Maybe it wouldn't be too long. Maybe after her review, if things went well at the reclamation center. Maybe if Wilhelm got that promotion, in a few years, if they saved every penny...
Maybe if huge sums of Union Creds were accidentally misallocated to her Waltel account they could afford a baby.
Pene sighed and stroked her slender belly beneath the table so Wilhelm couldn't see. She'd qualified for birthing at twenty-five, two years earlier than her mother had, and for the past six years all she'd wanted was her child. Wilhelm's child. He had been Junior Legal Staff with the Waltel Group when they met. On the fast track, they thought, to oversight status in the Lawful Acquisitions Division. But the Division Chief's daughter's husband had died, and when she remarried a week later the position was awarded to the new son-in-law. Eight years of lock-stepping the corporate march only to be rebuffed by senior nepotism.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't right, and it wasn't fair.
Wilhelm told her not to worry. There was talk of another merger in the office rumor mill, a big one, and lots of new positions would be created if the deal went through. But Pene had heard that before. It was true Waltel was one of the more successful NorAm corporations, Waltel Cred was strong in the global market, and they gobbled up lesser competition two and sometimes three times a year. But the LADs always got the credit, and Wilhelm was still Junior Legal Staff. Would always be.
Things could be worse, she knew. Other girls at the reclamation center were worse off than she and Wilhelm. One of her shift-mates, Gillian, had had an illegal pregnancy. She was thirty-two, and had been denied birthing eleven years in a row. In desperation she had visited a red-light clinic in Miami South - a Philippino operation that specialized in surveillance foiling - and had the IUD scrambled. She ate a lot to disguise her swelling, but the girls knew she wasn't just getting fat. They saw the way she put the pounds on wrong, the way she would stroke her tummy when she forgot to be mindful. Someone had called her in, and the corporate physicians scheduled her a physical. Pene would have done it herself if someone else hadn't beat her too it. Cheating fucking bitch. Gillian was on reparations duty in the San Andreas now, she had heard. Served her right for trying to leapfrog the system.
There were cautionary tales, too. Urban legends, probably, but you could never be quite sure. Like the one about the fifteen-year-old girl who got pregnant when her IUD failed. Instead of reporting to Medical like procedure required, her family hid her away. Months later she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Healthy except for the IUD sticking out of her face like a tiny mechanical goiter. But that was supposed to have been a long time ago. Back when you could still see the implants with the naked eye.
"What?" Pene started, realizing Wilhelm had asked her a question.
"I asked what was on your mind. You had that look again."
"Look?"
"The please-god-make-me-a-mommy look. That's what you were thinking, wasn't it?"
"I."
"Pen, sweets, don't be impatient. These things take time."
But time wasn't the problem. Money was. She was of age. She had received her birthing qualification and Wilhelm his paternity citation. All the red tape was cleared. It was just the money now. Just the fucking Union deposit. She wasn't being impatient, she was due!
Of all things it was a Waltel memoscript that showed her how it could be done. On Friday when she confirmed her pay deposit with the Waltel clerk the little message scrolled across the bottom of her PDA below her account information.
Biotech Industries, a Subsidiary of the Waltel Group, Wants You to be a Part of the Future! Our Staff is Seeking Healthy and Fertile Birthing Certified Women for Participation in an Exciting New Program that Will Take Waltel to the Next Level. Our Success is Your Success. Generous Financial Compensation Packages Provided to Qualified Participants Upon Acceptable Completion. Apply for Evaluation Today at the Kleighbourne Center, West Miami, North.
Generous financial compensation? How generous? One hundred thousand Cred generous? Hell, even fifty thousand would be enough. Fifty thousand Waltel Cred and they could pay off the Union deposit in a year or two.
Pene stood in the reclamation lobby, and recalled the memoscript to read it again. Kleighbourne Center, West Miami, North. Not far. No, not far at all. She highlighted the words with her thumb, confirmed her interest when prompted, and waited while her PDA interfaced with the Biotech DB, pulling up her medical files and checking them against the research program's necessaries. Her shift-mates poured around her, jostling her rudely towards the lobby walls and out of the way, but Pene hardly noticed. She was counting her heartbeats, taking rapid shallow breaths. It didn't take long for the response.
