My view of what’d he’d done had been indistinct, and time had eroded my recollections of the specifics, but with patience and determination I made progress. Although the youth had achieved success in a matter of seconds, it took me many hours of wrong turns and mistakes before I got the result I sought.
Now, with all in readiness, I swung my leg over and settled onto the cushioning of the black vinyl seat, still warm from sitting in the sun, and poked my thumb and forefinger through the ignition housing, feeling for the starter toggle. With a curt motion I activated the starter, and immediately the cycle began to vibrate, emitting a keening sound that rose in both volume and pitch for a few seconds before fading back to nothing. As the sound dissipated, the vibrations lessened and then ceased entirely. I ran my hands along the chassis, groping desperately for a sign that it was still operating, like searching a dead man for a pulse, but I could detect nothing. It seemed to have shut off again.
“Great,” I muttered, disconsolate at this anticlimactic fizzle after all those hours of work. I sat there stupidly, wondering why I’d ever imagined this might work. Now I’d reached the end and had nothing to show for it except hours upon hours of wasted time – precious moments that could have been better spent in the lab or back at Somerset.
I was about to dismount when I saw the HUD blink into life before me, hovering as if suspended in mid-air, pulsating green and blue as parameters began to populate: speed, distance travelled, weather conditions, location, cell reserves, all glowing in three-dimensional panels. An icon in the lower left corner, a red thunderbolt with a slash across it, bore the words:
Grid connection not found. Route inaccessible. Location services inaccessible.
Other parameters such as details of the weather also came up Unavailable, a result of the Helios having no access to the Grid.
I wasn’t concerned by that missing data. It was irrelevant. I only needed the Helios to provide me with transportation, not to keep me apprised of current trends in weather patterns.
I tugged gently on the throttle and the Helios eased forward, smoothly coasting down the empty street. The headlights flicked on automatically. Its engine made barely a whisper, and there were no noticeable vibrations through the chassis as the power ramped up.
“Damn thing runs as quiet as a mouse.”
I held on tight as I tried to acclimatise to the weight and handling. Having not driven a vehicle of any kind in more years than I cared to remember, I was a little edgy. I could see myself taking a tumble all too easily, ending up in an unceremonious heap on the asphalt, but soon my confidence began to grow. I negotiated the debris and the cracks in the road without tipping off, although I had to place my feet down more than once to keep my balance.
Easing back on the throttle, I came to a halt outside M-Corp and strained up to see orange sunlight painting its upper reaches as it towered into the sky.
I’d told Arsha that I was staying here tonight, while she herself was spending the night cleaning up around Cider, but now that I was here, sitting on the Helios and feeling the breeze on my face, I realised I would much rather be streaking along the freeway and putting the cycle through its paces. It had been so long since I’d experienced one of the luxuries of old, the type of thing I’d taken for granted in the days before the Winter, and the first ride along the street had whetted my appetite, like dipping a toe into the water on a hot summer’s day.
Even going at a moderate pace to negotiate debris, I could easily make it back to Somerset before nightfall, so there was no reason not to do it.
I hitched the backpack securely in place, then leaned forward and sent the Helios lurching ahead.
“Whoa!”
The cycle bucked under me like a stallion and I loosed a joyous cry as it sent me speeding across the asphalt. Having walked the path through the rubble so many times before, I knew the way intimately, every crevice and bump, every curve and dip. I weaved between car wrecks and clumps of concrete, feeling the freedom and exhilaration course through me like electricity. I didn’t just feel alive – I felt euphoric, like I was peeling back a layer of dead skin, the flesh underneath raw and pink and tingling with this new sensation.
As I cleared the city I had the temerity to skip across the side of a mound of rubble, pitching upward and launching into the air on the other side. The Helios shuddered as the wheels touched the ground again, wobbling and sliding before the tyres bit and I regained stability, rocketing along the freeway.
“Hoooooo!”
The headlights blazed into the twilight and the ruins of the city swept by me in a blur. The wind buffeted me now, throwing my hair this way and that and pulling the skin on my face backward tightly. Objects that I’d become accustomed to traipsing past now were swallowed up in seconds and left in my wake. Still the Helios barely made a sound – it was only the crunching of tyres across the debris that made any kind of noise, and the flapping of my jacket against my chest as it caught in the breeze.
Finally I felt vindicated in spending time fixing the cycle. If I could drive it in to M-Corp every day, I’d recoup the time spent working on it in a matter of weeks.
In minutes I was gliding silently into Somerset Drive, my hand off the throttle as I allowed the cycle to roll down the gradient. The house was dark and silent, and as I swung into the driveway the headlights slashed across the yard and illuminated the drab grey walls, making them blindingly bright. I killed the engine and the lights flicked off, and as the Helios powered down it made that high-pitched whining sound again for a few moments before falling silent.
Climbing off, I paused to readjust to the sensation of standing on my own two feet again. After spending so many years walking, it felt decidedly alien to–
I froze. Something was moving out there in the gloom. Rustling, sliding. Scraping.
I listened, trying to ascertain the origins of the sound. It wasn’t the wind. It was too defined for that. My thoughts turned to the watcher in the city, that sinister thing that hid in the shadows. Had it found its way here to Somerset?
