"You're afraid, but you're still here-"
"Because you're here. And because whatever happens, I want to be with you. I'm going to protect you-and if it turns out that I'm wrong, and that everything works exactly the way it's supposed to, then okay, I'm wrong, and I'll buy you all the chocolate I can afford. But please, can we be terrified of the future long enough to humor my fears and make some babies?"
"I'd rather make them the old-fashioned way, with a bowl, and some batter, and a big mixing spoon-"
"Hold it. It's my job to stir."
"I assume you're planning to lick the bowl too?"
"Do you think you can reach it?"
"Never mind. I'll lick the spoon."
"Then it's a deal?"
"Okay, it's a deal." She pried herself loose from my embrace and levered herself to her feet.
"Where are you going?"
"To use the phone and the bathroom, in that order. We're going down to Medical now, while I'm still giggling. Because if I stop laughing, I'll talk myself out of it. You, go take some vitamin E."
This is no longer an untested hypothesis. On the contrary, at the time of this writing, we have developed significant evidence that the capture of the Terran food chain is not happening at the top. It is happening at the bottom. The mechanism is understood and the components are becoming known. A number of Chtorran molds and fungi have been identified; and so have the creatures that feed upon them. As is to be expected, most of these forms are quite aggressive within their ecological niches.
Of particular interest is the "cotton-candy" or "manna" plant; the Chtorran agent responsible for the great pink storms of sugary dust that have blanketed many of the infested areas of the western United States, Mexico, North Africa, the Russian steppes, parts of China, India, and Pakistan.
The "manna" plant, as it is now known, is a deceptively harmless-appearing fungus-like form. It grows rapidly, and it is completely edible. A field that is green with grass on one day may suddenly on the next day be filled with large pink bulbs like puffball mushroomssome of them as huge as basketballs or water melons. By the end of the third day, the puffball bodies will have begun to shrivel. By the end of the fifth day, nothing will be left of the manna plants but dust. This process may occur over and over again during the course of a season. It will seem comparatively harmless, and on a small scale, it is.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 37
Red Status
"Not all lawyers know when they're lying. Only the good ones do. The best can conceal even this fact."
-SOLOMON SHORT
We were in luck. Lizard was only a day and a half away from the peak point of her cycle. Dr. Meier gave Lizard a shot of something to tweak her hormones, and three hours later she harvested six eggs. That wasn't quite enough time for the vitamin E in my system to have taken full effect, but Lizard had a better way to tweak my hormones, and responding to her skilled handling, I rose to the occasion magnificently. Uncle Ira would have been proud of me, I discharged my duty without complaint.
Very shortly, the three of us were watching the miracle of life. Even in a petri dish, it's still romantic-although all three of us were in agreement that the old-fashioned way of starting babies had certain ancillary benefits not to be overlooked.
After that, Dr. Meier did a little sorting, a little centrifuging, a little scanning, and the next morning proudly informed us that we had three little boys and three little girls safe in the freezer. She'd already made arrangements to ship them back from our Amapa stopover. We weren't the only ones on board who had abruptly decided to preserve a bit of our genetic heritage before going deeper into Brazil. Apparently, there were quite a few others who had their own misgivings about the safety of the mission, but Dr. Meier wouldn't elaborate on how many; it would have violated confidentiality. There was also quite a bit of paperwork involved, mostly inheritance rights (under the Baby Cooper laws) in case we invested any money in these eggs.
On the way out, Dr. Meier said one other thing. "Oh, you might want to be careful for the next few days. That shot I gave you, General Tirelli-well, you're still fertile. You could pop another egg and-"
"Uh-" Lizard and I exchanged a glance. "Why didn't you tell us this last night?"
"I see." Dr. Meier's smile froze. Her expression went abruptly professional. "If you'd like, I can do something about that."
Lizard looked to me quickly; her lower lip trembled uncertainly, then she shook her head. "No. If I've caught, I've caught. We'll go all the way with it."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." She slid her hand quietly into mine. I held it tightly; I felt her squeeze back. "We want a baby. We were planning to start one as soon as this mission was over anyway. So what if we start it a month early?"
Dr. Meier looked at us both. "Well, then congratulations." She shook our hands and ushered us out quickly. She didn't look happy.
Outside, in the hall, I stopped Lizard and turned her to face me. She misunderstood my intention and folded herself into my arms for a heartfelt kiss, which was a better idea than mine anyway. My heart melted, and I forgot most of what I had planned to say. I just held her close and let the moment envelop us.
When I finally came up for breath, I looked into her shining eyes and spoke the obvious. "Mmm, I like kissing you."
"Better than boys, huh?" She touched my nose with her fingertip.
"Geez-one lousy little troop of Boy Scouts, and you never let me live it down. Yes," I added. "Better than boys. Okay?"
"Okay." She lowered her lips to mine again.
After another century or two of mushy stuff, I broke apart from her abruptly and asked, "Hey, what was all that about in there?"
"All what about?"
"Dr. Meier's look. She wasn't very happy with the idea that you might be pregnant."
Lizard glanced away for a second; when she looked back to me, her expression had shifted to a more thoughtful one. She hooked her arm in mine and started guiding me down the corridor. "If I take maternity leave, it puts a big hole in the organizational chart."
"Huh?"
"Can you spell power vacuum?"
"As in Wainright?"
"As in Wainwrong," she sighed. "That's Dr. Zymph's name for him." She pulled me out of the corridor through the mission hriefing room and into her private office. She closed the door behind us and hit the red security panel, automatically locking the room and sweeping for bugs. "Sit down, Jim. We need to talk."
My heart bumped. "Serious talk?"
"Serious talk," she confirmed. She squeezed my hand. "It's all nght, sweetheart. This is a what-you-need-to-know discussion. I need to background you." We sat down together in a quiet corner. She thumbed her communicator to life and spoke softly into it. "Log it. Upgrade Captain James Edward McCarthy's clearance to Double-Q, Priority Alpha, Red Status, no inhibitions, as of this moment. Out."
"Red Status?"
She nodded. "Unless you have the clearance, you can't even know that the category exists."
"Wow," I mouthed.
"Right," she said. "This is all burn-before-reading stuff." For a moment, she looked tired. "Now I'm going to have to find a way to add you to my permanent staff. That'll make it easier on both of us. I'll talk to Danny Anderson about it. He might have some ideas. Maybe we can resurrect your field promotion-"
"Uh-uh," I said, a little too quickly.
"What's the matter?"
"I, uh-I'm not sure that I should-I don't know if I want it anymore."
"I see." She looked at me with narrowing eyes. She laid one hand on top of mine. "What's the problem?"