Before she could stop herself, Grace nodded. “I’ve been feeling the same—”
Just as Dex held up his hand to hush her, Fletch slapped a mint julep in front of Sheila. But the woman ignored it, and her eyes were wide with enthusiasm, first boring into Dex, then burning into Grace. Energy sizzled in the air between them as Fletch inched back into his seat.
Still looking at Grace, the woman smiled. “So, this dickpuppet wasn’t bullshitting me. Fabulous.” She turned to Fletch. “Honey, good work. I didn’t know you had it in you.” Turning back to Grace, she finally extended a hand. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. What’s your name?”
It came out like an admission and a sigh of relief. “Grace Jarvis.”
Sheila’s blue eyes sparkled. “How much do you know, Grace?”
“About what?”
“About your engineer.”
“I know his name was Theodore Bozarth.”
“Then we had the same one. I’m assuming you’re, what, thirty?”
“Twenty-eight.” An innocent mistake, but Sheila seemed to be the type who liked to make them on purpose.
“Makes sense, then. And do you know what Theodore Bozarth was a part of?”
Dex brought up his hands, folded them, and rested his elbows on the table. His body language suggested to Grace an increasing level of anxiety. “Grace met with a man who was rumored to be one of Bozarth’s lead researchers,” he said. “She heard enough to know that every regular and Bio cop in this metro should have the names of every heterosterile Bozarth mixed up. So why haven’t they done a roundup?”
Sheila snapped a finger and pointed it at Dex. “They are. And that’s the crappy part. But the Bio Police still need proof that Bozarth’s girls actually succeeded in being fertile. Thus far, it just looks to them like an abnormally high number of genetic mistakes, but nothing concrete. They’ve been keeping a lookout, but they’ve also been keeping it under wraps, because the Bio Police don’t yet want to publicize the Opposition and give their good citizens a reason to question why other people are resisting. If people start thinking with their own heads, they’ll start understanding what the NRO is becoming, and they, too, might want to fight back. We’re living in a time when the freedom we’ve worked so hard for since the Bio Wars is on the verge of disappearing again, only this time for no tangible reason. Feel lucky we’re still on top of that fence, not on the other side. We’re still free enough to have secrets, which is why a lot of Bozarth’s girls are finding a way to disappear.”
Here it was, the moment Grace had been waiting for. Instead of being relieved that Sheila might actually be able to offer help, however, she was terrified.
“Where do they go?” she whispered.
Sheila grinned. “I’m not the one to tell you that, but let me ask you something, Grace and Dex. What do you plan to gain by keeping this pregnancy and trying to hold onto an ideal you’ll never be able to preserve?”
Dex turned to Grace. Across from them, Fletch wore a confounded expression, as if the can of worms he had opened by introducing them to Sheila was far deeper than he had realized.
“Hope,” was all Grace said, glancing into Dex’s eyes.
But her hope came crumbling down when she saw the trepidation radiating from him. There it was: a verdict, even if Dex himself did not yet realize it. Terror sprang from every nuance of his face.
Grace knew it then. She would be walking the rest of her path alone. Perhaps it would be best to feign faith in Dex in the off chance she was wrong. But despair sank into her, and Sheila’s next words poured forth like a death sentence.
“Fletch, you’ve earned a place in this. Tomorrow night. All three of you, meet me at Sterile Me Susan’s. Eleven o’clock.”
A MEMORY (HIM)
THERE IS A STRIP OF WOODS behind the house Dex lives in, and it is a year-round fort for himself and Matilda Liverpool. A small creek flows through the trees, often carving for them a path of lava, a castle fortification, a mysterious force field, or a border between the civilized world and the Unrecoverable Territories. Sometimes, it simply serves as a small channel of water to assist in the construction of roads, pools, or castles in the mud. On winter days like today, they like to play Sanctuary, because there is snow on the ground to make it feel like Antarctica. Of course, the trees don’t help.
It is growing late in the afternoon. Dinnertime is soon, and tonight, Matilda is planning on eating over.