The noise was coming from the back yard. I began to creep around the side of the house, my hand slipping up to touch the butt of the shotgun protruding from the backpack.
It’s Arsha, I thought. Then, No, she’s at Cider.
I drew the shotgun and reached for the shells, slipping three inside the magazine as quietly as I could manage. As I neared the edge of the wall I peered into the gloom, seeing nothing but the familiar sight of raised garden beds.
“Arsha?” I called softly.
But there was nothing there. Everything was still. Peaceful. Perhaps it had been some debris floating about.
As if to contradict me, only moments later I heard something clatter and fall a couple of doors down, a short distance away. Something was moving over there. Running.
I launched into full stride, darting through the garden, pumping a round into the chamber as I scrambled over the fence into the next yard. I kept one eye on the ground and one in front of me as I tried to give chase without knocking something over and giving up my location. I stopped again, and heard footsteps ahead, moving away. Cutting through a side pathway at the next house, I skipped back out toward the street and moved low and fast across the driveways, my feet swishing through ankle-high grass. I pressed up against the wall of the last house on the street, creeping silently across to wait.
It was coming. I heard it turn from the back yard and step through gravel that ran along the side of the house, moving lightly as it tried to avoid detection.
My fingers gripped around the shotgun. I tensed.
Closer. A few steps away now. Still coming.
I stepped out and swung the butt of the shotgun at the shape that appeared in the gloom, connecting solidly and forcing the intruder backward. It fell to the ground making a gurgling, strangled noise. In one motion I brought the shotgun up and levelled the barrel at the thing on the ground.
“Urghhhh!” it cried.
Through the
anguished warble I recognised the voice. It was Arsha. I drew back the shotgun and held it at my side.
“Arsha? What the fuck are you doing?”
She clasped at her throat where she’d been struck, struggling to talk.
“Brant?” she choked. “What’s happening? Who’s out there?”
I reached down and offered my hand. She took it uncertainly.
“What are you talking about? And why are you creeping around out here?”
“Something’s happened,” she said, panicked. “I saw something, back at the house.”
My fingers tightened on the stock of the shotgun again. “What was it?”
“I don’t know. I was in the back yard, and suddenly there was a strange light out on the street, and a noise. Some weird noise. Have the Marauders found us?”
I relaxed again. “Shit. Arsha, that was me.”
“What?”
“It was me. I fixed up an old Helios.” She stared at me blankly. “An old solar cycle. I got it working and drove it out here.”
She clasped a hand to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut. “Fuck it, Brant, you scared the shit outta me.” She opened her eyes again. “I mean, my god… I thought they’d… I thought they’d found us. I thought the Marauders had come for us.”
“Luckily nothing like that,” I said, exhaling heavily, feeling foolish.
“Yeah, lucky. Lucky you didn’t blow my fucking head off,” she said, shock turning to rage. “I mean, what the fuck, Brant?”
“Look, I didn’t know you were here, okay? I thought you said you were going to Cider.”
“Yeah, I was heading to Cider, but I dropped in here first to finish up a few things while there was still light. Next thing I know, there’s strange lights and noises outside, so I ran.”
“Okay, I see that now. It was a misunderstanding.”
“No, Brant, that’s not all it was. You’re off the goddamn rails, okay?” Her fists clenched in at her side. “Where do you get off pulling a gun on me, huh? Trying to bash my skull in?”
“Arsha, I thought you were–”
“What? Huh? What were you expecting to be pottering around in our back garden? Who else could it possibly be?”
I thought of revealing my encounters with the watcher, to make her understand why I was so jumpy, but this was the worst possible timing. She’d never believe it.
“I called out for you,” I said lamely.
“Well, I didn’t hear that. Maybe it was drowned out by the sound of your little toy.” She threw her hands in the air. “What’s with that, anyway? Don’t you have better things to do than fuck around on bikes?”
“It’s supposed to save time. For both of us. Y’know, save all that walking between here and the city.”
She waved me away and brushed past. “I’ve heard enough. I’m leaving.”
“Arsha, come on.”
“No. Brant, just leave me alone, okay? Just stay away from me.”
“It was a misunderstanding!”
“Yeah, a misunderstanding,” she said sarcastically, walking away.
“Arsha–”
“I don’t want to hear it, okay? Just leave me alone.”
Her boots sounded rapidly on the street, and I stood there helplessly watching her go, that feeling of release I’d felt on the trip home evaporating like the last rays of sunlight fading overhead.
13
Arsha didn’t talk about the incident again, but she began to noticeably withdraw, refusing to communicate in anything longer than one-word answers. Spurning my attempts to assist her, she orbited around her three a-wombs constantly, intercepting me should I enter within range and fabricating some errand or other to deflect me elsewhere, deftly keeping me out of her territory – territory that she could not have marked more clearly as her own had she taken a can of spray paint to the vinyl and drawn it in great sweeping arcs across the floor. After a week of the same behaviour I got the message. I kept out of the way and concentrated on my own end of the lab where my own embryo continued its slow progress. It was not the arrangement I desired, but for the moment it seemed to be the only way forward.
