by Gini Koch
“She never stops eating.” I kissed her and made the comforting goo-goo noises. Seemed to help.
“Need to make sure she’s getting milk then,” Tito said briskly.
“The torpedoes inflate, she eats, they deflate.” I didn’t want to sit on the bed, but there weren’t any loungers in here, which was weird because they were in every living quarter. “No lounger?”
“I’ll bring you one, baby.” Jeff kissed me and hypersped out of the room. Sadly, he had his shirt on. Came back in moments carrying a nice lounger. Happily, his shirt wasn’t buttoned. A-Cs were strong, and Jeff, in particular, was able to do the massive heavy lifting and not have it seem like anything.
Got settled into the lounger, leaned it back, started the feeding process. Camilla and Tito both watched. Back to starring in my own reality TV show. Changed sides, Jeff burped her, diaper check, baby gurgled and went back to sleep.
“How long before it stops being this easy?”
“Couple of weeks, tops.” Tito took her from me and weighed her. “Good. She’s up an ounce or so. Kind of early to weigh, but I want to be sure. She could just be a big eater. Are your nipples bruised?”
“I beg your pardon?” I was shocked by the question, but the look on Jeff’s face was priceless.
“You’re fair skinned. More of a risk for bruising. Let me know if it starts to hurt, there are things we can do.”
“Oh, good. So, basically, every guy I work with’s seen my crotch, and you’re going to ask me about my boobs all the time now?”
Tito grinned again. “Yep.”
“The little joys of motherhood are without number.”
CHAPTER 25
THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS were a blur of new parenthood, investigations, and doctor checks. We still had no bassinet, mostly because everyone was still restricted to the Science Center, Martini Manor, or one of the other A-C Bases.
Jeff and I were still adjusting to the demands of taking care of someone other than ourselves. It was pretty awesome, especially since Jamie was an amazingly good baby, at least if I took the comments from everyone who had kids of their own as proof. I had no arguments, of course. So far, while I was still tired and felt pretty unprepared for everything, all had gone smoothly.
We’d had a steady stream of visitors. My entire family had made the pilgrimage to my hospital room. Thankfully, most of them didn’t seem to know I’d died and come back, for which I was incredibly relieved. It upset Jeff too much when I said I didn’t remember it happening. Besides, my parents were with us for most of our relatives’ visits, and I didn’t want to risk seeing either one of them cry, Mom in particular.
In addition to all the usual friends and family suspects, it felt as if everyone I’d ever even passed in the hallway at the Science Center came by to visit, too. We’d seen Jeff’s sisters and some of the older kids, all of whom were under lockdown at Martini Manor but came out to see the baby anyway. I had no idea where Jeff’s brothers-in-law were for this, but I was happy they weren’t with us—it meant that many fewer people handling the baby and asking me incredibly personal questions. I was getting concerned about Jamie being exposed to every disease in the world, but Tito and Camilla weren’t overly worried. Neither were any of the other Dazzlers, so I tried to relax about it.
Interestingly to me, in a rather offensive way, was the fact that the Diplomatic Corps wanted a look at our child. I wasn’t a fan of any of them, and the head Diplomatic couple, Robert and Barbara Coleman, I despised with a passion. Happily, Jeff had point-blank refused to allow them access to Jamie or me. When they’d protested all the way up to the Pontifex, Chuckie had stepped in and tossed around some C.I.A. muscle to share that they weren’t seeing my baby until I wanted them to, which was likely to be never.
They were still complaining about this, even though Chuckie had had them sent back to the Alpha Centaurion Embassy and told them to stay there “for their safety.” Considering how anti-interspecies marriage this group was, them wanting to see Jamie was odd and infuriating, since I didn’t believe for one moment that any of them had changed their stances in the last week. I wasn’t sure what their game was—but I was sure they had one. However, I didn’t want to have to be around them to discover what it was, so I chose to table these concerns for later. We had plenty of other things going on to occupy my attention, including diaper changes, which were moving up on my Least Favorite Things About Being a Mommy list.
