Chapter 3

Syretia ... Finch;

Oh, my. I didn’t know what to expect. I only knew that I was stifled, imprisoned, by the strictures of my native culture. I’d watched the activities of the Terran colonists. They didn’t know they were watched, and, of course, we didn’t get the subtler interactions, what they thought, what they said away from the monitor at the Mat-Trans station. But anything, I thought, would be better than the rigid, isolating, social structures I grew up with. Our leaders seemed not to realise that there were records, ancient, buried under millennia of conventional records. I was not the only one to chafe under the weight of social convention. Several friends agreed with me, though very quietly. One, ‘Charles’, suggested we take the matter into our own hands. We didn’t have much we wanted to take with us, and so we stepped together onto the Mat Trans grid, leaving our ‘Promethean’ names behind.

As I studied Terran history, it was apparent that the tendency to freeze social structures and exclude ‘outsiders’ was not limited to our birth society. However, the humans did seem to grow radical thinkers who challenged conventional ideas. Many were ostracised, exiled, executed or forced to commit suicide, but eventually nearly everyone came around to a new point of view, at the very least, agreeing to disagree. Here, on Andromeda, tolerance, acceptance, was written into the Constitution, but, more importantly, it was ingrained into the characters of the colonists. Many of them, of course, having come to the planet specifically to escape discrimination.

Acceptance extended to Charles and myself. We considered our own relationship carefully, deciding that much as we liked each other, that was not enough. Charles went to work for a farmer. He thought working in the open air with his hands, learning about the soil, the crops, the animals, sounded interesting. I ... well, I wanted to explore. I began to spend my time in learning, filling in gaps in my technical education, then learning to pilot the hyper-space vessels. I learned the theory behind the Fold-Space ships, too, but the Fold-Space transits, to and from Andromeda, were paused, pending resolution of the disputes among the Federation Planets.

The work on the land brought Charles close to the farmer’s daughter, Naomi. My training placed me close to the Rosses, but then, the King. Hex Finch, former courier pilot, then Governor, then chosen by the colonists as Sovereign. He’s, well, he’s an attractive man. Intelligent, caring, self-effacing. He already had two wives, but they seemed to think there was room in their family for me, too. I believe that the step of legal bonding, marriage, was partly about establishing a right of citizenship for me, as it was also for Charles with Naomi. I don’t suppose the Prometheans would have taken us back by force, but who knows?

I qualified as a pilot. I just needed to manage an actual hyper-space translation, as against a simulated one. Not that anyone could tell the difference. Hex jumped at the chance to spend some time in space. He would be the required co-pilot for my first jump. I know he fretted sometimes under the constraints of his position. We’d be away the better part of a day; ten hours out to the Limit, upward and downward translations, then ten hours back home. The ten hours, though ... From the beginning, the physical relationship I had with ... Hex ... was a revelation. Just as I had hoped, and more so. Promethean society raised stability to a religion. Emotion was ‘unreliable’. Breeding so detached from relationships that it was a matter of statistical analysis of strengths and weaknesses. For the most part, it involved test tubes rather than bodies. The result, a sort of physical perfection combined with emotional distance. Hex, though, and apparently Naomi with Charles, woke something buried by millennia of repression. My body had never forgotten, or lost, the ability to react. We didn’t hurry – Hex didn’t hurry – and I lost count of the orgasms. When Hex came he’d been holding back so long it felt like a torrent, and I made use of the stock of pads to contain the dribbles.

We dressed carefully and took our places at the controls. We dutifully ran through checks, though we knew Liam would have kept an eye on things. “Tell me about Terra,” I told Hex.

“Earth?” He hesitated. “The third planet of a G-type yellow dwarf star. In the goldilocks zone, but with an axial tilt so most parts have pronounced seasonal variations.”

“I know the facts,” I said. “I’m interested in the people, the feel.”

“Wow! That’s a tall order. There’s an incredible degree of variation in every respect. Some, a few, enjoy hurting people, others spend their lives helping others. I suppose most are somewhere in between. Different groups have differing ways of living, different social norms, religions, and often have disputes with their neighbours which have lasted millennia. It would be easiest to talk about specific groups, like the Inuit. They live in the north, living close to nature, hunting, fishing, enduring long periods of isolation in temperatures well below freezing.”

“Tell me about Hex Finch, though. What’s your ... origin?”

“I’m from an island called Britain. It’s large as islands go, two hundred and forty-four thousand square Kilometres, and we have five distinct groups, Scots, Irish, Welsh, Cornish and English. I’m Scottish, which means I’m a Celt, mostly, anyway. Scots, Irish, Welsh and Cornish are originally from a group called Celtic. The English are mongrels these days. Some Celt, some Scandinavian, some Anglo Saxon or Jute. Other odds and ends. It’s difficult to tell without a detailed DNA mapping. But it’s possible to trace origins using DNA. I’m about two-thirds Saxon and one third Dane with some others mixed in. I haven’t mentioned the immigrant population, people who fled war or oppression in their own countries.”