3.11.
The shuttle, owned by the Earth Space Force but manufactured by the Yonohoans, landed in New York City with its VIP passenger. Tonom Genisi had just finished his quarantine and been pronounced noncontagious and ready to live on Earth.
Like Eolai before him, he was met at the tarmac by a group of reporters. Unlike Eolai, his speech was not so great.
“What is the Acklatic Empire’s stance on the war with the Rosantean Empire?” was the first question asked.
“It is very tragic and we are very sad. We do not believe in violence. We have closed ports to Rosanteans and turn them away. We open ports to Earth and Yonohoans. But we do not fight. We are happy people, war is very very sad,” Tonom answered.
The reporters considered the man’s poor grasp of the english language for a minute, then proceeded to ask their ‘tough’ questions anyway. “You have said that you intend to establish normalized relations with Earth. What form of relations do you envision?”
“We want your stuff. Your cultural artifacts. Whatever you are willing to part with, we will trade for. We are very generous people. Your music, your entertainment, your books, your sports, your clothes. Many things which you might be willing to part with we will give you much money for. Also we want you live with us. If you come live in the Acklatic Empire, you find sponsor who make you very rich and happy life. Already thirty million sponsors looking for Earthlings to live with them,” Tonom answered.
“If someone emigrates to your empire, will they be able to maintain their ties to Earth? To return if they miss their families or their homes?”
“We are not jailers!” he said, sounding offended. “You have freedom of association and freedom of movement in the empire. You do not like your sponsor? Find a new sponsor. You miss Earth? Go back to Earth. We believe in happiness and not sadness.”
The questions continued for some time before Tonom’s escort said that he had to get moving. The bare-chested man extended both hands towards the sky and exclaimed “Earth has delicious air! Now to taste its women! And men!”
And then he was shown into a motorcade, where he was spirited away towards the UN to officially give an address requesting normalized relations between his empire and the nations of Earth. He spoke for a lengthy five minutes in which he requested everyone to contact his virtual assistant to begin the process of establishing relations, then he invited everyone in the UN building to a party at the Acklatic Empires embassy.
Which hadn’t been built yet, but the party was scheduled for the next evening anyway.
In the car, Tonom’s staff members, all provided by the UN, attempted to convince him to change the venue of the party, but Tonom simply waved his hand.
“It is fine, is fine. You just plan party, I take care of building,” he insisted, directing the driver to take him to the location which had been given to his government by the USA for the building of an embassy earlier in the week.
When the car arrived, Tonom stepped out, looked around for twenty minutes, then returned to the trunk of the car where his luggage was stored. He pulled out of one of the suitcases a stake that appeared to be made of iron.
It wasn’t made of iron.
He flexed a muscle that wasn’t a muscle and spent several moments interacting with the building device. Once he had confirmed the details, he drove the stake into the center of the lot and walked away.
The building nanites did the rest.
The venue was ready by dawn, and the party was set to proceed on schedule.
~~~~~~
Sarah stared at the medical readout. She tried not to panic.
This wasn’t the end of the world, she reminded herself. She should have been expecting something like this. It wasn’t like she had been careful to keep it from happening.
Her experimental treatment had ended a few days into the Toormonda journey. She wasn’t on any neurological medications anymore; her neurons had been shocked back into a state of adolescence already. They were simply reallocating their dendrites as the damage caused by her Tunnel Drive exposure was corrected.
Which mean that she didn’t have to worry about the baby being exposed to any experimental drug protocols
She exhaled, looking at the zoomed in hologram of her womb. The little cluster of cells, with a few words describing exactly what they were hovering nearby, made it undeniable.
She was pregnant.
She stepped off the medical scanner, and the hologram of her body vanished. She was alone in the clinic, continuing her habit of scanning herself daily to help gather data on the experimental treatment. Fortunately that data hadn’t been purged by the military force that was holding them, and she’d be able to forward it to Trenola and Dr. Liu Wei once the military lockout ended.
Oh god, what was Liu going to say? What was Captain Moon going to say? What was her mother going to say?
She forced herself to be calm. This wasn’t the end of the world. It was the beginning of one. It happened all of the time, and it was something to celebrate, wasn’t it?
Except for several factors, she reminded herself.
One, she was recovering from a psychiatric condition. It wasn’t supposed to be hereditary, but it called her ability to consent into question.
She frowned. No, fuck that. She’d known what she was doing when she’d jumped Dornodo. If anyone had a problem with it they could shove it up their ass.
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Two. Tuunka Powan. She chewed her lip as she tried to understand her pregnancy from the eyes of a Yonohoan. She quickly realized that she had no idea how they’d view it. While the birth would be unapproved in advance, and therefor unregistered, that itself wasn’t a crime. If she were Yonohoan, they would just register the birth with the Topokans and everything would be fine.
Except that she was from Earth.
She quickly realized that she didn’t have enough information to understand all of the aspects of her situation. She’d have to talk to someone. And it had might as well be the father.
