Айзек Азимов: The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“Would you like a nice clean pair of pants?” the assistant asked Sekou. He nodded eagerly and cast an only slightly worried look at Zora and Marcus as she led him out to get cleaned up. Zora buried her face in her hands.

Marcus pulled her hands away and searched her face, perplexed. “Girl, we’re vindicated. They can’t say it was our fault any more. This Valkiri-Estelle bee has as much as admitted she did it.”

“But we can’t go home, Marcus. And Sekou deserves better than a cubicle two meters square with only minimal utilities.”

“Would be good if we could sue her, or her former corp. But there’s no hope there.” He pulled her to him and stroked her shoulders. “Girl, there’s something worse wrong than that. Call it my hoodoo sense, but you’re grieving a bigger grief than our happy ex-home.”

She sobbed for several minutes into his shirt, then pulled away and said, “I lied, Marcus. I am pregnant, and I’ve stupidly murdered our baby. It can’t live after the dose of radiation I took. It might spontaneously abort, but we can’t take the chance. A damaged infant on Mars—the corp will take it away and kill it.”

He grabbed her shoulders and looked hard in her face. Then he shook his head sadly and hugged her close. “Zora, girl, don’t blame yourself. I should have known. Truth be told, I did know there was no rip in my suit. I just thought you wanted to be the big woman. I thought I’d let you have your pride, be the heroine. But you were storying—I knew that.”

She tried to pull away, but he held her tight. She sobbed some more, then said, “You’re so damned intuitive. Did you know I was pregnant, too?”

His embrace loosened, and she saw his sadness. “Truth be told, I think I did. Something in your eyes. Your skin glowed like it did before, when you were big with Sekou. But I told myself, you’re tripping, Marcus man. Didn’t want to think it, straight up.” His voice sank to almost inaudible. “Didn’t want to think you’d lie to me about that.”

After awhile, she said, “And can you forgive me?”

He let go of her and leaned against the cold marscrete wall “Forgive you, forgive myself for not being the man and telling you right out not to play me.”

She could scarcely make her voice loud enough to hear. “Where do we go from here?”

He shrugged. “The medical for the abortion is cheap. Medbots are clean and fast. And as far as surviving here, what we’ve got in our brains is enough to sell to some corp.”

“Sekou,” she said. “They’ll put him in a group school her. But he needs to go back to the on-line school. More than that, he needs a real home.”

“Sekou needs to hear the truth, which is that he’s a smart kid, and strong, despite his minor ills, and he’ll sell high to some corp that likes his brain as much as Vivocrypt liked yours and mine. Now I’m going to find that sorry assistant and ask what we have to do to get a meal around here.” Marcus pushed the door further open. “Whoa. Look who’s here, in all new clothes.”

“Mama, you think I’m smart, too?”

It was Sekou, wearing a jumpuit that had probably been blue when it was new. At least it was clean. The assistant had apparently brought him back and left.

Marcus rubbed the top of Sekou’s head, then continued down the corridor.

Zora bent over and hugged Sekou. She ran over in her mind what they had been saying. How long had the child been standing there listening? She turned from Marcus and hoisted him up into her arms—a heavy bundle though he was a skinny kid. “Mama thinks you’re way too smart for your britches. Where did that jumpsuit come from?”

“I dunno.” He opened his hand, revealing a bright twist of paper, “They gave me a candy. Can I eat it?”

“No! Bad for you!” She resisted the idea that candy might become part of the Smythe family diet now that they were going to live in Borealopolis. It would be hard to adjust to prepared foods from the refectory after having lived primarily for years on cuy and chicken and stuff from their own greenhouses.

He looked at the candy fondly, then put it in Zora’s outstretched hand. “Mama, what does ‘big’ mean?”

“What? It means not small. What are you talking about?”

“I thought it meant like when some lady is going to have a baby.”

Oh no. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I thought maybe you might have a baby in there.” He patted her tummy shyly.

“No.” Her stomach twisted. “No baby.”

Sekou dug in the pocket of the jumpsuit and brought out a tiny action figure, a boy in an environment suit. “But Daddy said—”

“You shouldn’t be listening when Daddy and Mama are talking privately.” But would there be any privacy once they had settled in to Borealopolis? Even the best paid city hires lived in quarters not much bigger than the passenger compartment of their rover. Speaking of which, they would probably have to sell the rover. What use do city people have for such a thing?

“Sorry.” His voice was very soft.

She had some credit, and she noticed the holding area had a tea dispenser. “Would you like some mint tea? I think they can put sweetener in it.”

She figured she had lied to Marcus, it would be a bad thing to lie to Sekou, young though he was.

When they had gotten their tea, which did indeed come with sweetener, she sat opposite Sekou on the little bench and then, in a rush of affection, moved over and grabbed him in a hug.

“Mama was going to have a baby, but something bad happened. You know about radiation, about the accident.”

“Yes. I’ve been thinking. I wanted to ask you something.”

She had been poised with a careful explanation, but Sekou’s question threw her. “About what?”

“About my camera.”

“The camera.” She was momentarily at a loss, and then, before he opened his mouth, all in a rush, she guessed what he was about to say.

“Mama, the camera works because light turns the chemical into something different, so it looks black after you develop it.”

She dropped her hands and stared at him.

“Mama, radiation comes in different kinds. Light is one kind. But the radiation from our nuke, that would turn the chemical all black too.”

She began to giggle.

“Mama, the picture took. So there wasn’t any radiation.”

Zora’s giggles shook her body until, if the fetus was developed enough to be aware, it would have gotten the giggles too. She fingertipped on her com and called Marcus.

How had Valkiri done it? How had she ruined every sensor and monitor in the whole hab and pharm?

They never found Valkiri, of course. But when they went back to the Pharm—cautiously, of course, because who trusts the reasoning of a child?—they found Valkiri—they couldn’t believe the other two had abetted her—had dusted the surfaces of every sensor, including the one in Marcus’s environment suit, but not her own, with Thorium 230 powder It had been imported from earth for some early experiments in plant metabolism. It was diabolic.

It cost a lot of credit to have everything checked out. Several other habs that had been contaminated made vague threats about suing the Smythes for not notifying them, as if they could have known any earlier what happened. But the fact that Sekou (Sekou!) had solved the mystery and pushed back the specter of death made the other Pharmholders back down.

Ultimately, Zora and Marcus didn’t trust the work of the decon crew. They had to do their own investigation. Nothing else would convince them it was okay. The sensors had to be replaced, and that wasn’t cheap. But they had a home. They had a place for Sekou to play, and grow.

Sekou didn’t get his camera back from the municipality of Borealopolis, but Marcus traded a packet of new freeze-resistant seeds for an antique chemistry set, and that seemed to satisfy the boy.