Darwin's Radio

by Greg Bear

  Sue came to be with Kaye while he took a break. He walked outside and stood beneath the clear, starry sky. Even out here, with so few people, there was a streetlight to blind him and cut back on the immensity of the universe.

  God, I’ve come so far, but nothing has changed. I’m married, I’m going to be a father, and I’m still unemployed, living on the—

  He blocked that line of thought, waved his hands, shook out the nervous jangles from the coffee. His thoughts drifted all over, from the first time he had had sex—and worried about the girl getting pregnant—to the conversations with the director of the Hayer Museum before he was fired, to Jack, trying to put all this into an Indian perspective.

  Mitch had no perspective other than the scientific. All his life he had tried to be objective, tried to remove himself from the equation, to see clearly what his digging had revealed. He had traded bits of his life for what were probably inadequate insights into the lives of dead people. Jack believed in a circle of life where no one was ever truly isolated. Mitch could not believe that. But he hoped Jack was right.

  The air smelled good. He wished he could take Kaye out here and let her smell the fresh air, but then a pickup truck drove by, and he smelled exhaust and burned oil.

  Kaye dozed off between contractions but for only a few minutes. Two o’clock in the morning, and she was still at five centimeters. Chambers had come before her little nap, inspected her, peered at the monitor tape, smiled reassurance. “We can try some pitocin soon. That will speed things up. We call it Bardahl for babies,” he said. But Kaye did not know what Bardahl was and did not understand.

  Mary Hand took her arm, swabbed it down with alcohol, found a vein and introduced a needle, taped it off, attached a plastic tube, hung a bottle of saline on another stand. She arranged little vials of medicine on a blue sheet of disposable paper on the steel tray beside the bed.

  Kaye normally hated shots and needle pricks, but this was nothing compared to the rest of her discomfort. Mitch seemed to grow more distant, though he was right by her side, massaging her neck, bringing more ice. She looked at him and saw not her husband, not her lover, but just a man, another of the figures coming in and out of her squeezed-down and compressed and endless life. She frowned, watching his back as he spoke with the nurse midwife. She tried to focus and find that emotional component necessary to fit him into the puzzle, but it had been lifted away. She was liberated of all social sensibilities.

  Another contraction. “Oh, shit!” she cried.

  Mary Hand checked her and stood with a concerned expression. “Did Dr. Chambers say when he would administer pitocin?”

  Kaye shook her head, unable to respond. Mary Hand went off to find Chambers. Mitch stayed with her. Sue came in and sat on the chair. Kaye closed her eyes and found that the universe in that personal darkness was so small she almost panicked. She wanted this to be over. No menstrual cramps had ever had the authority of her contractions. In the middle of the spasm, she thought her back might break.

  She knew that flesh was all and spirit was nothing.

  “Everyone is born this way,” Sue told Mitch. “It’s good you’re here. Jack says he’ll be with me when I deliver, but it’s not traditional.”

  “Woman’s stuff,” Mitch said. Sue’s mask fascinated him. She stood, stretched. Tall, stomach prominent but balanced, she seemed the essence of strong womanhood. Assured, calm, philosophical.

  Kaye moaned. Mitch leaned over and caressed her cheek. She was lying on her side, trying to find some position that was comfortable. “God, give me drugs,” she said with a weak smile.

  “There’s that sense of humor,” Mitch said.

  “I mean it. No, I don’t. I don’t know what I mean. Where is Felicity?”

  “Jack came by a few minutes ago. He sent some trucks out, but he hasn’t heard from them.”

  “I need Felicity. I don’t know what Chambers is thinking. Give me something to make this happen.”

  Mitch felt miserable, helpless. They were in the hands of the Western medical establishment—such as it was in the Five Tribes Confederation. Frankly, he was not at all confident about Chambers.

  “Oh, goddamn SHIT,” Kaye yelled, and rolled on her back, her face so contorted Mitch could not recognize her.

  Seven o’clock. Kaye looked at the clock on the wall through slitted eyes. More than twelve hours. She did not remember when they had arrived. Had it been in the afternoon? Yes. More than twelve hours. Still no record. Her mother had told her, when she was a little girl, that she had been in labor for over thirty hours with Kaye. Here’s to you, Mother. God, I wish you could be here.

