[Incubation 01.0] Incubation Read online

  “Where are we? What is this place?”

  A man I haven’t seen before—Idris?—speaks. He looks to be three or four years older than we are, with hair as black as the girl’s, but longer, tied back in a ponytail. His irises are a light blue or gray, burning with intensity. “It was a brothel before the epidemic put Madame Lorraine out of business.” He gestures to the sole portrait hanging in the gallery, of a woman in a long tunic and flowing pants from the 2020s, a fluffy little dog on her lap. “We’re in Atlanta, never mind exactly where. You shouldn’t have brought them here,” he says to Saben, who followed me up the ladder.

  I study him in the light. He’s big—I knew that from holding onto him—with a deep chest and powerful-looking legs. I put his age at twenty or twenty-one. He’s got an air of quiet confidence that Idris's belligerence doesn’t ruffle. His blond hair falls over a broad forehead, but it’s his eyes that startle me. They’re golden—he’s geneborn!

  “They shouldn’t be here,” Idris says again.

  “Not your call, is it?” Saben replies evenly.

  “Only a matter of time,” Idris says.

  I don’t try to follow the by-play. Atlanta! My eyes widen. We’re here! I look around for Halla, to see if she heard. She’s climbing up from the tunnel. I can tell by the smile lighting her face that she did. The dark-haired woman appears behind her, snaps the trap door down, and pushes a small cabinet over it. She’s lithe, with short-cropped hair that sticks out around her oval face. A thin scar cuts through one winged eyebrow. She surveys us, arms crossed over her chest. She wears what looks like an IPF-issue camouflage jumpsuit of gray, tan, and brown, like Idris and Saben. There’s a tough edge to her beauty, as if it’s been refined by trials I can’t even imagine. I put her at about twenty because of her commanding air, but she could easily be older or younger.

  “Welcome to Bulrush,” she says.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Halla starts, Wyck whirls, and I stiffen at the word. Talk about out of the frying pan, into the fire. We’re in the lair of the man the swamp couple was going to sell Halla to. I don’t know who this Bulrush is, but I’m tired of being considered a commodity, tired of Halla having to worry that someone’s going to steal her baby and sell him on the black market. I’m ready to have it out with him.

  “Where is he?” I demand, stepping toward the dark girl.

  Her brows slice down. “Who?”

  “Bulrush.”

  She stares at me, dark eyes searching my face. “Bulrush isn’t a ‘who,’” she finally says. “It’s an organization.”

  That gives me pause. I’m not giving up, though. “Fine. Then who’s in charge?”

  “You know,” she says, “a thank-you wouldn’t hurt.”

  “For what? Stealing us away from those other outlaws so you can sell Halla’s baby instead? I’m not feeling the gratitude.”

  Idris starts forward. “Hey, that’s not—”

  The girl interrupts him. “You think Bulrush buys and sells women and babies, the way the Dravon brothers do? Did?” Her frown deepens.

  Idris makes a disgusted sound. “Of all the—”

  “Don’t you?” I challenge her. “Halla got ambushed in the swamp and they said they were going to sell her to you, to Bulrush, so don’t try to fool us. Look, let Halla go. She wants to find her boyfriend and raise the baby with him. Please.” I try to sound conciliatory. “I’ll stay. You can sell me, whatever you want. I’ll work for you—earn enough money to pay what you would have gotten for Halla’s baby.”

  “Everly, no!” Halla says.

  “Me, too,” Wyck says. “I’ll work as long as it takes.”

  “You are as stupid as you look,” the dark girl says coldly, eyeing me with disdain. “Look at you—too stupid to disguise yourself as a man, even though any idiot would know that a breeder age female is a target. Too vain to cut that sheet of platinum hair”—she flicks it with a knife that suddenly appears in her hand—“that amounts to a blond flag saying ‘Over here, over here!’ Too dense to recognize salvation when it’s staring you in the face. Or be grateful for it.”

  She looks like she wants to spit on me, and I’m chagrined at how stupid I’ve been. She’s right, but life in the Kube didn’t prepare me for the real world—not even close.

