As I returned with an armful of fabric, Arsha presented me with the palm of her hand.
“Stay back. I’ll deliver him,” she said, her eyes never leaving the a-womb.
The black mesh beneath the a-womb began to extend, drawn out by levers at its edges, providing a soft cushion on which the infant could rest as it exited the sac. The slit was tight, conforming to the contours of the infant’s body and squeezing at him like the maw of a hungry jellyfish reluctant to release its prize. This was by design, an imitation of a natural birth that helped to apply the necessary pressure to expel the amniotic fluid from within the baby’s lungs.
The whole head was protruding from the sac now, slick with fluid, tiny black hairs matted flat against his skin. Arsha extended a hand and gently touch the cranium, and the disparity in skin tones was evident – hers pale, and his chocolatey-brown. The embryos in storage had been taken from a wide cross-section of nationalities and races, and it seemed that this boy was of African heritage.
The shoulders popped out, and then it all seemed to happen in a rush – he was shucked out like a tadpole from its egg in one fluid movement, his body unfurling on the mesh. Arsha lifted both hands and pulled him away, cradling the placenta as well, and placed him down onto the tray, where she immediately wrapped him in a towel, leaving just his face showing. For his part, the boy lay there with his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth curved unhappily and a scowl on his face, but he made only the slightest gurgle. There was no sign of protest as I had expected, no crying or wails of discomfort as he entered this new environment.
Arsha slipped a finger to his neck to check his pulse, and after a few seconds withdrew it again, nodding in affirmation and exhaling heavily.
I clenched my fist and raised it triumphantly, letting out a soft cry of jubilation, and then spontaneously threw my arms around Arsha, hugging her tightly to me. She lifted a hand awkwardly and patted my shoulder, as if not knowing quite how to respond to this show of affection, but then relented, turning her body into the embrace and slipping her arms snugly around my neck. She allowed herself a joyous sob that racked her body, burying her face in my neck. It was perhaps the most human moment we had ever shared together. For once we relinquished the almost mechanical nature of our calculations and projections, our planning and plotting and deliberations. The rigid shackles of dread and fear fell away. We experienced pure emotion, elation, and gave in to it without restraint.
How fitting, I thought, that such a moment should be brought about by the arrival of the first human to draw breath in so many years.
“We did it,” she said, as if she couldn’t quite believe it herself. “We did it.”
The joy was compounded twice more in the following days as Arsha’s girls were also brought into the world. The first arrived with not a wisp of hair on her head and skin like porcelain, announcing her presence with raucous cries that were deafening in the close confines of the lab. Arsha scooped her up in swaddling and made awkward attempts to comfort her, performing a comical-looking jig and uttering gentle crooning noises as she coaxed her into a more contented state. There was no handbook to read for this part, no guidelines for her to follow. No way to prepare. It was just a matter of winging it and hoping that something would eventually work.
The third infant was delivered without quite the same ruckus, settling serenely into her swaddling and making wet gurgling sounds without protest. Her dark eyes peered out through the slits of her eyelids, staring unblinkingly at the roof as she took in the world from outside the a-womb for the first time.
Arsha gave her a quick health check, as she had done with others, noting height, weight, head circumference, temperature and rate of pulse among others and tapping these details into the flip.
“Six point two kilos,” she said to herself as she was finishing up.
“Another monster,” I said, wanting desperately to go and hold her in my arms, to do the same with the other two who lay sleeping at the end of the room. Arsha had made it clear from the first moment that I wasn’t welcome near the babies, interjecting herself between me and them if I got too close. I held my ground.
“Yeah. With a monster appetite too, I’ll bet,” she said. She removed her cleanroom suit, hanging it on its hook by the door, then pulled the leather sling over her head with one arm, delicately manoeuvring the newborn between the straps as she settled it into a comfortable position. “I’d better get her home. She’ll want to feed in the next couple of hours.”
“Have you made enough of the soy formula?”
“Should be plenty. That’s all I’ve been doing of late. The kitchen at Cider is full of the stuff.” She lowered the girl into the first pouch in the sling. The baby fit snugly inside and lay quietly with her head poking out, like a pea in a pod, her eyes directed my way but still unfocused.
“So, uh… when are you coming back?” I said.
“Not sure. Things are gonna be busy for a while.”
“And there’s nothing I can do for you over there?”
She loaded the second infant into the sling, the boy sleeping cosily in his swaddling, where he occupied the next slot down.
“No. Like I said, you’re needed here. If I need you, I’ll come looking for you.”
With great care she added the last one to the sling, and the baby girl made a few squeaks of protest before Arsha was able to calm her. Making soft shushing sounds, she already seemed to be slotting into the role of parent as neatly as she’d performed the deliveries, as neatly as she’d crafted the sling. As neatly as she handled everything. I was already starting to wonder how I was going to cope without her.
“That’s better,” she crooned as the girl settled, lifting a finger and gently stroking it across the infant’s eyebrows. A smile touched her lips as she looked between the three of them, tucking the folds of swaddling, smoothing back hair, adjusting the sling, making sure everything was in its place.
