“Amen,” Ruth said. She lowered her hands and bowed her head in solemn reverence to Chloe’s words.
“Which means, of course, that I, like Sister Felicity and Brother James before me, will be passing along the torch of worship. This time, it will go to Sister Ruth. From what I have gathered in my five months here, worship socials have been a tradition for newcomers to the mountain since the first group of refugees arrived here eight years ago. Eight years’ worth of women, men, and children, growing into a new society to ensure human survival!”
Many in the congregation cheered. Grace glanced over her left shoulder. She had seen somebody come into the room and stand against the wall, near the door. It was Orion Skelby. He stood with his arms folded, looking with a skeptical expression at Sister Ruth. Then, his gaze scanned the crowd and rested on Grace. He gave her a subtle wave. Was she mistaken, or had his skepticism just arched into a grimace?
He gave Grace a nod, then walked out.
SINCE BECOMING FRIENDS in February, Grace and Hilda had developed a tradition of making weekly trips to the deck early on Friday mornings to watch the sun rise over the mountains. It was early enough that there were rarely any others enjoying the holosphere, and they had privacy. As they had grown bigger, they puffed their ways down to the deck and eased themselves onto the real mountain rock that formed the ground. Most often, they talked about the lives they had left behind. Hilda’s background could not have been more different from Grace’s. Before finding her way to the Cliff House, she had worked as a drug runner and occasional prostitute in downtown Minneapolis. Both her fathers had succumbed to purposeful overdoses (they had even left a note) and left Hilda, an only child of fourteen, with nothing. That was eight years ago, just after Mandate 39 had prohibited public social and medical benefits to heterosteriles and failsafes, regardless of age. The bank had repossessed their home, and the teenage girl had been kicked out, onto the street. For being a woman colored by such misfortune, she had a remarkably gentle demeanor. Now, she was five months pregnant, a month behind Grace.
It was the Friday after Sister Chloe had christened Ruth the new leader of the worship socials, and Grace and Hilda were awake before everyone else, watching their weekly sunrise on the deck.
“It’s hard to believe we’ve been here for over two months,” Hilda was saying, digging her fingers into some of the loose rock on the mountaintop. To their left, the kea bird marking the holosphere’s exit shook off its virtual feathers, which glowed in the golden morning light.
“Almost ready for our little girls to open their eyes on the world,” Grace said. “You know, I wish we could give birth in here. At least they’d see something pretty when they come out.”
Hilda grinned. “I don’t think they can see much right after they hatch. Dr. Thrace says it takes a while.”
Grace quivered in disgust at this use of the word “hatch,” and her friend giggled. It was a common phrase to exit Hilda’s mouth, especially around all the pregnant women.
Suddenly, Hilda’s grin disappeared into a confused expression. “Ouch! What is . . .?” Her arm stiffened as she felt something in the loose rocks. Her fingers fumbled with the ground for a moment, and then she pulled up something metal. It was one of the cafeteria forks. “Ha. Looks like someone ate their dinner here. Litterbugs.”
“They obviously had no regard for nature,” Grace joked.
From somewhere in the distance came the rumbling echo of an avalanche. Grace looked from the fork to the face of Mount Cook. Sure enough, a river of snow was tumbling from one of its ridges.
“Hey, there’s something written on it.” Hilda held the fork closer and examined its handle. Her face contorted in confusion, then fear. “Look.” She handed it to Grace.
There they were, written in black permanent ink, three tiny phrases that pummeled Grace in the gut and shattered all shreds of hope she had managed to piece together since arriving in New Zealand. The ink covered both sides of the fork’s handle:
There is no dorm past the Wall. They send you to the Sanctuary anyway. I should have let my baby die.
—EAV
CHAPTER 52 (HIM)
ON THE TWELFTH OF APRIL, two things of significance happened:
First, and it came as an announcement on WorldCom’s morning news by General Thomas Helio, the New Rainbow Order opened skies to commercial airlines once again. Piggybacking on it was a new but expected development: as there were still terror suspects at large, only homosexuals could travel, and each would have to undergo a background check by scanning his or her TruthChip upon arrival at the airport. It would be no different from train travel, so Dex was confident his new identity would allow him through.
