Ectopia (24 page)

He's picked a bundle of salad and brings it in two fistfuls to wave in the water of the pond, cleaning it of soil. Now's the time to ask him for my lie.

- You know better than that, I tell him – You had me on the flatbed scanner. You know my stomach took a real blow. It was a hellhole inside there. The blow nearly killed me. You know nothing as fragile as an embryo would have survived. Your plan's over doc. I'm giving birth to nothing. You get that, don't you? You've gone and built a playground, but I'm not going to play.

He nods back along the direction of the path. The dust of our run has settled back down.

- You ran well, he says – You were fast. Just like the Bender of old. There didn't seem much wrong with you. When was this blow you're talking about?

- Yesterday.

- You're sure of that? You lost consciousness, Bender. It wasn't worth the trouble of bringing you round. Whatever we let you see of our procedures you'd swear it wasn't true. We kept your consciousness on hold and treated your body with microsurgery. We did well, as you've just discovered in running. You're a healthy animal. Surprisingly but pleasingly the embryo implant has held. It's secured itself to a blood supply and is developing normally. Your daughter's going to make it, Bender. She's a fighter.

It's a lie. It has to be. I know it in my gut. My head goes faint. I fall to my knees and churn the lie out of my system. Vomit spews from my mouth and coats the grass. The sound startles the ducks. They flap their wings but they're not designed for flight. The flapping helps em keep balance as they scramble their webbed feet onto the bank. They run quacking over the grass rim and onto bare earth.

- Not to worry, the doc says – Nausea's to be expected. You'll get over it. Come back to the van as soon as you're recovered. I'll have that meal ready for us all.

He goes and I crawl to the pondside and stare at my reflection. The image of me stares back. I look normal.

That's not a lie. It can't be.

I dip in my hands to wash the image away and carry water up to my face. It feels good. I stick my whole head underwater, then slide my body in after it.

 

I work my way round from the pond, along the far edge of the planted garden. The slinksuit steams dry in the heat, the skypumps too. Beyond the garden the ground is dust.

One logic to the planting is that everything is within easy carrying reach of the water from the pond. The spur of plants along the path is high enough to form a shield if I bend when I walk. I hear voices. Malik and Karen are up and out of the van. It sounds like they're settled, probably seated around the picnic table. In the music of their conversation the doctor's voice is a low rumble, Malik's is somewhere above that, and Karen's voice is low for a girl but still high. I can't make out the words.

I lie on my back, on the dust but close enough to the not-sunflowers to keep the insects at bay. The sky's still beige as much as blue but I guess it's cleaner than in town. I stayed underwater in the pond as long as I could before bursting up and gasping at air, but now my chest feels tighter even than that. My heart's a rock that thinks it can breathe. It squeezes out a sharp thin pulse. My twin and my mate are in earshot, sitting round a picnic table.

It's simple, strolling over to check in with em, kickstarting whatever this new life is. Hey, we all got through. Let's celebrate.

It should be easy to do that.

But it's not.

My heart's not hurting for the thrill of reunion. It's not busting itself in excitement. It's something else. I've never had this sense before but I've felt it in others. I've seen inside a drek as teensquad was closing in, after the drek's run for his life and run and run and found his life's not there. The sense there's everything to run for but nothing to run to so in the end all you've got is the running and you've no heart left to run. That sense.

Before mice became extinct in the wild people made traps. Inside the traps they put cheese or best of all chocolate. Mice loved chocolate. They'd run in to take a nibble, what's so wrong with that, a mouse has got to eat, then wham. A wire bar slammed down to break the creature's spine. Doc Drake calls this place Eden. It's filled with wonderful things. It has plants and salad and ponds and ducks and insect-free zones. Listen to him now. The good doctor's installing my best mate and my twin sister in this wonderland of his.

I know what Eden means. This place isn't Eden. It's a trap. That's all it is. If the trap's as big as a world then the world's not big enough.

