Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “Take those off. I was going to write about it. But everything else is a go. Including the interview with the Montross girl that I don’t actually have yet. I think her attorney’s ignoring me now.” Tess rolled over on her left side and felt marginally more comfortable. “I promised I could get her.”

  Judy planted a reassuring palm on the round of Tess’s hip. “You’ll get her.”

  “What if I can’t?”

  “Then you’ll have to rework the article. But you will. You got an interview with the guy in prison, didn’t you?”

  Kenny Kendall had talked to Tess against his attorney’s advice. Before the interview, she thought it was because her article was the biggest microphone available to a man in love with his own voice. And maybe that was part of it; he’d struck her as someone who’d been waiting his whole life to paint himself as martyr to a cause. But it wasn’t just that. He’d recognized Tess. Knew her by name. Had leaned back in his orange jumpsuit, pinched at his eyebrows, and said he’d expected someone bigger.

  Tess tried to put it out of her mind. Being part of the story, rather than just reporting it, would make talking to Candace even more complicated. Her inability to find Candace at all was enough to worry about for now.

  “Are you still using the light?” she asked.

  Judy turned the lamp off and the soft LED gloaming of idle electronics filled the room. Tess stole pillows from Judy’s hoard, one for her head and one for between her knees. The comforter flapped against her body and Tess felt Judy’s arm slip under her own and drape across her ribs, warm breath on the back of her neck. Tess moved Judy’s wrist so it wasn’t pressing on her breast.

  “How important is it that I go to the party?” Tess asked.

  “You have to go to the party. It’s for you.”

  “It’s going to be crowded,” she said.

  Judy didn’t answer.

  “I’m too focused on this trip.”

  “You can handle it,” Judy said. “It’s gifts and sitting, you’ll be fine.”

  Was there anything more awful than gifts and sitting? Tess curled in her knees. “I wish I could take a pill.”

  “No flippers for Decaf.”

  “No flippers for Decaf.” It was a phrase worn smooth, a call-and-response begun in the months since Tess learned that she had to quit her anti-anxiety medication for the duration of her pregnancy.

  Judy’s breath slowed and evened. Tess shifted, twisted onto her back. Judy stirred but didn’t wake, just tucked her narrow nose into the pillow and pressed pale knuckles to her mouth. Judy’s was an accommodating sleep that came when called. Tess’s sleep, like her ability to enjoy her friends, came usually from a medicine bottle. The pills used to sit out on her nightstand, but were now shut away in the bathroom cabinet. Tess wondered what, if any, meds would be in the bag Judy had packed for her. None of her normal ones. She wouldn’t be surprised to find instead one of the herbal supplements with which Judy decorated their pantry. Valerian or something. Tess had no faith in substances she couldn’t imagine being synthesized in gleaming, sanitary laboratories, surrounded by starched white coats and lasers. Taking one of those grassy capsules was like eating off the floor.

  Without her prescription bottles, all she had left were words. Pliant letters on the page. The story was what mattered. Losing the cross-cultural angle would change the balance of the piece. She let the article fill her mind, then experimentally plucked out China. She shut the country away in the cabinet and watched her words twist and flow to fill the hole. Contexts shifted, sentences blossomed, and paragraphs slid over and through each other until, eventually, they began to blur into dreams.

  CANDACE MONTROSS’S CONDITION has yet to be definitively named. It was first called Human Asexual Reproduction Syndrome, or HARS, a term that proved less than fully accurate with the discovery that the disease is sexually transmitted. The name is no longer used within the medical community, though it remains in use online, where reactionary commenters still make references to “HARS whores.” Terms in more common use are Human Communicable Parthenogenesis (HCP) and Gamete Diploidy Syndrome (GDS). HCP is the popular term among the affected; the most widely read news site for this growing culture is titled The Hiccup. But GDS has become the preferred nomenclature in the medical journals, and is the term that will be used in this article.