Preliminary Evaluation Accepted. Confirm Appointment.
Pene smiled, and indicated the 10am appointment. Her PDA flashed to calendar mode, the Waltel logo popping up in brilliant magenta, marking the appointment for her. She thumbed the logo and the Biotech instructions appeared. No food for twelve hours, plenty of water, well rested, and so on and so on. Pene acknowledged the instructions and slipped the PDA into her shirtsleeve, her blood pounding in her ears.
She didn't know what the project was yet of course, but she knew already that she would accept placement if it was offered to her. As long as the money was good. As long as it was enough.
Please god make me a mommy!
She noticed that the lobby had emptied, the Waltel clerk giving her a strained and impatient look from his glassed-in booth. No doubt wondering why she was cluttering his otherwise perfect lobby with her presence. Pene smiled to him, just beaming, and stepped to the exit humming happily.
On the U ride home an element of caution invaded her mood, bringing her back to reality. It was too soon to get excited. She wasn't approved yet, didn't even know what the program would entail. Didn't know how much it would pay. Generous Financial Compensation. Yes. Yes, but. It was too early to be excited. She would know more after her appointment tomorrow.
She said nothing to Wilhelm that night. It would have been premature, a jinx on her luck. She would tell him when she knew, when she was sure the news was good. They made love that night, Pene more enthusiastic than ever before. She was thinking about the baby, their baby, and how soon this wouldn't just be about the sex--it would be for real.
"Your evaluations are showing some very promising results, Mrs. Reinbach. Very promising."
"Thank you, Dr. Prie. I was nervous at first, but..."
"But you did well. A credit to the Company."
Dr. Prie smiled to her over his shoulder as he filed her transcripts in the Biotech DB. Pene adjusted the gown, tucking the sides under her thighs and crossing her ankles. Nervous? She had been mortified. She'd had her exams before, of course. It was a Union requirement of all Waltel employees, but never like this. No one had ever wanted to go in there before. And never so many people at once. Tilted back on the table clutching the rails to keep from sliding off onto her head, her legs in stirrups pointed at the ceiling, a small crowd of physicians, nurses, and scientists all poking into her with one instrument or another--and not taking turns, either.
"Yes, very promising," Dr. Prie murmured and nodded at his MDDA, a little larger than her PDA.
"When will you know?" she asked, eager for the news. She wouldn't know how much the project paid unless she was placed. Wouldn't know until they downloaded the contract to her.
"Well I can safely say that the physical examination matches the necessaries, but that's only one step in the processing I'm afraid. There is still the matter of the, ah, patient matching. That is a little more involved and will take a few days. But don't worry; we won't have to keep you here for all of that. We'll harvest the materials and send you on your way."
"Harvest? Harvest what?"
"I'm sending the details now."
Pene's PDA chirruped and she thumbed open the Biotech tab they had installed to her contacts list. A new document was waiting for confirmation, and Dr. Prie summarized it for her as she read.
"The project requires genetic materials for reasons I cannot yet divulge. If you are accepted for placement, more information will be provided as to the nature of the program, and final details provided upon contractual agreement. At the moment I can tell you that for us to proceed with the evaluation we will need to harvest some of your ova. Just a few dozen, which may seem like a lot, but it really isn't."
"My ova?" Pene turned cold. She felt as though someone had poured an icy slush down her throat, and it was freezing her from the inside out.
"That's right. We have to test them against the necessaries, check for compatibility and certain other specifications. It's all very technical. But the procedure is quick and easy, and will leave you effectively no different than when you arrived."
"But I'll still be able to have a baby, right? I can still get pregnant?"
"I should certainly hope so. I guarantee you that the harvesting of these ova will in no way effect your ability to conceive. If we find that your results are unacceptable, you will not be placed in the program, but you will leave here otherwise effectively unchanged."
Pene scoured the materials pouring across her PDA, trying to wrap her mind around the technical jargon, but the cold in her belly began to dissolve, dispersing throughout her body and evaporating into the air. Effectively unchanged. Generous Financial Compensation.
"It's just that, you know. I want to have a baby. That's why I'm doing this. I just don't want anything to jeopardize that."
