Genus6

by Meg Buchanan

  Mum traces the streaks of colour in the marble countertop pattern with her finger. “You need to tell Amon and whoever else was with you, to get rid of that app.”

  I nod.

  “It’s important,” she says.

  I nod again and hope for Amon’s sake his father is still pretending he hasn’t connected things up like Mum has, and that he hasn’t checked Amon’s Com himself. Or that Amon has already had the sense to delete it.

  Mum stands, moves to my side of the counter and puts her arms around me; I rest my head on her shoulder. “Did they do DNA tests?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  Mum sighs again, lets me go and takes an apple out of the fruit bowl. She polishes it a bit. It comes from my grandfather’s farm. He sends us food every month.

  “You can’t keep getting into trouble like this, Ela, it’s dangerous. Remember, sweet and Elite.”

  “I know but it’s so boring.”

  “But it’s important, you have to act like the other girls and not stand out. I’m in Paris next week, so I’m not going to be here to protect you if Amon’s dad can’t make this right. You need to go and stay with Jacob while I’m away.”

  “Okay.” I like staying with my grandfather. My tablet lights up. I pull it across the countertop toward me so I can read it and brush my fingers across the screen. ‘Ela, where are you?’ asks the tablet.

  Then messages from Amon just keep coming.

  ‘Sorry I left.’

  ‘Dad would have killed me.’

  ‘Sorry I left.’

  ‘Are you all right.’

  “Sorry I didn’t stay.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  I ignore them.

  Mum sits there, then after a while she stands up. “I’ve got something for you.” She walks over to the bookcase in the corner and opens a small box sitting there. The Vid in the sky outside the apartment slides to text, ‘Humicrib, the Cradle of the World’ it claims.

  Mum picks up some envelopes sitting in the box, puts them on the bookshelf, then takes out a small thumb drive.

  “This is a message for you.”

  “Who from?” Nobody I know would use technology that old. “Is it part of a game?”

  “No, Thomas made this before he died. He asked me to give it to you when I thought you would be old enough to understand.”

  “Dad left me a message?”

  Mum nods and gives me the thumb drive. The drive is small and flat, about the size of a leaf and iridescent like paua shell. It has a loop at the end so it can hang from a chain. I stroke the surface and feel the ridge where the cap edge joins the cover.

  “Do you know how this works?” Mum asks.

  I take the cap off the small memory stick and look at the USB. “Yes, I know, lucky my tablet is old enough to have a USB port. I can’t believe Dad left me a message.”

  “Listen to it in your room,” says mum quietly. “Make sure your tablet is off the intranet and make sure the shields are up.”

  I nod. That’s my mum, she’s as bad as Jacob. Always worrying about being spied on. Jacob’s favourite saying is, walls have ears.

  I put the cap back on the small thing in my hand. I’ll hear Dad’s voice again. “Don’t you want to listen too?” I curl my fingers around the drive.

  Mum smiles. “I have my own message. Thomas made this one for you.” Then she looks serious. “Only listen to it when you know there’s no surveillance. Keep it safe.”

  ****

  Henry and Charlie Willis’s morning routine set them up for the day. Get up, get dressed, go down to the dairy, get a pie for breakfast and then go to the pub for a beer to wash it down. Today wasn’t any different.

  Standing outside the dairy, holding the pies, the thick golden pastry flaking out the tops of the white paper bags, steaming in the morning coolness, beguiling and threatening at the same time, but sure to burn if you couldn’t wait for that first bite.

  Across the road they noticed Fraser come out of the pub. They always noticed Jack Fraser. He’d been a problem since they were at college and was a bigger problem now.

  “He’s going to work,” said Charlie.

  “Probably,” said Henry. Tempting to follow the arsehole, but he hadn’t finished his breakfast, and Vincent would be here at any moment. Fraser would keep.

  They stood for a while longer, folding the paper bags down as they made progress through the pies.

  Breakfast finished, Henry scrunched his bag into a small ball, Charlie took it and put both bags into the grey rubbish bin on the edge of the footpath. They headed across the road.

