Abiogenesis (19 page)

"She’s having a baby," Pierce snapped.

"What?"

"She’s the one?"

"Get the hell out of the way," Reuel growled.

"She’s having a baby? It can’t be a baby, can it?"

"Of course it’s a baby! What the hell else would it be?"

"Cyborg?"

"It’s still a baby, fool!"

Dalia’s head swam. "Go away," she said faintly.

They didn’t. The growing crowd followed them every step of the way until the threesome reached the med center. The word apparently having spread, more rushed up as they went until they had to fight their way through the gathering throng.

At long last, they reached the med center. Reuel grabbed Dalia from Pierce and rushed inside, Pierce on his heels. The moment Pierce cleared the door, he slammed it shut and locked it.

There were five techs in the waiting and treatment area. They stopped, lifting their heads like deer that had caught the scent of the hunter. Five pairs of eyes zeroed in on her bulging belly.

"She needs ... something," Reuel growled. "The baby’s coming."

The med techs merely stared at him blankly. "You mean birth?" one of them finally said.

"Yes!" Pierce snapped. "Birth. Now!"

"But ... she’s not supposed to now. They told me it would be months."

Dalia groaned, demanding to be put down and Reuel set her carefully on her feet, supporting her with an arm around her waist. Her feet had no sooner touched the tile floor than something hot and wet rushed between her thighs, running down her legs and forming a puddle on the floor. Dalia gasped fearfully. "What is that? What’s happening?"

"Urine?" the med tech nearest her guessed.

Dalia glared at him and slapped him square across the jaw. "It’s something from the baby!"

Abruptly, all five med techs sprang into action, launching themselves in five different directions at once. Unfortunately, their paths converged. They slammed together with a noise like a clap of thunder. One of the females bounced backward, slammed into the wall and then hit the floor on her hands and knees. Before she could gain her feet, two of the other three fell over her.

"You were supposed to be ready!" Reuel roared furiously.

Wordlessly, the med techs scrambled to their feet and rushed away. In a few moments, one came barreling down the corridor pushing a gurney in front of him. As he slid to a stop in front of Reuel and Dalia, another med tech rushed up with some sort of monitoring device on wheels. When Reuel had lifted her and settled her on the gurney, they turned and went back down the corridor to an examination room.

Reuel and Pierce exchanged a long look and followed. Taking up position on either side of the door, they folded their arms, leaned back against the wall, and watched the proceedings suspiciously.

Pierce glanced at Reuel. "Do they know what they’re doing?"

"They damn well better," Reuel growled, but he didn’t like the way the med techs kept exchanging nervous glances. Finally, one of the techs dashed past them and out the door. Ten minutes later, he returned with an antiquated computer on wheels, pushed it across the room, and hooked it up.

Reuel covered his face with his hands when they pulled up an even more ancient, pictorial medical encyclopedia and began clicking through the pages frantically. By the time they’d found the passages they needed and began a checklist, Dalia looked and sounded as if she was dying, her panting gasps escaping more like hoarse screams of agony.

White-faced, Reuel stood away from the wall abruptly and left the room.

Pierce stayed, watching as one of the med techs moved to the foot of the gurney, pushed Dalia’s legs up until her knees were almost perpendicular and parted her thighs. After leaning close and studying her for several moments, he poked his head up again and looked at the computer screen. "What did it say it was supposed to look like?"

The question was bad enough. One glimpse of the round black blob protruding from her body and the blood trickling out around sent a wave of dizziness through him. With an effort, he felt his way blindly out the door, slid down the wall and put his head down.

Reuel stopped pacing, staring down at Pierce in abject terror. "What’s wrong?"

"Everything, I think," Pierce said a little sickly. "When you were checking out this natural reproduction thing, did you happen to check to see if many of the females survived it?"

Feeling the blood rush from his face, Reuel thrust the door open and reentered the examination room just in time to see a horrible, bloody mass slither from Dalia’s body and into the waiting hands of one of the techs. He knew then that Pierce was right. Dalia was dying and the infant he’d looked forward to with so much hope was nothing more than a bloody mass of biological material that looked as if it had gone through a defective particle transporter. Blackness swarmed around him. His knees suddenly felt like jelly. He felt himself sway.

