“We’re living in times that will make or break the world,” Stuart said. “We’ve all had moments of confusion. I myself almost killed my own husband when he threatened to turn Grace in for banishment to Antarctica. Now that’s saying something.”
The reunion was a discussion of choices. Stuart told Dex what he knew about Grace: she had survived the Sterile Me Susan’s raid, and he had set her up with a hotel and a rental car that very night. She had departed the next morning with Sheila Willy, and they were heading to a place the red-haired woman claimed was safe. Here, Dex filled Stuart in on what he knew about Frederik Carnevale and the Cliff House. But Grace had called her dad from there on a scrambled com and told him something that curled Dex’s heart into a knot: they were transferring her and the other pregnant women all the way across the Pacific Ocean, to New Zealand. That territory was secluded and politically divided, and it would be pleasingly obscure if not for the fact that it was also the gateway to the Antarctica Sanctuary. Grace had given Stuart no further hints about what waited for her in New Zealand, but she had mentioned an Opposition counterstrike.
“Sheila Willy said something about that when she took us under Sterile Me Susan’s,” Dex said.
Stuart shrugged. “Yeah, well, Grace seemed to know more about it this time. It’s supposed to be big. The attacks a few weeks ago? Grace said they would happen. That they were staged by the NRO, so they could declare martial law.”
“And start the process of rounding up heterosexuals,” Dex said.
“But there’s something bigger coming. Grace told me to go to New Zealand, or somewhere else far removed from the NRO’s main cities. She said the Opposition is going to wipe out humanity. That might mean a nuclear strike. I just don’t know.”
Dex turned to Linda. “Did you know this?”
The sumptuous blonde licked the tears off her lips. “Stuart told me.”
“Why haven’t you left?”
“I have a life here,” Linda said. “If I were to leave now, it would just look suspicious. Besides, the NRO is patrolling every major travel route. I don’t know what to do. Celine and Rita have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know what to tell them.”
“Tell them you’re saving their lives,” Stuart told her. But Linda, looking downcast, only shrugged.
There, in the empty park, the three devised a plan. Dex would remain with Stuart at his resort hotel on Lake Washington. It would not help them if the Opposition decided to launch nuclear weapons at the Minnesota region before the government lifted its ban on air travel, but hiding out at the resort would keep them away from police radar. Stuart explained how the Bio Police had seemingly left him alone after the raid on Sterile Me Susan’s, which he guessed meant their vehicles stationed outside his Wayzata mansion had strictly been investigating Dex back in December. Stuart had noticed police hanging around for a week following Dex’s arrest and his daughter’s flight, but then they disappeared entirely. Better things to investigate? Most likely. Stuart had since sought out an illegal com untracer, which scrambled the data running in and out of his address, should anybody be listening in.
“Five thousand dollars,” he told Dex in the car, after they had parted ways with Linda for the night. “You’d think the price of something as simple as a com scramble would be slightly more reasonable.”
It was a perfect time for Dex to ask Stuart the question he dreaded.
“Speaking of price,” he started, trying to quell the guilt swelling in his chest. “Are you and your husband as . . . I mean, I guess I should say . . . are you as well to do as you appear?”
Stuart took the question in fair stride and nodded. “You could say that,” he said. “James’s dad was the founder of DoMe Clinic, and he left us with more than I’ll ever know what to do with. I have a fair bit in my personal account. Why?”
“I’m wondering if I could work off a debt,” Dex continued. He explained how Sam and Moses Archer had spent almost thirty thousand dollars to help him lose his previous identity and continue life as a fugitive. “They had no reason to help me, other than to honor the memory of their son Efron. I put them out of a lot of their savings, and I have no way to pay it back.”
“Consider the repayment done,” Stuart said. “We’ll sort it out this week. If I can return goodness with some goodness, I can die a happy man when all this is all over.”
