“I think, maybe, but not a lot,” Grace replied, fighting the urge to reserve herself in front of the blunt young woman. It was clear enough she was simply looking for a friend. “Seems weird, but I guess that’s just how it worked. Theodore Bozarth sure knew how to hide the truth about his specimens, didn’t he?”
“I didn’t know who he was until I got here,” Marvel said. “My Moms had me, but I was dictated, I guess. They didn’t have a choice.”
“My dad was always a straight rights activist, and he made me a heterosterile on purpose, before the NRO took away people’s option to choose,” Grace said. “I don’t think my father ever forgave him for it.”
It turned out this was Marvel’s second pregnancy. She had sought out an underground abortion the first time, which, in her words, “was a drama worthy of old Hollywood.” This amused Grace, as it turned out she and Marvel shared an affinity for classic motion picture art from the days before the Bio Wars. The girl had been only fifteen during her first pregnancy, and she had nearly passed the five-month point by the time her search for a legitimate underground abortion facility turned up any leads. She had always been quite round, and the developing baby bump had disappeared well under baggy clothes. Few in her friend circle had been liberal enough to be of help, and it was a random woman from Cock & Vaj Alliance who had recognized Marvel’s symptoms and pointed her toward an abortion clinic masquerading as a tea house. Marvel had signed up at the straight rights group as a volunteer in one last attempt to expose herself to help. It worked.
“I didn’t hate myself after the abortion or anything like that,” Marvel said. “But I was scared, you know? Thank God my moms unlocked my TruthChip and linked it to a bank account that year, or I’d have had to come clean to them to get money to pay for it. They still don’t know. And now I’ve disappeared. I tried to warn them when I realized I was pregnant again, but I don’t think they would have had the mental ability to face the truth anyway. It’s better this way. I’m just glad the Opposition found me early this time. Turns out they had a file on my last pregnancy, but I had fallen through the cracks before they could get to me.”
Grace stopped at this for a moment, and then remembered: Theodore Bozarth had equipped his later girls with mechanized TruthChips that would alert the Opposition to new pregnancies. These younger specimens had it so easy.
“So, are you excited about the trip?” Marvel said next.
“Trip? What trip?”
Marvel gasped. “You mean nobody told you yet?”
OVER THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, Grace learned enough to know she would never see her fathers, brother, nephew, or Linda Glass ever again.
“You’re being taken to our Mount Tasman station in New Zealand on the twenty-ninth of January,” the flighty Dr. Kovak told her the following morning, as he allowed her to shut her legs after his hands-on inspection. “It’s the largest Opposition facility in existence, right there in the Southern Alps. You have a choice, of course, whether you go. But suffice it to say that you are all very special women, Ms. Jarvis, and Theodore Bozarth gifted you with a very noble responsibility. I should hope you won’t choose death, when you are a woman who can give life.”
If there was one thing Grace had learned with pregnancy, it was that she did not enjoy having strange men examining her private regions. And now the doctor was examining her abdomen with an ultrascope.
It made the news difficult to digest.
“Why New Zealand?” she asked. “What’s Mount Tasman?”
Dr. Kovak flipped the ultrascope visor up. “Mount Tasman is the second tallest mountain in that territory. The facility inside it was built in secret by a private party with the undisclosed consent of New Zealand’s government, twenty years before they succumbed to the NRO’s rule. Sherman Boyens was the prime minister at the time, when they were still sovereign. And his friend with the money was an ancestor of Frederik Carnevale, who just so happens to be the gay politician who is saving your life.”
Yet Grace’s pulse had quickened. “Okay. But New Zealand? Isn’t that where they ship people off to the Sanctuary from?”
