Ectopia (8 page)

- You may as well mop up a tide. She'll sweat buckets before we get her to the gate. Bring the towel with you.

The qual's still in my hand. I meant to press it between Mom's lips while padding her mouth dry. I slip it into the back pocket of my shorts as Dad grabs hold of Mom's left hand.

- Take her other hand Steven, he says – Karen, you carry that case and fetch an umbrella. Keep her in shade as much as you can while we're outside.

We lean back to lever Mom out of her chair. Her stare's still vacant, her mind's not in it, but her body remembers the routine. She rides on the momentum of that first movement, her legs pumping away. It's just a matter of steering her. We let go of her hands and group behind her. Dad reaches round me as we hold Mom beneath the armpits and head for the door.

It's sad seeing Mom's arms when her drapes fall off. They're like a map of the moon, craters of brown and yellow marked by bruises. Her arms scrape the doorframe as we leave the front room. The front door's wider but it's still a squeeze. It's got to be this way. Mom's lost the knack of walking sideways.

Mom used to garden. Green just happened in those days, she said. Now stepping stones lead the way over baked earth. Some she lands on, some she doesn't, it doesn't matter. We keep her moving forward.

- Rest here, Dad says, when we get to the gate – We'll hear em. No point waiting out on the street.

Mom stands still. She's steady that way. It's only movement that gets to her. Dad snatches the towel from my shoulder and starts dabbing Mom dry.

- I can do that, I tell him.

- You can take the umbrella from your sister so she can give your mother a hug.

Qual in my pocket, I stand there giving shade.

This is lousy. I don't know why it means so much, Mom taking qual. Maybe it's everyone's secret wish. Your Mom gets to know and accept all your secrets without you having to tell em. Qual can open her in that way. It's my parting gift. She can float out of her body and see us for what we are. Qual separates love from the effort involved. Maybe she'll see that we love her. It'll make it easier to love us back. Maybe she can see me, see all of me, see deep inside, see what I do and what I want, see all that and forgive. Maybe.

- You'll be fine Mom, Karen's telling her – The Towers and the Stacks come up on girltalk. Some girls have visited. It's a co-op, they say. Run by women for women. You'll do better. Better than staying in this hole. You wait and see.

She pecks the discs of fat that are Mom's cheeks, wraps her arms around her, and hugs. It's like the tree-hugging people used to do. That kind of hopeful. That kind of unresponsive.

Dad takes hold of Karen's shoulders and peels her away. It's his turn.

- Goodbye, love, he says.

Mom's eyes stay vacant even with Dad staring straight into em. He takes her head in his hands and presses it against his own. Their mouths connect. We have to stand to the side while his tongue works to prize open her lips and dip in between her teeth. This is Dad's way of showing love.

The truck pulls up outside. Its engine's silent but we hear its tires crunching the surface of the road. A door slams, another slides open. Dad lets go of his kiss and stands back.

My one chance. I put down the umbrella and slip the qual out of my pocket and between my teeth. I don't speak. You can't say goodbye with your teeth clamped. Dad's opened Mom's mouth for me. I follow through, stick my mouth to hers, and blow.

It works. The qual capsule shoots down her throat. She splutters a bit but she doesn't cough it up.

- You're sick, Dad shouts. He pulls me off so hard I fall back, grabbing the towel from his shoulder before I hit the dirt.

The qual won't take effect for a bit, but the spluttering sees Mom stir.

- Air, she says.

- Breathe, she says - Let me breathe.

She reaches out, pulls the gate open, and bulges through it.

The statesquad official penscans the tag on Mom's necklace as she stands on the hoist. A wave of cool air passes out of the truck's body and touches our skin as we watch. The scan matches official data and triggers the hoist to rise. It reaches its level, Mom steps forward, and the doors wheeze shut. A faint burr and the electric engine connects. Wheels turn and the van grows smaller, then turns right.

- Her case, Karen says, and holds it up – She's left her case. She needs her things.

She doesn't shout. There's no point. The street's empty. The truck's gone.

That's OK. We've got nothing that Mom really needs.

- You see, Dad says – We did right. See how she livened up at the prospect of a little trip?

I walk off.

Dad shouts after me but it's only insults.

