The Birthing House

She claimed they hadn't had sex. But what if they had? What if she had been lying just to gloss it over and move on? He hadn't really wanted to know one way or another before. But now he did. Oh yes, now he needed to know everything.

Oh, this is bad. This is fucked up. How do you ask her if the child is really yours? Without detonating a nuke?

Answer: you don't.

Then, with the out-of-control force of a nightmare, the rest of it clicked into place. Something far worse than deceit or infidelity.

What if he was not the father because there was no father?

What if it was the same with her as with the Boelen's? What if it was something in this new environment? Everywhere he turned he was confronted with pregnancy, eggs, children: he had become surrounded by burgeoning life. There should be nothing frightening about that. It could all be a coincidence.

Unless the house made things this way. Unless everyone who lived here was touched by it.

Unless the house was hungry for more.

14

'It's not only impossible,' Dr Alexis Hobarth said. 'It's fucking impossible. Those animals have been separated, in my care and my care alone, for the past three years.'

'I'm sitting on nine apparently healthy Boelen's eggs, Alex.'

Dr Hobarth was something of a jet-setting playboy in the reptile community. He'd returned Conrad's call while attending the annual National Herpetological Symposium in DC, where he was to deliver a paper on a new subspecies of water monitor his team had discovered on a remote island in Indonesia. So far Conrad had explained the situation with the eggs, but kept his fears about his wife to himself.

'So,' the doctor said, amused, 'what are you doing in Wisconsin, anyway? Are you out of your mind or do you just crave cheese?'

'Alex, it's not important why I'm here. What's important is I have nine eggs in my garage. You told me yourself there was zero chance of fertilization before they reached sexual maturity, at some four years of age and six or seven feet in length. Not only that, she's been eating like a horse since she arrived. You know a gravid female doesn't eat, I don't care how good a keeper you are, and I'm not that good.'

'You have photos?'

'Of the eggs?'

'Yes.'

'No, I don't, as a matter of fact. But I will be happy to email you photos later today.'

'Where are the eggs now?'

'In the garage.'

'You left them with the female?' Hobarth's voice registered concern.

'I'm not an idiot, Alex. They're in vermiculite, sealed in tamper-proof acrylic shoeboxes, holding steady at eighty-eight degrees. Humidity here is high, so I haven't bothered misting them.'

'All right. What do you want me to say?'

'How about, wow, that's a miracle?'

'A miracle? Conrad, please. If anything it's parthenogenesis.'

'What's that?'

'The animal kingdom's version of your virgin birth.'

'I'm not a biologist, Alex.'

'Cases involving insects and plants are well documented. Less so with vertebrates, but it happens with some species of fish, amphibians, and, yes, even reptiles. Every now and then you read about it happening at one of the zoos. A tiger shark couple years back. A komodo dragon just a few months ago. But hold on. Don't get excited. It is possible for a female to lay eggs without the benefit of fertilization, but it is extremely rare with reptiles, and almost impossible to prove because most of our stock comes from the wild, where the female's mating history remains unaccounted for. Even with semi-captives such as our Boelen's, it's dicey because most keepers do not document thoroughly enough to disprove the animals in question have never been put with the opposite sex. But I am not most keepers. I'm the fucking Curator of fucking Herpetology at the fucking San Antonio Zoo.'

'But it's possible? This partho thing, it's a real thing, not some Ripley's Believe It or Not hoax?'

'It's real, but it doesn't make any sense for your animals, or the Boelen's in particular.'

'Why not?'

'Because parthenogenesis occurs only in all or predominately female populations. As with honeybees, when you have a queen and her many drones. Parthenogenesis occurs only when the queen bee, the only female in the hive, dies before reproducing another queen. The male drones panic, or their genetic make-up panics, knowing their future is lost without her. In her place they begin to reproduce, but it is all in vain. They will only bring more males into the hive, and eventually these drones will die, too.'

'How do you know that isn't exactly what happened?'

'Because it's all in the environment, Conrad. Parthenogenesis occurs when environmental conditions are near perfect, when the balance of females to males is less than ideal, or all male. On top that, the Boelen's is such a delicate creature, even in the wild, it's a wonder they reproduce at all. It is why they almost never breed in captivity, let alone accomplish something as rare as this kind of virgin birth. The odds of this happening in a small population of males and females . . . in your, what, your garage? Preposterous, my friend.'

'But, Alex, how would she know there are males in her population? For all she knows, she is alone in the world.'

'Oh, so what you're telling me is, you've never put these animals in a bucket for a soak, never put them in the same bag for transport, never once shared cages, never once left one of them to crawl over another?'

'Not long enough to get their freak on.'

'Conrad, they don't have to get anything on - they just have to understand, to sense that reproduction with the opposite sex is possible. It's like us guys in a bar. We don't even have to be in the bar, or a whorehouse. We can look through the window, smell the perfume wafting out the door. This stuff is in the air. We've known for some time that snakes track pheromones emitted at mating time. Believe me, the snakes know who is or isn't next door, especially when they haven't closed the deal since last spring.'

'Shit,' Conrad said.

'Speaking of, how's your rack these days, chum? Things between you and the missus going all right since the move? You sound a little backed up.'

Conrad ignored the swipe. 'Have I ever lied to you?'

'Well, there's a simple way to prove all this one way or another.'

'Yeah, what's that?'

'Hatch the eggs. We can fingerprint the DNA on the hatchlings. If there's paternal contribution, we'll find it.'

'You can do that now?'

'It's not cheap, but you hatch these Boelen's, the zoo will pay for it.'

'I guess that's something,' Conrad said, dissatisfied but out of ideas.

'You've got eggs? Fine, take care of them. Keep me posted on their development. When they hatch, I'll see that we're published and we'll go to Costa Rica to celebrate.'

Conrad heard chatter in the background and the doctor cleared his throat.

'I'll let you get back to your talk, Alex. Good luck with that monitor paper. Maybe they'll name the thing after you.'

'That is my intention. We've an excellent shot at Varanus salvator hobarthi, as is only proper considering I discovered the little beasties.'

'You deserve it, Alex. Sorry I bothered you.'

'Conrad?'

'Yeah?'

'I don't care how it happened. You hatch those eggs, it's a hell of an accomplishment.'

'Thanks, Alex.'

'Dr Hobarth to you, knucklehead.'

Conrad slipped the cordless into his pocket and stared at the eggs in the box. The black, volcanic-looking vermiculite soil was slightly moist and sticky, the eggs leathery, free of fungus, healthy. No sign of movement within, even when he shone a flashlight over the smooth, opaque surface. He wasn't really expecting to see much - it would be another hundred days before they hatched.