Brave New Worlds

and a maroon watch cap demands to see their ticket.
    "Happy Saint Patrick's Day," says Stephen, flourishing the preserved blossom.
    "We're putting you people on the fo'c'sle deck," the man yells above the growl of the idling engines. "You can hide behind the pianos. At ten o'clock you get a bran muffin and a cup of coffee. "
    As Stephen guides his stepchildren in a single file up the forward ladder, the crew of the Mayflower reels in the mooring lines and ravels up the anchor chains, setting her adrift. The engines kick in. Smoke pours from the freighter's twin stacks. Sunlight seeps across the bay, tinting the eastern sky hot pink and making the island's many-windowed towers glitter like Christmas trees.
    A sleek Immortality Corps cutter glides by, headed for the wharfs, evidently unaware that enemies of the unconceived lie close at hand.
    Slowly, cautiously, Stephen negotiates the maze of wooden crates—it seems as if every piano on Boston Isle is being exported today—until he reaches the starboard bulwark. As he curls his palm around the rail, the Mayflower cruises past the Mystic Shoals, maneuvering amid the rocks like a skier following a slalom course.
    "Hello, Stephen. " A large woman lurches into view, abruptly kissing his cheek.
    He gulps, blinking like a man emerging into sunlight from the darkness of a copulatorium. Valerie Gallogher's presence on the Mayflower doesn't surprise him, but he's taken aback by her companions. Angela Dunfey, suckling little Merribell. Her cousin, Lorna, still spectacularly pregnant. And, most shocking of all, Father Monaghan, leaning his frail frame against his baptismal font.
    Stephen says, "Did we. . . ? Are you. . . ?"
    "My blood has spoken," Valerie Gallogher replies, her red hair flying like a pennant. "In nine months I give birth to our child. "
    Whereupon the sky above Stephen's head begins swarming with tiny black birds. No, not birds, he realizes: devices. Ovulation gauges sail through the air, a dozen at first, then scores, then hundreds, immediately pursued by equal numbers of sperm counters. As the little machines splash down and sink, darkening the harbor like the contraband tea from an earlier moment in the history of Boston insurgency, a muffled but impassioned cheer arises among the stowaways.
    "Hello, Father Monaghan. " Stephen unstraps his sperm counter. "Didn't expect to find you here. "
    The priest smiles feebly, drumming his fingers on the lip of the font. "Valerie informs me you're about to become a father again. Congratulations. "
    "My instincts tell me it's a boy," says Stephen, leaning over the rail. "He's going to get a second candy cane at Christmas,"asserts the bewildered pilgrim as, with a wan smile and a sudden flick of his wrist, he breaks his bondage to the future.

    If I don't act now, thinks Connie as he pivots toward Valerie Gallogher, I'll never find the courage again.
    "Do we have a destination?" he asks. Like a bear preparing to ascend a tree, he hugs the font, pulling it against his chest.
    "Only a purpose,"Valerie replies, sweeping her hand across the horizon. "We won't find any Edens out there, Father. The entire Baltimore Reef has become a wriggling mass of flesh, newborns stretching shore to shore. " She removes her ovulation gauge and throws it over the side. "In the Minneapolis Keys, the Corps routinely casts homosexual men and menopausal women into the sea. On the California Archipelago, male parishioners receive periodic potency tests and—"
    "The Atlanta Insularity?"
    "A nightmare. "
    "Miami Isle?"
    "Forget it. "
    Connie lays the font on the bulwark then clambers onto the rail, straddling it like a child riding a see-saw. A loop of heavy-duty chain encircles the font, the steel links flashing in the rising sun. "then what's our course?"
    "East," says Valerie. "Toward Europe. What are you doing?"
    "East," Connie echoes, tipping the font seaward. "Europe. "
    A muffled, liquid crash reverberates across the harbor. The font disappears, dragging the chain behind it.
    "Father!"
    Drawing in a deep breath, Connie studies the chain. The spiral of links unwinds quickly and smoothly, like a coiled rattlesnake striking its prey. The slack vanishes. Connie feels the iron shackle seize his ankle. He flips over. He falls.
    "Bless these waters, O Lord, that they might grant this sinner the gift of life everlasting. . . "
    "Father!"
    He plunges into the harbor, penetrating its cold hard surface: an experience, he decides, not unlike throwing