Urbis

In a city where there were next to no trees to mark the passage of the seasons, the brief crisp autumn which followed held little joy for Tana. The skies remained azure for the most part, with only a drop in temperature to indicate that the seasons were passing.

Tana flicked through the hundreds of TV stations. There was always more news about the Underground, the counter-measures from the Security Commission, and counter-counter-measures by the Underground again. It seemed like some sort of game, but she found herself siding with the Underground - anyone who was on the other side from Brandt had to be good - my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Brandt was close-lipped about all that side of things, but she got more out of her ally Jameson, the butler. She wasn’t surprised when he let slip that he was actually feeding information to the Underground. She quietly applauded him for his bravery and chastised herself for her own inaction.

She channel-surfed distractedly for a few minutes before settling on a daytime soap. There wasn’t much she could do now she was so large - six months gone now - and Brandt never let her out anyhow. She thought she would have gone mad, if it had not been for Jameson and her new-found friend Cath, the nurse Brandt had hired to attend her through her pregnancy.

A click at the door intruded on her thoughts. It told her that Cath had in fact arrived.

Cath’s ministrations were tender and meticulous. She always took care to warm her hands first, then she ran them expertly across Tana’s swollen belly, nodding and making approving noises. As they talked of this and that, Cath would absently stroke her legs.

“He asked me again - this morning,” Tana said as she was dressing.

“You’ve told him it’s a boy, why does he keep on at you?” Cath responded, seemingly unworried.

“He’s suspicious.” She sat up. “If I don’t produce...”

“He’s got no idea. What about all those gifts he gives you? All those “rewards”? He thinks he’s getting a boy. And when it isn’t... we’ll tell him the tests can be wrong. Forget it!”

But Tana could only think about Brandt’s likely reaction - he was violent at everything else... From then on she became more and more interested in the Underground, and actively sought out Jameson’s counsel.

Jameson described to her how the Underground had developed from a kind of broad based community organisation, incorporating everything from self-help to arts ventures, and how, with the passing of time, it had taken on a more covert role as a political force which the Presidium would ultimately have to reckon with. The Security Commission had raided known Underground lairs, but on every occasion had found them deserted. The Underground had moles like Jameson throughout the ranks of Security, and were forewarned of most strikes. Through its own pirate news station, the Underground announced that it was acting in retaliation against the wave of repression that had followed the installation of a new Security Minister.

The official media interviewed citizens at random, all of whom expressed varying degrees of hysteria about the increasingly bold moves being made by the Underground and demanded that the Security Commission be given greater powers: one of the people shown on the screen urging this was a `deliveryman’ named Lionel Brandt.

“It’s a set-up,” Jameson sighed when he saw his employer on the screen, dressed in a set of grubby truck driver’s overalls. “Orchestrated paranoia.”

Autumn became winter. The sky took on an almost permanent leaden hue, and brought off an invisible ocean uninterrupted driving rain that lashed furiously at the windows of the apartment, pouring down the glass in torrents and adding to Tana’s despondency as she watched. Frequently there were thunderstorms, sheets of lightning silhouetting the surrounding buildings. Tana found them more frightening than storms at Vale because her view was restricted, and it was difficult to judge the path in which the storm was moving, and hence where the next flash of lightning might strike.

It was Cath who kept her going on those days. It seemed to Tana sometimes that Cath had a kind of sixth sense about which days she found her burden the heaviest. On those days when simply getting out of bed was as much as she could manage, and she trailed around, her back and legs aching mercilessly, Cath appeared to minister to her.

She would undress her with a knowing smile and lay her down on the bed or a couch. Then she would work on her shoulders, neck muscles, thighs, and sometimes her breasts, now blue-veined and heavy with milk.

“Ah, these men,” she would sigh as she manipulated Tana’s body. “They have no idea, no idea at all, what they put us through when they shoot their sperm into us. I tell you, if men had to have babies, there’d never be more than one to a family.” She spoke with certainty, although she had told Tana that she had no man and no children herself.

As Cath massaged her body, Tana would slip into a kind of hazy, daydreaming state from which she was reluctant to emerge. The aching would drift away as if Cath were weaving a spell with her hands, and she tingled pleasantly.

When Cath did not come, she would retreat from the boredom of her confinement by reminiscing about the past. She wondered about Crispin, knowing he would have been devastated by her abduction. She hoped the others in the village would have been able to comfort him. He had been inconsolable for months when his mother had caught the fever and died a year before. She supposed he would find another wife eventually: she hoped he would not delay too long, agonising over her disappearance. For all his show of self-reliance, she knew he would be a shell without a woman’s company.

This train of thought invariably brought her up with a start. So much for Crispin. What was to be her own future?

The year was dragging towards its close, and with it came blankets of cloud the colour of slate bearing first sleet and then snow. From her window Tana gazed down, watching the flakes spinning down on the wind, and then, frequently, spinning up again on different currents. She saw them as like herself, a plaything of forces beyond her control. One day, she assured herself, she would change that.

As Tana approached her term, Cath’s visits became daily. She fussed around her, sticking temperature pads to various parts of her body, constantly checking and re-checking pulse and blood pressure, running a portascan over her belly and comparing readings with standards on her laptop.

One afternoon - it was Chillwater by Tana’s calendar - Cath had just finished her tests, and the two women were standing in the kitchen drinking coffee and discussing the polar climate prevailing outside when suddenly a strange look came over Tana’s face. By the time she had mustered the words “The waters...“, Cath was already summoning an ambulance.

In minutes the stretcher crew arrived. They whisked Tana away to the ambulance waiting in the carpark, and secured the stretcher to a trolley module in the back. Cath held her hand as the men closed the back of the ambulance. They placed a mask over her face. She heard Cath repeating, “It’s going to be all right, everything’s going to be all right,” as she drifted into unconsciousness.

When she awoke, she found herself looking up at muted lighting and apricot-coloured walls and ceiling. Cath was sitting beside her.

“Cath? Where am I?”

“Sector Two Birth Clinic,” said Cath, beaming. “Look.”

It was only then that Tana became aware of a weight on her chest. Lying sleeping peacefully was a baby with thick hair of an unusual reddish tint, just like her father’s.

Tana was awestruck. “The baby came just like that? While I was asleep? With no pain? No pain? It doesn’t seem possible.”

“It certainly is possible,” said Cath. “It’s an everyday fact here.”

“It seems like a miracle,” Tana smiled. She gently stroked the child’s hair, as if to assure herself that she was real. “Crispin’s baby.”

“How Brandt didn’t dislodge her that first night is a miracle,” opined Cath. “I think she was just determined to come into this world, and made up her mind that nothing was going to stop her.”

At the mention of Brandt’s name, Tana shuddered, mindful of the lies they had told him about the child.

“We’ll have to...” Cath began. Her eyes wandered past Tana, and Tana did not need to turn her head to know who had entered and was standing at the other side of the bed.

Before Tana could move to stop him, Brandt snatched up the baby in a paw that was almost as big as she was, and a peacefully sleeping scrap of humanity instantly became a screaming machine. Holding her up, Brandt observed that the infant was not blessed with a penis, and casually tossed her across the room. Cath’s reflexes were quick, and she caught the child and cradled it against her bosom.

“You.” He pointed an accusing finger at Cath. “Get rid of it. Now.”

With a tearful glance at Tana, Cath left the room. Brandt stood with his arms folded across his chest, waiting until the howls became inaudible. Then he pulled up a chair, sat down close to Tana and put his head on her pillow, so that his mouth was at her ear.

His voice was filled with unspeakable menace: “We will try again.”