Second, just seventeen minutes after General Helio’s announcement ended, Stuart’s pocket com buzzed on the dresser. He picked it up and held it out to Dex, looking both anxious and excited.
“Unverifiable address!” he said. Over the past week, Stuart had missed three untraceable calls, each time because he had been too slow to answer his com.
Dex almost choked on the glob of yogurt he had just eaten. “Hurry this time! It could be Grace!”
Stuart fumbled for his com, then answered. His exclamatory expression froze. As he listened to the person speak, his hope turned sour.
“So, it’s you who has been trying to call,” Stuart said. “You’re about three months late. You never returned my messages about the rental car.”
Oh my God.
Dex jumped off the bed and into Stuart’s face. “Is that Sheila Willy?”
Stuart nodded. “Miss Willy, I’m listening, but before you go any further, there’s someone here who would like to say hello.” He handed the com to Dex, who brought it to his ear so quickly that he hit the side of his head.
“Oh shit...Sheila? It’s Dex! Dex Wheelock!”
“You’re shitting me,” came the scarecrow woman’s voice after a long pause.
“I’m afraid not,” Dex replied, grinning.
Sheila mixed a gasp with a chuckle. “So you got your second chance after all. I must admit, I’m shocked. Glad and shocked. I saw your face on the news after the raid.”
“And what about you? I heard you left Grace, too. Did you get her to the Cliff House?”
“I did my part,” Sheila said, sounding resolute.
Dex shook his head, struggling not to show his frustration. “So why call now? We’ve been calling your com every day for weeks, and it’s gone straight to voice message.”
“Like it or not, Dex, I’m a human being too, and let’s just say I’ve been brooding over a particularly crappy decision. I ditched that com, because I’m a new person now. I’m a lesbian named Wanda Tykes, born January the sixteenth, 2355. Chip and com replacement at the Cliff House. Grace got the same thing, but her com can only receive calls. Of course, nobody has the address. The Opposition didn’t want any of their girls to accidentally slip and let loose sensitive information.”
“Well, you’re a bundle of sensitive information,” Dex said. “How come they gave you a normal com?”
“Because I demanded it, and I threatened to tell the refugees at the Cliff House what I knew. By the way, any audio, video, and hologram data sent from my com is scrambled, so whatever I say is safe. Safe as coms can be, anyway.”
The men had more questions, and Sheila had answers. Dex switched Stuart’s com to holo-mode, and Sheila’s orange hair sprang to life. It seemed the woman had loosened her pride about the Opposition since the night of the raid; now, there was a trace of bitterness in her tone when she spoke of it. Yes, she had left the Cliff House, and no, she had not told Grace about her plan to desert it. After driving the rental car Stuart had provided back to the Minneapolis area, she had rented another car and disappeared to her great aunt’s cabin outside of La Crosse. She had known about the agenda set for Grace and the other pregnant women, and a man named Albert Redmond, who ran Carnevale’s Cliff House, had given her the option to follow.
“It’s a fun
ny thing,” Sheila said. “I fell in love once, and only once, and it was with the man who first brought me to the Cliff House. He decided to follow the Opposition to a place they wouldn’t let me go to. He was afraid of the future, and I became a casualty of that. When I was at the Cliff House with Grace, I had a chance to speak with him over a com there. He arranged it that I could finally come and join him, only then, I was the one who was too afraid. That’s why I left. Now, I heard from him again, and he says they’re giving me another chance. If I go, it really is the end of everything I know. Assuming my new chip works to let me travel, I still have a choice to follow Grace, and that’s the clincher.”
Stuart leaned in toward the small com hologram. “To New Zealand, you mean? Is she really there?”
“Which is half the reason I’m calling,” Sheila continued. “She met my man. His name’s Orion, and he saw on her registration that I was the one who recruited her to the Opposition.”
“Well, Fletch helped,” Dex said. The recollection of his friend’s torn-up body lying dead in the cornfield came as a shock. It always did.