“Have you no flaws?” Dex asked in a joking tone, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’ve done nothing worth gaining your trust or friendship. If there is any way I can repay you—”
Stuart jammed on his brakes suddenly. Dex looked at him, then out the windshield, where the headlights had stopped a monstrous deer in its tracks. “Jesus, Mary, ’n’ Gaga!” Stuart screamed. “Heavens to Betsy, that came out of nowhere!” The hydro car screeched to a stop, and the deer darted off, across the country highway.
“That was a buck,” Dex said.
Stuart was shaking in his front seat, gripping the steering wheel more tightly than necessary. They sat on the road in silence, watching the cement disappear out of the headlights’ reach, into darkness.
“There is something you can do,” Stuart said as his gasping ebbed. He slowly accelerated the car again.
“What?”
“About the repayment.”
“Oh!” Dex exclaimed. “Anything.”
“You follow my daughter to the very end, to the best of your ability. If you find her and my little granddaughter or grandson, promise me you’ll stay with them.”
“I promise.” This time, there were no doubts in his mind, no lingering trickles of hesitation. Fear would never leave him completely, but now, he was no longer capable of letting selfishness make his decisions. If Grace was still alive, and if he could find her, they would journey together toward whatever life held in store.
Stuart had checked himself into a suite at Lake Washington Lodge. It was an upscale resort, but his unit was one of the modest ones. There were two queen-sized beds in the bedroom, and Dex took the unused one. They ate a quick room service meal of chicken parmesan and steamed green beans before retiring for the night.
After jumping into the deep end of bravery undone by cowardice, death counteracted by serendipity, and a rebirth coaxed into existence by charity, here Dex was, lying on a bed in the same hotel room as Grace Jarvis’s benevolent dad. They shared a common purpose now. Both had abandoned their lives; Stuart had left James for good, Dex learned, because the man had shown more unflinching reverence to the Queen and his agenda after Grace’s disappearance than concern for their daughter herself. Like everyone else in the world, James had seen Dex’s face among all the others arrested in the Sterile Me Susan’s raid. The man had correctly assumed that Grace was with Dex that night, and he had dismissed her as his daughter, deciding instead she was a wanton fool who had fallen into biological depravity.
James had known without doubt Grace was pregnant, Stuart explained, but he refrained from turning her in. When she disappeared without a trace, James had shown no sensitivity to the possibility that their daughter might be on her way to Antarctica, or worse (if the rumors were true), on her way to die. Stuart had left James the very night Grace had found a way to call him. He had packed his bags five days prior, itching for an excuse to leave, and then taken the opportunity to slip out when James was off at his favorite bathhouse. He had not returned any of James’s calls since, as much as it broke his heart. The man was no longer a true husband; the New Rainbow Order’s evil had thoroughly warped his spirit.
All Stuart had left behind was a note asking James not to call.
“He was the one who elected to have separate bank accounts,” Stuart said as they lay in the dark hotel room, “so there’s no way he can track where I am unless he chooses to involve the police. But I know James. He’ll just let me go. He isn’t malicious . . . just apathetic. And sometimes cruel.”
DAYS PASSED. Dex and Stuart waited, hiking around Lake Washington, eating fabulous meals in the resort’s
restaurant, and bonding as might a father and son. They could do nothing but hope for the government to lift air travel restrictions, and according to WorldCom, the General Assembly was still debating the date to reopen travel routes. “It’s a shame North America has no shipping ports off the Pacific coast,” Stuart said. “I’d even take a boat to New Zealand if it wasn’t for the fucking Unrecoverable Territories. You’d think they’d have at least rebuilt the sea ports!” Dex refrained from telling Stuart how useless ships would be in the age of hydro jets. The man was restless, intent on making sense of their helplessness.
The Friday after their reunion, Stuart arranged a fund transfer to Sam and Moses Archer in the amount of forty thousand dollars. The two men were thrilled to hear that Dex had made it safely to Minneapolis, but at first, they refused to accept the repayment. It was Stuart who finally spoke to Sam over the com and convinced him to accept the money.
“Dex took out a loan from me, and he’s repaying you for all your help whether you like it or not. Don’t deny him that privilege!”