With that done, she hefted them carefully across the room to dump the flip into her backpack, which she then hoisted onto her shoulder. She made a little hop to adjust the weight of her load.
“You look like a pack mule.”
Arsha gave me a lopsided smile. “Feel like one.”
With that she turned and headed for the door, gently easing it open with her free hand.
“Arsha?” I called.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Good luck, huh?”
With her mouth hidden behind her outstretched arm, I saw the corners of her eyes crinkle in what I could only imagine was a sad smile.
“Bye, Brant.”
The door swung shut and the lab was quiet again, and I suddenly felt very alone.
14
The sound of an explosion out in the city broke the quietude of morning and had me grabbing for the shotgun before the reverberations had even settled.
What the hell?
I bolted through the workshop, knocking boxes aside on my way out to the corridor. Skidding to a halt, I looked out across the skyscrapers from the window ledge. I could see nothing out there that seemed untoward: no smoke, no sign of movement, no fire, but I thought I could detect faint sounds in the distance. They were more hints and whispers than anything defined, not enough to give me any clue as to where to start searching for the origins of the explosion. I headed up the stairwell for a better view.
From ten floors further up I was able to find them through the lenses of my binoculars. Out on the old freeway, stopped dead amidst the rubble, a small truck with a cage mounted on the rear contrasted against the brown landscape like a shiny black beetle in sand. A couple of figures milled around it, too ill-defined for me to distinguish as to their identity or allegiance from this distance.
I could see movement in the cage as well. Captives.
A terrible image came to me, of rough hands grappling with Arsha and her babies, pulling them this way and that, thrusting them into the cage. Cruel laughter, mocking voices, and infants scr
eaming. Arsha trying to comfort them, trying to remain stoic in the face of the horror.
And if these were Marauders, then what? They would be carted off to the enclave, where they would be experimented upon, subjected to all manner of torture, and ultimately slaughtered.
I lowered the binoculars, possibilities running through my mind. Could it be Arsha? From this distance, the binoculars weren’t powerful enough to reveal anything more than shadowy outlines of what lay in the cage. It could be anyone down there.
I thought about the unborn child in the lab, the one who was depending upon me to safely deliver him into the world. The one who would die if I wasn’t around.
What if I were to head out there and be killed? What if I didn’t make it back?
I was torn, anguished. I didn’t want to leave. My one goal right now was to stay here and wait in the lab until the child was born, and then take him home. To raise him.
That’s it. That was my only job right now.
But I knew I couldn’t just let that truck leave without finding out one way or another if it really was Arsha and the children trapped inside. I pictured myself in a week, or a month from now descending on Cider Street to find an empty house, door kicked in and blood on the walls, realising I’d let them slip away, knowing that I could have done more to prevent them being taken away.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I sat by and let it happen.
I made the decision. I had to go out and at least make sure it wasn’t them. After I’d done that I could relax, forget about it and get on with my work in the lab.
Down on the street, I located the Helios in the nearby alley where I’d hidden it in a secluded courtyard. I got it moving. While running, the cycle didn’t make much sound, so in all likelihood the Marauders wouldn’t hear me coming. It was only during start-up and shutdown that it whined. As long as I kept it idling it should remain undetected.
On my way out of the downtown district I kept to the underpasses and backstreets where possible rather than heading straight to the freeway, as I hoped this would prevent them from sighting me on my way over. This also slowed my progress, as I had to spend time weaving through debris, and in a couple of places I had to turn around and find an alternate path due to blockages in the streets.
Eventually I came to a position where I could hear distant voices on the raised roadway above. Leaving the Helios idling, I crept through the thick grass that adorned the slope around the roadway and poked my head up to where I could see them.
They were much clearer through the binoculars now, and I could discern the swirling silver carvings on their cheeks that marked them as Marauders. There were two of them, the first dressed in dusty black overalls, the sun shining off his bald head, his hands covered in grease. The second was skinny, wearing only grey cargo pants and black boots, with a thick black watch on his left wrist and a filthy rag clutched in his hand. His greasy brown hair was shoulder length and slicked back from his face.
From this proximity I could make out most of their heated conversation as they shouted at each other.
“I said don’t fuckin’ worry about that,” the bald clank shouted. “Just get the wheel back on.”
“It’s too heavy to lift!” the other one retorted. “We need to unload the cargo first.”
“Hey, deadshit, we went over this three times already. We can’t contain ’em once we do that.”
“Not if we–”
“Just lift one more time, willya? I’ll get it on this time.”
The skinny clank shook his head and muttered something, then braced the edge of the truck with his hands and began to lift. From this position I couldn’t see around them to make out who was in the cage, but I could still see movement within. The prisoners were alive, whoever they were, but their identity remained tantalisingly out of my grasp.
There was a cry of triumph from the bald clank, and the skinny one relaxed, allowing the truck to drop. It rocked gently as it settled back into place.
“Not so hard after all, eh?” the bald clank said.
“Yeah, not for you, lazy fuck. Why am I the one lifting?”
