WHEN Jacqui came round, she found that she was lying on her bed, feeling quite comfortable although very tired. She was alone. It took some time for her to assemble her thoughts and recollections of the interrupted ‘interview’.

So Nathan was alive! Or at least, he had been alive and had recovered, a few months after she had accidentally stowed away on the spaceship. But ‘now’ was fifty-eight years into the future, by Earth’s reckoning. She had grasped all to do with light-speed delays. Surely Adam would have died by now—he was well into his forties when Jacqui first met him—and Nathan, if still alive, would be in his late sixties. Older than she was, physically! Besides, if she ever found a way to get back to Earth, another fifty-eight years would have elapsed, so Nathan would be dead too. The realisation that she would never see either of them again overwhelmed her, and she burst into tears.

The fit of crying lasted a long time, and eventually dissolved into occasional sobs, which continued until she fell asleep once again. When she woke up, feeling somewhat recovered, she saw that the Sou, the big speaking Sou, was in her chamber once more. In a wave of panic, realising her nudity, she tried to cover herself, until reason took over: the creature was non-human after all—and it would not understand the embarrassment she felt. But all the same…

“I really must have some clothing,” she ventured, nervously. “Some sort of covering for my body. It need only cover these parts of me—” indicating her breasts, lower torso, and thighs “—and I need it because of the customs of my people, not for warmth. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I understand your wants. We shall see what we can provide. Meanwhile, before you lost consciousness, we were speaking about the signal our ship received from Earth. Shall I continue?”

Jacqui thought about it and then nodded—but the gesture was not understood. She murmured “yes, all right” timidly.

“As I said,” the Sou resumed, “your son Nathan was restored to full health and being looked after by your companions Adam and Thelma. In reply, the robots sent a reply back to your planet, saying that you were aboard their ship, alive and healthy but under sus­pended animation. There was other information contained in the robots’ transmission which we are still assessing, so I cannot discuss that at this moment.”

“Can you tell whether my people received that message?”

“No, we can not. They would not have received it until over two years by their reckoning, after their original transmission. And no further signals have been received from Earth. We can only hope that they still had their receiving equipment in working order.”

That seemed to be the best Jacqui could hope for. She was resigned to the fact that she’d never see Adam and Nathan again. Better change the subject. “Tell me about your reproductive system,” she said. “You were beginning to, in our last meeting, but we got sidetracked.”

“This was my intention,” replied the Sou. “It may well be that you can help us discover the reason for the failure of the Earth mission.

“The progeny that hatches from our eggs (yes—we are an egg-laying species) cannot survive on our planet unaided, nor can we, the adults of our species, sustain them. The sea which covers most of our planet does not contain the right nutrients. This is the reason why our species has evolved into a two-stage reproductive process involving two distinct body forms. Far in the past, before our species even became sentient, we entered into a symbiotic relationship with a different species which shared our planet with us. If you had seen this creature, you would have described it as similar to a giant newt-like amphibian from your world. Our first-stage progeny would be raised and nourished by this creature as one of its own young—until eventually it reached maturity and gave birth to beings in my form. Accordingly, evolution determined that our first-stage young would closely resemble the young of that species so that they would be accepted by the foster-parents.”

Cuckoos! thought Jacqui, brood parasites, like cuckoos—but she kept this thought to herself. Instead she asked: “What did these—newts—stand to gain by this relationship?”

“Our first-stage progeny offered their hosts some sort of protection against predators. I am not an expert on this subject and I do not know the details. What I can tell you is that, many generations ago, the newt-symbiotes were unfortunately struck down by a virulent disease, and eventually died out. Yes—they are now extinct. Had we not had the means to overcome this crisis, my species would also be extinct.

“Fortunately, we had by now developed advanced technologies including interstellar travel and genetic manipulation—”

“We have the second of those technologies on our planet too,” interrupted Jacqui. “Or rather, had—when I left Earth. I don’t know anything about interstellar travel, except in the stories my Grandad used to write. ‘GM’—as we called it—it was not well liked by my people—indeed thoroughly resented by many, especially when it was food crops and livestock being manipulated. We have a legend called ‘Frankenstein’—”

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“Maybe your race misused the technology. What I can say is, my race sounded out the planets of nearby star systems, and found a few that held species that could serve as substitute symbiotes. So our genetic engineers set to work modifying the embryos in our eggs, so that the first-stage progeny would resemble the young of the new host and be accepted by them. We had many failures at first, but eventually we managed to establish a few workable relationships. And so our race was able to survive.