The next moment he was aware of, he was staring up at the ceiling and listening to a weak, strange noise that sounded like a combination of crying and choking.

Confused, both by that and the fact that his skull felt as if he’d cracked it open, he sat up slowly, holding his pounding head and trying to figure out how he’d gotten back into the corridor when he didn’t remember leaving the examination room.

"Hey!" Pierce exclaimed, chuckling. "It looks like a baby!"

Hope surging through him at that announcement, Reuel struggled to his feet with an effort, reentered the examination room, and shoved Pierce aside. Relief flooded him as he watched one of the techs carefully wiping the bloody residue off of the screaming child. He could tell nothing about the face, beyond the fact that the mouth worked. It was wide open. There were slits where the eyes were supposed to be. He sincerely hoped that only meant that it had squeezed them closed. It was red with fury and waving two arms and two legs, with two hands and two feet. He counted ten fingers and ten toes. It was definitely humanoid. A slow smile curled his lips. "It’s a female."

Dalia chuckled weakly and reached for the squalling infant. It began to grow quieter almost at once and Reuel moved to the head of the gurney, smiling as he watched it wiggle around in search of a comfortable position. Finally, it managed to get one of its waving fingers in its mouth and began sucking. Dalia flicked a look up at his face. "I’m all right, thanks," she said dryly.

Reuel flushed uncomfortably. Catching her hand, he lifted it to his lips and kissed the back and then leaned down and kissed her lips. "You’re wrong if you think I wasn’t worried. I’ve never been that scared before in my life. I’m just so ... overwhelmed."

"Guess that’s why you fainted?" Pierce commented. At the withering glance Reuel sent in his direction, he added, "I’d say that probably makes it unanimous." He turned to study the departing med techs. "They need reprogramming."

Reuel gave him a look. "We’ll all need some. We’ve got nearly six thousand cyborgs on Mordal and three thousand in the city Gallen, most of whom were designed as soldiers and damn few with any other kind of training." He gestured toward the group that had just left. "They were programmed as med techs for battle wounds, not medical conditions, sickness, and most definitely not for delivering babies."

Pierce shrugged. "Guess that’s why they didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground?" He transferred his attention to Dalia and the infant. "Anyway, you’ve got a beautiful baby, Dally."

Dalia looked at the baby a little doubtfully. "You think so?"

"No."

Dalia glared at him. "If you had any idea of the hell I just went through, you’d lie."

Pierce sobered. "I’ve got a pretty good idea--and I was just teasing you. She’s strong, healthy and got everything she’s supposed to have. That makes her beautiful."

Dalia shifted the baby so that she could study its sleeping face. A smile tugged at her lips. "She looks like Reuel."

"Really? No wonder she’s ugly as hell. Poor little tyke."

Dalia chuckled at the look on Reuel’s face. It was obvious he didn’t know whether to be more insulted by her remark or Pierce’s. Before he could think up a suitable retort, a great roar filtered through the building to them.

"What was that?" Dalia asked uneasily.

Reuel and Pierce exchanged a glance and left the room. Pierce was grinning when they returned and Reuel looking very pleased with himself. "They’re celebrating," Reuel said, his voice threaded with pride and excitement, "the birth of the first cyborg."

"The birth of the first child born on Mordal," Pierce added.

"I should take her and show them," Reuel said, studying the infant a little doubtfully.

Dalia gave him a look. "Don’t even think about it. The computer said she was only 90% matured. They can see her when she’s a little older."

"Yeah," Pierce added. "Hopefully, she’ll look better, too.... What?" he added when Reuel and Dalia both gave him an indignant glare.

Chapter Nineteen

Dalia was overwhelmed when they left the med center two days later. Hundreds of cyborgs, both male and female, lined the walks on either side of the street, trying to get a glimpse of the infant, cheering almost hysterically each time she lifted it up for them to see it.

