The flat black sensor pad flashed red, and Martin Connor obligingly pressed his
forehead up against it. The doors slid open, shutting smoothly but quickly behind
him.
Martin leaned just beside the entrance, waiting for his friend and coworker Allen.
The entry-monitor was too cautious to allow more than one worker through its
doors at the same time, and he and Allen were always a step apart getting into
the building. The doors opened again.
"Long time no see," Martin joked. Allen huffed in mild amusement, as he did
every time he heard that oft-used comment. The two walked down the hallway
together, shiny black shoes gliding soundlessly on pristine white plastitiles,
Teflon business suits making little whispery sounds. The walls were white, made
from the same perma-clean plasticene substance as the floors, uninterrupted by
light fixtures but seeming to be lit from within. It was a nice illusion, and it had
really impressed Martin when he had first been hired to REDUX.
"How's Ellie?" Allen asked.
"Oh, she's doing much better. Having to endure a menstrual cycle for those two
months really took a lot out of her, but now that the eggs are harvested, and
she's back to normal, we're all happier."
"The eggs are viable?"
"Yes. I did my part last night also, and the techs say we have a healthily
incubating fetus."
"How long are you going to allow it to stay in the autowomb?"
"Well, you know I can't wait for the final result, but Ellie insists that radiation is
dangerous for the first trimester. We struck a deal; we'll let it grow naturally until
its sex is apparent, and then she'll give in and let us speed it up. I figure sixteen
weeks, seventeen tops."
"Congratulations! I'll see if I can find any celebratory cigars at one of my antique
shops."
They had come to Martin's interface, and Allen continued down the hall to his
own, with a reiteration of their daily routine: "See you at lunch?" "Sure. Have a
good morning."
Martin leaned his head against the black pad. A section of wall shimmered and
became translucent, allowing him to step through. It reformed behind him.
"Good morning, Martin," his computerized secretary said to him. She was just a
voice, but Martin was sure she'd have a damn fine body if she were real. "You
have no outside messages. Would you like the contents of your internal box read
to you?"
"No, that's okay, Janus, put it on screen. I'll read it myself."
The most recent message was from Allen. He had just reached his interface and
loaded a mental image of a real cigar with the words emblazoned on it: It's an
embryo!!!
Martin chuckled and erased the message. The others were all business. His
supervisor wanted the cerebs on that new condominium complex the company
had underwritten, the economics department needed him to choose one of the
landscaping services which had bid for the job of creating environments for the
condos, and the real estate agency had sent him the complete file of applications
for prospective tenants.
"Thank you for my messages, Janus. Send reply to Stanley: Will download
cerebs as soon as complete. New info re landscape and tenants to be
assimilated." Martin rocked back in his chair and stretched. The sensation
seemed quite real. It was amazing that he could appear to be moving and
relaxing his muscles in this way, when he knew his body was firmly encased in
the material of the wall.
On his interface, Martin called up the images sent by the half-dozen landscapers.
He laughed aloud as he read the slogans: "A Home In The Country...In Your
Living Room!" "The Green, Green Grass of Home" "Flora Fauna Falsa."
Since the ground outside had dried up, and agriculture had moved its collective
operation indoors, landscapers, at a loss for how to make a living, had moved
yards and gardens inside as well. Martin himself had a small spruce beside his
viewport. It was guaranteed not to grow beyond five and a half feet tall, and it
had been made inhospitable to bugs. Ellie had complained at first, but when
they had their first picnic underneath it, she agreed it was just what they needed.
That was when she had relented about having children as well.
Martin compared the landscapers' relative prices and offered services, then
looked at the photos of previous jobs to split the tie between the two best deals.
"The Green Green Grass of Home" won him over with its lush grass carpeting
and hanging vines for the bathroom, and real apple trees for the kitchen. He
composed a message to the economic department informing them of his choice,
then began reading applications for residency. He was only a third of the way
through the file when Janus interrupted to say, "It's lunchtime. Shall I save what
you've been working on?"
"Yes, please, Janus. Would you like me to bring you anything?"
A computerized, but not entirely unnatural, laugh bubbled through his brain. "Be
sure you don't eat too much. The wall will have to recalibrate for you again."
"Nag nag nag," he mumbled goodnaturedly as his body reanimated and emerged
from the wall.
Allen was waiting for him in the caffridge. They seated themselves at their usual
spot and pressed buttons in the wall beside them to order their lunch. The tables
were designed in old cafeteria style, down to the little bars connecting the
bench-seats to the counter tops.
