Mothership (35 page)

I close my eyes and think that through. If I had known, in that moment, that that one tiny decision would change my whole life, would I have decided differently? Would I have chosen not to do the dirty with Cole? I want to say yes. But honestly, I don’t know. Try as I might to do otherwise, I might make the same choice again.

“You’ll make the right decision, you know,” Ducky says. He looks at the TV when he says it, not at me, but I know he means it. “Whatever you do will be the right thing.”

“Thanks, Duck.”

There is a soft knock on my bedroom door. “Dearheart?”

I look up from the game. “Come on in, Dad.” He steps into the room. “You want to join us? You can sub for Ducky.”

Dad laughs. “No, just wanted to see how you two were doing up here. I was setting up the new filing cabinet, and I needed a break.” He rubs his shoulder.

“New filing cabinet?” Ducky asks.

“I needed one with extra drawers,” Dad says with a nod. “Can you believe I only had
one
crisis folder on alien invasions?”

Before I can respond to that, the front doorbell rings downstairs.

“That must be the new crew of construction workers,” Dad says. I’d have thought, with the whole daughter-in-a-space-emergency thing, that maybe he’d give up on his plans for the solar deck, but it’s been going full-throttle. The sawing and banging outside the window has really put a damper on my afternoon naps. “I got a call yesterday that my normal crew was all reassigned. Can you believe that, right in the middle of the job? Anyways. Donald, would you mind letting them inside? Tell them I’ll be there in just a second?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Nara,” he replies. As he gets up, he pauses the game and looks at me. “No cheating while I’m gone,” he says, and leaves the room.

After Ducky’s footsteps fade down the stairs, Dad pulls something out of his pocket. An LED. “I wanted to give you this,” he says, handing it to me.

I put down the yogurt and take it. Slowly I read the words on the page.

It is an official doctor’s note, claiming that, after administration of the Gatling test, the fetus I am carrying has been determined to have CMS. My all-access pass to a legal late-stage termination with a certified physician. “How did you . . .” I ask.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replies, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “And before you say anything, I know you haven’t made up your mind yet, and I’m not trying to force you one way or the other. I think you know what my opinion is, but in the end it doesn’t matter. I just want you to have everything you need for whatever decision you make.”

I snuffle back a sudden wave of tears. “Thanks, Dad,” I whisper. My mind is roller-coastering out of control again, with the same thoughts that have been banging around in there ever since I learned about my situation. Do I really want to give up a baby, even if it isn’t mine? Do I really want to
have
a baby, especially if it isn’t mine? If I have this Almiri, that’s it for me. I can never have a child of my own after that. Period. And could it really be considered a termination? I mean, there was no fertilization of any egg going on here. The thing is a parasite inside me. Cole’s parasite . . .

Dad reaches across the space between us, to where I’m sitting curled in the armchair in front of the TV, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “What are you thinking?” he asks gently.

I sigh. “I’m thinking . . .” One thing I know for sure is, if I
do
have this baby—and I don’t know at all that I will—there’s no way I’d
ever
let it be raised by James Dean and his merry band of babe magnets in the Poconos. The brief conversation I had with Cole in the bathroom of the
Echidna
was enough to convince me of that. This kid, even if it weren’t mine, would need a more fair and balanced view of the human race than you can get from the top of North Knob. “All I keep thinking,” I tell my dad, “is how, if I have this baby, I’ll never go to Mars.” I am definitely crying now. I swipe at a tear before it can escape down my cheek. “I mean, I don’t want to be selfish, but . . . That’s what I’ve wanted
forever
. How can I give up my whole life for a baby? For
someone else’s
baby? For a
parasite
?” Dad presses his thumb against the line of my nose, blotting out another tear. “There’s no way I’ll be able to get into the Ares
Project, because I’ll have this
thing
with me, slowing me down every step of the way. And I’ll never get to see the world, the universe, anything. I’ll end up . . .” Yep, it’s turning into a sob fest. “I’ll be just like Mom.”

My father cocks his head to the side, curious. “Like Mom?” he asks.

“How . . .” I do my best to gather the words to explain. “How she marked all those places she wanted to go in her stupid book of maps”—I swing an arm in the direction of the book, propped up as always on my bookshelf—“and she never got to go to any of them because she . . . because she had me.”

“Elvie.” Dad waits until I’m looking into his eyes, and then he gives me the most soulful look I’ve ever seen. “Dearheart. Is that what you think?”

Sniffle. “What do you mean?”

“I suppose it’s my fault. Talking about your mother—well, you know that it’s very difficult for me. Very painful. I guess I just figured that if I buried the memories, they wouldn’t sting so much. But I never meant to rob you of your mother. For that I am truly sorry.”

Dad stands up and kisses my forehead gently. Then he walks to the bookshelf and takes down Mom’s book of maps. He sits back gingerly on the bed and turns a page to show me.

It’s my favorite map. Antarctica. I don’t even have to look at it to know exactly where it is marked in red, right over Cape Crozier.

“Your mother fed penguins, right here,” he tells me with a wistful smile. His finger lands directly on the dot that marks Cape Crozier. “They walked right up to her and ate out of her
hand.” He laughs to himself. “She must’ve told me the story a dozen times. Her group nearly died of starvation on the trek there, but she still hid a package of granola just for those damn birds.”

“Dad?” I say, confused. “But . . .”

He turns to another page. Peru. “Your mother rode a burro all the way up the Inca trail.” Another map. He points to a dot off the coast of New Zealand. “And here’s where she solar surfed for the first time.” He flips to another page, but before he can continue on, I rest a hand across the book. He looks up at me. “Your mother was a remarkable woman, Elvie. Olivia did a lot of things in her few short years on Earth.”