“However, the relationships did not last. If the symbiotes were sufficiently intelligent, they would in time suspect that our progeny were alien to them and reject them—and then we had to go and look somewhere else—”

“And so you came to Earth,” retorted Jacqui. “So as to use us humans as symbiotes for your first-stage progeny. I call that exploit­ation. You can call it what you like.”

“I do call it exploitation—I admit that. You are correct. But your own species has a long history of exploiting other animals on your planet—for food and clothing, for example. You cannot deny that. With us, the issue was that of our survival. We had hoped to work with the human race for at least one generation, and maybe more. We had high hopes of success—and our intention was that no harm would be caused to your species. We transported the eggs to your planet, hatched them on board ship, and then laid the young where they would be discovered and taken in. We had already prepared the locality in advance—”

“Of course! The Curse,” exclaimed Jacqui, interrupting once again. “You did something that prevented any babies from being conceived naturally in Wistbourne, for at least the five years pre­ceding. I read this in my Grandfather’s account. I suppose you did that so that the villagers would be more eager to take in abandoned babies—‘Foundlings’ as we called them. But your measure led to plenty of misery for years beforehand. Was this ethical of you?”

“Ethical or not, it was intended so as to increase our chances of success. And the move did succeed, at first. Unfortunately we lost almost all of the first-stages before they could reproduce.”

A thought occurred to Jacqui. “May I ask how the female of your first-stages—the Foundlings—came to give birth in the first place? She was in the company of two males and they were under constant observation, but no sexual activity was noticed.”

“None was required. The males were redundant and infertile—as they always are—but we produced them for balance and to provide companionship for the females. The female carried all the genes of her offspring already: the ‘birth’ was viviparous and parthenogenetic. I would have thought your people would have realised that.”

Virgin Birth, thought Jacqui. She had already suspected that, when she first heard the account from Joyce and Helen. Just as well the operation had been kept secret! Some in the Church would have been outraged…

*

Another thought. “Your other reproduction stage—the one with the ‘eggs’—is that sexual? If not, how do you manage the diversity of your gene pool—assuming that it matters to you as it does to us? What sex are you? And what is your name, if I may ask?”

“Yes, we do have sexual reproduction. I am male. But this is of no consequence to you: we do not exhibit sexual dimorphism and you would have no way of distinguishing our males from our females. I may as well tell you that the three of my kindred whom we brought back from your planet are all female. And we do not have names: at least, not names that could be expressed as any form of word you could pronounce. You may choose any name you like to address me by.”

“OK. I’ll call you ‘Major’, if you like. Reminds me of a friend of mine, who became a Major in the army. And also on account of your large size compared with others of your kind that I have met.”

“Major. That is well. You may call me that. And you may call our species ‘Sous’ if you are accustomed to that. But I am still trying to learn more about the group of progeny we placed on your planet—what went wrong.”

“What I read in my Grandfather’s account,” began Jacqui, “was that these Foundlings were very well received by their foster-parents at first and behaved like model children. The only unusual thing was a sort of bluish-green sheen on their skin, which could only be seen when you looked at it with the light from a certain angle.” At this point Jacqui stooped and moved her head from side to side, squinting at Major’s coiled body. “Yes,” she continued, “I think I can just about make out the same sheen on your skin, if I look carefully. So maybe your genetic engineers slipped up there?

“This wasn’t the main problem, and shouldn’t have been a problem at all, but unfortunately on my world, racial prejudice—fear, distrust, ill-treatment of people with skin colour different from one’s own—is endemic, and has been for centuries. Many of us tried to combat it, to overcome it—but often without success.” Jacqui remembered how she and Adam had gone on the Black Lives Matter protests in London—but she’d have gone even if she hadn’t been with Adam.

“This phenomenon occurs on other worlds besides,” commented Major. “We have to take account of this when seeking a symbiote. Yes, we may have slipped up there. In a highly complex species like your own, our genetic manipulation may not be able to produce a perfect lookalike. But you say this was not the main problem.”

“The Foundlings started breaking things—destroying things. There was some sort of ‘power’ they used occasionally—a power which was at first inexplicable and hence ‘supernatural’ to my people. One of them while still an infant was able to drill a large hole in solid wood without any tools. As if a baby could possibly hold a tool—let alone use one! Another baby reduced a toy to shreds—again without any tools. And there were other incidents. But the worst was when a man’s arm was reduced to pulp … It was the man’s brother, in a furious rage, who killed most of the Foundlings. He blamed them for what had befallen his brother. An act of revenge, we would call it.”

“I see,” replied Major. “I’m afraid I cannot explain these events—except to say that they certainly should not have happened. I do not have the right sort of expertise—I shall have to consult with our scientists.”

And with that, ‘Major’ furled his Big Bell, squeezed himself through the tunnel, and was gone.