Caim

by T. S. Simons

  As you know, my parents immigrated from Iran when I was a child. They are both dark-haired, and dark hair is a dominant gene, so the chance of me having a blonde child with light eyes is almost impossible. But they were still toddlers, and kids change a lot, so we watched the girls closely, thinking that they would change as they got older. But what we saw was more and more of you in them as they grew. We pushed, and my colleagues denied it, until I threatened to perform DNA tests. Finally, they admitted the eggs were donated from a desired genome, and the girls were full siblings.'

  Slumping on the couch, the toast in my stomach formed a solid mass.

  'How?' I asked weakly. 'How could they have taken them?'

  'That is the million-dollar question. Without your knowledge, they likely couldn't have. Do you know anything about IVF?'

  'Not really. I mean, I learned the basics in my undergrad degree, and saw it performed at some of my student placements, but I have never put it in to practice. Life as a vet here is a little more rustic.'

  Cam shrugged helplessly. As an agriculturalist with a speciality in food security, reproduction in humans wasn't his area of expertise.

  'How IVF works is this. In a normal month, you produce one ripened egg. The team in Melbourne may have been extremely lucky and been able to harvest an egg from you when they conducted the selection tests in Melbourne. But that doesn't explain both Ruby and Scarlett. During IVF treatment, you are injected with a hormone cocktail that makes you produce more ripened eggs. It is these that are retrieved. But this process is delicate and takes even me half an hour, and I have performed the procedure thousands of times. We normally retrieve ten to fifteen eggs in one surgery, sometimes as many as twenty if we use more drugs and time is limited, like in women about to undergo cancer treatment.'

  'Ok, so how did they take them from me then?' I wiped the sweat from my brow, willing the nausea not to overtake me. Cam, seated beside me, had his arm around my waist protectively.

  'Well, that is the thing. The entire cycle takes at least fourteen days. Usually longer.'

  'But I haven't been in a hospital or anywhere else for fourteen days. Unless they did it whilst I was on Clava. But even then, I would have noticed.' I looked up at Cam for confirmation.

  'You weren't away from me for longer than a few hours, and even then, we were in the same building. Just attending different briefings.'

  'Did you have any siblings or close relatives?' Bridget asked.

  'No,' I shook my head, my nose crinkled. 'My parents were alive when the pandemic hit, but in their fifties. They weren't candidates. My sister passed before I left for August, and all of my cousins and distant relatives were in Norway. But any of them could have survived, I guess. We weren't close.'

  'Did she?' Cam spoke gently, turning to look me directly in the eyes. 'I thought you said your sister was brain dead, but alive?'

  I stared at him, dazed.

  'You told me she was a shell, the life had gone, but she was still alive the day you said goodbye,' Cam whispered, not wanting to distress me, but loud enough for them to hear.

  My feet hit the ground, and I was out the door. I heard the empty mug from my lap bouncing along the rug behind me. I was running, but I didn't know where. The thoughts, images and nightmares filled my brain, overflowed, and tormented me as I ran faster and faster. But I couldn't escape the horrors of seeing her lying there, trapped in that bed for life. Alive, but not her.

  Holy fucking hell. No. They couldn't.

  But who was going to stop them? The nagging voice pricked at me. The world was dying. Who would have even noticed? One comatose woman missing. No one would know. Or care. But why her?

  A backup genome for you, the logical part of my brain interjected. Like Sorcha and Kendra, and all the others on the mainland protected communities. They wanted a backup for you, in case…

  In case I refused to participate. The brutal force of that reality struck me like a blow to the pit of the stomach as I realised that my refusal to be part of their plans had caused this. I slowed, dropped my head, and fought to keep the nausea at bay.

  Sitting beside Loch Acha Mor, I watched the sky change colour through the dome, from blue to purple, the orange and pink tinge of dusk, silver and finally black. I sensed movement behind me but was too shellshocked to look up.