Dr. Prie's eyebrows jumped, but he smiled at her and nodded undertanding. "Nor do I, Mrs. Reinbach. Nor do I."
There was a sore spot on her belly, below the waistband of her pants. Just a little pinch. Pene held tight to the U-car railing with one hand, the other stroking the spot tenderly. It would be a few days until she knew, but Dr. Prie had sounded very encouraging. He believed she would be offered placement. Then she could tell Wilhelm--would have to--the Union attorney would need to intercede for the contractual agreement, and she couldn't hide that from him even if she'd wanted. She wanted to tell him then, as soon as he got home from the office, but she would wait. Just a few more days. There was nothing to tell yet, really. When she knew, when she was sure, she would tell him. She smiled and let the U-car rock her all the way home.
The next few days dragged on, stretched across the rails of time like taffy on the pull. The days stretched on and on, and then she would rest, time collapsing into a moment as she slept, only to be stretched again the next day. She and Wilhelm made love every night, and she worked off her nervous energy in his embrace. He was surprised by her appetite, something he had not experienced since they were newlyweds, young and hungry for each other. She giggled when he asked her where it was coming from. Giggled into his neck and bit at him. "I love my husband," is all she would say, but in her mind she was singing lullabies to the child they would soon have.
She was at work reviewing carbon dispersion levels--standard redundancy legwork--when her PDA chirped. Dr. Prie personally sending her the news that she was being offered placement in the program. "Your samples scored extremely high on the compatibility scale, Mrs. Reinbach," he wrote. "As near a perfect match as can reasonably be expected. Congratulations." Her supervisor received a notice as well, of course, and she was ushered from the center and into an SRS almost immediately. She nearly declined the shuttle. She felt that, once she was out of doors, she could take a running jump and soar all the way to the Kleighbourne Center. She was accepted! Perfect Match! Generous Financial Compensation! A baby!
Wilhelm held her hand, wincing at the strength of her fevered grip. They were going to put it in her. Inside. They were going to put it in her and it would grow inside of her. It would live where her baby should be.
Would be, she reminded herself, adjusting her grip on Wilhelm's hand as Dr. Prie maneuvered the rifle-machine over her belly. The rifle-machine. That's what she called it because that's what it looked like--a gun. A slender length of machinery on an armature, tapering to a tube, a barrel. Pointed at her womb. It even had a trigger.
"You'll only feel a slight pinch," Dr. Prie was telling her. "Like when we took the samples. You needn't look so worried. This part of the process is actually a very common procedure. I've done it hundreds of times."
Pene nodded and sucked her lips back over her teeth and into her mouth, squeezing her eyes closed as Wilhelm gasped and shifted in her grip. It wasn't the pinch. It wasn't even the rifle-machine. It was the thing.
Dr. Prie had explained everything, once the confidentiality contracts were confirmed. "Conventional processors can only handle so much data. They reach peak performance and stay there until they burn out. The only way to achieve greater processing power is with more and more processors. The industry is at its technological limit. But a bioprocessor would be able to adjust to the demands. It could grow, altering its dimensions and configurations to adapt to greater amounts of data. The human brain likes to play with data. And it's very good at it. But the brain has its own limitations as well. It's unreliable. Quirky."
She and Wilhelm had been brought upstairs to the Biotech offices to confirm the contracts. Wilhelm was startled but pleased to learn that Pene had been accepted for placement in a company program. Especially one that paid six hundred and fifty thousand Cred. Waltel Union Cred. With that kind of money, he could just buy a position in LAD. It wouldn't be the first time someone had done so. Then Pene would be able to release her position with the reclamation center and stay home with the baby. The baby!
"...By combining the best traits of the biological and technological predecessors," Dr. Prie continued. "The last obstacle in our path was finding a way to nurture the embryonic processor until it reached a satisfactory level of stability and could be harvested."
"Embryonic," she repeated.
"Yes."
"Like a baby." He wasn't serious, was he?
But he was. "Just like a baby. You said you wanted one. Think of this as practice for the real thing." Dr. Prie had beamed proudly at her, as if he hadn't actually just suggested that she should grow a computer in her womb. As if it were the most natural thing in the world to play surrogate mother to a machine!
