Planetary: Mercury, page 26
He sighed. “My first date was with a girl named Allison. I took her to the movies—some really awful slasher thing, I don’t remember the title. See, the guys at school told me the way to score was to get the girl scared so she’ll grab onto you.” A laugh.
“Was she pretty?” I asked.
“Oh,yeah,” he looked off into the middle distance, remembering. “Blond and tan, and she wore tight T-shirts a lot.” He glanced at me to see if I understood the implications of that. I nodded. I saw fertile women as part of my job, too, after all.
“More than anything else in the world I wanted to get my hands on her shirt,” he continued. “I didn’t even think about getting under her shirt… Just to touch her there would have been heaven.”
“Did you get to?” I asked. I was finding this fascinating.
“Almost,” he laughed. “I got very close, there in the theater. I got her shoulder.”
Twenty minutes later I was stowing the collection cylinder in the freezer. It was, bar none, the most unusual pickup I had ever done. He never turned his video back on, instead he just… talked.
He had gotten his hands on a girl’s chest, eventually. Not Allison, a girl named Nancy. And then there was another one who put her hand between his legs. He talked about his past, before the war, and I listened. I started to feel like I was part of the process. I didn’t feel anything, not like he was, but I felt… involved. It wasn’t just his old memories that were getting him into the mood, it was the fact that he was sharing them with me. Like the fact that I was there and listening made them more real, helped him to relive the experience.
Very strange. Not bad, though, not bad at all. It made me feel like I was important to him.
I got the filled tube into the freezer, and locked the freezer, then sealed the environmental shields around the freezer, then locked the doors to the back of the van. All the usual safeguards. I got in the front, put on my harness, locked the doors, and pulled out, headed for the region gates. I called in to dispatch.
“It’s Topaz,” I said. “Frederick pickup complete, I’m heading for the recipient.”
“About time,” the kid on the desk, Huston, barked a laugh. “Long time coming, huh?”
That joke doesn’t get any better, no matter how many times I hear it.
“This one’s going to be an overnight,” I said. “I’ll check in after the implantation and go on to the motel. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Roger that,” Huston said. “Call if you run into any problems.”
I hadn’t been functional enough to pack a lunch that morning, so I stopped at my favorite deli and ordered a couple of cold sandwiches to go. While I was waiting for my order I told my van to get the updated highway information and then find me a route to my destination—in that order. By the time my sandwiches were ready it told me that I could get there in six hours, which would be nice but I wasn’t going to count on it. The route it found for me was all either level one or level two maintenance, though, and no bridges, so it was possible.
At the region gate the guards checked my paperwork, filed my route plan, and gave me the canned “You accept all liability for anything that happens to you once you leave the safe zone” speech and I signed the usual wavers. Then the opened the gate and I hit the road.
The driving is the best part of my job and, despite the scare stories, I’ve never had any real problems in the outback. There is still some traffic going through, after all, food from the farms and medical transports like me, mostly. Those of us who venture outside of the safe zones tend to look out for each other. The few times I’ve gotten stuck or broken down I was able to call for help and got bailed out by some other long haul transporter.
There’s a strange kind of beauty to the way that nature reclaims the places that used to be ours. Sometimes all you can see is the outlines, a square corner to a flowering hillside to let you know that there’s an old building under all that green. They say that there used to be two hundred and fifty million people living in the United States. Hard to believe.
One you get outside the safe zones it’s so green and so quiet. There’s just the road and the forest around you. I stopped for lunch at a place that I had used before, a wreck that used to be an Outlet Mall according to the crumbling remains of the sign. The building had mostly collapsed, just a few walls left, but the parking lot was in pretty fair shape. I turned off the motor and opened the windows and just listened to the stillness for a while. I could hear the wind in the trees and that was it.
When I got back on the road the stillness was too much, so I turned on the new dramatization of A Princess Of Mars. I started it from the beginning again, even though I’d already heard the first half. I like the story and it was a good production and listening to it made the empty miles pass quickly.
It occurred to me that Frederick must feel like John Carter—suddenly transported into a dying world. The reclaimed wilderness wasn’t exactly a dead sea bottom, but the principal was the same. Once we ruled these lands, and now we are barely hanging on to the edge of the continent. Six million of us in the United States. Twenty years ago there were cities with that many people.
And did that make me Dejah Thoris?
Hardly. I was just the messenger, the princess was waiting for me up ahead, on the other side of the wilderness. Heroes and heroines were too valuable to risk out here in the dead sea bottoms. They might get kidnapped by Tharks or eaten by white apes.
Or get stuck in a herd of deer like I did.
People used to hunt these things, I thought, crawling down the road in first gear through a forest of antlers and big, stupid faces. There was a whole industry devoted to making tools for hunting them, camouflage outfits and special rifles and whatnot. Going out in the woods and looking for a deer to shoot used to be a big deal. These days it’s all you can do to nudge them out of the way. Laying on the horn doesn’t get you anything but some indignant looks. It’s their world now and they know it.
