The Breeders

by Matthew J. Beier

  “You’re talking like the little rich girl who volunteers and never had to work for a damned thing in her life,” Ken says. “Trust me, you’ll learn otherwise. The world is fucking cruel, and we’re sitting in front-row seats.”

  She has had to work for things, but they aren’t things Ken would respect. Self-confidence has been one thing; belief that she can make a difference has been another. Both are rare traits for a heterosterile. Yet she has to admit she is lucky the Bureau of Genetic Regulation has not called on her to become a carrier against her will. Some women—lesbians or heterosteriles, as neither orientation is a delineating factor anymore—jump at the chance to carry, even though it means surrendering all freedom and sexual privacy to the New Rainbow Order. The Queen has made it so, but Grace is sure it won’t get worse, as Ken is saying it will.

  “You just have to be more optimistic,” she tells him.

  Ken tosses peanuts into the cucumber salad. “Optimism is the nectar of the delusional.”

  A trickle of agreement makes Grace shiver for a moment, but again, she lets Ken’s words roll off her. There is always room in the world for optimism, and she knows it, and nothing will ever prove that otherwise. Even in the worst cases, people can do their best.

  “Best efforts are the nectar of hope,” Grace wants to say but does not, because she isn’t quite sure the statement makes sense, and she doesn’t like to look stupid. In any case, an idea like that would be wasted on Ken the cook.

  CHAPTER 45 (HER)

  THE PACIFIC OCEAN was unfathomably vast, and New Zealand appeared suddenly. Grace was sitting on the right side of the plane, staring out the window, when a green expanse under a string of white cloud emerged like a gentle creature from the water. It was far below and distant, but the morning outside was sharp, and the pink sunrise was just beginning to turn gold, carving the ropey cloud out against the soft green of the island. It was not long before a large lake interrupted what appeared from the sky to be rolling hills, and on one side of it, two large mountains jutted upward. Grace recognized their conic shape.

  Volcanoes.

  “We’re nearing Wellington,” came the pilot’s voice over the intercom fifteen minutes later. “The government buildings there were leveled in the attacks. Looks like they still haven’t doused the fires yet.”

  The sky outside was indeed hazy. A stem of dark smoke rose from Wellington, which was built on a circular inlet of water. Nobody on the plane had witnessed any aftermath of the attacks until now; their layover in the City of the Dead had preserved in them a serene degree of ignorance. Passengers seated near windows watched the city elapse as quickly as it had appeared, and those without a view who could only imagine it fell into a cascade of mournful whispers.

  New Zealand was comprised of a North Island and a South Island that were differentiated by their natural and political environments. The North Island, home to political conservatives, was both temperate and tropical in spots, while the more liberal South Island was a staggering blend of rainforest, jagged mountains, farmland, and mystical fiords. A running joke about the territory was that topography had followed politics, not vice versa, even though the small civil war between the two islands had happened just over a hundred years ago. The Treaty of Colors had ended the war and ushered the separatist country under the umbrella of the New Rainbow Order, much to the disgrace of those living in the south.

  The more liberal island was already visible through the window. Cloud cover was heavier along its coastline, but protruding through the cotton-like puffs were jagged mountain tips, some dusted with snow. The range seemed too small to be the headquarters of the Opposition, because within minutes, the terrain became green and farmable once again, and the pilot announced their descent into Christchurch Intercontinental Airport.

  And then the sky broke in a dramatic shift. The clouds reached their swift end at a front, clashing with open sky as if it were an opposing army, and the boundary formed by the front line steered Grace’s gaze downward, to the western horizon.

  She gasped.

  The Southern Alps—spiked, majestic, and dwarfing the closer mountain range they passed earlier—formed a wall that lined the entire island. Peak after peak of praying rock reached toward the heavens, like cathedrals built to exalt some invisible creator.

  My new home, Grace thought.

  Would it be any better than Antarctica? She had no way of knowing, but the idea of mountains—of beauty—she could bear, as long as her child survived. Without that, New Zealand would simply become a moral prison in which she would pull her weight to save humanity.