In the end, they agreed to accept the fund transfer, which made it easier for Dex to talk to them about other things.
“New Zealand?” Sam exclaimed. “But how do you know your woman is there?”
“I don’t,” Dex said. “Not for sure. All I know is that she called Stuart and told him to go there whenever he could. She also said there’s going to be a massive Opposition counterstrike. It sounded like an attempt for heterosexuals to reclaim the planet, which means you and Moses might want to steer clear of any of the major cities. Maybe you could use the money to get down to New Zealand, too. Abandon your farm and start a new life, if you can.”
Sam took the news with solemn silence. It was Moses who, when Sam handed him the com, said, “This really is it, isn’t it? A time of reckoning.” When Dex said goodbye to the Archers for the second time, they agreed not to make a fuss of it. It was goodbye for a little while, they all decided. A little while, nothing more. It was an effective way to invoke comfort. Yet it was obvious Sam and Moses knew as well as Dex did that, if he disappeared to New Zealand and found Grace, they would never see each other again.
A MEMORY (HER)
HERE IS LITTLE RITA, perfectly new and perfectly innocent, just brought home from the engineering clinic in Minnetonka where Celine gave birth. Linda is cradling her, humming the melody to “Open My Mind” by the Cock Knockers. Celine is lying on the couch, asleep, holding a beer, which she avoided all pregnancy long, at Linda and the doctor’s orders. They will feed little Rita with the regular baby formula, even though carriers produce natural milk. Linda has just finished feeding her. Grace watches the joy on her best friend’s face and is disgusted at the traces of jealousy snaking through her body, settling in her lower abdomen, which today, for the first time in her life, feels immutably empty, immutably pointless, immutably useless. She will never be able to engineer a child, never have anything that is hers. For homosexuals, lesbians get the short end of the social stick, but compared to heterosteriles, they live lives of utter privilege, because they still have an accepted place in society. At the same time, Grace knows she has no right to complain. She has grown up with two parents, as much money as she could ever need, and creature comforts that would make the vast majority of people alive today quite jealous. Yet her very existence is about to become a vestige of the past. Heterosteriles are not going to be necessary for much longer; of that she is certain. Bioengineers have already finalized at least two models of artificial wombs for human gestation. But this is here, this is now, and she should do everything possible to discard those shreds of pessimism, instilled so furtively into her during those years of volunteering, college, and now working her job with the city, which she would not have if her dad hadn’t pulled strings with a few of his prestigious friends.
“Look at her little fingers!” Linda says, stepping closer to Grace. She is thrilled to be a mother. Who wouldn’t be? It has been ten years since anybody could freely plan to have a family with any real certainty; the government dictates everything now.
“She’s beautiful,” Grace replies. She holds a finger out to Rita, who makes the slightest curl of a tiny fist to grab it.
“You’ve had practice with kids taking care of little Lars,” Linda continues. “Any suggestions? We seriously have no idea what we’re doing.”
Lars. Grace still cannot believe Abraham has a son. Her brother is one of the most insecure and immature people she knows, and not just because his horrible husband Scott spent the first three years of their marriage beating him up and stomping his confidence into the ground. Abraham passed on to Lars his thin, bony genes. That much is already clear. She loves the boy and always will, but she worries about what will become of him.
“Abraham still has no idea what he’s doing,” Grace tells Linda, hoping the resentment she should not be feeling is transparent. She’s almost sure it isn’t. She shakes her head, steps back from Linda and Rita, and puts her hands on her hips. Here come tears, embarrassment, shame.
Grace knows what needs to be said. She wastes no more time.
“Linda, I’m jealous. I just want you to know it, because then maybe I can get over it. I’m jealous that you can have a baby. I love you so much, which is why I’m telling you. There, I said it.”
Linda’s face is unreadable, and she simply stares at Grace for a moment, continuing to rock Rita.
“Rita is beautiful,” Grace continues. “Absolutely beautiful. I wish I could have a baby too, so they could grow up together and be just like us. But it’s not going to happen that way, is it?”
