Counting Heads (4 page)

After a while, she wiped her eyes and said through bubbles of snot, “A baby is out of the question.”

“I agree totally,” I said. “It would be the stupidest thing we could ever do.”

AT THE NATIONAL Orphanage in Trenton, the last thing they did was take tissue samples for recombination. Eleanor and I sat on chromium stools, side by side, in a treatment room as the nurse, a jenny, scraped the inside of Eleanor’s cheek with a curette. We had both been off visola for forty-eight hours, dangerous but necessary to obtain a pristine DNA sample. Henry informed me that Eleanor’s full Cabinet was on Red. That meant Eleanor was tense. This was
coitus mechanicus
, but it was bound to be the most fruitful sex we would ever have.

AT THE NATIONAL Orphanage in Trenton, the first thing they did was lead us down to Dr. Deb Armbruster’s office where the good doctor warned us that raising a modern child was nothing like it used to be. “Kids used to grow up and go away,” said Dr. Armbruster. “Nowadays, they tend to get stuck at around age eight or thirteen. And it’s not considered good parenting, of course, to force them to age. We believe it’s all the attention they get. Everyone—your friends, your employer, well-wishing strangers, HomCom officers—everyone comes to coo and fuss over the baby, and they expect you to welcome their attention. Gifts arrive by the van load. The media wants to be invited to every birthday party.

“Oh, but you two know how to handle the media, I imagine.”

Eleanor and I sat in antique chairs in front of Dr. Armbruster’s neatly arranged desk. There was no third chair for Eleanor’s chief of staff, who stood patiently at Eleanor’s side. Dr. Armbruster was a large, fit woman, with a square jaw and pinpoint eyes that glanced in all directions as she spoke. No doubt she had arranged her own valet system in layers of display monitors around the periphery of her vision. Many administrative types did so. With the flick of an iris, they could page through reams of reports. And they looked down their noses at holofied valets with personality buds, like Eleanor’s Cabinet.

“So,” Dr. Armbruster continued, “you may have a smart-mouthed adolescent on your hands for twenty or thirty years. That, I can assure you, becomes tiresome. You, yourselves, could be two or three relationships down the road before the little darling is ready to leave the nest. So we suggest you work out custody now, before you go any further.”

“Actually, Doctor,” El said, “we haven’t decided to go through with it. We only came to acquaint ourselves with the process and implications.”

“I see,” Dr. Armbruster said with a hint of a smile.

AT THE NATIONAL Orphanage in Trenton, the second thing they did was take us to the storage room to see the “chassis” that would become our baby, if we decided to exercise our permit.

One wall held a row of carousels, each containing hundreds of small drawers. Dr. Armbruster rotated a carousel and told a particular drawer to unlock itself. She removed from it a small bundle wrapped in a rigid tetanus blanket (a spin-off of my early trauma blanket work). She placed the bundle on a gurney, commanded the blanket to relax, and unwrapped a near-term human fetus, curled in repose, a miniature thumb stuck in its perfect mouth. It was remarkably lifelike, but rock still, like a figurine. I asked how old it was. Dr. Armbruster said that, developmentally, it was 26 weeks old, and that it had been in stasis seven and a half years. It was confiscated in an illegal pregnancy and doused in utero. She rotated the fetus—the chassis—on the gurney.

“It’s normal on every index,” she explained. “We should be able to convert it with no complications.” She pointed to this and that part of it and explained the order of rewriting. “The integumentary system—the skin, what you might call our fleshy package”—she smiled at me, acknowledging my professional reputation—“is a human’s fastest growing organ. A person sheds and replaces it continuously throughout her life. In the conversion process, it’s the first one completed. For a fetus, it takes about a week. Hair color, eye color, the liver, the heart, the digestive system, convert in two to three weeks. The nervous system, major muscle groups, reproductive organs—three to four weeks. Cartilage and bones—two to three months. Long before its first tooth erupts, the baby is biologically yours.”

I asked Dr. Armbruster if I could hold the chassis.

“Certainly,” she said. She placed her large hands carefully under it and handed it to me. It was hard, cold, and surprisingly heavy. “The fixative is very dense,” she said, “and brittle, like eggshell.” I cradled it awkwardly. Dr. Armbruster smiled and said to Eleanor, “New fathers always look like that, like they’re afraid of breaking it. In this case, however, that’s entirely possible. And you, my dear, look typically uncomfortable as well.”