“You had a baby!” she screams at Dex, attacking him from behind and binding his arms in her own. Even though she is a tough little lesbian, she always smells like the tropical mango shampoo her fathers buy. The scent is perfect, like heaven, and being ten years old, Dex has begun to feel a little bit funny when he looks at Matilda. The way the boys who play sex together probably feel, the way he has always wondered about.
But to feel it for Matilda is not normal.
“You’re gone! You’re going to the Sanctuary, and ain’t nothing you can do about it!” Matilda screams, thrusting Dex across the frozen stream, over the boundary between Antarctica and the rest of the world.
“You can’t keep me here!” he screams back, reaching over the stream and tugging on Matilda’s arm.
She pulls her arm back and loses her soldier-like demeanor, in favor of bossiness, which is how she always acts. “Dex, stop it! You can’t do that! Not when you’re at the Sanctuary! Don’t you know that you can’t just escape?”
“I’m always the one who goes to the Sanctuary,” he complains. “Can’t we do it different?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Matilda yelps. “Now get back in there!”
“But what if you’re my heterosterile, and we both made a baby, and we’re both in the Sanctuary?” Dex poses. It would be a new way to play Sanctuary for them. No enemies, just both of them together, doing whatever it is grown-up men and women do when they get banished.
To Dex’s delight, he can see Matilda soften through her scowl. She likes the idea, even though she doesn’t want to admit it. “Fine. That means I’m the one having the baby.”
Until the sun gets so low in the sky that the woods grow dark, the two play Sanctuary. They pretend to garden in the big communal gardens, just like they have seen on WorldCom. Matilda is pretty sure that people at the Sanctuary sleep in bunk beds stacked seven high, with ladders to get up and down. To illustrate, she climbs a tree.
“Honey, I can’t get out of the bed!” she screams. “Our baby is hungry, but I can’t get to the cafeteria for food! Can you bring some? Find the ladder!”
Dex finds the ladder by climbing the tree. There, he sits with Matilda, loving every inch of her, smelling her tropical mango shampoo, even in the icy crisp air. This is what everything should be like, and if he ever gets sent to the Sanctuary (because he knows, deep down, that his mothers have kept something from him, a secret that maybe he isn’t going to be like the other boys), it better be like this. With Matilda.
Dex hands her a chunk of ice that he has carried up. “Here’s the food, honey.”
He leans in and kisses her.
It is warm, wet, and perfect, even though it tastes like the peanut butter and banana she ate after school. Matilda lets the kiss linger for just a second longer than normal pretending. Then, she pulls away and almost coughs up her snack.
“What’d you do that for? That’s disgusting!”
Dex grows so red in the face that he cannot speak. The kiss felt so good, so right. He has spent curious but lonely nights hoping Matilda might actually like boys, but judging by the look on her face, she is disgusted with him.
“I think I’m going home,” she says, climbing around Dex and down the tree. He sits there, shocked and ashamed of himself, sure his life is forever spoiled.
CHAPTER 20 (HIM)
DURING TRIPS TO THE BATHROOM on his Wednesday-night visits to Sterile Me Susan’s, Dex had always noticed a closed door at the far end of the rear corridor. Only a handful of times had he seen anybody enter or
exit it, and never would he have guessed that it was a gateway to the rebels.
It was the twenty-eighth of December, a particularly cold night.
Dex had an arm around the small of Grace’s back as he ushered her into the bar. Few were able to read his emotions, but yesterday at the Fallopian, he had seen Grace recognize the dread that had been building in him over the past several days. He touched her now in an effort to show a bit of courage. Tonight’s bartender, a burly, middle-aged man named Leo, watched them carefully as they crossed through the tavern.
Fletch and Sheila were sitting in the far back corner, in the shadows. The pink lights from the bar area were diffused to almost nothing, rendering the unlikely pair inconsequential against the establishment’s more lively patronage.
“Are you sure you lost the cops on your way here?” Grace asked Dex, stepping around a shirtless man and pantiless woman who were gyrating against a free table.
“I think so. Did my best, anyway.”
