[Incubation 01.0] Incubation

by Laura Disilverio

  I jump out of the way as it skims forward. I’m sad watching it go. Even though we only had it for a short time, it made me feel safe, like I was wrapped in an armored cocoon. With any luck, though, it will be a hundred miles away by the time the IPF intercepts it.

  “A flare,” Wyck suddenly says, excited. “We can send up a flare. Halla will see it.” He pulls one from the rucksack.

  “Other people might see it, too.”

  “Do you want to find Halla, or don’t you?” Wyck asks.

  “Of course—”

  “Any better ideas?” Taking my “no” for granted, he sends the flare up before I even answer.

  It whizzes skyward in near silence and bursts into an umbrella of orangey-red high above our heads. The intensity of the color is dazzling against the gray sky and the dun landscape. We tip our heads back and watch it for long seconds.

  “C’mon,” I finally say. “We can’t stand here in the open. There’s a tree over there we can climb. The branches are dense enough I don’t think anyone will see us.”

  We melt among the trees and I point out the one I think will give us the best view. Stashing our packs under a nearby thicket we scramble up. I go first and work my way higher because I’m lighter. The view is exhilarating, although the branch I settle on shakes under my weight. I straddle it with my back against the trunk, my legs hanging down. Wyck settles below me, straddling a thicker limb, facing me. To the east, I can see into the swamp with the denser growth of trees and the occasional gleam of water. To the west, the ground is barren and almost flat. The featureless landscape offers few hiding places and my stomach clenches at the thought of traversing so much open country to reach Atlanta. Wyck and I talk in a desultory way for the first half-hour, but then he falls silent. I get the feeling he’s thinking about shooting the soldier. To distract him, I ask, “If you could be anything, what would you be?”

  He doesn’t hesitate. “An astronaut.”

  I raise my brows. “Really? Why?”

  “A universe that goes on for infinity . . . isn’t that mind-blowing? In all that space, there’s got to be another planet where we could live. I could discover it, colonize it. We—humanity—could have a do-over, not fuck it up so bad this time around.” His tone lightens. “I’d invite you and Halla, a couple of others from the Kube, to come live on planet Wyckiter. What about you?” He cranes his neck to look up at me.

  “I think I’d still want to be a bio-chemist,” I say, semi-apologetically. I should want to be more than I am, shouldn’t I? “Nothing fascinates me like genes and living things.” I take his silence for disappointment in my lack of imagination and wriggle, trying to get comfortable on the narrow limb.

  “How do you think we can find the Defiance after we drop Halla off with Loudon?” Wyck asks.

  I stare down at him, puzzled, noticing a haze of whiskers on his chin and peeling sunburn on the bridge of his nose. “The Defiance? Why—?” I hadn’t worked out the details in my mind, but I’d assumed we’d head for an outpost together, with or without Halla, depending, after I found a way to meet my parents—

  He doesn’t pick up on my confusion. “It’s not like there’ll be a sign pointing to their headquarters or anything. They’ve got to be careful, vet volunteers, make sure they’re not taking in traitors. I overheard an IPF sergeant talking about the Defiance sabotaging manufacturing facilities near Auburn—”

  “We’re not joining the Defiance! That’s treason.”

  Wyck’s brow furrows. “The Defiance is fighting for individual rights, including yours. They’re fighting to overturn the Prags, to win back our right to live where we want, do whatever kind of work we want to, have access to computers and communicate with anyone we want—maybe even in other countries, for everyone who wants to to have babies, regardless of their genes, for—”

  “They’re fighting. Great. Hasn’t this country had enough fighting? The Resource Wars, the Between? We’re just getting back on our feet. The quarantine and immigration laws have almost eliminated the flu. Everyone’s got access to food under the Prags—no one’s starving like before.”

  “Sure, if they toe the line and give up—”

  “The Prags are going to find a way to eradicate the locusts. We’re so close. Then we’ll have more food, people can grow their own, and maybe the laws will change.”