“But . . . I thought the book was . . . Why did she keep all these maps? I thought they were places she wanted to see.”

“They were places she
loved
,” Dad replies. “Your mother was quite the explorer. I should’ve told you more about her, I know I should have. I always thought it’d be easier to do when you were older.” He looks at my baby bump and laughs weakly. “I guess you’re old enough now.”

Inside me the Goober kicks. It’s the first time I’ve felt his presence in I don’t know how many days, and the feeling is strange, jarring.

“Dearheart,” my dad continues. “Your mom kept this book of maps for you. She was so excited that . . .” I think for a second that I hear his voice break, but he swallows it down and begins again. “She was so happy when she found out she was having a little girl. She said she wanted to share the world with you.” He closes the book of maps and places it in my lap. “I guess in some small way she did.”

I look at the book in my hands. Feel its weight. All the places in the world my mother adored and wanted to share with me. All that love, in one book.

“If you want to go to Mars,” Dad tells me, “one little baby won’t stop you. It will take longer, it will be much more difficult. But there are other paths besides the Ares Project. If that’s what you want, Elvie Nara, I won’t
let
you fail.” With that he stands up slowly, gives me another kiss on the forehead, and walks to the door. “I’ve got to go talk to the new construction crew,” he says. “Show them some of the gremlins to watch out for.”

And he leaves me alone with my thoughts.

I spend a long time with that book. I don’t open it, just run my hands across its cover. Thinking about the places I’ve never been. Thinking about my mother. Thinking about the baby inside me.

I don’t know anything about the Goober, not really. I don’t know what he’ll look like, act like, want to eat. He’ll be a completely foreign creature to me, without a single strand of my DNA.

What I do know, though, is that he could grow up to be someone amazing. Important. Because all those famous Almiri that Cole listed in the bathroom that day on the
Echidna
—Mozart, Marlowe, Alexander the Great—he was right about them. There
was
something incredible about each of them, and they contributed so much to human society. Now that someone’s given me the chance to adopt baby Mozart—whether I asked for it or not—can I really turn that down? How can I deny the world a child who may one day grow up to cure
CMS? Or compose the next great symphony? Or develop a brave new political philosophy?

And if
I
raise the baby, I can make it more than simply the sum of the great genes it was born with. I can teach it the things that make human beings so wonderful—the joy of blowing bubbles on a sunny day, the opportunity to go to school, to have a family. The unconditional love of a real, true parent who already knows that great things lie in store for him, and can help him prepare for them. If I raise this baby, it will be mine, DNA or not. And I can prove once and for all that Dr. Marsden was wrong. When it comes to caring for the species or caring for the individual, sometimes you don’t have to choose.

I look at that book of maps for a long time, thinking. Then I pick up the LED my father gave me and look at that, too.

My mind made up at last, I wrestle my phone out of my pocket and open a new message box.

keeping it

I send the blink to Cole and set my phone on the bed. Then, my heart a thousand times lighter for having made my decision at last, I flop back into my chair.

I am having this baby. And I will share the world with him.

•  •  •

As I’m crossing to the bathroom to wash my face, I hear my dad deep in conversation with one of the new construction workers. He’s essentially giving him a lesson on the history of the fusion boom, as if he needed or wanted it. I can only
imagine the amount of eye rolling that’s transpiring.

“So you see, that’s why you can’t use those cheap new filters on these old vents,” Dad’s telling the guy. “You need to go with good old reliable coral. The new junk will just disintegrate because these old systems have such a variable rate of flow. You get what you pay for, that’s what I always say.”

“Mmmm,” I hear the construction worker reply, thoughtful. “We can do that, sure, no problem. Whatever you want.”

I pause, right at the top of the stairs, my feet frozen to the carpet. There is something about that voice, the way it is both smooth and dangerous at the same time, like dark chocolate with a hint of chili powder. Very man’s man.

And much too sultry for a replacement construction worker.

I tiptoe to the edge of the top stair and tilt my head down to get a look into the living room. Sure enough, there is my father talking to a burly man in a sleeveless tee. The dude has his back to me, though, so I can’t make out anything more than his full head of thick, lustrous hair.

Until, glancing around the room, he shifts just enough so that I get a good sideways look at his face.

Deep, dazzling brown eyes. Sharp cheekbones. Chiseled chin. Like a young Marlon Brando but with a sexy five o’clock shadow.

Holy.

Shit.

Without another thought in my brain, I dash to my bedroom and shut the door. Somehow the Jin’Kai have found out I am very much alive and still pregnant. Somehow they have come to get me. I have got to get out of here.

I whip my phone out of my pocket and send Ducky a blink.

construx workrs r jinki.

It’s not until after I push send that I realize my blink may be completely inscrutable. But no time to deal with that now. I cram my phone back into my pocket and cross the room to the window, which I yank up with a startling
whoosh!
Then, on my hands and knees and swollen belly, the Goober and I make our way quickly but delicately out across the half-finished solar deck. If I can just make it to the garage, maybe I can get to Dad’s car and get out of here. They’re bound to take off after me if I go, which should leave Dad and Ducky in the clear. Of course, that means I should probably figure out somewhere to, you know,
go
.

I immediately find myself with a splinter in my palm, but there’s no time to think about that now. The planks are sturdy but hardly meant for a human to walk on yet—especially a human-and-a-half like me. The boards creak under my weight as I shuffle my way farther to the edge of the deck. Then, with a deep breath, I ease my body over the edge and begin lowering myself backward off the deck, feet first, then knees, then—
WHOMP!
—belly, my hands gripped tightly around the supporting beam underneath.