Inheritance

CHAPTER 33

Liftoff was scheduled for midnight. “We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves,” Nura Halba had said at dinner, but Reese suspected the state of California had asked them to travel at night in order to prevent a massive crowd from gathering to watch the launch.

The ship would fly at a much higher altitude than commercial airplanes, but it would not leave Earth’s orbit. The entire trip would last about two and a half hours, and when they arrived in New York they would take up a position over New York Harbor, where they would remain for the duration of the weeklong General Debate. Their lander would ferry them to and from the United Nations headquarters on the East Side.

The Imria did not linger in the dining hall for long after dinner. Reese imagined they still had plenty of business to attend to before morning. Amber was the only Imrian who stayed behind.

Reese knew it wouldn’t be like a rocket ship taking off from a launchpad, but she had thought it would be a bigger deal than it turned out to be. The only audible indication that the ship was lifting off was a low rumble. Amber adjusted the lights and the screens so they could see the night outside. The ship seemed to levitate off the ground, silent and steady as a well-oiled elevator. As the island fell away beneath them, Reese saw the lights of San Francisco across the black swath of the bay, and then the lights vanished as the ship was engulfed in a cloud bank.

Reese glanced at her watch. It was just after midnight. In nine hours, Akiya Deyir was scheduled to speak at the United Nations. She hoped he would be telling the truth.

Reese slept fitfully after takeoff, waking as dawn broke through the screens in her room to reveal New York Harbor below the ship. She scrambled toward the screens as if they were real windows, staring down at the water and the Statue of Liberty and the toothy skyline of Manhattan. Helicopters were circling the ship, and while some of them bore news channel logos, others were sleek and black, and she knew they were from the military.

She dressed in her debate suit: knee-length navy blue skirt, white blouse, and jacket. It only survived midway through breakfast, because she spilled strawberry jam all over the skirt at the sight of David entering the dining hall in his suit and tie. She hadn’t seen him so dressed up since the national tournament in June, and his appearance made her feel like she was jolting backward through time. Unfortunately, her skirt was ruined, and she had to go back up to her room and put on a pair of black pants. She hoped nobody would notice that the color didn’t match her jacket.

All of the Imria going to the UN had put on their made-on-Earth clothes. Akiya Deyir was wearing a tailored black suit with a white silk handkerchief peeking from the breast pocket, making him look more like a film star than ever. Amber wore a black cap-sleeved dress with a fitted skirt and a narrow, patent-leather belt that matched her shoes. Reese recognized the shoes from the day of the press conference.

The Imria had received authorization for only one parent each to accompany Reese and David to the UN, and Reese’s mom and David’s dad were chosen to do the honors. They followed Nura Halba into the cargo bay on the first level, where two landers were parked. He directed them to climb into the larger one. Reese buckled herself in and held her breath as the ship opened in midair and the lander hovered up, rocking slightly before it accelerated out of the craft. She saw the steely color of the water below and the blue sky all around them, and she felt as if she were living in the future. Then the military helicopters fell in on both sides of the lander, and she was sucked right back into the present.

Reese had never seen so much security in her life. Police officers and squad cars lined the East Side of New York as the lander descended into the barricaded plaza in front of the United Nations. As they exited the lander, they were greeted by officials in suits and eyed by soldiers carrying machine guns. They were given badges on lanyards with their photos already laminated onto them, then escorted through a security tent where they had to walk through body scanning machines and be patted down for weapons.

The interior of the United Nations building looked like it had come straight out of the 1950s. In the multistory lobby, stacks of curved balconies overlooked a long, switchback staircase. As they were ushered past the stairs toward a bank of elevators, Reese glimpsed the press waiting behind ropes on the other side of the lobby, cameras flashing. She had put up her mental defenses as soon as she had stepped off the lander, but some of the curiosity still leaked through.

“After you, miss,” said one of their escorts, gesturing toward the elevator.

She turned away from the photographers and stepped in. The elevator operator held the doors until they had all crammed inside, and then he pressed the button to take them upstairs.

