First Draft Excerpt from Measure of Adulthood

"Sol Minor Three Local, Starbird zeroeight twentynine fortyfour zeroone inbound bearing nineteen by zero, range four iprime, interrogatory enabled." I'd sent a message while walking to the portal from my meeting with Adulthood Services, and received a response detailing procedure. They should be expecting me. System Control had explicitly instructed me to remain outside the published exclusionary zone, which was unusual because that was a standard requirement where one existed. The habitat was in Solar orbit at a distance of one minute, roughly half the orbital radius of Mercury. Nothing came this close to Sol accidentally.

"Starbird zeroeight twentynine fortyfour zeroone, Sol Minor Three Local, contact. Proceed inbound under impellers only, beacon zerofour. You are number one, cleared to land bay zerofour."

Evidently, they didn't get a lot of traffic here. I didn't hear another contact in the three minutes it took to reach the habitat. Most places, I could have been docked in fifteen seconds or less by Vectoring in, but they'd explicitly instructed impellers only. Since this was one of the closest things to a prison the Empire had, understandable. If you'd done something to merit being sent here, you arrived in stasis and generally left that way, too. Most controllers were military, but the entire station was probably military staffed - and if there were two full teams of eight, the station was overmanned. They couldn't afford not to be careful.

The arrival bay was unusual as well - instead of a simple docking clamp with interior access, it was a large, well-lit bay in the tip of a long metal arm extending outside the main shield. I saw the firing head of a craser pointing straight at my ship from within the bay on the video feed. There was a single landing area marked on the floor of the bay. Essentially, 'put your ship down here or we shoot.' "Sol Minor Three Local, Starbird fortyfour zeroone landed."

"Starbird fortyfour zeroone, shut down all power and bleed your capacitors. Station will provide restart." A large bondsteel hatch began to swing shut. It wouldn't prevent them opening the bay to space, but it would make a Vector out of the bay suicidal.

Look, if I was planning a jailbreak, all this wouldn't have made it impossible - but it would make it more difficult. Likely to delay even me more than long enough for a response force to foil the attempt. "Starbird fortyfour zeroone, will comply."

It took a few minutes, but once power was dead, "Starbird fortyfour zeroone, you have atmosphere. All persons must exit to the bay."

"Starbird fortyfour zeroone acknowledged."

Imperial Starships were built differently than our pre-contact visualizations. There were no actual windows on the Starbird, and the cabin wasn't on the surface of the ship. It was even possible, although difficult, to wiggle into or out of a spacesuit in the cramped cabin - I wiggled into a basic survival suit, just in case, although I didn't secure the helmet. The exit was on the underside of the ship.

I was halfway expecting them to do something like electrify the hull, but they didn't. The same voice I'd been talking with came over speakers set in the wall. "Your ship reads clean. I understand you're here for a prisoner."

"Yes."

"Please identify."

"Graciela Juarez," and followed with my official number.

"First key?" I reeled off the first of my confirmation numbers.

"We'll bring him out to you."

"Standing by." I hoped it wouldn't be too long, as I didn't see anywhere to sit. Oh, well - one of the perks of operancy was physical endurance.

It only took a few minutes. They brought in a stasis chamber, accompanied by two troops in combat armor, one of them a Second Order Guardian. "Sign receipt for custody," one of them shot my datalink a copy. I signed and transmitted back.

"He's all yours."

I deactivated the stasis field and opened the door. Out fell a man most of a head taller than me, skin the same dark chocolate color I remembered on Gerry, dark brown hair almost the same color as mine, dressed in the pink and white stripes of someone in custody. The damper was attached in a mostly circular band around his skull near the top of his ears, perhaps two isixths in thickness.

"This him?"

"Lemarcus Wilson," the Guardian in the combat suit repeated, and gave me his ID number.