Dr. Kovak approached her with a needle and blood tube. He pulled her arm to stretch it, then searched for an easy vein to pierce. “This won’t hurt a bit. Just running a blood analysis to gauge your hormone levels, check for any irregularities, and the like. And the facility is in New Zealand because it’s far removed and, as you said, in close proximity to Antarctica. It’s about as unlikely a headquarters for a grand scale resistance effort as there can be. Not to mention that the Mount Tasman refuge has existed in secret for over fifty years. I’m only privy to certain pieces of information, but as far as I know, it’s where you and all the other resistors will wait until the final phase of our counterstrike is carried out.”
Counterstrike?
Grace pulled her arm back from Dr. Kovak. “What do you mean, counterstrike? What is it going to involve?”
Dr. Kovak held up his hands, as if to assure her he was beyond reproach. “Don’t ask me about the details, Miss Jarvis. I know general secrets, but I make a point not to know the details. Do you get my drift? When people who know too many details get caught, they die. Or worse.”
Grace suddenly felt claustrophobic and struggled to keep still as Dr. Kovak took her arm again and inserted the needle. Blood began filling his tube. The man’s explanation perturbed her, and she shook her head. “But don’t you people realize you are stringing nobodies like me along through your process, so that by the end we will know all the details? Don’t we put you at risk if we get cold feet and . . . decide to leave?”
“If you would rather die, be my guest,” Dr. Kovak said. “The Cliff House is not a facility to perform abortions, Miss Jarvis, as that is against our cause. So, unless you want to beg Albert Redmond to let you back into your normal life so you can either find an underground way to kill your unborn child or simply wait until somebody notices your growing uterus and reports you to the Bio Police, I highly suggest you listen to what I have to say.”
The sprite of a man paused, seemingly waiting for her acquiescence. After looking him head to toe, wondering whether he was homosexual or heterosexual and realizing she did not care, Grace nodded.
“Thank you,” Dr. Kovak continued. “I know you’re trustworthy, because you made it this far, and even if you were to escape and expose our operation, nobody would touch us up here, because nobody would dare investigate Frederik Carnevale. He’s that important in NRO circles, not to mention he heads up the Order’s Department of Biological Defense and, thus, the Bio Police. Thus far, they don’t even have a hint of where his true allegiance lies. Now, what you must understand is that the NRO has finally realized that an underground resistance like ours does exist and that it’s probably getting stronger. This is what inspired the NRO to use Mandate 43 as a cover-up to distract people until they stage an attack they’re calling Operation 69, which will enable them to declare martial law, publicly round up heterosexuals and dissenters, and ship them off to camps. We have it on good authority that the attack is coming soon. Within four weeks. Which means we are getting as many fertile people as we can down to New Zealand before martial law makes travel all but impossible, at least for a while. Make sense?”
Sheila Willy had alluded to Mandate 43 simply being pavement for martial law, but it still begged a question.
“What kind of staged attack are we talking about?” Grace asked. “This is going to be before an Opposition counterstrike?”
Dr. Kovak withdrew the needle from her arm. “Of the NRO’s staged attack, I’ve heard only the rumors. It will be significant enough to scare people into surrendering power completely, which is why our counterstrike is being planned. Again, I’m not privy to the details, but I know the general idea.” He pasted a bandage over Grace’s vein. “If our operation goes as planned, humanity will be starting over. With people like you.”
Starting over?
“You mean illegal breeders will be hiding out
in New Zealand until it’s safe for us to repopulate? Isn’t that a bit drastic?”
“Don’t you think the NRO is a bit drastic? Not just its actions but the very concept? Our Opposition is drastic because it’s long term. We have humanity’s future on our shoulders. It’s bigger than any one of us.”
Dr. Kovak snapped off his latex gloves and set Grace’s blood sample on the counter.
“Now, we just have to hope nobody caught in the Minneapolis raid will talk. Human weakness is the only way the Opposition will crumble.”