“Well, well, well. The fox and the hound arriveth!” Sheila stood up into a shaft of light falling in from the restroom hallway. She was sporting a bubbly turquoise blouse that, combined with her brilliant eyes and orange hair, reminded Dex of a walking coral reef. Fletch was a different story. Dex had never seen the man so ungroomed. His long hair was greasy, and his stubble was several days past sexy. Life among the rebels seemed to have transformed him completely.
After making small talk with them for five minutes, Sheila stood up. Fletch copied her, and much too quickly. She glared at him. “Fletch, be nonchalant, or get out of here.” She turned to Dex and Grace and gestured sensually toward the bathrooms. “This way,” she said with a wink.
As they walked down the rear corridor, two women and a man were walking back toward the bar. Judging by the women’s chatter and their distance from the man, Dex presumed they were separate parties. The man he recognized as a Sterile Me Susan’s regular, but another slice of recollection suddenly plucked his consciousness. The man had also been stirring a martini at the Fallopian the previous morning. Tonight, he looked Dex in the eyes with a brief nod as he passed.
Color Dex paranoid, but he swore there was lust in the man’s gaze. If there was lust, there was sexual attraction, which suggested the man was a homosexual.
What would a homosexual be doing at two of the most heterosexual bars in town? Dex wondered.
Later, he would wish he had stopped for an answer, but right then, anxiety was chasing him from one second to the next, and all his focus was on outrunning it. Sheila took them through the door at the end of the hallway, which led to a storeroom filled with cleaning supplies, liquor, chairs, two extra tables, and an assortment of odds and ends. Lit by a large neon “Open” sign on the far right wall, the room glowed a musty purple color. Only when Sheila led them straight for the sign did Dex notice another closed door.
“Out we go,” she said, opening the door, which led to a small courtyard blocked in on all sides by tall, windowless brick buildings. It was like an alley walled in on both ends, illuminated by the frozen night’s dazzling moon. Twenty feet ahead of them, sitting against one of the towering brick walls, was the quadrangle’s only interruption in uniformity: a cellar entrance with two rusted doors.
Sheila led them to the cellar. “Here’s where we split up. Fletch, go back to the bar, by the bathroom hallway. Stand guard. Leo knows you’re back here, so it’ll just look like you’re coming out of the store room. Call me if you see anything suspicious, particularly people hanging out in that hallway. I’ll call you before we come back up.”
“What’s down there?” Fletch asked.
But Sheila shook her head. “You earned your role, which is up here. Now play it. Close these doors behind us.” She ushered Grace into the cellar, then Dex. He clapped Fletch on the back before stepping onto the first stair in a series that faded downward, into the depths of the city.
“See you soon, bud,” he told Fletch.
Their feet scraped the cement steps, and once they were all underground, the cellar doors creaked closed, shutting out what remained of the moonlight. Keys jingled in the darkness, then suddenly there was light from Sheila’s LED keychain. Moldy bricks lined either side of the wall, smelling musty despite the cold air filtering down from above. Perhaps it meant heat was rising from below. The stairway brought them down at least two stories, to a small landing faced with another metal door. A strip of white light shone from under the crack at its base.
“Now, they know you’re coming,” Sheila told Dex and Grace, not caring to reveal the identities of “they.” “Even so, you’re going to have to go through some tests in order to proceed. Grace, that means you. Dex, you’ll more or less proceed by default once we confirm Grace is pregnant. I know neither of you enough to actually trust you, but the Opposition is on a time crunch, and they’re getting desperate to round up as many pregnant women as possible, so I’m taking my chances that you’re legit. As silly as Fletch up there is, though, I do trust him. He wants to fight, and as he vouches for you, I think there’s a good chance you’re real. If you’re somehow working for the Bio Police, I regret to say that the people down here are not going to let you out, just like Fletch wouldn’t if you turned and ran right now. He’s armed.”
Dex gulped back the knot of discomfort in his throat as Sheila knocked three times on the door. “Queen of Sheba,” she said.
From the other side of the door came the high-pitched beep and roll of someone’s TruthChip opening a lock. Dex held up a hand to cover his eyes as the slab swung open into a wall of blinding light. His vision adjusted to reveal a white brick wall jutting out of a cement floor, five feet past the threshold. Standing to the side and holding the door was a man with mussed sand-colored hair, a scraggly goatee, and crooked wire-rimmed glasses. He was holding an old-fashioned automatic rifle, the illegal type that shot bullets.