The day when the first foetuses were due to leave the confines of their sacs was rapidly approaching, and all three had already turned their bodies into the engaged position, upending themselves in preparation for birth like loaded missiles awaiting their launch sequence. I watched from across the room as Arsha made notations on the handheld flip that she’d managed to keep running over the years.
“What’s the timeframe we’re looking at here?” I said. “I assume we won’t be bringing them all out on the same day.”
“I’m going to stagger it,” she said, and her usage of the term “I” instead of “We” was not lost on me. “Each two days apart.”
“So do you want me to stay with the new arrivals at Somerset while you handle the births here, or what?”
“No, it’s okay. I’m actually going to take them to Cider.”
I’d seen this coming, but feigned surprise. “Really? Why?”
“I’ve made a lot of preparations over there, and I figure it’s less work for me to settle at Cider now than to move everything back to Somerset.” The white glow from the flip made her face ghostly in the dimness.
“So you want me to join you at Cider?”
She glanced over at me. “Why don’t you stay at Somerset? You’ve got your own things set up there. No point relocating now.”
“Hang on a second,” I said, walking over to her. “Are you saying you don’t want me there at all?”
“Well, now you’re twisting my words. What I mean is, you’re going to be needed here at the lab.” She gave me a direct stare. “Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but–”
“So the best thing for you to do is to stay here at the lab and make sure your little one comes to term.”
“But you’ll be looking after three infants all by yourself.”
She shrugged. “Yeah. Isn’t that what I said I’d do from the start?”
I smiled ironically. “You’ve got me there.”
“Don’t sweat it, Brant. I’ve got this. I said I’d take care of it, and I will. You just hold up your end and we’ll be fine.”
Outside, the workshop was filling up with foreign items that I’d never seen here before: piles of swaddling blankets, towels, tiny onesies, bundles of cloth. Arsha had been stockpiling the stuff for years, collecting it from amongst the ruins and washing it by hand, then storing it away until needed. This was only a fraction of the supplies she’d kept. I began transferring them inside the lab, making great stacks on the benches that lined the walls, within easy reach for when we’d need them.
And that turned out to be much sooner than I expected.
I returned from the outer workshop with an armful of swaddling to hear a monotonous blipping sound emanating from one of the touch panels. It wasn’t an alert, I knew that much, but I struggled to recall the exact nature of the notification. It had been so long since I’d heard it.
My hand paused with the zipper of my cleanroom suit half-way up. “Is that…?” Realisation dawned, and I hurriedly yanked it up to my neck. “Is that a birthing sequence?”
“Yeah,” Arsha said. “I’m going ahead.”
She stood before the a-womb that belonged to her boy, a little tray on wheels arranged in front of her with several towels neatly arranged on top. As I reached her, the sac began to split at the bottom and fluid gushed out, splashing and gurgling noisily into the receptacle below.
It seemed I’d been taken out of the decision-making process entirely.
“The waters have officially broken,” Arsha said lightly, as if making a joke, but the tension cut through her voice like a scythe and undermined her attempt to appear calm.
The touch panel continued to blip, accompanied by a flashing red warning:
Specimen ejection imminent.
It was such a cold and scientific way to describe such a momentous event.
I couldn’t quite believe it was happening all of a sudden. It had seemed such a normal, routine day up until now. I had been going through the same processes I had been doing for months on end without pausing to consider anything further. I’d often wondered how I would prepare mentally for the birth of the first human child to return to the Earth. What would my thought processes be? How would I remain calm?
Now it seemed that preparation was unnecessary. The moment was here. It was happening. I was in the thick of it, and I would need to simply follow my instincts and hope that I did the right thing.
“Out you come,” Arsha murmured as the torrent of fluid abated, lifting her hands subconsciously as if to cushion the descent of the infant. “Come on.”
The slit in the sac puckered like a giant pair of translucent lips, and the boy’s body began to drift downward inside the bloated a-womb. He didn’t react in any way, neither moving his arms or legs nor struggling, but instead giving off the appearance of one who was nonchalantly settling in for a ride, content to allow himself to be taken on his way.
The walls of the membrane began to suck inward, compressing around the infant, squeezing out both the excess fluid and the boy himself. He was gradually drawn downward, head first, and as the tip of his head began to emerge from the slit, he finally gave a wiggle of his arms – the first sign that he was aware something momentous was happening to him.
Vaguely I noted another message on the touch panel:
Placental separation achieved.
I busied myself collecting more towels, bustling about the lab with my shoes swishing across the floor in little bursts like frenetic whispers. So here it was. The moment we’d been waiting for all these years had arrived out of nowhere, without any of the fanfare or sense of ceremony that I’d always envisaged. Perhaps it wasn’t so different from the old days, when babies were born when they were ready, often unexpectedly, and parents were forced to react as best they could. I felt a moment of kinship with all of those fathers who had been caught out at work or asleep in the middle of the night and suddenly had to drop everything at the onset of labour, madly trying to clear their thoughts and push away the panic that began to swirl around them like a fog.
The Seeds of New Earth Page 10