put his hands on her body.
“Does it hurt?”
She nodded; she could not talk.
“It’s supposed to hurt. Don’t be frightened. I’ll be in the next room.” He left.
She shut her eyes. The women moistened her lips with a sponge. They murmured to her, crooning, and sang her songs and said little charms. When she curled up they made her lie straight. A bell rang. The low watch had begun. She panted, trying to catch her breath. Her body knotted around the baby. She screamed, and Saba came in again.
“Akellar,” a woman said. “She is too small. We have to open her.”
He leaned over her, one hand on her belly. “No. It’s moving. Let her kick. She’ll get it out.” He stroked her face. “Don’t worry, Paula. They think every birth is the first.”
She closed her eyes, terrified. She clutched his fingers but he disengaged himself and went out of the room. She lay in a web of pain. The baby was tearing her apart. She heard two bells ring. Her throat was raw from screeching, she was so tired she could only moan.
“She is too small. She’ll die if we don’t cut her open and take it that way. The baby will die.”
Saba had come in again. Dopey with pain, she had not noticed him, and she could not care. He handled her. “No. Give her time. It’s a big baby. She’s getting it out.”
The pain was blinding. She lay in its grip for two watches more. At last David was born. The women took the howling baby away. Paula lay in a dazed feverish half-dream, blood pooling under her hips.
“You can’t bring a strange man in here,” Boltiko said.
Saba lifted the blankets off Paula’s body. “She trusts me. I have to do something.”
“It’s disgusting. Hasn’t she suffered enough?”
“Get out if you don’t like it.”
Paula’s mouth and throat were papery dry. Her strength was gone. She could barely turn her head. She wondered where the baby was. A man she had never seen before sat down on the bed beside her.
“There,” Saba said. “Over her womb.” He threw the blankets back. She whimpered in the cold.
“Saba—” The stranger bit his lip. “I—”
“Damn you, she’s bleeding to death,” Saba got the man’s hand by the wrist and slapped his palm down on Paula’s belly. She shut her eyes. She was cold. Saba pulled her legs out flat on the bed, her feet apart.
“Mikka. Let off, let me see what happens.”
The hand left her belly. Saba said, “She’s bleeding like a river. Here.” The cool hand fell on her body again. Saba was bending over her, between her legs. She saw him in a mist. She could not breathe deep enough to fill her lungs.
“Massage her. Rub her, hard.” He stooped over her and rammed his fist up through the torn channel of her body into her womb and put his free hand over the other man’s.
She cried out. The deep pain burned like salt. He squeezed her into another hard contraction.
“Good girl. That’s a good girl. One more.”
He massaged her, his arm buried in her halfway to the elbow. “Come on, girl, damn it, break the law and live.” She whined. Her body clenched. He drew his hand out of her. “Good. Good.” Her womb tightened again of itself, and she whimpered.
“I’m cold.”
“A little longer,” he said. “Just a little longer and you can rest.” He was sitting on the bed between her spread legs. In his hand was a tool with jaws, like a staple gun. “Don’t worry. I’ve clipped together men with wounds a lot worse than this. Mikka, stay there.”
The stranger stared off in the opposite direction. His hand was spread over the soft empty hill of her belly. She shivered in spasms, in fits. Distinctly she felt the grip of the stapler in her skin. The tool clicked steadily. She was too tired to cry. Finally he put her legs together.
“Let off, Mikka.”
The hand left her. Saba murmured, “Good. Stay in the next room, in case she starts to bleed again.” He lifted her up and wrapped her in a clean dry blanket. Her groin throbbed, zippered up with plastic teeth. “You’re a good little lawbreaking bitch.” He kissed her forehead. She yawned, sinking into sleep.
“Mikka is my brother,” Saba said. “He’s a blood-stauncher. His one gift, aside from getting thrown out of drinking docks.”
“Like Tanuojin.” Paula braced her shoulders up on her elbows, watching him take the clips out of her crotch. He bent over her, his head and shoulders framed between her raised knees. One by one the clips dropped into a bucket on the floor.
“Tanuojin is a little more than a blood-stauncher. I told you not to talk about that.” Another clip rang into the pail. “If I ever lose my call, I think I’ll take up midwifery. That’s not a bad job.”
“How is David?”
“Vida is fine. Boltiko has him. I shirted him the watch after he was born. He looks like me.” He sat back and put the pliers down. “Thirty-four clips. Those were three long wounds, sweet.”
She moved painfully over to the edge of the bed. When she sat up her head felt swollen. “Have you heard anything from the Committee?”
“Nothing. Stay in bed for a while.” He went over to the door. “I’ll tell you if anything happens.”
“I want my baby.” Carefully she raised herself up on her feet, gratified by her strength. She went toad-legged to the clothes rack on the wall.
“Boltiko knows all about babies. Let her take care of him.”
“I want him.”
“You aren’t the mothering type.”
“How do you know what I am?” She took a pair of her
“I know you. He’s my son too. I won’t let you mistreat him.”
She glanced at him, standing by the door with his hand on the latch, and pulled the overalls up over her shoulders. “What do you think I’m going to do to him, whip him?”
“I won’t let you turn him into some freak anarchist.”
She put the dress on. Her body was still thick, sway-backed from the baby. Saba went out; she heard the front door slam.
The baby’s eyes were not round, like a Styth’s, and not black. They were long and slanted, brown like hers, set far apart in his round chinless face. Boltiko gave her heaps of clothes for him, showed her how to mix his food and how to feed him, and called in the slave Pedasen to carry everything over to her house for her. “He’s a fine, strong baby,” the prima wife said, “although he’s so small. Saba doesn’t breed weaklings. If you need help, send for me.” She put the baby into Paula’s arms. He was heavy. Paula shifted his weight against her shoulder. Looking down at him, she felt a sudden wild surge of love.
Pedasen carried the basket of clothes and food after her out to the yard. She slowed down so that he could catch up with her, and he stopped behind her. She went back to his side. His face was smooth, like a child’s; he had never shaved his beardless cheeks.
“Is that your whole name?” she said.
“Mem,” he said, blank.
“Don’t you have another name?”
She had been speaking Styth. Now he turned his gaze on her, his arms wrapped around the basket, and said, “Why did you come here?” in a slurred, liquid version of the Common Speech. “Why didn’t you stay where you belong?”
“Come on,” she said. “Standing up makes me dizzy.” She went off toward her house. He followed her, and she stopped, irritated, and said with force, “Come on,” and made him walk beside her. They went into her house.
He spoke only enough Styth to take orders. While they put away the baby’s things, she talked to him in the Common Speech, and he answered in the dialect. He had no other name, just Pedasen, which had been his