“For Christ’s sake, hurry,” he whispered as Sheila led them into the chamber, which stretched left into a long LED-lit hallway.
“Guys, this is Barry, and he’s dramatic,” Sheila said. “We’ve come to see Dr. Trojan. This couple needs testing and approval for transfer to the Cliff House.”
“These are your supposed referrals from that Fletch Novotny twerp?”
“Yes, as it so happens,” Sheila said. “Barry, meet Grace Jarvis and Dex Wheelock. Grace is one of Bozarth’s, and Dex is the father.” She did not wait for Barry to lead her down the hallway. Dex tried to place a hand on Grace’s back again as they followed, but this time, she sped up before he could reach it.
Sheila’s hair and turquoise garments were an explosion of color against the stark white walls. Where Dex, Grace, and Barry’s shoes left muffled sounds behind, Sheila’s heels left sharp echoes. They approached another door, this one a metal blast door of sorts that looked far stronger than the previous two access points. Barry scanned his wrist against the code reader, and Dex heard a powered lock release somewhere within. It grated open horizontally from two sides with a deep mechanical groan.
“Try not to do anything stupid,” Barry said.
They left the man behind to resume his guard duty. The door led to another stairway, this one a far more industrial extension of the stark hallway they had just left. Dex counted as they descended four more stories.
“This was a safety bunker during the Bio Wars,” Sheila said. “They built the buildings on top of it about six years in, and lucky us, ownership passed along to Opposition supporters. Do you happen to be familiar with the clean liquid hydrogen tycoon and North American NRO Representative Frederik Carnevale?”
The last Dex had heard, Carnevale had been pushing for same-sex-education-only programs in all regional schools. Throughout the territory, he was the New Rainbow Order’s most powerful footprint. “He’s, like, premiere-fucking-fag around here, isn’t he?” Dex said.
“And head orchestrator of the largest social rebellion in human history,” Sheila said. “The NRO’s agenda following Mandate 43 i
s big, but Carnevale is on the inside, leading us.”
Grace shook her head in disbelief. “Frederik Carnevale? You can’t be serious.”
“We have information filtered straight down from him. He’s the eyes and ears of the Opposition, Grace Jarvis, and he’s smack-dab in the middle of the NRO’s upper echelon. I know people who know him, and it’s his Cliff House on Lake Superior you’ll be going to. And if you both happen to be snitches for the NRO and try to rat me out for telling you this, nobody will believe you. Carnevale is as far in as they come. Rumor has it he’s been considered for Secretary General once the Queen . . . leaves office.”
A tremor of foreboding colored Sheila’s tone. The Queen had no visible plans to relinquish his leadership. Dex glanced at Grace, whose wide eyes and sweating brow suggested she was finally absorbing the dire reality of this mutinous path. They were at the bottom of the stairs now, under the wintery gleam of the LED lights lining the ceiling.
“There’s so much more to this thing than just biological resistance by people like Theodore Bozarth,” Sheila said. “But just like the Opposition has a plan, so does the NRO. Mandate 43 is just a cover-up, according to the lines of communication coming down from Carnevale.”
From what the woman had gleaned by listening to those who were closer to the Opposition’s higher ranks, the mandate for the “social assessment” of heterosexuals scheduled for implementation on the first of February was one of the government’s last tactics in the plan for a staged terrorist attack. “They’re going to initiate a massive strike and blame it on fringe remnants of God’s Army who are trying to stop the social assessments,” Sheila told them. “This will lead to a declaration of martial law, and then anything even resembling the assessments will no longer be necessary, because they can then start arresting and removing failsafes, heterosteriles, and carriers on the grounds of intercontinental protection.” Sheila claimed not to know any further information than that, because the Opposition’s different branches functioned under unity by secrecy. “All I know is the Opposition is huge, and we’re scrambling to gather as many failsafes, carriers, and accidental carriers as possible—not just Bozarth’s, mind you—in order to form a colony of heterosexuals once whatever they’re planning is all said and done.”
The Breeders Page 10