Martin said, "I chose the landscape service for Nostalgia Homes today."
"Who'd you go with?"
"The Green Green Grass of Home...you should see what they do, Allen, real
grass carpeting. Apple trees right in the kitchen with real fruit all year long! The
master bedroom can be done (for just a small extra cost) in the image of Eden!"
A panel in the wall opened, and their trays slid out, Martin's topped high with
macaroni and cheese, Allen's with beans and franks. They fell to their food.
"Sounds like you've found a real treasure, Martin," Allen agreed, wiping brown
sauce from his chin.
"Boy, I can't wait to get in there myself. My kid should grow up surrounded by
real vegetation, you know?"
"We never had anything real growing up. How do we know it makes a difference
at all?"
Martin shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know...but it seems like it must. I must
have missed out on something...and Ellie too. That must be why...."
Martin stopped speaking, seeming embarrassed by the slip. His friend
sympathetically changed the subject, and they chatted about work until lunch
ended.
Ellie hadn't felt up to going to work that day. She lay on the fake-fur couch and
moaned and stared at the walls and the ugly art prints and the ridiculous tree.
Three calls came through from the office. Since she hadn't bothered to inform
them she was taking a day off, the personnel computer was worried about her.
During the third call, she heard the computer leaving a message that it would call
her husband to alert him to her disappearance, so she finally picked up and
assured the computer she was fine and would be in tomorrow. The computer
said it was glad, but she thought she detected a reproachful note in its speech
patterns.
Glad! she thought. Reproachful!
She, like everyone else, had found herself ascribing personalities to these chips
of data storage. Her husband referred to his secretary as if she had a physical
presence and the capacity to form original thoughts. Such a stupid man....
She knew she didn't mean that, even as she thought it. And she knew she had
no reason to be moping about when she should be at work. All she could figure
was that she still hadn't adjusted to the whole female experience. For the first
time in her thirty-four years she had gone through what women of her
grandmother's generation had endured every month. And after doing it twice,
she was able simply to turn it off again. She should be very happy to have it
gone. She should be relieved.
Yet for some reason, she was feeling let down, suddenly unfulfilled. It was like
going back to the envirooms at the malls and paying for a few minutes of
Dejeuner sur l'herbe when she knew how a real spruce smelled. All her life she
had been a woman of her own time, with a body which remained static all month
long. Then, for two months she had felt changes and new emotional levels. She
had swung up and down and been angry without justification and overeaten and
cried. At the time, she had been anxious to get it over, but now that it was over,
she found she missed it. The doctor had assured her that her cycle would
automatically follow the cycle of the moon, since she had no pattern of her own to
fall into. Never having seen the moon through the dark red opacity of the
everpresent clouds, she had enjoyed feeling a connection to it. She had felt like
Demeter, the virile moon goddess from Greek myths.
Now she felt like the third incarnation of the moon goddess, Hecate, the dried-up
old crone.
If only Martin...it's not his fault, she reminded herself again. He couldn't know
how she would feel when it was over, that she would want to carry the fetus
herself, that she would resent him for putting her through what would make her
want things she couldn't have. She knew that pregnancies were out of date, and
the new ways to handle creation were far more practical and safe. Her own
mother had been of the last Born generation, and when the UV had finally burned
the atmosphere through and dried up the soil, she was forced inside for the
remainder of her life. Ellie knew how lucky she was to have been of the first
generation to be grown carefully and inured to radiation early in life. She was
able to have a full life because of it. Her child would have the same. If she
carried it within her, it would have no natal exposure to UV and would not be able
to survive outside.
She would just have to get used to feeling like half a woman.
Lying on the couch, she decided it would help to recreate some of her strange
activities of the moon-cycle. She tried to get hungry, so she could gorge herself
on confections and high-fat dairy products, but the pills she had taken to get her
weight back down after the two months of indulgence (during which she had
gained eight pounds!, delightedly changing for the first time in her adult life) had
also regulated her appetite. She was unable to choke down a single bite of the
cake she had gotten from the wall unit.
Ellie finally felt the prescribed pangs of hunger around the time Martin was asking
if she was ready for dinner. She tried to rail against the falseness of it, but it was
impossible to convince herself that the hunger was false. It was inside of her,
and it made her stomach growl and kick in protest. She could not deny her
hunger, so she pressed the necessary buttons to get dinner for the both of them.