Reuel, despite his suggestion of taking it out to show the day it was born, wasn’t terribly anxious to hold it. He seemed perfectly content to stare at her for hours, but every time she handed the infant to him, he went rigid, hardly daring even to breathe. That was usually followed by a sickly, greenish pallor to his skin and a cold sweat.

Pierce didn’t do much better. As long as he wasn’t holding the infant, he was completely nonchalant about the care of it, and eager to impart the wisdom of infant care that he ‘remembered’ from his childhood programming. The moment she suggested he hold it, however, he thought of something else he had to do and disappeared.

She couldn’t say that she blamed them. She was terrified of it herself. She hadn’t expected it to be so tiny, or look so fragile and helpless. It couldn’t even feed itself, let alone look for its own food. And it almost seemed as if, when she did feed it the liquid diet the med techs assured her were all the sustenance it needed right now, the food poured right through it and out the other end. It was constantly soiling itself, which was another reason neither Reuel nor Pierce wanted to hold it.

She hadn’t wanted to voice her fears aloud, but she couldn’t help but worry that something was very wrong.

The new residents of the cyborg world had been assigned to the homes of those who’d come before them until they decided to stay and build their own abode or leave. And Dalia discovered that she was to make her home with Reuel, which didn’t surprise her. What did was that Reuel had arranged to take Pierce, as well, until it occurred to her that Pierce was one of the minute few who had any prior knowledge of infants.

Reuel’s abode, or ‘home’ as he referred to it, was what he called a ‘plantation’ about a mile beyond the outer rim of the city of Gallen. He grew food, but also plants that were used to make other things.

She’d been surprised to learn of it, until it occurred to her that they would have to have something like it to provide a continuous supply of food. It had taken them three months to get to Mordal. Even if it hadn’t been dangerous to regularly travel between the planet and others for supplies, it wasn’t practical.

Then, too, Mordal had no monetary system like the known universe. The cyborgs traded for what they wanted. The fact that Reuel grew food and everyone needed food meant that Reuel was one of the wealthiest cyborgs on the planet, particularly since he also seemed to understand the techniques of growing better than anyone else and produced far more than any of the other planters.

His abode was startling even after all of the other buildings Dalia had seen since she’d arrived. For one thing, it was an enormous structure of many rooms. On Earth, one was fortunate even to have soul possession and use of one large room. Reuel’s house had ten rooms of staggering proportions. Even the rooms for bathing were larger than the quarters she’d had. Most of the storage compartments were larger than her quarters.

He was obviously fond of what he referred to as porches, which were, basically, rooms on the outside of the building that had a floor and ceiling, but no walls or windows beyond those that made up the outer wall of the house--and columns. A porch ran the width of the building on the front and was lined with tall columns that supported the outer edge of the roof. These columns were not smooth like those at the flight terminal, however. They had regular, concave gouges running vertically around their circumference, which Reuel referred to as fluting. The decorative tops of the columns were also more elaborately carved.

It had windows everywhere, most of them tall enough they could’ve been doors if they’d been set nearer the floor. The doors were big enough for giants.

Staring at the enormous white structure as they neared it, Dalia felt her stomach go weightless. She wasn’t certain whether it was the beauty of the building itself that inspired such awe, or if that was only part of it, but she was aware of equal parts of admiration and gut wrenching fear--of so much space and of occupying it with Reuel.

He hadn’t said anything else about contracting as a family unit, but she was fairly certain that wasn’t because he’d forgotten it or dismissed the idea. She had the distinct feeling that he thought she would grow accustomed to it by sharing his abode with him and the infant.

She wasn’t certain she would. She hadn’t experienced anything since the birth of the infant to convince her she’d been wrong about not having nurturing instincts. The infant seemed to trust her, which only proved the poor thing hadn’t developed adequate logic capabilities, because she hadn’t a clue of what she was doing, or if she was doing any of it correctly. The only reason she hadn’t handed it to Reuel and fled was because he wouldn’t take it long enough, she didn’t think the city of Gallen was large enough for her to hide, and she hated for everyone to know how incompetent she was.