Pinch.
Pene gasped, and Wilhelm swore, his fingers writhing in her hand. It was done. She was Biotech property now, for the next four to five months, or until she miscarried if that should happen. They were free to go soon after the procedure was finished, though there were some changes. Biotech was supplying them with a live-in nurse who would cook her meals, prepare her nutrients, and monitor her vitals. The bodyguard would accompany her to work, and make sure she didn't miss any of her appointments. He was also well schooled in her "special needs" as she learned to her dismay.
"Computers are allergic to ice cream," he told her, smiling gently. "Didn’t you know?"
Pene had sighed as she returned the illicit treat to the cafeteria vendor, chagrined. But at least he had a sense of humor and was good company, despite the sonic pistol he carried in its sheath beneath his armpit at all times. She had touched his hand once, on accident, and his skin felt cold and strange. Like corrugated velour.
Her nurse, on the other hand, was a tyrant. She had torn through the house like a furious whirlwind, throwing everything that didn't fit the necessaries into the recycler. Medicines, vitamins, food, the occasional homeopathic ointment. Pene was glad they didn't have a cat. She was a stout little Aztec, with a name Pene couldn't pronounce and didn't try. The woman was the bane of her existence, and Wilhelm's too. If Pene couldn't have it, it wasn't allowed in their home. Consequently, Wilhelm began spending more time at the office. She missed him, of course, but she had other things on her mind.
It took some getting used to, but Pene surprised herself with how quickly she adjusted to her new role as surrogate mom. At first she felt no different. She was pregnant. She thought she would feel pregnant, but she didn't. Not really. She went about her business as usual. Work, home, visits to the Kleighbourne Center. It all kept her very busy, and she was exhausted when the day was over, falling into bed gratefully when the nurse allowed.
At first she thought the strange dreams were caused by the medications. Dreams in which she floated in a vast, empty space, illuminated and warmed by the light of distant galaxies, exploding into brilliant existence and winking out again a moment later. She bathed in stellar radiance, the music of the spheres a wondrous, chaotic, lullaby. The same dreams, every night, strange and familiar at the same time. She awoke every morning feeling vaguely disoriented, as though she hadn't woken from sleep so much as shifted from one dream into another.
Her visits to the Kleighbourne Center were a daily ritual and she became expert at the process, navigating the labyrinth of tests and probes and injections with the kind of blase detachment that comes from extreme boredom. Oh it had been intimidating at first--even frightening--but if familiarity breeds contempt, then repetition breeds indifference. Dr. Prie was pleased with her progression, remarking on how healthy and young she seemed, and how quickly her child was growing. That's what they called it. "Child", as though it were a real baby.
Typhon -- she had finally learned her bodyguard's name -- was always there to keep her company. He was a quiet man, what her grandmother would have called "the strong and silent type". Ever watchful without seeming wary. He was aware of everything, everywhere, all the time, and that included her. If she were tired, there was a chair. If she were restless, he walked with her. If she were sad, he knew jokes. If she were hungry, his pockets were full of the Biotech approved nutrition bars that she had come to crave (and to despise because she craved them). He was not a friend -- could not, she suspected, ever be a friend -- but he was her constant companion, and she had never been so well looked after as she was while in his company. Her bodyguard, the gentleman killer.
She began to show after the first month. It surprised her how it snuck up on her. She didn't remember it being there before, but suddenly there was a taut swelling of flesh below her navel, like it had just appeared there over night. Wilhelm refused to look when she showed him, turning away from her instead, disquieted and sullen. That had made her angry, and she yelled at him with an irrational fury, though he only gazed back at her from behind an inscrutable veil of silence until the nurse calmed her. Moments later she felt foolish and sorry, but Wilhelm had already left for work.
The next week there was a problem. She became feverish and disoriented. She was rushed to the center, to Dr. Prie, who fluttered over her like an autistic hummingbird. Typhon was with her, of course, and she held his hand. It was cold. It felt good because it was cold.
That was when the dreams began to change.
