Chapter Text
Rem bit her lip.
When Conrad had woken them, so excited, she’d assumed he’d finally found what they’d all been looking for: an Earth-like planet, something that could sustain humanity, could answer the prayer that Project SEEDS had been.
She hadn’t been expecting a baby .
Conrad had held the child–a girl, naked and squalling and still covered in blood–up in excitement, and the scientists in the room had gasped, because the girl was glowing . Incandescent blue lines, delicate as lace, traced their way across her skin. On the child’s back, three stubbly wings extended from the nexus of the markings.
Not human, that was obvious. But a baby, that was obvious, too. Rem wanted to take the child, dry her off, wrap her up, give her a bottle. She wanted to read a book on parenting to figure out what one was supposed to do in these situations, since she wasn’t actually sure what to do beyond that.
Rem was fairly certain, though, it wasn’t what Conrad and the others were discussing.
There were words being thrown around, CT scan, Xray , and she wasn’t sure but she thought she remembered reading somewhere that radiation like that wasn’t good for newborns. They were talking about blood tests, and the thought of finding a vein in those chubby little arms made her gag. No one seemed to be against it. No one seemed to be anything but excited.
Rem bit her lip and tasted blood.
She should say something. She should say something. Surely this couldn’t be legal, someone had to speak for the child. Where were her parents?
Oh, right. Her mother was a plant; Conrad had seen a sudden energy spike in one of the electricity plants and then found the baby floating in the bulb. Odd, he’d said, but there was blood, on the child and on the plant, almost like she’d been born the normal way. He’d said it like he was a little grossed out by the concept, like he himself hadn’t been gestated in a uterus and pushed through his mother’s vagina. Such a man , Rem thought.
He doubted the plant even noticed, Conrad continued. Rem had never given birth herself but somehow she doubted that a woman, plant or not, could fail to notice that . Still, a plant in a bulb had no agency. This child’s mother had no power to speak for her. The baby, with lungs that could scream and limbs that could crawl and grasp, already had more power than her parent, and wasn’t that a terrifying thought? A baby had no power at all.
This girl was alone in the world, the only one of her kind, surrounded by men and women who looked at her like wolves looked at a rabbit.
Rem bit her lip down to the jawbone.
She knew Conrad and the others. They were shipmates, but it was more than that. Project SEEDS was the trip of a lifetime, literally , a multi-century shot in the dark, a perilous journey through uncharted space in search of an unpromised future. The skeleton crew that took turns manning the ships had to trust each other, trust each other with not just their lives but their hopes. Every time one of them went into cold sleep, leaving another at the helm alone, they were placing the future of humanity on the shoulders of someone they saw as family. Someone whose honor and dedication had to be unimpeachable.
Before today, Rem would have vouched for each and every one of the crew with her life. But as she watched them watch the baby, something hungry in their eyes, she wondered if she’d trusted too fast.
No. No, they were all just a little excited, that was all, she had to calm them down. They were good people, all of them, she just had to remind them of that.
“Wait,” she started, and her voice sounded faint even to her. She coughed, trying to speak with more authority. “This doesn’t seem right. Can we just…step back a second here? Think about this?”
They turned to look at her, fixing her in their gaze as one, and she suppressed the chill of fear that ran up her spine. Conrad smiled at her. “We are thinking about this, Rem. Don’t worry, we won’t start our studies until we have a comprehensive plan.”
“That’s…not what I meant.” Her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth, and she had to scour her mind for the correct words. What she hoped were the correct words, anyway. “It’s just, um…I know everyone is excited, but we need to think about the…the ethical concerns here, too…”
One of the xenobiologists, a short-haired man named Hargrave, sighed. “Rem, we haven’t got time to go to an Institutional Review Board here. This is an unprecedented discovery! And who knows how long this specimen may last? Its vitals are all over the place, it could expire tomorrow—“
“It’s a child!” Rem burst out, horrified by the thought. “And if it—i-if she dies tomorrow, then it’s all the more important we treat her kindly today.”
She closed her eyes and sighed with relief. She’d said it, it was out, now everyone would come to their senses and everything would be fine…
And then she heard laughter.
“Rem, you can’t be serious,” came Conrad’s voice. “Come on, you’ve studied plant biology, you know better than this. There’s—there’s a thousand fools who have gotten caught up in the idea that plants have some kind of consciousness, just because they look vaguely human. We used to laugh at people like that, back in college, Rem! This thing came from a plant, it may look more human than them but it isn’t.”
That was true. Rem remembered their days in Berkeley, when Conrad had been a TA and she a freshman in Plant Studies. They’d walked past many little protests on campus, where people had been waving signs emblazoned with slogans like FREE THE PLANTS or NO POWER FROM SLAVERY . And they’d laughed, because it was all so silly. They’d read the studies, the court cases in their Ethics of Plant Engineering class. Redding et al, Nelson vs Conroy. They’d heard all of the arguments, and knew with absolute certainty: plants weren’t sentient. They had no minds to speak of, less awareness of self than the lab rats and chimpanzees used in other biomedical research. They were generators, and they made what they were told to make, and any stray expressions or noises or movements were purely coincidental.