She found him playing an alien ball game with the boys. The game itself was something like handball, except that the goal was more like basketball in that points were scored for throwing the ball through one of six hoops that were moving through the air. Both the ball itself and the hoops were holographic, and the game looked quite fun. Sarah had yet to work up the courage to try it.
She watched them play until the end of it. Dornodo’s team won, and he was celebrating as he came over to her. She gave him a congratulatory kiss, then told him that they needed to speak in his room.
The boys all jeered politely at the invitation. She couldn’t blame them, not really. Neither she nor Dornodo had been subtle about their relations since they’d started, and the teenagers were … well, teenagers.
They were all very happy for the couple, but a certain amount of polite teasing was to be expected when a relationship like theirs was carried on right out in the open.
The door to Dornodo’s room closed behind them and he abruptly kissed her. He too had misconstrued her reasons for inviting him into a private area, and he abruptly broke the kiss to pull of his shirt.
“Not now,” she told him. “Dornodo, I have something to tell you and I’m not entirely sure how you’ll react.”
He paused, his face abruptly turning serious as he saw that there was no humor in her voice. “I will listen. Whatever it is that plagues you, we will get through it together.”
She smiled. She had hoped that he would say something like that. “I’m pregnant.”
His eyebrows rose sharply. After a moment, he inhaled deeply, held the breath, and let it out.
He sat on the bed and put his hands in his head. He shook it for a good solid minute.
“I can’t believe we Tuunka Powan,” he said, his voice full of mortification.
“You know I don’t really understand Yonohoan culture. How bad is it?”
“It is very good! It is not bad at all,” he said. “Except that it will be somewhat mortifying to tell everyone that I could not control myself around the beautiful Earth woman and got her pregnant. It will impact my business slightly because I will have to bring a Topoka with me from now on, but that is okay. I am very happy to be a father, Sarah, and I hope that you will allow me to be the child’s [male role model] as well.”
“Of course,” she said immediately. The word for ‘father’ and ‘male role model’ were different in Yonohoan, with the latter being Parana. The child’s mother was always their mother, but it was common for a child’s father and parana might be the same person, or they might be two different people. It was similar to having a father and a step-father, except that the relationship between the father and the mother of the child might have no more depth to it than that of a sperm-donor.
“I am relieved. After we Tuunka Powan, it would be very embarrassing to me if you selected a Parana instead of allowing me to fulfill the role,” he admitted.
“It would be?” she asked, cocking her head to the side as though she were considering changing her mind.
“Yes. Almost mortifying, although I could justify it by saying that I was unwilling to put aside my career to care for the child. It would speak ill of my character, but it would be less embarrassing than having the mother of my child say that I am not a good enough role model for her child.”
“I see,” she said. Inwardly she pouted a bit to see that he hadn’t even realized that she had been trying to tease him, but then again they were having a very serious discussion. “So, where do we go from here?”
“That depends. Do you wish to live on Earth or Totola?” he asked.
“Do I have that choice?” Sarah asked.
“As the mother of a Yonohoan child, yes you do,” he answered. “You will be given citizenship immediately once we report the birth to the Topokans.”
Sarah chewed her lip. “I wish I could be more certain about how Earth will react to this news. It might help if we got married, but I don’t know that they’ve been talking about immigration between Earth and the Yonohoah yet.”
They both considered that for a moment.
“If you wish to live on Earth, then I will fly the Toormonda for Earth children instead of Yonohoans. It will be an adjustment, but I am certain we can make it work,” Dornodo said.
“Yes, well, we have nine months to figure out a plan,” Sarah said. “We don’t have to make any decisions right now.”
“Well, actually we must decide whether or not to tell the children,” Dornodo said. “We could attempt to hide it, but … they would give us a very hard time if they found out that we tried to keep it a secret. If you begin to show signs before we are released, they are sure to notice. They are very observant, and they have nothing better to do than watch the interactions of everyone around them.”
“What will happen if we tell them?” she asked.
“They will tease us for Tuunka Powan for a while, but it is friendly teasing. They will throw grain at us, but that is the celebration for a pregnancy and it is a joyous thing that they would do whether we had planned this or not. Mostly the boys will follow me around and pretend to sniff me like they were Topokan. I will remind everyone that you are not Yonohoan, so they will not sniff you.”
“That’s how you shame people for Tuunka Powan?” she asked.
“It is more teasing than shaming,” he said, uncomfortably. “Everyone will be happy about it. Especially because you are from Earth. But it is customary to tease the parents of a baby of Tuunka Powan until the birth.”
Sarah nodded. “Well, alright then. You’re right that we don’t know how long we’ll be stuck out here, we might as well rip off the bandaid.”
So they did.
They called all of the teenagers into the same room for the announcement. The children looked on curiously as Dornodo stood in front of them, waiting for whatever he had to say. When he took Sarah’s hand and mumbled “We tuunka powan,” the room erupted into laughter.
The boys ran into the kitchen and returned with grain to throw at them while the girls began doing a dance around them. Sarah endured it with stoicism.
They really did seem pretty happy about it. It was embarrassing, but the ship hadn’t been so happy since they’d discovered the proto-star. She decided that it was worth the embarrassment to cheer everyone up.