- Bender?

It's a low voice. The voice of Doc Drake. Not even shouting. He knows I'm close enough to hear. The trap's calling.

- Finish admiring those sunflowers and come and join us. Dinner's ready.

I stand up, see em through the flowers, and step forward. Malik pushes his chair back and runs toward me. He's smiling.

- Hiya, freak, he says.

He hugs me, then holds my shoulders to stand back and inspect what he sees.

- You're looking good, Bender. Not bad for a freak.

He holds the flat of his hand to my stomach and rubs it around.

- The doctor's told us the news. Says you're doing fine. They showed me round the Technosheds in Cromozone. I'm clued in, Bender. It's cool. Babies are cool. You've got to feel weird but it'll end. You'll be yourself again. We'll take care of you. No worries.

He takes my arm and leads me to the table. Pulls out my chair then pushes it in as I sit down. The doc piles salad onto my plate. Karen stares at me.

- It's a lie, I tell her.

- Yeah, she says – Like I've not seen the scans. Like I don't know your abdominal wall better than my own navel. Like I don't know your abdominal wall better than anyone's ever known any abdominal wall in history. You know what strikes me as a lie, Bender? That you never told me. That you saw me struggling through all those ectopic delivery programs and didn't let on what it was all for. It would have made it a hell of a lot easier to carry on if I'd known what was at the end of it. If I'd known I'd be delivering my own niece. My own part-sister. I've told Mom by the way. She's OK with it. She's OK with everything. She just sits there pumping out love and OKness.

- You haven't seen Mom, I tell her.

She takes it as a question, like we're having a conversation with questions and answers that all add up.

- I've just left her. About an hour ago. I said goodbye, got changed, and they brought me here. Mom sends her love.

- You've been here all the time. Both of you. You've been drugged and lying on tables in the van. I stood and watched you. The only trip you've been on is a braintrip. Ask him. Ask the doctor. He admits it. You've been hooked up to some psychomanaged dream program. It's all a lie. Everywhere you think you've been, everything you think you've seen, it's a lie.

Karen looks away from me, like she's embarrassed.

- Is Mom still staring out the window? I ask. It's a test.

- She faces the window. She doesn't stare though. Her eyes are shut. They've swollen like the rest of her, bulbous eyes that have rolled her eyelids out of sight. She faces the window and her eyes have swollen shut but she sees plenty. She sees you.

- You know that's a lie.

- She doesn't so much see you, Steven, as see where you are. She sees through your eyes. The whole women's council is tuned in through your eyes. You're their world, little brother. You're their future.

- No-one can see through someone else's eyes, I say.

I catch Doc Drake's stare. He's going to do it again. He's going to blank out my vision and make me see through his.

Then he changes his mind. The stare was enough. He's reminded me of what's possible.

- Believe it or not, those women do see through your eyes, Karen says – Mom sees through your eyes. Whatever you look at is what she sees. She's praying for your daughter, Bender. Her mouth's swollen but I see the lips move. It keeps her alive as she keeps hope alive. She's praying for your daughter and the future of the world.

- Mom tell you all this, did she? She suddenly got lucid and spouted this crap?

- They wired me in to the council's vision. Just for a while. I saw through your eyes. I saw as you looking at me as I lay on the table in the van. Mom held me in her arms and my heart beat in rhythm with hers as we looked down on her daughter. We both looked down on me. Don't tell me what's real, Bender. I feel what's real. I'm not wrong.

Karen gives me her wide-eyed stare. Her focus must be crap for her eyes are full of tears but she doesn't need focus. Storms don't need focus, they're just broad and high and knock you flying. Karen collects her tears so she can wash me with em. Flood me with em. She uses wet eyes to show that she's right and I'm wrong.

I stare her out. She doesn't blink so her eyes dry in the end. She picks up a fork, spears a leaf of lettuce, pushes it in place with her knife, and then looks up again.