It's OK. It can't hurt now. We don't live at the same place any more. Mom's gone. Home's gone. It's just a shell of a house now. Just another scene.

 

- She gone then? Malik asks.

He's in the same patch of garden we lay in last night. He never looks for shade. He's in his beige muscle shirt and satin shimmy shorts, lying in full sun.

- I gave her your qual, I tell him – It'll be kicking in about now.

- You brought yours?

I hold em out. We put one on each other's tongue.

- Mind if we just lie here, I say – And not run? This is Mom's towel. It's still damp with her sweat. They'll be wheeling her into Cromozone about now. Finding her a slot in the stacks. It'll help us follow, having something of hers to hold onto. That OK?

- We'll lay it over our eyes, Mal says –It'll make it dark enough to see, but the sun's still there. I love that. I love it when the heat melts your body so there's nothing but the trip.

I lie down next to him. The towel's dark blue. It's scented with the perfume Mom uses to top the stink of sweat. Looking up through it the view is part black and part bright, like looking up into a sky of exploding stars. I feel for Mal's hand and lay my own on top of his fingers.

At the touch of his skin my qual takes hold.

The journey's starting.

Mal, Mom and me. This is it.

 

Some trips aren't easy. You head down this corridor, more like a tube, and something catches hold. The smell of Mom on her towel. A fly landing on my knee. The stone in the ground beneath my left shoulder. The feel of Mal's hand, the feeling stretching till I've imagined the feel of all of him. These things catch hold and you're lost.

Mom's there though. The trace of her is faint but I strain to get nearer. It gets stronger. I stay with it.

It's there. She's there.

From steady I shift to the speed of rush and the light goes rosy. It's not free-fall for something's underneath me, it's more like surfing the inside of a sunrise cloud.

Some heatspot kicks in around my chest and flushes through me. The towel's done it. I've connected. I'm inside the experience of Mom somehow. It's like she's unfolding herself in light from her navel, her body generating ripples of liquid flesh that turn to vapor, opening a whirlpool with her as its center and base.

- Gentle I say, for Malik gets it too. Gets this eruption of soft strong energy that's bursting out of Mom. His hand is on top of mine. He's lifted my shirt and licks his tongue around my left nipple.

Mom's sweat runs from her towel now. It coats my face and I lick in the taste of it. It's salty but thick and creams my throat.

- Good, Malik says – Stay with it.

I arch my back as he slips the shorts down my legs and off my feet. He strokes from my chest down to my toes like he's shaping me out of all the pink light. Air touches where his hands have passed. My body forms itself from the passage of his touch. He takes hold of my ankles and lifts em into the air, hooking my legs over his shoulders.

I open my mouth and some words call out. I don't know what. Mal's reaching inside me now so I'm not just surface. With one finger then two he's starting to moisten, to shape my insides.

I'm singing now. Shouting and singing all at once, one of Mom's songs streaming through but the words all lost in the tune.

He holds his hand across my mouth. It seals the song inside of me as he finds its rhythm. I throw the towel to one side and stare up. His eyes are closed. I watch the rise and fall of his stomach and chest. His mouth stretches and opens. He holds still but I feel the pulse of his dick inside me, the warm spurts of his come.

I lower my legs but reach round to his buttocks to hold him in place. His head hangs over my shoulder. I match my breathing to his, breathing in as he breathes out.

He rolls to the side. I use Mom's towel to clean him off.

 

- You alright? Malik asks.

I just look at him. I don't speak.

- You done that before? he asks.

I shake my head.

- What is that stuff they give you?

- Qual.

- No way, he says – I know qual. They're slipping you something different. You don't mind? You don't mind that we fucked?

- I wanted it, I tell him.

- So you said. Fuck me, you said. You kept on saying it. Fuck me fuck me fuck me Mal. I put my hand over your mouth to shut you up. What's that voice you were using, Bender? It was like some woman's. Your mouth but some woman's voice. Karen's was it? What's that drug do to you? It's not qual. They're fucking with you, Bender. What's this non-qual do? Turn you into your sister?

- What's it do for you? I ask him.

- Colors, he says – I just got colors. Orange, yellow, flashes of white, that sort of thing. And hot. Hot inside. Then you started calling. What's it like? Did it hurt?

