The Only Ones (9 page)

He said he didn’t know, and we both laughed, like now Inez is asking the questions and he’s the one who says he didn’t know. “If we get working viables,” he added, “there would be a Bonus, if you came back.”

We’re brushing up against the bushes he hit that first time, driving in the dark. This time it’s in the sun.

“Why would I do that?”

“Well!” he coughed. “To patch you up for Host.”

“You know that’s never going to happen.”

“Give me a break, I.”

We’re back on the regular county road.

“And if what you did today does make, you know, viables that work?” I went on. “And they are the only ones you ever get?”

He waited awhile to speak, going down the regular road. “Well, Rini drives a hard bargain. But she does have an open mind.”

“It won’t be her mitochondria,” I said.

“I, will you give me a fucking break?”

I didn’t say anything until we’re on the big road that goes to the Terminal. Then I say what I was thinking, and I think he was thinking it too. “So you think if they work, what you made today, she will want them to be her kid? Even if it’s not her mitochondria or what she discussed?”

He got to fix the shade in front of him, because we are driving right into the sun. “I think she will.”

I guess I thought so too.

So that’s it.

I went home a different way, across the river at Newburgh on a bridge they let you cross on, then down through the Bronx. Because of Mumbai cautions, they hose you with Hygiene spray at the Bronx city line, then again at Queens, where it is really hot and smells worse than ever. I walked carrying my winter things in the bag Janet fixed for me, all the way from Flushing Main Street past the burnt houses and caution tape that is always on Northern Boulevard to where I had been living, near Powell’s Cove on a little side street half burnt to the ground where no one lived but me. The little side street seemed different. I don’t know why it did. I was still the only one who lived on it. I was still the only one in my whole great big empty house. It seemed different.

The city seemed different too. Of course, there are new Mumbai cautions at Zone crossings and extra checkpoints and barricades, but I thought it’s possible, what’s different was me.

I checked for messages regular like Rauden said. I mainly used the 14
^th
Avenue Board across Flushing Bay from the old airport, but got nothing for so long, I tried the Board on Flushing Main Street that sometimes works a little better, and bingo. It’s one of those messages that come with a talking vid of guess who? Rini Jaffur, going ballistic.

“This is not what we discussed! This is not what we discussed!”

And that’s how I found out it worked.

ii

It must be early September when I got this deCon job in Forest Hills. By now, I been doing Openings and deCon ever since I took the Interview at Iron Triangle Bazaar and passed with flying colors. I used my Bonus on the bubble suit they make you wear even though I don’t need it because I am a Sylvain goddamn hardy, but no one in Queens knows what that is. I even had enough coupons left to buy a fancy bag to carry the bubble suit around in. The pay is good. I already moved from my old neighborhood and have been crashing in an empty unit in Flushing near a few people and even stores, not those stupid food and water Lockers you got to use in Powell’s Cove. I’m off the Mound. I really got a different life.

So, I’m just walking around Forest Hills with my fancy bag, when it hits me, hey! Why not see if the Austin Street Board works? The Zone North Boards been down all August, and I have not got any message from the Farm since Rini Jaffur. I tried every Board I knew—14
^th
Avenue, Flushing Main Street, even Little Neck. Nothing worked. It’s Queens. But this Board looks pretty good. I swiped my ID in a slot, the screen lit up, and what is this? Four messages in a row.

1. Get back to me.

2. Something happened.

3. I! Will you fucking contact me? You need to get your ass up to the Farm ASA goddamn P.

4. There will be a Bonus.

Well, I just jumped on the first hybro I could make and head up to the Farm.

It didn’t leave till the next morning. I spent the night in a bin in Jersey, by the river checkpoint. Well, I spent worse nights.

By the way, in case you think I did it for the Bonus, I didn’t need that Bonus. I got a good job now. I just wanted to see what’s going to happen.

Janet Delize met me at the Terminal. She said Rauden’s at some DVM emergency in Shinhopple, and she told me all the news on the way to the Farm. She had a new hairdo. Bernie is in jail in Johnson City. They got another shady OBGYN, in Port Jervis. They found a virgin Host for Rini that Bernie had checked out before he went to jail, but by the time they followed up, she wasn’t a virgin any more and didn’t want the work anyhow, so Rini said she will be the Host herself, that way she can be sure the Host won’t run off with the kid.