Even with the time lost to the deer I made it to the destination safe zone by late afternoon. The gate guards checked my authorization and medical papers, gave my van a once over, and let me in.
My motel was close to the gate—they all were, since there wasn’t much traveling going on these days—but I didn’t go there, just gave them a call to let them know I’d made it into town and to verify they had my room ready. I wanted to see the recipient first and get business taken care of.
Her place was one of those buildings that used to be a dozen or so little apartments and had a big parking area. I slid the van into a spot by the front door, got out, and stretched. Then I opened the back and got out the collection tube and the thawing gear, loaded everything in my case and went to meet the soon to be expectant mother.
The woman who met me at the door was an iron-haired matriarch in a severe suit, heavyset but muscular rather than fat. She looked like she could pick me up and fold me into an origami crane without sweating.
“Sable?” I asked. “I’m Topaz.”
“Sable is upstairs,” she said, not bothering to introduce herself. “This way.”
Upstairs was a big bedroom, very neat and airy. Sable was sitting on the bed in a white Tennis dress, giving me a brave little smile.
She was young. Younger than me. She was rounded all over, with the same solid build of the older woman, and her hair was long and black, as sleek as the fur of one of my cats. Her resemblance to the woman who led me in was unmistakable.
A second-generation breeder. Either one of the first children born after they started viability testing, or a happy accident, one who just happened to have two parents who had escaped gene damage. Either way, it was pretty clear that the two women were mother and daughter.
I started unpacking my gear and found places to plug everything in. Sable’s mother was hovering around. I handed her the reservoir for the thawing bath.
“Would you fill this up with tap water for me?,” I asked, “Just room temperature.”
She gave me a look that made me think she was about to refuse, then took it and left the room.
I looked to the girl. “I’m Topaz,” I told her. “You nervous?”
She nodded. “A little.”
I lowered my voice. “Would you be less nervous if it were just you and me?”
Her eyes flicked to the door and she gave a quick nod.
I smiled at her. “Then we’ll do it that way.”
When Sable’s mother came back with the reservoir I took and said, “Thank you. I’ll call you if I need anything else,” and started setting up the thawing bath.
“I’ll stay with her,” she said.
I didn’t look up. “Better if you don’t,” I said. “We prefer not to risk cross-contamination.”
She stood there for a moment longer while I concentrated on my equipment. I could feel her wanting to argue and I readied myself to blind her with science—I have a whole bunch of big frightening words memorized for just such occasions—but she decided to leave gracefully.
“I’ll be just downstairs if you need me, Sable,” she said at the door.
“Thank you, Mother,” Sable answered. “I’ll be fine.”
Once the door was shut I looked up. “First time?”
Sable giggled nervously. “Is it that obvious?”
“Just relax,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.”
I had the water circulating and the heater running. I set the small metal cylinder that contained the frozen product in the bath and attached the leads. It takes about twenty minutes to bring the temperature up to body heat.
“Now we wait,” I told her.
“How long?” Sable asked.
I looked at the display on the bath automatically, although I had just set it. “Not long,” I said. “Less than a half hour.”
Sable nodded and looked up at the ceiling, blew out a deep breath, full of tension.
Even though what I do with the women is more complicated and more physically intimate that what I do with the men, it’s usually a lot less… emotional. It’s just a medical procedure. But most of the women I see have already had a number of children, and know what to expect. Sable didn’t. Sure, she had been told about it, but that’s not the same thing. I sat on the edge of the bed beside her.
“It’s exciting,” I said. “Having a child.”
Her expression grew sour. “It’s the beginning of a great adventure,” she said sarcastically. It sounded like she was quoting something. “I am the crucible of life.”
“You are, you know,” I said mildly. “We’re damned close to being extinct.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve been hearing it my whole life.”
Then, before I could say anything else, she changed the subject. “What’s he like?”
I looked over at the collection cylinder thawing in the warm bath. “The donor?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. That man. What’s he like?”
She wasn’t asking about his genetic fitness—she would already have a report on that. “He’s a nice guy,” I told her. “He gave me biscuits and coffee this morning.”
She thought about that for a moment. Hesitantly she said, “Now, you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but you…watch them, right? Make the…donation?”
“That’s right,” I agreed.
“So…” she was starting to blush, her ears turning pink, but she continued, “…you just, what, stand over them while they…” She finished up by curling her hand in a fist and moving it up and down over her crotch.
I shrugged. “More or less, yeah.”
She giggled. “Your job is awesome.”
I thought about the morning’s encounter with Frederick. “I suppose it can be.”
She was still giggling. “I wish you’d taped it for me.”
“That would be against a lot of rules,” I observed dryly.
She gave me a look that was pure teenager. “Yeah, I know,” then, tentatively, “But you can talk about it, right? To me? I mean, I’m gonna have his baby. I just want to know about him.”
I considered the question. “I think he’d like you,” I hedged.
She looked at me curiously. “Oh?”
