Wolf Boy, Chapter 7, Part I

Lider sat by Junad’s cot on a chair he couldn’t feel. Security medical personnel had cleaned Junad, exercised him, and returned him to the cot. He was restrained by an energy field, but he could wiggle. He recoiled when Lider settled within his line of sight. He looked away, pupils large, ears flattened back.

“I’m Canon Lider.”

No answer.

“I’m Monseigneur’s partner—”

Junad quivered.

“I tagged him. And registered. We’ll be married when I gain more mass—”

“Deceiver.”

Lider had wagered that between Junad’s rage and his fear, his rage would win. Junad didn’t stop:

“Non-real. Non-planet-liver. Hater of nature.”

“Neutrinos are part of nature,” Rhys objected from Lider’s prior spot against the infirmary wall.

Lider smiled to himself.

“Invisible. Untouchable. Substanceless. You should stay that way.”

Lider could practically feel Rhys’s trembling, his fierce wish to argue on Lider’s behalf. I should have told him to stay outside.

Junad continued, “Contrived. Pretended. Not natural.”

Lider said, “Like clones.”

Silence.

“Allec is a fantastic chef. And a good, ah, uncle-type figure.”

Rhys snorted, but Lider couldn’t bring himself to call Allec a father figure. Quin, maybe.

Lider didn’t stop. “Married to a decent man. His life extended.”

“He should never have been created in the first place,” Junad spat.

María Branyas Morera 116 Years Old

A lot of people agreed with Junad. Hence the lawsuits against Moon Cloning Operations. But few of those people thought that Allec shouldn’t live as long as he could now. One reason for Quin and Allec’s travel to Earth was to discuss that possibility with life-extension researchers there.

Junad thumped his legs within the shield but otherwise remained passive. Lider gathered that Allec was detested in a periphery sort of way. An assassin’s tunnel vision had some positive attributes. Panfilo was the hated object here.

Because he was an Anthros who loved Mars? Because he was a pretend Anthros? Like the Cubi-become-Anthros, Xavier?

Lider said, “Xavier—”

Xavier

And Junad was off: Xavier was a freak, a disgusting conniver, an instrument of the lying Vatican, which was a hotbed of human-Cubi deception. Humans and Cubi were in league to destroy Anthros, to weaken them through theological poaching, intermarriage, false prophets. Look at humans who got surgery to give them false Anthros tails and ears. Look at Cubi who pretended to be Anthros. And now the Moon—

Lider knew that Junad couldn’t hear him draw a breath, and Rhys was carefully noiseless after his initial outburst. But self-preservation is a powerful tool within all species. On the word “Moon,” Junad shut his mouth.

Lider said immediately, his voice carrying over Junad’s almost imperceptible pause, “But Panfilo is an Anthros. Born and bred. He was abandoned—”

“Not real. Not born to a mammal. The Moon admits its guilt.”

“The Moon never did. Not with all those lawsuits. It shut down tighter than a bank vault.”

He thought Rhys coughed a laugh since Lider rarely let his age slip with such historical allusions. Junad paid no heed.

He hissed, “There are still good Anthros, even on that desolate paeon to corrupt science and pleasures.”

A mixed metaphor but Junad wasn’t the only one to see the Moon as a cesspool of immoral philosophies and exploits.