  All of these names are attempts to capture precisely how it is that babies are being made now in a way they have never been made before. Recall the old, familiar recipe: two cells, a sperm from a man and an egg from a woman, fuse into a single cell which grows into a baby. The sperm and the egg can fuse this way because they are, at a genetic level, different from all the other cells in the body. Every cell contains our complete genetic code, split up into 23 chromosomes. Most cells have two copies of each chromosome (one from mom, the other from dad) for a total of 46. This property of having two copies of every chromosome is called “diploidy.” Almost every cell in the human body is diploid. The lone exception are the gametes, the sperm and the egg. Gametes are “haploid”–they only have one copy of each chromosome. Being haploid is what allows two gametes to fuse into a single diploid cell with a new mix of chromosomes that will develop into a genetically distinct person. This is sexual reproduction, the way human beings have made more human beings from the beginning of the species until sometime in the last six years.

  Candace Montross’s eggs, like the eggs of a growing number of women around the world, are not haploid. They are diploid. Her eggs are fully capable of implanting in her womb and growing into a baby that shares every one of Candace’s genes, a perfect clone of her only biological parent. They weren’t always that way. Her gametes were altered after she was raped by a man in Houston who also had diploid gametes, and who also wasn’t born that way. They both, now, have GDS. Since diploid sperm are nonviable, Candace’s rapist is a sterile carrier of the disease, which renders all men who contract it sterile. But they can still transmit it to women, whose diploid eggs will put them at risk for pregnancy whenever they ovulate. Their genetically identical children will themselves be carriers, and will similarly begin auto-impregnating when they reach puberty. This is a new form of reproduction which crowds out the old, and only time will tell which method is more robust.

  THERE WERE GIANT ants in the Atlanta airport, six feet long at least. They stretched across the ceiling in a curious, seeking line that curled down the wall of baggage claim. One lone ant had been installed on the floor, and Tess ran a hand over its copper and urethane carapace as she walked by on her way to the car rental desks. When she got to her hotel room, she found ants there too. These were alive and more traditionally sized, clumsy brown specks swarming the lid from a pudding cup that had fallen behind the nightstand and been overlooked by the housekeeping staff. The second room she tried stank of cigarettes and sent her, retching, back into the hall. The third was tolerable.

  In the morning, Tess found that her lavender blouse didn’t fit right anymore. She wasn’t that much bigger in the chest, but still the fabric gaped between the buttons and pulled tight around her shoulders. Her skirt sat lower than she was used to, also. She tugged and adjusted, but there was no fixing it. At least her jacket still fit, if she wore it open. The sides hung down like a charcoal frame for her belly. It hadn’t made sense to Tess to buy a whole new professional wardrobe for something that would be done with in a few months. And how often did she need to get this dressed up for work anyway? Before the Kendall raid, almost never. The last time she’d talked to Dr. Long-Kamal it’d just been a day of intermittent emails. She’d done the whole thing in sweatpants. Tess gave her hems a final tug in front of the mirror, then looked over her notes until it was time to head to Emory.

  Eleanor Long-Kamal. Forty-six, unmarried, no kids. Undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, Ph.D. In epidemiology from the University of Colorado. Discovered what she called at the time “Human Asexual Reproduction Syndrome” a little under two years ago, while faculty at the University of Texas
Health Science Center. “Discovered” in that she was the first scientist to notice the disease; thousands of women, of course, knew about it already. Tess was one of them. But Dr. Long-Kamal’s discovery was the tipping point for the medical community. This would be Tess’s first face-to-face encounter with her, and their first full interview.

  Dr. Long-Kamal was out when Tess arrived. “She’s on joint fellowship with Rollins and the CDC,” the department secretary explained. “There’s an off-site lab where she spends a lot of time. Can’t be she’s gone long though, sweetie. I know she’s expecting you.” She led Tess to a break room with a long folding table, assortment of orphaned chairs, and a love seat where a grad student napped with his knees bent over the armrest, blue and gray sneakers dangling. The secretary rousted him and gave the seat to Tess.

