by Eden Wolfe
Matilde stood up. "Yala, come back here. She lets us use the place, that earns her some rights."
"I'm not trying to dampen your spirits," Trudith went on, "but don't you think you'd do better to find methods within your reach?"
"And what does that look like, Trudith, knower of all?"
"Trude the prude," Krescencia spoke up.
"There's a reason I'm a prude," Trudith said, "I've come this far and it's all gone pretty well. I've got this pub, and it gives you all a place, doesn't it? I'm here, I'm standing. Most days that's enough for me."
"It's not enough for me," Yala continued. "I had a job, I'll remind you. A good job. Honest. I worked hard, I cleaned those laboratories like they were my own children." She sat back hard against the chair, "And what good did it do me. The minute they wanted to be rid of all the outliers, we were the first cut. The first."
"I was in Logistics."
"I worked in the Western Counties Rooming House."
"All we wanted was to earn our keep." Yala punched the table, "And they even took that away from us."
"Of course, you're angry," Trudith softened her voice. "You have a right to be. I'm only suggesting that you take steps that stand a chance of making a difference, not creating more havoc for the rest of us. You mess around with the checkpoint, and who do you think will suffer for it? Imagine you're sly about the whole thing. Imagine they don't know it's you. They'll come for all the rest of us. We've seen it before. People will be hurt, disappeared. Killed. And then someone, under the duress of who knows what torture, will speak your name. Think it through!" Trudith felt her temper rising from her gut. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
They are just playing with ideas, but the game is too dangerous.
The pub was quiet for a few minutes, but for the sound of glasses lifting, lips sipping, and glasses setting back down.
How long will they try to find some magic breakthrough, some brave act that will undo generations of buildup? A hundred years of segregation. It's true, this must be the worst period in history for us. But with this new Queen, nothing can possibly get better any time soon.
Trudith wanted change too. She was disgusted by what she saw around her. Good women who tore at the seams. No wonder so many turned to opie. What else had Geb left for them?
The door swung open and the group of women all swung to look at it. Trudith's heart jumped. If they'd been spied on, they could easily be called out for violating the principles of loyalty.
The woman was slender, unimposing. From Geb Center. Though she was small in stature, she carried herself stately. The woman looked around the pub, at the group of women, and then to Trudith.
"Are you Trudith?"
Her heartbeat accelerated. What could this woman want with her?
"Yeah, who're you?"
Trudith's stomach seemed to jump into her throat.
"A friend of Rose."
Rose?
How she missed Rose and her little presence. A full-grown woman trapped in a pre-pubescent body. It wasn't hard to see why she'd be sent off to Cork Town.
She hadn't heard Rose's name in years. Once she'd left her job at the pub, suddenly and without warning, most of the patrons forgot she'd ever been there. She'd mostly hid in corners, cleaning and sorting, preparing, shopping at the market. But for Trudith, she'd felt like family. Rose was always there. And she'd always been the one who was there. No risk of Rose being disappeared, she kept herself well out of sight. But she'd been a pillar too. Trudith always felt there was more to misshapen, red-haired Rose than anyone knew. Though she couldn't put her finger on it.
"You're a friend of Rose?" It seemed unlikely. It felt like a trick. Trudith wasn't ready to believe it.
The woman nodded, her eyes staying on Trudith's. The woman didn't waver.
Maybe it's true. We'll have to find out.
"Well, then you'd better sit down."
The woman took a few more steps in. "Maybe I can sit at the bar?"
"Wherever you like."
"What I'd like is to talk to you," she whispered and again Trudith's heart skipped a beat.
"Me? Why me?"
"Serve me whatever it is you serve. I'll talk and you can tell me what you think."
Trudith saw the women at the table try to start a normal conversation, something about market days and weather. She poured a glass of ale.
"There you have it." Trudith set the glass down and put her hands on her hips but it felt unnatural. Everything felt unnatural. She needed the woman to just say what she had to say.
The woman leaned forward against the bar. "I knew Rose, a little. I knew her guardian better."
"Lucius?"
"Yes."
"The Great Geneticist?"
"Yes."
"I see." Trudith tried to look nonchalant. "And what about Rose? Where is she? What's she doing?" She hoped she looked relaxed. She felt like she was in a cloud of panic.
"I don't know."
Trudith's heart sank. She didn't realize how much she'd hoped this woman would give her good news.
"I've come for a different reason."
Trudith wiped down the bar. She couldn't imagine what reason there would be for anyone to see her.
The woman looked back at the table where the others appeared engrossed in their discussion of former blowouts, though Trudith knew they were listening to every word.
"We need your help."
"Me?"
"You know people."
"Not really."
"You know hundreds who come through here."
"I don't know them."
"Hear me out." The woman sat up straighter and explained.
Trudith tried to keep her focus but the sounds swirled around her head.
They need a woman? A woman to carry a child undercover? But that could get someone disappeared just for considering it. Outliers can't be Willing Women. I thought it was chemically fixed that way. That's what they said. But don't I know better, not to believe anything they say?
