“Madame President, you have to talk to somebody, then,” Billy insisted. “Whatever is happening—these dreams, these… illusions. Perhaps it’s left over from the medications you were under, and it’ll just work its way out of your system…”
“No, it’s nothing like that… although it may well be, it’s…” She took another breath, again let it out, trying to cleanse her mind and steady herself. “I don’t want you to think I’m insane…”
“Never.”
“…but I think… Billy,” she said, “I think it’s the baby.”
He stared at her uncomprehending. “You’re pregnant?”
Laura appeared stunned for a moment, and then, despite the seriousness of the situation, she laughed aloud. “No. Not that baby… I mean, no. I’m not pregnant. Unless a god came down and visited me in my sleep…”
“Honestly, Madame President, I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“Yes, well… a valid point. But that’s not what I was referring to.”
“Then I don’t understand what…”
“I think…” She said it all in a rush, as if the biggest challenge was just to say it and get it out there rather than dwell on it. “I think the Cylon’s child has done something to me.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“The child. The fetus… Sharon Valerii’s.”
She told him then of the dream she’d had, of being born, of being carried away by a Cylon soldier. The recurring imagery of blood, and the warning about Sagittaron. “I… suppose it’s possible,” he said at last.
Laura wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. She was surprised, to say the least. The whole thing had seemed so farfetched to her that she was almost thinking that simple insanity might be the most reasonable answer.
“You do?” she said with the air of a drowning woman who had had a life preserver tossed to her when she had been bracing for an anchor.
“Yes, of course,” he said with increased conviction, as if just thinking about it for a moment helped clarify matters for him. “We’re talking about Cylons. We’re talking about unknown aspects of biology. Anything is possible.” Then he said firmly, “You have to talk to—”
“No.”
“Madame President… !” he said, clearly frustrated. “You have to—”
“I’m the president, Billy In case you haven’t forgotten, you don’t get to tell me what I have to do.”
As quickly as he was chastened, she regretted having said it. She patted him on the shoulder and said, “Sorry. I’m sorry about that. You’re just trying to help.”
“And I can’t if you won’t let me. The Cylon is trying to… to do something to you.”
“That’s the thing: I don’t know that for sure.”
“But you just said—!”
“I said I have suspicions,” Laura reminded him. “Nothing more than that. Here’s the thing, Billy… here’s what I’m not sure of. That I can’t be sure of. What if…” She knew this would sound even stranger. “What if she doesn’t know?”
“She? You mean Valerii?”
“Yes. Exactly. What if this is happening without her knowledge? What if the unborn Cylon is trying to tell me something?”
It was obvious to Laura that she was starting to reach the outer limit of what Billy would and would not accept. “The unborn Cylon is trying to send you a message?”
“You sound skeptical.”
“Can you blame me?”
With a small smile, she walked back around to the other side of her desk. “You yourself said we were dealing with Cylons, and anything was possible.”
“I know, but…”
“If I go to Cottle,” she said, as much to give herself the reasons as to convey them to Billy, “he may well come up with some treatment, some form of drugs, that will sever this… this connection, if that’s what it is. If I tell Adama, I know him, Billy. He’ll get right into Valerii’s face about it, and there’s no telling what might happen then. Hell, she might try to self-abort, and I’m not ready to let that happen.”
“Which is somewhat ironic, considering you were ready to abort her child for her.”
“Yes, well… life is full of little ironies, isn’t it,” she said ruefully.
Pressing the point, Billy said, “But you still haven’t told me why? Even if it were possible, why would it be trying to communicate with you?”
“Because… maybe it’s afraid.”
Billy stood there for a moment, trying to understand the implications of what she was suggesting. “Are you… are you saying… that the unborn Cylon…is… what? Asking you for asylum?”
“I was the one who was ready to have it aborted. Perhaps… on some level…it knows that. And perhaps on some level… it’s no happier about its heritage than we are, and it’s looking to us… to me… to keep it safe from the Cylons and Cylon influence.”
He processed that and then said, “Or… maybe it’s acting the way a Cylon is supposed to act… and is just trying to drive you insane.”
“If that’s the case,” she said with a heavy sigh, “then it may well be succeeding beyond its wildest hopes.”
CHAPTER
12
Gaius Baltar sat on the balcony of his former home and stared out at the setting sun. He was seated in his favorite chair with his feet propped up, and he was wearing a short white bathrobe that came down to mid-thigh. This was not the first time that he was making a visit back to the life that he’d left behind. He was never quite sure how he got there, but had learned to stop worrying about it and simply accept it for what it was: a blessing that he, and no one else in the fleet, ever had. For this alone, he was content.