“Oh, dear Fletch!” Sheila exclaimed. “How is our favorite little prejaculator doing?”
“He’s dead.”
Sheila’s gimmicky sarcasm fizzled, and her expression became serious. “Oh,” she said. Her gaze wandered to some point outside the hologram’s capture field. “I didn’t know.”
Stuart jumped back in. “But Grace? You know she’s alive? Can we get to her?”
“Quite frankly, I don’t think so,” Sheila said. “But I’m the best hope you have to get in. If you’re going to New Zealand, you’re going to need me there. The thing is, I haven’t had the money for a flight since Orion cleared me to join him, and I chickened out when I had the option to go with Grace’s group.”
“Just where is this facility?” Stuart asked.
Sheila told them, and the very idea came like a cold whisper on the back of Dex’s neck.
Grace and our baby are inside a mountain.
The woman described what she had been told about the facility, chuckling half the time for some reason Dex could not infer. He found nothing funny about a sunless mountain reserve supposedly filled with thousands of pregnant women, children, and failsafes. How could they ever have planned for enough space? Wouldn’t it become cramped? Wouldn’t they run out of artificial greenhouse space, eventually? Dex was about to ask these obvious questions when Sheila’s words froze the breath in his chest.
“But it’s all a hoax.”
Keep talking. . . .
“What do you mean ‘a hoax’?” Stuart demanded.
“Meaning all those pregnant women down there aren’t staying in the mountain. They’re going to Antarctica.”
“God almighty damn it to hell!” Stuart screamed, and he slammed his fists onto the desk.
Dex’s com-holding hand had broken a sweat and was shaking. “Do they know?” he whispered.
“Orion says they’ll find out after they give birth. It’s part of the Opposition’s strategy for a lot of reasons, I guess. Mostly because they wouldn’t have an Opposition if Bozarth and company’s pregnant women knew what it would mean to take a stand against the NRO. Most of the women who don’t want to risk illegal abortions are so scared they’ll do anything else to avoid banishment to Antarctica. They seek out help. They find it. They see an opportunity to hope, and they go to Mount Tasman so they can carry their pregnancies to term. They’re made to think it’s the last stop, but really it isn’t. Once they have a baby to take care of and their only option is to let the Opposition relocate them to Antarctica, they can’t object.”
“Jesus Christ,” Stuart seethed. “Who told you all this?”
“Orion. He told me when I spoke to him from the Cliff House in January.”
Dex was numb. The news was so horrible, so unthinkable. The God he thought had whispered to him on the train might as well have been a devil. “So it was all for nothing,” he said.
“Oh, no, it isn’t for nothing,” Sheila said.
She’s smiling, Dex thought, looking at the woman’s holographic face. She’s actually smiling.
“Frederik Carnevale’s Opposition has passed a tipping point of influence against the NRO, and it’s winning,” she continued. “What NRO officials haven’t told us and WorldCom and even its own military is that the Opposition has infiltrated the Sanctuary. It’s ours. And we have nuclear missiles, sonic ray bombs, and every other type of weapon under the sun ready to mount a strike on all populated NRO territories. The Opposition is collecting fertile heterosexuals in Antarctica, and they have the NRO at a stalemate. When they collect enough to maintain humanity at the Sanctuary long enough to outlive the destruction they plan to unleash, they’re going to blow the populated world sky high.”
The Opposition was broader in scope than Dex ever imagined. The New Rainbow Order, for all its clout, had been losing its battle in silence.
“So, that’s the reason I left the Cliff House without telling Grace why,” Sheila said. “I couldn’t bear to tell her the truth.”
Stuart buried his head in his hands. “And now she’s down there. Oblivious. Just waiting to be shipped off to that God-awful place.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Sheila said. “Haven’t you heard about the trains the fags have been emptying out all the heterosexuals on? They’re bringing every registered heterosexual in for social assessment and questioning, detaining them, then sending them off on trains. We’ve finally come to a head. It’s happening all over the world.”
Through his disgust, Dex chuckled. “Yeah, I know all about that. Remind me to tell you sometime.”
