Chapter Four: Strain and Closure — Part 1
C’rona’s chitinous exterior shined in the dim light of her nest, a home woven from strands of inch thick web. It glistened from a myriad of living lamps, woven into it like sleigh bells strung into a ball of yarn. The creation, spun with what appeared to be fractal symmetry, held back rain and bad things alike. Nothing in its right mind would attempt to attack or enter the home of an Antansi native, and nothing on the planet would confront C’rona, even outside of her home. Susan and Robert sat down on slings of web, listening to the random tapping of a light drizzle of rain. C’rona, her ancient body covered in sharp spines, spoke Cynosure standard fluently. The Antansi had been monitoring Earth for nearly a century before the colony ships arrived. She had made it her point to worry about the humans even before she was certain they would take notice of Antans. Susan had at first been surprised at C’rona’s knowledge of Earth and the Unified Cynosure that called it home. C’rona had hidden none of her knowledge, hoping that Susan’s knowledge combined with hers would be enough to counter any long-term threat The Cynosure might pose.
“Our system’s sensor net has discovered the approach of ships from Earth. I think now would be a good time to go over those concerns we’ve kept putting off these last five years.” C’rona said, more for the benefit of the others in the room.
Susan and C’rona, after all, had been playing out strategies for every possible contingency, all the while hoping for a limitation to the snags. “Those are ships of the Cynosure.”
“Tell me more about them. We only listen and watch, but we don’t fully understand.” C’rona admitted.
Susan conceded, because even though she had warned of more ships, she had spoken very briefly on the culture and behavior of the Cynosure. “The Cynosure has four classes broken into two class strata. The highest of classes, known as The Authority, is the most powerful in the Cynosure. They’re but a handful of families who control the populations of entire worlds. Immediately below The Authority are Class One Citizens, known as the Blues. This class organizes, maintains, conditions, and disciplines the lower classes. They have specialized training for their positions within the class strata.
“The greens, sometimes called Cogs, are trained only in manual tasks. If an individual cog works hard and follows orders, that person might be promoted to a spindle, a sort of low-level management position, who can give orders to the cogs put in his or her charge. It is only on rare occasion that anybody not of Class Ones citizenry is granted the access to the knowledge of reading or writing, so the cogs and spindles have no way of gaining higher education or rank beyond what can be passed on orally.
“The Third Class is the lowest strata in the structure of the Cynosure. They’re servants, performing light labor and detail jobs that can’t easily be industrialized but require little technical knowledge or physical skill.
“There are strict laws prohibiting mating between Classes, except for certain subdivisions of the third class. In all cases I’ve heard of, the lowest Class member is executed and the higher class member is punished.”
Robert, though quiet, stiffened with emotion. Susan took his hand, hoping to calm him.
“What is the justification of the Class system?” C’rona was clearly curious.
“The justification of action is based on over-population. The truth is that those with power wish to keep the population high. Determination of such actions is based on birth and family origin. Everybody has a place in society, and children are usually expected to follow in their parent’s footsteps. My parents were Class One citizens, so my choices were relatively wide. I could be a medic, a guardian, or I could train to command ships. There are thousands of Class One positions, all of them requiring mental aptitude and not much else. Those positions, however, are limited to an infrastructure, a hierarchy within that puts doctors very low on the command line for Class One Citizens. If ordered to torture, or kill, to amputate or disfigure, we are expected to, without question.
“The Greens are, however, more restricted than even the lowest echelon of the Blues. They work hard labor, either in a factory or as part of a city maintenance force, and there’s never a chance for them to rise above their status or their job. The Reds have jobs ranging from janitorial to sexual servicing of Class Ones.”
“So knowledge is the limiting factor and resource control is justification. Your people are a harsh race. Are they friendly with other species?” C’rona’s legs fluttered momentarily, a sign of extreme agitation.
“The Authority’s standard policy, upon finding sentient alien life, is to extinguish it before it can pose a threat to human existence. They have never had reason to implement it, until now.”
“It would appear that, as you warned so many years ago, we’re all in danger. We have to be subtle, and we have to work together. We may have to fight. Will all of your people support you?”
Susan replied after some consideration. “It’s hard for me to say without speaking to the rest of the families, but I have a feeling that nobody on this planet today would wish or dare to rejoin the Cynosure.”
“Why not just knock the ships from the sky and be done with it?” Robert asked.
Susan rubbed her forehead, fighting back her annoyance. “Ignoring the fact that the Cynosure would find it difficult to believe that two colony parties were randomly destroyed while entering a now well charted solar system, there is living cargo on that ship. Thousands of human beings, some of who might just survive and grow to like living here. All of them are frozen, as we were when we first arrived.”
“If those humans come to ground,” Robert paused, “there might still be a fight.”
C’rona spoke quietly after some consideration. “We will fight only as a last resort. Antans will integrate those who come to ground. Any forces that would pose a threat to our lives or the lives of your people will be cleansed. With the Cynosure’s advanced technology, and its terrible organization, your tribe must know a way to keep more ships from coming once these colony craft have been destroyed.”
“We could position a quarantine beacon at the edge of the system.” Susan suggested. “But how do we damage the colonizing ships without destroying their payload?”
C’rona clicked. “There is always a way. The asteroid cluster your ships hit was actually a telescope. That telescope was comprised of three thousand specially positioned mirrors. Those mirrors are roughly six tons a piece. When your ships arrived, our scientists altered the orbits of some of our reflectors, using pieces of the telescope to cripple your fleet. It is time consuming to repair the telescope; we have yet to restore all of our reflectors. As we don’t wish to lose even more detail of our already limited view of galaxy, and as Susan has also stated that the Cynosure will most probably not believe that two colony dispatches would suffer the same fate, I do not feel it would be appropriate or safe to repeat this tactic.”
“You took pretty desperate measures that first time.” Robert said.
“We had to keep the ships from coming to ground capable of killing. We’ve gained great respect for Antans because we can never leave its surface. We as a race do not wish to become extinct, so we never let uninvited visitors into the system.” C’rona paused. “We had hoped that our world would be deemed unworthy of human settlement. No offense intended.”
“None taken. We’ll protect you, and ourselves, with whatever cunning we have.” Susan said.
The enormity of the truth C’rona had just shared was sinking in. Next to her, Robert shivered at the thought: On one world lived two races with no way to leave when things got tough. For one species, the humans, it was a matter of political exile. For the Antansi natives, however, biology denied them their final freedom. Robert considered the possibility that technology might not some day free the Antansi of their planetary entrapment, but then had to wonder if, in being able to leave, any of them would ever want to.