But this child. She wasn’t quite a plant—no, her facial features were human, the sounds coming from her lungs were human. But the wings, the lines, meant that she wasn’t fully human, either, but something else too. This child, the spontaneous creation of a plant, was a blend of both species. It spoke to something. An artistry. A will .
An attempt, maybe, to communicate.
But nobody was fucking listening.
Rem watched her colleagues, her friends, her family, chattering excitedly about how best to study the specimen. If they should hook it up to power or wait. She thought she heard the word vivisection, reaching her ears as if from under the surface of a dark pond.
Or maybe she was the one underwater. She felt like she was drowning, sinking deeper and deeper into the lake of her thoughts, hands clawing uselessly at the surface of the water as they all moved further and further away from her.
This was how she had felt when Alex had died, she remembered suddenly. The hopelessness, the helplessness, had pulled her under like a riptide until she could barely get out of bed. Her friends had tried to help, but they couldn’t reach her beneath the surface, and she’d felt so deeply, terribly alone. It wasn’t until that bizarre dream, where she’d realized she still had a future , that Rem had been able to claw herself from the pit.
But it wasn’t Rem who was alone, right now, but this girl, this girl who was the only one of her species in the whole world. And if the people around her had their way, the girl’s ticket to the future might be punched right here and now.
And suddenly Rem couldn’t bite her lip anymore.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was running, feet pounding across the floor like something was chasing her. She slammed into a startled Conrad and wrenched the child from his arms. There was a terrifying moment when her hands, slick with her own nervous sweat and the plant’s blood, slid across the girl’s skin and the baby almost slipped from her grasp.
But then Rem had her, and she tucked the child to her chest and pelted away down the hallways. She could hear them following, and it drove her on faster. Finally, she skidded to a stop in front of her destination. Shifting the baby to her hip, she opened the computer terminal and began punching in her access codes.
Behind her, the door opened, and she could hear the others file in slowly.
“There’s nowhere to run, Rem,” Conrad panted behind her. “Hand it over and we’ll forget about this.”
“I’m afraid I can’t forget about this, and neither can you,” Rem replied, turning to show them the console in front of her. The screen glowed red, indicating that the cold sleep wake cycle for the entire ship had been activated. Her finger hovered over the Execute button. “Because in a few minutes, we’re all going to have a lot of questions to answer.”
Everyone froze. “Rem, what the hell are you doing?” Conrad whispered, horrified.
Rem forced herself to meet his eyes, despite the look of betrayal she saw there. She hardened her heart, swallowing the memories of their time at Berkeley, the memories of how he’d taken care of her after Alex died. She hoped their friendship would survive this, but if it didn’t, she could live with it.
“If you’re so sure that you’re doing the right thing, then you won’t mind if everyone finds out,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. “Mothers and fathers. Little kids. The Institutional Review Board members from Berkeley. This is humanity’s first contact with an alien race, right? Well, I think that all of humanity should get to decide how we proceed.”
The group looked nervously, guiltily, at each other. Conrad stepped forward, arms out. “Rem, this is silly—“
“I’ll fucking do it!” The shriek that tore out of her wasn’t a sound she thought she was capable of making. Dimly, she knew how dangerous this was. The ship wasn’t capable of supporting all of its passengers out of cold sleep. There wasn’t enough power, or oxygen. If she pressed this button, people could die. And beyond that, she could be court martialled, jailed or even executed for such a serious breach of protocol.
But the little girl in her arms had no one else, and if Rem didn’t do this, if Rem didn’t fight for her future, she wasn’t sure the girl would have one.
“William, if you want to explain to the human race why you were going to run experiments on a baby, then step right up. But if that doesn’t sound good to you…if the thought of explaining this situation to an outsider gives you any pause at all…”
His face twisted, but it was Ridley who spoke first. Ridley was a doctor, and she and Rem had met at orientation and got along very well. Running a hand through her dark hair, Ridley sighed. “Guys. She’s right. Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still burning with curiosity. But…this isn’t right.”
Rem sagged with relief. Around her, the others were nodding. It was as if they’d fallen under some spell that had now been broken. She caught more than a few dark looks cast her way, but no one seemed to be actively threatening her or the child anymore.
Conrad’s eyes were still on her, though, and on the child still balanced on her hip. The girl had stopped crying and was looking up at her with big, glowing blue eyes.
“What are we going to do with it, then?” He asked, and she didn’t like the way he watched her. Still hungry.
“I…I’ll raise her.” The words just tumbled out, before she’d thought about them. “I, um. Always wanted to be a mother.” That was a lie. But it was the only way to keep the girl safe. “And I can watch her, and make behavioral notes and keep track of her growth. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll still be a fascinating study.”
There was a rumble of satisfaction at that, and the group began to pull away from her. Ridley, however, walked up with an apologetic smile on her face and a kitchen towel in her hands.
“Rem. Thank you. I think you just stopped us all from making a big mistake.” She handed Rem the towel, and Rem started wiping the blood from the little girl in her arms.
I hope so, was all Rem could think. I really, really hope so.