The Breeders

by Matthew J. Beier

  They drank themselves into a healthy oblivion, laughing all the way, celebrating the lives they had led and being content that, at least for a time, they had been lucky enough to experience the world at all.

  CHAPTER 53 (HER)

  GRACE HAD BEEN BURSTING with a mixture of anger, excitement, and terror for the past ten days. On the twelfth of April, the day Hilda had nearly been punctured by the prophetic fork, they had returned to the halls of the maternity dorm in a shell-shocked state of contemplation. They ate breakfast in silence, then ascended to the facility’s top level to sit under the Wall of the Future, where they spent the entire day deliberating over the fork’s meaning. Who had written it? Could it be real? Were the Cliff House and this mountain asylum really the ultimate con she had feared? They looked at the hundreds of names and messages scribbled onto the wall. Could it really be possible all these people had been sent to Antarctica? When Grace roamed into the cafeteria that evening, it was as if she were on the outside, looking in.

  “Do we tell people?” Hilda whispered.

  Grace spotted their usual group of women at a table far across the cafeteria. They were all convulsing with laugher. “I don’t think we should,” she replied. “At least not until I can talk to Orion.”

  “Even so, do you think it’d be right? To dash everyone’s hope?”

  It was a valid argument. Selfless, too. It was not the first time since joining the Opposition that Grace had to face a moral dilemma: Expose an untruth, or keep a secret for the greater good? What gave her hope were those nefarious bits of information Lieutenant Helio had left her with, and she shared them with Hilda now. The Queen and his government were afraid due to whatever had happened in Antarctica. If this was so and if the words on the fork were true, it seemed as though her original instincts had been correct: the Opposition was using the Sanctuary to serve its own agenda. It was the same horrible end she had always feared, but it was now a means for something altogether hopeful.

  Even so, anxiety held her in a vise grip. Wilkes Land was the region of Antarctic coastline south of the Indian and Southern Oceans, just west of Victoria Land. Until 2248 when the New Rainbow Order overtook the continent and banned all scientific research there, Wilkes Land had been claimed by what remained of civilized Australia and France. Grace knew only what she had learned through the government’s public education system, but it was enough to give her an idea: the Wilkes Land Sanctuary stood atop thousands of feet of ice, which lay above ground that had not seen the light of day for millions of years. Built on ungodly strong metal stilts that ran five hundred feet down, the Sanctuary was a series of conjoined artificial biospheres covering a radius of over five miles. It was considered one of the Nine Wonders of the World, a feat of human engineering genius yet to be matched. It had solar and nuclear power centers, neighborhoods, farms, irrigation systems, water recycling facilities, animal reproduction centers for meat, and anything else one might need to survive in the frozen, lifeless desert.

  Grace’s life had come to a place where she could no longer predict the future with any real faith. The truth of this was terrifying, but the reality of knowing life might become her most reviled nightmare was even worse. To her surprise, Orion had approached her in the hallway after breakfast, the morning following Hilda’s discovery of the fork. Grace was about to unleash her worries on him, but he spoke first.

  “I have news.”

  She put a hand on the hallway wall to brace herself. “News? What news?”

  Orion’s messages to Sheila Willy had paid off. The carrot-haired woman had finally called him back, and with information that was about to make Grace’s day: her dad, her failsafe Dex, and Sheila herself were all still alive and would soon be traveling to New Zealand in hopes of reconvening with the Opposition. It took a moment for Grace to register Orion’s words. Then, an amalgamation of shock, relief, and joy seemed to lift her clear off the floor. For all the uncertainties plaguing her, here was a spark of elation strong enough to counter them. As had become habit, she looked down at her growing belly. “Did you hear that?” she exclaimed to her daughter. “They’re coming! Your daddy and grandpa are coming!”

  Orion grinned. “I’m doing everything I can to get them all here. But there might be a problem. I think I can get your failsafe to come in with Sheila Willy. Technically, he should be allowed in without much question, though Sheila tells me he’s had a chip replacement outside of Opposition circles, so he will register as a homosexual. I’ll beg the administration to let Sheila vouch for him, and we’ll bring you in if necessary. The problem is with your father.”

