Tam had had no idea that she could be so stubborn. She’d argued and pleaded for the three days they’d camped with the Janeways, letting the families get to know each other. Now they were leaving in the morning, with Vic and Lenny Janeway traveling with them to stay until the end of harvest, so Suze and Calie could decide about marriage. And Juli was still arguing! “I said no,” Tam said tightly. He was afraid to say more-afraid not of her, but of himself. Some men beat their wives; not Wilkinson men. But watching Juli all evening, Tam had suddenly understood those other men. She had deliberately sat talking only to Dr. Sutter, smiling at him in the flickering firelight. Even Uncle Ned had noticed, Tam thought, and that made Tam writhe with shame. He had dragged Juli off to bed early, and here she was arguing still, while singing started around the fire twenty feet away.
“Tam…please! I want to start a baby, and nothing we do started one… Don’t get upset, but…but Dr.
Sutter says sometimes the man is infertile, even though it don’t happen as often as women’s wombs it can still happen, and maybe-”
It was too much. First his wife shames him by spending the evening sitting close to another man, talking and laughing, and then she suggests thathim, not her, might be the reason there was no baby yet. Him!
When God had clearly closed the wombs of women after the Collapse, just like he did to those sinning women in the Bible! Anger and shame thrilled through Tam, and before he knew he was going to do it, he hit her.
It was only a slap. Juli put her hand to her cheek, and Tam suddenly would have given everything he possessed to take the slap back. Juli jumped up and ran off in the darkness, away from the fire. Tam let her go. She had a right to be upset now, he’d given her that. He lay stiffly in the darkness, intending every second to go get her-there were wolves out there, after all, although they seldom attacked people. Still, he would go get her. But he didn’t, and, without knowing it, he fell asleep.
When he woke, it was near dawn. Juli woke him, creeping back into their bedroll.
“Juli! You…it’s nearly dawn. Where were you all this time?”
She didn’t answer. In the icy pale light, her face was flushed.
He said slowly, “You touched it.”
She wriggled the rest of the way into the bedroll and turned her back to him. Over her shoulder she said, “No, Tam. I didn’t touch it.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“No. I didn’t touch it,” she repeated, and Tam believed her. So he had won. Generosity filled him.
“Juli-I’m sorry I hit you. So sorry.”
Abruptly she twisted in the bedroll to face him. “I know. Tam, listen to me…God wants me to start a baby. He does!”
“Yes, of course,” Tam said, bewildered by her sudden ferocity.
“He wants me to start a baby!”
“Are you…are you saying that you have?”
She was silent a long time. Then she said, “Yes. I think so.”
Joy filled him. He took her in his arms, and she let him. It would all be right, now. He and Juli would have a child, many children. So would Suze and Calie, and-who could say?-maybe even Nan. The egg’s fame would grow, and there would be many babies again.
On the journey home, Juli stuck close to Tam, never looking even once in Dr. Sutter’s direction. He avoided her, too. Tam gloated; so much for science and tech from the cities! When they reached the farm, Dr. Sutter retrieved his dirtbike and rode away. The next time a doctor came to call, it was someone different.
Juli bore a girl, strong and whole except for two missing fingers. During her marriage to Tam, she bore four more children, finally dying while trying to deliver a sixth one. Suze and Calie married the Janeway boys, but neither conceived. After three years of trying, Lenny Janeway sent Calie back to the Wilkinsons; Calie never smiled or laughed much again.
For decades afterward, the egg was proclaimed a savior, a gift from God, a miracle to repopulate Minnesota. Families came and feasted and prayed, and the girls touched the egg, more each year. Most of the girls never started a baby, but a few did, and at times the base of the egg was almost invisible under the gifts of flowers, fruit, woven cloth, even a computer from St. Paul and a glass perfume bottle from much farther away, so delicate that the wind smashed it one night. Or bears did, or maybe even angels. Some people said that angels visited the egg regularly. They said that the angels even touched it, through the invisible wall.
Tam’s oldest daughter didn’t believe that. She didn’t believe much, Tam thought, for she was the great disappointment of his life. Strong, beautiful, smart, she got herself accepted to a merit school in St. Paul, and she went, despite her missing fingers. She made herself into a scientist and turned her back on the Bible. Tam, who had turned more stubborn as he grew old, refused to see her again. She said that the egg wasn’t a miracle and had never made anyone pregnant. She said there were no saviors for humanity but itself.
Tam, who had become not only more stubborn but also more angry after Juli died, turned his face away and refused to listen.
Transmission: There is nothing here yet.
Current probability of occurrence: 28%.
Abby4 said, “The meeting is innorthern Minnesota? Why?”
Mal held onto his temper. He’d been warned about Abby4.One of the Bio-mensas, Mal’s network of friends and colleagues had said,In the top 2 percent of genemods. She likes to throw around her superiority. Don’t let her twist you. The contract is too important.
His friends had also said not to be intimidated by either Abby4’soffice or her beauty. The office occupied the top floor of the tallest building in Raleigh, with a sweeping view of the newly cleaned-up city. A garden in the sky, its walls and ceiling were completely hidden by the latest genemod plants from AbbyWorks, flowers so exotic and brilliant that, just looking at them, a visitor could easily forget what he was going to say. Probably that was the idea.
Abby4’s beauty was even more distracting than her office. She sat across from him in a soft white chair that only emphasized her sleek, hard glossiness. The face of an Aztec princess, framed by copper hair pulled into a thick roll on either side. The sash of her black business suit stopped just above the swell of white breasts that Mal determinedly ignored. Her legs were longer than his dreams.
Mal said pleasantly, “The meeting is in northern Minnesota because the Chinese contact is already doing business in St. Paul, at the university. And he wants to see a curiosity near the old Canadian border, an object that government records show as an alien artifact.”
Abby4 blinked, probably before she knew that she was going to do it, which gave Mal enormous satisfaction. Not even the Biomensas, with their genetically engineered intelligence and memory, knew everything.
“Ah, yes, of course,” Abby4 said, and Mal was careful not to recognize the bluff. “O, then, northern Minnesota. Send my office system the details, please. Thank you, Mr. Goldstone.”
Mal rose to go. Abby4 did not rise. In the outer office, he passed a woman several years older than Abby4 but looking so much like her that it must be one of the earlier clones. The woman stooped slightly.
Undoubtedly each successive clone had better genemods as the technology came onto the market.
AbbyWorks was, after all, one of the five or six leading biosolutions companies in Raleigh, and that meant in the world.
Mal left the Eden-like AbbyWorks building to walk into the shrouding heat of a North Carolina summer.
In the parking lot, his car wouldn’t start. Cursing, he opened the hood. Someone had broken the hood lock and stolen the engine.
Purveyors of biosolutions to the world, Mal thought bitterly, cleaners-up of the ecological, neurological, and population disasters of the Collapse, and we still can’t create a decent hood lock! O, that actually figured. For the last hundred and fifty years-no, closer to two hundred now-the best minds of each American generation had been concentrating on biology. Engineering, physics, and everything else got few practitioners, and even less funding.
O, it had paid off. Not only for people like Abby4, the beautiful Biomensa bitch, but even for comparative drones like Mal. He had biological defenses against lingering environmental pollutants (they would linger for another thousand years), he was fertile, he even had modest genemods so that he didn’t look like a troll or think like a