There were two times of day that he had always loved: dawn and sunset. He had never wondered why that was before he had lost his home… his planet… his life as he knew it. Since then, he’d had plenty of time to ponder it, and had come to the conclusion that those were the times of day that were most in line with his personal philosophy. Others—specifically those who were far less brilliant than he, which was pretty much everyone else—saw the world in terms of absolutes. Black and white, good and bad… day and night. Baltar knew that things were far more complicated than that. There were no truths in absolutes. The truth lay in what was in between. The not-quite-day, not-quite-night. It was only when the two aspects of day and night merged that it was possible to discern all sides of the equation.
“So are you satisfied, Gaius?”
He knew whose voice it was, of course. There was only ever the two of them there—Baltar and the mysterious woman who had delighted in seducing and confounding him before Caprica had been bombed into oblivion by the Cylons.
She had never had a name. Even when they were together, she had never told him. It was one of the oddest aspects of their relationship: “You can have all of me,” she had whispered the first time they were together, “except my name.” She had been true to her word. She had never held back in the heady days of their extremely active sex life… but not once, not one time, had she told him her name. “A girl has to have some mystery about her,” she had told him blithely one day when they were lying naked in bed together. It was typical male behavior, she said, that no matter how much a woman gave a man, he wanted more. “I walk down the street and I see men devouring me with their eyes,” she said to Baltar one time when he had become particularly insistent. “They would kill to have just the slightest taste of what I provide you as a full banquet. And you know what?” She had leaned closer in to him, and he had trembled as her tongue slid along the nape of his neck. “They wonder what it would be like to have my legs wrapped around them. To fondle my breasts, to cup my ass in their sweaty hands. They wonder all kinds of things, and the one thing they never… ever… wonder… is what my name is. I leave them wondering. Names have power, Gaius, and I choose to keep my name to myself so that you do not have that power over me.”
He had accepted that, for he had really had no choice. He simply wasn’t stron
g enough of character to take a stand on something which—in the final analysis—meant a good deal to her and not much of anything to him.
He half turned in his seat and saw her standing on the stairway that led up to the bedroom, the place where dreams came true. She was wearing a diaphonous red gown, which was fluttering in response to a breeze that didn’t seem to exist beyond the immediate area where she was standing. She was leaning against the wall in a posture that was simultaneously alluring and casual. “I said you must be satisfied with yourself, Gaius.”
“Oh,” he said in an off-hand manner. “Are you talking to me now?”
“Of course.” She strolled across the room, one foot placed precisely before the next. She walked like a cat, and there was much of a feline manner about her. “I may get annoyed with you, even put out… but I never get so upset with you that, sooner or later, I won’t forgive you.”
“And what have I done, I wonder,” he asked, “that requires forgiveness? Because I didn’t do what you wanted me to do? I didn’t incriminate an innocent young boy?”
“How do you know that’s what he is?” She stood next to him for a moment, and then draped one long leg over him and sat in his lap, facing him. It was all he could do to contain a small whimper. “We both know your Cylon detection test is a sham. He might indeed be one of us.”
“Yes, so you said before. Considering you’ve never been especially forthcoming on the identities of your agents, I’d have to think that the fact you seem determined to hang the boy out to dry reduces the odds of his being a Cylon to practically nonexistent.”
“Unless, of course, I know that you’ll think that, and am counting on it. Remember, Gaius, there’s not a thought that goes through your head that I’m not privy to.”
“You’re pushing awfully hard on this…”
She applied downward pressure with her pelvis. “Oh?”
“On this subject!” Baltar amended quickly, and he ignored the stifled laugh from Six. “I still don’t understand your obsession with—”
Abruptly she stood and stepped back away from him. She moved in the way a dancer moved, and it made him feel as if this was all some sort of strange, deluded tango between the two of them. “Because it’s in my interest to protect you.”
“You mean it’s in your interest to control me.” He rose from the chair and faced her, feeling powerful, feeling defiant. “What’s the matter? Afraid that I’ll have power over you now that I know your name… Gina?” He saw her face twist in annoyance. “Yes, you can’t stand that, can you. I know your name, and that gives me power over you. Didn’t you say yourself that’s how it works?”
“You know a name,” she retorted. “A name beaten out of a poor version of me. Isn’t it possible that she would have lied about it?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Baltar admitted, but then added with a sense of smirking confidence, “because—after all—your kind is quite accomplished at lying, aren’t you.”
She allowed the remark to pass and then, sounding all business, she said, “You need to throw up distractions, Gaius. I think you’re tragically oblivious to the amount of danger that you’re in.”
“And what could possibly give you that impression? Are you going to tell me again that Adama suspects? Let him. Let him suspect all he wants. He can’t prove a damned thing and you know it.”
