Aite Chp. 3 It was late when Jay and Kyla came home, but neither of them particularly wanted to go to bed. Jay began telling Kyla all about the things the others had said he'd been, while Kyla heated soup in the microwave. He felt electric, galvanized, like he could stay up all night. He also didn't feel much like eating, so he let the soup get cold and talked while Kyla ate. Kyla listened impassively as she ate. When she finished, she looked up. "Nambu offered me a position in ISO Intelligence," she said, showing no sign of having paid any attention to Jay. He hardly cared. "He did? That's great! I'd rather see you doing that than that public relations shit." She looked at him with the soft eyes he so rarely saw in her. "You'd like it if I took the job?" "Hell, yes! You'd be good at it, and you'd be doing something worthwhile. Besides," he said, and grinned, "if you're spying for ISO you'll be able to check up on me. I know how you'd love that." "Well. I guess it's a good idea, then." "Yeah. You feel better about all this, now?" He shoved his soup out of the way, and took her hand, across the table. "You know, Ky, I don't want you to feel like I'm trying to leave you out. I want all this stuff to be a part of my life, but I want you to be a part of my life too. Okay?" "It's all right," she said, because she desperately wanted it to be all right. "Great!" He stood up, releasing her hand, and vaulted across the table, landing next to her. Kyla had to fight back a smile. Jay was so immature sometimes, but she had to love him for it. "So. You and I've both got new jobs, and I'm going to find my past. Think that calls for a celebration?" He grinned down at her. Kyla laughed and stood up. "Jay, you think *anything* calls for that sort of celebration," she said, and grabbed his head, pulling him to her. Jay's arms went around her, lifting her and swinging her up into his arms. She was no lightweight, but Jay was immensely strong, far moreso than one would expect from looking at him. They kissed deeply, and Kyla's hands began to work their way across Jay's chest, under his shirt. Finally Jay broke away. "Better put that on hold till I put you down someplace," he said, somewhat hoarsely. "Don't want to get me distracted enough to drop you or bump into something." "Oh, I don't think you will." "Overconfident little bitch, aren't you?" "*Little* bitch? I'm an inch taller than you, you Italian bastard, and don't you forget it." "Overconfident big bitch, then." "Big, tall, beautiful, sexy blonde bitch." "Macho, studly Italian bastard." The two of them burst out laughing. "Modest, aren't we?" Kyla gasped, leaning her head against Jay's chest. "Hey, it's hard to be humble when we're as great as we are." Kyla lifted her head. "Well. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, and I need to get up early. If I'm to get any sleep at all, you'd better find someplace to put us both down, you macho, studly and humble Italian bastard." "There's a table right here..." Jay had his "innocent look" on. "We could even do something interesting with the leftover soup..." "The *bed*, idiot! You know how hard that table is?" Kyla put on her best look of mock indignation. "I always thought you *liked* stuff hard..." Eventually they did reach the bed. However, despite an early start, Kyla didn't get much sleep at all... *Faces, staring hateful faces mocking her, now they knew what she was, and Jay, standing in the circle with hatred in his eyes--* "Kyla!" Jay was shaking her. "Get up and turn off your fucking alarm clock!" "You do it," Kyla mumbled. "You're awake." Jay lifted her bodily out of bed and plopped her down on the rug, despite her struggling. "There. Now you're awake too." He was right, there; the chilly autumn air of the house was something she usually got used to in steps, and being shoved out into it cold turkey had woken her up, all right. But she was shivering almost too badly to move. With a great effort of will, she stood up, fighting a sudden wave of nausea. She shut off the clock's whining, and then threw herself back onto the bed, next to Jay, where she proceeded to imitate the alarm clock at top volume, directly in his ear. There was a brief wrestling match, ending with Kyla having a pillow pressed over her face. Since that was the position she slept in, Kyla grabbed the blankets, curled up and tried to go back to sleep. Jay yanked the pillow away. "Ky, you've got to get up! You've got a doctor's appointment!" "I feel too sick to get up." "You *always* feel sick in the morning nowadays. Sleeping late won't help." "Yes, it will. And it's only Dr. Kymel anyway," Kyla said sleepily. "She can wait; it's not like she's got any patients today." "Well, if she hasn't got any patience, you shouldn't make her wait," Jay said, grinning triumphantly. Kyla shot him a dirty look. "Ba-dum-bump." "You're not going to let me go back to sleep, are you?" "Nope." "Damn all morning people to hell." She sat up, yawning. "I'm no early bird. I just sleep light." "That's good. When we've got a baby crying for 2 AM feedings, you can get up for them." "You're the night owl-- you'll already *be* awake at 2 AM." "Like hell. I