by IGMS
"Your patient went natal." Dmitri's chuckle comes as a low wheeze. Even in this triple-filtered air of the hospital's chemical intervention ward, he barely takes enough oxygen to stay alive. "What a surprise. Emotion trumps science once again." His fingers drum compulsively on the bed of an inert child beside him: a five-year-old girl with the breasts of a grown woman. His eyes flick to the body and back to me. "No one seems to want prenatal care these days, do they?"
Against my will, I blush; Dmitri's mocking laughter rises briefly before dissolving into coughing spasms that leave him keeled over and gasping. He wipes his mouth on his lab coat's sleeve and studies the resulting bloody smear. "You should have sent her to me. I could have convinced her."
Beside us, the girl lies like a wax dummy, staring at the ceiling. Some bizarre cocktail of endocrine disruptors has rendered her completely catatonic. The sight of her gives me courage "Do you have any more squeegees?"
Dmitri laughs, sly and insinuating. His eyes flick to my damaged cheek. "And what would your sharp-nailed patient say, if she found out?"
"Please, Dmitri. Don't. I hate myself enough already."
"I'm sure. Caught between your religion and your profession. I'm surprised your husband even tolerates your work."
I look away. "He prays for me."
"God solves everything, I understand."
"Don't."
Dmitri smiles. "It's probably what I've missed in my research. We should all just beg God to keep babies from absorbing their mother's chemical sludge. With a little Sunday prayer, Lily, you can go back to pushing folate and vitamins. Problem solved." He stands abruptly, coming to his full six-and-a-half feet like a spider unfolding. "Come, let us consummate your hypocrisy before you change your mind. I couldn't bear it if you decided to rely on your faith."
Inside Dmitri's lab, fluorescent lights glare down on stainless steel countertops and test equipment.
Dmitri rustles through drawers one after another, searching. On the countertop before him, a gobbet of flesh lies marooned, wet and incongruous on the sterile gleaming surface. He catches me staring at it.
"You will not recognize it. You must imagine it smaller."
One portion is larger than an eyeball. The rest is slender, a dangling subsection off the main mass. Meat and veiny fatty gunk. Dmitri rustles through another drawer. Without looking up, he answers his own riddle. "A pituitary gland. From an eight-year-old female. She had terrible headaches."
I suck in my breath. Even for Chem-Int, it's a freak of nature.
Dmitri smiles at my reaction. "Ten times oversized. Not from a vulnerable population, either: excellent prenatal care, good filter-mask practices, low-pesticide food sources." He shrugs. "We are losing our battle, I think." He opens another drawer. "Ah. Here." He pulls out a foil-wrapped square the size of a condom, stamped in black and yellow, and offers it to me. "My trials have already recorded the dose as dispensed. It shouldn't affect the statistics." He nods at the flesh gobbet. "And certainly, she will not miss it."
The foil is stamped "NOT FOR SALE" along with a tracking number and the intertwined DNA and microscope icon of the FDA Human Trials Division. I reach for it, but Dmitri pulls it away. "Put it on before you leave. It has a new backing: cellular foil. Trackable. You can only wear it in the hospital." He tosses me the packet, shrugs apologetically. "Our sponsors think too many doses are walking away."
"How long do I need to wear it before I can leave?"
"Three hours will give you most of the dose."
"Enough?"
"Who knows? Who cares? Already you avoid the best treatment. You will reap what you sow."
I don't have a retort. Dmitri knows me too well to feed him the stories I tell myself, the ones that comfort me at 3 a.m. when Justin's asleep and I'm staring at the ceiling listening to his steady honest breathing: It's for our marriage . . . It's for our future . . . It's for our baby.
I strip off the backing, untuck my blouse and unbutton my slacks. I slip the derm down under the waistband of my panties. As it attaches to my skin, I imagine cleansing medicine flowing into me. For all his taunts, Dmitri has given me salvation and, suddenly, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude. "We owe you, Dmitri. Really. We couldn't have waited until the trials finished."
Dmitri grunts acknowledgment. He is busy prodding the dead girl's bloated pituitary. "You could never have afforded it, anyway. It is too good for everyone to have."
