by R F Hurteau
“Felix? A father? Now that’s something! I didn’t know you could be a father if you never grew up yourself!”
Ripley laughed as he enjoyed the rare pleasure of seeing his friend speechless. He gave Willow a tight hug, forgetting for a moment how distressed she seemed. Babies were a wonderful blessing, after all. Perhaps she’d been crying tears of joy. “I’m so happy for you both!”
But when Ripley pulled away, he saw that her brown eyes, so beautiful with their tiny specks of gold, were glistening. His smile faded to a frown, and he glanced at Felix. But his friend was not looking at him. He was staring, wide-eyed and unseeing, at the floor.
“I’m...I’m going to be a father?” Felix whispered. “We’re going to have a baby?”
He jumped out of his chair and grabbed Willow around her waist, swinging her around in a wide circle before placing her gently back down on the ground. “I’m going to be a father!” he repeated, shouting now. “We’re going to have a baby!”
Ripley was torn between joy and confusion as he watched Willow. She had begun to sob.
Felix’s expression was one of genuine confusion as he looked to Ripley for help. “What did I say?” he mouthed, caught off guard by this reaction.
Turning back to Willow, he took her by the elbow and guided her to Ripley’s bed. “What’s the matter? You’re okay, right? And the baby’s okay? Is this hormones? Sweet Evenmire, does that start this early? I mean, I know there’s something about hormones and crying, but—”
“It’s twins.”
The room fell silent. Ripley felt his stomach tighten, and he sank onto a chair. No one said anything for a long time. When Willow spoke again, her voice was soft, quavering.
“I went to my appointment and the doctors...they ran some tests. Everything looked great. They had an ultrasound machine, and the nurse was all smiles, beaming and talking about how I would get to see a picture of the baby. But then she looked away, and her smile faded. She looked concerned, so I asked what was wrong. I thought there was something the matter with the baby. She didn’t answer, she just walked away. I was so afraid, but I forced myself to look at the screen.
“At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. But the doctor came in then, and he said that there were two.” Willow’s face contorted into a grimace and she gripped wads of blanket in both fists. “He talked about it in such a cold, uncaring way. I didn’t know how it had gone from an excited nurse talking about my baby, to this stony-faced doctor talking about two... specimens.” She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. Fat tears slipped from beneath the lids.
“I’d wanted to come here, to plan a surprise for you with Ripley. But then they said... and I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t want to go home. So, I came anyway. And Ripley wasn’t home, so I let myself in.” Tears continued to stream down her face. “It was going to be such a beautiful surprise, my love.”
There was a tense silence before Ripley could find his voice again. “I’m so sorry.”
He reached out and placed a hand on her knee.
But Felix offered no words of consolation. His face was hard, his vape pen still clutched in his hand. His fist was so tight that his knuckles had turned white. He was depressing the trigger and it hissed, emitting a stream of vapor and the scent of something unpleasant smoldering.
He didn’t seem to notice. “They can’t make us do it.” Felix’s words had a tone of finality to them. “They can’t. It’s wrong! It’s always been wrong.”
The number of Therans in Sanctuary grew slowly. They had long lives and bore one offspring, if any. It was the Human population that had soared to unsustainable levels. A one-child rule had been implemented some twenty-odd years ago, in order to reduce the growth rate. Only Humans and Halfsies felt the weight of that particular law.
It was easy to justify, in theory. Everyone felt the effects of too many people in too small a space. The domes were full to bursting and food production couldn’t always keep up. Where once every citizen had been employed in the running of the city, now there were places like the Edge. Those too old or sick to work received the least aid, and there had even been whispered rumors of “compassionate euthanasia” being carried out in the hospital.
Ironic, really. The world had ended over a century ago, and now the seeds of a civilization had to be culled in order to keep it from outstripping the resources of the last settlement on Earth.
“What if I took the second one?” blurted Ripley. There had to be a way, something he could do to help. “I could raise him. Or her. I could—”
Willow was shaking her head before he had even finished speaking.
“If they allow us to have two children, even if you raised one of them, it wouldn’t be fair. And it would be removing you from the gene pool.”
The Council repeated over and over that everything would be fine. A common theme at the Anniversary was their assurance that with careful planning and adherence to the law the population would stabilize, and there would once again be plenty for everyone. All that needed to be done was to strictly enforce the rules.
No exceptions.
“Well, I’ll sign something, then. Tell them I’m not ever planning on having kids of my own. Tell them whatever they want to hear. We’ll make them listen.”
Willow’s eyes were sad even as she smiled. “You can’t promise you won’t feel differently in the future. And others would ask for the same if they found out. No, the Council won’t allow it. No special privileges.” Her voice shifted into a practiced monotone. “We are all equal in the eyes of the law.”
It was one of the things that had been drilled into them since birth. We are all equal in the eyes of the law. No one actually believed this. But everyone pretended that they did.
Felix snorted. “I doubt anyone on the Council would ever have to face this. I think we’d see some exceptions then! I doubt a pair of purebloods would have to...”
