Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

“No,” I said. “I’m sure you did the right thing.”

Since she’d come to him he had been hiding her away, though he wouldn’t say where. From her look, I doubted it was in much comfort. He hadn’t told his parents what he was doing. He had done his best, I thought, and I wondered how well I would have coped with such a situation when I was seventeen.

I asked Lucia her age. I was shocked to find she was only fifteen. She looked too worn out for that.

“All right,” said Peter. “Let’s start at the beginning. Lucia — you’re trying to get away from something. From the Order?”

That took a little translating. “Yes,” she said, “from the Order.”

“And that’s why you contacted Daniel here.”

“There was nobody else,” she said miserably. “I didn’t want to get him into trouble, but I didn’t know what else to do, and—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Just tell us. Why do you want to leave the Order?”

“Because they took my baby away,” she said.

I did a double take. “Your first baby. You’re now pregnant with your second.”

“Yes.” Lucia’s eyes were downcast, and she rested her hands on her belly.

“Who was the father?”

“His name was Giuliano … something. His name doesn’t matter. He was brought in.”

“Who by?”

“By the cupola .” I didn’t understand that, and she said, “By Rosa Poole. Your sister.”

Peter and I exchanged glances.

Hesitantly I touched her hand. “You can tell us. Were you raped?”

“No.” She closed her eyes, shaking her head, almost irritably. “You don’t understand. Daniel asked the same questions. People never listen .”

I backed off. “I’m sorry. Just tell us.”

“Giuliano was brought in, and he made me pregnant, and I had my baby, and they took her away. And now this .” She patted her bulge. “I don’t want to lose this one, too. And I don’t want baby after baby. I don’t want this .” Suddenly she was crying, a flood of tears.

We three males all scrambled in our pockets; the comedy routine concluded when Daniel was the first to produce a tissue.

Peter sat back and blew out his cheeks. “Deeper and deeper. So who was the father of this second kid?”

“The same guy,” said Daniel. “The same asshole. This Giuliano, whatever.”

Peter frowned. “Then how come she doesn’t know his name?”

Daniel took a breath. “Because he only slept with her once.”

Peter thought that over, and laughed out loud.

Daniel, hotly embarrassed, said, “You don’t know the half of it, man.”

Lucia said desolately, “I told you they wouldn’t believe me.” With a tissue clutched to her nose, she looked up at me through water-filled eyes heartbreakingly like my own.

“Let’s all take it easy,” I said. “Lucia, you say you don’t want to have baby after baby … Is that what they asked you to do? The Order — umm, my sister?”

“Yes. But they never asked ,” she said, with a trace of sulky petulance.

“And why you?” Peter asked.

She looked away. “Because I had grown up.”

It took a little probing to establish that she meant that she had begun her periods.

Peter asked, “So it’s some kind of baby factory down there?”

“Peter—”

“George, if you are unscrupulous about it a healthy white kid can bring in a lot of money. The big adoption services in the States—”

“It’s not like that,” Lucia said.

“But,” Peter said, “every time a girl begins her periods she is made pregnant. Right?”

“No.” She was finding this difficult, but there was determination in her face, I saw, a strength. “You just aren’t listening. Not all girls. Just some. Just me . The other girls can’t have babies.”

The rule of three mothers, I thought absently, thinking of Regina’s biography. “You mean they aren’t allowed to?”

“No,” she said. “They can’t .”

Peter thought that over. “They’re neuters?” Again he laughed.

Daniel glared at him. “It’s true, man. I’ve met one of them. A woman called Pina — about twenty-five, I think. Calls herself Lucia’s friend, but she’s no friend; she betrayed her to the other creeps. You should have seen her — no tits, hips like a ten-year-old boy’s. She’s twenty-five, but she’s prepubescent .”

It was impossible, of course. Absurd. But now I thought back to my own incursion into the Crypt, and I remembered those ageless people who had clustered around me in the corridors and mezzanines -

mostly women and girls, few men, not slim, but with no figures, no busts or hips … Rosa, I realized, had been the only woman I saw there who had looked mature. It hadn’t struck me at the time — I suppose I was simply overwhelmed by that dense, dizzying environment, by too much strangeness to notice such a simple thing — and yet, now that I thought back, it was startling.

I looked at Peter. “How could this happen?”

“And why? … I’ve no idea,” he said uneasily. “But if any of it’s true, I think this means we’re facing more than just some money-grabbing cult here, George.”

Lucia cried out, clutched her belly, bent over, and vomited.

Peter and I responded reflexively, jumping back out of the way of that stinking splash. But Daniel had better instincts. He leaned forward to grab her shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s okay …”

Peter dug in his pocket for his cell phone.

I said to Daniel, “I don’t know what the hell’s going on here. But she’s going to the hospital. Now. ”

“No,” he said. “The Order—”

“The hell with the Order.” One-handed, Peter had punched in 113, the code to call an ambulance. “They aren’t the fucking Illuminati — hey!”

Daniel had snatched the phone out of his hand and terminated the call. “Okay. But at least let’s take her somewhere they might not expect.”

Peter made a grab for his phone, but I pushed him back. “Where, Daniel?”

“There’s an American hospital on the Via Emilio Longoni. Thirty minutes out of town.”

“Too far,” Peter growled.

I held him back. “Let him follow his instincts,” I said. “He’s done okay for her so far, hasn’t he?”

Peter was unhappy, but subsided.

By the time Daniel had completed the call, Lucia had done vomiting. We had to help her stand. Peter and I walked at either side of the girl. She draped her arms over our shoulders, and we held her around her waist. When I brushed against her skin, she felt oddly cold, I thought, clammy.

We emerged from the Colosseum entrance into the bright light of midmorning, where the fake gladiators continued to milk the lengthening queues. People stared at us as we limped past. It struck me how helpless we were. We were essentially strangers. Poor Lucia was trapped in the travails of an evidently unwanted pregnancy, and all she had to protect her was a confused, headstrong kid and two screwed-up middle-age blokes — and we weren’t even sure if we should be getting involved in the first place.

Daniel gave Peter his phone back, and he produced a floppy disc from his waist pack. “Here. I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” He handed it to Peter.

Peter slipped it into his pocket. “What’s this?”

“About Pina no-tits. I hacked into hospital records. Lucia told me Pina was in a traffic accident a couple of years ago. Not serious, but she busted her leg, and she ended up in a city hospital for a few hours — long enough for the doctors to notice her, umm, peculiarities. And they ran some tests. The results were weird. But by the time they turned around to figure out more, she’d already gone. Whisked away by the witches from the Crypt.” He glared at Peter. “Take a look at the disc. It’s all there.”