Occupied Earth Read online

  Table twelve hosted two grim chemical-blonde octogenarian MRs, probably escapees from the nursing home down the street. Their garish makeup gave testament to their failing eyesight and they clutched their purses like hyenas hoarding carrion. They scowled when Jemma splashed coffee on their table. There goes your tip, thought Scud-re.

  As Jemma headed back to the bar, Scud-re called out “Miss?” She ignored him. He raised his voice, “Hey! Can I get some more coffee, please?”

  In a sudden shift of rage-driven momentum, Jemma whirled on her heels to face him and, as Scud-re held up his cup with an impish grin, she slipped and the entire pot of scalding liquid spilled into his lap.

  “I UNDERSTAND you had an unfortunate accident,” said Dr. Hosep-ra.

  Scud-re groaned through gritted teeth as he waited for the anesthesiologist to arrive with some Accupleasure to moderate the agony.

  The young doctor raised the sheet to examine Scud-re’s groin, gently prodding the inflamed organ. Scud-re screamed.

  “Let’s not be melodramatic,” said Dr. Hosep-ra.

  “Will there be any damage to my, uh... functionality?” asked Scud-re.

  “It’s not like you’re human. You should regen by tonight.”

  Moments after Dr. Hosep-ra left the room, Jemma appeared in the doorway. Scud-re was struck by her effortless sensuality. She was a scorcher in more ways than one.

  “I came to apologize,” she said.

  He looked past her at three human orderlies staring hungrily, like dogs watching their kibble being scooped. “Come on in,” he said.

  The hospital-room door considered the issues and slid closed behind her. She put out her hand and said, “Jemma Haley.”

  Scud-re was too exhausted to raise his hand. She lowered hers with an understanding smile.

  A bedpan sat in the visitor’s chair so she settled on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs and leaning on one arm with her breasts so close to his face that no amount of self-control could stop him from looking. He’d learned the hard way that human females could be touchy about males staring at certain body parts, but this huwoman didn’t seem to mind. His pupils settled in her cleavage where a small gold crucifix hung from a delicate chain.

  “I’m sorry you got hurt,” she said.

  Scud-re resisted the urge to cop some MR attitude, make her sweat over what she’d done. He inexplicably wanted this magnetic woman to like him. “It was an accident,” he said.

  “I got fired for it if that makes you feel any better.”

  The gloom in her voice aroused Scud-re’s radar. Maybe he could turn her misfortune into a stroke of luck for both of them.

  “Makes me feel worse,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “You could give the bad news to my son.” He was dumbfounded. She smiled and said, “Just kidding.”

  She’s fertile, he thought. “I might have a job for you.” She uncrossed her legs, then recrossed them in the other direction, as if the prospect of a job offer just an hour after her firing seemed too coincidental for comfort.

  “You’d want to hire me after what I did to you?”

  “People make mistakes. You’re only human.”

  She laughed. It was an easy, husky laugh. He liked it.

  “Okay,” she said. “You’ve got my attention.”

  “It would only be for nine months. But if you qualify, I could pay you ninety thousand dollars.”

  Her eyes went almost as wide as an MR’s pupils.

  “Ninety? As in nine oh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do I have to do? Murder somebody?”

  “Just the opposite: give birth to somebody. A clone. Assuming your womb is functional.”

  “Surrogates don’t make that kind of money. What’s the catch?”

  “It’s… a celebrity.”

  THE WOMAN wore black mini-nuke bandoliers that crossed her chest in an X, separating her improbably large breasts to stretch her bra-top so tight her nipples threatened to spike through. But Ozzie’s attention was fixed on the bazooka nuke she held against her leg.

  “Ozzie?” He must have heard his name but he didn’t budge. “Ozzie!”

  A rat the size of a Rottweiler raced toward him down the post-apocalyptic street. Ozzie blasted it and swung back before the woman could raise her weapon. Then the world went blank.

  Ozzie turned to see his mother behind him, finger poised to air-toggle the wall in case he tried to resume play.

  “Why’d you turn off my game?”