I smile.

- I've never done it like that, he says – Not with a mate. Not face to face.

- You like it? I ask.

He pulls up his shorts.

- That sister of yours, he says – That Karen. You reckon it's safe, her being around your Dad now your Mom's gone?

- What do you reckon? I ask him.

- You could ask her, he says – We can run off. Tell her that. Tell her we three can run off together and look after her.

- I'll tell her, I say.

- You coming? he asks.

He's up now, ready to take the wall and run off.

- In a bit. I'll lie here a bit then come.

- Yeah he says, and grins – You've got to come too. You've got to jerk off.

He puts a hand on the wall.

- See you, he says, looking back.

Then he's gone.

 

Dad hands me a spade when I walk through the gate.

- Here, he says – Your Mom's gone. It must break your heart. Use this to work off your grief.

I throw the spade to the ground.

- Suit yourself, Dad says – The house is locked. The locks are changed. I've been digging since you ran off. Finish the trench, you get a key.

- That's hours.

- Could be, he says – Could be days the way you get stuck into things.

- I've got to eat.

- You know where the kitchen is, he says – You'll find the back door's got a lock on it too. That's a separate key.

- What about Paul? Why isn't he digging?

- Paul's got his education. You threw yours away.

- What's the point? What's the point in your stupid fucking trench?

- You finish it, you get back indoors. That's the only point you need.

He climbs back up to his control tower. There's no way I'm digging with him watching over me.

I move round the back of the house, into the shadow, and start channeling through the dust.

 

0.13

I walk in on Karen. It's a deal we've got, part of the twin thing. I walk in on her anytime I want, she yells at me to get the hell out.

She's busy. Her visor's on so she doesn't see me, just the 3D image they're beaming to her. Her right hand's working the thinnest of tubes against the air.

I wait till she's finished. She takes the visor off and sees I'm there.

- Fuckers, she says.

I'm safe. She's got someone else to be angry at. Her eyes are red. Sweat and tears have mixed to wet her face.

- I'm seventeen, she says – Only just seventeen. This is meant to be my history of medicine module. Medicine for beginners. So what do they have me do? Perform a virtual operation. What I've seen, Steven … what they've just made me do …

She gags before she can say more and runs off to throw up in the bog.

I put her visor over my head and flick the control to review.

 

It's a bloodbath.

The scene's in close-up from how Karen left it. It's hard to make out through the gore. One part is an adult belly sliced open. The other part is a baby, its head dropped into the adult's open wound.

I move my hands into the frame and waggle the fingers about but nothing shows up. Just the same bloody image of mother and child.

I flick on the audio.

The voice is male. Old male. Maybe a surgeon old enough to have worked with knives.

- Expertise aggregate, 16%, he announces – reduced to zero on this second fatality.

I look around the chamber. The belly and baby are brightly lit. Beyond em everything is a blur. The whole scene's running in reverse but it's as still as death.

Then it quivers a bit, going freezeframe.

- Point of death for parent, the voice announces.

The scene rolls on, going back in time toward the source of the massacre. In a moment, the picture changes. It's subtle. I don't see much of a change, but blood is flying. A few drops take flight from the belly and vanish into the wound. Then a few more. The action speeds up till the blood is gushing back into the body.

- Point of death for baby, the voice says.

The baby twitches. A foot moves. And an arm. Soon it's writhing as blood flows over its skin. The body flips over and I see its face, twisted and scaly like a bad glue job.

Karen won't be long. I flick to hi-speed reverse to see as much as I can.

What seems like guts are stuffed into the wound along with the blood. Enough blood's flown up from the surface to show white patches on the belly's flesh. The baby's tucked in with the rest of the organs. The flesh is made clean. The wound is sealed tight. There's just the belly now, breathing sharply. A shiny belly, skin stretched tight over its mound.

The mother's alive and intact again. I look down. She's got to have a cunt somewhere inside the blur. Surely that's got to be part of a birthing.

Karen yanks the visor off my head.

The picture goes.

- Great work, I tell her – We need a doctor like you in teensquad. You could operate on the dreks. Seems like you manage to kill every time.

She checks the controls. Sees I've been through review.

