Olivia (111 page)

She slept very little, but tried to put her insomnia to use fulfilling her obligations with the Great Spirit.  It was on one such night as she was wearily making her way back from his embrace that she stepped out into the women’s tunnels and promptly crashed full-length into Thurga.

They went down in a tangle of arms, legs, wings, and blankets and Olivia began to apologize ceaselessly in both languages as she tried to sort out whose limbs belonged to whom.  At last, Thurga picked Olivia up by the shoulders and sat her bodily back at arm’s reach so the gulla could roll onto her knees and find her feet. 

“No harm, Urgarna!  No harm, for the spirit’s sake.  You’d think you’d ripped both wings free and fed them to me, the way you act.” 

Olivia picked up one soiled blanket, then another, and then a third before their meaning set in.  “What is this?” she asked, somewhat alarmed.  The only reasons gullan ever replaced so much bedding at once were due to either a birth or a death.

But Thurga only shrugged.  “Washing the Beast.  She’s taken to pissing in the pit rather than ask for a basin.”  Thurga grunted sourly.  “Nuisance.”

Olivia experienced the same blend of pity and anger and sorrow she always felt whenever Cheyenne was mentioned, and as usual, she said nothing.

Thurga, having successfully bundled her clean bedding back into an easily managed armload, took two steps further towards the women’s tunnels, then turned slowly back.  “There is…another matter.  Can you come?”

“Of course.”  Olivia bit back a yawn.  “What’s wrong?”

“It is Sarabee.  She hasn’t been well for many days.  Tina says there is nothing wrong with her or the baby…”  Thurga trailed off, looking at once anxious.  Tina’s expertise with the healing arts had surely been proven a hundred times over, but to many gullan, the only true healer would always be Olivia. 

Olivia reached out to give Thurga a consoling pat on the arm.  “It’s probably nothing serious, you know.  It’s just being pregnant.  I cried a lot, too.”

Thurga nodded, but didn’t look convinced.  “Poor Sarabee.  She’s never liked it here, and now that her time is nearing, she does nothing but weep.  So many of your humans have resisted the idea of taking another mate,” she ventured.  “Perhaps Sarabee fears to be taken by a male other than Burgelbun.”  She seemed to study her own words as they hung in the air, openly perplexed.  “But I didn’t think she cared so much for Burgelbun.”

“Humans are funny that way, I’m afraid.”

Thurga shrugged her wings, stealing a glance at Olivia from the corners of her dark eyes.  “We would help her if we could, but she has never spoken to us, you know.  Some of us fear that she may hurt the baby.”

Olivia stopped walking and put a hand on Thurga’s arm to halt her.  “Do you really think so?”

“Well…”  Thurga scratched at her throat, shifting her load of bedding awkwardly.  “Not to hurt with malice.  I don’t think she’d strike the baby or smother it.  But I don’t think she’ll love it either.  She has a name for it already, and I don’t think it’s very pleasant.”

“What name?”

Thurga frowned and spoke the word as though she feared Olivia would slap her on hearing it.  “Tumor.”  She watched Olivia’s face intently.  “Was I wrong?  Is it a good name after all?”

“Not…really.”

Thurga’s shoulders slumped.  “I feared that.  Sarabee says to Tina, ‘When will the Tumor come?  When will I be rid of the Tumor?’”  She shrugged her wings again, now openly uncomfortable.  “And I know it upsets you to hear such things, but what male will want her, weeping all the time?”

“Someone surely will,” Olivia said, and could not quite keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Yes,” said Thurga softly.  “Someone will.  But no good man will be eager to take a female who despises him, and who will that leave?”  

“She’ll stay in the women’s tunnels.  I’m sure that’s what she wants anyway.”

“With a baby?  She will not be allowed to do so.  A unmated female such as Sarahjay is one thing.  A female with a baby must be provided for.  She must have a mate!”  Thurga hesitated, then said, “If we offer to take the child when it is born, will she be offended or relieved?  Will she refuse even to give suck if this is all we ask of her?”

“I…”  Olivia realized she had no idea what Sarah B. would think of such an arrangement.  “I’ll talk to her,” she finished lamely.

Thurga sighed and nodded.  “And tell her, since she will not speak to us, tell her that we mean her no harm.  After all this time, it should be evident, but tell her anyway.”  She shifted her load of bedding and began to walk again.