have a job." "You also have an appointment with the Doctor in about an hour from now. Better get up and get cleaned up." "If I don't?" "I'll toss you in the shower." "Oh, you'd shower with me?" "With only an hour of time to play with? Don't tempt me, Kyla, or you'll be late." Kyla got up, got dressed and showered, and went to her appointment, still irritated from lack of sleep. * * * "Anything of importance happen lately?" Dr. Kymel asked, as she ran her tests on Kyla. Automatically Kyla answered, "Nothing much," then checked herself. The standard answer was no longer applicable. "No, actually something of monumental importance happened. Yesterday, as a matter of fact. Jay's people found him." "Jay's *what*?" Dr. Kymel looked up from her scanner momentarily. "His people. The people he was with before the accident. It turns out that he was a fighter, in ISO. Now that Galactor's coming back, they want him back." "Galactor's coming back?" "That's what they said. We talked to Dr. Nambu from ISO-- he used to know Jay." Something flickered across Dr. Kymel's face and was gone before Kyla could identify it. "You know who Dr. Nambu is, right?" "It would have been hard to avoid," Dr. Kymel said dryly. "I didn't lose *my* memories of the war with Galactor." "It looked for a second-- when I said the name-- that you'd met him, or something." "Well, tell me what you thought of him. And ISO in general. Are you happy Jay's found his people? Is he?" "He's thrilled about it." "Give me your arm." As Kymel took a blood sample, she continued to speak. "That's part of the question. But how do *you* feel?" "I really don't care much. I'm happy for Jay, I guess." "Kyla, you are a wonderful liar, but I know all your tricks. You're upset about it, aren't you?" Kyla stared at the far wall for several moments. "They're the ones who're upset, not me." "Why?" "They don't like me. I don't know why. No, I do know why. Because I look like some Galactor bitch, and because they resent me for being closer to Jay than they are, nowadays." "Well. Even the Science Ninja Team are only human, Kyla. Give them some time-- and don't go prejudging them the way they're prejudging you, or you'll never have a chance to get along." The doctor wasn't looking at Kyla-- she was concentrating on the machine she'd dumped Kyla's blood into. Kyla narrowed her eyes, staring intently at Dr. Kymel. "I never mentioned the Science Ninja Team." Perhaps recognizing the tension in Kyla's voice, Dr. Kymel turned and looked at her. "But it's obvious that they are," she said. "They are, right? Jay's a member of the Science Ninja Team." "He *was* a member of the Science Ninja Team. Did you know that already?" "Why would I have?" "Then how did you guess it was them?" "I said so. It was obvious. A team of fighters, associated with Nambu?" She seemed to think about it for several seconds. "Now that you mention it, I suppose I was jumping to conclusions. He may well have other fighters-- but the most famous ones are the Ninja Team, so I just assumed. Does he remember them?" "He says that he knows he *could* have done the things they say he did, but he still doesn't remember doing them." "And what about you? Any memories?" "No." Flashes of deja vu, yes, but nothing concrete enough to call a memory. "He told them about the baby!" If Dr. Kymel was fazed by the *non sequitur*, she didn't show it. "Why does that upset you? Are you ashamed of the baby?" "Ashamed? Not really... but it's *our* private business! He had no right to tell them!" "If he thinks of them as his friends, then perhaps he thinks he has every right. You didn't tell him to keep it a secret, did you?" "No..." "How do you feel about the baby? Do you still hate the idea so much?" Kyla looked down at her stomach. As yet, it was still flat-- the only weight she'd gained so far had been spread all over her body, making her softer and more feminine-looking than she'd been. "Not hate, no. I'm resigned to it. But him-- he's so damned gleeful about it! He's a man-- he doesn't have to..." She lost the train of thought. A sudden clamoring of images flickered through her brain and were gone, like the remnants of a dream thought lost, and she let them flow, trying to capture and analyze them. *"...but I am not a man..."* *"...not a man or a woman either? what then?..."* *"...both is neither..."* "Kyla?" Dr. Kymel was asking. "Is something wrong?" "What?" Kyla looked up. "Oh, nothing. I just-- had a flash of something. I think it might have had something to do with the nightmare I had this morning, and I was trying to catch it, but it's gone now." "Most likely better that way," Kymel said. "There's enough pain to deal with in the real world without dealing with nightmares too. Better to forget. I know. Lay back on the table and put your legs in the stirrups." Kyla did so. "Have you given the question of what to do about the baby any more thought?" "Nambu offered me a higher-paying job with ISO Intelligence, with child-care benefits." "Wonderful! And are you going to take it? Take a deep breath and then exhale slowly, please." "Yes." Kyla breathed deeply for the doctor. "Well, that solves one problem. I'm afraid Utoland men are far too macho to accept staying home with the baby, even if their wife makes more-- and that goes double for Jay. Thought of any names?" "Why bother? Time enough for that when the kid is born. There aren't any I like, I can't go to relatives for names... I don't even know whether the kid is going to be a girl or a boy--" *"Now how could she know that yet?"