  Luca's enormous frame scrambled to sit beside me on the small rocky shelf and not slide into the lake. He propped there, not speaking, for the longest time. He was just… there. I dropped my head onto his shoulder and let go. His strong muscular arms came around me and held me as I sobbed. For letting her down. Abandoning her. The tragedy of her life, and for what they had likely done to her. Exhausted, I slumped onto him. Luca scooped me up like a child and carried me home, depositing me into Cam's care. The house was quiet, and I heard the front door close. The tears started again as I raged, and cried, and eventually fell asleep.

  'How could they?' I sobbed when I woke during the night, and Cam held me as my body shuddered with the agony. Reliving the pain of her death—but she wasn't dead. I truly believed she hadn't survived long after the pandemic had struck. Had they just harvested her eggs before they left, or was she still lying unconscious… somewhere?

  'What else did Jorja say?' I finally asked.

  Cam spoke haltingly, not wanting to distress me further. But that ship had sailed. I had already imagined all the indignities she might have suffered. I had watched helplessly as I envisioned the medical procedures they had inflicted on her poor lifeless body. All in the name of science.

  'Perhaps sensibly, rather than ask any more questions, Jorja and Bridget took it upon themselves to do some research. They didn't find much. Many records were classified or redacted. But they learned there had been many anonymous donors of eggs to women who couldn't conceive. Donor Seventeen was the donor to both Jorja and Bridget. Likely it was planned, maybe luck. They don't know. But they learned that Donor Seventeen was the egg donor of five fertilised embryos. Full siblings. What they didn't know was whether that donor was you.'

  'Five?'

  'Five.'

  'Holy fucking hell,' I muttered, my brain whirring. If it wasn't me, then it must have been her. Was she on Clava? More likely Auckland Island. That was where Bridget and Jorja had lived and had their girls. Was she still being used as a guinea pig? Or had they just taken her genetic material before they left Australia, to be used in case I refused to take part in the breeding program? That made more sense if they only needed a few eggs.

  Despite it being the middle of the night, I couldn't stop the torturous images flickering before my eyes. I could see Kat's face clearly, her beautiful long blonde hair fanned out over her white pillowcase, glowing in the sunshine that streamed through the window of her small private room. How she had looked as I had left her, the day I said goodbye. Two years she had lain there since her accident at only eighteen. After the pandemic, I genuinely believed she had perished. Maybe she had.

  'Do they know?' I asked. 'Is she still alive?'

  'They don't. They have come a very long way to tell you this, Frey. They took those girls through the portal to Clava and then sailed here. They wanted you to know.'

  'Why now?'

  He shrugged. 'Likely they didn't know before. Their girls are only six. They change so much in the early years.'

  'They look so much like our girls,' I whispered. 'So much like Kat… and me.'

  'They took a chance coming here. What if they are your children and you wanted them back?'

  'No. Even if they are, I could never do that to a child. Take them away from the only parents they have ever known.'

  I lay there, my mind racing, unable to think clearly, unable to slow the random thoughts galloping through my mind. Like a whirlpool, giddy, unable to slow the world down. Desperate for the thoughts to stop, I pulled Cam's face to me in the dark and kissed him, insistently. Forcefully, I pushed his shoulders down, straddled him, and stripped off the o
ld thin grey t-shirt of his I used as night wear, dropping it off the side of the bed. He pulled back to look at me, confusion furrowing his dark brows in the dim moonlight.

  'Now?'

  'Now!' I demanded, my lips crushing his. I needed this. To not think. To let my body take over and silence my chattering mind.