Finally back in the Lair and able to lock some of the madness out. Not as much as I would have liked, of course—we were in the middle of some kind of operation. None of us were sure what, which made getting anywhere difficult.
In between visits and fending off the Diplomatic Corps, Jeff and Chuckie had spent a lot of time questioning Amy. The three of us were in the Lair, bickering about the results.
“Look, I can’t get a thing from her other than confusion, fear, and jealousy.” Jeff wasn’t snarling, but I knew he wanted to be. “Unless she’s able to block me, she’s being used, not part of the issue.”
“Confusion and fear I get, but what’s she jealous about?”
Jeff sighed. “She’s jealous of you. And Sheila, but mostly you.”
“Of me? Um, why?”
He shrugged. “You’re happily married, just had a baby, have an exciting career, and an interesting life.”
“She’s had an exciting career and interesting life, too.”
“No husband and baby. Sheila’s been married for over seven years and has four kids, you’re married with an immediate baby, Brian same thing. The clock is ticking and Amy’s losing the race.” Chuckie didn’t sound surprised. “But does that mean she’s happy to be working against Kitty?”
“I don’t think she’s working against anyone.” Jeff shook his head. “I’d like you to find the agent who was supposedly helping her.”
“I would, too.” Chuckie shook his head. “No idea who it was at this point.”
“Had to be someone involved in covert ops,” I pointed out. “The number worked.”
“Yeah, and it traced back to the payphone Amy said she was at. But a lot of operatives had that number. It was an older number, but still active.” Chuckie didn’t look or sound overly worried, but his eyes said otherwise.
“How old?” Jeff asked.
“Five years. And, yeah, we’ve been checking the retirement files. So far, Amy has gotten a great look at every operative we have all over the world, but recognizes no one. Let me mention that she’s not leaving our control any time soon, if ever. All by herself she’s a major security breach, even if she’s innocent, let alone if she’s deeply involved.”
“Can’t argue there.” I cuddled the baby and tried to think of something that wasn’t mommy related. “Amy said she thought he was a businessman.”
“Covert ops field agents aren’t supposed to be wearing signs that say ‘Hi, my name is Bill, and I’m with the C.I.A.,’ you know.” Chuckie’s sarcasm knob was up to full.
“No, really? Wow, I learn something new every day.” I had a sarcasm knob, too.
Jeff sighed. “As enjoyable, and rare, as it is to watch the two of you bicker, could we maybe focus on the matter at hand?”
“I suppose. We have the other matter at hand, too.” They both looked at me. “Ronaldo Al Dejahl? We are agreed this is a son of Yates’ that we didn’t know about?”
Chuckie nodded. “Your mother agrees. Yates was under surveillance for years, but he could have impregnated any number of women.”
“Aren’t we all so lucky? So, there could be more of them?”
“No idea. I’d have said that was Centaurion’s business, but I can’t really blame you all for not following the human side of things.”
I looked at Jamie. She gurgled and grabbed at my hair. “But any child of his wouldn’t be a human. It would be a hybrid or a full A-C.”
CHAPTER 26
I LOOKED AT JEFF. He looked ill. Chuckie, same thing. “On record, that thought only just occurred
to me.”
“Hybrid males have no unusual talents.” Jeff sounded like he was grasping for a good spin.
“But they can still have talents. Paul does.”
“And you and White aren’t exactly short in the talent department,” Chuckie added.
“Yeah.” Jeff heaved a sigh and pulled out his phone. “I want tracking for unknown hybrids. No idea of how. Take a sampling. What do you mean from whom? From the Gowers and Serene for starters. Then branch out—what? Really? Huh. Okay. What?” He looked over at me and Jamie and I recognized his expression—protective and possessive. “No.” Whoever he was talking to was arguing, I could tell by the way Jeff looked. “Fine, we’ll discuss it after you tell me what you have with the five adults we know about. Call me right away.” He hung up and looked worried and thoughtful.
“Jeff? What’s wrong? Aside from them wanting to test Jamie? Which, if it’s a safe test, I can’t understand why you said no.”
