Exogenesis

By Peco Gaskovski

Out of the collapse of Old America rises Lantua, a glittering thousand-mile metropolis where drones patrol the sky and AI algorithms reward social behavior. The most compliant citizens enjoy the greatest privileges, the poorest struggle to rise up the echelon system, and criminals are subjected to brain modification. Birthing and genetic quality are controlled through mass embryonic selection, with fetuses grown outside the body in artificial wombs—a technology known as exogenesis.

But rebellion is brewing.

Lantua struggles to control the Benedites, a rural religious people who refuse to obey one-child regulations. Each February, Field Commander Maelin Kivela oversees the forced sterilization of Benedite teenagers, a duty she carries out with unflinching zeal—but this year comes with a shock. After escaping an ambush by insurgents, Maelin returns to the city to choose one of over three hundred embryos to be her child, only to come face to face with a secret that will tear her life apart and alter the course of her civilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Jul 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781642292749

Book preview

1

She ran through the field half-naked, stumbling through the snow. Darasov caught up to her in bounding strides and tackled her, the two of them tumbling over in a heap. Her pale legs kicked from under his greatcoat, and she struck and scratched at his face. The young woman had been meek during Maelin’s interview, with a frilled veil and wimple on her head, her cheeks like blushing white ceramic; but the girl was a different person now, a different creature altogether, her hair disheveled, her legs thrashing in the snow like a wild animal caught in a trap.

Maelin sighed. Shanti, how did the day get so complicated? It hadn’t started out like this. It had started out with quiet. Quiet and solitude. She had woken early that morning, before the sun rose, and after getting dressed found her winter scarf hanging on the doorknob of her quarters. She had snagged the scarf on a branch the other day, opening a hole in the weave, and Gidwyn had promised to fix it for her. Maelin examined the weave pattern, the interlacing helixes, and found no evidence of the damage. A perfect repair.

She draped it on and exited the barracks. There was a distinct chill in the air, presaging a winter storm expected this afternoon. But they would get out by then; they would complete the protocolling before noon and get back to the city by nightfall, and so another February would be finished. The perimeter lights cast an oily glow across the base and the snowy clearing that surrounded it. The gatehouse window opened as she approached, and a rush of warm air met her face carrying the mingled scent of coffee and rifle lubricant. The young guard within saluted crisply, and Maelin, who had an officer’s rank in the Territories, saluted in response, though not quite so crisply. She had never gotten used to the gesture, which she rarely used outside the city.

I’ll be on Stumble Rock if anyone needs me, she said, nodding up toward the dark outline behind the base. I should be back in an hour.

You’re going up there alone, ma’am? the guard asked with a leery glance at the black hill.

Yes, alone.

Shouldn’t go too far, ma’am. Never know who’s out there.

Maelin ignored the warning and passed through the gate. The heated pavement gave way to hard snow that crunched under her boots. She followed the fence toward the trees that stood in the shadows beyond the reach of the perimeter lights. A patroller whirred toward her at an eager tilt, like a flying green beetle, and she obliged it by looking up at its bulging Eye. The drone halted and drifted backward, scanning Maelin’s face as she walked, and then its propellers hummed with satisfaction and it whirred away.

The snow cracked into muck as she strode through a boggy patch behind the base. Reeds and cattails poked through the white. The greasy smell of the base kitchen followed her a little ways on the cold air, fading as she reached the trees. Plunging into the dense shadows, she flicked on her omni light and flashed it ahead of her, illuminating a trampled path the soldiers used in training. Everything outside that cone of light was murky darkness, the trees like the legs of giants crowding around her. The darkness triggered an instinctive fear she never felt in the city.

Maelin had rarely been in the Territories except in the winter months. Once in the summer and autumn, a long time ago. Every other time had been winter, each February for almost twenty years, from base to base and village to village. Protocolling was usually done in the winter, when the farms were not as busy. When there would be less disruption to the families.

