The Breeders

by Matthew J. Beier

  The conversation continued in circles all the way to a town called Franz Josef. Just west of the Southern Alps, it looked like a ghost town, complete with a dilapidated sign that seemed more a warning to stay out than an invitation to come in. The buildings that remained standing were faded and rundown, and many of them had broken windows and unused refuse of the old world piled up next to them.

  Hilda squeezed her face into a nervous wince as she peered out the window. “Some town,” she said.

  They passed a fuel station where a lone car was refilling its hydrogen cell. There were people in Franz Josef after all, then. Judging by its size, the town could never have been larger than a few hundred people at most, unless buildings had been torn down and trees had taken their place.

  The intercom in the back of the limousine sprang to life, and the driver spoke to them.

  “Ladies, we’re in Franz Josef. Gateway to the Mount Tasman facility. The Carnevale family bought this place, more or less, about seventy years ago. Since they were all hoity-toity in the NRO, they also bought up all the businesses here and shut them down. Used to be a huge tourist hub. Scenic hover jet rides, and the like. Now, everyone here is working for the Opposition. We keep the fuel station and dairy open for travelers, but for all they know, it’s a dead town. People know the Carnevales have had a house down here for decades, but it’s just cover. We’re at the end of the world, and nobody’s going to suspect our big mountain is full of pregnant women now, ay?”

  He turned left and drove up a paved road, which was straight at first before turning to dirt and winding into the forest. They came to a faded red gate. A rusted sign dangled from it, reading NO TRESPASSERS. The gate opened automatically. Grace wondered who monitored it, and from where. From the mountain, or somewhere closer?

  The dirt road twirled upward, into the foothills. The trees were unlike any Grace had ever seen. They looked coniferous at first glance, but when the limousine slowed for a curve, she saw through the tinted glass that tiny leaves dotted their tangled branches. Where the light broke through them from behind, it lent the forest a sparkling quality before falling like dust onto rolls of green moss covering the ground.

  After thirty minutes, the canopy broke, and the vehicle bumped off the dirt road, onto a long spread of pavement. Resting on it were three hover jets. The limousine shook from the vibration of their rotary engines.

  This is it, Grace thought. I’m really going.

  Instead of exhilaration, doubt rang like mad bells in her heart. The worm of despair that had burrowed into her since Los Angeles had a firm hold now, and not even the thought of giving birth excited her. What remained of her life was a volatile wager against the probable. At any moment, the Opposition could become a casualty of some weak link brought to a snap, some unfortunate instance leading to exposure. What of Mount Tasman then? Might the Queen’s military storm it and exterminate the dissenters? Even if the wager paid off, what would she have to show for it, other than a child whose life was bound to be sunless and miserable? Grace longed for her dad, her father, her brother, Linda, Dex—anything or anyone to bring her back to the illusory peace she had enjoyed before the Opposition consumed her.

  “Come on, ladies, let’s go!” Ruth exclaimed, opening the limousine door and jumping out. The driver had parked next to three other limousines; Grace saw a number of Cliff House women and failsafes already gathered on the landing pad. Ruth and her cluster of friends climbed out of the limousine first, leaving Grace for last. When she stepped out, the fresh mountain air barreled into her, for a moment washing out her feelings of regret and loss. There it was again, however brief: her sense of adventure.

  Suddenly, a green bird was floating in the air, in front of her face, flapping its wings.

  “Oh my—” she started, and her driver turned and laughed.

  “They’re cute, kea birds, ay? Pesky buggers, but bloody smart. They know this is a spot where humans visit. And where humans visit, so does food.”

  The bird was grayish green on the outside, but a brilliant orange lined with black-and-yellow stripes colored the underside of its wings when they opened. It fought the hover jet wind current and landed at Grace’s feet, bobbing toward her in an inquisitive manner. She grinned and knelt down, breaking off a bit of the protein bar she had swiped from the limousine’s snack buffet. The bird ate it out of her hand, then cried for more. Grace broke off a larger chunk, and this time, the feathery friend clamped his black beak around it and swished into the air, nearly catching her forehead with its wingtip. Laughing, Grace spun around to watch the bird.