  A new voice comes from behind me. It’s rich and smoky with an unmistakable drawl. “Bulrush doesn’t sell young women or babies,” he says. “We help them escape. Think of us as a late twenty-first century Underground Railroad.”

  I tilt my head back to stare into the gallery where a man stands looking down at us. He seems tall from this angle, almost willowy, with silver streaks in brown hair, sunken cheeks and a haze of stubble on his cheeks. His resemblance to the woman in the portrait is marked: same aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and deep-set eyes. He starts down the stairs, stumbles, and recovers. I can’t tell if he’s ill or intoxicated.

  “And you’re Harriet Tubman, I presume?”

  He laughs. “Someone paid attention in history class. Not so stupid after all, eh, Fiere?” He’s shorter up close, not much taller than I am.

  “What about ‘free air’?” Wyck asks in a low voice.

  The girl’s hearing must be acute because she snaps, “It’s my name. Fee-AIR.” She strides toward a closed door. “Some of us have work to do.”

  It could have sounded petulant, but it doesn’t. I feel a sudden burning curiosity to know what kind of work Fiere—all of them—do. “Thank you,” I call after her.

  She acknowledges my thanks and implied apology with an uplifted hand, but doesn’t turn.

  Idris hesitates. “Don’t tell them too much,” he cautions the older man. “They might be working for the Prags.”

  “I’ve got this, Idris,” the man says mildly. “Help Casanova prep our passenger for the mission tonight.”

  It’s an order. Idris waits another beat, eyeing us distrustfully, then swings on his heel and leaves.

  “Introductions, I think, hm?” the man says, crossing to where Wyck, Halla and I have drawn together. “I’m Alexander Ford. Let’s sit.”

  Halla sinks into a love seat, Wyck leans against a sofa’s rolled arm with the stuffing poking out of it, and I pull up an ottoman. Alexander sits in a wing chair and lets out a small, pained sigh. He’s ill, I decide. When he’s settled, he looks at Wyck expectantly.

  “I’m Wyck.” He points to me. “Everly. Halla.”

  He says nothing else and I applaud his discretion. Until we know more about Alexander and Bulrush, I don’t want to share too much.

  Alexander nods, studying each of us in turn. “I won’t insult you by offering a history lesson. Let me just say that when the Pragmatists took over and it became clear that they were going to rebuild the population by deciding who could have children and who couldn’t, by conscripting young women to be surrogates, there was a cadre of us who disagreed with that approach. It might have been the expedient thing, and I know some of them thought it was the only way to ensure our nation survived, but it wasn’t ethical. The government shouldn’t get to decide who has children. Bearing children is a God-given right, not one the government has any business regulating. I’ll get off my soapbox now.” He gives a self-deprecating smile.

  “So. Those of us who split from the Pragmatists set out to help young women, couples, who wanted to bear their biological children and raise them themselves. We forged networks of people willing to help them move out of the eastern cantons to outposts. I’m the only one of that original group left, and I doubt I’ll be around this time next year.” He presses a hand to his side, wincing. “Sometimes we’re able to rescue pregnant women taken by opportunists by outbidding other buyers, and we have agents who make contact with people like the pair who caught you, Halla. We’ve helped more than four hundred women, and some men, escape with their babies.”

  “That’s where ‘Bulrush’ comes from,” Halla says with the excitement of figuring out a puzzle. “From the Bible. From the story of ba
by Moses being left in a basket in the bulrushes on the Nile and getting rescued by the pharaoh's daughter.”

  “Exactly.” Alexander smiles

  Four hundred doesn’t sound like a very big number to me, not over a period of many years. And even though Bulrush helped us and is going to help Halla, I can’t approve of what they’re doing. The government is working hard to re-build the population, and they know what talents and skills are needed to help us produce more food, re-engineer the nation’s infrastructure, take care of our sick, and the like. They are carefully manipulating DNA from a centralized selection of eggs and sperm for the development of geneborn children who will have the abilities to pull Amerada out of crisis, and growing those babies to term in the not-plentiful-enough wombs. I look at Halla. She doesn’t look perturbed; she’s focused on Alexander.

  “Can you help me?” she asks. “Me and Loudon?”