- You look like shit, I tell her.

- That's just the first operation of the day, she says – I spew up my guts, things get easier.

- What are you trying to do?

- Step 1, sex the baby. If it's a boy, step 2: keep the parent alive. If it's a girl, step 2: keep the baby alive. Step 3: keep both alive. I've not got past step 1 yet.

- You've done this before?

- For days now. Again and again. It's my project. I have to stick with it till I get it right.

- So you kill em every time?

- I'm getting better. They last longer.

- Maybe you're just getting slower. The voice gave you 16%. Zeroing when they died.

- Wow, she says, but it's a yawn more than a cheer – I've never beaten 13 before.

- You might do better if you chuck the lasers. Births are meant to be natural.

- A friend's got natural childbirth. She texted me on day 1. Told me she'd passed. She had nothing to do but watch more or less. Another friend got skin grafts. She unsealed the packet, kept it the right temperature, toned it for color, and rolled it on the wound. Pass. Day 1. What do they give me? An ectopic pregnancy. Normally that means a fetus getting stuck in the fallopian tubes but they don't even give me that. An embryo bypasses the uterus, gets lodged in the abdomen, latches onto some organ like a bowel to get its blood supply, so you have to cut the flesh and reach into the stomach and pull the baby out.

- That's so hard to do?

- You don't want the mother to hemorrhage, sure it's hard.

- Why start you on the difficult stuff then?

She slides her hands back into her fiberoptic gloves and picks up her knife.

- Maybe coz there's more to life than running the streets. Maybe coz time's running out and they want to put my natural genius to good use. Maybe coz no-one's an expert in everything and they need an expert in this. So maybe if I stop gabbing with streetscum like you I can practice and get it right.

She drops the visor back over her head.

It hides her bagged and bloodshot eyes and her skin that's parched of sunlight. It makes her look like an ant.

It's an improvement.

 

- You off out? Dad asks.

He tries to talk in a cheery voice now Mom's gone. It comes from Section 4 from the take an interest in your children website that's mandatory for stay-at-home fathers. It's scary when he starts using the stuff instead of sneering at it.

- That's good, he says. He sets down the ladder he's carrying from round the back – There's worse things for teenagers to do than keep order on the streets.

- What are they? I ask him – You know me Dad. I'm always on the lookout for something worse. Ever eager to live down to your expectations.

The cheeriness goes from his voice. That's good. It's best he sounds like the mean and scheming bastard he is. It keeps me on my guard.

- I've got mixed emotions, he says – I'm proud of my country, shamed of my son. Shamed that you have a clever way with words yet nothing at all to say with em. Proud that my country's found the best use for you. Teensquad keeps you running and keeps your mouth shut. I've registered my support. Dialed through a request to have teensquad sweep my neighborhood this afternoon. Should do you some good. I've heard that proof of community interaction earns merit points. Are you going to thank me, son?

- Better than that.

He stares at me. I open the front gate, ready to run off.

- I'll give you advice, I tell him – If teensquad's coming down this street, stay indoors. We're proud of our country. It doesn't permit dreks like you out on the street.

I bang shut the gate and run. Dad doesn't shout. He moves quickly though. I look back from the end of the street and he's already on his lookout platform, staring out.

 

- What's the game, Bender? Runt asks.

He's up with me at the front. Short legs but great stamina balances him out. He's a good pacesetter for the group.

- Dreks are getting harder to find, I guess. Splitting us up this way, we cover the same ground in an hour as we did in four.

The assignment was onscreen when I got to the depot. Our area was divided into quadrants. Split into groups of six, our teensquad was given an hour to cover em all.

- What then? Runt asks – Do we leave the area if everything's OK? Do we get to circuit Cromozone again?

- You like that?

- They'll let em out one day, won't they, Bender? All those girls and birds and animals they're growing out there in their sheds. We're in the same business, Cromozone and us. They clone stuff. We keep the streets clean, keep the world safe for when they open their gates. Sure I like going up there. It lets em know we're ready. We've got the world in shape for whenever they come out and join us.

- You're a good kid, Runt, I tell him.