“She’s less than a week old,” he muttered.
“What else is wrong?” I started to get worried, and it was clear it showed in my voice because Jamie began fussing.
Jeff closed his eyes. “None of the other hybrids are still alive.”
That hung on the air for a bit. “Um, why not?”
He opened his eyes. “No idea. Praying to God it’s not a shorter lifespan.”
“You never checked this before you married Kitty and allowed every A-C under thirty to marry a human?” Chuckie sounded just this side of enraged.
“Before you both start, stop it.” I took a deep breath. “Jeff, just call whoever does the statistical analysis and get them going on it.”
He did as requested. Chuckie still looked ready to lose it. “Chuckie, stop. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it, okay? If it’s scary bad, then we’ll both need your help, not your rage, okay? Please? As my oldest friend?”
Chuckie nodded, and I saw him pull himself back under control. “Yeah. Sorry. It didn’t occur to me, either, and since I would have loved a reason to tell you not to marry him, I can’t really complain that none of us thought of it.”
“None of the older A-Cs mentioned it as a danger sign, and I think they would have. Jeff’s mother would have, for sure, at least when I first met her.”
Jeff got off the phone. “Well . . . it’s interesting. Reynolds, we need to somehow have Michael Gower under protection when he’s back at NASA.”
“Why?” Chuckie sounded confused. “Thought you cleared out the security issues there over a year ago.”
“We did, but the statistics on hybrids are really interesting.” Jeff let out his breath slowly. “None of them died from disease. None of them have made it into old age, either.”
“Oh, I love this game, let me see if I can guess what comes next! They all had mysterious accidents, right?”
“I married the smartest girl in the galaxy.”
“Nope, I’ve just been trained by the Conspiracy King.”
Chuckie managed a weak grin. “Thanks. So, every one of them?”
“All but the Gowers and Serene,” Jeff confirmed. “Every other hybrid is dead and buried.”
“You said they were all men, right?”
Jeff nodded. “Yeah, which is a scary statistic in its own right.”
“Why didn’t anyone pay more attention to this?”
Jeff shrugged, but Chuckie looked thoughtful. “Maybe they did.”
“Come again?”
Chuckie sighed. “You’ve been infiltrated before. Several times that we know of. It’s likely there are more infiltrators than we know about. So, perhaps a study was done, and the results were destroyed or hidden.”
“Who would do that?” Jeff asked. “Who would want to keep this information from us?”
“Beverly leaps to mind, and that’s just for starters.” I considered. “The current Diplomatic Corps might, particularly if the statistics indicated that interbreeding was good for both races.”
“There weren’t enough numbers for a sufficient test,” Jeff protested.
Chuckie cocked his head. “Why did they stop then?”
“What do you mean?” Jeff actually didn’t sound aggressive—he sounded confused.
I snorted. “Your race is extremely efficient. You test everything, at least as far as I’ve seen. You research. You do your homework.”
Chuckie nodded. “So, why would they only interbreed a few couples?”
“It was every race and country,” I offered. I remembered this well from Operation Fugly. “So, figure there was a sample of at least a hundred, maybe closer to two hundred.” Jeff nodded.
“That’s hardly enough to perform any useful analysis,” Chuckie said. “What did the tests prove?”
“We were taught the tests showed no significant positives that made interspecies marriage worthwhile, which meant we shouldn’t interbreed . . .” Jeff’s voice trailed off, and he looked as though he was starting to get angry. “This is going to be one of those things they told us to control us, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s more that they told you to control you the way Ronald Yates wanted. We have to figure whoever was in on this willingly and knowingly was a Yates loyalist, like good old Beverly.”
Chuckie shook his head. “If it’s, as it always seems, a group of the older generation of A-Cs, we’re going to have trouble finding them.” He shot me a look I knew meant he felt that we potentially had some really excellent liars in the A-C community. “However, let’s table the rest of our genetics worries. We need to move the murder worries front and center. How did the hybrids die?”