  “And Loudon is . . .?”

  “My boyfriend. He’s in the IPF, at Base Falcon.”

  “Halla,” Wyck warns.

  Alexander shoots him an amused look. “It’s all right, Wyck. I understand you don’t trust us yet, but it’s quite clear the three of you are from a Kube, probably Kube 9 since it’s the closest. You’re not geneborn and you’re on your own—sans parents—so I don’t think Halla was giving anything away when she mentioned the Kube. Tell me, is Proctor Fonner still in charge down there?”

  Fonner’s name sends an electric charge through me and I sit up straighter. “How do you know about Proctor Fonner?” I can’t keep the suspicion out of my voice.

  Alexander gives me the same gently amused smile he gave Wyck. “Oliver Fonner and I were at university together a lifetime ago. We started out in biology. I went into medicine and he left the sciences for a degree in public administration. I’m sure he’s a fine Supervising Proctor.” There’s an edge to his voice. “We haven’t talked in years. Decades.” The last word is a little wistful.

  “You’re a doctor?” Halla asks. "Can you deliver my baby?"

  "Lord willing and the volcano doesn't explode, as my aunt Lorraine used to say." He smiles.

  I can tell Halla’s ready to accept Alexander and Bulrush at face value for the opportunity to have a qualified doc present during Little Loudon’s birth. I’ve got reservations, but l keep them to myself for the time being.

  Saben’s voice intrudes. “Fiere asked me to bring this up.” He comes forward holding a glass half-full of a milky liquid.

  “I hate that stuff,” Alexander complains. He takes the glass and downs it with the air of a man drinking cyanide.

  “I know, but it helps.”

  Saben turns to us and I get the full effect of his gold eyes. “You’re geneborn,” I blurt. “What are you doing here, with these—” No polite word comes to mind. Smugglers? Scofflaws? “—activists?”

  Saben looks me over. His hair and eyes are almost the same shade of gold. “What’s to say I can’t be an activist?”

  “But you’re geneborn,” I repeat. “Privileged. You were given to a good family, went to the best schools. Are you a doctor, too? An engineer?”

  “No.” He retrieves the empty glass from Alexander and leaves.

  Alexander watches the interplay with interest. “All of us here have things we’d rather keep to ourselves.”

  It’s a gentle rebuke and I flush.

  Alexander struggles to rise and Wyck gives him a hand. “Thank you, Wyck. You must all be tired and you’d probably like a proper bath or shower.”

  “Oh, God, yes,” Halla breathes. “With soap. Next time I run away, I’m packing soap first.”

  We all laugh, and Alexander says, “Aunt Lorraine put a cistern on the roof after Hurricane Melba, so there’s running water. Don’t be profligate with it or we’ll have to do without until the next rain. Our electricity is supplied by solar panels installed almost forty years ago, so be conservative with that, too. You have the run of the house except for that wing.” He tilts his head toward the hallway running to the right. “The men’s dorm is upstairs to the left and the women sleep on the right. I’m afraid I haven’t the energy right now to show you myself.”

  “We can find it,” Wyck says.

  We trudge up the stairs and I suddenly realize how tired I am. Someone tied cement blocks to my feet when I wasn’t looking. Halla and I each hug Wyck at the top of the stairs before he disappears down the left hall. I watch him go with a feeling of loss, realizing this will be the first night we haven’t slept curled up together in weeks. It’s an odd feeling. I follow Halla to the right and offer her the first bath when the first room we look into is an old-fashioned hyfac with a claw-foot tub, chipped porcelain sink, and toilet that flushes with a lever and water. Strange. She immediately begins to strip.

  I wander further down the hall to a large open room with seven mattresses arrayed on the floor. Only four of them have sheets; the others have bedding neatly folded beside them. I assume Fiere uses one of the beds and wonder about the others. There’s a photo of two children, dark-eyed and dark-haired, on one pillow. I pick the mattress farthest away and flap the sheet over it. I lie down, intending to doze until Halla returns from her shower, and the next thing I know, I’m sound asleep.