* *"Besides..."* *"...not a BOY/not a GIRL/but just a little BABY..."* *"...then I'm a boy AND a girl..."* "Are you all right, Kyla?" Kyla shook her head, to clear it. "I'm fine. Can I close my legs now? This is a ridiculously undignified position." "Go ahead." Kymel stepped away. "Then I want you to get on the scale." "Yes, I am eating more." "Did I complain that you weren't?" Kymel noted down Kyla's weight on an odd- looking pad. "Any noticeable increase in appetite?" "You... might say that." Kyla had always been known to eat a great quantity of food, despite which she remained rail-slim. She was now eating almost twice as much as Jay, who was no anorexic by any standards. "How fat am I likely to get?" "It's not a question of fat at this point. Your normal ratio of body fat to mass is much lower than a woman's should be, and what's happening now is that you're putting on the extra fat you should actually have. Under normal circumstances, Kyla, you're quite underweight. I would guess you're going to put on something like 32 kilos, and burn all of it off a few weeks after the birth. But that's not too extreme-- you could stand to fit another 7-10 kilos on that frame of yours anyway." "Good, because I feel like I'm starving all the time and I hate the idea of getting fat. I liked my weight the way it was." "Well, eat whatever you want. One problem you *don't* have is overconsumption disorders. Your metabolism is fast enough to handle whatever junk you want to feed it." *"...your metabolism IS unusually fast... that's why you're hungry all the time..."* *"...there's no excuse for living on junk food! your kind run twice the risk of deficiency disease..."* "In fact," Kymel was saying, "with teeth as strong as yours and a metabolism so fast, you may be one of the few people in the world for whom sugar is actually good for you." "Am I different from ordinary people?" Kyla asked suddenly. "I mean-- with my metabolism being so fast-- is there some way to check, to make sure my child won't be born a freak?" Kymel frowned. "What brought that on?" "Just something I thought of." "Amniocentesis, but I wouldn't do it. Amniocentesis runs a 5% risk of causing birth defects, and in your case it wouldn't do any good-- if your child was likely to have six heads and a tail we still couldn't abort, for reasons of your health. You would only torment yourself for months, knowing you were going to have an abnormal child. It's not likely your child will have any defects, Kyla-- you and Jay are both healthy and strong. Don't worry about it." There was something-- Dr. Kymel wasn't being entirely truthful, somehow-- but Kyla was still too tired to ferret it out. "If you say so." "Besides, the sonagram shows a perfectly healthy, 15-week fetus. There's no visible defects so far, and no reason to believe there will be any. All right?" She smiled at Kyla, but Kyla had a great deal of experience with plastic smiles, and felt that Kymel's was one. Kymel glanced at the blood results. "I want you to start taking two of your pills each day. You're fine, but let's make sure you and the baby stay that way. Come to me when you've only got six pills left, and I'll make you up some more. And above all else, *don't* go a single day without them, or the results could be catastrophic. All right? Now, why don't you get your clothes on, go home and get some rest." There was something-- buried under Kymel's neat cover-ups and Kyla's own amnesia-- but what? Kyla dressed and went home, concentrating furiously. But the more she tried to pinpoint the source of her unease, the more vague it became. Finally she just decided to bury herself in a book and forget about it. * * * Teriani Kymel had a talent for masking herself. It was not enough simply to go emotionless and cold. That in itself could be a significator of emotion being hid within. The best disguise was a mask of a different emotion, and so she had held a facade of friendly concern, allowing as little as possible of the turmoil she felt to reach her face. Now she dropped the first mask, as Kyla drove home, and adopted the second that was second nature, the expressionless, neutral face that felt more natural to her than real feeling would have been. She was very, very much afraid. Item 1: Jay had been contacted by the Science Ninja Team. Had he told them who she was? Had Kozaburo heard her name? Hearing it, could he do anything but hate her for hiding so long, coward that she was? And what of the Science Ninja Team's reaction to discovering Joe alive-- would they hate the one who had saved his life because she had taken his memories? Regardless of the fact that she'd made him far happier, without his corrosive memories of hate? *Would* he regain his memories? There had always been a greater chance that he would, because there was less