The General Assembly Hall was packed. Reese hadn’t realized that she would be seated up front, and as she was led into one of the reserved sections on the right side of the central podium, she found it difficult to look at the audience. There were too many of them, and they were all staring directly at her—or at least it felt that way. She sank into her seat, closing her eyes as the waves of their interest surged over her. David, who sat beside her, reached for her hand. He was as overwhelmed as she was, but it was easier to face it together. After several minutes the audience quieted, and a man stepped up to the microphone to introduce Akiya Deyir. Reese felt the audience turn their attention away from her, and she allowed herself to open her eyes.

Akiya Deyir didn’t look nervous at all as he approached the podium. The General Assembly Hall was completely silent as he took out his notes. Reese felt the weight of the hush on her skin like a layer of static.

“Good morning,” Deyir said. “Thank you for welcoming me and my fellow Imrians to the United Nations. We are eager to open the dialogue between our people. In fact, we have been waiting for this day for many, many generations.” He paused, glancing at Reese and David. The whole General Assembly glanced with him, and for a moment Reese couldn’t breathe.

“One month ago,” he continued, “when I first spoke to your reporters at Angel Island, I told you that we did not know all the details about our origins. This is true. We do not know where we come from. But I misled you on another subject: the origin of humanity.”

The mood in the hall became palpably more tense. Reese saw the ambassador betray the first sign of his own strain, as he gripped the edge of the podium with both of his elegant hands.

“We Imrians are an old people. We have lived for many millennia, and some of our beliefs are so deeply ingrained that it has been extremely difficult to recognize that they are wrong. I must thank your children, Reese Holloway and David Li, for showing me that we must change the way we have thought of you. For too long we have considered you, humanity, to be our responsibility, but now I realize that we have been acting out of guilt, and that guilt has blinded us to who you are. Your scientists have spent decades trying to uncover the origin of your species, and today I must tell you that they have been… misled by us.” A ripple of shock rolled through the assembly hall. “We Imria first came to this planet millions of years ago. We were a younger people then, and we thought we had all the power of science at our disposal, and we exercised that power by creating you in our own image. That is why we are so similar. Because we made you to look like us.”

The hairs on Reese’s arms rose at the sensation of utter astonishment that swept through the General Assembly Hall.

“Our belief in our own power, however, was arrogant,” Deyir continued. “We brought your species into existence, but we did not succeed in the most important way. As we told you a month ago, the foundation stone of Imrian society is our ability to share consciousness with one another: susum’urda. It makes us who we are. From the day we are born, we are connected intimately with our loved ones, and this is the reason that we have survived for so many millions of years. But we failed to give you this ability, and because of that, you grew into a very different kind of people. Because you cannot share consciousness with one another, you have had to create societies different from ours. We thought your lack of susum’urda made you a violent people, prone to attack rather than to love, and we wanted to correct this. In many ways, we saw you as our greatest mistake.”

A murmur rose in the hall, accompanied by waves of stunned disbelief and the beginnings of indignation. Akiya Deyir raised his voice.

“That is why we returned to your planet in the early nineteen hundreds: To find a way to right this wrong; to bring you the most wondrous aspect of our civilization. We thought of this as the next stage in humanity’s evolution. We called it an adaptation. Our research encountered many roadblocks. We had been absent from your planet for too long, and human beings have changed since the last time we intervened in your evolution. But we were overjoyed this past summer when our adaptation procedure was successfully implemented in two of your children. We thought this meant that the time had finally come for us to share this ability with the rest of you: to adapt all of humanity. We wanted to bring you into the Imrian family; to make you, finally, the people you were meant to be.

“Two days ago, I learned that Reese and David have adapted far beyond what we initially intended. They are now capable of susum’urda, but they are capable of more than that. They can not only share consciousness; they have true telepathic abilities. We do not know if all human beings who undergo the adaptation procedure will develop these same abilities, but we do know one thing: It is time for us to stop intervening without your full cooperation. We Imria are not the future of your species. We may be where you came from, but David and Reese are where you’re going. They are the future of both our peoples. I come here today on behalf of all the Imria to ask your forgiveness for what we have done and what we have left undone. I hope that we can move forward into a new age. Together.”