  “Go wash your hands. It’s time for dinner, then homework.”

  Shoulders slumped, he trudged toward the bathroom to run his hands under water. Jemma pretended not to hear him mumbling something like “friggin’ bitch.” She surveyed the cramped one-bedroom unit with its cheap Goodwill furniture and wondered what kind of home she could provide with ninety-thousand dollars. Surely someplace whose thin walls weren’t cheap faux titanium, and whose ceilings weren’t century-old, sadly indestructible cottage cheese.

  Jemma stepped into her small kitchenette to decant the cicada chili she’d brought home from Parker Center, a gastropub in the old police department headquarters, now a popular spot for MRs to pick up human prostitutes of every sex and proclivity.

  As she zapped the Parker’s take-out in the old-fashioned microwave, she contemplated the daunting prospect of another pregnancy. She knew that women were genetically programmed to forget the pain of childbirth over time so they’d be inclined to repeat the experience--some sort of survival mechanism to guarantee reproduction of the species. But Jemma’s DNA somehow lost that gene. After more than thirteen years, the pain of delivering Ozzie was still etched in her memory like an epitaph on a gravestone. Delivery was an ordeal she did not want to repeat, especially for a child she’d be giving up at birth.

  Ozzie walked in and grabbed a stool by the tiny shelf they used as a table. He took one look at the chili and rolled his eyes.

  “Can’t we pretend we’re a normal family once in a while and go out to McGoogle’s?” he said.

  “You stop getting D’s and F’s, you can have a GigaMac every night for a month.”

  She handed him a NutriCoke from the fridge.

  “Why bother?” he said. “School don’t mean shit.”

  “School doesn’t mean shit.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not ‘don’t mean shit,’ it’s ‘doesn’t mean shit’ and you mean to say ‘does mean shit.’”

  “What friggin’ difference does it make?”

  “It makes the difference between sounding like an uneducated idiot or someone who might talk his way into a decent job.”

  “Like Melonz? Oops, I forgot. You lost that job.”

  His sarcasm cut like a laser blade. She swallowed her pride and spooned his dinner into a bowl.

  “All the good jobs go to Mahktards anyway,” he said.

  “You need to be ready. Opportunities come up.”

  “Yeah? Where’s yours?”

  She considered telling him about Scud-re’s offer but if she couldn’t wrap her own mind around it, how could she expect a thirteen-year-old to understand? Especially a kid as bitter as Ozzie. She marveled at how much she loved this insensitive pit of negativity. It was no wonder the MRs found human maternal love so bewildering. She put a hand on her stomach, hoping to feel some sort of premonition, perhaps a sign from God, but all she felt was indigestion.

  By noon the next day Scud-re was out of the hospital. He went straight back to work. Jemma was already in the building, two floors down, enduring a marathon gynecological exam. A few minutes after four o’clock she walked into his lab.

  “I’m cleared to bear clones,” she said, taking a seat.

  ”I’ve already sent an advance to your cash account,” he said. “It should cover your back rent and more.”

  “I haven’t agreed to the job yet.”

  “You came in for the physical. I wanted to pay you for that time. B
ut it’s a pittance compared to the fee you’ll get if you agree to carry him.”

  “It’s going to be a boy?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought about this, but to Scud-re’s relief, she didn’t ask about the clone’s identity. He couldn’t believe she wasn’t curious but he supposed she might want the child to remain anonymous to make it easier to give him up after delivery.

  The door slid open and an auto-cart rolled in.

  “Your eggs,” said Scud-re. They’d been extracted during her physical. After completing his DNA sequencing, Scud-rewould replace the nuclei in her egg cells with nano-engineered duplicates of the nucleus that gave birth to Christ.

  Jemma watched Scud-re take a rack of small vials from the cart. He handled them gently, almost lovingly, as he bent his tall frame to store them in his under-counter freezer.

  “You act like they’re precious,” she said.

  “They are to me.”

  He turned and caught her grinning.

  “Will you do it?” he asked.

  “I have to do something to keep a roof over our heads.”

