Slave Stories

by Bahr, Laura Lee

  There comes a moment, after he dispatches his unconscious’s latest sending, when he pauses, sounding himself to determine whether his task is done, whether he has at last emptied the vast region below his conscious of its denizens. How many of them can there be? How many figures are necessary to populate the space? He would know, the pit-witch assured him. The moment his unconscious was clear, he would feel it. Then, it would be a matter of turning the null-sword on himself, and his quest would be completed.

  He does not feel empty.

  He sighs, wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. He looks around for the child, expecting her to approach with a fresh glass of milky water. She’s nowhere to be found. The jar with the jagged lip rests beside the cloudy pool. He walks over, squats to take the jar and scoop the pool with it. The sediment in the water swirls, makes fantastical shapes.

  I must be almost done, he thinks. I have to be. How much can any person contain?

  For Fiona

  Crimes Against Nature

  —Mary A. Turzillo

  Gary tired easily by the eighth month, so when the brunette flashed him a gap-toothed smile and offered him her seat on the bus, he gladly collapsed into it.

  The bus lurched through grimly falling snow. With the war effort, private cars were frowned on. But Gary wished he was in a warm sedan purring home instead of in this bumpy bus that jounced his hemorrhoids.

  He became aware of the woman’s lively gaze still riveted on him.

  “What’s the matter? Never seen a pregnant man before?” His voice, raised to carry over the noise of the other passengers and the traffic, betrayed annoyance, though he tried to make it light.

  “Well, excuse me!” Her voice was deep, gravelly even.

  Gary was embarrassed. Here she had been polite and considerate, and he was attacking her. He tugged her pink jacket. When she turned around crossly, he smiled. “I’ll bet you really haven’t ever seen a pregnant man before.”

  She brightened, showed the space between her big front teeth “Right-o. Listen, I’ve got respect for you. It takes guts. It takes guts for women to do it, and we’ve got the original design.”

  “It takes guts for anybody to have a kid, what with the defense situation the way it is. But, I wanted a son. If I had waited until the war was over, I might be too old.”

  “For sure. Not to pry, but your wife didn’t want to have one? Or you a single parent?”

  “Wife had the first one. She had a caesarean, so it wasn’t going to be any easier for her.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion!” She scowled. Crooked teeth and big painted lips. Not pretty, but lively. “You still working? You look pretty close to term.”

  Gary glanced down at his maternity suit. “I work for a firm that markets organic software viruses.”

  “Wow! Classified stuff?” Her voice buzzed with curiosity.

  “No, nothing like that. Domestic use only. But it is defense oriented, so I hung in there. My wife’ll take care of the baby after it’s born, so I can go back to work.”

  “Didn’t mean to pry. You hear so much about these Ninth World viruses,” and her voice sunk to a raspy whisper, “ I had to wonder.”

  Gary smiled. “Nothing that dramatic.”

  “This is my stop. Good luck, Daddy-to-be.” Before she got off, she winked and added, “Maybe I’ll see you again. Name’s Rachelle. I’m an RN. Specialty is surgical obstetrics.”

  “I’m Gary.” He turned and watched her bounce off the bus step and disappear into a yellow brick office building near the hospital. He didn’t appreciate her playing games, pretending she didn’t know anything about his delicate condition, and then confessing that she’d been an obstetric nurse. Gary dozed and nursed his misery in the soggy heat of his coat and the prickly cold of his toes.

  His wounded feelings, enhanced by hormones foreign to his blood, were jerked suddenly away when the bus braked and went into a skid.

  Something wet on the street. Gary’s stomach heaved as the bus glided, slow motion, toward a stopped car. The driver managed to stop the bus inches short of collision. The passengers chorused relief.

  Ice. Somebody had opened a fire hydrant and the water had frozen on the street.

  Gary felt a sharp pang in his abdomen. Matter of fact, he’d had gas all afternoon. But maybe it wasn’t gas.

