unwillingness to confirm or deny anything.
“Are you focused?” Nina asked.
Lisa felt the cramp draw in like a belt yanked tight around her.
Nina pressed her hand on Lisa’s sweat-spattered forehead. “Listen, I have a great idea for a tattoo for the baby,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Nothing too big. Just a little snake.”
The cramp subsided, and Lisa once again stared out at the night sky.
“When the next contraction comes,” Nina told her, “take in a deep breath.”
The cramp came again, fierce and searing, but Lisa continued to gaze into the sparkling night.
“She’s fully dilated,” one of the nurses said. “Stop pushing.”
Lisa was not aware that she’d been pushing. It was the baby who was pushing, being born at its own pace and of its own free will.
“Stop pushing,” the nurse cried.
Lisa watched the heavens. “I can’t,” she said.
The nurse’s voice was tense. “ Call Dr. Catrell.”
Lisa’s eyes swept over to the nurse. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
She heard the nurse give her blood pressure. “She’s having seizures,” the nurse said, but Lisa felt no seizures. She turned her eyes back to the window, where scores of lights sparkled brightly in the night sky. One, two, three, she said to herself, counting the lights as rapidly as she could. Six, seven, eight…
“She’s preeclamptic,” the nurse called.
“Let’s stabilize her.”
The lights were coming together, and Lisa’s eyes widened as the dazzling display began to move in upon itself.
“Four grams magnesium.”
The beauty of the lights bloomed like a flower in her mind, but she continued to count.
“Five milligrams hydralazine.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Dr. Catrell draw near, his lips at her ear. “What’s happening is called eclampsia,” he said.
Lisa watched the sky, the lights moving in upon each other, drawing in as if toward the nucleus of some great cosmic soul.
“BP’s down to one twenty,” the nurse called.
“It’s coming,” the doctor cried.
“So much blood,” the nurse said.
“She’s DIC,” the doctor said.
Lisa held her gaze fixed on the sky, all the lights in their final convergence, becoming one dazzling ball of light.
“She’s bleeding out!”
And the light flashed in a huge magnificent radiance, an explosion in the vast night sky, but silent, utterly silent, so that all Lisa heard as the light engulfed the room was the faint cry of her newborn little girl.
A blackness settled over her, then rose in a slowly building light. When she opened her eyes, it was morning, and Nina sat beside her bed.
“Hey,” Lisa said softly.
“Hey,” Nina said. She smiled. “You weren’t supposed to be here, you know. You were bleeding to death.”
“What happened?”
“The bleeding stopped,” Nina answered. “No one knows why.”
“My baby?” Lisa asked fearfully.
Nina stepped over to a bassinet, picked up the baby and brought her to her mother. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” She placed the child in Lisa’s arms. “Seven pounds three ounces of perfect little girl.”
Lisa nodded. “Yes.”
“What are you going to name her?”
She hadn’t considered a name, but one sprang into her consciousness so quickly it seemed to have been there always, as if long ago implanted in her mind.
“Allison,” she said. “Allie. Her name is Allie.”
Eric stirred the lone olive in his martini and looked admiringly at a daughter he’d rarely seen since the divorce. His bright little girl had grown into a lovely, intelligent woman with intense, determined eyes. Looking at her, he felt a vague sadness for the inevitable passage of time, the way fathers grew weak as their children grew strong, shrank as they developed. Becky came to mind again and he wondered how his life might have been different if he’d simply met her on a spring day, just an ordinary guy, a doctor or a scientist perhaps. Had he been only that, she might have loved him. But he was Eric Crawford, Owen Crawford’s son, the dark legacy of his father like a stain on his soul.
“So,” Mary said with her usual directness. “Why did you want to see me, Dad?”
Eric smiled. Right down to business. That was Mary. No time for sentiment, for idle conversation, a simple inquiry into his health.
“There’s something I want to show you,” Eric said. He opened the drawer of his desk, took out the artifact and handed it to her. “Your grandfather found this in Pine Lodge, New Mexico. He found it at a crash site.”
Mary turned the artifact in her hand, and he could see the way she was drawn toward it, almost mystically, a power pulling her in.
She looked at Eric. “It’s all true then,” she said finally. Her eyes swept back down to the artifact, and he saw that she believed it, and was suddenly, miraculously in league with him.
Then he told her everything, the whole history of his involvement with the artifact, as well as her grandfather’s. The artifact she held in her hand was the one proof in all the world that the kooks and crackpots had gotten it right, that out there, somewhere in space, there was another world, that creatures from that world had visited the earth, taken people and in some way used them. He told her about the implants, his theory that people were being bred in some way and for some purpose he had not yet been able to discover. He told her about Charlie Keys and Lisa Clarke. Chet Wakeman knew all of this, Eric said, but he knew nothing of the artifact. That, and that alone, was a secret she must keep to herself.
“Chet’s coming by in a few minutes,” Eric said in conclusion. “He says he has some news. From now on, we’ll all be working together.”
Mary said nothing, but Eric saw her eyes flash with excitement.
When Wakeman came into the room a few minutes later, Eric noticed that Mary’s fingers instantly curled protectively around the artifact.
“Hello, thrill seekers,” Wakeman said as he stepped into the study. His gaze immediately leaped to Mary.
“Well, look at you,” he said. “All grown up and beautiful. How’s the quest for the Nobel Prize coming?”
“I came close to coming up with a genomic-mismatch scanning technique,” Mary answered proudly.
Wakeman smiled. “And you’re only in graduate school.” He looked at her admiringly for a moment, then turned to Eric. “Well, ready for the news?”
Eric nodded.
Wakeman sat down in the chair opposite Eric. “Well, here’s the latest. Lisa Clarke has had a baby. A little girl.”
“Are we going to try to pick them up?” Eric asked immediately.
“What would be the point of that?” Wakeman asked.
A few hours later, Mary lay in Wakeman’s arms, her eyes moving along the walls of the small motel room.
“God, I’ve been waiting a long time to do that,” Wakeman said.
“Me, too,” Mary said. She leaned over, kissed him, then drew away. “Why don’t you pick up the baby?”
Wakeman smiled. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