  “You want some coffee? Or there’s usually some cokes in the fridge.” She yanked open the refrigerator. “There’s no cokes. But can I get you coffee? Or some water?”

  “No, it’s all right. I probably shouldn’t drink anything.”

  “Oh, I know how it is. I’ve got three myself, two boys and a girl. The bathroom’s out this way, end of the hall on the left. You come and say if you need anything. Or send Derek. He’s not doing much, is he?”

  The grad student had dragged three chairs into a row and stretched himself over them, trying to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. When the secretary left, he shrugged into a seat back and said, “I’ve got two hours left on my protocol before the centrifuge.” Tess nodded, and the grad student closed his eyes.

  The walls of the break room were covered in posters and announcements. There were false color micrographs of cells, cutting-edge smears in neon blue and green. There were handwritten signs and notices. “Please rinse out coffee mugs thanks.” “This fridge is for FOOD ONLY!” Taped up on the wall near Tess’s head was a printout of a graph with the words “FUCK YES” written above in marker. The figure, all dots and trend lines, was utterly incomprehensible.

  Tess shifted in her seat, chased an itch under the edge of her shoe. She felt a stretching bulge, a brief squirming that she still couldn’t quite convince herself was Decaf moving inside, and not just some intermittent digestive insult. She glanced at the grad student, dozing again with a white-sleeved elbow creased over his eyes. She realized she was holding herself frozen, taking shallow sips of air, like this was his bedroom and she was tiptoeing through. She dug her phone from her purse. In a waiting room at Emory, she texted Judy. Feel like a specimen for dissection. Butterflies and pins.

  Her phone buzzed a moment later. You’re the journalist. You’re the one with the scalpel. Did you take a pill?

  Judy had packed one of her alternative remedies. Homeopathic, it looked like. Tess had found it the night before in a plastic bag with her soap, shampoo, and the new toothpaste that didn’t make her gag, as the flavor of mint now did. In there too was a brown glass bottle around which Judy had taped a label in her own neat script reading, “Placebos. Take for anxiety.”

  Tess texted back, No, but I saw that. Funny.

  The effect is real. That’s science, sent Judy.

  Why’d I even fly out here? Can get all I need from you.

  A woman in a striped polo appeared in the doorway, hands braced across the frame. She had a name badge dangling from her shirt by a shiny metal clip and vibrant red frames resting on the deep cheekbones that Tess recognized from photographs. There was a streak of gray in her tied-back hair, though, that wasn’t in her faculty headshot. “You must be Ms. Mendoza,” she announced. She tumbled forward in to the room and scooped Tess’s hand in warm, strong fingers. “I’m Eleanor Long-Kamal.”

  “Tess.”

  “It’s a pleasure, Tess. So glad we’re finally doing this. I’m terribly sorry about the delay, I…” she stopped as she noticed the grad student lying across the chairs. She pulled away the one supporting his legs, and Tess started at the sound of his soles slapping the floor. Eleanor said, “Derek, is that a lab coat in the break room?”

  The grad student hunched up on his elbows. “It hasn’t been in the lab. It’s an extra. Clean from my office.” He glanced up at the wall and added, “I’ve got two hours left on my protocol.”

  Eleanor loomed over him. “Sure, you know it’s clean. Anyone else walking by just sees one of my researchers napping in a lab coat. Do you want the undergrads thinking that’s okay? Or any reporters that should happen by, like our guest here?”

  “I only grabbed it ‘cause they keep this place freezing.”

  “Bring a jacket. I can’t have the press thinking I don’t care about contamination in my lab.” Eleanor turned back to Tess. “Come on down to my office.”

  Once they were out of earshot of the break room, Eleanor said, “Hope I didn’t make you feel on the spot, using you to bludgeon Derek like that.”

  “So he’s not supposed to wear a coat outside the lab?”

  “God no. The stuff we work with? He should have known better. I’m big on lab safety. When I was in grad school I used to see people eating in lab coats sometimes. Turned my stomach.”