"It needs to be a sturdy woman. Someone who physically is up to the challenge without needing much care during the gestation period."
"The what?"
"The pregnancy."
"I see." Trudith sighed. "Actually, I don't see. How can one of us giving birth make any difference? There are thousands of births happening every day."
"I get it." Yala stood and walked towards the woman.
The woman stood up, the stool falling behind her. Trudith could see the scare across her face.
"It's okay," Trudith whispered. "They're alright."
"We can start undermining their system." Yala continued, "You want to challenge Central Tower. You want to throw their one-sided, prejudiced, blindly-loyal research program into the wind."
"I wouldn't put it that way."
The pub went quiet. Trudith watched the woman's hand tremble. Yala looked her down and up.
Trudith couldn't bear the silence.
At last, Yala spoke.
"We'll help you."
14
Lucius
How irresponsible they’ve all become. A Tower full of mindless scientific cronies.
Lucius emptied a bag of pasta into boiling water.
Of course, this was Maeva's plan all along, back in the day. Build up her army. Willing Woman campaign, that's what she said. I should have guessed she'd be unsatisfied with that. Too much screening, too many variables, too much time. She wanted her army.
Well, now look at what she's got.
He watched the water boil, the little wheat spirals making a whirlpool in the pot. They were his own fortified blend he'd made in the lab below.
He let out a long, audible sigh, though there was no one to hear it.
She could never do anything the way I told her. Never. I suppose that's the prerogative of a Queen. And I'm the one who designed her, so that's what I get.
If only he could go back and never start incubation in Lower Earth.
&nb
sp; It had been his own greed and ambition that had driven him to do it. But didn't he have ideals? Wasn't it supposed to be for the betterment of Lower Earth? Wasn't incubation going to replenish the male population, even if it did have an unacceptable mortality rate among infants?
He tried to shake the memory, but it doggedly came back. Too much talk of incubation. He knew the vision of it would haunt him for months, or years, to come.
Rainfields had been a perfect choice to set up the thousand-strong incubation boxes. The sun's reflection created more than enough heat off the lava rock to provide ideal conditions. They harnessed the natural heat and channeled it without any advanced technology required.
And there was something poetic in it all.
Rainfields - where the first settlers arrived after the Final War. Rainfields - where men would be born again.
Queen Idia had been the most unpredictable Queen Lower Earth had seen, and he had still been young at the time, under thirty when the Great Geneticist had died and he'd taken over the job. Martin. How he'd degraded into something inhuman. Lucius had watched it all happen before his eyes.
Martin, the father of modern genetics. And yet I surpassed him on every single measure. He designed me well. He did.
Even the thought of Martin degrading on that hidden hospital bed couldn't drive the image of Rainfields away. The beauty of the day he'd seen the glass boxes laid out across the land had been so powerful, so energizing. He'd felt the image burn into his mind at the time, and as he expected, it was alive in him until this day.
Though it was over seventy years ago.
Seventy years. What does that put me at now? A hundred and seven. How about that. And I used to worry that I wouldn't get past forty.
The glass boxes, a sea of them, row on row with the staff lined up through the channels. How striking the women looked in their white uniforms. Twenty-four-hour surveillance. His dream, the male embryos of various designs, finally they would test at scale. He was prepared to lose half of them. Or more. They just had to find the ones that took, the ones that endured. The ones that beat the odds.
They'd manipulate that genetic sequence until they broke through and had the one that would work. Replenish the male population. Bring the world back into balance. His plan had been perfect.
How naive. How idealistic. How clueless.
Then there was Queen Idia's smile at his arrogance. Idia's gentle touch on his arm. Idia's destruction of his dream.
No boys, not one.
She'd changed his perfect plan. Instead, every box was filled with the code of Queens.
The Queen's code, multiplied by a thousand, each a little life in each little box. And for what? For Idia's sick gladiator games. To find her true successor.
To find Maeva.
There had never been any love in Idia's heart for anyone. Something snapped, broken in her. It had to be. How else could she have taken the code he'd perfected and pervert it so deeply? Thousands of incubated possible queens, all of the same code?
Look how that went. Look how there was only one left standing. Look at the mark it left on Maeva's soul.
Maeva knew it. She knew it was the incubation program that had made her into what she was. That was why she dismantled it so soon after taking reign, even if she was only eighteen years old at the time.
Dismantled is not the right word. She destroyed it. Smashed and tore it. She purged the world of it.
And then she brought it back.
Lucius turned off the pot, the pasta swollen into gobs. He'd overcooked them without noticing.
Incubation. Using the common code of women. Incredible. Did she not think it through at all? Of course, they are clinically depressed little things. The code needs human contact. Humans are social beings, genetics 101! If you don't code it out, you deprive every incubate of the human contact they require. They need the mother's blood. They need to capture the sounds of the mother's heart. Without it, what are they? Loners. Worse, loners without boundaries, but whose need for fetal contact will never be satisfied. No wonder they jump off bridges.