She was right. Eleanor and her chief of staff stood side by side, twins (but for their ages), arms stiffly crossed. Dr. Armbruster said, “Governor Starke, you might find the next few months immensely more enjoyable under hormonal therapy. Fathers, it would seem, have always had to learn to bond with their offspring. For you we have something the pharmaceutical companies call ‘Mother’s Medley.’”

“No, thank you, Doctor,” Eleanor said and uncrossed her arms. “We haven’t decided yet, remember? And besides, this one is damaged. It’s missing a finger.” One of the baby’s tiny fingers was indeed missing, the stub end rough like plaster.

“Oh, don’t be concerned about that,” Dr. Armbruster said. “Fingers and toes grow back in days. Just don’t break off the head!”

I flinched and held the chassis tighter, but then was afraid I was holding it too tight. I tried to give it to El, but she crossed her arms again, so I gave it back to Dr. Armbruster, who returned it to the gurney.

“Also,” El said, “this one is already gendered.”

I checked between the chassis’s chubby legs and saw a tiny little penis. It—he—was a little guy. Maybe that was when things started to shift in my heart. I had never parented a child before, not with any of the numerous women Henry claimed I had known, even though I reached adulthood long before the Population Treaties had gone into effect. Only once, with Jean Scholero, did I get close, but I was too preoccupied with my career, and she miscarried, and we didn’t last long enough to try again.

“Don’t be concerned about that either,” Dr. Armbruster said. “Your genes will overwrite its gender too. It’s all part of the same process.”

Eleanor touched my arm. “Are you all right, Sam?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a little overwhelming.”

El turned to Dr. Armbruster. “Well, we’d better be going, Doctor. Thank you for the tour.”

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Governor Starke, and you, too, Myr Harger. On your way out, why don’t you stop by the procedure room and let the nurse take a skin sample.”

“That won’t be necessary,” El said.

“The decision is yours, of course, but it could save you an extra trip if you change your mind.”

BACK AT THE Williams Towers in Bloomington, we lay on the balcony in the late-afternoon sun and skimmed the queue of messages. Our friends had grown tired of our good fortune: the congratulations were fewer and briefer and seemed, by and large, pro forma, even tinged with underlying jealousy. And who could blame them? The Population Treaties had been in effect for nearly sixty years, and sixty years was a long time for a society to live outside the company of children. Probably no one begrudged us our child, although it was obvious to everyone—especially to us—that we’d come by the permit unfairly.

El deleted the remaining queue of messages and said, “Talk to me, Sam.” Our balcony was situated halfway up the giant residential tower that ended, in dizzying perspective, near the lower reaches of the city’s canopy. The canopy, invisible during the day, appeared viscous in the evening light, like a transparent film rippling and folding upon itself. In contrast, our tower had a smooth matte surface encrusted with thousands of tiny black bumps. These were the building’s resident homcom slugs, absorbing the last rays of the setting sun. They were topping off their energy stores for a busy night patrolling living rooms and bedrooms.

I asked her, “Have you ever had children before?”

“Yes, two, a boy and a girl, when I was barely out of college. Tom died as a child in an accident. Jessica grew up, moved away, married, led a successful career, and died at age fifty-four of cancer of the larynx.” Eleanor turned over, bare rump to the sky, chin resting on sun-browned arms. “I grieved for each of them. It’s hard to bury one’s kids.”

“Would you like to have another?”

She didn’t answer for a while. I watched a slug creep along the underside of the balcony of the apartment above us. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “It’s funny. I’ve already been through it all: pregnancy, varicose veins, funerals. I’ve been through menopause and—worse—back through remenses. I was so tangled up in motherhood, I never knew if I was coming or going. I loved or hated every moment of it, wouldn’t have traded it for the world. But when it was all over, I felt an unbearable burden lifted from me. Thank God, I said, I won’t have to go through
that
again. Yet since the moment we learned of the permit, I’ve been fantasizing about holding a baby in my lap. I don’t know why, but I can’t get it out of my mind: the feeding, the cooing, snuggling, rocking. My arms ache for a baby. I think it’s this schoolgirl body of mine. It’s a baby machine, and it intends to force its will on me. I’ve never felt so betrayed by my own body.”

