Dr. Uri Arjun stood over the straining woman, glaring down at her in displeasure. “Let me know when she delivers,” he ordered. Spinning on his heel, he left the room, stalking down the long corridors to his office. The few people he passed in those corridors took one look at his face and quickly found some other place to be.
The doctor did not stop until he was in his office, slamming the door behind him and flinging himself into the chair behind his desk. Twins! Why had he never thought to check for twins? For her sake one of them had better be a viable candidate for the program or there’d be hell to pay. He couldn’t afford a weak gift slipping into the gene pool, the pool was shallow enough as it was.
Five years they’d been on this world and he was only slightly closer to his goal than he was when he started. If only the other ships hadn’t been lost! When they’d fled the Ardraci home world there had been five ships, all filled with equipment, personnel, and breeders. His had been the only ship to reach this world. The others were lost, or worse, captured by the Ardraci/Illezie ships following them.
This world had not been his first choice for landing, but they’d been low on fuel and there were no other habitable worlds in the system. This was an agrarian world, and worse than that, they had a charter that clearly stated that to settle here you must agree to eschew all forms of technology, the exception being the single space port. It had taken a fair amount of wrangling with the council to be allowed to build the compound out of components stripped down from the ship. As far as Arjun was concerned, the council did not need to know what was inside the compound.
Picking up the record tablet, he began scanning the contents. His frown deepened. Perhaps he should concentrate on expanding the pure lines before continuing with his crossbreeding. Of course that had been what sent him fleeing the Ardraci homeworld in the first place – trying to purify the four elemental lines.
His goal was to create a more powerful elemental, and to do that required only the purest of elementals for breeding. Each Ardraci was born with the potential for all four elements, but one was always stronger than the other and would dominate when they reached maturity. By breeding only water with water, air with air, fire with fire, and earth with earth he sought to make the dominating gene even stronger.
At first the Ardraci scientific community had been behind him, after all he was working with volunteers. But then it somehow got out that he was working on a way to suppress the lesser elements and he was brought before the Tribunal. If it had not been for his loyal followers he would not have escaped, but they had been prepared, the ships already loaded and waiting.
There was a tap on his door, breaking into his train of thought.
“Come,” he called.
The door opened for one of the midwives.
“Forgive the interruption, doctor. Namir has delivered her babies. Both are healthy and strong.”
“And?”
“The male child is clearly of water. The female . . . we will need more time to determine her gift.”
Dr. Arjun was pleased enough with early signs of a gift, a sure indication of power, that he decided to let the female live as well. If it turned out she was not a viable candidate for the breeding program they would find some other use for her. But the male, he was third generation water. His program was working!
He’d show the rest of Ardraci and he’d show those damned Illezie. By the gods, he’d show them all!
3 comments:
Whoa. Awesome start, and poor Namir...poor babies too. Interesting to get the background on these stories now too. Looking forward to the rest!
Yeah, poor Namir. She has a sad life, but it's necessary for the story.
I've noticed a trend. Cold blooded scientist and vulnerable perhaps passionate test subjects. Ready made confrontation.
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