“How much?” asked Kol from the side.
Dru ignored him waiting for her sister’s answer. When she didn’t answer Dru said, “Five hundred UCs.”
Kol laughed.
“More,” Jesse replied.
“One-thousands UCs.”
“Five-thousand UCs or I’m out of here. You’ve done enough to me and I’ll not do you any favors, sister.”
Dru turned behind her and then looked back at her IC and nodded, “You’ll have them within the hour. And I’ve your word that you’ll be there, Jesse?”
“Yes, I’ll be there, but this will be the last thing I ever do for you.”
Dru rolled her eyes at her sister and just ended the RVM.
“Well,” Jesse said to Kol, handing his IC back to him, “at least we will get some UCs for it. I imagine 5,000 will go far in Hogo.”
“You have no idea how much that really is do you?” Kol asked.
Jesse shrugged, “No.”
“It’s enough to buy another cargo vessel. A used one, but a good secondhand model.”
“Or a house,” Jesse said not really wanting to live onboard a ship all the time.
“It would be the largest house in Hogo. We don’t need that. We need ships first.”
“No, I don’t need the largest house, just someplace discrete and large enough for Salem, me and you.”
“And some kids,” Kol added.
Jesse didn’t reply. All she could think about was who her real father was and wonder whether it was wise to pass those genes on. She thought about Dru’s children then and wondered if Kol’s genes would be strong enough to override her own, just as Ket’s had done for Dru. Then a thought occurred to her, “Do Alliance doctors decide fetuses’ genetics before they are born?”
“What do you mean?” Kol asked.
“Do they choose certain traits from the parents artificially with technology?”
“No, it’s forbidden,” he said automatically, then backtracked. “It’s supposed to be forbidden anyway, why?”
“Is there a way to find out if someone has done that? Like a DNA trace or something?”
“I’m sure there’s a way. Imperial medical equipment can never be wiped, and it transmits while it’s working. I know there are ways around it, but probably only if you are a doctor…” he stopped midsentence and just looked at Jesse.
“At least now I have something to hold over Dru and Ket, just in case.”
“But you don’t have any evidence,” Kol pointed out.
“You’re right, no evidence of a machine but the children. They should have black hair, it’s a dominant trait and there are other traits as well,” Jesse explained. “It’s good to know for two reasons, first if we want to do it ourselves, we know who to go to and second,” Kol interrupted her.
“Why would we ever want to do that? You and I are healthy and perfect. We don’t need to genetically modify our future children,” he was thinking how terrible it was to disrupt the most powerful thing in the natural world.
“Because” she looked at him very seriously, “I found out some things about myself that I don’t know that I want passed on to a child. I’m assuming Dru might already know the same and that’s why she did it.”
“What things?” Kol asked wondering what else she could be hiding.
“Nothing to worry about now,” she replied, thinking that she and Dru would have to have a conversation at some point, but not now or anytime soon. Then being brought back to the present she asked Kol, “Please kiss me and let’s sleep. I’m tired.”
Jane walked into the large Main House of House Rega on Alliance Planet Two. She had no time to meet the slaves or the middling class people that waited to greet her. She walked past all of them quickly looking for the nursery which she found only because Jei was walking swiftly behind her telling her which way to go.
Once she entered, she went to the grey skinned child playing on the floor and picked her up. Jane held the chubby, black haired baby with blue eyes against her. My eyes, she thought. Then she instinctually smelled the top of her head and thought, She may look like an alien, but she still smells like my baby.
Without any warning, memories came flooding back to Jane. Memories of being a mother for the first time and holding her own human babies this way. Her love for her human children, but these memories stopped when she looked up at Jei. He had said something.
“What?” she asked.
“Magnolia has only the best and we monitor her to make sure that the Dulu womb wasn’t detrimental in her development. I don’t need to explain to you the risks involved with those wombs as it was you and Doctor Anu who used them first. However, none of the children reared in them have shown any sign of emotional instability as we had in the Empire so many years ago with our own engineered wombs.”
Jane looked at Magnolia again, “She is perfect. And she has my eyes, like all my children. Who would have ever thought a recessive blue eye trait in humans could show up in a half-Alliance child when it seems like, judging by all the other children, Alliance traits are more dominant?” After a minute of reflection, she added, “And it’s only right that my own child be nurtured in a Dulu womb after what I did to the other women’s children. I hope the other women of House Human were made aware of that?”
“Yes, they are aware, I had to pay a mountain of fines and call in a lot of debts for Magnolia. Doctor Rea too.”
“You kept her onboard the Kzi?”
“Yes. I didn’t trust anyone on planet after your death. I would have kept her in my quarters if I could have.”
“Thank you Jei for not letting her die,” Jane said quietly and held the child against her tightly.
Jei nodded in acknowledgement. He was having a difficult time controlling his emotions. Seeing Jane hold their daughter for the first time was almost more than he could bear. He didn’t know what to do so he dismissed the nanny. When she was gone, he walked across the room on trembling legs to Jane, and asked, “May I hold you both?”
Jane didn’t look up at Jei. She was at a loss for a moment, but then she nodded.
She hadn’t been prepared for how she would feel, holding her new daughter and Jei holding them both in his strong arms. His massive form coming around them gently. Jane couldn’t help it then; she began to cry. She cried for joy and grief. For all that she couldn’t control and things she had controlled but done so badly. All the mistakes she had made.
Jei held them for a long time. He didn’t speak but he cried too. He cried for relief at them all being together and vowed silently that they would never be separated again as long as he lived. He would protect his human family from everyone, including himself.
Magnolia cooed and tried to say some words both in English and Alliance, but they were unrecognizable, gibberish.
“She’s so beautiful,” Jane said when she finally trusted her voice again.
Magnolia wanted to move around so Jane put her down on the plush black rug and she moved towards some brightly colored human toys, “You’ve done a good job, Jei.”
Magnolia was fascinated by her mother and kept touching her face and then her human doll’s, then looked at Jei and said in very broken Alliance, so it did not come through on Jane’s translator, “Like Ellie.”