  They landed. Until it was safe for the captain to direct them further, Grace and her party were aimless. Nobody on Frederik Carnevale’s flight had uttered a word about Mount Tasman or the Opposition, because the thirty passengers transferred from Cher Airlines 212 had necessitated flawless role-playing from the refugees. Grace tried to suppress the tension gathering in her clenched fingers by looking past two fussing Cher 212 passengers, out the opposite window. The plane taxied past what appeared to be the main blue-and-yellow terminal before turning left, showing her a fleeting glimpse of a mechanized stairway wheeling to meet them. This seemed normal enough.

  She glanced out her own window. At first, what met her eyes made perfect structural sense, and she almost ignored it. Then, revulsion pummeled her gut.

  Less than three hundred feet away was a tangle of heavy chain-link passageways—a fenced-in queuing area—following a main gate displaying the purple arc logo of the Bio Police. It ended on the right side with a large open space, almost a common of sorts. Painted on the ground was a giant H to mark a hover jet landing pad.

  Goosebumps formed on Grace’s neck.

  That’s the gateway to Antarctica. Where they funnel through the bio prisoners to fly them away.

  Ever since her childhood, it had been the subject of regular WorldCom images that stirred fear and created nightmares—but the passages had always been full of people shuffling toward that ultimate consequence of broken biological law. Today, the queuing area was conspicuously empty. Unless we’re the people about to shuffle through it, Grace thought.

  She could barely move. Had it all been a joke? Had the plan since the beginning been for the pregnant women and their partners to be shipped off to Antarctica? She noticed now that the visible points of the airport’s perimeter were dotted with high security towers, identical to those of a large prison yard.

  The plane stopped, and Grace forced movement into her limbs as the captain led her and the other passengers down the portable stairway, into an escort of armed soldiers and airport ground staff. She braced herself for an onslaught of violence.

  But the use of this empty taxiway section seemed only to be some sort of makeshift security procedure. The soldiers receiving them, despite their sonic guns, were quite polite. They ignored the females, mostly. The transferred passengers from Cher 212 were all civilian males, and their natural flirtations with the soldiers began in a matter of seconds.

  Frederik Carnevale’s chartered plane was the first to fly over the territory in eight days. Because of this, Lieutenant Helio’s plan turned out to be a blessing; instead of being curious about Carnevale’s peculiar entourage, the ground staff seemed to be more interested in the events at LAX.

  Grace heard murmurs of awe from some of the uniformed men. “Los Angeles! They got to visit the Unrecoverable Territories!” said one man. “I heard there was a bomb! Almost blew them all up!” said another.

  Grace imagined Marvel back there, in the wild ruins, doomed to a life of running and hiding. If the girl had survived, she was gaining firsthand experience with a corner of Earth seen by few living people. Grace’s fleeting friend had taken a gamble. Perhaps she would win. And then there was Lieutenant Helio, sworn by his profession to hunt people like Marvel down, perhaps now inspired to make greater rebellious gambles of his own. Like so many people in Grace’s life as of late, they had walked in and out, leaving footprints on her
heart and nothing more.

  I hope they find peace, whatever that might be now.

  “Excuse me, Miss, could I have your name?”

  A military officer wearing a rainbow arm band was staring her in the face.

  Grace shook herself back into the moment. “I’m sorry?”

  “Name please,” the guard said. “Can I please see your wrist? We’re not running security through normal routes this morning, considering the circumstances. We’re checking everybody here, outside.”

  Hoping her status as one of Frederik Carnevale’s passengers would preclude her from presumed politeness, she held out her wrist to the officer in an off-hand manner. It was a moment of truth: Would the new TruthChip work?

  The man scanned it with his pocket com. Like those of the soldiers in Los Angeles, his device was military-grade.

  “Thank you, Miss Austen.” He read the com’s identification results. “You were one of the original passengers for this flight?”

  “Yes,” Grace replied, remaining as detached and aloof as possible.

