Brun sagged onto the bed.
“And no sitting on the bed during work hours!” the matron said, flinging open the door with a bang. “We don’t put up with laziness here. Get your sewing basket; you have plenty to do.” She pointed at the cabinet. Brun heaved herself up and opened the door; inside was a round basket and a pile of folded cloth. “Decent clothes for yourself, first of all,” the woman grumbled. “Now come along to the sewing room.”
She led the way along a stone-floored corridor to a room that opened on an interior court; five pregnant women sat busy at their handwork. None of them looked up; Brun could not see their faces until she was sitting down herself. One had a wry face, pulled to the right by some damage; Brun could see no scar, and wondered what had caused it. But the warden tapped her head with a hard finger. “Get busy, you. Less lookin’, more sewin’.”
“You did what?” Pete Robertson’s voice rose sharply.
The Ranger Captain looked even more like a sick turkey gobbler, Mitch thought.
“We captured the trader without any trouble; the crew and captain lied, and the females was all using abominations, so we killed ’em. There were five children aboard, though: three girls and two boys, and those we brought home. They’re in my household now. We were still in the system, learning the big ship’s control systems before taking it through jump, when this little yacht came in—”
“And you couldn’t let it go—”
“Not after it slowed down and was sneakin’ up on us, no. It would’ve got all our IDs. They might’ve traced back to where we got the ships from. So we grabbed it, and found a mighty important passenger, so she thought herself.” Mitch grinned at the memory of that arrogant face.
“Abomination!” Sam Dubois hissed.
“She’s a female, like any other,” Mitch said. “I had her gagged, and muted her without letting her speak—she can’t have contaminated any of us. Our medico said she was pure in blood, and after he took out her implants and made her a natural woman again—”
“She’s one of them Registered Embryos,” Sam said. “And you call that pure in blood?”
“Mixing genes from more’n one person—she might as well be a bastard—” Pete added. “You know what the parsons say about them.”
“She’s a strong, healthy young female who’s now pregnant with twins,” Mitch said firmly. “And she’s mute, and she’s safely in a muted maternity home. She’s not going to cause any trouble. You better believe I was firm with her—she’s quiet and obedient now.”
“But why did you send the yacht back?” asked Pete.
If they were asking questions and not yelling at him, he was over the hump.
“Because it’s about time we got a little respect, that’s why. The talk on the docks is that we’re just a bunch of pirates like any others. Common criminals. That’s what the Guernesi are sayin’ in their own papers; they’re not tellin’ the truth about us. So we make it clear we aren’t goin’ to put up with it—they can’t just ignore us. God’s plan isn’t goin’ to be held back by such as them. Besides that, once they started lookin’ for that female—and they would look, considerin’ who her father is—they could’ve found things we don’t want them to know.”
“And you bring the whole Familias down on us,” Sam hissed. “Biggest power in this part of the galaxy and you have to make them mad—”
“I’m not afraid of anything but God Almighty,” Mitch said. “That’s what we all swear to, ’fore we’re sworn in as Rangers. Fear God but fear no man—that’s what we say. You goin’ back on that, Sam?” He felt strong, exultant. New children in the home, shaping well. That yellow-haired slut carrying twins—God was on his side for sure.
“There’s still no sense leadin’ trouble home,” Pete said.
“I didn’t,” Mitch said. “Sure, I claimed what we did for the whole Militia—but I didn’t leave one scrap of evidence which branch it was. By the time they figure it out—if they figure it out, which I doubt—we’ll be raisin’ enough hell right there in Familias space that they won’t have time to bother us. If they make one move against us, we blow a station or two—they’ll back off. I told ’em that. Nobody goes to war for one female.”
Brun fretted in the confines of the maternity home. She was allowed to go into the walled courtyard, hobbling around the brick paths on her swollen, sore feet. In fact, she was required to walk five circuits each day. She was allowed to go from her dormitory to the kitchen, to the dining hall, to the bathing room or toilet, to the sewing room. But the only door out was locked—and more than locked, guarded by a stout man a head taller than she was. The other occupants, all five of them, were as mute as she. The woman in charge—Brun could not think of any word that fit her position—was not mute, but all too verbal. She ordered the pregnant women around as if she were the warden in a prison. Perhaps she was; it felt like a prison to Brun. She had to spend so much time a day sewing: clothes for herself, clothes for the baby to come, clothes for herself after the birth. She had to help in the kitchen. She had to clean, struggling to push a heavy wet mop across the floor, to scrub out the toilets and sinks and shower stalls.
What kept her going was the thought of Hazel, somewhere with those two small girls. What was happening to Hazel? Nothing good. She promised Hazel—she promised herself—that she would somehow get Hazel out of this.
She was examined every day . . . and as her time came nearer, she found a whole new source of fear. One of the other women, cutting carrots beside her in the kitchen, suddenly bent and pressed a hand to her side. Her mouth opened in a silent yell. Brun could see the hardening under her maternity shift.
“Come along, you,” the warden said. She glared at Brun. “You help her, you.” Brun took the woman’s other arm, and helped her stumble down the corridor, into rooms Brun had not yet seen. Tiled floor . . . narrow bed, too short to lie on . . . as the woman in labor heaved herself onto it, she realized that this—this utterly inadequate ramshackle arrangement—was where women gave birth. Where she would give birth. The woman writhed, and a gush of fluid wet the bed and splashed onto the floor.
“Get basins, you!” the warden said to Brun, pointing. Brun brought them. When was the warden going to call the doctor? The nurses?
There were no doctors, no nurses. The warden was the only attendant, along with whatever women were in the house. The others edged in—some of them had done this before, clearly. Brun, forbidden to leave, stood against the wall, alternately faint and nauseated. When she sagged, one of the others slapped her face with a wet rag until she stood straight again.
She had known the facts of human reproduction since childhood. In books. In instructional cubes. And she knew—or she had known—that no one who had access to modern methods still gave birth in the old way. And certainly no one, no one in the whole civilized universe, gave birth like this, without medical care, without life support, without anything but a grim old woman and other pregnant women, in a room with unscreened windows, with the blood and fluids splashing onto the bare floor, splashing onto the women’s bare feet. Her father’s horses had better care; the hounds had cleaner kennels for whelping.
She tried not to look, but they grabbed her, forced her to look, to see the baby’s head pushing, pushing . . . her body ached already in sympathy.