  Sue was not in the room. There was Mitch, working on her arm, easing the tension, moving to the other arm. She felt a distant affection for Mitch, but doubted seriously she would ever have sex with him again. Why even think about it. Kaye felt she was a giant balloon trying to burst. She had to go pee and the thought equaled the deed and she did not care. Mary Hand came and removed the soaked paper pad and replaced it.

  Dr. Chambers came in and told Mary to start the pitocin. Mary inserted the vial into the appropriate receptacle and adjusted the machine that controlled the drip. Kaye took an extreme interest in the procedure. Bardahl for babies. She could vaguely remember the list of peptides and glycoproteins Judith had found in the large protein complex. Bad news for women. Maybe so.

  Maybe so.

  The only thing in the universe was pain. Kaye sat on top of the pain like a small, stunned fly on a huge rubber ball. She vaguely heard the anesthesiologist moving around her. She heard Mitch and the doctor talking. Mary Hand was there. “You’re almost ready,” she said. “Eight centimeters.”

  Chambers said something completely irrelevant, something about storing cord blood for a transfusion later if the baby needed it, or to pass on to science: blood from the umbilical cord, rich with stem cells.

  “Do it,” Kaye said.

  “What?” Mitch asked. Chambers asked her if she wanted to have an epidural.

  “God, yes,” Kaye said, without the least guilt at having failed to stick it through.

  They rolled her on her side. “Hold still,” said the anesthesiologist, what was his name. She couldn’t remember. Sue’s face appeared before her.

  “Jack says they’re bringing her in.”

  “Who?” Kaye asked.

  “Dr. Galbreath.”

  “Good.” Kaye thought she should care.

  “They wouldn’t let her through the quarantine.”

  “Bastards,” Mitch said.

  “Bastards,” Kaye mouthed.

  She felt a prick in her back. Another contraction. She started to tremble. The anesthesiologist swore and apologized. “Missed. You’ll have to hold still.” Her back hurt. Nothing new about that. Mitch applied a cold cloth to her forehead. Modern medicine. She had failed modern medicine.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Somewhere way outside her sphere of consciousness, she heard voices like distant angels.

  “Felicity is here,” Mitch said, and his face, hovering right over her, shone with relief. But Dr. Galbreath and Dr. Chambers were arguing, and the anesthesiologist was involved, too.

  “No epidural,” Galbreath said. “Get her off the pitocin, now. How long? How much?”

  While Chambers looked at the machine and read off numbers, Mary Hand did something to the tubes. The machine wheeped. Kaye looked at the clock. Seven-thirty. What did that mean? Time. Oh, that.

  “She’s going to have to go it on her own,” Galbreath said. Chambers responded with irritation, sharp quiet words behind his awful filter mask, but Kaye did not listen to him.

  They were denying her drugs.

  Felicity leaned over Kaye and entered her visual cone. She was not wearing a filter mask. The big surgical light was turned on and Felicity was not wearing a filter mask, bless her.

  “Thank you,” Kaye said.

  “You may not thank me for long, dear,” Felicity said. “If you want this baby, we
can’t do anything more with drugs. No pitocin, no anesthetic. I’m glad I caught you. It kills them, Kaye. Understand?”

  Kaye grimaced.

  “One damned insult after another, right, dear? So delicate, these new ones.”

  Chambers complained about interference, but she heard Jack and Mitch, voices fading, escorting him from the room. Mary Hand looked to Felicity for guidance.

  “The CDC is good for something, dear,” Felicity told her. “They sent out a special bulletin about live births. No drugs, particularly no anesthetics. Not even aspirin. These babies can’t stand it.” She worked busily for a moment between Kaye’s legs. “Episiotomy,” she said to Mary. “No local. Hold on, honey. This will hurt, like losing your virginity all over again. You’re at nine. Mitch, you know the drill.”

  Push to ten. Let breath out. Bear down, puff, push to ten. Kaye’s body like some horse knowing how to run but appreciating a little guidance. Mitch rubbing vigorously, standing close to her. She clenched his hand and then his arm until he winced. She bore down, push to ten. Let breath out.