His voice trailed off. He straightened, looking almost hopeful. “The Council! Willow, you can talk to your father!”
“I could try.” She didn’t sound optimistic. “He’s always said I’m welcome to come home. But you know how he feels about us. I don’t think he’s going to offer much help. Not with this.”
“But, but they’re his grandchildren!” Felix pressed. “Surely that has to count for something?”
Willow buried her head in her hands.
“It’s going to be okay, Willow. Even if your father won’t help, we can figure this out,” Ripley said. “We’re going to get through this.”
“We? What exactly do you have to get through?” Felix stood abruptly, his face a mask of rage. “I won’t let them kill my child!”
Felix slammed his hand on the table with such force that his vape pen shattered into a hundred sticky, sweet-smelling shards of metal and glass. The fuel cell skittered across the table and came to rest at the edge. A tiny drop of acid escaped its punctured casing, falling to the floor where it sizzled and hissed. Felix was breathing hard. Ripley had never seen him like this. In all the years they’d spent together, Felix had always been so laid back, so calm, always quick to offer a joke.
Now he was livid. His eyes flashed, and his face had gone ghostly pale.
“We’ll run away.” Felix was nodding to himself as though unsure why he hadn’t thought of this before.
Ripley’s eyebrows rose, his words incredulous without intending to be. He wanted to support his friends. But still…
“Run away? We live in a domed city, Felix. A dome on the most inhospitable end of a dead planet. There’s nowhere to go.”
“Then we’ll hide. We’ll hide in the tunnels!”
“That’s no way to raise a family, hiding in the dark like rats. We were just down there. You know what it’s like. How will you get enough food? Where will you get water?”
“Well, at least I’m trying
to find a solution!” Felix shot back.
Willow stood up, wrapping her arms around him. She tilted her head up to rest her chin on his shoulder and made soft shushing sounds in his ear.
“Ripley isn’t our enemy, Felix. There’s no use taking this out on him.”
Felix bit his lip. Although his stiff posture relaxed a bit at Willow’s touch, Ripley did not want to risk upsetting him further. He watched as his friend looked down at the mess on the table. At the tiny crater in the tile beneath the broken fuel cell, which dripped once more with a sizzle and a pop.
“Sorry,” Felix murmured. “Of course he’s not.”
He sniffed. “I didn’t mean to get so angry.”
Ripley’s heart ached for them. Felix was painfully familiar with the one-child policy. His mother had become pregnant when he was two. The laws had still been in flux back then. The Council had not yet enacted their more extreme sterilization mandates.
“My mom ran,” Felix said after a while. “Dad always told me she must have been caught. That she’d have been sent to Geo.” He paused, lost in thought. “Maybe they didn’t catch her. Maybe she got out.”
Ripley’s own mother had died in childbirth. The hole that had left in his life, the same hole that Felix had experienced, had been a big part of what had brought them together. They’d explored the idea that Felix’s mom had actually escaped Sanctuary. They imagined that she was living somewhere out in the old world now, with Felix’s brother or sister. Frontier adventurers! And they would be planning a way to come back and rescue Ripley and Felix, too.
But they weren’t kids anymore. Imagination couldn’t turn wishes into reality. Felix was grasping at straws, at dreams, because he was hurting.
Ripley wished that he had more to offer his friend than false hope or empty promises.
He tried to word his next thoughts as tactfully as possible. “I know that people have attempted to leave, Felix. We’ve all heard the stories. But they never have happy endings.”
There was no way out of Sanctuary. It was hermetically sealed. After the D6 disaster during construction, bulkheads had been put in place. A breach would wreak all kinds of havoc inside the domes, alerting the authorities. And once outside, what then? The temperature in the city was always steady. The people here weren’t used to enduring the smallest of changes, let alone the unforgiving Antarctic climate. To be subjected to the subzero environment Antarctica offered wouldn’t just be a shock to the system. It would probably be lethal.
While Felix scowled at this, Ripley turned to Willow, giving his friend the opportunity to come around. “So, what happens now?”
“The doctors are running more tests. They told me that will help them decide which baby to keep. They’ve scheduled me to come back for... the procedure... after the Anniversary is over.”
She hung her head so that her long hair masked her face from view. “There’s a chance I could lose both of them. Selective reduction carries certain risks. ‘Acceptable risk,’ the doctor called it. As if any of this is ‘acceptable.’”
Felix just gave a slow nod. When he spoke again, his voice was uncharacteristically distant. Cold and droning like the wind they’d heard in the Observatory.
“Go to sleep, Willow. You should rest. We aren’t going home tonight.”
Neither Willow nor Ripley made any protest. At Ripley’s insistence, she took the bed. Felix swept his mess onto a plate and tossed it into the garbage chute. He and Ripley took the cushions from the chairs and lay down opposite each other on the floor, both lost in their own thoughts. Willow’s soft sobs transformed into long, even breaths.
“So that gives us two days, then,” came Felix’s quiet voice out of the darkness. “Not a lot of time, really.”
“Two days to do what?”
Ripley had a sinking feeling that he knew the answer.