Martin came up behind her and slid his arms around her chest. He hugged her
and began to rock back and forth.
"Did you miss me?" he asked softly.
"Since when? This morning?" she responded, and the coolness in her voice
made him back off a bit. He let his hands rest on her shoulders and began
rubbing them.
"You're very tense," he said. "Was it a rough day at work?"
"Yes," she said. "No," she amended.
"Well, which is it?"
"A rough day, but not at work."
"You didn't go?"
"No," she said, a small amount of satisfaction creeping into her voice, "I didn't."
"Are you ill?"
"I guess not."
"Were you told not to go in?"
"Nope. In fact, my silicone supervisor sounded as if it really wanted me there."
He let go of her shoulders and turned her around. The look he gave her was
profoundly male, she thought, aware that she had never before made such a
distinction. "Then why on earth didn't you go?" he asked.
She straightened her posture and said, "Because I didn't want to. I didn't want
to," she repeated, loving the sound and feel of it in her ears and mouth.
Martin stepped back, a worried, almost horrified look on his face. They ate their
meatloaf and mashed potatoes in silence, and then he went to call the doctor.
"Yes, Doctor Levin, I know she's only just come back from the woman-thing, but I
don't think she is back yet."
The doctor murmured words of comfort in Martin's ears, but they were insufficient.
Martin had begun to feel as if his wife were a complete stranger. She had
always been complaisant, willing to get the job done. She had been just like him,
and their relationship had been so easy. Now something had changed, ever
since the blood. The only comparison Martin could draw was to the walls at work,
the walls which were meant to conform to one's physical shape and keep one
safe and in check. Ellie had outgrown her wall, and it didn't seem to be resizing
to admit her.
Ellie skipped work again the following week, overcome by the desire to make
some semblance of contact with her baby. The on-duty technician at the
incubation facility was accommodating, if slightly condescending.
He chewed the cap of his pen and said, "I can show you the ultrasound
photographs and the monitors of its heart and respiratory system."
She nodded eagerly. He shifted his computer screen to face her, producing a
grainy image of a fetus shifting restlessly in its containment system. Little blue
wavy lines indicated proper lung motion, and a blinking red dot showed its pulse.
Ellie stared at it longingly.
"It's so big already," she breathed.
The tech smiled indulgently. "Well, that's the equivalent of two months'
development already, Mrs. Connor. They're all-"
His sentence trailed off, forgotten, as he saw the anger suddenly come over her.
"Two months, did you say? Are you sure? Two months?"
He nodded helplessly, struck dumb by her display of emotion. She turned and
fled the facility.
Ellie stood outside her husband's building, banging the console with her fist. She
was aware that she had never hit anything before and that it felt good. She
screamed his name through the intercom unit, refusing to simply press her head
to the unit, which would have summoned him immediately. The computers
translated her voice request and processed it, rousing Martin from his work. He
stepped from the wall and went to meet Ellie.
"You speeded it up," she accused, the moment his face appeared before her.
"You did, you bastard."
Martin felt an emotion he hadn't encountered since high school, embarrassment.
He wondered if his immediate blush were visible with his dark post-UV skin.
Placing his hands on her shoulders in what he hoped would be a placating
gesture, he said, "Honey, I just thought that once you saw how great she was,
you'd be so happy to have her, you'd forget all about that."
"And you checked on the sex too?" she shrieked.
"I knew a girl would be just perfect for us," he explained calmly.
His wording stayed her. Putting it together in her mind, she said softly, "You
engineered her, didn't you? Because a girl would be just perfect."
He nodded. She was staring at his chest, but she saw the nod peripherally. She
was staring at his chest, imagining little blue waves and a blinking red dot against
the backdrop of his work shirt.
Seeing the sudden drop in her emotions, Martin pulled her against him, ignoring
her stiff reluctance to be held.
"We'll go see the doctor, okay? He'll make everything back to normal."
With pills, she thought. Pills, hormones, shots. My job is done anyway. I have
officially contributed to post-UV population efforts. We are allowed only one
child. I am done.
She liked the sound of her not speaking. She concentrated on the sounds of
heart and lungs doing what her mother's womb had never properly taught them
to do. She recalled the image of her daughter in the imitation uterus. She hit her
husband once, lightly, in the chest, just to see how it would feel. She wondered
if she would ever understand after this visit to the doctor the feelings that had led
her to hit or shout or cry. I am done.
forehead up against it. The doors slid open, shutting smoothly but quickly behind
him.
