Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

“Oh, I will.”

Daniel walked jerkily, his shoulders set. He was angry and scared. He said, “And if you don’t believe that , wait until we get to the hospital. Wait until the American doctors see her. Then explain to me how Lucia can have gone through a full-term pregnancy in three months . Explain how she can have got pregnant again without having sex .”

Lucia bowed her head, biting her lip.

Peter and I exchanged a glance. I murmured, “Three months?”

“One thing at a time,” Peter said, and he rolled his eyes.

We all rode in the ambulance.

The Rome American Hospital turned out to be bright, modern, efficient, the reception area full of light cast from big picture windows. Lucia was taken out of our hands as soon as the ambulance doors opened, and she disappeared into the maw of the hospital.

We were quizzed about our relationship to Lucia. Peter lied with surprising smoothness. I was her uncle,

he said, visiting from England — hence the family resemblance. Daniel and Peter were friends of the family. He had already contacted the direct family, who were on their way … I thought the nurse looked skeptically at us, and perhaps she was remembering Lucia’s torn and dirty dress. But there was nothing to be done about that now.

I had to produce a credit card to guarantee payment for whatever treatment Lucia was going to need. “Ulp,” I said to Peter. “I wonder if my travel insurance will cover this.”

“I kind of doubt it. Are you concerned?”

I said, “That my bank account is about to be flattened?” I watched Daniel roaming around the reception area, restless, helpless, frustrated. “I don’t think I am, no, given the circumstances.”

“ Conception without sex. The kid actually said that, didn’t he? And three-month pregnancies. Jesus. What have we gotten into here?”

I studied him. “What’s wrong with you, Peter? I’ve never seen you so — aggressive.”

He snorted, and fixed his invisible glasses. “We came here looking for your sister, remember. Not for this .”

“Do you want to back out?”

“Rosa isn’t my sister. Do you ?”

I thought about it. I sensed that this murky mystery of poor Lucia tied in on some deep level with what I’d glimpsed of the Crypt — the biological strangeness I’d experienced, but which I’d not been able to express to Peter. If I wanted to unravel all that, I was going to have to deal with Lucia. And besides — I pictured Lucia’s face: so pale, such deep shadows around her eyes. She was just a kid, and she really was in deep trouble, I realized, and I felt a sharp instinct to help. Peter’s peculiar behavior — the furtiveness he’d shown since he’d arrived here in Rome, the half secrets he’d dropped about dark matter and the rest — was just complicating things. But it didn’t change the essentials.

“No. I’m not backing out,” I said firmly. “Simple humanity, Peter.”

He laughed without humor. “I don’t think there’s anything simple about this situation.” He cast about. “I need to get on the Internet. I’ll see if there’s a dataport in here, or maybe a phone socket. And I could use a coffee,” he called over his shoulder, pulling his laptop out of his bag.

I walked up to Daniel. “You’re pacing like an expectant father.”

He looked at me sourly. “Bad joke.”

“Yes. Sorry. Look, do you have any change? …”

Down the hall we found a machine that would dispense Starbucks-sized polystyrene beakers of coffee in return for euro coins and notes. We walked back to Peter, who had tucked himself into a corner seat and was pulling Daniel’s hacked medical file off the floppy. He accepted the coffee without looking up, flipped open the little drinking flap in the plastic lid, and took a sip, all without ceasing to work at his keyboard.

“The man’s a professional,” I said to Daniel.

“Yeah.”

We sat down. Daniel was full of nervous energy. He tapped the arm of his chair, and his legs pumped up and down in tiny, violent movements, as if he were ready to flee.

“I guess you haven’t had much experience of hospitals,” I said.

“No. Have you?”

“Well—”

“You have kids of your own?”

“No, I haven’t,” I admitted.

He turned away. “Look, it’s not the hospital that bothers me. In fact, I enjoy being surrounded by people speaking English, or at least Italian with an American accent.”

“The Order? That’s what you’re scared of?”

“Damn right.”

“They can’t harm anybody here.” I pointed to a beefy security guard, who stood by the door, hands folded behind his back. “Lucia will be fine. We’re in the best place she could be …” And so on.

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced.

A typical adult-kid response came to my mind: Yes, everything will be fine, she will be okay, we can all go home. But I thought I should respect him more than that. “I really don’t understand what’s going on here, Daniel. You know more than I do. And I have no idea if she’s going to be okay.” I felt a stab of anger. “I don’t even know what okay means, for a fifteen-year-old girl who will have had two kids by some guy whose name she doesn’t even know.”

“They had no right,” he said.

“No. Whoever they are.”

“I should be at school.” He spread his hands. “What am I doing here?”

“Look — you did the right thing,” I said awkwardly. “I’ve lived a quiet life. What do I know about how to deal with situations like this? You saw a kid in trouble — a human being — and you responded on a human level. Your parents will be proud.”

He grimaced. “You don’t know my parents. When they find out about this I am toast .”

A junior doctor approached us. About thirty, she was short, brisk, competent, with severely cut hair. She had a yellow notepad in her hand.

Lucia was fine, the doctor said, in accented English. The girl was in the late stages of pregnancy, and it was possible she would soon go into labor. But the doctor looked a little puzzled as she said this, and I realized that she was keeping stuff back from us. Well, they had had only a few minutes to examine Lucia, and if even a fraction of what Lucia and Daniel had told us was true, they had a right to be baffled.

Peter hit the doctor with questions. “What about her breathing? Her metabolism, pulse rate? …” She was startled enough to try to answer him, referring to her pad a couple of times, before her customary doctor’s mask of nondisclosure slid back into place. “We’ll let you know as soon as there is more news.” And she turned and walked briskly away.

Daniel said, “What use was that? She doesn’t know what she’s dealing with.” He returned to his seat, fuming, pent up.

I murmured to Peter, “Wish I hadn’t encouraged him to drink caffeine. What about those questions you were firing at the doctor?”

He looked at me. “When we were helping her to the ambulance — didn’t you feel her pulse? Boom … boom … boom. Given the state she’s in, and given that she’d just thrown up her breakfast, it was bloody slow — I estimated less than fifty a minute — slower than a top athlete’s resting rate. And she was cold . The quack’s first test results confirm it, I think. George, it kind of fits with what you told me of the Crypt. The air down there must be dense, with high humidity, high on carbon dioxide, low on oxygen.”

I nodded. “Which is why I felt breathless.”

“With low oxygen levels, you get a low metabolic rate, low body temperatures. A slow pulse, cold skin.” He rubbed his nose. “I’d like to get a look at any urine tests they do.”