The squeegee hits me on the El.
One minute, I'm sitting and smiling at the kids across the aisle, with their Hello Kitty and their Burn Girl filter masks, and the next minute, I'm doubled over, ripping off my own mask, and gagging. The girls stare at me like I'm a junkie. Another wave of nausea hits and I stop caring what they think. I sit doubled over on my seat, trying to keep my hair out of my face and vomiting on the floor between my shoes.
By the time I reach my stop, I can barely stand. I vomit again on the platform, going down on hands and knees. I have to force myself not to crawl down from the El. Even in the winter cold, I'm sweating. The crowds part around me, boots and coats and scarves and filter masks. Glittering news chips in men's sideburns and women with braided microfilament glo-strands stepping around me, laughing with silver lipsticks. Kaleidoscope streets: lights and traffic and dust and coal diesel exhaust. Muddy and wet. My face is wet and I can't remember if I've fallen in the murk of a curb or if this is my vomit.
I find my apartment by luck, manage to stand until the elevator comes. My wrist implant radios open the apartment's locks.
Justin jumps up as I shove open the door. "Lily?"
I retch again, but I've left my stomach on the street. I wave him away and stumble for the shower, stripping off my coat and blouse as I go. I curl into a ball on the cold white tiles while the shower warms. I fumble with the straps on my bra, but I can't work the catch. I gag again, shuddering as the squeegee rips through me.
Justin's socks are standing beside me: the black pair with the hole in the toe. He kneels; his hand touches my bare back. "What's wrong?"
I turn away, afraid to let him see my filthy face. "What do you think?"
Sweat covers me. I'm shivering. Steam has started pouring up from the tiles. I push aside the cotton shower curtain and crawl in, letting the water soak my remaining clothes. Hot water pours over me. I finally drag off my bra, let it drop on the puddled tiles.
"This can't be right." He reaches in to touch me, but pulls away when I start gagging again.
The retching passes. I can breathe. "It's normal." My words whisper out. My throat is raw with vomit. I don't know if he hears me or not. I pry off my soggy slacks and underwear. Sit on the tiles, let the water pour over me, let my face press against one tiled wall. "Dmitri says it's normal. Half the subjects experience nausea. Doesn't affect efficacy."
I start retching again but it's not as bad now. The wall feels wonderfully cool.
"You don't have to do this, Lily."
I roll my head around, try to see him. "You want a baby, don't you?"
"Yeah, but . . ."
"Yeah." I let my face press against tile again. "If we're not doing prenatal, I don't have a choice."
The squeegee's next wave is hitting me. I'm sweating. I'm suddenly so hot I can't breathe. Every time is worse than the last. I should tell Dmitri, for his trial data.
Justin tries again. "Not all natural babies turn out bad. We don't even know what these drugs are doing to you."
I force myself to stand. Lean against the wall and turn up the cold water. I fumble for the soap . . . drop it. Leave it lying by the drain. "Clinicals in Bangladesh . . . were good. Better than before. FDA could approve now . . . if they wanted." I'm panting with the heat. I open my mouth and drink unfiltered water from the shower head. It doesn't matter. I can almost feel PCBs and dioxins and phthalates gushing out of my pores and running off my body. Good-bye hormone mimics. Hello healthy baby.
"You're insane." Justin lets the shower curtain fall into place.
&nbs
p; I shove my face back into the cool spray. He won't admit it, but he wants me to keep doing this; he loves that I'm doing this for him. For our kids. Our kids will be able to spell and to draw a stick figure, and I'm the only one who gets dirty. I can live with that. I swallow more water. I'm burning up.
Fueled by the overdose of Purnate, the baby arrives in minutes. The mucky hair of a newborn shows and recedes. I touch the head as it crowns. "You're almost there, Maya."
Again, a contraction. The head emerges into my hands: a pinched old man's face, protruding from Maya's body like a golem from the earth. Another two pushes and it spills from her. I clutch the slick body to me as an orderly snips the umbilical cord.
The MedAssist data on its heart rate flickers red at the corner of my vision, flatlines.