  “Must be nice to have friends in high places,” the soldier continued, offering her a genuine (if not slightly jealous) smile.

  Grace wanted to be polite, but she kept her expression cool, then turned to face the conspicuous gray holding pen in front of the plane. Walking, she could reach it in less than a minute; it was that close. She suppressed a shudder as images of the Antarctic Sanctuary swam through her mind. Something had happened there, but what? Lieutenant Helio had suspected his father and other government officials were scared. This could imply any number of things, but if the lieutenant was correct in his assumption that whatever happened was somehow related to the Opposition, there existed the absurd possibility that the Sanctuary was now in the Opposition’s hands. This, in turn, brought with it an uneasy prospect: What if her initial fear at seeing these fences really wasn’t a false alarm? What if Mount Tasman, like the Cliff House, actually wasn’t the last stop, and Carnevale was using the Sanctuary to house breeders until their counterstrike was complete?

  Stop jumping to conclusions, Grace thought. Lieutenant Helio was only assuming it had to do with the Opposition.

  She had no way of knowing the truth. The government might simply have slaughtered everyone there. Perhaps now they were hoping that any lingering, influential liberals of the civilian world would remain oblivious to the genocide until their operation was past the point of no return. Grace looked at the steel gate again. If the rumors were true and the people at the Sanctuary really were dead, the fenced square in front of her was nothing less than a portal to death. Her stomach churned at the thought.

  The soldiers directed Frederik Carnevale’s party to a reception in the main terminal, for which they provided a speedy hydro shuttle. There was food of all sorts: fresh produce, roasted meats, and an array of appetizers. The airport’s government lounge staff served Carnevale’s guests with as much graciousness as they could muster.

  “Second entourage in two months,” one of the servers griped quietly to another as they had their backs to Grace. His accent sounded like that of the Australian Territory representatives Grace often saw on the news, only the inflection was more contained, quicker to the point. The other server, a woman who was either a lipstick lesbian like Linda Glass or a pretty heterosterile, shrugged and turned away from the first server with a worried expression.

  The young man turned with a tray of appetizers and saw Grace. He pasted on the phoniest smile she had ever seen. “Shrimp on kumara?” he asked, holding out the tray. Grace took one, and he walked away in a huff. She bit into the cracker, which was topped with a sweet potato puree and a wedge of honey-glazed shrimp.

  Carnevale isn’t the most popular guy around here, she thought. If only these people knew the truth about who they were helping, maybe they’d be nicer.

  Limousines came next, six of them, each one bearing a government-issued, rainbow-colored license plate on its rear. The security team led the Cliff House refugees to a private pick-up zone at the rear of the airport, where the black vehicles were lined up in a row, gleaming in the morning light. Grace climbed into the last one with six other women, including the friendly blonde Hilda and the brown-skinned pack leader Ruth. They marveled at the automobile’s plush interior while Grace sank into her seat with a stoic expression. All she could think of was the world they were about to leave behind. As the limousine began to roll away from the airport, she turned her face toward the window, hoping to hide any tears that might come.

  THEY RACED WEST ACROSS the Canterbury Plains, toward the looming wall of mountains. They were to access Mount Tasman from the west coast, their driver explained, which meant they had to journey across the island and over the Southern Alps at Arthur’s Pass, the middle of only three highways crossing what he called “the West Divide.” Sheep dotted the fields left and right as the mountains grew closer, and soon, the limousines were passing a spread of rolling hills scattered with peculiar rock formations. From a distance, they looked like herds of petrified beasts tumbled into place by some giant wave.

  Ruth’s booming voice overtook the limousine. “This is incredible, isn’t it, ladies? I’ve never seen anything like it!” Ruth was the big girl on the playground, and all the other women, even Hilda, gasped in agreement.