The ground sloped upward, the track winding around boulders and over icy rocks that made her footsteps slip and twist. More than once she drifted off course, for the path was not always clear, leading to side trails that ended at fallen logs and impassably steep inclines; but at last, after a half hour of trudging, she emerged from the trees and gained the top of Stumble Rock Hill. The summit was a barren head. She gazed out at the formless night. Soon the first connotations of color seeped into the distance, grew hot, and turned bronze. Slowly a molten sun erupted through a crack in the horizon, its bright fingers of warmth reaching across the silent landscape to brush her cheek. As the darkness melted away, a frozen lake appeared before her, where bluegills darted beneath the ice, and beyond the lake were forests of pine and maple and cedar, a vast wooded stillness that reached to the rim of the world, losing itself in the blazing light. Two million steaders lived in the Northern Territories, most of them Benedites, but all she could see, all she could feel, was the solitude. The land and sky seemed to gaze back at her as if reading her thoughts, thoughts that she herself could not read. This is what she had come for: the sensation of something inside her that she did not know, a sensation like yearning that almost brought tears to her eyes. She’d had this feeling on occasion at the E-domes, controlled feelings, brought on by a combination of psychedelic drugs and brain stimulation. But this was different. It was rooted in something real, something tangible.

I do not know myself, Maelin, except through you. The center of me is in you, and the center of you is in me.

And the center of us is in this child, and of this child in us.

We are three, in one.

Why did the words come to her? His words, hated words, whispering in her mind. Sickening images followed, the upwelling of a dream from last night, the black-clad bodies, the smoking wreckages of the snowmobiles, the snow soaked with blood, a baby crawling through the horror. A living, crawling baby. It should not have survived the explosions. It should not have been able to crawl, being a newborn. But the dream had made allowances for these things, as dreams did. The baby’s head lolled unsteadily, the arms and legs floundering as it twisted and squirmed through the red snow and the corpses that were slumped and torn to bits and pieces like blackened dolls. The message of the dream was unmistakable. I will not let you kill me. I will live.

Maelin shook off the thoughts. It wasn’t the first time she had been disturbed by dreams and flashbacks, though they had been more vivid this season. Of course she knew why. She and Stefano were choosing soon. They were going to have a baby. She never thought she would—not after what happened all those years ago—but here she was on the cusp of the decision, and afraid.

Well, a little fear was to be expected. She had talked to friends who had gone through it, and she had read the latest books on the subject, and everybody said the same thing. You never felt entirely ready. A degree of anxiety was natural.

These four weeks away had given her breathing space, but her time had just about run out. Stefano sent her daily messages about his latest thoughts on the profiles. She was returning home tonight, and the pressure would be on the moment she stepped through the door.

They’re getting older.

We need to choose.

Ma’am? Gidwyn called out.

Maelin turned. What are you doing out here? she asked.

Gidwyn came up panting, squinting at the cold, his hood pulled over his earmuffs. I thought you might have forgotten, ma’am. We’re heading out earlier this morning.

I hadn’t forgotten, she said, pulling her omni from a pocket and checking the time. Thank you, by the way, for patching the tear in my scarf. I didn’t think it could be done.

It was nothing, ma’am. I didn’t actually patch it. It was a duplicate stitch.

And your mother taught you this, you said?

Yes, ma’am. All the children. A Benedite thing. Self-sufficiency and all that. Quite a climb, he added, gulping air. He scanned the landscape. That’s a fine view.

It is, she said, though view was not the right word. Solitude. That was the word.

A snowstorm is forecast for this afternoon, he said, glancing at his device. Looks bad on the weather radar. Not meaning to hurry you, ma’am, if you wanted to stay a few minutes.

Maelin looked northward. No, she did not feel like staying. The solitude was delicate and easily disturbed. Easily lost. She doubted she could recover it now.

Let’s go, she said.

type ornament

Later that morning they headed out to Iscalon with the PMD convoy. The town was several kilometers from base and was the administrative center of the district. It was PMD’s eighth day of protocolling in the district, and the final day of the season. Today’s group of callouts was small, fewer than twenty youth who waited outside the medbus in a quiet line along the brick wall of the magistrate’s building. The young men, in front, wore black overcoats and wool caps. The young women stood behind bundled in dark blues, with hats of beaver and fox fur. All the faces were lowered and somber. They always looked somber before sterilization.

Almost a hundred soldiers were positioned on the road, each one a daunting figure in a bulletproof greatcoat, rifle in hand, together forming a solid perimeter around the medbus and the lineup. Drones hovered above, some at twenty meters, others higher, bobbing in the wind like metallic jellyfish with dangling tentacles. The families of the callouts waited on the opposite curb, where snow was heaped in dirty piles. Most of the families were old-order Benedites in black horse-drawn buggies; some of them lived so far away it would have taken them half a day to get here, clopping along icy roads with nothing but homespun coats and blankets to keep warm, and only lantern light to guide the way during the early morning hours. A few Beny families, those of the newer sects, huddled in electric vehicles, which were surely more comfortable, though these were as black and plain as the buggies.