  She gasped when she saw its path.

  It was heading straight for a colossal snowcapped mountain that towered in the distance, between the valley’s diagonal slopes. There was no doubt: it was one of the two icy peaks she had seen from a distance, on the coastal highway.

  “There she is,” the driver said, grinning. “The birthplace of a new humanity.”

  Snow, impossibly bright and impossibly high, blew in a ribbon off the mountain’s summit, trailing into nature’s oblivion.

  “Mount Tasman,” Grace said.

  The words caught in her throat as the kea bird became a mere dot bobbing in the sky.

  This was my choice.

  Grace fell into line with the rest of the Cliff House refugees, and within ten minutes, she had a seat on a hover jet bearing the government’s rainbow emblem. There was adrenaline in her; there was fear; there was, however insignificant, a glimmer of hope. The hover jet lifted off the ground, and the afternoon light blazed on Tasman through the windshield. Tears fell down Grace’s round cheeks now. With hands clamped over her belly, she shut her eyes, hoping to imagine a life far, far away from here. But there it still was, burned into her closed lids: the mountain, growing closer and closer.

  CHAPTER 46 (HIM)

  THE JAYHAWKER’S OWNER, a dried-out fag covered in tattoos symbolizing sexual and reproductive equality, knew Sam and Moses Archer by their faces.

  “Saw you on Kansas City Com after it happened, but only on that one report,” he told them, reaching above the bar and bringing down three glasses. He dumped ice into them. Dex looked around the establishment. There were only two other people in it: a man and a woman, in the corner, enjoying drinks. “I never forget a face, and I’ll never forget your boy,” the owner said. He mixed three vodka tonics and slid them over the bar. “On the house. They’ll be shutting me down anyway, within the month, I’m betting. They’re putting out all the straight rights supporters they can. I heard the Queen on WorldCom yesterday . . . he said anybody who supports heterosexuality can now be considered a member of God’s Army.”

  The bar owner never introduced himself. After Sam explained the reason for their visit, however, he gave Dex a once over, then said, “You’ll want to see Canvas Ojala. He owns another bar down on Armour’n Harrison. Three blocks east, then left on Harrison. You’ll run into it on the corner. Meatheads, it’s called. Ojala knows his way underground. I myself’ve been stoppin’ short of illegal, whatever the case, so I can’t help you much more’n that. Just be careful when you’re there. They’ve set up an execution stage right across the street.”

  Sam, Moses, and Dex were all in the process of sipping their drinks, but they stopped at this.

  Moses’s hand was shaking. “An execution stage?”

  SURE ENOUGH, a black paneled tavern sporting a tattered green sign reading “Meatheads” stood just a ten-minute walk away. It was one of two structures standing amid a dissipating crowd of people. The other was the stage the Jayhawker’s bartender spoke of, erected in a vacant lot opposite the bar. By the look of it, the scattering people had been watching an event there that had driven some of them into a fervor. An orgy of men was in progress on the lot’s dirt ground, and some of those involved had red streaks crossing their chests and faces. For a moment, Dex wondered what it was. Then, he looked at the stage.

  Its white base dazzled with blood.

  Sam put a hand to th
e small of Moses’s back, and they gaped at the red display. “Did they kill somebody up there?” Sam whispered.

  The blood on the stage was still wet, and the men from the mob, bucking and fucking and painted with gore, appeared to be celebrating the carnage. Dex watched Sam and Moses stare at the empty stage. They wore hollow expressions. The shared memory of their murdered son Efron draped their faces like a ghost, rendering their heartbreak transmissible. Whoever had just suffered a grisly death on that stage had been loved at some point, one could guess, just like Efron. Now, the person had been deconstructed into dirty crimson smears.

  A red-haired boy was dancing through the crowd, toward Dex, Sam, and Moses.

  “Kill the breeders, kill the breeders!” he was screaming, pointing a finger like a gun and stopping to shoot, and then weaving again through the dwindling mob. The boy passed them in a flutter, then stopped to point his finger straight at Dex.