  It was true, of course; the vista was unlike anything Grace had ever seen back home. As they progressed into the mountains, the strange rock formations gave way to tall alpine ridges and rocky gray summits. The highway sloped upward, weaving through a curvy tunnel of trees. Their mysterious, cool-green color ascended the banks of the valleys, stopping in spots to make way for sparkling waterfalls washing down from the crags above. Soon, the trees broke to offer a view again: wildflowers lining the roadside bush and descending into a vast river basin. The river shimmered in the sun, winding downward in shallow lines from the valley’s far end, where the mountain peaks closing it were high enough to have summer snow.

  Grace had not outwardly agreed with Ruth’s enthusiasm over the beauty, and when her gaze meandered back into the car, the woman was eyeing her in a manner that seemed both curious and vindictive: a momentary, silent showdown.

  Are you angry because I don’t submit to you? Grace thought, surrendering to a gust of bitterness over Ruth’s commanding and unflinchingly optimistic leadership. Do you think it’s smart to get these women excited for a future that might be thrown back in their faces, if whatever happened in Antarctica really does somehow affect us?

  Cynicism was a new experience for Grace, and over the next four hours, sour at the irony, she tried like mad to keep her eyes dry and lose herself in the scenery Ruth so loved. Up ahead, creeping between the rolling mountain peaks, was a strand of gray rain cloud. Its top glowed white under the afternoon sky, but underneath, it was a dark gray shadow, consuming their path. It grew larger and larger as the limousine curled across the mountain pass, and when they entered it, the sun disappeared. Rain came quickly, hiding the picturesque surroundings in its fury. They bumped over a long cement bridge that was crumbling along the edges; underneath it, through the haze, was another shallow river snaking across a bed of rocks.

  Soon, the road descended, and the cloud grew lighter, bright enough for the lush greenery lining either side to glisten as it emerged from the ghostly fog. When the clouds broke, there was sky, and only minutes later, the sea: a brilliant, turquoise vista glittering under the sun, which just moments ago had seemed so far away.

  Maybe Ruth is doing the right thing, Grace thought, begrudging the woman for feeling so enthusiastic. I’ll be positive for the baby’s sake.

  The highway stretched south, and apart from an unusually solid-looking strip of fog falling out of the mountains to the east, the day remained crystal clear for the duration of the journey—a rarity, said the driver. At one point, the road wound eastward briefly. Dense forest lined either side of the highway. Some stretches of it bordered farmland, and others tumbled up the steep foothills, hiding what
lay farther down the coast.

  And then it came, a fleeting glimpse through the trees that sank like a dead weight in Grace’s stomach: two mountains, higher than any others, so far away that they were almost lost in the blue sky, save for peaks that dazzled white. They dwarfed her even from a distance.

  One of those is Mount Tasman, she thought. It has to be.

  But the mountains disappeared behind a closer ridge of rainforest, and the limousine turned again, so Grace was looking at a tangle of abundant foliage. Through the occasional spots where the trees broke, she saw more sheep dotting open fields and birds galloping through the sky in diving flocks.

  “How about you, Jarvis? What do you think?”

  Grace had to refocus her attention on the other women at the mention of her name. How did Ruth even know it?

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “Jesus, she hasn’t even been following the conversation,” Ruth said, and her followers giggled. “We’re talking about Mount Tasman. How big do you think it is? Did anyone tell you?”

  Be cordial.

  Grace shook her head. “All I know is it’s supposedly the main headquarters for the Opposition, so it has to be pretty big.”

  “I wonder what the rooms are like,” Ruth exclaimed, turning to her friends with a wide grin. “I mean, if they’re keeping a few thousand people there, the place has to be massive, but also pretty nice. I mean, how else do they expect us to survive for however long it takes?”

  Hilda dared to share an original opinion, one closer to Grace’s. “Well, it sounds kind of like the Sanctuary to me,” she said. “I’m guessing it’s pretty crowded.”

  “It’s nothing like the Sanctuary,” Ruth hissed. “We’re going there to save the world, not rot and die.”

  Grace offered a fleeting smile to Hilda, who simply gave her a matter-of-fact shrug in return. The young woman was clearly capable of thinking for herself.