The Lani People, Jesse F. Bone [best reads TXT] 📗

which were run by a team of court-appointed medics and biologists, who made in vitro and live tests on a number of Lani female prisoners. The tests ran for over two years and were totally negative. So the Alexander family acquired Flora and the Otpens, and a legal status.” Alexander stood up. “Well—that’s a capsule summary. The records are in the library if you’d care to check them.”

“Why?”

“Just to prove we’re honest.” He moved carefully toward the door, opened it, and disappeared into the night.

Silently Kennon watched him descend the porch steps. He seemed steady enough. For a moment Kennon debated whether he should see him home—and then decided against it. If Alexander needed help he’d have asked for it. As it was, it was better to leave things alone. Certainly he didn’t know Alexander well enough to act as a guardian. He turned back to the living area. The stereo was playing something soft and nostalgic as Kennon sank into the chair Alexander had vacated. He let his body relax. It had been as full a day as he had ever spent filled with changes so abrupt that they were exhausting. He felt confused. There were no precedents he could apply. Neither his studies nor his travels had prepared him for living in a situation like this.

Legally and biologically the Lani weren’t human. But they were intelligent, upright, bipedal mammals whose morphology was so close to man’s that it had taken the ultimate test to settle their status. And being a Betan, Kennon was suspicious of the accuracy of that ultimate test.

But the Brotherhood of Man was based upon it. The feeling of unity that pervaded mankind’s expanding empire was its product. From almost the beginning of mankind’s leap to the stars it had been recognized that men must help each other or perish. The spirit of co-operation against the common enmity of alien worlds and cultures transcended the old petty rivalries on Earth. Men—all men—were brothers in arms.

And so the Brotherhood was born—and the concept born of necessity developed its muscles in a thousand battles on a thousand hostile worlds. And ultimately it evolved into the only form of central authority that men would accept. Yet basically it was not a government. It was an attitude of mind. Men accepted its decisions as they would accept the rulings of a family council, and for the same reasons.

The Brotherhood laid down certain rules but it did not attempt to enforce them. After all, it didn’t need to. It also arbitrated disputes, admitted new worlds to membership, and organized concerted human effort against dangerous enemies. And that was all. Yet in its sphere the authority of the Brotherhood was absolute.

There was only one criterion for membership in the Brotherhood—membership in the human race. No matter how decadent or primitive a population might be, if it was human it was automatically eligible for Brotherhood—a free and equal partner in the society of human worlds.

Kennon doubted that any nonhuman race had ever entered the select circle of humanity, although individuals might have done so. A docked Lani, for instance, would probably pass unquestioned as a human, but the Lani race would not. In consequence they and their world were fair prey, and had been attacked and subjugated.

Of course, proof of inhumanity was seldom a problem. Most alien life forms were obviously alien. But there were a few—like the Lani—where similarities were so close that it was impossible to determine their status on the basis of morphology alone. And so the Humanity Test had come into being.

Essentially it was based upon species compatibility—on the concept that like can interbreed with like. Tests conducted on every inhabited world in the Brotherhood had proven this conclusively. Whatever changes had taken place in the somatic characteristics of mankind since the Exodus, they had not altered the compatibility of human germ plasm. Man could interbreed with man—aliens could not. The test was simple. The results were observable. And what was more important, everyone could understand it. No definition of humanity could be more simple or direct.

But was it accurate?

Like other Betans, Kennon wondered. It was—so far—probably. The qualifying phrases were those of the scientist, that strange breed that refuses to accept anything as an established fact until it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. After all, the human race had been spaceborne for only six thousand years—scarcely time for any real differences to develop. But physical changes had already appeared—and it would only be a question of time before these would probably be followed by genetic changes. And in some groups the changes might be extensive enough to make them genetic strangers to the rest of humanity.

What would happen then? No one knew. Actually no one bothered to think about it except for a few far-seeing men who worried as they saw.

Probably.

Might.

Possibly.

If.

Four words. But because of them the Betans were slowly withdrawing from the rest of humanity. Already the radiations of Beta’s variant-G sun had produced changes in the population. Little things like tougher epidermis and depilation of body hair—little things that held alarming implications to Beta’s scientists, and to Beta’s people. Not too many generations hence a Betan outside his home system would be a rarity, and in a few millennia the Betan system itself would be a closed enclave peopled by humans who had deviated too far from the basic stock to mingle with it in safety.

Of course, the Brotherhood itself might be changed by that time, but there was no assurance that this would happen. And mankind had a history of dealing harshly with its mutants. So Beta would play it safe.

Kennon wondered if there were other worlds in the Brotherhood that had come to the same conclusion. Possibly there were. And possibly there were worlds where marked deviations had occurred. There wasn’t a year that passed that didn’t bring some new human world into the Brotherhood, and many of these had developed from that cultural explosion during the First Millennium known as the Exodus, where small groups of colonists in inadequate ships set out for unannounced goals to homestead new worlds for man. Some of these survived, and many were being discovered even at this late date. But so far none had any difficulty in proving their human origin.

The Lani, conceivably, could have been descendants of one of these groups, which probably explained the extreme care the Brotherhood courts had taken with their case. But they had failed the test, and were declared animals. Yet it was possible that they had mutated beyond genetic compatibility. If they had, and if it were proved, here was a test case that could rock the galaxy—that could shake the Brotherhood to its very foundations—that could force a re-evaluation of the criteria of humanity.

Kennon grinned. He was a fine employee. Here he was, less than a full day on the job, dreaming how he could ruin his employer, shake the foundation of human civilization, and force ten thousand billion humans to change their comfortable habit patterns and their belief in the unchangeable sameness of men. He was, he reflected wryly, an incurable romantic.