  “Kill the breeders!”

  Pow.

  He shot his imaginary gun and ran off, up Harrison Avenue. Moses had gone pale, and Sam’s mascara had mixed with tears and was beginning to fall down his cheek. Dex wiped a finger over the man’s face to catch his running makeup.

  “We should get moving,” he whispered.

  SEEKING OUT A CHIP REPLACEMENT turned into an expensive and dangerous game of connecting the dots. Meatheads was packed with people, most of whom had stopped for a drink following the execution. It was a perfect lion’s den, and Dex wondered how on earth they were going to find a lead on anti-government activity in this party of bloodlust. The muscular bartender, however, disappeared into a back hallway after Sam asked for Canvas Ojala. He returned a minute later with confirmation of a meeting, then ushered them back to wait next to a closed door with a red handle. Moses settled against the wall with his arms folded in on one another. Dex felt silly striking the same pose in high heels and a dress, so he followed Sam’s lead and stood with a hand on his hip. They waited twenty minutes before Moses looked at his watch and shook his head in frustration. After another twenty, he bounced free from the wall and rapped on the locked door. It opened two seconds later, and a balding fat man dressed in sagging white underwear and a gold necklace glared at them. Behind him, sitting naked on a desk, was a pale, thin boy who looked no older than fourteen.

  “Excuse me?” the man said, exasperated. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “Yeah, well, we were told you’d meet us back here, and that was almost an hour ago,” Moses said in a low voice. “A bartender from the Jayhawker sent us. We’re looking for a chip replacement.”

  “Two thousand gets you a referral.”

  “Two thousand dollars?” Moses asked, looking incredulous.

  “No, blowjobs, you fuckwit! Of course two thousand dollars. No money, no referral, and I forget I met you.”

  He was about to close the door when Sam held up his wrist. His silver bracelets tinkled against each other. He turned to Moses, who looked livid, and said, “Honey, we’ve got the money.” He then turned to Ojala and thrust his wrist forward. “Here.”

  The sweaty beast of a man turned around and grabbed a credit reader off his desk. He set the price, then scanned Sam’s wrist.

  “Kal Mauer. 413 East Thirty-Third Street. Tell him I’m still waiting for my commission.”

  “And where is Thirty-Third Street exactly—?”

  But Ojala slammed the door in their faces, and they heard the deadbolt roll into place. Sam gave the door a miffed look, as if he had been expecting a shred of common courtesy. Moses pulled him back toward the bar.

  “We’ll ask the bartender.”

  Kal Mauer turned out to be another greasy-haired lead, and he too asked for money—this time three thousand dollars—before scanning Dex’s barcode and running it through what he explained was an illegal mirror of TruthChip’s identity database. Dex seized with horror as he realized Mauer could easily be an undercover member of the Bio Police, and his current chip would immediately expose his criminal status. But it was his criminal status, on top of his being a failsafe, that bought Mauer’s trust. Only after the man gave them the com address for somebody named Flevin did Dex notice the sonic gun attached to his hip. If he had been an undercover police officer, there was a good chance all three of them would already be dead. But the gun stayed in its holster. Mauer typed Dex’s name into a separate com database and sent the three men away.

  Sam tried calling the mysterious Flevin from a nearby fuel station’s public com, but there was no answer. After Moses drove them back to the hotel, Sam called again from the com in the room—once before dinner and once after. Still no answer.

  Calling, waiting, and hanging up became routine over the next three days. Between attempts to make contact, Dex spent most of his time in the hotel room in order to avoid wearing the drag costume. When he needed to move his legs, he walked the hotel hallways, avoiding maids and guests whenever possible. The Archers, however, took to the streets. After growing frustrated with the Flevin possibility, they began hopping around different hetero-friendly bars to see if they could uncover new options. While they were out, Dex continued to call Flevin’s com address. On that third day, just as he was about to give up for good, somebody answered.

  It was a gruff-sounding woman.

  “Hello?”

