent. She hadn't noticed anything amiss in any of his responses, but he knew that could not last. He had to get out of this bed. Out of this room. Had to escape before the shock wore off and he gave away something of his inner turmoil. Had to rally his wits and think, think… think, damn you, THINK!

He couldn't think. Not yet. He had to run. No, not run. He had to get up calmly and leave the room, that was all. As if nothing was amiss. As if his whole world had not just shattered around him, like those countless tiny globes of ice…

"I should…" he began, and found once the first words were out his mouth did remember how to work, after all. "I should go and take a shower, Palis," he said, stunned by the calmness in his voice. It shouldn't sound so serene, not after what had just happened, what was still happening within him. Yet whatever psychological training or battle-readiness drill or competency counselling had instilled this instinct for coolness under fire, Julian was wretchedly grateful for it. "I'll be right back. D'accord?"

"Mmm, d'accord," Palis agreed idly. She had one arm curled up behind her head now, and she was examining the nails of the other hand. "Hurry back, mon trésor. You know how I miss you when you're gone."

Julian dug the heel of his hand into the mattress and pushed himself upright, praying his legs would hold him when his feet hit the floor.

(fade)

French Translation Glossary:

"Ne sois pas impertinent. Tu es mon trésor, et je te chatouillerai si je veux.": "Don't be impertinent. You are my treasure, and I'll tickle you if I want."
"Ah, je suis impertinent, tu crois?": "Ah, I'm impertinent, you think?"
"Ça marche.": "All right."A very casual French affirmative, similar to "Sure, fine with me."
"Mon Dieu! Ce n'est pas possible!": "My God! It's not possible!"
"C'est absurde!": "It's absurd!"
"Ça me dégoûte! Pourquoi est-ce que l'Office planétaire du Logement permet cela? Ils sont une abomination, des Augments!": "It's disgusting! Why would the Planetary Housing Authority allow it? They are abominations, Augments!"
"Qu'est-ce qu'on peut y faire?": "What can we do?"