The slug bypassed our balcony, but another one was making its way slowly down the wall.

I said, “Why
not
have another one?”

She turned her head to peer at me. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Doomsayer, but aren’t you the one who warned me not to take this posting? Aren’t you the guy who said something about someone setting me up? I’ve had Cabinet scouring the nets for the past few weeks trying to piece together who’s behind all this. But a baby? Do you have any idea how vulnerable a child makes you? You might as well tie a leash around your own neck.”

She relaxed again and went on, “But for the sake of argument, let’s just say that I have some powerful unknown benefactor promoting my career. And that this baby is a carrot to gain my loyalty. Well, here’s a basic law of life, Sam—wherever there’s a carrot, there’s a stick just out of sight.”

I thought about that as I watched the homcom slug. It had sensed us and was creeping across the balcony toward us.

“Well?” El said. “Any comments? It’s your permit too.”

“I know,” I said. “It would be madness to go through with it. And yet—”

“And yet?”

“Could you imagine our baby, El? A little critter crawling around our ankles, half you and half me, a little Elsam or Sameanor?”

She closed her eyes and smiled. “That would be a pitiable creature.”

“And speaking of ankles,” I said, “we’re about to be sampled.”

The slug, a tiny strip of biotech, touched her ankle, attached itself to her for a moment, then dropped off. With the toes of her other foot, Eleanor scratched the testing site. Slugs only tickled her. With me it was different. There was some nerve tying my ankle directly to my dick, and I always found that warm, prickly kiss unavoidably arousing. So, as the slug attached itself to my ankle, El watched mischievously. At that moment, in the glow of the setting sun, in the delicious ache of perfect health, I didn’t need the kiss of a slug to arouse me. I needed only a glance from my wife, with her ancient eyes set like opals in her girlish body. This must be how the Greek gods lived on Olympus. This must be the way it was meant to be, to grow ancient and yet to have the strength and appetites of youth. El gasped melodramatically as she watched my penis swell. She turned herself toward me, coyly covering her breasts and pubis with her hands. The slug dropped off me and headed for the balcony wall.

We lay side by side, not yet touching. I was stupid with desire and lost control of my tongue. I spoke without thinking. I said, “Mama.”

The word, the single word, “mama,” struck her like a physical thing. Her whole body shuddered, and her eyes went wide with surprise. I repeated it, “Mama,” and she shut her eyes and turned away from me. I sidled over to her, wrapped my arms around her, and took possession of her ear. I tugged its lobe with my lips. I breathed into it. I pushed her sweat-damp hair clear of it and whispered, “I am the papa, and you are the mama.” I watched the side of her face and repeated, “You are the mama.”

“Oh, Sam,” she sighed. “Crazy Samsamson.”

“You are the mama, and Mama will give Papa a
son
.”

Her eyes flew open at last, fierce, challenging, but amused.

“Or a daughter,” I added quickly. “At this stage, Papa’s not picky.”

“And how will Papa arrange either, I wonder.”

“Like this.” I rolled her onto her back to kiss and stroke her. But she was indifferent to me, willfully so. Nevertheless, I let my tongue play up and down her body. I visited all the sweet spots I had discovered since first we made love, for I knew her girlish body to be my ally. Her body and I wanted the same thing. Soon, with or without El’s blessing, her body welcomed me, and when she was ready, and I was ready, and all my sons and daughters inside me were ready, we went for it.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, a bird, a crow, came crashing to the deck beside us. What I could make out, through the thick anti-nano envelope that contained it, was a mess of shiny black feathers, a broken beak clattering against the deck, and a smudge of blood that quickly boiled away. The whole bird, in fact, was disassembling. Steam rose from the envelope, which emitted a piercing wail of warning. Henry spoke loudly into my ear,
Attention, Sam! In the interest of safety, the HomCom isolation device orders you to move away from it at once
.

We were too distracted to pay much mind. The envelope seemed to be doing its job. Nevertheless, we dutifully moved away; we rolled away belly to belly, like the bard’s “beast with two backs.” A partition formed to separate us from the unfortunate bird, and we resumed our investigation of the merits of parenthood.