  Dex was so shocked that somebody actually picked up that he almost forgot the reason he was calling. “Um—hello—I’m looking for Flevin,” he said, cringing at his amateurish intonation. But the woman replied in the same brusque voice.

  “This is Flevin.”

  A tangle in Dex’s gut almost froze him up.

  Talk, idiot, talk!

  “Oh, hi. My name is . . . Actually, I should probably tell you I was referred to you by a man named Kal Mauer. I’m looking to get a chip replacement.”

  “Full name?”

  “Dexter Michael Wheelock.”

  “Call me back in twenty minutes.”

  Flevin ended the call, leaving Dex in silence. He waited twenty minutes, then redialed her com address, as instructed. Kal Mauer had typed his name into what had probably been a shared database, and Dex guessed Flevin was checking to make sure he was real. Sure enough, when Flevin answered and he identified himself, she launched immediately into business. It was clear her words were a memorized speech for potential customers.

  “It will be twenty thousand dollars up front, and you don’t leave my presence until the replacement is finished. We will destroy your current chip upon its removal, and your record with TruthChip Corporation will show you to be officially deceased, marked as such by the proper authorities. By all appearances, you will disappear from the NRO’s radar forever under your current name. As you know, the NRO’s Department of Identification owns all branches of TruthChip Corporation, but I have an affiliate working at the Kansas City branch, and he has created a live, updateable mirror of the database that we can merge with his own at any time, which lends us a 100 percent success rate for chip replacement services, though I have no way to prove that to you. For all future registration purposes, you will be catalogued by your new identity. The twenty-thousand-dollar cost includes everything you need to disappear and integrate back into society: the new chip, the attached fabricated history in TruthChip’s official Identity Database of Individuals, a new dollar account containing five thousand dollars to get you started, and accelerated skin renewal over the new chip’s insertion point. By the end of the day, you will be a new human being. You will meet me at the corner of West Tenth and Baltimore at ten o’clock tomorrow evening, from where I will escort you to our next stop. I am of Asian descent and will be wearing a black jacket. Do you need me to repeat any of this?”

  “Uh, no. West Tenth and Baltimore. Sounds good. I’ll most likely be . . . in a dress. I’m pretending to be part of the drag—”

  “I’ve already seen your photo, but I’ll keep the dress in mind. Good day, Mr. Wheelock.”

  Flevin’s com went silent once again.
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br />   Now, all that remained was letting Sam and Moses know the cost, which was astronomical. It was the first time in his adult life that Dex had been financially dependent on anybody. It would be unfair for him to expect anything from the two farmers, but he had faith they would agree to give him the money, if they had it. Whether he would be able to pay it back was the question. Dex needed only to consider his situation to face the obvious answer.

  When Sam and Moses returned to the hotel room later that evening, they were slightly drunk and seemed to be in an extremely reckless mood.

  “We’re totally breaking the law, and we’re totally standing up for what’s right!” Sam slurred, hugging Dex around the shoulder. His hands wandered down Dex’s biceps, and Dex allowed him the indulgence. It was the least he could do. Moses was a calmer drunk, but he nodded at each word that came from Sam’s mouth. “For the first time in forever, we actually feel as if we’re paying tribute to our son in a real way. And you, Dex, are to thank!”

  “Well, I’ve got something else you can thank me for,” Dex said, wincing as the story about Flevin and her twenty-thousand-dollar fee came out. It hit the two men like a freight truck. For a moment, they simply stared at Dex with their jaws dropped. Then Sam began shuffling around the room.

  “Okay, okay, we can manage that. It’s okay, Dex. No, really. We just . . . we need to figure out how . . .”

  “Twenty fucking thousand?” Moses growled. “How the hell do those criminals make their living when other criminals are their only customers? Where does anybody pull up that kind of money?”

  Sam spun around and held a flat hand up to his husband. “Moses, dear, don’t even start. We’ll figure a way.” He turned to Dex. “We have the money, hon, so don’t you worry. It’s just . . . it’s been a slow year, as even more people have turned lately toward neighborhood greenhousing, and it’s taken its toll, particularly on the banana market. But we have a retirement fund, and we have Efron’s life insurance.”