Natalism

Natalism is a religious position represented aboard the colony expedition by members of the Natalist Church. Its objections to Expendables and to multiple copies are not presented only as abstract doctrine: they affect how Mickey Barnes understands his isolation, how Cat Chen interprets criticism of her work, and how Hieronymus Marshall responds when two versions of Mickey are discovered. Across these encounters, religious belief sits beside practical necessity and secular ethical concern, while also becoming a language through which authority can judge other people’s conduct.

Belief and life aboard the expedition

Mickey knows that there are Natalists aboard the ship and says their presence is one reason he keeps to himself. Cat Chen challenges the assumption that this makes her hostile to him: she says she is not a Natalist and considers Mickey no more unusual than the other people who signed up for the expedition. Her distinction matters. Mickey’s status as an Expendable may make him an object of religious disapproval to some, but Cat refuses to treat that status as a reason to exclude him.

Cat’s objection to Marshall is specifically about the way he has characterized her work. She resents the insinuation that hormones interfered with her professional judgment, and points out that Marshall did not level the same accusation at Mickey. The exchange reveals how institutional criticism can carry a gendered implication even when it is framed as a dispute about competence. Cat does not defend Natalist belief; instead, she objects to a different form of moral judgment being applied selectively to her.

In a later conversation, Cat confirms that Natalists are present aboard and tells Mickey that not all of them want him to keep to himself. The remark complicates his expectation that their beliefs necessarily require social distance from him. The text does not make every Natalist’s attitude identical, or give a full account of their doctrine. It shows a community whose presence Mickey feels, but whose members cannot be reduced to a single response to him.

Objections to the Expendable system

Mickey’s reading about Expendables gives the religious opposition a broader context. The technology has been viable for only about two hundred years, and many colony missions have not used it, despite the practical appeal of producing replacement colonists far from resupply. In a small settlement where embryos take years to mature, repeated regeneration might seem an obvious logistical advantage. Its adoption, however, has been contested.

Mickey identifies religious objections as one source of resistance, while also recognizing an ethical argument that does not depend on religion: taking someone from the street or a prison and making him die repeatedly for other people’s benefit. Volunteering changes some of those circumstances, but Mickey questions how often a volunteer would be available. His own decision to sign up does not erase that dilemma. He reflects that he might have researched the history before giving Gwen Johansen his DNA, though he is unsure the information would have changed his choice; the torture machine that drove him to enlist was a powerful motive.

This account prevents Natalism from standing in for every objection to the system. Religious resistance is described as readily understandable to Mickey, even if it does not align with his own outlook, while the coercion and repeated deaths raise a separate moral problem. The colony’s dependence on Expendables can make them useful, but usefulness does not settle whether their treatment is just.

Multiples and historical fear

The opposition to multiple copies is described as especially visceral. Mickey anticipates that readers unfamiliar with the Natalist Church or Union history may see simultaneous copies as a practical solution—for instance, sending two Expendable bodies on a mission that requires two people rather than risking someone else. He argues that this surface-level calculation cannot explain the strength of public reaction; understanding it requires knowledge of Alan Manikova and what he did to Gault.

The historical account begins with the bio-printer, an invention older than the use of Expendables. Early systems could scan a body and reproduce it at cellular resolution, but the printed bodies were empty, lacking awareness. Researchers later learned to reproduce synaptic connections and theorized that this might recreate behavior, if not consciousness. Repeated experiments on animals and humans disproved that theory. Mickey places this technological history beside the later fear of multiples, establishing that copying a body and reproducing a person are not simple equivalents. The account points toward Manikova’s actions as crucial to the public reaction, but the evidence here does not detail those actions or reduce that reaction to a single cause.

Natalist morality in the duplication crisis

When Marshall confronts Mickey and his duplicate, religious condemnation becomes explicit. He calls them an abomination and invokes not only the colony’s prohibition on multiples but also the seventy kilograms of calcium and proteins their existence has taken from a settlement near starvation. He further condemns their sexual relations with each other. His outburst then subsides into a cold ruling: both are to be sent to the cycler, and the discussion will determine whether another iteration of Mickey can ever be made and whether Nasha Adjaya should also be killed.

Marshall’s response draws together distinct grounds for judgment. The colony has a material claim on scarce nutrients; the existence of two copies violates the social rule against multiples; and their intimacy provokes his appeal to Natalist morality. The scene shows these arguments reinforcing one another without making them interchangeable. Scarcity gives the crisis an immediate practical cost, while Marshall’s language turns the copies’ existence and relationship into a moral offense.

Nasha contests that moral authority directly. Marshall says she had known something was wrong for two days and reports that she rejected his claim to govern what she did with the two Mickeys, dismissing his Natalist morality as none of his business. Yet he does not immediately remove her: she is one of only two qualified combat pilots, and the colony may soon be fighting hostile native sentients. His decision exposes a tension between asserted moral judgment and military dependence. Nasha’s standing in the crisis is constrained by command, but her expertise also limits Marshall’s ability to act on his condemnation.

Significance

Natalism is most consequential here not as a fully explained creed but as a force in disputes over who may reproduce, who may belong, and who has authority to judge intimate conduct. The text places those disputes inside a colony where calories and protein are scarce, where survival work depends on Expendables, and where the threat of combat makes a qualified pilot indispensable. Religious objections therefore meet material conditions rather than operating in isolation.

The differing responses also resist a simple division between believers and outsiders. Cat rejects Natalism but defends Mickey against social exclusion and challenges Marshall’s gendered insinuation; Nasha openly refuses his moral jurisdiction; and Mickey recognizes ethical objections to repeated, coerced death even as he is himself an Expendable. The resulting conflict is not simply faith against technology. It concerns how moral principles, institutional power, and immediate need shape the treatment of people whom the colony has made both useful and vulnerable.