  Eleanor’s office was a long, shallow room dominated by an ornate mahogany desk. The desktop was immaculate, but the floor surrounding was a shantytown of papers, journals, and books in teetering piles. Eleanor hefted some binders out of a cracked leather wingback by the wall and dragged the chair over, nudging stacks out of the way with the side of her boot.

  “I’m a pretty organized person at home,” she said. “I’ve only been in this office five months. I guess that’s a long time, actually. But you know how things get away from you. Sit, please. So,” she said, lowering herself into her desk chair, “before we begin, if it’s not an indelicate question, can I ask how much of a personal stake you have in this topic?” She gestured with her chin at Tess’s abdomen and leaned back in her seat so the springs creaked.

  “I don’t have it, if that’s what you mean,” said Tess, sitting down. The wings of the chair jutted in her peripheral vision like broad palms waiting to squeeze her skull. She felt a press of claustrophobia, swallowed it back, but inched forward in the seat when she leaned to retrieve her voice recorder. “But everyone has a personal stake, I think. Some people just don’t know it yet.”

  “It’s so nice to do an interview with someone who gets it,” said Eleanor. “You know, you were the first to look for me. I’m surprised you’re writing forAmerican Moment, though. Their science reporting is usually terrible. No offense. I mean, obviously I still read it.”

  “It’s my first time writing for them,” said Tess. “And this won’t be a science article. I’m focusing on the social implications of the disease. The future of motherhood. Things like that.” She put her recorder on the desk between them. “May I?”

  “Absolutely. I’m happy to answer any questions I can.”

  Tess turned on the recorder. “Okay. So you were the first to discover GDS. Tell me how that happened.”

  “I first started looking into it about, oh, twenty months ago. This was back in San Antonio. I was primarily researching Toxo at the time — that’s Toxoplasma gondii — and I read an article in the LA Times about a new psychological condition that was hitting pregnant women and new mothers, where they refused to believe their children really belonged to them. People were calling it ‘maternal dissociative disorder.’ As a Toxo researcher, I was used to thinking about possible infectious causes for psychological changes, so this was pretty interesting.” Eleanor leaned sideways in her chair and plucked something off the floor behind her desk. A plastic ball that expanded when she tugged on the sides. She played with it in her lap, colorful struts thrumping together as she spoke. “Of course, in the end it turned out not to be psychological at all. That initial misconception made people miss it for a long time.”

  “That’s my next question. Why did it take so long for the medical community to realize this was something new. Because, as I understand it, we now think that GDS has been s
preading for at least six years. Are you saying that the whole time it was just doctors who wouldn’t listen to their patients? It really took six years for someone to believe that women knew what they were talking about when they said there was something strange with their pregnancies?”

  “That’s a little unfair,” said Eleanor. “You have to understand that there was nothing about this disease that would show up on the radar of the public health community. Even my initial interest was purely speculative. The only solid evidence for GDS was demographic. A slight bump in the birthrate and more girls being born than boys. No scientist looks at that data and thinks infectious disease. You see that and you look for social and environmental factors. Abstinence-only education and hormones in beef. We’re talking here about an STI whose only visible symptom is sexually active women getting pregnant. It was impossible to figure out what was happening until we started seeing it in infusion patients. Before that, there was no way to tell.”

  “You can’t say there was no way to tell,” Tess said. “You could tell by listening to what women were saying. The alternative press started reporting on unexplainable pregnancies four years ago. I know, I wrote some of the stories.”

  Eleanor shrugged. “They started being right about it four years ago. Fringe publications have been writing about virgin births a lot longer than that. As a scientist, you don’t start writing a grant proposal until you see it happen five times in the same hospital.”

  Tess jotted grant prop in her notebook, a reminder to quote that line. Profit motive. Perverse incentive? She felt flush with uncharitable objectivity. “Okay, then. So now that you do know the condition exists, are you any closer to understanding what causes it?”

  “I can’t answer that, actually. I have a paper on the subject under review right now. I can’t discuss results that are pending publication.”