  “All right. She’s crowning. There she is. God, it’s taken so long, such a long, strange road, huh? Mary, there’s the cord. That’s the problem. A little dark. One more, Kaye. Do it, honey. Do it now.”

  She did it and something released, a massive rush, pumpkin seed between clenched fingers, a burst of pain, relief, more pain, aching. Her legs shivered. A charley horse hit her calf but she hardly noticed. She felt a sudden shove of happiness, of welcome emptiness, then a knifelike stab in her tailbone.

  “She’s here, Kaye. She’s alive.”

  Kaye heard a thin wail, a sucking sound, and something like a musical whistle.

  Felicity held up the baby, pink and bloody, cord dangling down between Kaye’s legs. Kaye looked at her daughter and felt nothing for a moment, and then something large and feathery, enormous, brushed her soul.

  Mary Hand laid the baby on a blue blanket on her abdomen and cleaned her with quick swipes.

  * *

  Mitch looked down on the blood, the baby.

  Chambers returned, still wearing his mask, but Mitch ignored him. He focused on Kaye and on the baby, so small, wriggling. Tears of exhaustion and relief flowed down Mitch’s cheeks. His throat hurt it was so tight and full. His heart pounded. He hugged Kaye and she hugged him back with remarkable strength.

  “Don’t put anything in her eyes,” Felicity instructed Mary. “It’s a whole new ball game.”

  Mary nodded happily behind the filter mask.

  “Afterbirth,” Felicity said. Mary held up a steel tray.

  Kaye had never been sure she would make a good mother. Now, none of that mattered. She watched as they lifted the baby to the scales and thought, I didn’t get a good look at her face. It was all wrinkled.

  Felicity wielded a stinging swab of alcohol and a large surgical sewing needle between Kaye’s legs. Kaye did not like this, but simply closed her eyes.

  Mary Hand performed the various small tests, finished cleaning the baby, while Chambers drew cord blood. Felicity showed Mitch where to cut the cord, then carried the baby back to Kaye. Mary helped her pull her gown up over her swollen breasts and lifted the baby to her.

  “It’s okay to breastfeed?” Kaye asked, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper.

  “If it isn’t, the grand experiment might as well be over,” Felicity said with a smile. “Go ahead, honey. You have what she needs.”

  She showed Kaye how to stroke the baby’s cheek. The small pink lips opened and fastened onto the large brown nipple. Mitch’s mouth hung loose. Kaye wanted to laugh at his expression, but she focused again on that tiny face, hungry to see what her daughter looked like. Sue stood beside her and made small, happy sounds to the mother and the baby.

  Mitch looked down on the girl and watched her suckle at Kaye’s breast. He felt an almost blissful calm. It was done; it was just beginning. Either way, this was really something he could fasten onto, a center, a point of reference.

  The baby’s face was red and wrinkled but the hair was abundant, fine and silky, pale reddish brown. Her eyes were shut, lids pressed together in concern and concentration.

  “Nine pounds,” Mary said. “Eight on the Apgar. Good, strong Apgar.” She removed her mask.

  “Oh, God, she’s here,” Sue said, hand going to her mouth, as if suddenly shocked into awareness. Mitch grinned like a fool at Sue, then sat beside Kaye and the baby and put his chin on Kaye’s arm, his face just inches from his daughter’s.

  Felicity finished cleaning up. Chambers told Mary to put all the linens and disposables in a special hazards bag for burning. Mary quietly complied.

  “She’s a miracle,” Mitch said.

  The girl tried to turn her head at the sound of his voice, opened her eyes, tried to locate him.

  “Your daddy,” Kaye said. Colostrum dribbled thick and yellow from her nipple. The girl dropped her head and fastened on again with a little push from Kaye’s finger. “She lifted her head,” Kaye said in wonder.

  “She’s beautiful,” Sue said. “Congratulations.”

  Felicity spoke to Sue for a moment while Kaye and Mitch and the baby filled the spot of solar brightness beneath the surgical lamp.

  “She’s here,” Kaye said.

  “She’s here,” Mitch affirmed.

  “We’ve done it.”

  “You sure did,” Mitch said.