psychological pressure on him to forget, less need. She had taken that into account, though, and set up a baffle. If he remembered his hatred for Galactor, for Berg Katse, and realized that Katse was his lover-- that sort of conflict could rip his mind apart. As long as that potential existed, he would not remember. Maybe brief, happy fragments of his life with the Science Ninja Team, but nothing charged with hate or anguish. She was sure of that. As long as Kyla was the woman he loved, he *could not* remember his hatred for Katse. And the only two things that could disrupt that would be a major souring of their relationship, or Kyla changing into a man. The first could never be predicted, of course, but by stepping up the dose of Kyla's drug to two pills a day, she had taken every reasonable precaution against the second. It wouldn't happen. So the Jay/Nambu locus proved to have only one danger, that of Kozaburo's reaction to learning she was alive. That would be the lesser of the two worries. Item 2: Kyla was regaining her memories. Teriani hadn't had to block Kyla as heavily; Berg Katse's psyche was riddled with blocks and baffles anyway, and as a Gemini, her mind was naturally more malleable than a human's. It had been easy to place one final block on all the misery, and give Katse what he/she had not even been able to admit to wanting: a normal life. Perhaps Teriani *should* have blocked it more tightly, however. Kyla had had some sort of flashback twice during the conversation, both times triggered by references to gender. That was the most fundamental difference; of course, that would surface first. And the sudden concern for her child being a "freak"-- that had probably come from a brief flashback, too. Why was it happening? Teriani could think of two reasons: first, that the sight of the Science Ninja Team and Nambu was triggering the dormant memories. That, Teriani found unlikely. She hadn't keyed on much more important significators, such as the word Galactor. The other reason was much more likely: the Science Ninja Team recognized Kyla. In recognizing her (and they would not be subtle enough to avoid her noticing), they would awaken persecution fears, and paranoia. The mind found it far easier to remember things that had originally happened in a certain state when the mind was once more in that state. Things that had happened when Katse was a paranoid psychotic-- most of Katse's life-- would be easier to remember if Kyla was in a state of paranoia. And the psychological pressure on her not to remember would be slowly balanced by the psychological need to understand why she was hated and feared by these people. If she remembered-- well, it all depended on how well the conditioning held up, and Teriani could not predict that ahead of time. If Berg Katse's memories returned to Kyla, and the conditioning that would prevent her from sympathizing with them collapsed-- they were all in deep shit, not least of all a Keiraine who had dared to try to rehabiliate a Gemini. Katse reborn would not look kindly on Teriani's attempt to condition her into sanity. Whereas if the memories returned, and the conditioning held-- it would be Kyla who would pay the awful price, remembering crimes no sane mind could bear remembering. Item 2 was a far greater fear than Item 1. Somehow Teriani would have to take steps to stop this. But what? She couldn't mindwipe Kyla again; Kyla would forget Jay as well, and that would damage Jay's psyche badly. Could she step forward and tell Kozaburo what she'd done, work with him on a way to hold Kyla's memories at bay? Did she have the courage to face Kozaburo at all? Even to save Kyla's sanity? It was so easy to see what other people should do. So easy to manipulate, to push or to cleverly pull until people did what was best for them. Teriani Kymel, guardian of others' sanity-- but who guarded her own? Who was there who could see what was best for *her* to do? Because she couldn't see it; had never been able to see it. Anyone else's life she could read like an open book, but her own was a cipher she had never decoded. What could she do? What was best? What would work? Why could she never see a way out? * * * In a thousand little ways, Jay was just like the Joe Ken remembered. The walk, the smile, the little gestures of hands and mouth... but then, there were so many ways in which he wasn't like that Joe at all, and the contrast was jarring. When Ken took him out on the mats to see how much he remembered, for instance, he discovered that Jay's streetfighting skills had lost none of Joe's touch. Fewer of the martial arts remained, probably because he hadn't kept them up; still, it was amazing how much he retained after amnesia. And how much was lost. Because he had Joe's moves, all right; but the intensity was gone. The rage, that had been so much a part of Joe that Ken had never even seen it as a separate entity-- that was just gone. Jay had Joe's friendliness, Joe's talent for mischief, Joe's frustration at mistakes and his own body's failures, but none of Joe's anger and hate. Looking at him, as he grinned at a joke Ryu had made or listened to Ken's advice with that "I-know-all-that-now-will-you-get-on- with-it" look on his face, it was easy to forget how much he'd changed. It was more the things that *weren't* there, rather than the things that were, that kept reminding Ken-- --the way he took a reprimand calmly, without any of his "don't- give-me-this-shit" attitude-- --the way he looked toward Ken for approval and advice on everything he did-- --the way he smiled blankly when everyone else laughed at some shared joke, as if he knew he should find it funny but couldn't remember why-- And then there were the other things. Ryu had stepped away from the weights, and jokingly asked Jay to prove how much of the old Joe he still had left in him. Never one to turn down a challenge, Jay had gone over to the weights, and Ryu had dialed them to the maximum Joe had been able to easily handle. Jay lifted them as if they were nothing, and didn't seem to realize that that wasn't normal. Carefully, Ken had tested him on the machine, dialing the weights progressively higher in an effort to discover Jay's upper limit. Jay didn't have one. At least, not one on this weight machine. Not even Ryu could manage the high range; Jay had to exert some effort, but he successfully managed to bench-press even the highest weight. Now Joe had always been physically stronger than Ken, which Ken had made up for in greater agility. But he'd never been stronger than Ryu. And this-- the casual ease with which Jay lifted weights that would have made Ryu groan, and his total lack of realization that this was not normal-- bothered Ken deeply. How *had* he gotten this strong? Jay was also faster than Joe had been. Not as obviously as the increase in strength, no. But when they tested his reflexes on a driving simulation, and his speed and accuracy on a shooting gallery, he was three or four points higher than Joe had been. The scaling was from 1-50, so three or four points might be the logical result of training and improvement-- except he hadn't trained. He hadn't shot a gun since getting amnesia, and he'd only recently taken up racing again. Without training, how could he be *better* than the highest scores he'd gotten when he trained all the time? He wasn't going to ask. Not yet. Not until he'd gotten a better handle on this familiar stranger who'd come walking back into all their lives. He needed time to get to know Jay better. So he would train Jay, help him reintegrate into the team, help him regain his memories if he could. But above all, he would watch. Because there was something intensely fishy about all this. He hoped-- he prayed-- that Joe's returning from the dead around the same time as Galactor's revival was a coincidence. But the amnesia-- the marriage to Katse, of all people-- the increased abilities-- well, he didn't want to doubt Jay, and he honestly didn't think anyone who'd ever been Joe could fool him that well. But was it possible that Jay was the unwitting pawn of a Galactor plot? Or worse yet, that Jay was *not* Joe, but some sort of unholy replica? It was Ken's job to be overcautious. He had criticized Nambu for paranoia once, and Nambu had turned out to be in the right. If Berg Katse lived, any sort of deviousness was possible, and Ken intended to be fully on guard. Hopefully, both of them were telling the truth when they said they had amnesia. But if it wasn't true, in either case... well, Ken was prepared for any sort of trap. * * * "This is where you'll be working," Nambu told Kyla. The data room of ISO's Intelligence department looked like any other moderately busy office. People pored over papers or leaned forward, looking at terminals. There were a series of cubbyhole constructions, giving each workstation a feeling of privacy. Kyla had turned in her two-week's notice today, and taken half the day off. She would spend the other half here, getting her bearings. For the next two weeks, she had told Nambu she would work half days here, full days there. He had objected-- "A pregnant woman shouldn't have to handle all that work!" "What do you expect me to do instead, lie in bed and eat bonbons?" she'd replied. "I pull 12-hour days as a matter of routine, sometimes as much as 16 if I have to. I'd be more stressed by not getting my bearings here as fast as I can." So she would be officially employed both at the PR agency and at ISO for two weeks, meaning there would be no delay between her last paycheck at her old job and the first paycheck at the next. Nambu couldn't help but feel it was unhealthy for a pregnant woman to spend so much time working, but she insisted she would be all right, and knowing something about her unique biology, Nambu was not in a position to know for sure whether she was wrong or not. Besides, he felt that the faster he got her settled in, the better. Now she stood, looking at the data room, at the printers on the far wall and the two xerox machines. "Looks a lot like our office," she commented. "You'll be starting here. If your ability warrants it, you can be moved to a private office to work on the more confidential information." Kyla smiled at him. "If my ability and the security checks you're undoubtedly going to do on me warrant it, you mean." "That