Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

Kaye stared up at the ceiling again and bore into a contraction. Mitch encouraged her to take puffing breaths until the wave passed. Her back ached abominably. For a bitter moment at the end of the contraction she felt trapped and angry, and wondered what it would be like if everything went wrong, if she died, if the baby was born alive but without a mother, if Augustine was right and both she and her child were a source of horrible disease. Why no confirmation ? she wondered. Why no science one way or the other on that? She calmed herself with slow breaths and tried to rest.

When she opened her eyes again, Mitch was dozing in the chair beside the bed. The clock said it was midnight. I will be in this room forever .

She needed to go to the bathroom again. “Mitch,” she said. He didn’t wake up. She looked for Mary Hand or Sue, but he was the only one in the room. The monitor beeped and rolled its tape. “Mitch!”

He jerked and stood up and sleepily helped her into the bathroom. She had wanted to have a bowel movement before going to the clinic, but her body had not cooperated, and she worried about that. She felt a mix of anger and wonder at her present state. The body was taking charge, but she was not at all sure it knew what to do. I am my body. Mind is the illusion. The flesh is confused.

Mitch walked around the room, sipping a cup of bad coffee from the clinic lounge. The cold blue fluorescent lights were etched into his memory. He felt as if he had never seen bright sun. His eyebrows itched abominably. Go into the cave. Hibernate and she‘II give birth while we sleep. That’s the way bears do it. Bears evolve while they ‘re asleep. Better way.

Sue came to be with Kaye while he took a break. He walked outside and stood beneath the clear, starry sky. Even out here, with so few people, there was a streetlight to blind him and cut back on the immensity of the universe.

God, I’ve come so far, but nothing has changed. I’m married, I’m going to be a father, and I’m still unemployed, living on the -

He blocked that line of thought, waved his hands, shook out the nervous jangles from the coffee. His thoughts drifted all over, from the first time he had had sex — and worried about the girl getting pregnant — to the conversations with the director of the Hayer Museum before he was fired, to Jack, trying to put all this into an Indian perspective.

Mitch had no perspective other than the scientific. All his life he had tried to be objective, tried to remove himself from the equation, to see clearly what his digging had revealed. He had traded bits of his life for what were probably inadequate insights into the lives of dead people. Jack believed in a circle of life where no one was ever truly isolated. Mitch could not believe that. But he hoped Jack was right.

The air smelled good. He wished he could take Kaye out here and let her smell the fresh air, but then a pickup truck drove by, and he smelled exhaust and burned oil.

Kaye dozed off between contractions but for only a few minutes. Two o’clock in the morning, and she was still at five centimeters. Chambers had come before her little nap, inspected her, peered at the monitor tape, smiled reassurance. “We can try some pitocin soon. That will speed things up. We call it Bardahl for babies,” he said. But Kaye did not know what Bardahl was and did not understand.

Mary Hand took her arm, swabbed it down with alcohol, found a vein and introduced a needle, taped it off, attached a plastic tube, hung a bottle of saline on another stand. She arranged little vials of medicine on a blue sheet of disposable paper on the steel tray beside the bed.

Kaye normally hated shots and needle pricks, but this was nothing compared to the rest of her discomfort. Mitch seemed to grow more distant, though he was right by her side, massaging her neck, bringing more ice. She looked at him and saw not her husband, not her lover, but just a man, another of the figures coming in and out of her squeezed-down and compressed and endless life. She frowned, watching his back as he spoke with the nurse midwife. She tried to focus and find that emotional component necessary to fit him into the puzzle, but it had been lifted away. She was liberated of all social sensibilities.

Another contraction. “Oh, shit!” she cried.

Mary Hand checked her and stood with a concerned expression. “Did Dr. Chambers say when he would administer pitocin?”

Kaye shook her head, unable to respond. Mary Hand went off to find Chambers. Mitch stayed with her. Sue came in and sat on the chair. Kaye closed her eyes and found that the universe in that personal darkness was so small she almost panicked. She wanted this to be over. No menstrual cramps had ever had the authority of her contractions. In the middle of the spasm, she thought her back might break.

She knew that flesh was all and spirit was nothing.

“Everyone is born this way,” Sue told Mitch. “It’s good you’re here. Jack says he’ll be with me when I deliver, but it’s not traditional.”

“Woman’s stuff,” Mitch said. Sue’s mask fascinated him. She stood, stretched. Tall, stomach prominent but balanced, she seemed the essence of strong womanhood. Assured, calm, philosophical.

Kaye moaned. Mitch leaned over and caressed her cheek. She was lying on her side, trying to find some position that was comfortable. “God, give me drugs,” she said with a weak smile.

“There’s that sense of humor,” Mitch said.

“I mean it. No, I don’t. I don’t know what I mean. Where is Felicity?”

“Jack came by a few minutes ago. He sent some trucks out, but he hasn’t heard from them.”

“I need Felicity. I don’t know what Chambers is thinking. Give me something to make this happen.”

Mitch felt miserable, helpless. They were in the hands of the Western medical establishment — such as it was in the Five Tribes Confederation. Frankly, he was not at all confident about Chambers.

“Oh, goddamn SHIT,” Kaye yelled, and rolled on her back, her face so contorted Mitch could not recognize her.

Seven o’clock. Kaye looked at the clock on the wall through slitted eyes. More than twelve hours. She did not remember when they had arrived. Had it been in the afternoon? Yes. More than twelve hours. Still no record. Her mother had told her, when she was a little girl, that she had been in labor for over thirty hours with Kaye. Here’s to you, Mother. God, I wish you could be here.

Sue was not in the room. There was Mitch, working on her arm, easing the tension, moving to the other arm. She felt a distant affection for Mitch, but doubted seriously she would ever have sex with him again. Why even think about it. Kaye felt she was a giant balloon trying to burst. She had to go pee and the thought equaled the deed and she did not care. Mary Hand came and removed the soaked paper pad and replaced it.

Dr. Chambers came in and told Mary to start the pitocin. Mary inserted the vial into the appropriate receptacle and adjusted the machine that controlled the drip. Kaye took an extreme interest in the procedure. Bardahl for babies. She could vaguely remember the list of peptides and glycoproteins Judith had found in the large protein complex. Bad news for women. Maybe so.

Maybe so.

The only thing in the universe was pain. Kaye sat on top of the pain like a small, stunned fly on a huge rubber ball. She vaguely heard the anesthesiologist moving around her. She heard Mitch and the doctor talking. Mary Hand was there.

Chambers said something completely irrelevant, something about storing cord blood for a transfusion later if the baby needed it, or to pass on to science: blood from the umbilical cord, rich with stem cells.

“Do it,” Kaye said.