“I’ll do that, but you’re just about at the place where you and Sarbin need to enter the womb.”
“Matt, I won’t even try to ponder the Freudian implications there.”
Sarbin said, “Failure to translate.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Matt said, “Sarbin, stop Carrie right there.”
Sarbin flipped around and eased his big body up against Carrie’s, just as he’d done while they delivered the nanotech. The Aquatile reached into his medpack and grabbed the scalpel beam, which resembled nothing more than a small stunner or disruptor. Carrie asked, “How will you know where to cut?”
Sarbin depressed the trigger on his device and a narrow blue beam illuminated a small spot on the side of the vein. “Matt can detect that,” he said.
Sure enough, Matt immediately said, “A little up, Sarbin. Now to the left. Carrie, are you ready?”
“No. But I guess we’re going anyway. Hey, wait a minute—did you check on the vegetation?”
“I did. They’re related, but not quite the same.”
“What’s the difference between them?”
“The type the Leviathans eat in the open ocean has an alkaloid the one around the islands doesn’t. But it’s harmless. Varis says no one else in her pod’s ever gotten sick the way she has.”
Carrie said, “Harmless to them, maybe. But what if Varis’s body has some sort of reaction to it?”
“That’s something we have to look at later, Carrie—Varis and her child need our help now.”
Carrie took a deep breath and mustered her remaining strength. “All right, then. Anytime, Sarbin.”
The Aquatile twisted around to narrow his aim at the proper spot of the vein while still holding Carrie in place against the bloodstream’s never-ending flow. He squeezed the trigger on the scalpel. The vein’s flesh parted. So did that of the Leviathan’s womb just beyond it. Sarbin executed a deft flip of his body, thrusting Carrie through that rubbery rift.
It was only the cushioning effects of the womb’s amniotic fluid that kept Carrie from having the breath knocked out of her as she landed, hard, against the Leviathan baby’s body. A surging stream of Varis’s blood began to diffuse within the womb. Sarbin squeezed through the rift and used the scalpel’s suture function to close it within seconds. Carrie took a moment to get her bearings. Any movement, she found, was slow and methodical against the thick amniotic fluid.
She stared across the giant baby’s back, down its fifteen-meter length. If Varis is the size of a shuttle, Baby’s about like a lifepod, Carrie thought.
A familiar distant rumbling drew closer and stronger, and Varis was in the full throes of another seizure. That sent the baby moving, too, whether having a seizure of its own or reacting in fear.
Carrie tried to stay on the baby’s back, but she started sliding downward, falling in slow motion within the thick fluid. The fall won’t hurt me because stronger lifesuit tech would snap on, she thought, but the baby’s movements could pin me against the side of the womb.
Sarbin glided up beneath Carrie, saying, “Grab onto me.” Carrie grabbed the strap around Sarbin’s midsection and held on tight as the Aquatile swam through the narrow space between baby Leviathan and womb wall.
Varis’s body grew still as Sarbin dropped Carrie off on top of the baby’s body again. Carrie kept on hands and knees, both for balance and because she had very little room to move. Matt was right, she thought. It is crowded in here.
Now, seemingly, it was the baby’s turn to thrash around. Carrie was about to be pinned against the “roof” of Varis’s womb, but Sarbin inserted himself next to her, taking the pressure on his own larger, stronger body. “Matt,” she said, “I don’t know if this was a good idea. We can barely move ourselves, let alone turn this big thing around.”
“You’ve got to try,” Matt replied. “Sarbin has the strength. You can help guide.”
Carrie muttered, “I could help guide it up your…”
“What’s that?” Matt asked.
“Nothing.”
Sarbin broke in: “We have to get to work to save the baby.”
“You’re right,” Carrie said. “Let’s get started. You’ll have to do the heavy work. I’ll get behind the baby’s head and try to guide her.”
“Here I go,” Sarbin said, and made his way through the thick fluid to the baby’s tail as Carrie floated over to a perch just behind the baby’s head, right above her closed eyes. Sarbin applied the side of his snout to the unborn Leviathan’s bulk and his fluke began to flap, though not as quickly as Carrie expected. In the low light of their glowing lifesuits, Carrie could tell that Sarbin was putting all his considerable strength behind the effort.
But the baby didn’t move.
Sarbin rested. “The fluid’s too thick,” he said. “I can’t move my fluke quickly enough.”
Varis’s body shook violently and Carrie flattened herself against the baby’s body. It looked as if the ceiling was caving in. As her lifesuit snapped into armor, Carrie realized: Varis is having more contractions.
Sarbin pleaded in a strangled voice: “Carrie, help me!”
A glance behind her, and Carrie saw that the Aquatile was pinned between the wall of Varis’s womb and the baby Leviathan’s body. And Carrie realized: Sarbin doesn’t have the same protective tech in his lifesuit that I do. Mine was designed for space, and his was only developed for this mission.
“What is it?” Matt asked.
“Sarbin’s in trouble.” Carrie hunkered down as much as she could to try to slide off the baby’s back so she could make her way down to Sarbin. “Is there any way you can help out to make this baby flip around?”
“Goodness, I can’t think of anything. Carrie—the Unity’s counting on you.”
Subtext, Carrie thought. He’s telling me he’ll follow the Unity’s orders to cut Sarbin and me out of here if he has to. “The Unity’s just fine for now,” she said, hoping to keep her own reference cryptic enough.
Carrie worked herself free of the tight spot between the womb’s walls and the baby’s back. But I do have to decide—should Sarbin and I just get out of here, even at the risk of killing the baby and Varis herself?
I say, hell no.
At least for now.
Carrie made it back to Sarbin and grabbed his arms and pulled. To no effect.
“I’m being crushed,” the Aquatile said. “I can barely… breathe.”
Matt again: “Is now the time?”
“Not yet,” Carrie said. “We have to think of something—wait a minute. Sarbin, can you reach your scalpel?”
Sarbin reached down and pulled it from his sheath. “It’s right here.”
“Put it on a low setting and shoot the baby with it.”
“What? I came here to help it, not hurt it.”
“A low setting. Sting it!”
Sarbin raised the scalpel beam and aimed it at the wall of flesh right before him. And hesitated.
“Shoot!” Carrie said,
“I… can’t…”
Carrie reached toward the scalpel. “Oh, Jesus Christ, let me do it—”
Matt: “Carrie—”
“I know, language. Gimme, Sarbin.”
“I’ll do it,” the Aquatile said, and fired the scalpel.
The baby flinched, and Carrie held on tight to Sarbin as he swam free. “We did it,” the Aquatile said.
Carrie told him, “And the baby’s turned a bit. Give him another shot.”
“You sound as if you’re enjoying this.”
“What I’m enjoying is knowing we’re about to turn the baby—oh, and that we’re not getting squished just yet.”