Maya is staring at me. The natal screen is down; she can see everything we wish prenatal patients would never see. Her skin is flushed. Her black hair clings sweaty to her face. "Is it boy or a girl?" she slurs.
I am frozen, crucified by her gaze. I duck my head. "It's neither."
I turn and let the bloody wet mass slip out of my hands and into the trash. Perfume hides the iron scent that has blossomed in the air. Down in the canister, the baby is curled in on itself, impossibly small.
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
Ben's eyes are so wide, he looks like he'll never blink again. "It's okay honey. It wasn't either. That's for the next one. You know that."
Maya looks stricken. "But I felt it kick."
The blue placental sack spills out of her. I dump it in the canister with the baby and shut down Maya's Purnate. Pitocin has already cut off what little bleeding she has. The orderlies cover Maya with a fresh sheet. "I felt it," she says. "It wasn't dead at all. It was alive. A boy. I felt him."
I thumb up a round of Delonol. She falls silent. One of the orderlies wheels her out as the other begins straightening the room. She resets the natal screen in the sockets over the bed. Ready for the next patient. I sit beside the biohazard bin with my head between my legs and breathe. Just breathe. My face burns with the slashes of Maya's nails.
Eventually I make myself stand and carry the bio-bin over to the waste chute, and crack it open. The body lies curled inside. They always seem so large when they pour from their mothers, but now, in its biohazard can, it's tiny.
It's nothing, I tell myself. Even with its miniature hands and squinched face and little penis, it's nothing. Just a vessel for contaminants. I killed it within weeks of conception with a steady low dose of neurotoxins to burn out its brain and paralyze its movements while it developed in the womb. It's nothing. Just something to scour the fat cells of a woman who sits at the top of a poisoned food chain, and who wants to have a baby. It's nothing.
I lift the canister and pour the body into suction. It disappears, carrying the chemical load of its mother down to incineration. An offering. A floppy sacrifice of blood and cells and humanity so that the next child will have a future.
InterGalactic Interview With Paolo Bacigalupi
by Darrell Schweitzer
* * *
Paolo Baciaglupi seems to have stormed the science fiction field in the first few years of this century. In 2005 he had a Hugo Award nomination for "The People of Sand and Slag." In 2006 he won the Sturgeon Award for "The Calorie Man." His first novel, The Windup Girl (2009), collected a jaw-dropping six awards: Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Locus Award, the Compton Crook Award, and the Seiun Award (for best novel translated into Japanese). There were other award nominations before that and there have been some since, including a Nebula Award nomination for Best Novella for The Alchemist in 2011, but it was safe to say that with The Windup Girl he definitely had the attention of the science fiction field. His career has not gone predictably since. He has published a humorous book for young adults, Zombie Baseball Beatdown (2013), a thriller for adults about climate-change denial, The Doubt Factory (2014), and two other novels for younger readers, Ship Breaker (2010) and The Drowned Cities (2012). His first book was a collection Pump Six and Other Stories (2008). The Water Knife is forthcoming.
For the curious, he informs us, "my last name is pronounced Batch-i-gah-loo-pee."
SCHWEITZER: Could you give me some idea of who you are, what your background is, your education, etc? What were you doing before you were writing for publication?
BACIGALUPI: My background: In college I majored in East Asian Studies with a focus on Chinese language. I later moved to China to work in business. After that, I turned to internet development, and worked as a web developer for many years. Eventually I ended up as the Online Editor at High Country News, a news magazine that focuses on the environment and social dynamics of the American West -- public lands, natural resources, communities, and science issues, primarily.
SCHWEITZER: What made you suddenly turn to science fiction? You did indeed seem to come out of nowhere a few years ago and grab center stage in science fiction. Is this a matter of being an overnight success after years of effort?
BACIGALUPI: I read science fiction growing up. My father and grandfather were both readers of science fiction, so when I started writing, it seemed natural that those would be the kinds of stories I would try to tell. I had one early success, "Pocketful of Dharma" which was the first short story I ever wrote, but then I spent a long time wandering in the wilderness, writing novels and short stories that didn't sell. By the time I genuinely started to break in, and started selling stories consistently, I think I'd been writing for about ten years and had four failed novels under my belt.