  “My dad,” Grace corrected.

  “Homosexuals are less likely to get clearance to the mountain. They’ll consume unnecessary resources.”

  “But it won’t matter,” Grace said, the gears of rationality grinding in her head. “Antarctica is self-sufficient, isn’t it? Won’t there be enough food?”

  Orion’s face went pale, and Grace realized what had slipped out of her mouth. For a moment, they stared at each other, sizing up the truths they were both holding back. Three women passed between them. They waddled down the hall, giggling, blissful and ignorant.

  Orion gritted his teeth. “What do you mean by that?”

  Grace told him about the fork. He listened with a pensive expression, which became almost dolent as he tried to formulate a response.

  “I had no idea anybody figured it out,” he whispered. “People are usually told once they pass through the door, on their ride to the rear hover jet platform. We give them insulated jackets to keep warm for when they land in the Sanctuary’s main entry. By that point it’s all pretty obvious, I think.”

  “But you’re duping them,” Grace said, feeling broken.

  Orion looked to the ground, and for a few seconds, he simply breathed. When he looked up, there were tears in his eyes. “I hate myself every day for having to lie. It’s all I can do not to seek out Carnevale himself and beg that he be honest with everyone. But word would get out to the public, and there’d be a mass panic. Because there’s something else. . . .”

  He told Grace about the Sanctuary, how the Opposition had overtaken it. They had an imminent counterstrike in place that was keeping the New Rainbow Order in a deadlock. For the first time in two hundred years, the world government had a legitimate revolution on its hands, and it had no solution.

  “Have you seen the Sanctuary?” Grace asked. “Do you know it’s true?”

  Orion nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen it. Pictures, anyway. Frederik Carnevale goes down there about three times a year to check on everyone’s progress. I’ve seen pictures of families. Natural families, standing with Carnevale. Everyone is smiling, because . . . they know what they are.”

  “The future.”

  If her dad or Dex could accompany her to the Sanctuary, she would still have a life, just as those smiling people had. Love and family made for happiness, did it not? The only truly horrible thing would be if the dumping ground rumors were true, but she now doubted them. If the government had secretly lost the Sanctuary to enemy hands, what better way to continue generating fear in the general public than by pretending nothing was wrong? Disseminating vague rumors was a perfect way to cause confusion.

  “Did you tell anyone about this?” Orion asked.

  “No,” Grace replied. “Hilda Leopke is the only other one who knows. She didn’t want to tell anybody else.”

  “It would cause an uproar.”

  “So it’s really true? That’s where they take us after we go through that blast door?”

  “You’ll have a week in the mountain’s hospital wing after you give birth, unless there are complications with you or the baby that require more time. But then, yes, you’ll be transferred. But Grace . . .” Orion shook his head in worry. “You can’t tell a soul. Do you think anybody would have joined the Opposition if they’d known we’d overtaken the Sanctuary? Without this lie, we wouldn’t have an Opposition. Going to Antarctica has been everyone
’s nightmare for the past seventy years. I didn’t know the truth myself until I elected to be transferred down here. We’re interested in saving as many lives as possible before the counterstrike, and I saw it as the only way out. At the time, Sheila did not.”

  “But now, she does.”

  “Now, she does. The counterstrike will happen very soon.”

  The next nine days passed so slowly that all Grace wanted to do in her waking hours was sit on the deck and talk to her little girl, the baby who would soon be seeing the world. On the night Stuart, Dex, and Sheila arrived in New Zealand, Orion updated Grace. He had spoken to Sheila and directed all three of them to drive to the fuel station in Franz Josef, and while Dex had been cleared for transfer to Mount Tasman, her dad had not. For Grace’s sake, Orion had scheduled a meeting for the next morning with the mountain’s administrative offices to make one last case for Stuart.

  “It’s not looking good,” he whispered on his way out.

  But at the very least, my little girl will have a father.