  Again, their daughter lifted her head, opened her eyes, this time wide.

  “Look at that,” Chambers said. Felicity bent over, nearly knocking heads with Sue.

  Mitch met his daughter’s stare with fascination. She had tawny brown pupils flecked with gold. He leaned forward. “Here I am,” he said to the baby.

  Kaye reached out to show her the nipple again, but the baby resisted, head bobbing with surprising strength.

  “Hello, Mitch,” his daughter said, her voice like the mewing of a kitten, not much more than a squeak, but very clear.

  The hair rose on the back of his neck. Felicity Galbreath gasped and backed away as if stung.

  Mitch pushed against the edge of the bed and stood. He shivered. The infant resting on Kaye’s breast seemed for a moment more than he could stand; not just unexpected, but wrong. He wanted to run. Still, he could not take his eyes off the little girl. Heat rose into his chest. The shape of her tiny face came into a kind of focus. She seemed to be trying to speak again, her lips pushing out and drawing to one side, small and pink. A milky yellow bubble appeared in the corner of her mouth. Small dapples of fawn-color, lion-color, flushed across her cheeks and brows.

  Her head rolled and she stared up at Kaye’s face. A puzzled frown wrinkled the space between her eyes.

  Mitch Rafelson reached with his big, raw-boned hand and callused fingers to touch the little girl. He bent over to kiss Kaye, then the baby, and stroked her temple with great gentleness. With a touch of his thumb, he turned her rose-colored lips back to the rich nipple. She gave a breathy sigh, a small whistling sound, and with a squirm, fastened onto her mother’s teat and suckled vigorously. Her tiny hands flexed perfect golden-brown fingers.

  Mitch called Sam and Abby in Oregon and told them the news. He was barely able to focus on their words; his father’s trembling voice, his mother’s piercing squeal of joy and relief. They spoke for a while and then he told them he could barely stand. “We need to sleep,” he said.

  Kaye and the baby were already asleep. Chambers told him they would stay there for two more days. Mitch asked for a bunk to be brought into the room, but Felicity and Sue persuaded him that everything would be all right.

  “Go on home and rest,” Sue said. “She’ll be fine.”

  Mitch shifted uncertainly on his feet. “They’ll call if there’s any trouble?”

  “We’ll call,” Mary Hand said as she walked past with a bag of linens.

  “I’ll have two friends stay outside the clinic for the day,” Jack said.

  “I need a place to sta
y tonight,” Felicity said. “I want to check them over tomorrow.”

  “Stay in our house,” Jack suggested.

  Mitch’s legs wobbled as he walked with them from the clinic to the Toyota.

  In the trailer, he slept through the afternoon and evening. When he awoke, it was twilight. He knelt on the couch and stared out the wide picture window at the scrub and gravel and distant hills.

  Then he showered, shaved, dressed. Looked for more things Kaye and the baby might need that had been forgotten.

  Looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.

  Wept.

  Walked back to the clinic alone, in the lovely gloaming. The air was clean and clear and carried smells of sage and grass and dust and water from a low creek. He passed a house where four men were removing an engine from an old Ford, using an oak tree and a chain hoist. The men nodded at him, looked away quickly. They knew who he was; they knew what had happened. They were not comfortable with either him or the event. He picked up his pace. His eyebrows itched, and now his cheeks. The mask was very loose. Soon it would come off. He could feel his tongue against the sides of his mouth; it felt different. His head felt different.

  More than anything, he wanted to see Kaye again, and the baby, the girl, his daughter, to make sure it was all real.

  88

  Arlington, Virginia

  The wedding party spread out over much of the half-acre backyard. The day was warm and misty, alternating patches of sun and light overcast. Mark Augustine stood in the reception line beside his bride for forty minutes, smiling, shaking hands, giving polite hugs. Senators and congressional representatives walked through the line, chatting politely. Men and women in unisex black-and-white livery carried trays of champagne and canapés over the golf-green manicured lawn. Augustine looked at his bride with a fixed smile; he knew what he felt inside, love and relief and accomplishment, all slightly chilled. The face he showed to the guests, to the few reporters who had picked winning tickets in the press pool lottery, was calm, warmly loving, dutiful.