A MEMORY (HIM)
SABRINA CANTOR’S BODY is exquisite, maybe because she is a junior in high school and Dex is still a sophomore. Dex has her sitting on the solid oak kitchen table, facing him, with her legs spread apart and wrapped around his lower back. He is standing up, thrusting into her, making her scream his name over and over. It is the third time he has had hetero sex, and it is intoxicating. Nothing matters but the blonde strand of hair caught in Sabrina’s lips, the glimmer of sweat between her breasts, and that warm (but so dirty, so unnatural, so wrong) hole between her legs. He kisses her in the middle of an awkward, tandem grunt and thrust, but she swallows the kiss with a grunt of her own, her mouth begging for more.
It is a day off of school, and they have been planning this sexual escapade all week in a series of text and holomessages between their pocket coms. Nobody is home, they have all afternoon, and Dex is vaguely aware that this is the table both his mothers will later eat dinner on. Sabrina says she has already had an orgasm, and Dex takes her knees, one in each hand, and spreads them, so he can see himself plunging in and out of her.
“Oh, God, oh God, Dex, do it. Do me. Fuck me. Oh God—”
He is not a talker during sex, but Sabrina doesn’t mind. She is one of five heterosteriles in their entire high school, and she managed to notice Dex staring at her during study hour four weeks ago. They made eye contact, and suddenly, his secret was out: he was attracted to her. He has known for many years now that he is different from most of the other boys, and why his mothers have failed to mention his status as a failsafe is beyond him, even though he remembers vague conversations here and there from childhood about his mothers “keeping him a surprise.” It angers him, and it fuels his every thrust into Sabrina, makes him want to throw this animalistic proclivity for females into his mothers’ faces.
“Oh, Dexy, baby, do it harder! Let’s show those faggots we mean business! I’m getting close again, oh God—”
The crashing of glass on the kitchen floor makes him slip right out of Sabrina.
His mother is standing in the doorway over a fallen bag of groceries, agape.
Sabrina has already jumped off the table, but she cannot gather her clothes, because they are in the living room. The kitchen was just one of many rooms in which Dex had planned to fuck her.
“Get out of my house,” Karen hisses at Sabrina. “You goddamned heterosterile whore. Get out of my house!”
Sabrina rushes past Karen to gather her clothes as Dex, stark naked, stares his mother down. Thirty seconds later, their front storm door slams, and he can hear Sabrina’s sandals clicking down the sidewalk.
“This is how you desecrate our home?” Karen whispers.
Dex says nothing. Now, he is looking at the broken jars of pickles and tomatoes on the floor. Their juices creep right around his mother’s loafered feet.
“I thought you had to work,” he says.
She almost spits her response back. “I decided to take the afternoon off and make an anniversary dinner for your mom and me! And now I can never eat on that table again!”
“I saw you and Mom fingering each other on the table once.”
“But that was real!” Karen trills. “That wasn’t abominable, disgusting, unnatural heterosexual fucking!” She has never used the word “fuck” in front of him. She purses her lips so tightly that, for the first time in his life, Dex sees in her an old woman.
“Well, you knew you created a failsafe!” he screams. “You had to have known!”
Karen shakes her head. “Your mother volunteered us for a surprise. But obviously the engineer had to fill his quota. I always knew that, but your mom remains blissfully ignorant about how the world really works. I always knew you’d turn out this way. Someday . . . someday, it’s going to get you hurt.” His mother has never cried in front of him, but she puts a crumpled hand to her lips and averts her gaze from his.
“Pardon me for being a natural human male,” he says, knowing the argument won’t do him any good. If the old way of reproducing had been a good thing, overpopulation would not have been so harmful to the world back before the Bio Wars. But he knows there is more to his mother’s concern than just this.
“Get dressed,” Karen orders.
“Are you going to tell Mom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you better.”
“Get dressed.”
Covering his genitals, still smelling Sabrina on his skin, Dex walks around his mother and into the living room to find his clothes.