They are both crying now. Linda forgives her; of course she does. Grace approaches them again and kisses Rita on the forehead, feeling her velvet-soft skin warm her lips. She takes Rita from Linda’s hands and cradles her close, feeling every moment of it, because holding a baby has been and always will be a rare occurrence for her. The Bureau of Genetic Regulation has allotted Linda and Celine only one child. This one is it.
Linda smiles, and the tears on her face shimmer in the afternoon light. “She’s just as much your family as I am, Gracie. I wish you could have one, too. God, I really do.”
“It’d be a one-way ticket to Antarctica.”
They laugh now until they can’t stop, and Grace has to sit so she doesn’t drop Rita. At this, they laugh even harder. This is friendship; this is love; this is life. It won’t last forever.
Grace is relieved. For the moment, her pain, her jealousy, and her sense of worthlessness have lifted.
CHAPTER 51 (HER)
RUTH, THE CLIFF HOUSE’S “single-girl group leader” (as Grace had come to think of her), had befriended an eight-month-pregnant woman named Chloe Zeffarelli, nicknamed “Sister Chloe.” By early April, Ruth had joined in leading with Sister Chloe what they called worship socials, congregations that welcomed all women and men in the maternity dorm. In the past two weeks, Grace had attempted to integrate herself with the mountain’s other inhabitants, actively seeking them out for conversation, games, and possibly even friendship to pass the time. The effort had not been in vain; at least ten people now knew her name. She was still skeptical of the worship socials, but it was something to do. Chloe had been inside Mount Tasman for five months now, watching her belly grow almost to the point of bursting, and from what Grace gathered during her sermons in the first floor common lounge, she had recently lost a friend through the final hallway, the secret door. Ruth, then, seemed to be a replacement. Chloe, whose jet-black hair and pale face made Grace think of Lars, was a large woman by default. The pregnant belly (twins, a woman named Syl had whispered excitedly to Grace during one of the services) lent the woman an authoritative presence that held many of the women and men of Mount Tasman rapt.
“Soon, I’ll be gone,” she said with a shudder of ecstasy, on the tenth of April. Both she and Ruth were standing before a congregation of at least two hundred people. The common lounge was overflowing. “Soon, I’ll move on to the next section
of the mountain where the families live. And am I scared?”
“No,” Ruth answered for her. The microphone crackled.
Grace was sitting near the front, next to Hilda from the Cliff House. Hilda had been the one woman to warm immediately to Grace’s rekindled effort to make friends; the rest of the women she had shared the limousine with still spoke to her with a cold edge. Since they were both alone, Grace and Hilda had become partners for the birthing and mothering classes, which they took together on Wednesdays. There, they learned about different techniques for birthing, how to breastfeed, and how generally to care for infants. Chloe and Ruth were also in the class, where they carried themselves with the same sense of superiority they exuded now.
“And where do I go from here?” Chloe asked the congregation. “Where does my spirit find peace?”
Ruth raised a hand in exaltation. “In God’s plan.”
The larger woman nodded. “In God’s plan. This mountain—this final, beautiful resting place for our future—is a fortress of the human spirit. Here, God’s secret workers slaving inside the depths of Satan’s homosexual regime have created for us a temple of procreation. Of life force. Of the very thing homosexuals sought to snuff out from the beginning!”
Gosh, if only they knew the rest of it, Grace thought to herself. She thought of a world without human beings. It would be peaceful, all right. Empty and peaceful.
Chloe rearranged her feet, a motion which, on her, looked strenuous. “We’ve all taken baby steps to get to where we are. Jumped off small cliffs, blindfolded, trusting in faith, only to be shown the next jump once there was no way back up again. We’ve walked by faith, and now we’re finally there. Won over by hope. A team, at its core, completely humanitarian. God led us here, and soon, I will write my name on the Wall of the Future and move deeper inside our new mountain dwelling. Our home at the end of the NRO’s filthy rainbow.”
The Breeders Page 30