  It took a while for their eyes to adjust to the gloom of the pub. Henry looked into the private bar, Vincent had just walked in, the scary bastard.

  Vincent stared, then beckoned for them to come over.

  “I want progress,” he said in an undertone, “Do you understand? I’ll meet you here again tomorrow night, and you’d better know where it is, or I’ll have to do something about you.” He stood looking at them for a moment like he wanted to let the threat sink in and then turned and left the bar.

  Henry ordered a beer each. If there was any way they were going to avoid going to jail, they needed a new plan.

  Chapter 3

  I sit on my bed, slide the memory stick into the USB port, and a Vid file opens. The small icon spreads out, slowly the hologram forms and there’s my dad. It’s like seeing a ghost, except he looks real.

  He reaches, adjusts the focus on the ImageMaker, then smiles directly at me, and I realise I look like him. Mum and Dad must have chosen that.

  He pauses for a while as if he’s thinking about what to say, and then starts to speak. “Hi Ela.” He pauses again and smiles sadly. “I’m in hiding, and I don’t think it’ll be safe to try and see you or your mother so I’m leaving you this message. If you’re watching this, I guess I’ve missed all the years it’s taken for you to grow up. But I can imagine how you look, tall and slim like your mother, but with my colouring, the grey eyes and black hair. Am I right?”

  I nod as if he can see me, even though I know he can’t. He looks down and reads the notes he has in his hand, then he looks up. “I know your mum will have done what we planned and so you’ve grown up in the City, it’s the only way to keep you safe. But she has promised to make sure you keep in contact with your grandfather.”

  Dad looks down at the notes, then up again. “In the next few days, either I’ll escape and go to Australia where Mike Fraser is, he was lucky he got out in time, or I’ll be dead. I don’t have time to explain it all, just some of it. If there’s anything you don’t understand, go and see Dad and ask him to explain it to you. I don’t know what they will have taught you about the history of the Quarantine but years ago when the UN closed the country to rest of the world, they said it was to protect the population. We were one of the few nations in the world still able to have children. Already there had been stories of children being snatched and smuggled away. The Quarantine seemed like a good thing. Nothing would be allowed to contaminate New Zealand. The UN put an Elite team of research scientists, doctors and administrators into the country to assist our scientists and keep us safe. That is how I met your mum; she was part of that team, and I was a research scientist already working on what had happened. I hoped we could stop it happening to us.”

  I pause the Vid for a moment. It’s strange Dad telling me about the history of the Quarantine. I already know all that. We get taught about it at school. And I’ve heard the story of how Mum and Dad met heaps of times. But it’s nice to hear it again. I start the Vid and Dad keeps talking.

  “At first the Quarantine worked, the first Commissioner oversaw our protection and the population lived in peace. I thought the Quarantine would give my team time to discover why we could still have children when no one else could. But the answer eluded us. When your mother and I married, we gave up our work and went to live on the farm with y
our grandfather. Then you were born. We hadn’t thought it would be possible because your mother is Elite, but we had a beautiful baby girl.”

  I pause the Vid. I was born? No that can’t be right. Dad must mean they got me from Humicrib. Mum is Elite, and the Elite can’t have children anymore. I start the Vid again.

  Dad smiles into the Imagemaker. “I started to look at all the things that might’ve made it possible for your mother to conceive when nobody else from her country could.”

  I pause it again. Stunned. I’m a Natural? I can’t be a Natural. Nobody in the City is a Natural. Only Locals are. But why would Dad say it if it isn’t true? I carry on watching the Vid and listen to what Dad is telling me.

  “Two years ago, I found the answer and wrote a paper about it. After that I found I had become an enemy of the Administration. I discovered it was a dangerous thing to know that answer. It was then I realised the people in charge already knew it and would do anything to stop the rest of the world finding out.”

  I remember that for a while before he died, Dad seemed worried. That must have been what he was worrying about. Poor Dad. I keep watching.

