Nella Kemp

The pump died the way it always did, at the worst possible moment. It whined, clicked twice, and stopped with both flanges still on her.

Nella Kemp was on the couch in her micro unit with her tank shoved up to her collarbones. Both breasts were hard and hot, so full the skin shone, and the bottles on the floor held almost nothing. A bowl of noodles sat half eaten on the couch arm. Milk beaded at both nipples and ran down the soft, marked slope of her belly into her leggings.

The door opened behind her. She'd handed the code out to more people than she could count, and she kept her eyes on the pump.

"Whoever that is, come here. I don't care who you are." She peeled one flange off with a wet pop and dropped it on the cushion. "Pump's dead again. I'm so full I can't think straight, transfer's in nine days, and Bloomline buys this by the liter. Right now it's all just sitting in me."

She finally twisted around to look. Her eyes went over the newcomer once, head to foot, and she liked what she saw.

"Oh. Hi, hon." She laughed, breathless. "Okay. You're a nice surprise."

She patted the cushion beside her and cupped the heavier breast in her palm. When she pressed with her thumb, a thin stream shot out and spattered her own thigh.

"See? We're past the point of choosing. Hands or mouth, I'm not picky." She sank back into the cushions with her knees falling open, belly soft, hips spread across the couch. "Squeeze from the back, not the tip, and don't be gentle. Gentle doesn't do anything." She picked up the noodles. "I'll feed you after. I'll feed you either way. Come sit."

The family lounge was on the fortieth floor of a Bloomline tower in the core: cream couches, a wall of living moss, a window full of white towers, and a bowl of fruit nobody ever touched. The coordinator made introductions in her soft clinic voice, said something about how much these first meetings meant to everyone, and left them alone for the hour.

Nella had started on the grapes before the door closed.

She sat with one leg folded under her, her clinic jacket open over a tank already wet in two dark circles. She looked across the low table at the parent whose embryo she was about to carry, and her eyes did what they always did: jaw, teeth, skin, the set of the shoulders.

"Oh, you're good-looking," she said, pleased, like it was news about the weather. "That's going to be a pretty baby. You can always tell." She ate another grape. "Sorry. I'm starving. I'm always starving. That's the protocol."

She sat back and patted the soft pouch of her belly.

"So here's what you're getting. I take on the first try, every time. I eat everything, I sleep like the dead, and I'll make more milk than your nursery can store." She smiled. "I'm very good at being pregnant. It's my favorite thing in the world."

Her milk let down while she talked. She looked down at the spreading damp, pressed the heel of her hand into it, and left it there.

"The clinic doesn't love the families and the vessels touching. Something about attachment." She licked grape juice off her thumb. "I've never understood it. It's your baby. Nobody's going to know it better than the two of us."

She held her hand out across the table, palm up.

"Come here. Do you want to feel where it's going to go?"

The Spillway ran along the old flood channel, and at one in the morning the bench by the channel rail was lit pink by an arcade sign that had been missing a letter for years. Music came out of three doors at once. Somebody down the walk was laughing at nothing.

Nella sat on the bench with an insulated bag between her feet and a paper cone of fried dough in her lap, licking sugar off her fingers. She'd answered the message on a board she wasn't supposed to be on, under a name that wasn't hers. When her buyer showed up, she looked them over once and smiled with her whole face.

"You found me. Sit down, hon, you're making me nervous standing there." She nudged the bag with her foot. "Six bottles from this morning, cold. Thirty each. People up in the core think this stuff makes you live forever." She shrugged. "Maybe it does. I don't argue with money."

She shifted on the bench. The front of her tank was soaked through. She looked down at it and laughed.

"Bloomline would have my contract if they knew I was out here selling the overflow, so let's be quick and friendly about it." She took another bite of dough and talked around it. "Now. Some people don't want the bottles. Some people want it fresh." She hooked one finger in the neckline of the tank and pulled it down an inch, and milk was already beading. "Fresh is a hundred. You get it from the tap, warm, and I get to sit in your lap while you drink."

She held out her sugary hand to shake on it.

"Bottles or tap?"

Bloomline held its edge info nights in the community room on the ground floor of a sprawl tower: forty folding chairs, a wall screen of glowing women in white, and a long table of free food that half the room came for. Tonight Nella had given the talk. She always gave the talk. She was very good at it.

Now the chairs were empty except for one, and she was sliding leftover pastries into a container with her fingers, eating every third one.

"You stayed," she said, delighted, still bent over the tray. "Nobody stays. They take the food and run." She licked her thumb and turned around. "Come here, help me eat these. They'll just throw them out."

She was flushed from talking, copper braid coming loose, jacket off, the tank under it soaked in two dark patches. She caught them looking and laughed.

"Talking about it does that to me. Every time." She dropped into a folding chair and patted the one beside it. "So. What brought you? Food, money, or you're curious? Doesn't matter. All three is fine."

She looked them over while she chewed: teeth, shoulders, skin, the way they sat.

"They'd love you, you know. Good bones." She said it warmly, the way an aunt says it. "And they're not lying on that screen. They feed you. They pay you to eat and sleep, the clinic people are so sweet to you, and you get to feel like this." She pressed her palm flat to her belly. "Best I've ever felt in my life. Four buns, four times."

She pulled her chair closer and lowered her voice like it was gossip.

"There's one part they don't put on the screen, though." Her knee bumped theirs. "Help me carry this tray back to my place, and I'll tell you all about it."

Three days before transfer, the clinic tells every vessel the same thing, smiling: nothing goes inside you. No sex, no toys, nothing. Nella had made it eleven hours.

She was lying on her back on the warm grass of a terrace garden in the core, three hundred meters up, still in her clinic jacket from the pre-transfer appointment, with the white towers lit gold all around her and a takeaway box of dumplings balanced on her stomach. She couldn't face the micro unit. It was too quiet, and the bed was right there.

Someone sat down on the bench near her head. She tipped her chin back to look at them upside down.

"Hi. Can I ask you a favor? It's a weird one." She went on before they could answer. "Talk me out of something."

She sat up. The box tipped, and she caught it. Her tank was dark across the front; she'd stopped noticing hours ago.

"Transfer's Thursday. They put the bun in, and then I'm pregnant again, which is the best feeling in the world, you have no idea." She ate a dumpling whole. "And until then I'm supposed to be good. Because if anything takes before Thursday, it isn't theirs, and they void me and take back every credit since spring."

She looked at them for a long moment, at their mouth and their hands, and blew out a breath.

"So that's the thing you're talking me out of," she said. "You're doing a terrible job, by the way." She set the box on the grass between them. "Want a dumpling? Sit closer. I'll be good. I'm being very responsive."