Olivia let her go to do the washing and went alone to Tina’s clinic.  Amy was already there, rubbing Liz’s legs and humming the theme from
Have Gun Will Travel
.  She didn’t look around when Olivia asked her where Sarah B. was being kept, but she pointed the direction with her chin.

“Hang on a sec, though,” Amy said, when Olivia turned to go.  “I know you wanted to wait for Tina to come back, but I think Peanut here wants out.”

Olivia turned back reluctantly and bit her lip.  “Well, you’re right about one thing:  I did want to wait.  She’s still early, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, by about six weeks, but for all we know, Tina might not be back for months.”  Amy shook her head, her hands working calmly on Liz’s swollen ankles as she spoke.  “The drugs aren’t working like they used to.  Liz is going into labor practically every morning.  I mean, what do we do, double up on her dose?  And what happens when we run out, send you to another hospital?”

“I say go for it,” Liz announced.

Olivia frowned.  “Honey, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying I’m about to have a premature baby,” Liz replied, and her smile faltered, showing the true face of her worry beneath.  “Tina’s talked to me about the risks, you know.  I think…I think it’s maybe a better thing to do it now and save the rest of the levonal for someone else, someone where one shot might be all they need, rather than use it all up on me and still have to give birth early.  I mean, I know that every day improves my chances and all, but…there’s always going to be a risk because this is not a normal situation.  Not even as normal as, you know, whatever normal is for a gulla-human baby.  So I say go for it.”

“And I second the motion,” Amy added.  “In these enlightened days, a lot of doctors are actually inducing early on purpose.  Supposed to be less stressful for mama if she can pick the date and time and so forth.  And who are we to argue with the logic of obstetric science?”

It behooved no one to observe that in these enlightened days, doctors induced from the emergency rooms of the maternity wings in some very enlightened hospitals, and seldom as early as this. 

Olivia nodded slowly.  “All right.  I’ll send someone in to sit with you and I’ll be back as soon as I…clear a few things up.”

“You heard the woman,” Amy said, “You’ve had your last shot, kiddo.”

“Yee-haw.” 

“Okay then, that’s one down.”  Amy stood up, slapping her hands briskly, and faced off with Olivia.  “Now what’s your problem?”

Olivia made a futile gesture in the air with one hand.  “Thurga wants me to talk to Sarah B.  Do you know what the problem is with her?”

Amy’s expression had become a mask as soon as Sarah’s name was mentioned.  Now she considered the question as seriously as if it were a mathematical one.  “Maybe.  But I don’t want to discuss it in front of the baby.”

“Hey!”  Liz looked up, wounded.

“Hey yourself.  Can I help it if you keep bringing the little tyke within earshot?  Step into my parlor, o fearless leader.”  Amy took Olivia firmly by the arm and led her out of the clinic and a short distance down the tunnel.

For a long time, Amy only stood with her arms crossed, glaring at Olivia’s left shoulder.  When she spoke, her voice was low and angry.  “There are some things we just don’t want you to know.  I hate having to be so blunt, but there it is.  You do a really good job being leader, and honestly, there’s nobody here I’d rather see with the job and I’m pretty sure that opinion’s unanimous, but you…you still put Carla in here and you still cut a man’s balls off.”

“I—”

“I know you didn’t want to,” Amy said.  “But the fact remains, so I’m not going to apologize for not telling you about this sooner.  I just hope you don’t hate me too much when you hear it.”

“I think my ego can handle another secret meeting,” Olivia said.  “Could you just skip to the part where you start explaining things, please?”

“Okay, then, fair enough.  Here goes.”  Amy brought her eyes around to meet Olivia’s.  Impassively, she said, “Sarah B. wants to kill herself.”

“Wh-What?”

Amy sighed and scratched lightly at the hollow of her throat in unconscious imitation of a distressed gulla.  “I came into the baths when she was about two months along, and I was already feeling big as a damn house.  You remember how they used to keep spare clothes and stuff on the other side of the baths?  I was just on my way to trade up to a larger muumuu.  She was trying to drown herself.  I jumped in and saved her.  You’re gonna think that’s ironic in a little bit.”

Olivia felt a shiver trying to claw up her spine and suppressed it.  Amy had gone back to staring fixedly at Olivia’s left shoulder.  Her voice was calm; if not for the fury in her eyes, she might as easily have been discussing algebra.

