She calmed down by the time they were walking down the companionway to their cabin. “I know I’m going to have this baby someday. Harlen knows it too. He’s just determined that it’s going to be on his terms and not mine. He’s the captain, so he expects to get his way.”
“I heard you want part of the ship as a settlement.”
“It’s not about the money.” She paused at the hatch. “Well, it is, but what probably scared him more was when I said I wanted my share so I could sell to Transtellar.” The hatch slid away. Been followed her into their common room. “He worked over a century for them so that he could own a ship without any partners. And he hates Transtellar.” She noticed her reflection in one of the blank lightboards and shuddered. “Scenery,” she cried. “Show me scenery.” All the boards lit up with images of the salt castles on Blimmey. “Okay, I was hot and so I didn’t begin the divorce negotiations in the best way. It was a stupid thing to say. Things spun down after that.”
“He worked for Transtellar for a century? How old is he?”
“I forget. Over three hundred and fifty.” She settled gingerly onto the couch. “He’s been recast four times.” Been was about to sit in one of the chairs but she tapped her hand on the cushion beside her. “Do me a favor,” she said.
He almost hit his head on a descending panel but managed to slide in next to her. The babyface was gazing at him as if it were frightened.
Ilona noticed Been looking at the babyface and not at her. She picked it up and turned it so she could see it. “I’m not going to be your mother,” she told it. “I don’t want to be around you at all. Let the crew take care of you.”
Despite himself, Been was aghast. “You sound like you hate it.” Having Ilona and Harlen Quellan for parents wasn’t their baby’s fault.
She let the babyface fall back around her neck. “It knows that I do. But it’s part of me.” She caught his gaze and seemed to sense his shock. “There’s so much you don’t understand.”
Been chuckled bitterly. “I’m beginning to realize that.”
“I’ve lost everything,” she said. “I have nothing.”
At that moment, Been felt as if he were outside himself, looking in. None of his feelings for Ilona made sense. Before he’d become gay, that would have been reason enough to bolt off the couch and run for his hutch. He was a mindsync courier; he’d spent most of his life buried in the sustain with strangers. But after a year of enduring the pale emotions of the colonists, he felt irresistibly drawn to this woman, who was burning with anger and need. He’d never been particularly sympathetic to others, but now he was experiencing Ilona’s anguish as if it were his own. And maybe that was the real reason why he stretched his hand out and brushed the back of hers. He was one hundred and thirty-two years old, and he was certain that he had never felt so deeply about anyone ever before.
“Is there something I can do?”
“There’s another line I’ve heard too many times.” She slumped against the back of the couch and stared up at him. “Oh, come on, Been. You’re gay.”
“Not very. And you’re very pregnant. Now that we’ve covered the obvious, I’d like to kiss you.”
She looked dubious. “Is that all?”
He kissed her lightly on the lips but then pulled back, as if tasting her flavor to see if he liked it. “Not really.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I do,” said Been. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”
“No.”
He touched the side of her face and she leaned hungrily into his caress. He said, “I’ll be careful.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t do that. I’m through being careful.”
Been reached around the back of her neck and pulled the chain with the babyface over her head. “Go to sleep, baby.” He tucked it between the cushions of the couch.
“He’ll be watching,” said Ilona. “Harlen.”
Been saluted the overhead.
“That won’t bother you?”
“It will,” he said. “But not so you’ll notice.” He tugged at the hem of her blouse and slid it slowly over her belly. She raised her arms as if in surrender and he pulled the blouse up and over and dropped it onto a panel melting into the floor. Her skin was so pale and so taut that he could see traceries of blue veins beneath it.
“He put you here to punish me, didn’t he?” said Ilona. “To make me uncomfortable? Is that what this is?”
“I wanted to be here from the moment I first saw you.” Been rested his hands on her shoulders and met her gaze full on. “Right here.” He grinned. “Well, maybe a little closer.”
“Thank you.” She was breathing into his mouth when she said it. Her breath was so sweet. “Thank you very much.”
It was not the most physically pleasurable lovemaking Been had ever had and it was certainly not easy. Ilona could never find a comfortable position for very long and he had trouble keeping his penis in her. But it was tender and funny and at the end he wasn’t careful at all.
Afterward, he lay spooned against her back, his arms draped over her belly. He was playing with the short hairs on her neck when the entire Nine Ball gonged as if struck by an enormous hammer.
“What was that?” Ilona started awake.
“The earth moved,” said Been. “Only I think it came a little late.”
“They’re closing the sustain,” she said.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” Captain Harlen Quellan appeared on all five lightboards in his dress uniform. He did not appear to notice that this particular lady and gentleman were naked. “Some of you may have been startled by the bump a few minutes ago. There is nothing to worry about. We are approaching one-to-one ship subjective to galactic standard time and are beginning to close the sustain.”
“Oh, Been,” said Ilona.
He squeezed her. He could hear applause echoing down the companionways.
“It’s possible that there will be a few more such mild bumps,” said Harlen Quellen.
“Been, it’s wet here.”
“So I would encourage all of you . . .” The captain’s image froze in mid-sentence, his mouth still open as if he were surprised that he had nothing more to say.