Maelin sat in the cramped back room of the medbus, rubbing her socked feet against the heating bar, pausing now and then for a sip of tea. She paid little attention to the somber lineup outside her frosted windows, or to the occasional cries that drifted from the surgery room, her thoughts occupied with collating the last four weeks of demographic data. It was an easy morning, and she wanted to keep it that way. She left most of the counseling to Senchi, an upbeat but unremarkable intern who needed the practice. Maelin herself interviewed only one callout, a sixteen-year-old named Cornelius who wished to leave his family and come to the city. He spoke in Kawarthic—a Latin dialect—as did many in Iscalon district. A few hundred years ago orthodox religious enclaves, the early Benedites, had settled in the Territories and had begun using the ancient language. It was one of their many customs, backward customs, designed to separate them from contemporary society. Maelin could not help pitying these people, as one might pity someone in the grip of a delusion.

Her Latin was reasonably good in several dialects, but she turned on her omni’s translation app to make sure she picked up everything correctly. Cornelius claimed his father was a raving drunk who regularly assaulted him, and his brothers were merciless bullies. He didn’t have a scar or bruise on his body based on Dr. Faizal’s medical screening, and Maelin made no comment on this obvious discrepancy; but Cornelius insisted he had suffered horribly, and recalled several graphic anecdotes about the violence he’d endured. He didn’t get any help from the village priest either, who was secretly a sodomite, and anyway he did not put much stock in priests and their holy babblings, which were, in his opinion, a lot of Old World excrementum. Maelin listened with sympathy, uncertain whether his story was true or fabricated or somewhere in between. These people knew what to say if they wanted out. No matter—if they wanted out, then it was her job to make it happen. She went through the routine questions, tapping checkboxes on her digital interview form. Then she witnessed his consent form with old-fashioned pen-and-ink, scanned it into the system, and directed him back to Senchi.

He’s coming to Lantua, Maelin said.

"Mirab’le," Senchi said with a jubilant smile.

Wonderful. Well, that wasn’t quite how Maelin would put it. The young man had just made the biggest decision of his life, and it was plainly visible in his face. He looked suddenly anxious, as if only now realizing what he had done. He was abandoning his family and all he had ever known. He would soon enter a world so radically different from the one he had grown up in, that it would be like plucking somebody out of the Middle Ages and fast-forwarding him a thousand years into the future. But if young Cornelius harbored any notions of changing his mind, it was too late. The forms had been signed. He was a full second-echelon citizen of the State of Lantua, subject to all its laws.

In halting, broken Latin—Maelin squirmed as she overheard it—Senchi explained to Cornelius what would happen next: she would take him by the arm and lead him out of the medbus and into the magistrate’s building. His family, who waited outside, would suppose he was drowsy from the surgery; they would suppose he’d spend a little while in the warm building, reclining on a cot and sipping orange juice, until he was well enough to go home. Instead, Senchi would lead him to the courtyard in the back, into one of the armored rovers, and he would travel to the base and join a handful of other deserters who were being readied for transport to the city.

Most of these deserters—converts, they were called—would never see their families again. Most would not want to see them. Maelin had studied the statistics. Contentment levels for Benedite converts living in the city was high, even higher than for native-born Lantuans. Of course, that was not counting the 1 or 2 percent of converts who committed suicide. The culture shock was too great for some. Apart from this tiny minority, though, the numbers were indisputable. A few years in the city, living off the milk and honey of its comforts, was enough to soothe all but the deepest conscience.

Gidwyn entered her quarters after the last of the young women had been protocolled. One of the callouts is missing, ma’am.

Which one?

A female, Avrah Schall, age sixteen. She lives on a farm over an hour north of here. It’s on the borders of Algonquin.

An hour? Can we still make it out today?

I doubt it, ma’am. Not with the snow coming. And if we don’t head up there now, we’ll have to wait another day until the roads are cleared. Of course, we could defer her until next year. That would be the most straightforward thing.

Maelin opened her mouth to speak, but froze as the dream burst into her mind. An infant dragging itself through the wreckage, its body caked in snow and blood.

Ma’am? Gidwyn asked. What do we do?