By now we’re back at the Farm, where I forgot how windy it is, and Rauden is already waiting in the truck. “Let’s go, I,” he yells, and off we roll to Port Jervis like I never even left, with him picking up where Janet stopped.

The new shady OBGYN implanted Rini with the four viables Rauden made my last day at the Farm. Rini went into shock. They pulled her through, but Rauden could only talk her out of trying again because he ran out of viables. While he mixed up a new batch, he researched some details about the Dearborn hardy Compatibility anomaly and found out that sort of hardy could be toxic to anyone who didn’t have Compatibility to her. It looks like the new viables have that same anomaly. And he gives me that look he used to give when I can’t understand a word—do you agree?

I agree!

He goes on, what if you’re the only one who has Compatibility to them?

I agree.

Then I’m the only one who could be the Host. Nine months, all expenses. He researched how to patch my uterus that way Bernie said is risky. The new OBGYN will try it out.

The new shady OBGYN lived in a house off the main road and worked from an office over his garage. He laid me on a table and scraped tissue from my uterus. It was invasive. We drove back to the Farm in the dark and Rauden waited till we got there to call Rini with the new plan. She hit the roof—this is not what we discussed, Inez will run off with the child. But she got over it. Rauden said he knew she would.

He thawed out two of the new viables, mixed them with the tissue scrapings, and he will culture them. This is a little hard to follow but Rauden says I don’t need to follow, I just need to go with him back to Port Jervis in ten days on an empty stomach, lay down on the table where they stuff what he mixed up into me, and stay on my back for three days, but when I stood up, everything fell out. I lost a lot of blood and passed out. When I came to, Rauden was on his Mobile yelling, “Fuck you, Rini! She could have bled out!”

Like that is really going to happen.

We drove back to the Farm.

Still, it didn’t work.

I was pretty sure I will get sent back to Queens once I could walk but Rauden said stick around, now I already made the trip. We could run another Harvest.

Well, maybe you are starting to think Rini was right. I got no character. No self-esteem. I blew off a good job in Queens just because I want to see what’s going to happen. First of all, I didn’t mention this but Opening is boring, and deCon is worse. And by the way, Rini got so much self-esteem, she was ready to go into shock
twice
just so she could Host her own child, and wait till you hear what she got in mind to do now.

“Rini, are you out of your goddamn mind?” I was sleeping the Port Jervis thing off on the sofa when Rauden woke me up screaming at her on the phone. “I may be out of my depth here but while I’ve heard it’s always a challenge to be a good mother I’d have to guess offhand IT IS FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE IF YOU’RE DEAD!”

She wants to draw my blood and put it in her by transfusion so she will get Compatibility from that.

She hung up.

Janet made Rauden call back and say he’s sorry—you can’t talk to a client like that or they will take their money and go. Well, Rini did get over it, but still. It’s not like anybody knows what to do. Rauden is on the phone to Henry every day.

Janet heard of some guaranteed virgins available in Homer.

Rauden says, Janet, for God’s sake don’t you understand anything? That’s not what it’s about. So now he has to say he’s sorry to Janet too. At least he doesn’t have to say he’s sorry to me, but even if he did, even if he says he’s sorry to all of us, that doesn’t help the main thing.

We cannot find a goddamn Host. I don’t know why they’re even bothering with my Harvest. He already has twelve viables left on ice from the Cahoonzie group that nobody knows what to do with. Rini didn’t work as Host. The virgin didn’t work as virgin. I work as Donor but if Host doesn’t work, none of it works.

And to tell the truth, it looks like it won’t. We went so far and after all that, it’s not going to work.

Then Henry showed up one day with some guy in whiskers with a check shirt and diagrams, Rauden says, I, come along, and we all go to Four Corners and look at what he got. His name was Lucas. He lived in a Quonset at the bottom of a hill with mud, a few pigs and a cow and a shed. He took us in the shed and we checked the thing out.

Henry is looking at the hardware. Rauden is looking at some tubes. Lucas is pretty much just looking at me, but he explains to Rauden, “They pump the stuff in from some cow. You give her shots.”