  Not long afterward, Jemma walked out of the restroom in a mint-green hospital gown. Despite all the Mahk-Ra innovation bestowed on humankind, it amazed Scud-re that no one had reinvented these ridiculous gowns. She hopped onto the table. Scud-repositioned a pantoscan probe--like a marble on a gold wire--over her belly. He swung it gently in a circle.

  The pantoscan imaged Jemma’s abdominal anatomy above Scud-re’s hand, floating in the air in lifelike 3-D. He set the scanner down and reached into the image, double-tapping her small intestines and her bladder. Both organs disappeared, leaving her womb unobscured.

  ”Panto transparency sixty,” he said. Her imaged organs grew translucent so that he could see them both inside and out simultaneously.

  “Is this going to hurt?”

  “You may feel a little cramping, but not too bad.”

  He swiveled her virtual anatomy toward him to make it easier to access the image of her vagina. As he orchestrated movements in the air, a snakelike robotic embedding arm replicated his actions inside Jemma, making its own corrections for any unsteadiness in his hands. Ten minutes later she was pregnant.

  It was a mechanical conception, but to Scud-re it felt like the best sex he’d ever had.

  “HEY, MA. Where’s the brew?”

  The question struck Jemma as odd. Why would her thirteen-year old be looking for beer?

  She rose from the couch and walked into the kitchen. Ozzie was standing in front of their worn-out refrigerator staring at the empty shelf she usually stocked with pale ale. Someone had invaded her home and taken it.

  “You’re letting out the cold,” she told Ozzie. “No shopping in Fridgie.”

  He grabbed a NutriCoke and closed the door.

  “Yo Fridgie,” she said to wake its attention. “Where’s my ale?”

  “Sorry, Jemma,” said the fridge. “Beer has been forbidden.” Those assholes broke into my home, she thought, stealing my brew and reprogramming my food supply.

  Ozzie left the room and she heard him boot up the living room wall to play one of his real-games. The sounds of gunfire and pulse bursts filled the air.

  Jemma glanced at her nip nook. They’d taken her hard liquor, too. They would have needed a Rules and Regs override to violate her private space, and override warrants required more juice than a scientist like Scud-re would have, especially since he was Mahk-Re. What sort of freaky life form was she carrying in her womb that not only caught the attention of Upper Esche, but demanded their intervention?

  SCUD-RE NERVOUSLY TWIRLED the pantoscan probe, waiting for Jemma to get undressed. It had been four months since Rhea-ra sent Scud-re’s proposal upstairs and it still hadn’t been approved. The delay could only mean someone up the chain was raising objections. Scud-re’s dick would hit the fan if Upper Esche denied this project and then found out Jemma was well into her second trimester. But that was a risk he was willing to take if it would get him back to civilization. He was sick of kowtowing to the MR military thugs who’d been sent here to run this wasteland of a planet.

  Jemma came out of the restroom and walked past him to the examination table, her hospital gown giving him a sweet flash of butt cheeks. She caught him looking and glared.

  “You don’t look happy,” he said.

  “Someone broke into my place and stole my booze,” she said. “Did you know they were going to do that?”

  “Your contract forbids alcohol,” said Scud-re. “It can malform the clone.” He immediately regretted his officious tone. He didn’t want Jemma to see him as a typical MR.

  “Who did it, Dr. Scud-re? Upper Esche doesn’t even know I’m pregnant.”

  He looked away, embarrassed to have been put in this position by Rhea-re. Over Scud-re’s objections, the department head had insisted on cleansing Jemma’s home site of potential fetal toxins before Upper Esche had even weighed in on the project.

  “The brass can be a little overzealous,” he said sheepishly.

  She glared at him with those pools of cocoa and he felt like a turd. Even worse, like a human turd.

  “I don’t know why I’m making excuses for them,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  He was heartened when Jemma seemed surprised. MRs rarely apologized to humans. Her expression softened.

  She lay down on the examination table. Scud-reswung the pantoscan over her Y-axis, from cranium to coccyx.