You abandoned it. You let it perish.

Why was she clinging to the guilt? Why, after so many years? How old is she? Maelin asked, refocusing.

As I said, ma’am—sixteen.

Sixteen? How did we miss her last year?

Gidwyn looked at his omni screen. Well, she was away staying with relatives—

Never mind, she said with a flash of anger. No deferrals. Absolutely not. We do her today.

Today, ma’am? Then we have to leave now with that storm coming. If we’re to make it there and back on time.

2

The Schall farmhouse was built on a rise of land between a barn and a cluster of trees. A rolling snowy landscape spread out around it in soft white waves and dips of blue shadow. The PMD rovers had no difficulty on the long private road that led to the farm, but it was too icy and hilly for the medbus, and Maelin ordered the driver to park it at the edge of a field a half-kilometer from the property. She assigned two rovers for guard and led three other vehicles to pick up the missing callout. Several black-clad young men in a garage turned and watched as the tank-like rovers came bumping up the lane with a quartet of drones hovering over them, each with an antenna-like gun suspended between its long-legged landing gear.

Maelin could see faces pressed at the windows of the farmhouse as she and her team emerged from their vehicles. A man with a stiff grey beard like a stalactite—the patriarch of the family, Mr. Schall, she guessed—came striding out of a field, a boy traipsing after him in oversized boots.

Yes, what do you want? Schall demanded as he intercepted Maelin and her team on the lane. There were spots of mud on his ruddy cheek, the splatter from a cow hoof perhaps.

The man had spoken in Lantuan rather than Kawarthic, though Maelin wasn’t surprised. The Schall family had been in Iscalon district only a few years, having originally lived in a Benedite settlement just north of the city where Lantuan was the more common tongue. It didn’t surprise her, either, that Schall had addressed his words to Gidwyn and Captain Ubaku—the men standing on either side of her—though whether that was a deliberate slight or natural Benedite misogyny was hard to tell.

I am Field Commander Maelin Kivela, she said, opting for her military title, which had a greater ring of authority than PMD Counselor. From the Population Management Department of Lantua City, Northern Division, she continued after a pause, giving the hardy patriarch time to digest the moment. You are Isaac Schall?

Schall glanced up at the drones, which were hovering low like giant late-summer mosquitoes. I am he, he said.

I wish to speak with your daughter Avrah.

Schall’s brow furrowed. What is this about?

Could the man really not know? Maelin stepped closer. We are from PMD. We are here for Avrah.

We received no letter, if that’s why you’ve come.

Do not test my patience, Mr. Schall.

Schall held her in a long glare and then called back to the house. The young men from the garage wandered up behind him carrying hammers and heavy wrenches. The security detail tightened their positions around Maelin and Gidwyn. Violence was more likely during unexpected visits. By now more faces had filled the lower windows of the farmhouse. The front door opened, and a teenage girl in a hooded overcoat came out. She hurried down the path, slipping and catching herself on an icy patch before reaching her father, who put his arm around her protectively.

This is Avrah, he said. But we received no letter.

Maelin nodded to Gidwyn, who stepped forward with his omni. I need to confirm your identification, Miss, he said to the young woman. Please look into the red light.

Avrah obeyed. The device bleeped, confirming her particulars: name, age, family, breeding status, polygenetic scores, genealogical linkages going back several generations.

We did not get any letter, Schall said.

You should have, Maelin said. It was sent three months ago. Her appointment was this morning in Iscalon. Gidwyn, do you have it?

Gidwyn tapped on the omni and held it up. Right here.

This is a copy of the letter, Maelin said. It was addressed to you, Mr. Schall, sent out last November.

Schall barely glanced at the screen. His eyes were fixed on her. We received nothing. Perhaps it got lost. The magistrate’s office loses the mail sometimes.

You do understand the letter is a courtesy? It is not necessary to provide forewarning. It is your responsibility, in fact, to consult the magistrate’s Register of Callouts, which is publicly posted at the magistrate’s building in Iscalon and in every district church each January.

Nothing was posted in our church.

Then your priest was remiss in his duties.

A matronly woman in a head cover and apron came hurrying from the house. Schall’s wife, no doubt. She exchanged anxious words in Kawarthic Latin with her husband and pulled Avrah close, kissing the girl’s head tearfully.

We got no letter, did we? Schall said. No warning.