They're raising thousands of children who will never know what loyalty means. They cannot even be loyal to their own survival.
Lucius dropped the bowl of overcooked pasta on the table.
What a disaster. What a complete disaster. How will Maeva try to fix this one?
He stopped.
She won't of course. It'll be Ariane.
Lucius felt something cold go down his spine.
I thought Ariane would be the last incubation birth we ever did. I designed her sequence for it. But the Central Tower cronies couldn't have known, none of them know what I compromised in her sequence to make it work. To make her sequence work.
Lucius had been wondering over the past few years if he'd compromised too much. Ariane's tolerance for Cork Town was frighteningly low. The Guard called it policy and treachery and a variety of other words, but Lucius knew what was behind it. Ariane.
It's my fault. Like all of this, my fault. The curse of my mind, that I see solutions. But I could never see the consequences.
He beat the table with his fist, his pasta falling out of the bowl. He picked up the individual noodles and popped them into his mouth.
One chance. Maybe my last chance. I will do this right. I will get 4957 right.
15
Roman
Roman stood from behind his desk. "What do you mean, he said no?"
Sara shook her head, "I don’t know what to tell you. You know what he's like."
"I selected you, Sara, because I had confidence you could get through that exterior. It's just an exterior. He's a man like the rest of us, and his dedication to Lower Earth exceeds most of us." Roman couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd selected Sara specifically. Lucius would have seen the code he drew up in her, the scientific genius and then he would have been charmed by her kindness. Roman knew Lucius. Knew him well. "Did you impress upon him the consequences?"
"I did."
"This doesn't make sense. What did he say, exactly? Tell me word for word."
Sara took in a deep breath, looking at the floor. "He started with sarcasm."
As he would, Roman thought.
"And then he went into a long speech about how he could have seen this coming. How we didn't take sufficient precautions, how this was something we brought upon ourselves."
That part I know. He would love to gloat over this. But then what? He should have finished his arrogant speeches and then relished the opportunity to come and save the day. He loves that. Especially because he'd have recognized that no one else could do it.
"Get to it, Sara. What was his refusal? How could he refuse! That's not Lucius. Tell me quickly, my patience is getting low."
Sara swallowed, she looked nervous. "He said that he's not the Great Geneticist anymore."
So that's what it's about. His demotion to common Cork Town outlier.
"And?" Roman leaned forward on his desk.
"And that if it mattered so much to the Great Geneticist that this was sorted out, then it should be the Great Geneticist who lowered himself to ask for help. He shouldn't send a half-wit, low-level, cookie-cutter sequenced technician to be the picture of humility before him." She exhaled. "Those were his exact words."
So he saw through it. Maybe I could have seen that coming. He'd love to see me beg.
"Anything else?"
"No. I was not welcome to stay, so I left."
Roman sighed. "Disappointing, Sara. Speak of this to no one. Dismissed."
Sara turned and left without another word.
Roman rubbed his forehead.
I guess I'm going to Cork Town.
"You've got some gall." Lucius had barely opened the door.
"Hello, Lucius. Nice to see you too."
"I didn't think you'd come."
"It's been a long time."
"You've been comfortably promoted."
"You're still alive."
"Th
at's about all I am."
Roman shifted his weight. "May I come in?"
"I don't see why you'd want to."
"You know why I'm here."
"Not hard to guess once I sent that pony-ass girl flapping back to you. You thought just because she was R-type that I'd crumble? Become putty in her hands? You're out of touch, Roman. I thought you knew me better."
There was no point trying to cover it up with Lucius, that wouldn't help him get what he needed.
"Bad call, right?"
"Very. Now in addition to being flabbergasted by the liberties you've taken since stealing my job, I'm also offended. That doesn't bode well for your asking for favors."
Roman held his hands in the air. "I won't say any differently, Lucius. We're beyond that now. Not that it's easy for me to say. Don't take it lightly. Having to show my credentials at the entry to Cork Town was humbling enough."
"The Guard didn't accompany you?"
"I didn't want them to know I was coming."
"And the checkpoint didn't let the Great Geneticist slide his way in?"
"They didn't recognize me."
"Ah, that must have been awkward."
Roman gave a little laugh. Lucius had not changed at all. "Please, may I come in?"
Lucius opened the door. "Since you said please."
"It's the incubates." Roman looked for somewhere to sit. A folding chair was against the wall. He brought it to the table and sat down.
"Have a seat, why don't you."
"Lucius, I don't have a lot of time."
"You had time to send me the girl. She already explained your not-so-little problem, remember?"
"The behavior is all off-track. We're going to lose Willing Women over it. Housemothers are at a loss. If we don't do something soon, the error will become very public knowledge. So far no one has put it together but - "
"Error? Developing thousands of fetuses in incubation who were designed for womb birth is an 'error'? How many of them are there?"
"Fourteen thousand."
"Fourteen thousand? I can't be hearing you correctly."
"We went straight to scale. Births are on a rolling basis. We're preparing for several contingents."
