17.
 “Quick!” Anna whispered from her bed.
Taxi was already in bed. Moira pulled the covers up and dove underneath. “Brr, it’s cold.” Taxi felt Moira’s hand on her belly. “You’re supposed to tuck it around your knees when you get in, otherwise you lie there with it all bunched up around your chest.”
“I thought it didn’t matter once you’re under the covers.”
“It’s up to you. Oh please, warm me.”
Taxi relaxed and said nothing. “These Toons, are they strong?”
“Hmm? Can I at least snuggle next to you?”
“Sure. Go ahead. How easy would it be to bop one of these borgs?”
Moira snuggled close, shifting herself inch by inch against Taxi’s right. Moira’s right arm crept across and she held the palm of her hand against Taxi’s left ribs. “Hmm?” Moira shivered.
“To knock one of these sumbitches out. Could you do it?”
“I never tried. Why would I? They protect us.”
“They also haul you away if you’ve been bad.”
“I’ve never been bad.”
“Just sneaky.”
“What do you mean?”
Taxi took Moira’s right ear and gently tugged it, as if correcting a bad boy. “You’re bad all right.”
Moira pulled up on both elbows and put her hands to her mouth. “What do you mean?”
“Because you like girls instead of boys, and these people would go nuts if they knew.”
“Is that bad?”
“It doesn’t lead to a healthy gene pool. Talk about wasting perfectly good eggs.”
“Shh!” Moira said. “Someone might hear you. For your information, I plan to be a perfectly good bearing mother, and you’re wrong, Taxi, I like boys.”
“You like both.”
Silence.
Taxi added: “Come on, Moira, I really don’t care.”
“On the outside, do they care?”
“On the outside, most people die before they are 30. You get what you can. Nobody asks too many questions.”
“In here, they care. Everything has to be just so.”
“You and Anna?”
“The others know. We are all like sisters, and nobody tells.”
“Bad for the gene pool,” Taxi teased.
“In here, we also get what we can and feel happy to get from one day to the next. We know how bad things are on the outside, so we don’t feel to bad about our lives.”
“Will you help me get a helium drive bottle?”
“Oh yes.”
“Help me get it to the outside?”
“Yes. Taxi?”
“What?”
“Can I go with you?”
“What? Honey, I would not do that to you.”
“I don’t belong here, Taxi.”
“You’ve got this gorgeous red hair,” Taxi said, absently pulling at a few strands. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the dark, and she looked at the hair. It glowed red, almost orange, in the dormitory light.
There was a noise. A door opened.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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