Nebula Awards Showcase 2012

From what I understood, the energy requirements for opening a portal were so staggeringly high that it could only be done inside a star. Although the swales had been creating portals for so long that they didn’t seem to know where their original home star was, Sol Central Station was the interstellar nexus of human civilization, and I was thrilled to be there despite the limited dating opportunities.

The Monday after my first day at church, I was in the middle of reviewing an arbitrage deal involving transports from two colony systems when I received a call on my station phone.

“Harry Malan,” I answered.

“President Malan?” said a melodious alto voice. “This is Neuter Kimball, from the branch.” Since the actual names of swales were series of magnetic pulses, they took human names when interacting with us. On joining the Church, Mormon swales often chose new names out of Mormon history. Neuter Kimball had apparently named itself after a twentieth-century prophet of the Church.

“What can I do for you, Neuter Kimball?”

After a pause that dragged out for several seconds, Kimball said, “I need to confess a sin.”

This was what I had dreaded most about becoming branch president—taking on the responsibility of helping members repent of their sins. Only serious sins needed to be confessed to an ecclesiastical leader, so I braced myself emotionally and said a quick prayer that I might be inspired to help Neuter Kimball through the process of repentance. Leaning back in my swivel chair, I said, “Go ahead, Neuter Kimball, I’m listening.”

“A female merged her reproductive patterns with mine.” While many swales had managed to learn how to synthesize and transmit human speech, their understanding of vocabulary and grammar was not always matched by an understanding of emotional tone. Often they sounded the same no matter what the subject.

I waited, but Neuter Kimball didn’t elaborate.

It took three swales to reproduce: a male, a female, and a neuter. The neuter merely acted as a facilitator; unlike the male and female, its reproductive patterns were not passed on to the offspring. In applying the law of chastity to the swales, Church doctrine said that reproductive activity was to be engaged in only among swales married to each other, and only permitted marriages of three swales, one of each sex.

“You aren’t married to the female, are you?”

“No.”

“It was just a female and you?” I asked. “No male?”

“Yes and yes.”

According to my limited knowledge of swale biology, such action could not result in reproduction. Still, humans were perfectly capable of engaging in sexual sin that did not involve the possibility of reproduction, so I figured this was analogous.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

“She did it to me.”

“She did it to you? You mean, she forced you? You didn’t agree to it?”

“Yes, yes, and no.”

“Then it isn’t a sin,” I said, both horrified at the sexual assault and relieved that Neuter Kimball was innocent of any sin. “If someone forced sexual conduct on you, you are not at fault. You have nothing to repent of.”

“You are sure?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But you may want to report the swale who did this to the authorities so she won’t do it to anyone else.”

“Why won’t she do it to anyone else?” Neuter Kimball asked.

“Because they will punish her.”

“That is human law,” it said.

I was taken aback. “You mean it’s not swale law?”

“There is no such law among our people.”

The swales had supposedly been civilized for longer than humanity’s history, yet they had no law against rape? “That’s terrible,” I said. “But the most important thing is that you did nothing wrong.”

“Even if I enjoyed it?”

“Umm.” I wondered for a moment why I had been called to serve here, rather than some General Authority of the Church who had more doctrinal knowledge. I had a vague suspicion it was so the Church could easily disavow my actions if I made a huge blunder. The swales were the only sentient aliens humanity had found thus far—and the swales didn’t seem to know of any others—so the Church’s policies for dealing with non-humans were still new.

I pushed those thoughts aside and focused on Neuter Kimball’s question. “To commit a sin, you must have the intent to do so. If you did not intend sexual activity and it was forced upon you, then I don’t think it matters whether you enjoyed it.”

After several more reassurances, Neuter Kimball seemed satisfied that it was not guilty of any sin and ended the conversation.

It took me ten minutes to calm down after the stress of counseling. But I still felt the urge to action, so I looked up Dr. Merced’s phone number.

We met in her office. A wallscreen similar to the one in the chapel showed pods of swales moving through solar currents.

I sat in a chair across from her desk and tried to keep my eyes from straying to the animated galaxies colliding on the chest of her skinsuit. “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” I said. “We didn’t part on the friendliest of terms yesterday.”

She shrugged. “I’m curious. Your predecessors never sought me out. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Tea?”

I saw a twinkle in her eye and realized she was yanking my chain by offering drinks that she knew were forbidden by my religion. “No, thank you. But if you want to drink, go right ahead. The prohibitions of the Word of Wisdom apply only to members of the Church.”

She picked up her coffee mug and took a long sip. “Mmm. That is so good.”

I merely smiled at her.

“Okay,” she said. “Actually, the coffee here is awful. I just drink it for the caffeine. Why are you here?”

“A member of my church was raped,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “What? Wait, you don’t mean a solcetacean, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Solcetaceans do not have the concept of rape,” she said.

“Whether they have the concept or not,” I said, “a female swale engaged in sexual activity with one of my neuter members without its consent. To me, that sounds like rape, or at least a sexual assault.”

She took a sip from her coffee mug. “It may sound like it, but solcetaceans are not human. Their culture is different—”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“—and their physiology is different. Tell me, was your church member injured or caused any pain?”

“No. But it was afraid it might have sinned.”

She pointed at me. “That is your fault, for teaching it that sexual behavior is sinful. But, physiologically, sexual contact between solcetaceans is always pleasurable for all parties involved. And since reproduction can only occur when all three deliberately engage in sex for that purpose, casual sex never results in pregnancy. So solcetaceans never developed the taboos humans did regarding sexual contact.”

I nodded. “So, if we humans hadn’t developed taboos about sex, and there was no chance of your getting pregnant, then you would have no objection to my forcing you to an orgasm.”

She had the decency to blush. “I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that you can’t judge solcetacean behavior based on human cultural norms. After all, even your own church has had to adapt its doctrines to take differences like the three sexes into account. Not to mention there’s no way you’re getting a solcetacean into the waters of baptism.”

“‘Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,’“ I quoted. “Swales are not men, as you’ve pointed out. No contradiction there. But you’re avoiding the subject, which is that anyone, swale or human, has the right to be free from unwanted sex. If the swales don’t recognize that right yet, it’s time we told them about it.”