Martin leaned just beside the entrance, waiting for his friend and coworker Allen.
The entry-monitor was too cautious to allow more than one worker through its
doors at the same time, and he and Allen were always a step apart getting into
the building. The doors opened again.
"Long time no see," Martin joked. Allen huffed in mild amusement, as he did
every time he heard that oft-used comment. The two walked down the hallway
together, shiny black shoes gliding soundlessly on pristine white plastitiles,
Teflon business suits making little whispery sounds. The walls were white, made
from the same perma-clean plasticene substance as the floors, uninterrupted by
light fixtures but seeming to be lit from within. It was a nice illusion, and it had
really impressed Martin when he had first been hired to REDUX.
"How's Ellie?" Allen asked.
"Oh, she's doing much better. Having to endure a menstrual cycle for those two
months really took a lot out of her, but now that the eggs are harvested, and
she's back to normal, we're all happier."
"The eggs are viable?"
"Yes. I did my part last night also, and the techs say we have a healthily
incubating fetus."
"How long are you going to allow it to stay in the autowomb?"
"Well, you know I can't wait for the final result, but Ellie insists that radiation is
dangerous for the first trimester. We struck a deal; we'll let it grow naturally until
its sex is apparent, and then she'll give in and let us speed it up. I figure sixteen
weeks, seventeen tops."
"Congratulations! I'll see if I can find any celebratory cigars at one of my antique
shops."
They had come to Martin's interface, and Allen continued down the hall to his
own, with a reiteration of their daily routine: "See you at lunch?" "Sure. Have a
good morning."
Martin leaned his head against the black pad. A section of wall shimmered and
became translucent, allowing him to step through. It reformed behind him.
"Good morning, Martin," his computerized secretary said to him. She was just a
voice, but Martin was sure she'd have a damn fine body if she were real. "You
have no outside messages. Would you like the contents of your internal box read
to you?"
"No, that's okay, Janus, put it on screen. I'll read it myself."
The most recent message was from Allen. He had just reached his interface and
loaded a mental image of a real cigar with the words emblazoned on it: It's an
embryo!!!
Martin chuckled and erased the message. The others were all business. His
supervisor wanted the cerebs on that new condominium complex the company
had underwritten, the economics department needed him to choose one of the
landscaping services which had bid for the job of creating environments for the
condos, and the real estate agency had sent him the complete file of applications
for prospective tenants.
"Thank you for my messages, Janus. Send reply to Stanley: Will download
cerebs as soon as complete. New info re landscape and tenants to be
assimilated." Martin rocked back in his chair and stretched. The sensation
seemed quite real. It was amazing that he could appear to be moving and
relaxing his muscles in this way, when he knew his body was firmly encased in
the material of the wall.
On his interface, Martin called up the images sent by the half-dozen landscapers.
He laughed aloud as he read the slogans: "A Home In The Country...In Your
Living Room!" "The Green, Green Grass of Home" "Flora Fauna Falsa."
Since the ground outside had dried up, and agriculture had moved its collective
operation indoors, landscapers, at a loss for how to make a living, had moved
yards and gardens inside as well. Martin himself had a small spruce beside his
viewport. It was guaranteed not to grow beyond five and a half feet tall, and it
had been made inhospitable to bugs. Ellie had complained at first, but when
they had their first picnic underneath it, she agreed it was just what they needed.
That was when she had relented about having children as well.
Martin compared the landscapers' relative prices and offered services, then
looked at the photos of previous jobs to split the tie between the two best deals.
"The Green Green Grass of Home" won him over with its lush grass carpeting
and hanging vines for the bathroom, and real apple trees for the kitchen. He
composed a message to the economic department informing them of his choice,
then began reading applications for residency. He was only a third of the way
through the file when Janus interrupted to say, "It's lunchtime. Shall I save what
you've been working on?"
"Yes, please, Janus. Would you like me to bring you anything?"
A computerized, but not entirely unnatural, laugh bubbled through his brain. "Be
sure you don't eat too much. The wall will have to recalibrate for you again."
"Nag nag nag," he mumbled goodnaturedly as his body reanimated and emerged
from the wall.
Allen was waiting for him in the caffridge. They seated themselves at their usual
spot and pressed buttons in the wall beside them to order their lunch. The tables
were designed in old cafeteria style, down to the little bars connecting the
bench-seats to the counter tops.
