Thrax

“I guess I do,” she said.

As honest as ever, he replied, “We’re not, you know.  We’re as human as you.  We have the same fears and hurts and hates as you.  It’s only that we’re something else alongside our humanity.  It does not make us any more or any less human.  The fact that we’ve taken the measures we have to keep our world in growth should tell you that.”

Agena blinked again, her brows arching.  “The Lottery, you mean?  Are you saying you don’t like the Courtship Lottery?  That you don’t approve of it?”

The beginnings of a frown showed on Thrax’s handsome face.  “If I am honest, it has always troubled me.  I have spent my life from adolescence until now, avoiding it.  I’ve deferred it all these years, held it at bay.  My status as a Knight and being stationed on other planets has helped me to defer it.  Only now, I can’t hold it at bay any longer.  It is my sworn duty to serve my world in whatever way I am called to serve.  And now I am called to this.”

She was now genuinely alarmed and fighting to stay calm.  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, now of all times.  “Then…you don’t actually want a child?  You don’t really want to be a father?”

Carefully, thoughtfully, Thrax replied, “Having a child is something that everyone imagines, I think.  Even if we never intend to have a family, I think that we all entertain the idea.  It’s a natural thing, to try to imagine how it would be to have a child and do what you described: protecting it, teaching it, playing with it, helping it, sending it out into the world and hoping that it will do good things.  Loving it.  It is the most natural thing in the world.  And yet…it is not something I have ever really needed.  The Knighthood has always been more than enough for me.  I’ve never needed fatherhood.”

Agena felt a sudden chill in spite of the perfectly maintained temperature.  She settled back in her seat, hoping she did not look as pale as she suddenly felt.  She wanted to open another bottle of wine and drink and drink and never stop.  Feebly, she said, “Oh.  I didn’t realize…”

“There was no way you could know,” said Thrax.  “This Lottery of ours selects people at random, complete strangers with no knowledge of one another, and tosses them together expecting them to produce children to stop our planet’s stagnating.  It is a pragmatic thing to do.  It is even a pleasurable thing to do.  All around us now are people pleasuring one another in the interest of keeping our world vital.  But when I ask myself if this is the way it ought to be…I find I don’t care for the answer.”

For one of the few times in her adult life, Agena felt like crying, but she’d be damned if she would give in to the impulse now.  Instead, she said, “Then, to you…this is nothing but a duty.”

Thrax’s pain mirrored her own.  “I’m sorry, Agena, sorry if this hurts you.  But you needed to know.  I couldn’t be so dishonest as to not let you know.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” she said, suddenly feeling as hollow inside as she had felt excited and aroused just a few minutes ago.  How could everything have changed so quickly?

“Perhaps there is a way I could make you understand me in this,” Thrax said.  “You remember the history of Earth, correct?”

“Yes, I know history.  What has history got to do with…?”

“Please, just hear me out.  You know that hundreds of years ago, in one of the old nations, there was a time when some people in power saw women as things to dominate and control and even use and abuse as they saw fit.  And they believed that a woman’s body was not really her domain and that she should have no say in what she did with it, that a woman’s body was rightly the domain of a man or even the state. 

And they tried to make laws to compel a woman to reproduce, even if it was against her will.  They said it was about the children, but it was actually about the women, about the way women saw themselves and the power that men wanted over them.  Imagine yourself in a place where you were told that your body was not your own possession and that it was not for you to say what you did with it.  How would you feel?”

Apprehensively, she asked, “So, you’re saying you feel now the way some women felt on Earth when people tried to take their rights over their own bodies away from them?”

“I’m saying that I am a Knight and I’m proud of it.  I’m saying that I’ve committed my life to protecting and serving my world and my people.  This is the only life I’ve ever wanted, and it is a life that I love.  But in commanding me to surrender my body for breeding, my world is telling me that I am not its protector but its property.

 I gave myself freely into the life that I lead.  Now my world says I must give myself into a different purpose, and not one that I have chosen.  If I refuse this duty, I may no longer be a Knight.  I’ll be stripped of badge and armor, and the life that I love will be behind me.  And I do not know who or what I’ll be then.”

Agena protested, “But you wouldn’t have to give up your whole life for it.  You wouldn’t even have to marry me.  Thrax, I could keep the child and have full custody.  Or we could share custody.  If you didn’t want to commit to living with us and raising the child together, you could be as much a part of the child’s life as you wanted.  You could still stay a Knight and still do what you love.  I’d never ask you to give that up.”