Ilona heaved herself to a sitting position, grabbed at Been’s hand, and pressed it to the cushion where she had been lying. He felt a wet spot not quite the size of his palm. “It is wet,” he said.
“Get the float!” she cried and bolted for the head. “Get Zelmet.”
“Nice timing,” Emsley said, as Ilona came out of the head, her face ashen. “Contractions?”
She nodded.
Everything happened at once, and, for some reason, Been found himself at the center of it, right by Ilona’s side. Zelmet Emsley had come with the float and Brend Diosia, the Nine Ball’s second bioengineer. They loaded Ilona onto it. As they were dodging her through the obstacles in the common room, Ilona reached out and grabbed Been’s wrist. He lurched toward her and almost upended the float.
“I want him,” she said to Emsley.
“Easy, Ilona,” said Brend Diosia. “All you have to do is ask. It’s your party.”
As Brend pushed the float down the companionway, Zelmet Emsley took Ilona’s vital signs with his medfinger. Both of his heads watched the lightboard at the end of the float. “Hmm.” Once again, Been was struck by his cool detachment. “I see you had sex.”
“Yes,” said Been.
“Vaginal intercourse?”
Ilona moaned.
“With an ejaculation?”
“I did,” Been said.
“Well, that’s one way. Did you know, Been, that your semen contains some prostaglandins? This is the same family of unsaturated carboxylic acids we use to induce labor. And if Ilona had an orgasm, she would now be producing oxytocin, the hormone that causes contractions. Orgasm, Ilona?”
“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth.
Emsley patted her arm. “Good for you.”
&nb
sp; “But that’s not a reliable way to induce labor,” said Brend.
“No.” Emsley had removed the tip of his left medfinger and replaced it with a tip that was several centimeters longer. “But it passes the time.” He tapped his two medfingers together, the short to the base of the long, and nodded. “I’m going to give you the spinal block now, Ilona. This is all going to go just as we discussed. We’re going to place a urinary catheter into your bladder, we’re going to shave a little of your pubic hair so we can make the incision. You said you wanted to watch the operation, so we won’t cover you.”
“Operation?” said Been.
“She has to have a cesarean section,” said Brend. “The head is too big.” The hatch to BioCore Receiving slid away and they whisked the float past the intake counter and into the BioCore itself. The captain was still frozen in mid-sentence on the lightboard in Receiving. Been thought maybe he ought to be worrying whether something was wrong with the ship, but at the moment he had other problems.
When Ilona had been prepped and Been, Zelmet Emsley, and Brend Diosia were scrubbed, Emsley turned to Been. “We’re going to start now. You hold her hand, that’s what she brought you here for. This isn’t going to take long, but if you feel a little faint, you can sit on this chair.” He kicked a stool next to the float. “Shall we, Brend?”
Been watched with no little horror as Emsley skived a twenty-five-centimeter incision through the skin of Ilona’s abdomen. The skive coated the incision with dermslix, so there was no bleeding. He continued to cut through several layers of tissue and then suddenly a stream of clear fluid came blurbling out of the incision. Emsley waited while Brend suctioned it up. “We’re into the uterus, Ilona. You didn’t lose all that much amniotic fluid when your membrane broke, so we’re cleaning it up. Not much longer now.”
“Do it.” Ilona was squeezing Been’s hand so hard that the tips of his fingers were tingling.
Emsley reached through the incision and felt around for a grip. As he did, his thinking head turned to Been and winked. “Got it. Brend, forceps on the incision.” Brend Diosia clamped the cut in Ilona’s abdomen open wide as Emsley pulled the struggling baby out.
It was astonishingly ugly, covered with blood and amniotic fluid and a waxy white coating. But Been was certain that it was misshapen as well. The head was so huge that the little, pink squirming body seemed like a useless appendage. And it had a tail that was thick as Been’s finger and some thirty centimeters long.
Been didn’t recognize the baby’s face at first.
“Goddamn it, Ilona,” squeaked a voice as thin as a spider’s web. “Took you long enough! Don’t you know I’ve got a ship to run? And we’ve got to close the goddamned sustain.”
On most planets of the Thousand Worlds, Captain Harlen Quellan might have been fined or stripped of his pilot’s license or even sentenced to serve a term of incarceration in a rehabilitation VR for dereliction of duty, had the proper authorities been alerted. While reembodied as a fetus, he was only intermittently available to command his slipship using the babyface. Originally, the Quellans had planned for Ilona to be pregnant while the Nine Ball was in drydock. But the divorce had wrecked everything. When the time had come to honor their next transport contract, the Quellans had to come to an accommodation with one another, or risk losing the Nine Ball to their creditors. So Harlen Quellan created a virtual captain to cover for him whenever Ilona decided to make it impossible to connect to the ship through the babyface. Each had sought to get what they wanted by making the other miserable. All of the crew knew that Ilona was pregnant with her ex-husband, but no one else did. Except, that is, for Been Watanabe, the sole outside witness to the birth of Harlen Quellan. He had his own reasons for keeping the Quellans’ secret.