is a factor to consider," Nambu said, with the faintest hint of a smile of his own. Kyla looked down at some papers on a desk. "This doesn't look too difficult." "I think I need to tell you something about the history and background of Galactor, if you're to make sense of these things," Nambu said. "Come with me." They left the noise of the data room and entered one of the side offices, currently unoccupied. "How much do you know about Galactor?" "Not much. They were a terrorist organization that killed millions, that's all." "Yes, well that part is certainly true. Since we first learned of the existence of Galactor, however, we have suspected there may be something more to it than that. They used technology far more advanced than Earth science. An... expert on such things... warned me that they might have alien backers, some time ago. Now we have reason to believe that their true leader, Sosai X--" "I thought you said the leader's name was Katse." There was still no recognition, no emphasis, no change in expression at all when she used that name. "Their figurehead leader's name was Katse. The true ruler's name was Sosai-- Commander-- X. We have reason to believe that this being was an alien of some sort. We do know that Katse was bioengineered, and that many other Galactors were cyborgs, a technology ISO has only been able to duplicate very recently." "Bioengineered? In what way?" Oh, this was dangerous ground. "A number of factors," Nambu hedged. "That's not important. This is what matters. After Katse's death, Galactor went into a period of turmoil. Now you realize, we have always had difficulty getting agents into Galactor. Galactor recruits are not screened carefully, but they are forced to... tests of loyalty and cruelty... that most of the kind of people ISO would hire could not pass." "Mohs tests," Kyla said, nodding. "Mohs tests? What do you mean?" "The Mohs scale is a scale for hardness of objects. I read someplace once about a group who made new recruits do horrible things as a test of 'hardness'." "Indeed. In connection with Galactor?" "I-- don't remember. But I don't think so. I think it came from a book. Maybe Galactor got it from the same place I did." *No doubt,* Nambu thought privately. In fact, the Galactors *had* called their recruitment tests "Mohs tests". He had known what Mohs ordinarily stood for, but had not seen the connection between the two. Now he knew. "Possibly. Be that as it may, we have occasionally placed a few agents, and what is more, we have numerous agents in places influenced by Galactor. So we learned that Galactor was suffering internal turmoil-- and then, it suddenly collapsed. It fragmented into a thousand little groups. Some of these became criminal gangs, using Galactor technology for theft. Some went deep underground. One, a science group, continued to do work under its director as if nothing had happened, but now the work was more theoretical, less applicable to weaponry. Some disappeared totally. Coincidentally, at the same time as Galactor's breakup, a golden UFO was spotted leaving Earth's atmosphere. "Two months ago, the UFO returned, or one very much like it. It crashed into a passenger liner, killing all but 50 out of over a thousand passengers. Since then, there have been numerous disappearances. Over a thousand military men, and 2 dozen scientists, have vanished. Oddly enough, the scientists have all been male." "What's strange about that? Most scientists are." "True. However, some top-level females were overlooked in favor of lesser-known males in the same field." "A terrorist organization's hardly likely to be egalitarian." "My point is that, in the past, Galactor *was*. Most of the cannon fodder was male; however, there were several female captains, including one of very high rank; a female assassin squad; and any number of female scientists, including Galactor's Executive Scientist at the time of the breakup." "You sound like you don't approve." There was something slightly belligerent in Kyla's tone. "Is there something wrong with that?" "Not in itself, I suppose-- but I feel it's symptomatic. When an organization sends women to war, it indicates an eroding of family virtues." "There speaks a Utoland man. What about your precious Science Ninja Team? There's a woman there..." "Jun's aptitudes were such that she could not be ignored. Besides, she's yet young." What Nambu felt was that most women were less warlike than most men, and that Galactor had, by masculinizing its women, removed all the softer emotion from its structure. He also believed that most women were happier as wives and mothers, and hoped that Jun would live long enough to experience such happiness for herself. But something warned him not to argue such topics with Kyla, who appeared to be very much a feminist. "The important thing to note is that they don't appear to be doing it anymore. "Our agents have observed a number of other things that may be related to Galactor's return-- shifts in the flow of illegal drugs, in the power structure of criminal organizations. One agent, codenamed Whisper, has learned far more. Whisper is placed in one of the Galactor sub-groups that went independent. According to this agent, a personage named Gel Sadra has contacted the head of this group about rejoining Galactor. The name Gel Sadra doesn't check with any of our records of known Galactor captains, but it may be a different name, or Sadra may have previously been unaffiliated with Galactor. We do not know Sadra's sex--" "Male, I'd presume. Wouldn't you?" "If the organization were not Galactor, I would. But the description is ambiguous, and there have been high-ranking female Galactors. In fact, since Sadra may be a tool of Sosai X, it is possible that he or she is in fact hermaphroditic, since X has been known to create such beings through bioengineering." "Hermaphroditic?" *Damn.