His cheeks dimple. He's the happiest person I know. Or he's the happy person I know outside of Dome, who knows nothing but happy so he's probably not happy at all, coz happiness is something better than what you're used to. Something like that. I'm not that good on happiness.

- Those guards and defenses at Cromozone, I ask Runt – What do you think they're doing? Stopping people going in, or stopping em coming out?

He thinks it through for a few paces.

- Who's to stop? he asks – We go up there, we run a circuit, we run away. They don't have to stop us.

- Other people might want to get in.

- Sure. Like in a zoo. They let you in for an hour or two and you go round and look at the creatures. You don't break into a cage though. Those guards are manning the cage.

- So they're stopping things coming out.

- Maybe freaks. Maybe they're stopping the freaks. Cloning's tricky. They can't get it right every time. Maybe misclones turn out freaks. Is that what we're training for, Bender? When we've dealt with the dreks, they can trust us to deal with misclones that slip through.

- Misclones that want to run free aren't the freaks, I tell him - The freaks are the ones that stand guard.

Like Dad in his watchtower.

- I could do it though, Runt says - I could stand guard. Does that make me a freak?

- Keep running, I tell him - Running like this, it clears things. It makes you see right. You see as far as you can run. Up in a tower you run nowhere. You see nothing. Never trust a guard, Runt. Never trust anyone who's stopped themselves. That's all they know. Stopping.

 

We report back. Our four groups have covered all the quadrants. The streets are clean of dreks. None to see, none to chase, none to wipe out. Job done.

A message onscreen asks us to move to headsets. State issued for wireless reception, the aerial arcs out from the earcups to clasp the set to the head. It's an offence to travel without one, but they're so lightweight it doesn't matter.

The state uses a woman's voice for its announcements. It's warm, slow, and a bit husky.

- Congratulations, she says – We thank you for your success in building a better world. A better world for us all. Please watch the screen.

Colors ripple from the edges of the vidscreen to a dark point at its center, then start to form into images.

- The future, young man, the voice announces – You're watching the future of our human race.

We don't laugh. Music comes through the phones as a pulsing bass line, and we just watch.

Watch sunlight catch the gloss on Dome's scalp and glint from the smile of his teeth.

Watch Roach's eyes bulge as his body strains.

Watch sweat fly from Soo's head.

Watch the pump action of Skink's elbows.

Watch Jok stare direct to camera.

Watch Skel sway in the slipstream of the boy who runs before him.

The lens draws close on each of us. It watches us draw near then speed away. We're in teensquad gear, running in full and steady flow. I come into focus, approach, and pass on. Even at speed the definition's good. I make out the cuts in my scalp from shaving my head.

The film's recent. We're running on paved road, open dirt at our far side. The focus is on individuals. Some run left to right, others right to left. Then I get it. Get the angle. The shots are from the security cameras in Cromozone's perimeter fence. They've assembled a film from when teensquad split into two and ran its circuit.

The film shifts. It's a group shot of us running in pack, the 24 of us racing toward Cromozone out of our own dustcloud.

A halfbeat is added to the soundtrack, a higher note between the pulses. The video morphs. There's no cut, no obvious break. Just a gradual melting of the bone structure of each of us, of our frames, our postures, our hair.

Furbo goes past. His eyelashes grow. His cheekbones move higher. His soft goatee grows back into his skin. Without a stumble, without missing a beat, he turns himself into an olive-skinned girl.

Kes is running. His elbows out to his sides, head thrust forward, his nose grows trim as he presses it into the wind. His hair rises into golden spikes. His lips swell. The straps shorten on his singlet to hold his budding breasts in place.

I look around. No-one's laughing. They know it will happen to each of us. Our teensquad, in full spate, is turning into girls.

I'm next.

My hair grows back. It's my old red color but longer than I had it, long locks that fly back in the wind of my running. My own straps shorten, my own breasts swell. My neck turns more slender, my throat smoother. Small tics shift across my face, and each is an adjustment. I can't watch and say what I was like before. I just see what I've become.

I'm Karen. Karen running.

- Steven, the woman's voice says through my headset – We call you by name as we call to your nature. As a twin you know what the others cannot know. Teensquads run for a purpose. Your running means nothing till Karen runs free. Run for yourself and you're running away. You must run till all others can run.