Ectopia (13 page)

- This time is special to you.

Now the words matched the button lips of the Mom on the right.

- We love you.

The Mom on the left.

- We care for you.

The Mom near the right.

- Like mothers.

The voice stayed the same. Always the same. Bender stared at one Mom, then another. Each one he looked at was the one who was speaking. He asked a question.

- I'm a prisoner?

- You think we want to keep you here?

Bender stared from left to right. The voice stayed the same, and all the Moms' mouths moved in time with it.

- Who's talking?

- We have no who. We're of one mind. Nothing parts us, nothing comes between us. It's a fact of our existence. You don't need to understand it. Choose a face. Focus on one of us if it's easier for you. Turn and stare at your mother if you prefer. Her lips won't move but these words you hear are her words too. This is also her voice.

The near left Mom, one of the black ones, had sticky ginger hair. Bender focused on her.

- Am I a prisoner?

- Do you want to stay here?

- No.

- Then you are free to go. We wanted to look at you. Your mother wanted to look at you. That's one reason you're still here. Don't be embarrassed. Your mother understands. She knows what's happened to you. She accepts. She welcomes the news.

- What news?

- You're going to be a parent, Steven.

- I'm not Steven. You warped Steven. Here in Cromozone. You did something to him. You warped him so he doesn't exist. What did you do?

- You're going to be a parent, Bender.

- No way. I'm not a breeder. You want sperm go jack off Paul. He's got the breeding gene, not me.

- We're talking parenting not breeding. A special kind of parenting. You will be parent to a special child. Her life depends on you as your life depends on her. Maybe all our lives depend on her. When you go you'll take her with you. That's our promise. She's not yet a fetus. That's much too soon. She's an embryo.

- She?

- A daughter. Your child is a daughter.

- Daughters are history.

- Steven is history. You're Bender now. You've changed the world.

- The world's fucked.

- Nothing was fucked, Bender. Your mother gave birth to the last girl born of a human. You will give birth to the next. A woman of the Council gave the egg, inseminated by the donation of a high-order pre-degenerate male, that will grow into this very next girl. The embryo is female. You will parent a daughter. That much we know. The rest is speculation. We have changed the conditions of your daughter's physical birth. No womb can ever reject her because she will never enter a womb. Should she be brought to term we hope she will bear daughters of her own. Think of the possibilities, Bender. Your child may grow to be the ancestor of the rest of the human race.

- Let me out.

- You want to leave?

- Let me out.

The doorway slid open. Doc Drake was standing in the corridor outside.

- Our prayers are with you, Bender. Your mother's prayers are with you.

Doc Drake looked at the glass wall. Bender looked too. The wall was blank.

- They let you see them? the doc asked. His eyes shone wide.

- See em? Blobby as clouds and wide as horizons? Sure I saw em.

- They spoke with you?

- One voice. One sick lying voice between em.

- They don't lie. They never lie. They never speak to men. They never let men see them. This is special, Steven.

- Who's Steven?

- Bender. It's special. That was the council.

- They're just like Mom. Ex-Steven's ex-Mom.

- They've adopted her. She's joined them. One mind, Bender. One female controlling mind that runs all of Cromozone. This place is a birth factory. The world got screwed. This place is one single experiment to set the whole world right. You see these wires leading from your Mom's head?

The doc walked across to run a hand through the air around the wires. The door was unblocked. Bender could run. Run till they bothered to chase his little green bleep down on their map.

He had nowhere to run.

- Your Mom's connected to the neural network that keeps this whole place running. She is its principle feminizing agent. Each fetus that grows in this place, animal and human, reverberates to the sound of your mother's heartbeat. Now it's your turn, Bender. It's your turn to carry that heartbeat into the world.

- I can go?

- They told you everything?

- They told me nothing. Only lies. I'm no breeder. I'm Bender.

- You're to be a parent.

- They said that. They lied.

- They never lie.

- Everything lies. Everything that speaks lies. Lies are why people speak.

- You're going to be a parent. The parent of a baby girl. It's in embryo form already.

- Then give it me. Those women who never lie said I can have it. Said I can take it with me. I want it. I want it now.

- You've got it, Bender.

- It's here?

The doc didn't answer. Bender checked the room. It had no furniture. Just ex-Mom and her cushions.

- Where is it? At the end of her wires?

Bender moved across the room and reached up to snatch the wires back from their sockets near the ceiling. The doc was quicker. He swiped Bender's hand from the air and pinned it behind his back.

- You've got it. Don't you understand? Didn't they explain it to you? You've already got it.

Bender relaxed his body. The doctor released the grip on his arm.

- Where?

Bender patted his slinksuit down, held out his arms.

- Where? In these pumps? Tucked under the soles of my feet? Fucking where?

- It's inside you, Bender. The embryo is attached to the lining of your stomach.

- How?

- It was a very minor operation.

Bender dug his fingers in beneath the slinksuit's collar. The black material stretched wide as he pulled it down one shoulder then the other, pulled his arms free of it and rolled it down his chest. Over his stomach. He stroked a finger over a tiny white pinprick of a scar just to the right of his navel.

The stitches have melted, the doctor explained – It's healed. Even that scar should vanish when you get some sun on it.

- You've stuck an embryo inside my stomach?

- Not inside the stomach. We've implanted an embryo and placenta into the abdominal cavity just under the peritoneum, the stomach lining. It's attached itself to your stomach. The fertilized egg produces enzymes which allow it to feed there. It's tapping into your blood vessels.

- Fuck sake why? I'm seventeen. I'm male. What have I done?