  “Vistynoi dal p’pristii!” shouted a balding, angry man, pushing the bus door open. At least that was what it sounded like. It was no language Gary recognized. Maybe a Ninth World language. The Ninth-Worlders were created and controlled by virus engineering, and yet their leaders denounced most other forms of biotechnology. The aliens who masterminded the whole invasion must have laughed and laughed, if those aliens even knew what laughing meant.

  The man, who looked American, wore a Cleveland Indians tee shirt. Cradled in his arms like a dark metal baby was a machine gun.

  Behind him crowded other American-looking people, standing on tiptoe and jumping to watch the action. Some shouted slogans in a language Gary did not recognize. The bald man barked orders to those behind him, who let a housewife in an apron climb up. She had her hair in curlers, tight enough that her eyes were pulled slanty.

  She fished in her apron pocket and brought out a piece of paper. “Frans ‘n’ uthas. You on theese veecle. Theese bus is now the propty of the provizhnl gauvment of Hwee-hee. You weell be infectud w’ a language virus and th’propriate belief viruses.”

  The bus driver, a heavy-set woman in a man’s uniform, sneered at her. “You still speak English, honey, or do you think we’re gonna sit still for this?”

  A few people in the front of the bus muttered, “Yeah,” but Gary didn’t say a word.

  “I still onnastond l’tl bit slave language.” She smiled and patted her curlers. Then, as if she had forgotten something, she peered at the note again and recited, “Those uv you w’ so-called scientific ideas thut cannot be destroyed by virus, you die. The trials are gowin on all th’ time.”

  “What scientific ideas, sweety?” said the bus driver.

  “Crimes ’gainst nature,” said the housewife promptly. She smiled again. Gary shrank into the corner of his seat.

  At this point, a crowd broke around the corner marching double step and shouting “Nature for man! Nature for man!” which sounded suspiciously to Gary like a virus-driven chant. But at least they were chanting in American English. The man with the machine gun and the lady in curlers jumped from the bus and fled into a store with broken windows. The gang with them scattered.

  A man in a torn business suit leapt into the bus. “Sorry, folks. Bad virus hit about twelve hours ago. American viruses to counter it; we’re all volunteers, so our own terrestrial virus took faster. But we need to get you people away from the bus. Scatter into buildings. Don’t speak to anybody who appears infected with a Ninth World virus. Practically speaking, friends, Cleveland is at war.” He jumped back down and rejoined the crowd.

  Scatter into buildings? How was Gary to be sure he wasn’t already infected? He experimented with a number of jingoistic slogans. They didn’t seem any sillier than usual, so he tried the periodic table of the elements. Got through that up to cadmium, which was all he could remember. Well, no early signs of infection.

  But certain other signs persisted.

  <~~O~~>

  By nightfall, he knew. He had no watch, so he wasn’t sure how far apart the contractions were. But the synthetic womb was contracting. Forces in his body were trying to move that baby out.

  Out? How?

  He crept in the darkness (there was a power outage, of course) from building to building. Once a middle-aged black woman in a McDonald’s uniform and a heavy sweater grabbed him by the arm.

  “What wron’ w’you, mon? You stoop, you all ben’ over like you hurt somewhere.”

  Gary shook his head, wild with panic. If he spoke, she would know he was not yet infected with the virus. She would either infect him—probably by scratching him and rubbing sa
liva into the wounds—or try to kill him. She was apparently unarmed, but Gary didn’t trust her. The fact that she wore no coat in this freezing weather suggested that the virus was firmly set with her, that her loyalty to the Ninth World was to the death.

  Gary’s company made de-programming viruses for such as her. And no, he had no access to the cultures, not even if he had thought to steal some.

  “Mon, you fat in the belly, thin in the face.” Her hands groped unbidden up and down his torso. “You a crime against nature, my mon.” She suddenly produced a pamphlet printed in some Ninth World language and shook it at him. “They catch you, they try you.”

  Gary’s mouth was dry. “Do you remember anything of the old way? Were you a patriot before they got you?”