I made a quick genetic scan with perception. Because of the damper, it felt like I was stirring not quite set concrete - but this man was genetically my son. "Do you understand Technical?" I asked in Technical. It was possible to live in the Empire speaking only Traditional. Not smart, but possible.

He looked at me blankly.

I wasn't certain if he was disoriented or didn't understand. "Would you prefer Traditional?"

"I can understand Traditional, but I prefer English. Who are you?"

Joy. He had to have had enough comprehension of either Technical or Traditional to have passed the adulthood tests at some point - they were never administered in any other language. The Empire didn't care what local languages there were, it did business in Traditional, Technical, Mindlord, and Concept. Most people (including Guardians) used Traditional or Technical, and you really needed both. Traditional was more useful for art, Technical for precision. Letting your proficiency in either go was sabotaging yourself.
"Lucky for you I do speak English. But almost nobody else does in Indra System, where we're going. I'm Graciela Juarez, your genetic mother."

"Where's Mom?"

"No idea, but you were in stasis almost a year. Nobody else was coming for you. Will you accept my guardianship, or would you prefer to go back into stasis for exile, where basically nobody will speak English?"

"I want Mom - Ashley Wilson!"

I was an Investigator, so I had access to records. "She died three days after you were put in stasis. Her former husband is still alive, last reported in the area of Bakersfield."

"Jim and I never got along. We put up with each other for Mom's sake. Shit!"

"That sort of language has very little tolerance in our home. We express our disdain more skillfully. What's it going to be, me or exile?"

"You threw me away! Why do you suddenly want back in?"

"Because you're still my child. Nor did I throw you away. I had real problems that might well have ended up hurting you, so I did what I thought was best for you - put you into a system that was supposed to be able to give you a better parenting than I could at the time. It was the law back then that adoptions were private, but I signed permission to share my identity with you and your adopters. Did you ever try to look me up? I would have been easy to find."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"The point is your actions indicate you didn't want anything to do with me. But I've been out in the Empire for a long time now. I understand why responsibility delegated is not absolution for poor results, and I'm here because I love you, I believe I can do better now, and I want to help you. But you have the right to reject me as a guardian. Do you accept me as your guardian?"

"What kind of deal you offering?"

"No special considerations. I'm offering you myself and my husband as parents. You will have five siblings, one of which has just achieved adulthood. You will be a legal child, and be expected to behave thus until your adulthood is restored by an appropriate viceroy. There is a large extended family on both sides, and my husband's grandfather keeps a large residence in Sumabad which is home to his extended family, including us."

"But I'm an adult! I'm over two hundred years old!"

"You're grown, but you are not a legal adult. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation in an Adulthood Services facility. Since the Empire has adjudged you unable to assume responsibility for yourself, you have a choice of accepting someone else or leaving the Empire. I've visited an exile planet - life there is ugly."

"I'm in prison either way!"

I laughed. "Only if you want to be. You go into exile, your chances of earning your way back into Imperial society drop to almost zero, and there will be nobody there to help you. Whereas my husband and I will attempt to channel you into the bounds the Empire demands of citizens, as I evidently should have done all those years ago. You're not paying attention! We're rich by the standards of Earth!"

I knew that was a mistake as soon as I said it. I wasn't reading beyond the bounds with auros, but his surface thoughts changed completely. He didn't have to say he was attracted to rich - it was plain in his thoughts. Nothing wrong with that - who isn't attracted to having means? But it shouldn't be anything like enough on its own. I'd have loved Asto if he was living in a tiny cubicle in the middle of a building, barely scraping the essentials of life. For Lemarcus, his thoughts all became 'easy life!', and an easy life is not a meaningful one.

"All right, I'll give you a try."

I shouldn't have let it stand. But watching the combat-suited observers, it wasn't their job to sit there and watch me argue with my son. "Climb in." I didn't bother telling him not to touch anything; instead I deactivated the manual controls and followed him up.

"Sol Minor Three Local, Starbird fortyfour zeroone requesting departure..."

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