Sarbin took aim again. “I guess we have to do this.” Another shot, and the baby’s tail moved farther away from them. But Varis also reacted, moving her own body from side to side, and Carrie held onto Sarbin even tighter as they swayed back and forth in the relatively slow motion of the amniotic fluid.
Sarbin said, “Varis, you have to keep still—we’re saving your baby.”
A voice Carrie hadn’t heard previously came over her datalink, rough and low: “You are hurting my child.”
Varis, Carrie thought. Speaking at last.
“I know we’re hurting her,” Sarbin said. “But not very much, and if we don’t get her to turn, she could die. So could you.”
An odd moment passed, of utter silence and stillness. Then Varis said, “Do what you must.”
Sarbin didn’t hesitate, but raised the scalpel and stung the baby again. The unborn Leviathan shifted around some more, until it was “sideways” in the womb. Carrie said, “She can’t be comfortable that way—she’ll have to shift around some more.”
And she did, but started back the way she’d come. “Again, Sarbin,” Carrie said, and the Aquatile fired yet again.
With a couple of swishes of her tail and twisting of her body, the baby spun around and placed herself into the proper position for birth. She ended up facing Carrie, who found herself staring directly toward an eye the width of her hand—an eye that spun toward her, then blinked a couple of times against her lifesuit’s illumination and finally closed again. Wow, Carrie thought.
Varis’s body began to shake again and Carrie flattened herself against Sarbin’s back. “Dam-mit,” she said. “Those contractions are tough to take. Matt?”
“I’m here.”
“How long can a Leviathan’s birth take? We don’t want to be stuck in here for hours.”
“Everything’s proceeding faster than you might think.”
Varis’s entire body shook again and suddenly Carrie felt as if she were on a starcraft where the grav had failed. “Is Varis diving?”
“Don’t worry,” Matt said. “It’s common practice for Leviathans about to give birth—dive into colder water, and her body rushes blood to the body core where it’s needed.”
Varis was already leveling off. “What about the baby when it comes out?”
“The cold provides a shock, and the baby expels any amniotic fluid that could be in its lungs.”
“Then it’s right up to the surface for that first real breath?”
“You got it, with a little help from Mom.”
The baby Leviathan’s eye opened again. I could swear it looks surprised, Carrie thought. Then it, and the rest of the baby’s body, began to recede as Varis’s body trembled with another string of contractions. Carrie and Sarbin were rocked from side to side, then found themselves following right behind the soon-to-be-born Leviathan.
“Uh-oh,” Carrie said. “I’m not a Christian, but I’m about to be born again.”
“Part of that didn’t translate,” Sarbin said.
“Just get ready to take a ride.”
The Leviathan baby shot backward all at once, and Carrie grasped Sarbin tighter than ever as Varis’s contractions shot them that way, as well, the baby staring at them all during her fitful journey. “Push, Varis,” Carrie muttered, then couldn’t help laughing, however feebly. “I guess that’s the first time anyone’s said that from inside.”
Several minutes of violent back-and-forth, side-to-side movements followed. Carrie, hands cramping, arms and legs losing strength, was about to resign herself to falling away from Sarbin and taking whatever came.
Sarbin said, “Look, Carrie—light!”
Every muscle in Carrie’s neck protested as she lifted her head, but she was rewarded with the slightest of glimmers as she looked past the baby’s body and beyond its tail. “Isn’t it marvelous, Carrie?” Sarbin said. “We’re part of the miracle of life.”
The miracle will be if we survive it, Carrie thought, but at least she had more motivation to keep hold of Sarbin, if this incredible journey was about to end.
Another burst of motion, and the baby suddenly slipped away from them, her umbilical cord snapping and her body sliding gracefully into the open sea. As smooth and controlled as a starcraft undocking, Carrie thought.
Then she had no time for thought, as the umbilical cord, trailing crimson blood, whipped toward her and Sarbin, massive enough that it could’ve killed them in an instant, but slowly enough that the Aquatile dodged it and headed for the light.
A final contraction from Varis propelled Sar-bin out into the ocean in a cloud of blood and amniotic fluid. The newly-born Leviathan baby, swimming free, cast a broad shadow over them.
Suddenly Carrie felt as if she were being launched spaceward in a shuttle that had lost its inertial protections. She caught the merest glimpse of Varis’s fluke pushing upward inexorably against Sarbin’s underside, and then, unexpectedly, she and the Aquatile and the Leviathan child broke the surface of Welkin’s waters.
The baby barely left the water before falling back in a gigantic belly flop. Sarbin twisted instinctively and transformed his fall into a headfirst dive that barely seemed to part the waters. Carrie, try as she might, was a creature of land or water, not airborne leaps, but managed a feet-first splashdown that was functional, if not graceful.
The first thing she did after entering the water was deactivate her lifesuit, and she gloried in the feel of Welkin’s waters flowing over her skin. She broke the water’s surface again and took in the sight of Varis’s great bulk rolling onto one side, water sluicing down her underside as her newborn moved in to suckle.
It was worth it, Carrie thought. Just for this one moment, it was all worth it.
Sarbin burst out of the water in front of her, arced over her head, and made graceful splashdown behind her. As he came up next to Carrie, he said, “Isn’t it wonderful? You worked hard, but everything turned out all right.”
Sometimes the innocents of the world get their way, Carrie thought. “You worked as hard as I did. Without you, the baby would never have been born. Race you to shore.” Carrie took a deep breath into her genetically engineered lungs and started swimming past mother and child and toward the land.
Sarbin easily passed Carrie up, but made it a game all the way in, darting around her and encouraging her to go faster. Matt met her at the shoreline, and stood holding out a terry cloth robe, but with his eyes looking to one side. I’m starting to feel as if I’m somehow odious to him, she thought. But she took the robe, put it on, and sat down on the sand. “I won’t move for a month,” she said.
“You did a marvelous job—both of you,” Matt said.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Sarbin said from the shallow water, “I’m going to take a long swim and a half-nap.” And with a fluke flip, he was gone.
“A half-nap?” Carrie asked Matt.
“The halves of Aquatile brains take turns sleeping. Just like dolphins.”
“He’s amazing. How did marine life here become sentient?”
“An excellent question,” Matt said, sitting next to her. “One we’re trying to find the answer to. One question we have answered, though—why Varis got sick, and why she’s getting better, however slowly, here at the motile island.”
“It’s that vegetation she’s eating in the open ocean, isn’t it?”
“She has a reaction to that alkaloid—gets sick, comes to one of these islands, eats the other stuff, gets well.”
“Which is why the banishment seems to work.” Carrie ran her fingers through the sand to play for time, then told Matt, “Thanks for doing such a good job as capcom. I was afraid we weren’t going to get along.”