“Listen, we lost three fuckin’ guys trying to break through that Ascension checkpoint. That was your idea, remember?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“So you’re the reason we’re in this mess, that’s what. I wanted to just head north like usual.” He finished manipulating bolts on the wheel and stood up, snatching the rag from the other clank and roughly wiping his hands. “And that’s why we can’t leave ’em here, neither. If we don’t return with some cargo we’re gonna be in a whole world of hurt. You get me?”
“I get that you’re a whiny bitch, that’s what I get.”
“Screw you!”
They tussled like a couple of old women, and then the skinny clank pushed free of the other’s grasp.
“All right, all right. Are we done here?” he said.
The bald clank went back to scrubbing his hands and glowering at his companion, then backhanded the rag into the skinny clank’s chest.
“Get in the damn truck.”
They moved to the truck’s cab and finally I was able to get a better view of the cage. I could see arms and legs and the sides of heads, enough to make out that there was more than one person inside, but not much else. I thought I could also see body parts, where the Marauders had evidently dissected some of their victims before tossing them into the cage. Where possible, they tried to keep their captives whole. I’d heard that among the experiments they were conducting, they were trialling methods of recharging power cores and attempting to replace cores without killing the subjects. When the operations inevitably failed, they would dice their captives up for spare parts.
It was only the ones who didn’t come quietly who ended up in the cage in pieces. Ones like Arsha. She wouldn’t have gone quietly, I knew. She’d have fought to the last.
Were those pieces of Arsha in the cage?
The engine started with a shuddering roar, and a cloud of black exhaust spewed from the back of the truck along with a deafening backfire, like the sharp crack of a gun. That was the sound that had startled me back in the workshop, I realised. Not an explosion after all.
As the truck pulled away I could see there were two live captives, their fingers clasped through the wire of the cage as they bounced roughly along the road, one male with short brown hair and one blonde female. I felt a moment of relief, realising that neither was Arsha. There was no sign of the infants either.
It seemed my fears had been unfounded. These were strangers, and I had no reason to pursue them. As horrible as their fate might be, I couldn’t risk their rescue with all that was at stake back at the lab.
I didn’t want to watch these poor wretches hauled off in the cage. I didn’t want their faces burned into my memory, haunting me in the weeks and months to come with their hopelessness and despair. The only reason I kept gazing after the truck was to be completely sure that Arsha wasn’t stooped in a corner of the cage I hadn’t observed.
The male prisoner turned back in my direction to stare solemnly at the receding skyscrapers, his youthful face numb with shock and hopelessness. I could now see the manufacturer’s branding mark on his left temple: the letter ‘Q’.
The relief I’d felt a moment before vanished. I stood up for a better view, twisting the focus ring on the binoculars as the truck began to blur.
I saw the female, and my heart caught in my throat.
I knew them. Without a shadow of doubt, I knew them.
Their names were Ellinan and Mish.
I charged back to the Helios, loading shells into the shotgun, and then I experienced a brief moment of indecision. Going after the Marauders was a huge risk, and I could well be consigning the unborn child back at the lab to a lonely death if I didn’t survive. There was no time to get word to Arsha, no time to come up with contingencies. The baby’s fate was entwined with mine. If I died out here pursuing the Marauders, it too wo
uld perish.
That left me with the choice of saving Ellinan and Mish, or ensuring the safety of the unborn child by letting them die at the hands of the Marauders.
In the end, I knew that there was only one course of action, and that was to follow the truck. Seeing them in that Marauder cage brought a sharp pang of guilt, and a feeling of regret. I remembered the last time I’d seen Ellinan and Mish, playing hopscotch outside their house, happy and secure in their little town of Carthen to the east. On that day I had truly believed that the right choice was to leave them where they were. After all, they had lived quietly by themselves for several decades and had managed to stay hidden from the Marauders, and I understood that taking them with me might be more hazardous to their welfare than leaving them behind. I couldn’t guarantee my own safety out in the wasteland, let alone theirs.
Whatever the case, I couldn’t dwell on it now. There would be time to berate myself about my choices later, if I survived this encounter. If they survived it.
I abandoned any sense of subterfuge, bracing the shotgun in one hand while I gunned the Helios along the street with the other, flinging an arc of dirt from the tyres in my wake. Frustratingly, my pathway up onto the freeway was blocked and I had to double back not once, but twice. By the time I had made it back to where the truck had stopped, they were nowhere in sight.
But I knew where they were headed: north.
I was beginning to come to grips with the feel of the cycle now, and it bucked and swerved at my every motion, veering nimbly along the cluttered freeway and eating up the distance between myself and my target with every passing minute.
The Marauders were no slouches, either. After ten minutes of pursuit, I still had not sighted the truck, but I could see the dust of their passage, and I knew they’d made it to the open ground of the wasteland. I ducked my head into the wind and surged onward, more urgent now than ever. I couldn’t allow them to reunite with the other Marauders further to the north. If that happened, there really would be no hope for Mish and Ellinan. I was prepared to roll the dice on an encounter with two Marauders, but I couldn’t confront a legion of them on my own.
The Seeds of New Earth Page 11