  Wyck sneers. “People in power never willingly give it up. Even our own history tells us that. Look at the Revolutionary War, President Fredricks. If the locusts die off tomorrow, the Prags’ll find other reasons to keep us under their thumb,”

  “That’s not true.” I take a deep breath and change tack. “We could go west, to an outpost. It’ll be an adventure of sorts. The government isn’t so influential out there; at least, that’s how it seems on Assembly videos and from Proctor Mannisham’s lectures. They need people—young, strong people like us. I can help with food production, and you can do your gadget thing—there must be dozens of processes you can automate at an outpost, things they do manually that you could invent a machine for, things that need fixing.”

  His corrugated brow tells me I’m not getting through. I bite my lip. I can’t join the Defiance because their fighting and sabotage undermine Amerada’s recovery, but I don’t want to lose Wyck. I’m practically pleading with him. “I can’t not use my bio-chem training, not after all the time I’ve put in, the money the government’s invested in me. I have a responsibility—”

  I think I see movement. I focus on the area, a couple of hundred yards into the swamp, and stare at it so hard it goes blurry. I blink twice, thinking I imagined the movement, and then a glint catches my eye.

  “Wyck,” I whisper. “The scooter.” I point. Halla’s weaving between the trees, obviously looking for something. Us. She’s found a dark green jacket somewhere . . .

  “Finally.” He’s about to yell to Halla when I kick his shoulder. “Hey, what the—”

  “Ssh. I don’t think it’s Halla.” The scooter is definitely the one we took from the Kube, but the bulky figure riding it doesn’t look like Halla. A chill works its way up from my toes. What has happened to Halla? “Down, climb down,” I say, as the scooter glides closer. “We’ve got to follow it.”

  We start down, the need for haste clashing with the need for quiet. Twigs snag my hair and gouge my skin. Perched on the bottom limb, we scan the area before jumping lightly to the ground. We can hear the whoosh of the ACV now and we duck behind the tree trunk as the scooter passes on the far side of the thicket. The driver, a man with a bushy beard scraggling half-way down his chest, is scanning from side to side. I bend forward instinctively to hide the white gleam of my face when the man looks in our direction. The scooter pauses, and I hold my breath, not daring to breathe, but then he continues on, picking up speed. Wyck and I grab our packs from their hiding places and take off after him. Halla, we’re coming.

  He’s not traveling fast, but even so he’s going faster than we can go on foot. We’re trotting, dodging roots and fallen limbs and boggy spots, trying to keep the scooter in sight. It draws steadily further away, even though we pick up our pace until we’re running as fast as we can. Wyck’s face is red with the exertion of carrying his heavy pack and I’m gasping for breath. Intent on the scooter, I run full-tilt into a spider web strung between two trees.

  “Oh!” The sound is involuntary, not loud enough to carry to the man on Halla’s scooter, but Wyck frowns anyway. The web restrains me for a moment; it’s made of the ultra-strong, ultra-sticky spider silk scientists genetically engineered in the ’40s. They thought it would help the spiders to catch more locusts. Like so many of those initiatives, it was ineffective, if not an outright failure. Wyck pulls out his knife and slices through the web. I try to shake the sticky strands off as I run.

  We can’t see the scooter anymore, and we can barely hear its hum. “Left,” I gasp, angling that way. I duck beneath some Spanish moss and find myself confronting a twenty foot wide strip of water. I’m about to plun
ge through it, suspecting it can’t be more than waist deep, when Wyck grabs my arm. He gives me a little shake and points to the middle of the tarn. A snake oils its way across the surface, its thick body and triangular head a black stain on the amber-colored water. Cottonmouth. Poisonous and aggressive. I back away, sobbing with frustration at having to circumnavigate the pond. We reach the other side.

  “Listen.” I hold up a hand. I can’t hear anything. I turn to Wyck, who looks as distressed as I feel. “I can’t hear it. He’s gone!”

  “We’ll find him. We’ll find Halla. C’mon. We’ll keep on this tack.” He goes ahead of me now, and I follow.

  We’re less worried about making noise, and twigs crack under our boots. After half an hour, we take a quick break for water, but resume walking after a bare two minutes. For once, I’m grateful for the morning physical fitness sessions at the Kube. We check the compass frequently to stay on the scooter’s last known path; it’s all we can do. I’m determined to search for a week if we have to, but I’m so tired I can’t squelch the words my mind is tossing out: futile, pointless, too late.