- Your twin's a girl. The last girl born of a woman. You followed her, Bender. Steven was the last boy born in the old world.

- You got it. The last boy. Karen's the last girl. She's the one with a womb. Get someone to fuck her. Fuck her yourself.

- Any resulting child would be a boy.

- You got something against boys?

- I'm a scientist. I'm out to save the world. The world needs girls.

- This embryo's female. Take it out. Take it out of me and stick it in Karen. Stick it in her womb.

- We've tried. You saw them. Saw the women in their cells. We've got hundreds more like them throughout the building. Hundreds of women with female embryos in their wombs. Every one of them will miscarry. We keep on trying, keep chasing the offchance, but statistics are against us. They stack higher against us every day. Natural wombs reject female offspring. It's not a fact, we've discovered no scientific basis for it, but it happens every time without exception. Women want to give birth to daughters. Women's bodies refuse to do so. Women's bodies reject the possibility of bringing more of their own kind into this world. We've got to break that chain.

- You're making me into a woman?

- You're a young man, Bender. It's why this might work.

- Why what might work?

- Why you might carry a female child to term. Opposites attract. A male won't reject a female. The chain will be broken. A female born of a male might bear daughters of her own. We cannot rule out the possibility.

- You're a doctor. You know better than that. Men have no wombs. They can't bear children.

- Things change. You were in the womb room, Bender. You saw female fetuses growing in artificial wombs.

- You're saying I've got an artificial womb?

- I'm saying more things are possible than you know. No-one believed in artificial wombs but they were in development even before you were born. They were my own specialty in fact. I was a research psychiatrist specializing in the emotional constructs of alternative pregnancies. Artificial wombs would offer women lifestyle choices, their pregnancy occurring in a controlled environment while they continued their working lives. In the days of health cover, insurance companies were preparing to make artificial wombs their preferred birth environment. The fetus could grow in laboratory conditions with no risk whatsoever to the mother's life. Neither mother nor baby need face the trauma of birth for birth becomes trauma-free. Such was the theory. Artificial wombs were the stuff of vast research grants. No sustainable life has ever emerged from one, and I'm guessing none ever will. We're out of time. But to answer your question, no. You don't have an artificial womb. With you the process is entirely natural.

Bender stabbed a finger at his scar.

- You call this natural?

- The growth of an embryo outside of the womb through fetus to birth is a natural process.
It's rare but it has always happened in women. The fertilized egg takes the wrong passage out of the fallopian tube and exits in the abdomen instead of the uterus. It's called an abdominal ectopic pregnancy. The possibility of male pregnancy has existed for decades but has never to my knowledge been brought to effect. It increases rather than decreases the dangers and discomforts of birth. The incitement of male ectopic pregnancies had no rational basis in science. Till now. Till you.

- You're saying I'm pregnant?

Bender's brain hit rewind. He saw images from Karen's anthead visor. Saw the bloodied mess of an infant pulled from the wound in its parent's stomach.

The doc was quick. He caught Bender before he hit the floor.

 

- Guess that was all news to you, huh? the doc said as Bender came round. Someone had slipped his arms back through the sleeves of his slinksuit.

They were still in the room with ex-Steven's ex-Mom as its centerpiece. She faced the window, her sealed eyes fixed on the sky. Bender tried to move. The more he tried the tighter he was bound. Straps held him to the seat of a slipcart. The seat was built for a fleshblob. Bender sat on half the seat, the doc on the other.

- Relax, Bender. You fainted. You're in shock. I've administered a mild sedative. Some wave of calm should be sweeping through you. Find it. Relax. You remember this type of constraint? The more you relax, the looser the straps become. Your body's been moving faster than your mind. You're in shock. You need time to understand. Time for your brain to catch up with the situation.

Bender tried to fling himself to one side, so his weight would bring the slipcart to the ground. The straps clutched him still tighter against the seat.

- I'll kill myself, Bender said – That what you think? You let me go and I'll kill myself? Kill myself to get rid of this thing in my stomach? Too right. That's what I'll do. I'll kill myself.

- No you won't, the doc replied – You get your flash intuitions. They're all well and good, but here in Cromozone we adopt more professional techniques of foretelling the future. We use psychological and genetic profiling. You're rare for your age, Bender. You show no disposition toward suicide. Let me tell you what you will actually do when we release you. You'll go home and sort some things out then return to us here. You'll be met at the gates and transported somewhere special. I can't tell you more. Even I don't know. Your destination is a council directive. You'll bring this child to term if at all possible, and you'll survive if at all possible.

- You say it's attached to my stomach …

- It's an abdominal ectopic pregnancy. Such a condition is dangerous but you're strong. In good health. You stand a chance of survival.

- It's a parasite. I'll get it cut out.

- It's your child. Your daughter.

- It's sick. A sickness. I'll get it cut out.

- Who'll do it?

- My sister. Karen. She's got the fiberoptics. She's been trained.

- She's trained for delivery from abdominal ectopic pregnancies, Bender. Not for abortion.

- She'll do it. She'll cut it out.

- Fine. Your decision. Nothing's being forced on you, Bender.

- Ha.

- Nothing more. Nothing else. You're free. You have to be free. It's a council directive. Bring your sister with you when you come.

- I'll never come.

- OK. If you get what you think is a better idea then act on it. We won't stop you. We'll simply track you.

- I'm outta here.

- Are you going to say goodbye to your mother?

Bender looked round at the mound of flesh and wires that sat and soaked up the windowlight. He tried to speak twice. Words stuck in his throat like lumps of fat before he gulped down the pain and managed to speak.