  “Why is Upper Esche even interested in me?” asked Jemma. “What’s so important about this baby?”

  “Let me concentrate.” Scud-re side-stepped the question. “We’ll talk later.” He reached into her virtual anatomy to feel for physical anomalies that the pantoscan might miss. As he ran his hand along her virtual womb, she reached up and grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t be such a Makhwonk,” she said, and moved his hand from her virtual anatomy to her actual one. “Here’s what real life feels like.”

  The soft flesh of her belly seemed electric to his touch. If he could have flushed with embarrassment, he would have. He tried to withdraw his hand but she held it firmly against her.

  “You’re as close as he’s got to a father,” she said.

  He smiled and relaxed his hand, moving his fingers to gently palpate.

  “You’re different from the others,” she said. “Tender. Sort of caring. Almost human.”

  He smiled again. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  And then the fetus kicked. Scud-re jerked his hand away, as if he’d been burned. Jemma pulled it back.

  “Feel the life, Dr. Scud-re. Because you’re the one who put it there. You went deep inside my womb and you planted it. You connected my baby to me. You made it mine. It’s like we made love, only without the fun part.”

  His heartbeat trilled at the thought. One of the most unexpected perks for MRs on Earth was the pleasure of passion. Back on Ra-Prime, reproduction was a job, not a joy. Despite MR supremacy in most things, sexuality was a standout bastion of human superiority. Erogenous zones were playgrounds for humans, but minefields for MRs.

  Jemma stared into his large green eyes as if trying to decipher a code, then gave him a teasing grin.

  “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

  He said nothing but his pupils gave him away.

  “I knew it,” she said, amused. “You can kiss me if you want.”

  He was mesmerized. He’d only dreamed of feeling her lips on his. He leaned over and wondered, as he kissed his first human, why she closed her eyes. Her lips were impossibly soft and warm and moist and bursting with an energy he couldn’t describe. And then the most amazing thing happened: she parted her lips and he felt her tongue. He thought he would melt right there in the lab. He’d never experienced a feeling like this before. His legs trembled. She sensed the strength of his reaction and pulled away to watch.

  “Wow,” he said. “Is it always like that?”

  “Not always,”
she said, “but when there’s an emotional bond... like having a child together….”

  Scud-re tried to understand the connection between the kiss and the clone, but the logic escaped him.

  “So tell me, Dr. Daddy,” she said, “who is this child of ours?”

  Scud-re braced himself for a storm. “He’s going to make history. His DNA comes from the blood of Jesus Christ.”

  It took her a moment to ingest the concept, and even then, it didn’t quite register. She hadn’t been to church in years, but she’d been raised Catholic and still believed in Jesus as Lord. The fact that she was carrying Him in her belly defied her comprehension.

  “You’re telling me I’m carrying the son of God?”

  Before Scud-re could reply, the door opened and Dr. Huxen-ra marched in. Hux started at the sight of a woman in a hospital gown in Scud-re’s lab.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  “Hux, meet Jemma,” said Scud-re. “Jemma, this is Dr. Huxen-ra, my supervisor.”

  Jemma was too staggered by Scud-re’s clone revelation to speak.

  “Jemma has graciously agreed to be our surrogate,” said Scud-re.

  Huxen-ra’s mouth opened, then closed. He took a moment to compose himself.

  “I’m sorry Dr. Scud-re,” he said, “but Upper Esche has put the kibosh on the clone. They’re afraid this birth will turn into a massive disruptor, the kind that sparks human revolts. Two-hundred thousand Mahk-Ra and twenty million humans died in the First Interplanetary War. Upper Esche wants to avoid a repeat.”

  “They have to reconsider!” said Scud-re. “This birth is too important!”

  Jemma saw the interference pattern of fear roll across Huxen-ra’s pupils. His ass was on the line along with Scud-re’s.

  “You’re not hearing me, Scud-re. This wasn’t just a local decision.”

  Scud-re’s jaw dropped. “This edict came from Ra-Prime?”

  “It went all the way up to the Senate of Commanders.”