  The dichotomy that formed in Grace—fear and elation frolicking together, or perhaps it was the simple miracle of pregnancy—had built so steadily over the week that her appetite, her ability to sleep, and even her bathroom habits had stopped working with any sort of synchronicity. Sheila, Dex, and her dad’s looming arrival in New Zealand had been enough to drive her wild with speculation. She had scores of questions, but it was Dex she was most curious about—that man who so fleetingly seemed as if he might devote himself to their child. She had seen his face pasted on WorldCom first among those caught in the Sterile Me Susan’s raid, then along with the supposed escaped God’s Army prisoners the Queen claimed were responsible for the attacks. Surely he had spent time in jail, but how had he escaped? How had he managed to get back together with her dad? Furthermore, there existed potential for familial concerns in the near future. Dex had another child, a son from Diana Kring named Michael, if the Wall of the Future was to be believed. They would also be in Antarctica. Would he eventually find Diana there and have to make a choice between his two families? Did the concept of family even matter at the Sanctuary?

  Time will tell, she told herself. Just relax, and hope for the best.

  Hilda waited in the cafeteria with her the next day, and they discussed Grace’s worries until there was nothing left to say. It was Hilda who had the last good word.

  “You’re lucky you’re getting your failsafe back.” She took a scoop of Grace’s untouched frozen yogurt. “I wish all of us could have that.”

  It was almost four o’clock when, finally, Orion appeared in the doorway to the cafeteria. It was impossible to tell by his cryptic expression whether he had been successful in arguing a case for her dad. He raised a hand and jerked his neck toward the loading dock, beckoning for Grace to follow.

  A MEMORY (HIM)

  DEX GRINDS COFFEE BEANS in the kitchen wearing only his boxer shorts, feeling the Indian summer breeze flow through the open window and onto his skin. It is Saturday morning. Diana is asleep in the bedroom, a beauty to behold, and for the first time in his life, he wonders if he is in love. In all his years, he never thought it would happen, never once gave the possibility a fighting chance. For all that is wrong in the world—yes, it is getting more terrifying by the day, because the Queen shows no signs of backing down, and heterosexuals are on the verge of being all-out scapegoats for everything broken in society—this moment, as he breathes in the autumn air and pours the coffee grounds into the filter, knowing he has found something good, brings a sense of serenity he had no idea he was missing. This is what the homosexual majority has been telling him he has no right to have, to experience, to cherish. For thirty-six years—in just four days, the nineteenth of September, it will be thirty-seven—he let himself believe them.

  A dove lands on the thin ledge outside the kitchen window. Dex is lucky to have a corner unit, even though the apartment is fairly cheap compared to the nicer ones around town. The dove flaps its wings, as if to dust them off, but stays on the ledge. Dex swears it sees him, and he waves, smiling. It is refreshing to feel silly once in a while. Diana has been nervous lately, due to Mandate 43, she says, and it has made him nervous as well. Today, however, the world is bright, warm, intoxicating—one of the last days of summer they will see this year.

  Last night, he said “I love you” to Diana. Instead of saying it back, she had only smiled, then kissed him, then invited him inside her. Her sexual expression told him everything he needed to know, at least for that moment. He will try again this morning. He’ll say it as she walks out the door, after they cook breakfast together, after they make love again.

  No woman has ever said “I love you” to Dex in the romantic sense. He would admit only to himself it has been a life dream of sorts: to find heterosexual love, to hear the words of it flow from a woman’s mouth, to share in something of that magnitude, even just for a moment.

  Dex smiles, then starts the coffee. In the bedroom behind him, the covers rustle. Diana is awake. “Coffee’s coming,” he says.

  But the bottle of cream in the refrigerator is empty, something he should have recycled yesterday but was too lazy to wash out. Both he and Diana love cream. It is a treat, a drop of richness with which to welcome the day.

  He skips to the bedroom, throws on a shirt and his flannel pajama pants, then dashes out of the room, whispering, “Gotta get some cream. I’ll be right back.” Diana’s feet move as she stretches to welcome the morning, but she says nothing. Coffee first, words later. In the two months they’ve been dating seriously, he has learned this is her daily order of operation.