“So, you still want to go to New Zealand, Dex? Be part of the Opposition that you were too afraid to join the first time? I promise I’ll do everything to have Orion get you in. And you can meet your baby.”
There was no choice, really. Not anymore. But it was Stuart who voiced it.
“Ms. Willy, you better make your way to Minneapolis. When you’re here, I’m booking us all flights to New Zealand. In return, you do everything you can to help Dex and me see my daughter again.”
THE AIR TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS were phased out slowly. As stranded passengers had first dibs on all flights, the earliest tickets to New Zealand Stuart could book were for the twentieth of April. Sheila agreed to meet him and Dex at Twin Cities Intercontinental Airport the evening their flight departed.
Dex and Stuart stopped by Linda Glass’s house on their way there to say goodbye. Linda crushed Stuart’s neck in her arms. “This is one of those forever goodbyes, isn’t it?” Stuart nodded. Both their faces glistened with tears. Stuart had already signed an electronic fund transfer to Linda for two million dollars and sent it to her com. Now, in their embrace, Stuart was whispering, begging her to use the money to keep her family safe. In a burst of sobs, she finally nodded, and Stuart squeezed her extra tight. When Linda pulled back from the hug, she held a hand up. “I know you have to go, but give me two seconds. I want you to give something to Grace, if you ever find her.” She rushed into her bedroom. Dex heard a drawer open and close, then silence. When Linda returned, she was wearing red lipstick. Handing Stuart a small brown envelope, she sniffed and wiped her tears. “Don’t forget.” On the envelope was a bright red kiss mark from Linda’s voluptuous lips. She hugged Stuart again, then Dex.
“Leave as soon as you can,” Dex whispered. A minute later, they were off.
By nightfall, they were cruising on Cher Airlines to Auckland, New Zealand’s main air hub. From there, they would catch a flight to Christchurch on the South Island, just six hours’ drive from the Mount Tasman facility where Grace was supposedly hiding. Stuart, Dex, and Sheila all sat together. Sheila settled into her seat and fell asleep. Stuart drummed his fingertips on his knees while waiting for departure, then closed his eyes and grabbed the arm rests as the hydro plane took off. Dex himself had never flown before. Apart from it being expensive, there was nowhere in
the continental territory worth traveling to. Only brave people traveled overseas, and until recently, he had never been one of those. Today, they had been lucky; none of their TruthChips were flagged in the identity database. They were in the air, free.
The hydro plane cruised toward the ozone, and Dex was awed when he looked out the window during sunset and saw mountains far, far below. The Unrecoverable Territories, he thought. I wonder if Exander ever made it.
They arrived into Auckland at 9:55 in the evening on April twenty-first. Two hours later, they were in Christchurch, in a taxi, on their way to a hotel for the evening. Dex had seen nothing of the territory on the way in, and now, the city was nothing but passing lights. Off to the west were mountains, the taxi driver told them. He was a stout, bald man who seemed particularly proud of his homeland. The town they needed to get to was called Franz Josef, Sheila had said, but when Stuart accidentally mentioned it in passing, the driver turned his head backward, in confusion.
“Franz Josef? Nothing there but a fuel station, mate. What’s your interest in that place?”
“I just heard of it once,” Stuart replied. Nobody spoke until they reached the hotel, where he paid the driver with a quick scan of his TruthChip.
Sheila made a call and left a message for her friend Orion, letting him know they had arrived in Christchurch. Last they heard, Orion had not yet cleared Dex and Stuart for transfer to Mount Tasman. Sheila, however, had put in a good word for both men. They would be driving to Franz Josef in the morning to await further instruction. If Orion could pull the right strings, they would all be inside the mountain by tomorrow evening. Grace was due in just over two months, which meant their secret transfer to Antarctica would come faster than Dex wanted to imagine. This was his age of bravery, however, and the crumbling world around him somehow made this future seem adequate.
“Now, we wait,” Sheila said, hanging up her com. She dug inside the hotel’s mini-refrigerator and pulled out three small bottles of whiskey. “To the future!” she said, throwing one each to Dex and Stuart.
The Breeders Page 31