Mrs. Schall shook her head. Nothing.

I need to speak to your daughter, Maelin said. In private.

And if I say you cannot? Schall said. If I say you’ve done four of my children, and that is enough?

His voice was trembling with fear and anger. Why do these people make it so difficult? Maelin thought. If you refuse, she said, we will still take her. We have the means to do so—and your refusal will be noted in the record. She looked off toward the fields. That looks like it was corn, Mr. Schall. I believe you plant winter wheat as well. Do you want to lose your seed for next year? Have you forgotten who supplies you?

It was a stinging reminder. We control the seed of your lands. We control the seed of your children’s bodies.

Of course, control was a harsh word. A misleading word. It was about the management of populations and resources. It was about sustainability. But these people were stubborn, and it was needful, at times, to show them who was in charge.

Schall’s eyes lowered. I did not forget, he said.

Please, Mrs. Schall said, let us go inside. Speak with her inside. Please, please, you cannot take her so quickly. Come inside; speak with her inside. She clutched her daughter, kissing and caressing her head.

Resignation settled over Maelin. It was midafternoon, and snowflakes were whirling over the fields. During the drive up she had hoped they might finish with the girl quickly, and then speed back to the base and onward to the city without getting caught in the storm. She doubted it was possible now. They would be stuck in the Territories at least another night.

Fine, she said. We’ll speak to her inside.

Gidwyn glanced at Maelin with the mildest look of surprise. They had gone into farmhouses before, though it wasn’t the usual procedure. Usually they took people back to the bus. Maelin herself wasn’t sure why she had conceded to going into the home—a flicker of sympathy for the mother, perhaps—but now that she’d spoken, she was reluctant to change her mind. Uncertainty was a sign of weakness.

She left three security men outside and went in with three others and Gidwyn. An arched timber ceiling held up the main hall of the home, which was centered on a fireplace where flames crackled, emanating a palpable heat. The scent of sweet fresh baking hung in the air. There were several electric lamps, probably battery-powered through solar panels Maelin had glimpsed on the roof; evidently the family was not strictly old order. The walls were hung with tapestries with scenes from the Rohm Bible, a copy of which stood in plain sight on the fireplace mantel. Rohms were illegal, but Maelin ignored it. Things were already tense enough.

Wooden toys lay about the rug. The family did their schooling at home, judging by the print books, papers, and ink writing instruments that cluttered a long scuffed table. Maelin was offered an upholstered chair by a wall shelf of volumes whose authors she recognized: Homer, Thucydides, Cicero, Virgil, Pliny, Plutarch, Dante. These books, like the Rohm, were part of the cultural propaganda of the Old World, and they too were infractions—less serious than the Rohm Bible, but still infractions. Again she ignored them. Let them have their stories. It was one thing to control the seed of their lands and their bodies. It was harder to control the seed of their minds. The State of Lantua was still working on that part of the threefold strategy.

Apple strudel and tea were brought in by young women, as if Maelin had come to celebrate a birthday rather than to sterilize one of the family members. She and the team declined, but the presence of dessert excited the younger children, lifting the mood. The adults and elder siblings sat in high-backed wooden chairs topped with intricate carvings of grapevines, and talked quietly with furtive glances at the Lantuans, while the children sat cross-legged on the rug with their saucers, looking up at the strangers with wide-eyed interest. The family, clad in their simple, dark-colored garments, were like museum pieces from a bygone era.

Avrah was nowhere to be seen.

Where is your daughter? Maelin asked Schall.

She is upstairs praying in her room. If you will permit that much, he added bitterly.

Maelin held back her irritation. For all she knew, the girl was slipping out a window. She glanced at her security men, who stood with their backs to the wall, Morrighan rifles in hand. A word, and they would go and check on the girl. But Maelin decided against it. Even if the drones didn’t spot Avrah, which was unlikely, there was nowhere to escape to in this remote countryside. Especially with a storm coming.

Maelin studied the faces around her. She had overseen the protocolling of four of the six Schall children and had reviewed each family member’s records during the drive up. The eldest son, a registered breeder, was present with his wife and children. The wife was deep into her fifth pregnancy, her swollen pink ankles showing under her skirt. The young couple, like most Beny breeders, was clearly having as many children as possible, though regardless of how many they ended up with, only one would be permitted to breed.

Two nonbreeding sons and a nonbreeding daughter were also in the room, all in their late teens and early