Martin said, "I chose the landscape service for Nostalgia Homes today."
"Who'd you go with?"
"The Green Green Grass of Home...you should see what they do, Allen, real
grass carpeting. Apple trees right in the kitchen with real fruit all year long! The
master bedroom can be done (for just a small extra cost) in the image of Eden!"
A panel in the wall opened, and their trays slid out, Martin's topped high with
macaroni and cheese, Allen's with beans and franks. They fell to their food.
"Sounds like you've found a real treasure, Martin," Allen agreed, wiping brown
sauce from his chin.
"Boy, I can't wait to get in there myself. My kid should grow up surrounded by
real vegetation, you know?"
"We never had anything real growing up. How do we know it makes a difference
at all?"
Martin shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know...but it seems like it must. I must
have missed out on something...and Ellie too. That must be why...."
Martin stopped speaking, seeming embarrassed by the slip. His friend
sympathetically changed the subject, and they chatted about work until lunch
ended.
Ellie hadn't felt up to going to work that day. She lay on the fake-fur couch and
moaned and stared at the walls and the ugly art prints and the ridiculous tree.
Three calls came through from the office. Since she hadn't bothered to inform
them she was taking a day off, the personnel computer was worried about her.
During the third call, she heard the computer leaving a message that it would call
her husband to alert him to her disappearance, so she finally picked up and
assured the computer she was fine and would be in tomorrow. The computer
said it was glad, but she thought she detected a reproachful note in its speech
patterns.
Glad! she thought. Reproachful!
She, like everyone else, had found herself ascribing personalities to these chips
of data storage. Her husband referred to his secretary as if she had a physical
presence and the capacity to form original thoughts. Such a stupid man....
She knew she didn't mean that, even as she thought it. And she knew she had
no reason to be moping about when she should be at work. All she could figure
was that she still hadn't adjusted to the whole female experience. For the first
time in her thirty-four years she had gone through what women of her
grandmother's generation had endured every month. And after doing it twice,
she was able simply to turn it off again. She should be very happy to have it
gone. She should be relieved.
Yet for some reason, she was feeling let down, suddenly unfulfilled. It was like
going back to the envirooms at the malls and paying for a few minutes of
Dejeuner sur l'herbe when she knew how a real spruce smelled. All her life she
had been a woman of her own time, with a body which remained static all month
long. Then, for two months she had felt changes and new emotional levels. She
had swung up and down and been angry without justification and overeaten and
cried. At the time, she had been anxious to get it over, but now that it was over,
she found she missed it. The doctor had assured her that her cycle would
automatically follow the cycle of the moon, since she had no pattern of her own to
fall into. Never having seen the moon through the dark red opacity of the
everpresent clouds, she had enjoyed feeling a connection to it. She had felt like
Demeter, the virile moon goddess from Greek myths.
Now she felt like the third incarnation of the moon goddess, Hecate, the dried-up
old crone.
If only Martin...it's not his fault, she reminded herself again. He couldn't know
how she would feel when it was over, that she would want to carry the fetus
herself, that she would resent him for putting her through what would make her
want things she couldn't have. She knew that pregnancies were out of date, and
the new ways to handle creation were far more practical and safe. Her own
mother had been of the last Born generation, and when the UV had finally burned
the atmosphere through and dried up the soil, she was forced inside for the
remainder of her life. Ellie knew how lucky she was to have been of the first
generation to be grown carefully and inured to radiation early in life. She was
able to have a full life because of it. Her child would have the same. If she
carried it within her, it would have no natal exposure to UV and would not be able
to survive outside.
She would just have to get used to feeling like half a woman.
Lying on the couch, she decided it would help to recreate some of her strange
activities of the moon-cycle. She tried to get hungry, so she could gorge herself
on confections and high-fat dairy products, but the pills she had taken to get her
weight back down after the two months of indulgence (during which she had
gained eight pounds!, delightedly changing for the first time in her adult life) had
also regulated her appetite. She was unable to choke down a single bite of the
cake she had gotten from the wall unit.
Ellie finally felt the prescribed pangs of hunger around the time Martin was asking
if she was ready for dinner. She tried to rail against the falseness of it, but it was
impossible to convince herself that the hunger was false. It was inside of her,
and it made her stomach growl and kick in protest. She could not deny her
hunger, so she pressed the necessary buttons to get dinner for the both of them.