  Her eyes went blank. “Padriot? No. No, not e’en before. But I ’member beyin’ a mother. A mother.” She shivered and hugged herself, as if noticing the cold for the first time. “Run. Don’ tell me where you go. The virus haf me, but not all of me. I ’member. Now I ’member. Go.”

  Gary hulked across an alley, to a drug store.

  The door swung open, but it was dark inside. Sure. Power lines were down all over the city. Gary groped toward the back of the store. His skin prickled with terror that he would encounter the store personnel, armed against looters.

  Near a rack of diabetic supplies and condoms, he braced himself against the wall and waited for his heart to slow down. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

  Some virus, American or alien, had caused the personnel to abandon the store. But nobody had bothered to smash into the pharmaceutical section yet. Gary tried to think of something useful he could steal from the pharmacy, but all he could come up with was an antibiotic for that time Sharon got cystitis and her doctor couldn’t be reached.

  He needed help.

  On his way to the back of the store, Gary had noticed a pay phone. He rummaged his pockets for suzies. Three of them. Three telephone calls, then. Oh, St. Susan B. Anthony, get me out of this mess.

  The first call was to his wife.

  “Hullo, mon.”

  A Ninth World accent. A virus-infected puppet of the enemy. Oh God. But sometimes you could trick the virus, if the threat to Ninth World offensive was not obvious. “Sharon, please?”

  “Who this?”

  “Husband.”

  “Oh, yeh mon. We godd y’ wife. We kill her, less you come home and turn y’self in.” A scuffle. Then: “Gary! For God’s sake, don’t tell them where you—”

  It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what they were going to do. Gary considered asking what had happened to his little girl, but realized there was a chance the Ninth Worlders hadn’t discovered the child’s existence. She would be with a baby sitter until five. Maybe Sharon hadn’t picked her up before the Ninth Worlders broke into the house. Maybe she was all right.

  Gary hung up and began to shake all over. Sure. Maybe she was all right. Maybe there’d be a heat wave this afternoon, too.

  The second call was to his doctor’s office.

  “This is Doctor Barth’s office. The office is closed until Monday morning. However, if you need assistance, Doctor Frieman is covering Doctor Barth’s calls this evening.” And the metallic voice gave Frieman’s number.

  The pain in his abdomen began to grow. Gary put the telephone down and rode the contraction. Then he looked at his last suzie.

  If he called Frieman’s number and got another recording, or worse, a Ninth Worlder, he had lost his last telephone call.

  The cash register. Many, many suzies would be in the cash register.

  But the register was locked. Firmly. Gary had no idea how the stupid thing would open anyway. He tried punching keys and finally bashed it with a large bottle of calcium supplement. It sounded curiously empty. With a pang of despair, Gary pressed his cheek against its cold keys and rode through a labour contraction. Then, in the gloom, he explored the cupboards and shelves behind the counter. A key. Somewhere there had to be a key.

  He patted the shelves with shaking hands, stopping several times as contractions rode over him. Finally, he began sweeping things off shelves. So damned dark. He was trying to find the key by touch only. If only he could find a flashlight.

  No doubt the store stocked flashlights. But where? The drugstore seemed a cellar of useless junk.

  His throat tightened with fear and despair. It was useless anyway. The clerk had probably emptied the register before leaving.

  Outside, eerie lights raced across the buildings and sky. Cars, search lights, fires illuminated the city. Gary watched the light patterns, despair sitting in his chest like undigested raw meat.

  Car lights pooled along the street. The car crept to a stop in front of the drugstore.

  Gary scuttled toward the back of the store, feeling like a trapped rat with a time bomb in its belly. The car killed its lights. Lit them again. Glided away, slowly.

  Perspiring and shivering, he sat on the rubberized carpet in front of the cash register. The human-made womb within him was beginning to tense. He watched as his abdomen clenched into a rounder, harder dome. The pain crescendoed, and he panted, taking little sips of air, trying not to whimper.

  The fear was worse than the pain, he decided, as the pang subsided. They had explained the caesarean section in elaborate detail. He had visited a hypnotist who relieved him of much of his fear of the surgery. No more dangerous than a few dozen auto trips, said the hypnotist.