  “At about that time, the old Commissioner was replaced, and the Quarantine changed. A barrier was built around the City where the Administration was based, the UN Team became ‘the Elite”, the Vector Guards were given more power, and after a while the rules imposed on us became more and more difficult to live with.”

  Well, I know about that. I know about the rules and how hard they are to stick to. Maybe this is why Mum, and Jacob are so worried when I break them. I’m a secret. I go back to watching Dad’s message.

  “We had been taken over; we were prisoners in our own country. Some of us started to fight back but any resistance was handled brutally and efficiently. I worked against the Administration and it has brought me to here, a fugitive who probably won’t survive tonight.”

  So, Dad was part of the Resistance? I’m almost sure Jacob is too and that is what the walls have ears, thing is all about. He is worried about the Administration finding out about him and what he is doing. Now Dad is frowning and leaning into the ImageMaker. His voice is quieter but more urgent somehow.

  “Go to the farm Ela and talk to Dad. He knows what happened. But be careful, the Commissioner is in league with Eugenics Corp, I think he may be one of the owners. Transgenics and Humicrib are subsidiaries of the Eugenics Corp empire. Eugenics Corp is rich and powerful and ruthless. Its wealth is tied to Genus6 and you are the proof there is a solution to the problems with Genus6. You are the answer.”

  Suddenly there is a loud noise in Vid, a crashing, and Dad looks behind him, then back at me.

  “There’s no more time, I have to go. Remember how much I love you and your mother, and I wish things were different. Take care.” Dad’s face looks sad, smiles at me, then he reaches forward and turns the ImageMaker off. He fades back and disappears until all that is left is a small square icon on the screen of the tablet.

  I’m still stunned. How come I didn’t know all that? I’m sixteen, surely someone would have told me that I was a Natural? I know what Genus 6 is, everyone does, it’s the seed they make the biofuel out of, but I didn’t know there was a problem with it. And I am the proof and the answer to the problem, that’s what Dad said.

  I touch the screen, slowly the icon grows and becomes my father again. I want Dad to tell me more. I watch the message three times, but it finishes in the same way, the crash behind Dad and him turning the machine off. There’s no more. I shut the Vid off, take the memory stick out of the tablet, put the cover back on, fish in a drawer, find a silver chain and slide the thumb drive onto it beside a small silver flower.

  I hang it around my neck and wonder if Mum has watched the Vid and how often and then remember Mum has her own Vid to watch. Maybe it will tell me more. I could ask Mum.

  I re-enter the intranet. The tablet flashes.

  ‘Sorry I left, love Amon,’ it says. I ignore it. I lay down ready to sleep and pull the duvet around me and think about the message, and Dad, and my grandfather. Actually, I call him Jacob like Mum does. When I was just learning to talk, Mum would say, ‘Ela, here comes Granddad on his motorbike.’

  I’d run out to the gate. ‘Jacob, give me a ride,’ I’d say, and he’d lift me onto his lap and ride back to the shed.

  Mum says she wouldn’t let that happen now; she didn’t realise how dangerous it was.

  But then she’d say, ‘Say thank you to Granddad, Ela.’

  I’d say, ‘Thank you, Jacob.’

  ‘Granddad,’ Mum would say.

  In the end, Jacob said, ‘Let the kid be. If she wants to call me Jacob, that’s fine. Everyone else does.’

  I think he liked having this little kid following him around puppylike, saying Jacob this, Jacob that.

  Then there’s a knock on my bedroom door.

  “Come in.”

  Mum opens the door. “Jacob is expecting you this afternoon,” she says.

  “I’m going to the farm straight away?”

  Mum nods. “Get ready, and I’ll sort out your papers.” Usually we aren’t allowed outside the City limits, but Mum can sometimes make the rules bend.

  That was quick. I get changed and pack ready to leave. Mum looks at the way I’m dressed and shakes her head. Mum never likes the heavy red boots. She always tries to get me to be more feminine, and dress like the other girls. To be less of a tomboy.

