Suddenly she knew that whatever Scott wanted, she couldn’t carry this thing back with her on the train. She just couldn’t. This clump of genetically engineered tissue, this dead baby.
She went back to sit by Jessica, who had fallen back asleep. Theresa studied the young face smoothed into blankness by sleep. Forty years ago she had been afraid of Jessica. Jessica the bully, quick with her fists, sarcastic about everything, dangerous and despicable. Forty years ago. Theresa reached out and smoothed a few stray hairs back from Jessica’s forehead.
Time passed. Too much time — Madison was taking much longer than Jessie had. Theresa got up and made her way through the maze of curtains. At the end she found an actual door, wood set into the foamcast wall, and went through it.
“Use the calatal!” cried a woman Theresa hadn’t seen before. She and the abortionist were applying various pieces of equipment to Madison, unconscious on a table. There was blood everywhere, way too much blood. The smell of it, metallic and hot, hung in the air.
“Get out!” the second woman yelled at Theresa. “You’re not sterile!”
Theresa blundered back out the door. She stood there, not breathing, for what seemed like hours. When the door finally opened, Theresa already knew.
“Unexpected tearing,” the abortionist said unsteadily. “It’s never happened before, I couldn’t stop it, I tried and tried… I’m so sorry…”
A sound behind her. Theresa turned to see Jessica leaning against the wall. “Madison’s dead, isn’t she?” Jessica said, and when no one answered, Jessica—the bully, the truculent—cried and cried, and would not be comforted.
The rest of the summer brought many good things. It didn’t matter. Every night Theresa dreamed of Madison’s face. Not even the birth of Senni’s child in October made a difference to Theresa’s mood, which made no sense. Senni was her daughter, the new child her granddaughter. Madison was only someone Theresa had known a long time ago, in another time and place.
Senni had an easy birth. The baby was healthy, perfect, strong despite being three weeks premature. Senni named her Clari, after nothing in particular.
Patients came to Scott from towns up to fifty miles away. It turned out he had bought a small ad on the Net. By the beginning of November he was going into Wenton three days a week to hold “office hours” at a tiny rented room. He bought a horse for this trip, helped by Jody, who also taught him to ride. Fortunately, Scott was a natural. There was a lot of work: the warming and increased rain had had brought malaria and dengue fever this far north. Simple diseases to treat, even to vaccinate against—if you had the knowledge and the drugs.
The delivery of drugs was only intermittently reliable. There was no Post Office anymore. Information went by the Net; packages went by the few struggling private companies that exploited the rail circuit. Scott ordered double amounts in staggered deliveries; some got through. Eventually.
He charged patients according to what he learned about them on the Net. Often the fee was paid in welcome foodstuffs or livestock. As his reputation spread, Scott began to get rich people from the enclave outside of Ruidoso. Except for buying drugs, Scott turned every credit he made over to Theresa for the farm.
The crops flourished in the summer heat and new rain, despite the punishing daily wind and violent storms. The harvest was rich. Theresa was now beyond subsistence farming, and ten years ago that had been a glittering goal. The warming had killed billions of people, one way or another: geographic dislocation, epidemic diseases, political collapse, random violence. The war had killed billions more. But Theresa was going to have her best year ever.
Winners and losers, she thought, and her mood did not improve.
At the beginning of October, Bonnie Carson and Julie Cunningham arrived back at the farm, brought by old Tom Carter from Wenton.
“Theresa, these girls would rather be with you,” Tom said, his ancient, pale blue eyes giving away nothing.
“Come in, Tom,” Theresa said. She stood in the cool dawn, already dressed, and bit off her questions until she was alone with the girls. You didn’t burden outsiders with family troubles.
“Got to get back,” Tom said.
Theresa glanced at the brightening sky. “You can’t now. Not in that open cart.”
“I’ll spend the day at the Graham place,” Tom said, not looking at her. The Grahams owned the next homestead; Tom could make it there before the punishing wind began. Theresa understood. Tom didn’t want to be around whatever was going to happen next any more than Theresa did. She, however, didn’t have a choice.
Julie helped Bonnie out of the back of the cart. Bonnie could hardly walk. She held her left arm cradled in her right. Her strong-planed face was covered with bruises, the lip split open. Jody, Theresa’s oldest son, appeared at her side, casually armed. When Tom had left, Julie quavered, “She was in a fight. She—”
“I can see she was in a fight,” Theresa snapped. “Bring her inside. Jody, go find Scott and tell him to bring his medical stuff. Julie, stop sniffling. Did Bonnie miscarry? Any show of blood?”
“I don’t think so,” Julie sniffed.
“I’m… okay,” Bonnie muttered.
Her arm was broken. Scott sedated Bonnie and set the arm. Bonnie lay on Lillie’s bed; God, they were going to have to jam two more beds in here somewhere. The farm house had only three small bedrooms. Theresa, Senni, and the two babies were in one; Rafe, Alex, Sam, and Scott in another; Lillie, Emily, and Sajelle in the third. Theresa’s sons, having ceded their mattresses to pregnant girls, now slept in the barn with the migrant laborers who drifted through. And there were no more extra mattresses. Well, Rafe or Alex or Sam, any two, could give up theirs. Although five mattresses would never fit in this tiny space…
She was pondering housekeeping to avoid thinking about anything else.
Scott frowned. “Bonnie will be fine. In fact, the break is already healing much faster than it should, and her injuries are much lighter than they should be for the kind of beating she took. The pribir did something to her, Tess. Boosted her immune system somehow.”
“Too bad they didn’t give her more muscles so she could have kicked the hell out of those bastards.”
Scott wasn’t listening. Probably he was running over medical possibilities in his head. Theresa went into the great room.
Fifteen people and two babies awaited her. Infant Clari nursed at Senni’s breast; little Dolly wandered around, whimpering for her breakfast. Sajelle got Dolly a piece of bread. Everybody else looked expectantly at Theresa.
“What?” she snapped. Irritation as cover for feeling burdened beyond bearing.
Jody spoke up. “Mom, we’ve been talking. Julie told us why that girl was beat up. She’s… somebody thought she liked girls instead of boys.” He said it with distaste, and Theresa sighed. Her children had grown up in a world they didn’t choose, a frightened world backsliding into protective conservatism. Not what she would have chosen for them, but there it was.
“All right, listen up,” she told everyone. “I don’t care if Bonnie likes boys, girls, or roadrunners, and that means nobody here is going to care, either. She’s one of us—”
Senni opened her mouth, closed it again, scowled.
“—because she was with me and the others at Andrews Air Force Base. I’ve told you about it, and that telling is all I need to do. I still run this place. Bonnie is a scared, pregnant kid, just like the others. She stays here. Julie, too. Now, is anybody going to fight me on this? Jody?”
“No.” Promptly. Bless her oldest, he had always been her ally. “Carlo?”