  But they hadn’t mentioned what Gary was supposed to do if labor overtook him when no surgeon was available.

  Alcohol. Couldn’t alcohol in the correct dosage stop premature labor?

  Between contractions, he must break into the pharmacy and find some alcohol.

  The divider that sealed the pharmacy from the rest of the store felt waxy, stronger than glass. The door to the pharmacy was locked, of course. Gary looked around for a tool.

  Another contraction hit. Despair engulfed him. He was going to die, victim of a stupid medical experiment.

  Experiment? Male pregnancy was not exactly experimental. Ever since Prince Jean-Pierre had announced his intention to bear the next heir to the Canadian crown, men had been getting knocked up in droves. Well, not in droves, but Sharon and he had managed to find a doctor whose practice included male obstetrics. They had had to travel to Boston for the implantation, but no questions were asked.

  The contraction hit like a towering wave, picking him up and throwing him against a wall of pain, where he floundered, then slowly slid down.

  He started disassembling a shelving unit. The leg seemed sturdy enough to shatter the pharmacy window. He fought off another wave of pain before the leg was entirely free of the shelving.

  Getting to his feet was more difficult than he’d expected. Terror was exhausting.

  A watch would have helped. He would have known how much time he had to work between contractions.

  The window did not give. In the end, he pried the locked door loose.

  Inside the pharmacy, he wished he had not had to pull the latch plate on the door loose. It would be nice to be able to lock himself in here until he’d found what he wanted.

  At least there was a flashlight near the counter.

  He knew another contraction was due, and prayed that the one that would rupture the artificial womb was far off. He sprawled, back against the counter, upsetting plastic bottles, as the wave hit.

  Examining the shelves, mostly on his knees, seemed to take forever. The flashlight kept going out, and he kept having to shake it to make it light again. There must be an order in the inventory of such a pharmacy, but he could not figure it out. Worse, there was no alcohol except as a medium for potent drugs.

  A scraping noise.

  Gary killed the light and slowly rose to a position where he could just peek through the pharmacy divider. Three scruffy kids with powerful flashlights had entered the drugstore.

  They scuttled down the dark aisles, flitting from item to item, p
laying the beams on bottles, packages, and bins.

  “Check out the drugs,” said one. A beam of light sliced across the wall above Gary. His fingers closed around the legs of a stool, the only weapon at hand.

  “Damn, door’s broken. Somebody’s already hit them. Shit,” said another.

  “Shit,” echoed the first.

  “Hey, there’s a virus-head parlour across the street,” said the third. They whooped and crowded out the door.

  Gary exhaled. He hardly noticed the next contraction.

  But there was no alcohol, unless it was identified in some strange way he didn’t recognize. Another contraction hit, this one more business-like.

  It left him panting, whimpering.

  No damned alcohol. Why hadn’t he found a liquor store instead of a pharmacy?

  “Listen, kid,” he said to his belly. “Stop trying to get out. No exit, get it? We need doctors and nurses and anaesthesiologists before we’re ever going to get shed of one another. Understand? You’re going to kill us with this independence bit. Oooo, nooo.”

  When the contraction was over, Gary opened his eyes and saw a woman’s purse under the counter. It was a big cloth purse, not the sort your fashionable under-thirty type carries. Gary hefted it and peeked in with glad suspicion.

  A pint of Cutty Sark, almost half full.

  The first taste was more nauseating than he had expected. He had never liked scotch; always been an American beer man. He thought of going back into the main part of the drug store and looking for something for a mix.

  But warm cola with scotch might be worse than scotch neat, so he swallowed another slug. Like medicine.

  He fought nausea for three more swallows, and then a warm haze settled over him. He had to stop for a contraction halfway through the bottle, but he got it almost all down.

  Then the nausea came back. With a vengeance.

  Labour nausea. The labour continued unabated. Each contraction brought with it horror and desire to heave up his entrails.