Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

scene: All of the adults gathered together, aunts and uncles and grandparents, people he knew and loved and respected, people whose opinion he valued, people who had always looked upon him fondly and whose respect he had always hoped to maintain. All of them had sat together and discussed him and Janda, discussed a sex life that Victor didn’t even have! It was revolting. And Mother and Father had been there. How embarrassing for them. How could Victor ever face these people again? They would never be able to look at him without thinking of that meeting, without remembering the accusation and shame.
    “No one is suggesting that you two have done anything improper, Victor. But that’s why we’re acting now, before your feelings further blossom and you realize you’re in love.”
    Another slap. “Love?”
    “I know this is difficult, Victor.”
    Difficult? No, unfair would be a better word. Completely unfair and unfounded. Not to mention humiliating. They were sending away his closest friend, perhaps his only true friend, all because they thought something would happen between them? As if he and Janda were animals in heat driven by unbridled carnal impulses. Was it too much to imagine that a teenage boy and a teenage girl could simply be friends? Did adults think so little of adolescents that they assumed that any relationship between sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds of the opposite sex had to be motivated by sex? It was infuriating and insulting. Here he was making an adult-sized contribution in the trade with the Italians, bringing in the largest share of income for the family, and they didn’t think him mature enough to act properly with his second cousin. Janda wasn’t in love with him, and he wasn’t in love with her. Why would anyone think otherwise? What had initiated this? Had someone on the Council seen something between them and misinterpreted it as a sign of love?
    And then Victor remembered. There was that time when Janda had looked at him strangely, and he had dismissed it as pure imagination. And she had touched his arm a little longer than normal once. It wasn’t sexual at all, but he had liked the physical contact between them. That connection hadn’t repulsed him. He had enjoyed it.
    They were right, he realized.
    He hadn’t seen it, and they had. He really was on the brink of falling in love with Janda. And she had fallen in love with him, or at least her feelings were moving in that direction.
    Everything swelled up inside him at once: anger at being accused; shame at learning that all the older adults on the ship had talked about him behind his back, believing he was moving toward disgraceful behavior; disgust with himself at realizing that perhaps they may have been right; grief at losing the person who meant the most to him in his life. Why couldn’t Concepción simply have told him her suspicions before now? Why couldn’t she and the Council have said, “Victor, you really need to watch yourself. It looks like you and Alejandra are getting a little close.” They didn’t have to send Janda away. Didn’t they know that he and Janda were mature enough to act appropriately once the family’s fears were voiced? Of course they would comply. Of course he and Janda wanted to adhere to the exogamous code. Victor would never want to do anything to dishonor her or the family. He and Janda hadn’t even realized that their relationship might be headed toward perilous waters. Now that they knew, things would be different.
    But arguing would only make him look like a child. And besides, he would be arguing to keep Janda here, close to him. Wasn’t that proof that the family was right? No, Alejandra had to go. It was cruel, yes, but not as cruel as keeping her here in front of him every day. That would be torture. Now that their love—or pre-love or whatever it was—had been so flagrantly pointed out to them, how could he and Janda think of anything else whenever they saw each other? And they would see each other. All the time, every day. At meals, passing in the hall, at exercise. It would be unavoidable. And out of their duty to honor one another and the family, they would become distant and cold to each another. They would overcompensate. They would refrain from any look, any conversation, any touch between them. Yet even as they tried in vain to avoid each other, they would be thinking about the need to avoid each other. They would consume each other’s thoughts, even more so than