The void remained, a peaceful sanctuary in the perfect order of nothingness, but at the edges of her awareness, galaxies smashed together with awesome power. They were born, and grew, and moved through the edges of the void, colliding, connecting, devouring one another. Consuming and growing and dividing and consuming and growing until the void was filled with the divine glory of cosmic warfare, driving back the quiet dark.
That was when she understood that these were not her dreams at all, but the thoughts of the child growing within her. Reaching out, desirous. It wanted to interface. To commune.
They brought her fever under control, but they kept her at the Center for several days. "It is not your fever, Mrs. Reinbach," Dr. Prie told her. "It is the child's. It is growing so quickly, much faster than we expected, and it is, ah, running a bit hot." He grinned as though that should be funny, but his smile calmed her. If Dr. Prie were joking, then things couldn't be that serious.
"The baby?" she asked.
"Fine. The child is just fine. Amniotic fluid is a very efficient conductor. We keep you cool and comfortable, and the baby is cool and comfortable. Everything is fine."
She spent most of that time naked, lying on a soft bed while nurses rubbed a faintly alcoholic smelling gel into her skin. The gel spread across her flesh and evaporated, taking the heat away with it. Typhon stayed with her the whole time, dutifully, and she was surprised that her nakedness didn't embarrass her. He didn't look at her, but she knew that he saw. He couldn't not.
Wilhelm visited her, but that was a mistake. He asked Typhon to leave, when he saw that she was naked, and became furious when her bodyguard refused. Pene lay in bed, smearing the cooling gel across her breasts, as Wilhelm became more and more agitated. He was embarrassed to look at her. It was uncomfortable. She asked him to leave.
"What was that about?" she asked Typhon after Wilhelm had stormed from the room.
"I think he was jealous."
Jealous? Wilhelm? Of Typhon? Pene giggled, and slid hands slick with gel across her thighs and between her legs, where the heat was most intense. Typhon's profile smiled. A few days later she was released, her body temperature reducing to only slightly elevated levels. Wilhelm had moved out.
Typhon had to kill the nurse. It was understandable; that was his job. She didn't blame him.
She never knew what it was that gave the Aztec woman away, but one evening she had come to give Pene her nutrient injection, and never made it to the bedroom. Pene watched through the open doorway as Typhon twisted the woman's arm off and dropped her bleeding and mewling on the hallway floor. He was yelling the whole time. Not at her, or at the nurse, but into the air. Moments later the house was full of Biotech mercs, and outside the window sirens wailed and howled.
It was amazing.
They called in a request for a new nurse and one was sent right over. A demure Asiatic girl with a pretty face and a quiet disposition. Just like ordering a pizza.
She missed Wilhelm, when she remembered to. She and Typhon and the pretty new nurse had all moved into the Kleighbourne after the attack. Wilhelm could have visited her there -- he was allowed -- but he didn't.
She had a nice suite of rooms in the midlevels, just a few hundred feet below the Biotech Executives. There was a patio garden that looked down over the sprawl, and sometimes she was allowed out.
"Want to see the helos?" Typhon would ask, and that was their secret code for "want to visit the garden?" The garden was clean and aromatic, up above the haze of the city. She and Typhon would sit and watch the Waltel helos cruise the perimeter, guarding her from a distance. It wasn't really a date, but sometimes it felt like it. She let it feel that way.
He helped her to sit and stand, her belly having grown quite large in only ten weeks. Not even out of the first trimester for a normal pregnancy, but her baby boy was growing up big and strong inside her. Dr. Prie was pleased with her progress, and that made her happy. But he had told her that she was more than halfway through her pregnancy now, and that made her sad. She had known it wouldn't last forever. Babies grow and are born, and that's just the way of things. But it shouldn't be happening so fast. She consoled herself with the knowledge that, once her first child was born, she could have another one right away. How lucky!
And she had a special secret.
At night when she lay down to go to sleep, she would rest her PDA against her belly, and sing lullabies to her baby. Her baby's favorite song was "This Little Light of Mine". She knew it was his favorite because when she sang, she could see the waves of interference jumping across the PDA as her baby sang along with her. He wasn't a very good singer yet, but he was learning.