  “Need a break.” I drop to my knees and Wyck comes back to me.

  He’s bending to offer me a vegeprote bar when suddenly he straightens. He points up. “Look! Smoke.”

  The merest wisp of smoke snakes into the air behind me. A smile breaks over my face. “Let’s go get her.”

  Hope gives us renewed energy and we make our way toward the smoke, using it like the magi used the Christmas star, in the Bible story Halla insists on reading aloud every December 25th. I wish we had a camel or two. Boy, I’m so tired I feel drunk, like the one time I tried Wexl, sneaking a taste from Dr. Ronan’s stash. One sip was all it took to make me feel fuzzy. We move slowly now, placing our feet carefully to avoid twigs, and taking care not to brush against the crackly undergrowth or tree trunks.

  I smell the camp before I see it. There’s the fire, an earthy, slightly bitter aroma I guess is peat. They’ve dried and are burning peat dug from the depths of the swamp. Then there’s a rancid, greasy smell that seems to leave an oily film on the roof of my mouth, and the sour smell of unwashed bodies. This is no overnight camping site; this is someone’s—or multiple someones’—permanent home. I’m looking down to make sure I place my foot quietly when a dark glint warns me. I stop Wyck with a hand across his chest, and bend to get a better look at an early warning system consisting of a wire strung with utensils and cast-off bits of metal. If we’d tripped over it, the clanging would have given us away.

  Easing back, we follow the wire to the right. It seems to circle the whole camp. I’m reluctant to risk stepping over it. I’ve about decided that’s our only option when the wire ends at a stake, and a vile odor tells me we’ve reached the area set aside as a latrine. Makes sense: they don’t want to trip over their own alarm system every time they need to pee. We’re on the opposite side of the camp. The fire crackles with false welcome and the man we saw earlier putters around outside a lean-to constructed of branches and stretches of gray fabric that might have been sails or tarps. He’s fussing with a contraption made of loops of copper tubing and glass vessels. It’s filled with fumes that evaporate when heated to leave an orangey-pink sludge on the container’s walls. Psyche, maybe? I’ve heard of the illegal hallucinogen during Assemblies, but never seen it. It’s bad stuff and dangerous to make. Highly volatile. He carefully measures in crystals of some kind and adds water. Trying not to inhale through my nose, I watch for ten long minutes and almost decide he’s a one man drug-making operation when he speaks.

  “Tweren’t nuthin, I tells ya. Nobbut the flare. Not the IPF nor no one else. Not no one lookin fer the breeder. You worrit too much.” His voice is gravelly, his accent virtually unintelligible. I get the gist, though: he went to check on the flare at someone’s behest and didn’t find anything.

  “Yer sure?” The voice is the crackle of a dried leaf. It belongs to a crone who hobbles out of the makeshift hut and stretches a hand to the fire. A braid of gray hair flops over her shoulder and she flings it back. “Didja find some of the mushrooms I sent yer fer? We’re a-goin ta have ta feed the breeder fer another month, I’m thinkin, or the babe won’t survive.”

  “We mun sell ’er now. We’ll get a good price and not ave to feed another mouth,” the man argues.

  The breeder. They’re talking about Halla, about selling her and her baby. We’ve got to rescue her. I back away slowly, motioning Wyck to come with me. When we’re far enough away that I can no longer smell the latrine ditch, or hear the couple arguing, I whisper. "Halla must be in the hut.”

  “Who do you suppose they want to sell her to?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I brush the question aside. “We need to get her out of there. Tonight.” I can’t imagine how terrified she must be, especially if she knows their plans for her and the baby. “There’s about two hours of light left. We need to get a look at the whole camp and be prepared to act anytime one of them leaves. It’ll be easier to take on just one of them, preferably the woman.” She looks tough and wiry, but she doesn’t outweigh us by a hundred pounds like the man.

  “I can shinny up a tree,” Wyck says, “and scope out the compound.”

  He spent too much time listening to the Kube’s IPFers. I mentally roll my eyes, but agree. “Good idea. I’ll work my way all the way around the camp and see what’s what. We’ll meet back here.”