* He never should have mentioned it. "Possessing both sexes." "I know what the word means. X-- creates people like that? How could they survive in Galactor? A terrorist organization would rip someone they thought was a freak apart!" "Galactors wear masks and costumes that may very effectively hide their sex, if required. And Galactor has been known to accept deviants of all categories. Physiological deviants would be only marginally stranger than some of the people Galactor has been known to employ." "But-- somebody like that-- they could never have a normal life. Changing from one to the other-- maybe they couldn't have any kind of life, *except* in Galactor. Is that why X did it? To force these people to serve him?" "X's motives are unknowable; it is, however, possible." He had to get her off this topic. Nambu had noticed that Kyla automatically assumed a hermaphrodite would change from one sex to the other; in normal usage, a hermaphrodite would be someone who possessed both organs at all times, and Nambu hadn't said anything to indicate the other. It was her life experience speaking through her, even if she didn't understand that yet. "In any case, at the moment it's irrelevant what sex Sadra is, when we don't know anything else about him or her. The information we're currently collecting is an attempt to locate Galactor bases, learn their strength, and discover any possible targets they may have. Second to that, we want to know more about Gel Sadra and the possible connection with Sosai X. Let me show you back to the data room..." * * * As Kyla studied the work she was to be doing, she felt a strong sense of deja vu, stronger than any before. She had done this kind of work before-- she knew it. Already she was looking forward to quitting the PR agency and working against Galactor here. And yet-- Something had disturbed her greatly, in Nambu's history of Galactor, and she'd pinned down what it was. He hadn't talked about it much, but... Kyla had come into existence with an egalitarian mind. As far as she could remember, which admittedly wasn't that far, she had taken as a first principle the notion that all people were fundamentally alike. Race, religion and nationality, sex and sex preference-- these things just *didn't matter*. She also knew, as a fundamental principle, that most people didn't agree. At least the Americans paid extensive lip service to equality, and some of them even believed it, which made Kyla wonder sometimes if she might have been American instead of the European she believed herself to be after all. Other countries-- the nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, places such as Utoland-- were ready and willing to discriminate freely, and frequently on the basis of sex. There were women who made it to the top, and Kyla was one of them, or intended to be. But many, many more were relegated to supporting roles for life. Even Nambu, as egalitarian a man as he seemed to be, seemed to be bothered by Galactor's sexual equality and "acceptance of deviance". Up until now, Kyla had thought of all Galactors as basically animal scum, with no sympathy at all. But then Nambu had given his talk. He had only briefly mentioned hermaphroditic beings X had created, but the notion had instantly captured her sympathy to a disturbing degree. In this world, where to be female was to be a second-class citizen, and to be bisexual or homosexual was to be a deviant, how could a hermaphrodite survive? The awful loneliness such a being must endure came to her mind so clearly, it was almost as if she had imagined it before... or else... *"...not a man or a woman either? what then..."* *"...how can she know what it's going to be?"* *"besides..."* *"...not a boy or a girl, so you're neither..."* No. *No*. She shoved the cascade of chilling, half-remembered resonances away. She sympathized with the poor hermaphrodites, with no choice but to enter Galactor if they wanted to find acceptance, only because the loneliness they must have felt was similar to the loneliness she must have felt once, the loneliness that lurked under her love for Jay and made her so desperately afraid of losing him. Only because their struggle for acceptance would mirror, on a larger scale, her struggle to be accepted by a male- dominated world, sometime in the past. There was no connection. There could be no other connection. She forced herself to concentrate on her work, and no longer remember the things that disturbed her...