“Roslin is suspicious of you as well. She believes you to be a Cylon sympathizer at best… a Cylon yourself at worst.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Baltar told her, dismissing the notion out of hand.
“Is it.” She circled the room, shaking her head as if he were the most pitiable individual she could ever have hoped to meet. “And how do you know it’s ridiculous?”
“Because I just saved the woman’s life, for gods’ sake! She’d be dead of breast cancer if it weren’t for me!”
“That’s very true. And I’m sure she’s abundantly grateful for your having saved her, isn’t she. Think back, Gaius,” she said with sudden impatience. “Open your eyes and think back. Did she ever, at any point, say so much as thank you?”
He didn’t have to answer her, because she knew the answer as well as he: Laura Roslin had never thanked him. In fact, she had done quite the opposite. He had been there shortly after the treatment had been administered and her cancer-free status had been verified. He’d shown up in her hospital room, and he had been expecting… something. Some sort of thanks, some measure of gratitude. But he had gotten nothing. Oh, she had received him in her room cordially enough, and she had made small talk about impending business and how long it would take her to return to her duties. She had asked him about the expectations of reasonable recovery time.
But she had not thanked him, or given the slightest indication that she was at all appreciative of what he had done for her. Quite the opposite, in fact. She had watched him with great suspicion, jumped on any comments that could remotely be misconstrued. It seemed as if she had been looking for things to criticize, to find… wrong… with him.
Why? Why would she come out of her coma, her near-death experience, with new and increased suspicions regarding Baltar? Was there something that he had said or done that had made her think something was wrong with him?
“You still don’t get it, do you?” said Six.
“Not readily, no,” he admitted. “But I very much suspect you’re going to tell me.”
“For someone who purports to be a genius, you’re not always very bright, Gaius. It comes down to something as simple as this: When someone is on the verge of death, all the detritus is stripped away from their mind. Take it from someone who has died several times in her existence. Nothing clears the mind like impending demise, and things that may have been obscured by time and distance suddenly snap into very clear relief.”
“What, are you saying that because she was going to die, she’s now come to some sort of realization about me that she was blinded to before?”
“I’m saying that her behavior is not consistent with someone who damned well should have been grateful considering she would have died without your intervention.”
He was about to reply to that, to again issue an automatic denial and express his complete confidence that Laura Roslin had no reason, none, to suspect him. But he didn’t say that because he couldn’t get the words to come out of his mouth. Finally he said, “Not everyone is skilled at giving thanks to people.” He winced even as he said it, because it wasn’t remotely convincing even to his own ear. That being the case, it certainly wasn’t anything that Number Six was going to buy.
It was, in fact, so unconvincing that she didn’t even deign to address it. Instead she said, “Something’s in the air, Gaius. You can feel it. You can smell it. They think they can fool you and even hide it from you… but they can’t. They’re investigating Cylon infiltration in new and aggressive ways, and you’ve been targeted for suspicion. They’re going to do something about it. They’re going to try and find evidence.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know humans. In some ways, I know them better than you.”
“I see.” As far as Baltar was concerned, the entire discussion was becoming ludicrous. “All right, Gina… or Six… or whatever. Impress me with your knowledge of my people. Tell me what they’re going to do to try and find evidence.”
“Obviously,” said Six, “they’ll undertake some manner of surveillance.”
“Surveillance? You mean spy on us?” Baltar snorted derisively at that. “Adama would never approve something like that. I know the man…”
“As well as you knew me? As well as you knew what I was capable of?” She lowered her voice to a whisper, as if somehow it was possible to spy on the deepest arenas of this thoughts. “You want to believe you’re so much smarter than the rest of them, Gaius. You want to believe that you’re above reproach. But we both know you live your life with one eye cocked over your shoulder to make sure that no one is watching you. You have a dark, terrib
le cloud hanging over you, and you’re constantly aware of it. You are the betrayer of humanity, Gaius. How long do you think you’re going to be able to live with that?”
“As long as it takes,” he growled.
“If they want to believe they have an infiltrator, let them. Let them have the boy. At the very least, it will buy you time. Time you desperately need.”
“No,” he said firmly, “I won’t…”
“Do this for me. You owe me this much.”
Baltar laughed grimly at that. “I owe you? As if I haven’t done enough for you already.”
“Then do it for yourself. Check your lab for listening or viewing devices. Sweep your lab and come up with one. I’m sure I’m right. If I’m wrong—if I have done a disservice to the noble humans who run the Galactica—then I shall never make mention of it again.”
“As if I’m supposed to believe that.”
She hesitated, and then said with great solemnity, “If you do as I ask… I’ll tell you my real name. Not the fake one that Gina told her captors. My real name.”
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