  Cam was warm and powerful. Cradling my face between his large, roughened hands, he kissed me with so much tenderness that I bit his lip out of frustration. I didn't want gentle. I wanted to be driven, to be oblivious to my pain, just for a short time. I didn't want to make love; I wanted him to take me. Responding to my provocation, he wiped the drop of blood from his lip, and with a gleam in his eye, deftly flipped me onto the opposite side of the bed. Gripping both of my hands firmly in one of his own, he used his weight to pin me to the bed, his hips forcefully crushing mine, and stretched my arms above my head to hold them against the bedhead. I writhed violently, kicking and squirming, and he held me there, firmer. His muscular legs atop mine kept me still. He knew what I needed. To feel alive. To focus on the physical so I could stop my thoughts from tormenting me, even just for a short time. I gasped as he filled me, not caring who could hear me. Forcing myself against him, I wanted him to take control of me, body and mind. Focused on him, I finally stopped thinking. He pushed me to the brink until I could bear it no more. He released my hands as the familiar warmth flooded me, and I wrapped my arms around him as I moaned. Holding him tight, he joined me, quivering as the waves surged through him.

  'I love you,' I whispered as I tumbled into unconsciousness, still safely entangled in his arms.

  'Not as much as I love you.'

  Breakfast conversation was monosyllabic and communicated chiefly in grunts and gestures. Unable to look at the children, too nauseous to eat, I gazed into the swirling depths of my cup. Cam bustled around making toast, but even his attempts at conversation were stilted.

  'I'm so sorry,' Bridget said. 'We always knew this would be difficult.'

  I sniffed, indicating I had heard, but wasn't prepared to engage. Especially not with the children here. They were abnormally quiet. Normally they were raucous and silly, constantly needing to be reminded to eat with cutlery, not to be rude to each other. But today, they sensed something was wrong and stalled, making Cam sweep them out the door to school.

  'Like you, we always knew we were chosen. Part of that was for our skills, but the other part was to help repopulate the earth. We genuinely thought we were doing the right thing,' Bridget said as soon as Cam had closed the door.

  'Forcing people to have children? How is that the right thing?' I demanded, jerked out of my trance. Even with a little sleep, I was in no mood to be sympathetic. Cam had told me as I dressed that upon hearing of their arrival the previous day and me taking flight, our close friend and neighbour Isla had screamed and locked herself in her house, terrified of the thought of being forced to have more children. With four of her own, the idea of being forced to mate with a selected partner was repugnant on many levels.

  'We knew we were chosen for our genome,' Jorja explained. 'All of us. I knew my job was to help couples have children, especially same-sex couples like us. I didn't know about the selected pairs, I promise you. That is beyond anything I knew. That made me sick, but what could I do? We had two babies of our own by then. We were expected to work, and we needed the support, so they neatly trapped us.'

  'Well, we didn't even know about the genome selection part, so you knew far more than us.'

  Jorja nodded grimly. 'But we had no idea why. Truly. Mapping genomes and ensuring that all healthy genotypes survived makes sense. You are a scientist. Surely you can see that. Ensuring that we maintain the healthiest samples of the most diverse gene pool to secure the best chance for future generations is critical. Plants and livestock too. Didn't you wonder why the communities are so diverse? People from all nationalities and cultures? When you think that only a few thousand people survived, it was critically important to choose the best samples possible.'

  'All the communities are very multicultural,' I admitted, thinking of Di's Chinese ancestry, Isla's Indian mother and even Jacinda's Maori heritage. 'I can see that.'

  'That is what we thought my role was, to ensure that each genome survived. Logically, that was through having children. As a fertility specialist, I thought they chose me to help people who couldn't conceive. Sometimes mixed-race couples struggle to conceive naturally, or the rhesus factor can be an issue.'

  'Rhesus factor?' Cam asked.

  'You know how you are told you are positive or negative with your blood type?'

  Cam nodded.

  'That is the rhesus factor. It is a protein found on the red blood cells; you either have it, or you don't. It can cause issues if a rhesus negative mother carries a rhesus positive child. It can be fatal for the child. There are also some blood type incompatibilities. They can be treated if caught early.'

  'These women you treated as part of the program. Were they all artificially inseminated?' I asked, feeling nauseous. The toast I was nibbling on was doing little to ease my gurgling stomach.