“Your, uh,” I gestured. Now I was the one getting embarrassed, “…chest.”
She looked down at her breasts and reached to cup them in her hands—not erotically, just measuring. “He likes big boobs?” she asked.
I shrugged. “He mentioned it.” I really shouldn’t have said even that much.
“He’s old, right?” she went on, “is he all… wrinkly?”
His age was listed on the donor profile. “He’s fifty-three. He’s in good shape. He looks like he stays pretty active.”
“Old enough to be my father,” Sable mused.
“You know they screen for consanguinity,” I pointed out.
“Well of course he’s not my father,” she replied quickly, “but he’s old enough to be. I don’t know who my father is. Mother says it’s not important.”
She may not know, I thought, but I didn’t say it. Records from the early days were pretty spotty. But they would have run the charts to rule out any chance that donor and recipient were related.
A sigh from Sable. “How much longer?”
I checked the display. “A few more minutes. You don’t want the applicator to be chilly.”
Her eyes got momentarily big. “No,” she considered, “I guess not.”
She sighed again. “It’s just not fair. I’m going to have a baby and I don’t get laid first. You at least got to see him jerk off—I don’t even get that much.”
“You can—” I broke off, wondering how much Sable’s mother had told her. “There are still things you can do, you know. Have lovers.” I finished lamely.
“Oh, I know,” she looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve got the whole list on what I can do by myself and what I can do with other people and when I can do it…”
A glance over at me. “It’s just so damned clinical. Like sex is some kind of medical procedure. My mother has a ‘massage therapist’. He comes over three times a week and they go up to her room for an hour. Like I’m not supposed to know what’s going on. I don’t know his name—Hell, I don’t think she knows his name. Like, he could die, and the service would just send another guy, and Mother wouldn’t even notice.”
That sounded a bit harsh, but it might not be that far off the mark. I was saved from trying to think of a reply by the tone from the thawing bath. I went to get the equipment ready.
“Aren’t you at least going to kiss me first?” Sable said, mock-pouting.
I went to her bedside and bent over, obediently pressed my lips to hers. She looked shocked, then giggled.
I finished assembling the applicator and preformed the procedure.
Afterward Sable rearranged her dress and stretched on the bed. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” I agreed. “The sperm are still traveling, but we’ve given them every advantage we can. It’s best for you to just rest for the next hour or so.”
“When will I know?” she asked.
“About a week,” I said. “You’re already being monitored, I assume?”
“Every time I pee,” she said with an aura of world-weariness. “Or anything else.”
“Hormone changes show up fairly quickly,” I said. “There will be indications in a week or a little more. Then, of course, they’ll be monitoring the child as it grows.”
She looked down to her belly, stroked it gently. “Hello, baby person,” she said. “Welcome to one fucked-up world.”
I told Sable’s mother on the way out that the procedure had gone smoothly and that her daughter was resting upstairs. The older woman had been baking and she insisted that I take a couple of slices of honey cornbread, warm from the oven. I thanked her.
I checked into the motel and called dispatch to report that I was done and I’d be back in the office sometime tomorrow afternoon. Called room service for a pizza, took a bath, watched a movie that I didn’t bother to pay attention to, and went to bed.
Just one of those days.
About the Author
Misha Burnett has little formal education, but has been writing poetry and fiction for around forty years. During this time he has supported himself and his family with a variety of jobs, including locksmith, cab driver, and building maintenance.
His first four novels, Catskinner’s Book, Cannibal Hearts, The Worms Of Heaven, and Gingerbread Wolves comprise a series, collectively known as The Book Of Lost Doors.
Major influences include Tim Powers, Samuel Delany, William Burroughs, and Phillip K. Dick.
Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B008MQ8W4K
My blog: https://mishaburnett.wordpress.com/
THE STAR OF MERCURY
By A.M. Freeman
When the first sunrise in fifty-nine days peeked over the rim of Mercury, Eli Shepard risked looking away from his instruments to watch it. The sun was a massive ball of fire on the horizon. It cast out its first rays over the rocky and hostile planet, stretching long shadows across the cratered and hard ground. With no atmosphere, the sun was blinding, and the contrast between the dark and light was sharp enough to cut. It was a breathtaking sight, if Eli had had breath or time to spare.
“Captain, we are ready.”
Eli snapped his attention back to the task at hand. He’d have time to marvel at the sunrise once he made this world livable.
He looked over the readings and marked the check list, “Is the thermos filled with the air and exact temperature of this side of the planet? Do you have the seal secured?”
“Yes, sir.” Rondle finished clipping the magnets onto the thermos and connecting the cable to the rover, “Holding at -310 Fahrenheit. We are ready for transport.”
“Excellent.” Eli pressed the com in his helmet, “Team Hot Side, mission status?”
“Complete,” came the reply.
A grin spread across Eli’s face, “Confirmed. Meet at the lab.”
He released the com but not the smile. Today would be the day. He could feel it.