I stare back. My eyes never shifted while my hand picks up food. My mouth churns salad and my fingers roll the salad mixture into a thick wad and stuff it into my mouth. My Mom's in fat meltdown in an institution, my Dad's a psycho who burnt down my home and slaughtered my friends, I'm fucked if I'll sit here and show manners. I'm not domestic. I'm wild.

- That's gross, Karen says.

I flatten the rest of the salad against the plate with my fingers, lift the plate up, and slide it all into my mouth. Still staring at her over the edge of the plate.

- Glad you liked it, Doc Drake says. He reaches his own plate up from the ground and passes it across – Here. Finish mine. Maybe you can take a moment to appreciate the citrus dressing this time. Oranges, tangerines and limes have been grafted to grow on a single tree in your garden. Mixed together I find the pressed fruit adds a certain tang.

Malik stays quiet and watches but he's already taken sides. He's picked up his knife and fork. I let some of the chewed wad of leaves spill from the corners of my mouth as I speak.

– Everything in this garden's warped. That's not a plate of food in your hand, doctor. It's a bioengineering freakshow. Come on, Malik. Let's run.

- Where to?

- Out of here.

- We can't, Malik says – It's not allowed. This place is surrounded by a forcefield. They explained it to me in Cromozone. The perimeters are marked with orange flags that go luminous at night so you can't miss em in the dark. Three steps beyond the flag you come up against an electronic barrier. Reach that you get a shock. Try and run beyond that you get stunned. They've built this place up into a model of everything that's best on Earth, Bender. They call it Eden. The world out there gets more fucked every day but in here it can only get better. They're making new animals all the time. It's beautiful, Bender. It really is. They gave me two lambs to play with in the Technosheds. They're going to bring em here, Bender, and set em loose. Rabbits too. I sat in a pen full of baby rabbits. Everything we've fucked up in the world they're putting right here. Only here. You're carrying a daughter. She's going to grow up in paradise. This is as good as it gets, Bender. They've put up a barrier to protect it.

- You're a runner, Malik, I remind him – We do long distance. Pain sets in after an hour or so. You remember that? You remember what we do with it? We run through it. It hurts, hurts like your heart's being crushed and your brain's got cramp, then it all bursts open. You remember that? You kick your heels and the pain's gone, it's left behind you in the dust, the world opens in color and light and the breath of it all just fills you. We don't stop at the barriers, Malik. We don't stop at the pain. We run through it all. We always get to the other side. Are you coming?

- What do you think? he asks Karen – Do you want to explore?

I check for the sun and turn so it casts my shadow right in front of me. That's my direction. I'll aim to land on the shadow of my head with every stride. Keep on going till I'm outta here. Far away from where my mate asks my sister for advice.

- You explore, I tell em – I'll run. When you get bored, come and find me.

Doc Drake reaches for his palmpad and starts tapping at the keys.

- They've shown me the layout to this place, Malik says – I got to study it. They built a house and planted trees all around it. This place is so big you can't see it from here but I know where it is. Let's go there. Let's run till we find it.

- You've gone domestic, Mal? You?

I like to play a game with the sun on my back. I think of it as a power source. It burns my neck but it never burns me out, it just burns me faster. I use that power now. These skypumps are new ones, not the ones Malik borrowed. I feel em correcting as I stretch through the first steps of my run, remolding my soles to straighten my gait. Tussocks of grass stud the earth but the running's clear enough. My shadow forms my path. My tread reaches beyond it but the shadow extends as I come back down to earth with each step. I stop looking at the ground and look ahead.

I don't see much. Tears ache behind my eyes. I blink to let em loose. The hot air dries em to a stain on my cheeks as I run up a wind. I don't get sad but sometimes I cry. I cry to be running and alone. It's not me that's crying, it's just old life caught inside me. Tears and sweat are the same thing. Crying's just a way of sweating old life out of your system. Keep on running and those tears dry out in time. The way ahead goes clear.