SCHWEITZER: So now you seem an overnight success and at the Cutting Edge of science fiction. Cyberpunk has long since been assimilated. Steampunk seems to be over. So, what is the cutting edge of science fiction and do you feel you're at the edge of it?
BACIGALUPI: Cutting edge . . . I'm not even sure I know what that is. I just want to reach readers and tell stories that feel relevant to me, and I want to make the questions and ideas and worries that engage me feel relevant to others. Science fiction has tools that allow me to do that. But it's not about being cutting edge. It's about telling stories that help us understand our present moment better. Sometimes, it turns out that science fiction isn't even the tool you want, so the most cutting edge thing to do is to not write science fiction at all. When I wanted to write about how our understanding of science is manipulated by corporations, I wrote The Doubt Factory as a contemporary novel, because a science-fictional treatment would have blunted the horror of what respected, publicly-traded, companies legally get away with every day. Science fiction is just a tool. It's a powerful tool, and I love it, but it's not the only tool. And the idea that science fiction stories somehow should be ahead of x, or new in way y, or that z is so dead . . . it just doesn't resonate for me. It's like trying to be the coolest kid in science fiction school. I just want to write stories that start conversations about the world we live in. That's more than hard enough.
SCHWEITZER: What should SF writers be writing about, which they haven't been?
BACIGALUPI: The problem with telling writers what they should write about is that it assumes it's any of my business. I set my own agendas for my stories, whether I'm writing zombie books for kids, or writing public relations caper novels for teens, or writing climate change thrillers for adults. One of the joys of writing is that you get to tell the stories you care about, in whatever way you desire. Some people wish I wouldn't write a book like Zombie Baseball Beatdown because they don't see that as serious work. Alas. They get no vote in my dictatorship of the page. People can accept what you choose to write about, or reject it, but they don't get to decide what you type when you sit down to sweat out a story. I worked for a long time to get rid of the nanny voices of what I should do as a writer, and I sometimes still have to fight against them, so I'm probably not going to jump up to add my own nanny voice to the chorus. The most I would say is that I hope that writers will write stories they care about, and that they'll also find som
e joy in the process, because really, writing generally doesn't pay well enough to justify it being a miserable experience. Come to think of it, writing also doesn't generally pay well enough to bother listening to what other people think you should write.
SCHWEITZER: Of course all writers secretly yearn for and fear that Faustian bargain of the publisher with the checkbook, who says, "I will give you a huge pile of money to write another book like ____" or even "Zombie Nazi Surfer Cheerleader novels are all the rage now, so that is what we want from you next." So what happens when a sufficient amount of money is waved at your "dictatorship of the page"?
BACIGALUPI: If I was hungry enough, I'd probably write anything. But I think that the goal for a writer is to find win-win scenarios where you get paid and get to write stories that you care about. That's been my goal for a while now, and so far it seems to be working. I don't think that being a published author automatically has to be a zero-sum calculation where you're either "selling out" or staying "true" to your art. I think if you're sufficiently skilled and clever, there are options where you get to feed yourself and feed your soul.
SCHWEITZER: A theme I am noticing in some of your fiction seems to be that the human race will short-sightedly foul the planet beyond repair, but adapt to the result, as in the story "The People of Sand and Slag" in Pump Six and Other Stories, in which the characters seem to thrive on toxic materials and the last real dog in the world (and by implication all natural biological creatures) seems at an evolutionary dead end. I see this in The Windup Girl too. People don't learn better, but they learn. Do you think so? Do we face a future of learning to live up to our necks in our own waste?
BACIGALUPI: I think Ted Chiang said that almost all science fiction is inherently optimistic simply because of the somewhat unfounded assumption that there will be any people at all left in the future. Science fiction carries that false narrative construct in its DNA, thanks to its need for some sort of protagonist to drive a story along. I mean, you could write a story about a global warming Earth that burns like Venus and where all life has been scoured away, but it probably isn't going to be a novel. For myself, I think that we'll get the future that we invest in today, but I'd also say that just because science fiction needs people to form narrative, the ecosystems that we're currently undermining don't give a damn about whether there's a story to tell or not.