  On his way out, he glides his hand over Diana’s overnight bag, which sits in a chair at his kitchen table-for-one. In five minutes, he will be back in the apartment with cream, ready to bring her coffee in bed. It will be a good day.

  CHAPTER 54 (HIM)

  THE MOUNTAINS SWAM under the hover jet, their rugged, snowy peaks cutting into the sky like godly spires. The steady thwump-thwump-thwump of the machine drummed in Dex’s ears. Sheila sat next to him, staring out the window, over the jagged ridges. The colossal, ice-capped Mount Tasman was slowly overtaking the window in front of them.

  “Take care of her, Dex,” Stuart had told him in Franz Josef, sobbing into his shoulder. “Take care of my little girl. Tell her I love her more than anything in the world. And that I would have followed her to the end.”

  Stuart was a homosexual. An inspiring, good, and perfectly loving homosexual. He was a human being of the highest order, yet they had not cleared him for transfer to the mountain. The only thing he had to offer the future of the human race was love, but it seemed that was not good enough. It was a cruel verdict.

  A black car was waiting for them at the fuel station in the tiny, soon-to-be abandoned town. The driver, a brown-skinned man with a tribal tattoo covering his face, approached the travelers, verified their identities, and delivered the news that would surely crush Grace to pieces.

  “I’m sorry, but I have clearance only for you and the woman,” the tattooed man said to Dex. He turned to Stuart. “You, sir, will have to stay.” He explained the administration’s decision, and Stuart accepted it with a stoic nod. Then he crumbled under his grief. Dex held him. When they parted, Stuart dug into his coat pocket and handed Dex a crumpled envelope.

  “For Grace. From Linda.” The envelope with the red kiss mark.

  “I’ll give it to her. And Stuart . . . thank you. For everything.”

  “Thank you,” Stuart replied. “Thanks for not giving up on her. And on yourself, with all you went through.”

  “It happened because I ran in the first place. Fear won’t get me anywhere, I’ve learned.”

  “Share that sentiment with my Grace, will you? She’d appreciate that.”

  “I think she’s already living it,” Dex said. He stood on his tip-toes and kissed Stuart on the forehead, hugged him again, and promised to contact him if it ever became possible. Stuart planned
to attempt survival in New Zealand for as long as he could. If they never spoke again, the very least Dex could do was give the man’s daughter love every day and do all he could to ensure she and the new child were happy.

  Stuart managed to smile as Dex climbed into the black sedan with Sheila. They waved goodbye as it pulled away into a forest of sparkling, tangled trees.

  Now, the hover jet. It sailed toward Mount Tasman, climbing over lush valleys and serrated peaks, giving Dex the most spectacular view of his life. He took it in, letting it wash through his soul, knowing it would be one of the last times he saw such beauty. But the ride was short. After only fifteen minutes, the hover jet descended into a shallow gorge just above the bush line, on one of the rocky crests leading upward.

  “You ready, Dexy?” Sheila said, grinning. Her smile was, for the first time since he had known her, alive, touched by the anticipation of love. Dex felt the same type of smile form on his own lips. He looked out the window at the landing pad built into the valley. It was near a rectangular opening in the side of the mountain.

  There, wrapped in a thick jacket with her dark hair sailing in the wind, was Grace Jarvis. Her belly was round under the coat, and she stood with the elegance and simple beauty of a woman on the brink of sharing life with the world.

  CHAPTER 55 (HER)

  THE COLD ALPINE WIND beat on Grace’s face, whipping her hair into a frenzy under the dazzling afternoon sun. It was glorious to be outdoors again, for what could feasibly be the last meaningful time in her life. She had grown accustomed to the ventilated facility air and artificial breeze on the deck, but no synthetic sunlight could compare to the real thing. It beat down on her face, her eyelids, her lips—a divine heat warming her entire being.

  I hope our little girl can feel this someday.