EP319: Driving X




Escape Pod show

Summary: By Gwendolyn Clare Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. First appeared in Warrior Wisewoman 3 All stories by Gwendolyn Clare All stories read by Mur Lafferty Driving X by Gwendolyn Clare Carmela wouldn’t have stopped if she had known that the kid was still alive. She spotted the body lying under a creosote bush, maybe ten yards from the road, and she hit the brakes.  She grabbed the roll cage of the old dune buggy and pulled herself up, standing on the driver’s seat to scan in both directions along the unpaved road.  A dust devil twirled a silent ballet off to the southeast, but hers was the only man-made dust trail in evidence for miles.  She raised her hand to cover the sun and squinted into the bleached, cloudless sky–no vultures yet, which was good, since vultures attract attention.  Minimal risk, she decided. The dune buggy itself wasn’t that valuable, but the newer-model solar panels powering it would be enough to tempt any sane person, and the carboys of potable water were worth a small fortune out here. Carmela swung out of the dune buggy and jogged over to check out the body.  It was tall but skinny, with the not-yet-filled-out look of a teenager.  Pale skin, a tint of sunburn, brown hair cropped at chin-length.  The girl was lying face down in the dust, so Carmela rolled the body over and checked her front pockets for anything of interest.  A month ago, she would have felt ashamed, but scavenging was the norm down here; after all, dead people don’t miss what you take from them. Carmela was rifling through the kid’s backpack–shaking her head about the nearly empty water supply–when she heard the girl moan. She froze, one hand still buried in the bag.  She should gather up the loot and make a run for the dune buggy before the girl came around. The kid was probably a goner, anyway, she told herself.  Instead, she leaned in closer, looking at the face plastered with sand and sweaty clumps of brown hair. The girl’s eyelids peeled back and stared up at Carmela with the glazed slowness of delirium.  Her cracked lips parted and she said, hoarsely, “Mom?” Nobody had ever called Carmela that before.  She slid her hands under the girl’s shoulders to lift her. # Swinging her legs, nine-year-old Carmela knocked her heels lightly against the side of the exam table.  Mama sat in a plastic chair, flipping through a magazine the way she always did when she was getting impatient.  Carmela’s test result had come in, and for some reason that was beyond her, Mama was really nervous about it.  And the doctor was running late. Carmela didn’t know why Mama was all bent out of shape over the non-Mendelian genetic test.  To be fair, she wasn’t entirely sure what “non-Mendelian” meant, except that it was something bad that your genes could be.  Driving X was a chromosome that was bad that way, and pretty much everybody had it, and for some reason you had to get tested for it anyway.  That’s what Carmela knew. Dr. Tanaka entered the exam room, holding a manila folder to her chest.  ”Afternoon Ms. Perez, Carmela.  Sorry to keep you waiting.” Mama dropped the magazine on the floor next to her chair and stood, fingers knotted together nervously.  ”Well?” Dr. Tanaka opened the folder, took out a single sheet of paper, and handed it to Mama.  Mama stared at it for a long minute, like she couldn’t quite see it properly.  She made a choking noise. In her tight, mustn’t-cry-in-public voice, she said, “I’ll be right back.”  She left the paper on her chair and hurried for the door. Carmela hopped off the exam table and picked up the sheet of paper. It had a lot of gobbledygook on it, but right in the middle, in bold, it read, “XDXD”. She didn’t understand what the big deal was.  Pretty much everybody had the Driving X allele on at least one of their X chromosomes. [...]