  His eyes shine and I know if Halla weren’t in danger, he’d be enjoying this. Shifting the backpack on my shoulders, I creep back toward the camp, dropping to a crouch when I’m close. When I spot the wire, I follow it around. It takes me past the rear of the hut and I’m heartened to see that the back is no more than a flap of material. Maybe we can slice through it and spirit Halla out this way. What if she’s injured? I think about that, wondering if the couple hurt her when they captured her. I give my head a little shake. I can’t worry about it. She can’t be too hurt, since the woman talked about keeping her for a month. I know the baby’s not due for a couple of months, at least, and I try not to think about how they would induce birth so early.

  We could buy Halla from them. The thought leaps into my head. I give it some thought. I have no idea what the couple expect to get for Halla. Would they accept our supplies as payment? We’ve got the tent, the NVGs and the weapons we took from the IPF ACV. They would make life a lot easier for people living off the land in this forsaken corner of the Okefenokee. Halla’s captors might accept a trade, or they might try to kill or capture me and Wyck and steal our stuff. We can’t risk it.

  I’m far enough away that I rise to a half-crouch and immediately walk into a line of dangling, rubbery things. One drapes over my shoulder and I find myself eyeball to eyeball with a water moccasin. Its mouth yawns open, displaying the cottony inside and needle-sharp fangs. I bite back a scream and jump away. Another swings against my arm, cold and heavy. It takes everything I have not to run screaming. They’re dead. They’re dead, I tell myself again, fighting for calm. It’s a line of snakes strung by their tails, six or eight of them, the longest about five feet and the shortest something under three feet. I recognize two cottonmouths, a rattlesnake, and a king snake. I ease myself away from the snakes and take three steps, shaking, before I can gather myself enough to keep going.

  The couple are cooking something—snake, I’m guessing—and my tummy gurgles at the aroma of roast meat. I can hear them talking, but can’t make out the words; I’m too far away. I’m almost to where we initially came up on the camp. A sudden gust of wind sets the utensils on the wire tinkling and I drop flat, pressing my face into the damp soil. The couple must be attuned to the alarm system’s various sounds because they don’t even pause their conversation. After long moments, I rise and make my way back to the rendezvous point and Wyck. My heart isn’t pounding as fast as I would have expected, and I wonder if I’m getting used to living in fear. Thinking of the blithe way I promised Dr. Ronan I wouldn’t die, I smile ruefully.
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br />   “They’re eating alligator,” Wyck announces enviously when I join him. “They’ve got a big gator carcass tacked head down against a big tree, slit down the middle.”

  “They must have weapons,” I say, telling him about the snakes.

  "And balls,” Wyck adds, “if they’re tackling fifteen-foot gators and poisonous snakes.”

  I tell him what I saw on my reconnaissance and suggest we sneak into the camp via the latrine to avoid the alarm, make our way around the back of the lean-to, and try to pull Halla out the back.

  “We’ve got the beamers,” he says.“Why not march in, show them we mean business, and take Halla?”

  “Because we don’t want to hurt them if we don’t have to—”

  “They kidnapped Halla!”

  “—and because we don’t want to give them a chance to hurt Halla, or use her as a shield,” I add.

  The light is almost gone. The swamp floor is dark, with a glimmer of light caught in the highest branches. Freeing one beamer from where it’s strapped across the back of his rucksack, Wyck hands it to me, and pulls out the other one for himself.

  “I’ve never fired one of these.” The weapon is heavy and cold, but it quickly absorbs warmth from my hands and conforms to my grip.

  “It’s easy. Point and shoot.”

  Wyck leans over me to demonstrate, and his chest is pressed to my back for a moment, his cheek almost touching mine. His closeness is both comforting and distracting. I clear my throat. “Got it,” I say, putting my finger on the trigger sensor pad. “We should go.”

  For a moment, I think we might kiss again, but Wyck pulls away, already intent on the mission. “Operation Halla Homecoming is a go,” he says.

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “I know it’s not a game, for God’s sake.” His face twists with frustration. “I just need—you wouldn’t understand.” He strides away from me, weapon held loosely at waist-height. He’s making a lot of noise, but before I can caution him—and get another blast of his temper—he slows down and begins to move more carefully.