Martin came up behind her and slid his arms around her chest. He hugged her
and began to rock back and forth.
"Did you miss me?" he asked softly.
"Since when? This morning?" she responded, and the coolness in her voice
made him back off a bit. He let his hands rest on her shoulders and began
rubbing them.
"You're very tense," he said. "Was it a rough day at work?"
"Yes," she said. "No," she amended.
"Well, which is it?"
"A rough day, but not at work."
"You didn't go?"
"No," she said, a small amount of satisfaction creeping into her voice, "I didn't."
"Are you ill?"
"I guess not."
"Were you told not to go in?"
"Nope. In fact, my silicone supervisor sounded as if it really wanted me there."
He let go of her shoulders and turned her around. The look he gave her was
profoundly male, she thought, aware that she had never before made such a
distinction. "Then why on earth didn't you go?" he asked.
She straightened her posture and said, "Because I didn't want to. I didn't want
to," she repeated, loving the sound and feel of it in her ears and mouth.
Martin stepped back, a worried, almost horrified look on his face. They ate their
meatloaf and mashed potatoes in silence, and then he went to call the doctor.
"Yes, Doctor Levin, I know she's only just come back from the woman-thing, but I
don't think she is back yet."
The doctor murmured words of comfort in Martin's ears, but they were insufficient.
Martin had begun to feel as if his wife were a complete stranger. She had
always been complaisant, willing to get the job done. She had been just like him,
and their relationship had been so easy. Now something had changed, ever
since the blood. The only comparison Martin could draw was to the walls at work,
the walls which were meant to conform to one's physical shape and keep one
safe and in check. Ellie had outgrown her wall, and it didn't seem to be resizing
to admit her.
Ellie skipped work again the following week, overcome by the desire to make
some semblance of contact with her baby. The on-duty technician at the
incubation facility was accommodating, if slightly condescending.
He chewed the cap of his pen and said, "I can show you the ultrasound
photographs and the monitors of its heart and respiratory system."
She nodded eagerly. He shifted his computer screen to face her, producing a
grainy image of a fetus shifting restlessly in its containment system. Little blue
wavy lines indicated proper lung motion, and a blinking red dot showed its pulse.
Ellie stared at it longingly.
"It's so big already," she breathed.
The tech smiled indulgently. "Well, that's the equivalent of two months'
development already, Mrs. Connor. They're all-"
His sentence trailed off, forgotten, as he saw the anger suddenly come over her.
"Two months, did you say? Are you sure? Two months?"
He nodded helplessly, struck dumb by her display of emotion. She turned and
fled the facility.
Ellie stood outside her husband's building, banging the console with her fist. She
was aware that she had never hit anything before and that it felt good. She
screamed his name through the intercom unit, refusing to simply press her head
to the unit, which would have summoned him immediately. The computers
translated her voice request and processed it, rousing Martin from his work. He
stepped from the wall and went to meet Ellie.
"You speeded it up," she accused, the moment his face appeared before her.
"You did, you bastard."
Martin felt an emotion he hadn't encountered since high school, embarrassment.
He wondered if his immediate blush were visible with his dark post-UV skin.
Placing his hands on her shoulders in what he hoped would be a placating
gesture, he said, "Honey, I just thought that once you saw how great she was,
you'd be so happy to have her, you'd forget all about that."
"And you checked on the sex too?" she shrieked.
"I knew a girl would be just perfect for us," he explained calmly.
His wording stayed her. Putting it together in her mind, she said softly, "You
engineered her, didn't you? Because a girl would be just perfect."
He nodded. She was staring at his chest, but she saw the nod peripherally. She
was staring at his chest, imagining little blue waves and a blinking red dot against
the backdrop of his work shirt.
Seeing the sudden drop in her emotions, Martin pulled her against him, ignoring
her stiff reluctance to be held.
"We'll go see the doctor, okay? He'll make everything back to normal."
With pills, she thought. Pills, hormones, shots. My job is done anyway. I have
officially contributed to post-UV population efforts. We are allowed only one
child. I am done.
She liked the sound of her not speaking. She concentrated on the sounds of
heart and lungs doing what her mother's womb had never properly taught them
to do. She recalled the image of her daughter in the imitation uterus. She hit her
husband once, lightly, in the chest, just to see how it would feel. She wondered
if she would ever understand after this visit to the doctor the feelings that had led
her to hit or shout or cry. I am done.