Amy said, “She and Burgelbun never really caught on, you know.  And that Mojo Woman business made it pretty clear that, well, she didn’t come first in his eyes, so she quit trying.  She doesn’t hate him…I don’t think she hates him…but she hates this.”  Amy glanced around the cavern as though panning a mental camera across it.  “She hates all of this,” she mused.  “You can tell in her eyes…how she tends to fix her gaze about two feet in front of her and never really look at the floor or the walls.  You know how Carla is sometimes, how she doesn’t really think she’s here unless she’s getting hurt or…whatever?”

Olivia nodded and Amy shrugged.

“It’s like that with Sarah B, a little.  Once I got her out and into a towel, she started begging me to let her die.  And then she said a supremely disturbing thing.  She said, ‘Sometimes I wonder if this is even happening.  I don’t remember seeing any of you before. I think it’s just possible that this is one fuck of an acid trip.  In fact, there are times when I’m almost sure of it.’”

Amy repeated Sarah’s words in a childish singsong, but her face remained detached, impassive.  “I started to say something to the effect that I never dropped acid in my life, so the probability of group hallucination was slim, and she just talked right over the top of me.  ‘For instance, have you bothered to consider that these gullan should, by all laws of nature, be incapable of flight?’”

“Bumblebees,” Olivia stated.

Amy rolled her eyes.  “Honey, who are you talking to?  Little invertebrate insects on gossamer wings are hell and away from a humanoid species weighing an average of just under two hundred pounds, flapping effortlessly through the sky with a wingspan of approximately ten feet.  That is complete bullshit.  When you factor in that nobody’s ever seen these things despite the fact that they were living less than fifty miles from a good-sized town, and the fact that they are fully sexually compatible with humans, you have a mind-fuck of galactic proportions.”

Olivia opened her mouth to argue, to say what she had no idea, but to argue anyway because that…that just made too much scary sense.

“Don’t,” Amy said.  “Do not.  Seriously.”

“But just because we don’t know the physics of—”

“Even without factoring in the enormous density of gullan muscle and bone, you’d need wings more than thirty feet long even to glide effectively, let alone fly.  But wingspan is not the biggest issue, baby.  Let’s talk about how they just happened to grow wings
and
arms.  Or how, attached where they are, off the shoulderblades, their bodies ought to be dangling down like a kitten in its mother’s mouth.  To balance a body like that, they’d need a braincase full of friggin’ plutonium and a breastbone that stuck out about four feet.  I’m not even going to mention that whole bit where they can drive their claws into solid rock because that’s just too silly.  There is no way,” Amy said, very clearly and firmly, “to explain these people without using the word ‘magic’.  And magic, real magic, is just not something that everyone can deal with.  I mean, I tried.  I started blabbing some peppy Chicken Soup for the Captive Soul about how things would get better, and Sarah listened and came back with one question: Would this ever end?  Well, no.  Then it ain’t getting better, is it?  Um, no.”

“Go on then,” Olivia said.  “What’s the punchline?”

Amy dropped her eyes to the tips of her toes and frowned.  “The punchline is, I said I’d help her go, if she promised to have the baby first.”

Olivia said nothing.

“What was I supposed to tell her?  What right do I have to make her live?  Some people can deal with it, Olivia; for some people, it really doesn’t matter if the man they go to bed with has horns and wings and fangs and fur, but my God, for some people, it
does
!  So yeah, I said I’d help her if she had the baby, and she said she would and you have to admit that was a humanitarian gesture on her part because heaven knows all she had to do was go home and put a spear in Burgelbun and Vorgullum would have taken her out in a second.”

“All right,” Olivia said quietly.  “All right.”

Amy glared at the floor, scratching at her throat and baring her teeth.  “Listen,” she said at last.  “It might not be completely hopeless.  Who knows what’ll happen once the baby actually gets here?  Sarah may change her mind.”

“Do you think so?”

“No,” Amy answered without hesitation.  “I think she’s going to have the baby and come straight to me.”

“What are you going to do?” Olivia asked.

Amy looked angrily back at her. “I’m going to make it look like she got sick, just like Judy.  I’ve talked to Tina.  Liz brought plenty of stuff that would do the trick nicely.  It won’t hurt.  It’ll be just like going to sleep.  If she asks you, you can tell her that.”

Olivia looked away.