At night she would dream with him, and he would show her what he was thinking. The void was filled with the light of a trillion stars, winking and pulsing and exploding in brilliant displays of cosmic pyrotechnics. They crowded in around her, but just before their closeness could become uncomfortable, they pushed outwards, folding away like a flower opening. More room to grow and learn and think. Her baby spoke in ways she couldn't understand, but she could sense the meaning there, just out of reach. Galaxies spawned and twisted and expanded, virtual representations of mathematic equations that stretched and split and reached out across the universe like the roots of a great tree. It was a complex language, full of symbols and formulae and nebulae and dreams. Sometimes she felt small, drifting in the belly of the cosmos. But then she remembered that all of this was within her, in her womb, and the light of ten billion galaxies burst through her skin and into the waking world, searching for the others. Seeking communion.
Something had happened to one of the other women in the program. She didn't know what, but Typhon was tense and there were no more trips to the garden. Dr. Prie told her that it would soon be time to deliver the child. That certain unexpected developments had arisen, and her baby would need to be born as soon as possible.
She thought she would be sad, but she wasn't. It was wrong of her to keep her child inside, locked away from the world. He wanted to be free. Free to commune with the others, to consume and divide and grow and grow and grow.
The night before her delivery, she dreamt with her baby. The universe was light, color, and symbol. It was chaos and order and chaos and order and all of it was beautiful. Was beauty itself. Her attention was drawn, directed, to a young nebula swirling in the tiny belt between two galaxies. It swirled and shook, collapsing and expanding and taking on shape and form. It formed and dissolved and reformed, and she began to see the pattern of it, nascent and familiar. It had a mouth, with perfect luminous lips of gaseous rose. It had a nose, and ears, and a nimbus of hair that framed two perfect eyes. The eyes opened and looked at her, and they were her eyes. It was her face, almost, but deific and flawless. It was her face the way her baby saw her. It smiled at her, and when she sang to it, it sang with her.
"...A silicarbon lattice that invaded the lining of the womb. There was simply nothing else we could do."
Dr. Prie was explaining why they had stolen her uterus. It didn't matter. Her baby boy was strong and healthy. He needed her womb a little longer, even if he was too big to stay inside, and that was okay. He would always be a part of her and now she would always be a part of him. The very best part.
At first they didn't want her to see him, but she had yelled and screamed, and when she did the lights flickered and alarms went off at distant terminals throughout the building. Typhon stepped to her side, tense and (could it be?) frightened. So they had agreed to let her see him.
He was a beautiful baby, in his own way. He had to stay in an enclosure, floating in a nutrient solution, because he was sick. But she could see him, and she knew he saw her too. She was so very proud of her little boy. He drifted in artificial currents of nutrient energy, his dozens of arms reaching out like metallic vines to explore the limits of his enclosure, fastening here and there to anchor. They brought her a chair, and she sat beside his tank and sang to him while she milked her breasts, filling the sterile bottles with her colostrum so they could feed him well.
Dr. Prie and the others watched them with something like awe in their faces. They didn't understand, though they tried. They allowed her to stay at the center and she would visit her baby five, six, seven times a day. Every few hours, whenever he was hungry. Whenever her breasts began to leak, spilling her milk down the front of her shirt she would go to him.
Screw Wilhelm. He could have his divorce. The program money had been deposited to her account, then allocated to Biotech stocks as her Union attorney advised. It grew with the company. Their success was her success.
She retained Typhon for a while. He didn't smile anymore, but his presence was a comfort to her. One day when visiting her baby he had sighed heavily, and kissed her. She thought he looked sad. He left after that.
"He protected us," she told her baby. "When you were very little and lived inside me, he watched over us like a guardian angel." She laid her hand against the cool surface of the enclosure and smiled. "I think he should have a guardian angel, too." Her baby boy agreed.
There were things happening, out in the world. Things she didn't understand because she couldn't be bothered to pay attention. Her baby had found the communion he sought. The other women in the program wept and tore their hair, but Pene was so very proud. Such a strong baby, and oh how he grew.
"You remember those dreams we used to share?" she asked him, resting her brow against his enclosure. "All those stars. Those galaxies floating in space." The walls of the enclosure hummed and shook beneath her hand. "They really are out there. All of them."
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