“What’s the track record?” Rauden asked.

“Last time all four worked.”

Rauden whistled.

“Whose product?” Henry asked.

“Violet 4.”

They all nodded at that, like, oh! Violet 4.

“And how did they come out?” That’s Rauden.

Lucas shrugged. “Alive. Three of them still are.”

When Rauden came back to the Farm he told Janet to track Rini down and get her on the phone. He had a plan.

Well, when you hear what the plan is, maybe you will think this is so open minded, our head blew off.

Even Rini, on the speaker-phone from Toronto, shouted, “This is beyond unethical! Even for cows it is unethical.”

“Let’s not split hairs, Rini.”

“Put Inez on. You would do this, Inez? Did Rauden say how long it’s going to take?”

I said it’s ok with me. The deCon work is freelance. I could pick it up again when this is done. Rauden is mouthing at me, “Pitch her, I,” but all I could think of to say was, “Don’t you want to see what will happen?”

Rini didn’t even know if she did want that. Maybe she didn’t.

You can be sure that Rauden did. At this point, I think he would of gone ahead even without her. It’s true Rini already put some money down but nobody ever signed anything. It was my product. It was his time. It was even his storage. But come on. It’s her child.

He kept on her case. “I don’t say this Host always works, even with livestock,” I heard him explain on the phone, “but the great thing is, it’s technically not alive. So it can’t die.” Then, when he finished coughing, Rauden added, “And then, obviously—it’s not going to run off with the child.”

We all knew why he said it. It was her bottom line. We all really knew she would agree in the end. She was mad with grief. Maybe this plan is not the best one Rauden ever had, but face it. It’s the only one left.

iii

It took about two weeks to get the parts for this new plan and the whole time, Rini is calling two, three times a day to say she changed her mind. “It would not be my genes! It would not be my womb!” She is on speaker so everybody hears. “IT WOULD NOT EVEN BE MY MITOCHONDRIA!”

“Rini!” Rauden yelled back. “It’s an adoption. An
open
adoption—so goddamn open you can watch the whole nine months through a high-powered scope right up till the kid is goddamn born! But when it is, Rini! This child will be very, very special. Gotta go!” And he’s off to buy a new backup generator.

What will be special, Henry says to me, is if after nine months in that cockamamie hoo-ha Lucas dreamed up, the kid is still alive.

Uh oh. Rini again. She got the same idea.

“What if my child dies before she’s born?”

“We do multiples!” Rauden just got back with the generator. He is wiping sweat off his forehead. “Five. That’s more than I’ve ever done with cows,” he tells Henry and me, “but Rini doesn’t need to know.” Rini already has enough trouble getting behind this hoo-ha plan, without the cow details.

She stopped calling for a while. I think she had some meetings.

Leaves were falling when Rauden drove me to Port Jervis for my Harvest. An even dozen eggs! He just froze them for now. He froze everything—he even had froze the uterus tissue that fell out of me in Port Jervis. He’s going to thaw that for this new thing. It’s going to need a lining. The regular way got a lining. They want to make it as regular as they could. They are even going to mike my heartbeat in.

Rini again. “This is not what we discussed. I do not need all five. Inez must take one.” Remember she was afraid I’ll run off with it?

“Will you give me a break, here?” Rauden is trying to hook up the new generator. “What’s Inez going to do with a child?” But she hung tough and finally he just said fine. Inez will take one child. But he told me don’t worry. It’s never going to happen. Some of them will die for sure, and one of the ones that dies will be the one Rini said is mine.

When Lucas showed up with the last parts, him and Rauden put the thing together in the basement. Remember those little rooms three steps down where I watched him make viables? You go from there down more stairs to a big dark basement room behind a door no one will even know is a door if they don’t already know it is. We been fixing this room for days. They had to rewire and put paint on the walls and floor. They let me help paint. Rauden and Lucas put up a wall inside so it will be two smaller rooms, one what they call a rec room next to the inside room where everything is going to happen, and they put a glassed window in this wall, so you can watch.

They brought in two sofas, six chairs, one card table that Janet did not need. There will also be a monitor like Rauden had when he made the viables. You need a monitor to scope to because what’s going to happen will be very small, at least at first.