“Sorry. How’s that?”
“Much better. Lemme reach down and grab that medpack from your belly. Okay, got it. All its systems check out, Matt—which way should I point it?”
“That would be to your right, directly in the middle of the vein.”
I’ve got to get this done quickly, Carrie thought. Even my endurance has its limits, and I’m reaching them pretty quickly. She pressed the medpack against the smooth flesh of the vein, with Sarbin adjusting his position to keep her in place as she moved. She raised her hand to depress the control that would deliver the pouch and—
“Stop!” Sarbin said.
Carrie jerked her hand away from the pack. “What is it?”
“It’s Varis. She doesn’t trust you. She’s afraid of what you might be injecting into her child.”
“Isn’t this a hell of a time to decide that?”
Matt piped in: “Sarbin, you’ve got to convince her we’re doing what’s best.”
Or I could just go ahead and hit the button, Carrie thought.
But what would happen then? If Varis became upset enough, agitated enough, she could hurt herself and her baby. And if Sarbin and I were in danger, and Matt ended up following his orders to cut us out if necessary…
Carrie kept one hand pressed against the medpack, and the other well away from the control that would activate it. She looked down at Sarbin. “What if you did it?”
The Aquatile looked up at Carrie expectantly. “You mean I should perform the injection?”
“Ask her,” Carrie said as Sarbin looked away from her to communicate with the Leviathan on their private channel.
Sarbin said, “Varis accepts your proposal.”
“Let’s switch around, then. I’ll hold the pack against the side of the vein.” My energy’s fading, she thought. Either way I’ve got to finish this quickly.
Sarbin managed to ease himself upward while still keeping Carrie’s body pressed against him so the bloodstream wouldn’t sweep her away. But his short arms still couldn’t reach the medpack. “Use your snout,” Carrie said.
“No!”
“Why not?”
“I’m an Aquatile, not some primitive being. I use my hands or nothing.”
“Sarbin, please make an exception. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Sarbin cast Carrie a harsh look. “Just don’t tell anybody. If another Aquatile found out, they’d call me a—fish.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Cross my heart.”
“Failure to translate.”
“Just hit the button!”
Sarbin thrust his snout forward and hit the button. Immediately, a readout told Carrie the pouch was being delivered. It flowed smoothly, easily, though the vein wall and into the Leviathan’s womb. The too-small-to-be-seen machines making up the medical tech would join the proteins, carbohydrates, electrolytes, and other substances within the amniotic fluid to strengthen the unborn child’s defenses against infection and provide her more endurance as she coped with her mother’s seizures.
Carrie twisted around to return the medpack to the strap around Sarbin’s belly. “Time to go,” she said. Sarbin did one of his now-familiar flips and let the bloodstream take him. Carrie was right behind him. All around her came another deep rumbling. Not as strong as Varis’s seizures, though, she thought. What could it be?
“Great job,” Matt said. “Everything’s looking fine… uh-oh.”
Carrie was just getting the hang of keeping herself in the middle of the vein again. “Don’t say that, Matt. I don’t want to hear that ‘uh-oh’ shit. What’s wrong?”
“It’s the baby—she’s moving into position for delivery.”
“Uh-oh.”
Sarbin asked, “Why would that happen?”
Carrie could hear the concern in Matt’s voice: “The tech made the baby stronger, and Varis’s body is interpreting that as the baby being more mature.”
Carrie asked, “So that’s the source of those rumblings we heard a little while ago. Varis is ready to deliver?”
“And it’s happening fast. But there’s a problem.”
“This already was a problem.”
“Well, it’s a worse one now. The baby’s facing head-first. Leviathans are normally born tail-first.”
“Why’s that?” Carrie asked.
“Being delivered head-first when you’re an aquatic animal means you can drown before you’re completely born. And Leviathan babies don’t turn around until late in the pregnancy.”
Another rumble, this time accompanied by a strong shift to one side that made Carrie miss a curve in the vein. She slammed her shoulder against its walls. She groaned, then said, “What happens if Varis tries to deliver now?”
“There’s no ‘trying’ to it. She’s delivering. That was a contraction.”
Carrie said, “You’ve got to get us out.”
No response at first from Matt. Then he said, “Uh, Carrie… ?”
“No. Don’t you start. As short a time as we’ve worked together, I can tell what you’re thinking. You’ve got some other mission for us, and I can tell you we’ve had enough.”
“You went in there to save the baby. Now it’s both Varis and the baby who are at risk.”
Carrie and Sarbin continued to barrel down the center (mostly) of the vein. “What are you suggesting? That I get in there and push?”
Another silence stretched larger. Finally it was Carrie that broke it: “No. You can’t mean—”
“That vein you’re in is about to curve up toward the womb again, in just the right place. Sarbin can cut a path—”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“—you get inside—”
“Does no one understand the word ‘no’ on this planet?”
“—and then you help the baby turn around and be ready for delivery.”
“You know, a midwife is supposed to work on the outside.”
Matt said, “Once you get in there, it’s going to take some work to turn that baby. It’s fifteen meters long, after all.”
“What, we can’t just flip her around?”
“Carrie, for a woman you don’t seem to have much of an idea how crowded it is inside a womb.”
“It’s been awhile since I left one.”
“Besides, you’re a fixer. At least that’s what I was told before you got here. Now here’s something that needs fixing.”
Sarbin said, “I can help you, Carrie. We have to save the baby.”
It’s all so simple for Sarbin, Carrie thought. A true innocent. “All right. Matt, let me know when we need to stop. Sarbin, what does Varis think about this?”
“She’s concerned and afraid. We were supposed to help her child. But we might’ve made things worse.”
“Yeah. I don’t blame her.” And I sure won’t say out loud that I’m afraid we could screw this up even worse than that. Especially if she has another seizure. Carrie thought back to the last seizure, and how she and Sarbin were rocked around inside the vein, with the lesser disturbance of Varis eating following soon after.
Wait a minute, Carrie thought. “Matt, what do the Leviathans eat when they’re out in the ocean?”
“Mostly tiny fish and floating vegetation, much like our own whales. We’ve been gathering it up and taking it to her—but yes, it’s the natural vegetation that Leviathans eat when they banish themselves to the motile islands.”
“But is it the same as what they eat in the open ocean?”
“I guess we’ve assumed so—you want me to check?”
“As quickly as you can, Matt. It could make a big difference.”