The consensus of the colonists on Little Chin, as well as the new arrivals from the Nine Ball, was that Lars Benzonia should accept the personality transplant that Been had carried from Nonny’s Home. The entire colony had been shocked to learn that Acoa Renkl, Benzonia’s most trusted advisor, had secretly contracted to have the transplant delivered to him against consensus. However, Renkl had gone clearly and irretrievably stale while he waited, throwing the Consensualists into a panic that their founder might succumb as well. So Lars Benzonia was quickly recast. For saving the mind of the First Consensualist, the grateful citizens of Little Chin voted the heroic mindsync courier a tract of forty hectares of prime bottomland along the Thalo River in the Tenderland District.
In the decades following his first personality transplant, it was said that Lars Benzonia became less dogmatic about the primacy of the consensus over the individual. Some point to the career of Zola Molendez, who in 2514 was named Pacifier Select, as another key factor in the reform of Consensualism. In any event, the fortunes of the colony soared.
As did those of Been Watanabe, formerly a mindsync courier, currently in the interstellar export/import business, specializing in hats. Caps, snoods, crowns, shuffs, turbans, fedoras, tricornes, kimberlys, bowlers, bonnets, toppers, helmets, and toques. As a young man, Been had never realized how many citizens of the Thousand Worlds felt the need to cover their heads. He and Ilona had been able to set themselves up in the hat business, thanks to the income from Been’s holdings on Little Chin and the regular payments Harlen Quellan made to Ilona as part of the final divorce settlement. He was buying back her one-quarter share of the Nine Ball over time.
Whenever he was on Nonny’s Home, Harlen Quellan liked to drop in on Been and Ilona to make a payment in person. Ilona maintained that he was hoping to find them split up, but Harlen Quellan claimed he just wanted to set eyes once again upon “the luckiest goddamned bastard ever to book passage on my ship.” They watched him now from the porch of their house as he strode down their front walk to his hover. He swerved to tousle their daughter Benk’s hair, but she slapped his hand away. Little Benk was busy teaching Rags’s great-great-great-spiderlings to dance. And she was her mother’s daughter.
“After all these years, I still don’t understand why you did it.” Been slid his arm around Ilona’s waist.
“What?”
“You were pregnant with your own husband, Ilona!”
She giggled. “Ssh! He’ll hear you.”
Harlen Quellen turned to wave a last goodbye and then folded himself through the hover door.
“Good.” Been waved back and gave him the most insincere smile he could muster. “Maybe he’ll take offense and stop coming around.”
“It was his fifth recasting,” she said as they watched their daughter twirl around twice and then drop to hands and knees, so she could press her face against the terrarium to instruct her spiderlings. “He needed to go radical. And I didn’t want to be married to a minotaur or a wheelie.” She sighed. “Mostly, it was because I loved him.”
“You mean you thought you loved him.”
She shook her head. “No, I really did.” She leaned into him. “Does that still bother you?”
Been considered. “A little.” He knew it had all happened a long time ago. He tried to remember what his life had been like before he’d become gay. It was hard, but he knew one thing for certain. He had never really been in love. “But not so you’d notice.”
As Harlen Quellan’s hover lifted straight off the landing pad and shot into the creamy sky of Nonny’s Home, Been gave a low whistle.
“What are you thinking?” said Ilona.
“I’m thinking”—he chuckled—“that I’ll never have to divide the sustain again.”
MINLA’S FLOWERS
ALASTAIR REYNOLDS
Alastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone, and has also sold to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Spectrum SF, and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space, was widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year; it was quickly followed by Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, and Century Rain, all big sprawling space operas that were big sellers as well, establishing Reynolds as one of the best and most popular new SF writers
to enter the field in many years. His other books include a novella collection, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. His most recent book is a new novel, Pushing Ice. Coming up are two new collections, Galactic North and Zima Blue and Other Stories. A professional scientist with a Ph.D. in astronomy, he comes from Wales, but lives in the Netherlands, where he works for the European Space Agency.
Reynolds’s work is known for its grand scope, sweep, and scale—in one story, “Galactic North,” a spaceship sets out in pursuit of another in a stern chase that takes thousands of years of time and hundreds of thousands of light-years to complete; in another, “Thousandth Night,” ultrarich immortals embark on a plan that will call for the physical rearrangement of all the stars in the galaxy. In the intricate and surprising novella that follows (a sort of prequel to his story “Merlin’s Gun”), he shows us that long-term plans can also have long-term consequences—some of them not at all expected.
Mission interrupted.
I still don’t know quite what happened. The ship and I were in routine Waynet transit, all systems ticking over smoothly. I was deep in thought, a little drunk, rubbing clues together like a caveman trying to make fire with rocks, hoping for the spark that would point me toward the gun, the one no one ever thinks I’m going to find, the one I know with every fiber of my existence is out there somewhere.
Then it happened: a violent lurch that sent wine and glass flying across the cabin, a shriek from the ship’s alarms as it went into panic mode. I knew right away that this was no ordinary Way turbulence. The ship was tumbling badly, but I fought my way to the command deck and did what I could to bring her back under control. Seat-of-the-pants flying, the way Gallinule and I used to do it on Plenitude, when Plenitude still existed.
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