Page 22 of The Champion
Following my gaze, Victor asked. “Are you sure you’re ready to cut the umbilical cord?”
I ignored his comment and asked a question of my own. “When do we start on the project?”
“Today, if you’re up for it.”
“Today?” Celeste lowered her brow. “But it’s Sunday. I have other plans and no one else is working in the lab today.”
“That’s fine. I’ll go over the scope of the project with Freya. Once Shelly is here, things will move fast. By starting out slowly, Freya will have an easier time understanding what we’re trying to do.”
“You’re trying to prevent endangered species from going extinct. I read up on cloning before I got here.”
“Good, but we’re looking into other options as well. For now, we’re focused on mammals. With cloning we still depend on the females to carry the offspring and that limits the number of animals we can breed. What we would like to do is find a way to grow the animals in an artificial womb. That way we can grow the numbers of a species extremely fast. To avoid inbreeding, we would need to assert the same discipline that we use when we inseminate our women here in France.”
“You want to build an external womb?” I asked.
“Yes. We want to expand on the technology developed to care for premature babies. The Motherlands have advanced methods of keeping infants alive from as early as twelve weeks. Shelly and I will develop an artificial womb that takes care of the baby all the way from conception to birth.”
“When you say baby… we’re still talking about animals, right?”
“The technology we develop could be used for all mammals; humans included. But whether it should be used for expanding our population is a political discussion.”
Victor and I had studied each other for years and I knew every micro expression he had. Right now, his mouth, eyes, and head position told me he was hiding something.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Celeste and Victor looked at each other as if silently debating how much to share with me.
“Spit it out. What’s going on?”
“Don’t!” Celeste warned him when Victor opened his mouth.
“Don’t what?” I pressured her. “Look, if there’s some hidden agenda to this project, I need to know about it, right now.”
Victor shifted his weight. “It’s just that when we applied for funds for this project from the government, there were those who argued it could become an alternative to the two mandatory pregnancies for women here in France.”
I stared at him. “Please tell me I’m not helping to build factories that produce motherless babies. That’s sounds awful.”
Victor shook his head. “It’s not on the agenda for now. As I said, it’s a political discussion that we have no control over. France is a poor country, Freya, not least because we are a tiny country. Growing our numbers faster would benefit us long term.”
I swung my hand through the air. “Then open your borders and invite people to come and live here. Don’t breed babies as if people are nothing but a resource to make your country rich.”
Celeste moved closer. “You’re right. I promise you that it’s not relevant at the moment. The Motherlands made the decision centuries ago that they would rather grow organically and slowly than manufacture people. They wouldn’t allow us to grow babies in a lab even if we decided we wanted to try.”
My shoulders relaxed a little. She was right. My father and the Council in the Motherlands wouldn’t let it happen.
Giving my shoulders a squeeze, Celeste smiled. “I’m off to visit a friend, Freya, but I’ll see you back at my apartment later tonight.”
“Sure, thank you for letting me stay with you.”
“It’s fine. I don’t expect to be home much anyway. I’ve developed an interest in younger men lately and I have some eager ones lined up.” With a chirpy laugh, Celeste left Victor and me to walk on alone.
For a while we didn’t speak, but then we reached the building where he worked, and he led me through a maze of doors and hallways to a laboratory that was much larger than I had expected.
I waited for Victor to explain about the project, but instead he said, “You know that you don’t have to stay in Celeste’s apartment. You could stay in mine.”
“Last time I offered to stay in your apartment, you said that you would rather drink radioactive water than sleep next to me.”
He groaned. “You wanted us to be a family like in the Northlands.”