  “At least I’m wearing a skirt,” I point out. “And I’ve straightened my hair and put makeup on.” I even have crystals spilling down one cheek like teardrops the way Izzy sometimes does. I did it to please her mum and I’ve packed girl clothes for the same reason. It’s really only window dressing; my farm clothes are at Jacob’s.

  Mum smiles. “You look lovely,” she says and kisses me on the cheek.

  On the edge of the City, I stop at the checkpoint. The guard from the Vector Force looks at my papers.

  “Ela Hennessey?” he asks. “Going to Paeroa?”

  I nod and wait, twisting the edge of my cloak in my fingers. The guard calls it in and checks the records, but he doesn’t spend long over it. He knows not to question an authorisation on a Vector card. He touches a screen, and the barrier slides away. Raindrops make a pattern on his uniform. The Humicrib babies march across the sky through a field of Genus 6, text slides around them, Welcome to New Eden, the Cradle of the World.

  ****

  Vincent looked up from the report he was reading as Kane came into their office at the Outpost.

  “Something you might be interested in, boss,” said Kane and his Lieutenant handed Vincent a tablet. “A couple of things picked up by that Intercept you asked for.”

  “The Hennessey Intercept?”

  “Yeah.”

  Vincent glanced at the report. “Why would I be interested in some kids racing trolleys?”

  “Look at the name.”

  “Ela Hennessey?”

  “Yeah, now look at the mother’s reaction to her getting arrested.”

  Vincent slid to the next Intercept.

  Doctor Hennessey - Can Ela come to the farm and stay with you for a while?

  Jacob Hennessey - Is there a problem?

  Doctor Hennessey - Yes. She’s in trouble she got herself arrested by Vector.

  Jacob Hennessey - Is she in custody?

  Dr Hennessey - No, she’s home, but I have a conference next week so I won’t be here to protect her if things go wrong. Can she stay with you? I want to make sure she’s safe.

  Jacob Hennessey - Send her here for as long as you need to, I’ll look after her.

  “Interesting,” said Vincent. “Bit of an overreaction from the mother. Has the kid gone?”

  “Yeah, I pulled up the records at the barrier; she went through an hour ago.”

  Chapter 4

  Jack Fraser, that’s me, farm worker, mug and bloody babysitter. I get to work Friday morning. It’s pouring with rain, and I’m sloshing through the
mud. Jacob must have heard me arrive. He comes over and leans back against the fence rail, face wrinkled like a walnut shell, eyes peering at me from under his hat, and tells me about this babysitting job.

  I tell him, “No way.”

  Jacob looks irritated, the way he usually does if I don’t fall straight into line. “Ela won’t be any trouble. She’ll just tag along,” he says.

  I’ve heard that before. Ela used to follow me around all day. She was ten, I was twelve, and our dads were mates. I’d get stuck with looking after her while they were off doing stuff.

  “The kid tagging along again, that’s all I need. I’m not doing it,” I say.

  “I pay your wages. You’ll do as you’re told,” says Jacob.

  “You pay me to work on the farm, not to entertain your relatives.” And anyway, I’m off females at the moment.

  “It’s only for two weeks, and how long since you’ve seen her?”

  “Five, maybe six years, just before Vector got her old man.”

  “She’s grown up a bit since then.”

  “Yeah, grown up in the City. I can see how this will go. Me starting her bike, me picking it up, me opening gates, her sitting in the way.” This morning I got a message from Katie, my girlfriend. Going hunting with Nick last weekend instead of going to Katie’s party was a mistake, especially when I didn’t bother to let her know. Actually, I thought I was going to be able to fit both things in. I opened the message expecting a ‘where were you,’ type question. Instead it’s all, ‘let’s stay friends but I need to concentrate on my studies right now’.

  I’d been dropped. I hadn’t seen her for a few weeks, but I hadn’t expected to get dropped. I guess taking second place to hunting again was more than Katie could stand.

  Jacob tugs at the brim of his hat. Raindrops roll off it. “You know Ela can handle a bike. And I’m serious. Your job is to be with her if I’m not.”