“Report’s coming down to us, but it would be acceptable things. Car crash, superbeing, alcohol ingestion.”
“Wait a minute. Jeff, no one knew alcohol killed A-Cs until I joined up and we all figured it out.”
“Last male hybrid died from alcohol ingestion twelve months ago,” Reader said as he came into the room carrying a file.
“You’re the statistics guy?” Why was I always the last to know anything?
Got the cover-boy grin. “Why do you think I live for the light reading?” He tossed the file to Jeff and came over to me. Kissed my forehead, kissed the baby. Then leaned against the wall. “Our last hybrid was supposedly depressed, and the consensus was that he committed suicide.”
“We don’t commit suicide.” Jeff sounded confused. “It’s just not something A-Cs do, religiously or racially. I can’t think of a suicide, ever, that I’ve ever heard of.” I chose not to mention that Jeff asking ACE to kill him if I died was a form of suicidal thinking. I mean, he was stressed enough, Chuckie was right there, and they were both doing so well, I didn’t want to wreck the cooperative mood.
“You don’t do drugs, either. I point to White, who’s locked up in your version of rehab, and mention that, yes, sometimes you do.” Chuckie shifted in his chair. “But back to Kitty’s point. Why would alcohol ingestion be an acceptable cause of death?”
Reader shrugged. “Guy was depressed. But let me have your attention before you go off worrying about that.” He waited until we were all looking at him. “Every single hybrid, other than the Gowers and Serene, was living in Europe. And our last dead hybrid was living in . . . wait for it . . . Paris.”
Silence. Jeff was an A-C, genetically quiet when thinking. Chuckie had learned to think to himself since thinking aloud got him beaten up when we were in school. Reader had been around the A-Cs a long time. As always, this left acting human to me.
“So how many hybrids were there, in total? To begin with, I mean?”
“Less than two hundred. And, yeah, girlfriend, in all of those, the only female births were Naomi, Abigail and Serene. Only Americans had girls, I might add.”
“Go U.S.A. But Paul told me that they tried every race and every country.”
“They did. But the other A-Cs who married Americans didn’t have children. There were several couples worldwide who never reproduced.” Reader had obviously memorized the file.
Jeff shrugged. “It was a scientific experiment. Had the long chat with my dad about this when we told them we were pregnant. Any couple that didn’t get pregnant, it was just assumed they couldn’t—that our genetics and theirs didn’t mix right. Enough couples did have children that it wasn’t definitive proof of anything, good, bad, or indifferent.”
“So none of the A-C scientists spent any time on this? At all? I get that it’s likely that the original data was hidden or destroyed, but in all this time, it’s never come up? No one’s ever asked themselves or each other why it is that these experiments weren’t continued? No one checked to see how the hybrids were doing? No one but me is interested in this stuff? How did I become the Genetics Queen?”
“You were interested in reproducing with one of them. What?” Chuckie said to the glare I shot him. “I’m not wrong and you know it. You were interested because it was all exciting and new, and you were hot for Martini and being told you couldn’t marry him. I know you, that made you even more interested in him and finding out about this genetics experiment. But for them, it’s just history.”
“I didn’t just want to marry Jeff because they said we couldn’t.” Oh, sure, that news had made me a lot more open to the idea, but it wasn’t why. I didn’t want to look at Jeff, though, because I was afraid he might think that was the only reason why.
“And here I thought it was only because I looked good in my suit.” Jeff laughed. “I’ll take whatever your motivation was and be happy with it, okay, baby?”
“Wasn’t my only motivation.” The great sex had had a lot more to do with it. I looked over at Jeff and realized he’d caught the great sex thought because he had a really satisfied smirk on his face. Wondered if it might possibly be safe enough to have sex the moment I could shove the other guys out of our room. Saw his smirk get a little wider.
“Anyway,” Reader said, presumably because he’d seen the look on Jeff’s face, too. “The A-Cs didn’t leap into human relationships when they arrived here—their position with the U.S. government was too tenuous. The interspecies tests weren’t approved until they’d been here a while.”