CHAPTER 28 (HIM)
SYSTEMATIC GANG BANGS were literally almost backbreaking, but Dex had to commend any homosexual who actually found the receiving end of such a thing erotic. A man had to be tough. Dex apparently was not, but he was surprised at his body’s ability to recoup. He had hoped the sexual punishment was over after they left him alone during the period of solitary confinement, but when Detective Riley ordered his relocation to the main cell block on the detention center’s fifth floor, there were new guards, each ravenous to have their way with him. Despite his short height, Dex was attractive for a male. It made life difficult.
But a coward who sacrifices his dignity doesn’t deserve much more than this, he thought during one of his torture sessions, glad at least that his withdrawn cellmate was not suffering the same wrath.
“You just gotta let yourself go,” the man whispered one morning, after Dex had spent the night being defiled. It was the first time Dex had heard his voice. “Stop doing pushups every day. They love pecs. Can’t control themselves when they see ’em. Let your chest get flat.”
But letting his muscles atrophy could take weeks of disuse, unless he were to starve. If unattractive pectoral muscles were the key to keeping the guards genitally flaccid, it seemed his only option for the time being was to hope they would grow bored.
It was Dex’s luck that they did. The reprieve came after he was so exhausted that he simply began submitting to their every whim. First one day passed without torture, then two. It seemed his putting up a fight had been the thing keeping them interested.
The main cell block was on constant glow from white LEDs. The cell doors faced each other down the long row and were all magnetically sealed, and each had an eight-inch square window through which to see out into the hallway. Unlike the isolated cell, which had been an empty square room, Dex and his cellmate’s chamber was equipped with a set of bunk beds on one end and a toilet, drain, and shower head on the other. The cold shower turned on once every day for four minutes, followed by a blast of warm air that jetted from a vent in the wall. No soap, no towels, and Dex and his cellmate had to share the space and time. They received a minute’s notice via an intercom in the ceiling so they could both get undressed. Sometimes, the guards watched through the square window, laughing and making sexual hand gestures.
The cellmate had remained silent during their first few days together, up until his suggestion against doing pushups. He had acknowledged Dex each morning with a masculine nod and nothing more, yet he had also been kind enough to show by example how to make the best of shower time. His brown hair was thick and hanging over his ears, and he wore horn-rimmed glasses—an old-fashioned habit, as the need for corrective lenses was so easily fixable. He reminded Dex of Grace’s dad, Stuart.
On the fifth of January (if Dex’s internal calendar was correct), the man introduced himself as Exander Baker while they were eating their miniscule allotment of breakfast. L
ike showers and nature calls, this happened in their cell. The detention center was no communal lockdown with common areas for prisoners to mill about; it was a holding pen. What might happen when they were let out was a question Dex tried not to think about.
“What are you in for?” Exander grunted after they were finished eating.
“Being a coward,” Dex answered. A second later, he added, “Caught in a raid.”
Exander nodded, then resigned himself once again to his own company.
He did not speak again until the next morning.
“Why do you say you were being a coward?”
“Because I’m a natural father who abandoned the woman carrying his kid. I was scared of what they’d do to me. Coward, see?”
“She was a genetic mistake?”
“No, something different.”
Another day passed without words between them. All day and all night, the cell lights reflected so brightly off the white walls that Dex developed an interminable headache. There was no peace here.
On their third day of communication, Exander asked two more questions, one in the morning, one in the evening. He whispered both times, gesturing at a speaker in the ceiling that Dex could only assume was also a microphone used to monitor their conversation.
“What did you mean ‘something different’ than a genetic mistake?”
“Meaning the woman I got pregnant wasn’t a heterosterile, like she thought. The guy who engineered her was a homosexual working against the NRO. He figured out a way to cause activation of the ovaries’ Lrh1 genes later in life, or something.”
“By planting zinc fingers? Delaying them somehow?”
“I’ve no idea,” Dex replied.
More hours of silence. And finally, even after Grace’s face crept through his mind’s eye, some sleep. Exander slept without trouble.
The Breeders Page 14