  I wake with a start. I know immediately I’ve slept for hours. It feels like early afternoon, although the windows of this room are darkened, too, so I can’t use the sun as a guide. Halla is asleep on the next mattress, snoring softly. The other beds are empty. I tiptoe from the room to the hyfac, figure out the shower, and plunge under the stream. It’s only lukewarm, but I don’t care. There are soap, shampoo, and depilatory on a ledge and I use them all. Keeping in mind Alexander’s warning, I’m out within three minutes, smelling like the lavender-scented shampoo. I suspect it’s been here since the house was a brothel.

  I wish I didn’t have to put on the filthy, stinky shirt and leggings, but I have no other clothes. I wrinkle my nose as I pull them on, then return to the dormitory. Halla is sitting up, talking to Fiere. When she sees me, Fiere hands over the camouflaged jumpsuit she’s holding. It’s identical to hers.

  “Here. Courtesy of the IPF. Next-gen intelli-textile construction. Auto-warming, -cooling, -wicking and camouflage shifting. It uses polarization to blend—see how it looks like fish scales? Un-rippable. ”

  “How did you get these?”

  She smiles for the first time, revealing small, even teeth. “We have our ways. And our sympathizers. Halla, Alexander is waiting to examine you. Everly, come on. Time to start your training.”

  I scramble into the jumpsuit which feels wonderfully crisp. Hopping on one foot as I pull on my boots, I follow Fiere. “Training?” I ask when I catch up to her.

  “Alexander says we should train you and Wyck. He thinks you will be assets.” Her tone says she disagrees.

  “I don’t think I even agree with what you’re doing.”

  That nets me an assessing look. “That’s honest, at least. Maybe Alexander’s not as wrong as I thought. At any rate, you’ve got to have something to do while you’re here, so you might as well train, learn self-defense a little so you can hold your own against thugs like the Dravon brothers.” She leads the way downstairs, across the room we were in earlier, and through an archway. The room we enter is large, wood-floored, with high ceilings and deep crown-molding. Mattresses are laid end to end and side by side in the middle of the floor.

  “Ballroom,” Fiere announces. “Lots of spare mattresses in a bordello.”

  “What are they for?”

  In answer, she sweeps my feet out from under me with her leg and I fall on my back on a mattress which wheezes dust.

  “That,” she says with satisfaction. Hands on hips, she looks down at me.

  I scramble up, angry. “What the hell—?”

  “Training. You’ve got to be able to protect yourself, Everly. Bulrush won’t always be nearby to save your ass.”

  That brings a question to mind. “How did you know? About the ambush last night?
” It’s hard to believe they were merely passing by.

  “We’d been looking for you for a couple of days, ever since the swamp rat Armyn talked to one of our agents about the pregnant breeder who got away from him and his mother in the swamp. He was swearing revenge for his mother’s death. An accident, I guess?” Her tone is disparaging—she doesn’t think any of us capable of doing what we did to escape the moonshiners’ camp.

  “Halla slit her throat.”

  Fiere’s brows arch up a hair. “Well. Maybe I should be training Halla. We were about to approach you when the Dravon brothers made the first move.” She kicks at my legs again, this time buckling my knees, and I fall forward, smacking the wooden floor in a gap between mattresses. My hair flops over my face. I push it back, and tie it into a low ponytail. I don’t give her the satisfaction of complaining.

  “Okay,” I say. “Teach me something.”

  “Lesson one: be alert.”

  On the words, her leg comes up toward my face. I’m onto her tactics now, though, and I manage to duck away. I lunge for her, hoping to catch her off-balance, but she swivels and kicks my legs out from under me with her other foot. We both land on the mattress deck, but she springs up almost before she’s down. I roll away, out of reach, before standing.

  “Better.”

  We train for two hours. She teaches me how to break holds from attackers coming at me from the front or the rear. She teaches me to go for the throat, the nose, the groin, the solar plexus. My weapons, she says, are my palms, heels, knees and elbows. She demonstrates how to use each. She drops me every time I let my guard down, saying in a lilting voice, “Lesson one!” I’m dripping with sweat and I’ve added new bruises to my already colorful collection when she calls a halt. Fiere has remained calm, cool, and confident throughout. I don’t think she even breaks a sweat.