  'No. They were all given the choice of conceiving naturally first.'

  'Shagging a stranger, even though they were in a relationship with someone else?' Cam supplied helpfully.

  'Well, yes. You could put it that way. Natural conception is a far better option. IVF works, but it involves a lot of synthetic drugs and is very time and labour intensive. It also isn't great for your body long term. We can time ovulation fairly precisely, so for most pairs, it only took the one time.'

  'And that is where the drugging people part was helpful?' Cam asked.

  Jorja's eyes dropped. Bridget looked away.

  'We didn't know about that either, I swear,' Jorja said.

  'We worked it out after we left Clava,' I replied, unable to keep the animosity from my voice. 'We both felt sick for days; then it wore off.'

  'They were feeding it to us too. Again, we didn't know. Honestly, we ate what you ate, remember? They didn't treat us any differently,' Bridget added, placing a protective hand on Jorja's leg.

  'Well, I hope they gave the conceiving couples some privacy,' I sniped. 'Or did they observe that too?'

  Bridget grinned unexpectedly. 'No. That part was very discreet. Dark rooms and lots of privacy. Often even the love partner didn't know who the other person was. It was better that way.'

  'I have to ask, how were the pairs chosen?'

  'I had no part in that. The geneticists made that decision. My role was to help them conceive, quickly, and with minimal intervention when they brought them to me. If we could impregnate a woman and send her back to her own life and just monitor the pregnancy, that was the best outcome.'

  'Best for whom?' I muttered under my breath, but Jorja ignored my barb.

  'All we knew was the pairs were not in the same community. Many were in the partnered, antipodal community, though. They didn't want love matches to cause issues in the production of breeding selected children.'

  'That makes sense,' I admitted reluctantly. 'After all, if they forced me to have a child with someone, I would prefer not to see him every day when I went to get bread.'

  'Do you know who the partners were, for each of us?' Cam asked.

  'No. That was top secret, well beyond my clearance level. However, Bridget found notes that they deliberately separated people who had hit it off during the testing phase. They noticed you and Callie got along, so they sent you to different communities.'

  'Why would they do that?' Cam asked. 'Were we supposed to be a pair?'

  'Unlikely. It was just that they thought if you started as a couple, then you wouldn't take the time to become part of the community. You would be focused on each other and not on establishing networks and friendships.'

  'That makes sense,' Cam admitted. 'Although I never felt about Cal that way, or she about me. We are friends, nothing more.'

  'How would you know
that about Cam?' I quizzed, my mind whirring.

  'We were given copies of your files when you stayed with us. They wanted us to know a little about you before we agreed. Our job was to befriend you, get you to stay.'

  'I see.' I could see, with crystal clarity. We had been set up the moment we stepped foot on Clava.

  'And you? What was your role?' I asked Bridget, boring holes into her face, making her squirm as she squeezed the curvature of her cup.

  'Initially, it was to communicate with the off-shore communities. Provide enough carefully curated information to keep everyone calm and want to make their new life a success. Give them enough information about the world they had left without inciting panic. But I knew there would be a greater role to play when they activated the antipodes, and people could travel through the Nexus.'

  'Convince people to be unfaithful?'

  'Look, I get it,' Bridget snapped back, slamming her cup onto the table. 'It is repugnant no matter how you look at it. But as I keep saying, I didn't know when we met you on Clava. Neither of us did. We just thought they had chosen us to help ensure that we all survived. The detail we didn't learn until after we had the girls, when they knew we couldn't go anywhere.'

  I felt my face flush, guilty for provoking her.

  'What do we do now?' I asked, allowing my voice to soften. 'You are here, with the girls. They let you go.'

  'Not exactly. We asked for another secondment to Clava and waited over a year for it to be approved. Settled in, started work. Did nothing to attract attention. Then we escaped late one night, using one of the electric cars. We took a boat from Inverness and made our way here. They could see us by satellite, but we kept moving and hoped they wouldn't follow.'