The shuttle landed smoother than she expected, easing down onto the hardpacked gravel slow enough to make it hard to identify when they touched ground. Cassandane ran through a post-flight checklist, then led Sam outside with the rest of the small crew of four. The crew and the Angmari staff of the supply depot watched Sam warily as they walked to one of the Quonset huts.
A man who seemed to be in charge indicated which items had loading priority. Another one, whose uniform jacket designated him a cargo master, began dictating how the items would be loaded on the shuttle to balance the weight side to side and front to back. When the two men finished their pontificating, Cassandane informed Sam that as part of her paragon training she would be performing most of the loading under the direction of the crew.
So began a grueling day of labor. Sam could only lift approximately eighty pounds of cargo at a time, so the cargo master had the other three crew members tasked with identifying items at or below that weight for immediate transport. Despite the lack of physical exertion, she found herself wearying fast. Cassandane advised her after a dozen trips to balance out her precursors by releasing bursts of nous in what she called an unstructured meme-cast. Judging by the blank expressions on the faces of the crew every time she balanced herself, the burst of nous had the effect of disrupting the thought processes of those around her, even to the point that people would lose track of their conversations mid-word.
Several trips later, Cassandane handed her a rock and instructed her to break and repair it using gravitas. The breaking part proved simple enough, but reattaching the rock halves required a significant precursor investment. After working the rock over once, she could resume her job porting heavy items without problem.
Larger pallets floated through the air as Cassandane effortlessly picked up the slack created by Sam’s lagging pace. Hours passed before all cargo had been loaded. Cassandane led her back into the control room of the shuttle and they strapped in while they waited for word from the crew that they were ready to depart. Following that, Cassandane radioed their status and lifted the laden vessel straight into the air.
“You’re not going to orbit up?”
Cassandane didn’t even look over at the question. “I’m not concerned with efficiency.”
“Oh,” Sam said. “How much stronger than me are you?”
“It’s not worth calculating at the moment. Your strength will increase rapidly in the next few months. Though you shouldn’t expect to match anything near my level of performance unless you manage to generate. Full paragons . . . are an unjust existence. Not only do they have a wide range of talents and possess the ability to permanently prevent resonant buildup, they are also significantly stronger than other kinds. All of the perks and only a minor inconvenience.”
Sam sat up straighter. “What is the inconvenience?”
“You can never turn it off,” Cassandane said.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s a constant preoccupation.” Cassandane smiled at her. “Don’t concern yourself too much over the issue. The likelihood that you will have to deal with it is small.”
Once they reached a certain altitude, Cassandane had Sam help with their ascent. So soon after her labors with the cargo, Sam barely felt able to contribute, yet she dug deep to avoid disappointing her benefactor. When the Angelship became visible in their screens, Cassandane took over completely.
Unlike with her previous shuttle ride, the docking proceeded smoothly. Cassandane did call “contact”, which the crew echoed back, but the vessel never rocked as it fit into the cradle. A slight shudder passed through the shuttle as the airlocks interconnected.
Then came the time to unload. In a reversal of the work on the ground, Sam moved cargo into the Angelship and into a designated storage bay. She did not get any assistance from Cassandane this time as the lack of gravity allowed her to maneuver even the most massive pallets.
After, Cassandane took Sam back down to the lower level where they took a casual stroll in artificial gravity through the central street. Sam looked around at the steel-and-glass buildings to either side backed up against the dazzling white porcelain of the external walls, then at the smaller adobe buildings nestled at odd intervals between them. Rooftop gardens were everywhere, soaking up the bright light from straight above. The street weaved around public parks and over ponds and once under a stadium.
“You can ask questions,” Cassandane prompted her after a while.
Sam continued to stare around at the marvel of the spaceship that would be her home for the rest of her life. After all her efforts that day, she didn’t feel much desire to use her brain for anything more involved than sightseeing. Yet she had the impression that this powerful woman wanted to talk. For all Sam knew, Cassandane had no friends, other than possibly her niece Ayla.
“You’re an Aoleyen,” Sam said. “And Ayla is a Lentaran. Does that mean one of you isn’t . . . purebred?”
“This is not the type of question I anticipated.”
“Sorry.”
“No. It is fine. Ayla and I are not actually related. A number of Lentarans made it into space during the Chekowan invasion because their guileless natures made them an ideal labor force for simple ship maintenance. They wouldn’t rebel and couldn’t double deal. Ayla’s parents weren’t sterilized . . .at least not then.”
Cassandane paused before continuing. “Traditionally, Lentarans were not permitted to raise their own children. They are affectionate and generous to a fault, but they don’t make decisions in the same way a competent adult would. This practice continued even after the human rights reforms were enacted. The only exception would be if a third party agreed to take on a supervisory role for the parents and act as a guardian to act in the best interests of the child.”
“That’s . . . nice of you to take on that role for Ayla.”
“I suppose.”
“But isn’t all of this a bit racist? Do Angmari even have that term?”
“Yes, Sam, I know what racism is,” Cassandane said. “And this is not that. Your Earth never dared to test the possibilities of human breeding. Emperor Gotaki Vonger’s three programs created subspecies with wildly divergent mental and physical characteristics from the baseline population. Ayla is not like you. And neither am I.”
“Sorry.”
“No apology is necessary. I don’t expect you to understand these things after spending a week in an industrial farm. Let’s eat before I start my shift on generators.”