“To find a way to survive out there. Whatever it takes. I don’t care. We’re leaving Sanctuary.”
Four
Of Rats and Spies
THE mood was somber as Felix and Ripley parted ways with Willow, seeing her off at the station.
She was headed for D4, where she taught at the Halfsie school. Then the two of them made their way down the Maintenance stairs to the tunnels.
Walking in silence, Ripley found himself having to almost jog to keep pace with his friend.
“So, are we going to talk about this?” Ripley asked at last. “I mean, you know it’s crazy, right? It’s never been done. Not successfully, at least.”
Felix smiled. Not his usual carefree grin. This was a small, tired smile.
Felix was a lot of things, but he was no fool.
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“And if you get caught and sent to Geo, then what? You want Willow to be forced out to the Edge?”
Felix made a little derisive huffing sound. “Now you’re just being an idiot. Willow’s strong. She can take care of herself. And even if she couldn’t, we both know you’d take her in without a moment’s hesitation.”
“I couldn’t do that if I was caught helping you, now could I?”
Felix cast a a sidelong glance at Ripley, eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t ask you to come with us.”
“Of course you wouldn’t ask. You wouldn’t have to. You already know I’d do anything for the two of you.”
“Then why are we even having this conversation?”
“Because what you’re proposing is crazy!” Ripley threw his hands up. “Think about it, Felix. Even if we’re successful, even if we could find a way out, it would be suicide to attempt an escape. We’d freeze to death out there! I don’t care if you’re Human, Elf, Halfsie, or otherwise. Antarctica is just one big frozen island. There’s simply nowhere to go. I mean, maybe you wouldn’t be too put out if it was just the two of us, but do you really want that kind of suffering for Willow? For the babies?”
Felix stopped walking so abruptly that Ripley took several more paces before realizing he was no longer beside him.
Ripley turned back, and his friend fixed him with a cool glare that made his eyes gleam in a way Ripley had never seen before.
“You said ‘babies,’” Felix stated in a dull tone. “You seem to have forgotten that if we don’t find a way out of here, Ripley, it will just be ‘baby.’ If either of them survive the procedure to begin with.”
Ripley cringed as if he’d been hit.
“Sorry,” he offered meekly. “You know I didn’t mean anything by it, I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Felix began to walk again.
Ripley felt uncomfortable. This side of his friend unnerved him. Willow had once told him about how Felix had stood up to her father when he’d tried to stop their marriage. She’d said his determination and courage had made her fall even more in love with him.
At the time Ripley had laughed it off, but now he understood what she’d been talking about. Felix really could be serious if he needed to be.
The shift in personality was more than a little intimidating.
“When my mom left, she had to have had a plan.”
Felix’s voice rang out along the empty tracks, despite the softness of his words.
It was as if the weight of the hope they carried made them louder, somehow. Gave them force.
“Even if she was caught, she still had to have an idea, right? She wouldn’t have tried to escape if she didn’t at least have an idea how to go about it. Some weak point in the city, a way out.”
“I don’t know,” replied Ripley, uncertain. “I mean, desperation can make people do crazy things. She probably didn’t think it all the way through. It’s more likely she was acting on instinct.” He did not add what he was thinking, which was, Just look at you right now.
Felix frowned. “Maybe,” he conceded at length. He didn’t
seem convinced.
A small sign on the wall declared “Sigil” where the main line merged with a side tunnel that ran to the Sigil Tube Station. One of the trains rushed past them, brakes screeching as it slowed. Ripley pointed at the sign and shouted over the din.
“That’s us!”
***
Ripley scanned his chip as he entered Core Operations, stopping short when he noticed someone at his post.
He glanced at the clock. Somehow, he’d managed to arrive ten minutes before shift change.
He stood there, fidgeting, wondering what to do with himself.
One of the supervisors, a severe looking Elven woman with sharp cheekbones and black hair pulled back in a tight bun, stopped in front of him and offered him a scrutinizing look.
“Is there a problem here, Prior?”
Her eyes flashed with irritation as she glared at him. He was surprised that she even knew his name, and felt oddly guilty for not knowing hers.
“Uh, no, ma’am,” he replied politely. “Just running a little early today.”
She nodded, eyes still narrowed in suspicion. “Next time don’t sign in until your shift starts. We don’t pay you to stand around.”
“Of course,” he assured her, wondering if she actually believed he had shown up early on purpose. “Sorry ma’am. It won’t happen again.”
Hearing Ripley’s voice, the young man at his station looked up and offered a broad smile. It was Nelson, who had just finished his schooling a few months earlier. He’d shadowed Ripley for a while before moving on to a night shift.
Ripley liked him well enough, he supposed—on the rare occasions when their paths crossed the young man was always cheerful. But he found Nelson’s excitement exhausting and wondered if Sigil would ever manage to crush Nelson’s spirit the way it had Ripley’s. His enthusiasm for his work seemed to know no bounds.
“Hey, Ripley!” Nelson cried, drawing scowls from several of his nearby coworkers. He glanced around sheepishly before lowering his voice. “Good to see you!”
