“N-no!” Marya bit at the corner of her lip. Yolande looked up; the other meditech had rolled her sleeves back to the elbow and thrust both hands into a claver. There was a flash and hum, and when the technician withdrew them they were covered in a thin film that glistened like solidified water where the highlights caught it.
“All right, Antonia,” she said.
“Hnnn!” from the serf on the table. Yolande followed her eyes; the meditech was wiping off the foam with cloths that had a sharp medicinal smell, moving down from belly to anus; the hair came with it. The Draka could see the muscles of Marya’s belly and thighs jerk as the tech followed with a clear sharp-smelling spray. The pinkly naked flesh gleamed.
The serf with the molecular-film gloves replaced her coworker. “Whata you think we win the bridge tournament?” she said casually, spreading the subject’s vulva with her left hand. With her right she ran an experimental finger into Marya’s vagina. “If that crazy Giuseppe no—Jesus-Mary-Joseph, she tight like stone!”
Yolande pushed down with the flat of her hand. “Marya, relax,” she said in a clean clipped tone. After a long moment she felt the serf loosen into obedience.
“Thank you, Mistis, thata better,” the meditech said. Her companion handed her an instrument like a speculum, giving it a quick spray of lubricating oil from another aerosol.
“Agg. Nhhhhnng.” Marya’s voice, as the meditech inserted it with a series of deft, steady pushes. She gave the threaded dilator at the base two turns and hooked fold-out supports over Marya’s thighs to hold it in place.
“Please! God, please!”
The doctor whistled through his teeth. “Catheter now, Angelica,” he said.
“Giuseppe, he crazy like fox,” the other tech said, unreeling the end of a spool of what looked like black thread from a machine on casters. It rolled near. “Here. He say you play too cautious, you lose alla time.”
The gloved meditech threaded the tip of the catheter through the instrument and into Marya. “Master Doctore?”
“Good, anothah ten millimeters. Careful now. Very slowly.” Yolande stroked Marya’s stomach and watched the wild, set eyes that stared down between her legs. “Good, that’s it. Hmmm. Acidity balance good, uterine wall looks good . . . getting a reading . . . let’s boost . . . All right, here we go.”
Yolande looked down at the shuddering body on the couch, imagining a tiny form with red birth fuzz lying in her arms; she smiled, and for a moment the weight of hatred lifted.
“Blastocyst’s in the uterus. That’s the egg in the womb to you lay people,” the doctor chuckled. “All right, Tetrarch, one seeded brooder. Virtually certain to take, anyway. Leave her here until tomorrow; she ought to be immobile. Intend to bring her back fo’ the bearin’?”
“No,” Yolande said, with a slight smile. “We’ve got a perfectly good midwife on our plantation. Look at me, Marya.” The serf looked up, licked her lips. Wisps of hair were plastered to her brow, and Yolande pushed them back with one finger, and touched her navel with the other hand. “You’re going to bear Gwen fo’ me, Marya, an’ suckle her. That’s how you serves me and the Race, now. Understand?”
The serf jerked slightly. The meditech had withdrawn the speculum and catheter; the two technicians laid a cloth over Marya’s crotch and adjusted the stirrups so that her legs were together with knees up. One waited patiently with a blanket, while the other stripped the thin film gloves from her hands. The doctor rose.
“You can pick her up tomorrow. Unless you’d care to sit with her.”
“No,” Yolande said. The meditechs draped the blanket over the serf, tucking it around her neatly and freeing one hand next to a plastic cup of water. “No, I’ve got a date.” This was better than inflicting pain, but she did not want to stay and watch. “And Marya here needs to be alone with her thoughts, hey?”
Chapter Twelve
SOUTH WING WAITING ROOM
CASTLE TARLETON
ARCHONA
ARCHONA PROVINCE
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
The family was waiting for her in the ring-road plaza by the south side of the Castle Tarleton grounds. Her brother John and Mandy, sitting at a table under an umbrella and talking. Looking exactly what they were, Landholders in from the provinces, down to the broad-brimmed hats and conservative Tolgren 5mms . . . David, their latest infant, cooing and gurgling in the arms of stout Delores, his brooder-nurse; Jolene, Adele . . . and Marya, with Gwen. Gwen.
“Momma! Momma!” The small red-headed form bounced erect and ran toward her, toddler’s tunic flying. “Momma!” She leaped up.
“Ooof.” She was heavy for a five-year-old; that was the denser bones. Incredibly strong. Yolande grabbed her under the armpits and swung her in a wide circle, laughing up into the face that smiled back at her.
“Zero-G!” the child cried. “Zero-G, Momma!”
Yolande darted a look of apology at her brother, and tossed her daughter up with a swoop-catch. “There you go, spacer! And—one and two and three and dockin’ maneuver.” She gave the child a smacking kiss and hugged her.
Gwen’s arms tightened around her neck, and she pressed her head against her mother’s. “Love you, Momma,” she said.
“Love you, too, my baby Gwennie,” she said.
“I am not a baby! I’m Gwen,” she replied firmly.
“Indeed you are, light of my life.” Yolande signed to Marya. “Here, now stay with you Tantie-ma fo’ a minute, an’ hush.”
John and Mandy were smiling indulgently at her, hands linked.
“I gathah the news is good,” her brother chuckled. Mandy was using her belt phone to call for the car; the family had rented the latest for their stay in Archona, a superconductor-electric with maglev capacity on the few stretches of road relaid for that luxury.
“You are lookin’,” Yolande said, buffing her nails, “at the newest Cohortarch in the Directorate of War.”
“Well, well, well, we Ingolfssons are movin’ up in the world,” he said, with a swift hard embrace. John had never been more than a tetrarch, or wanted to be. He and Mandy did their Territorial Reserve duty, and that was enough distraction from Claestum and its folk. “Even as I dragged you appalling offspring through the zoo and amusement park. Wotan’s stomach, the things they do with rides these days! While Mandy shopped the estate into bankruptcy; we’ll need a Logistics Lifter to get the loot—”
He winced theatrically as the tall blond woman dug him in the ribs. “Gwen didn’t enjoy those rides half as much as you did,” she said. “Do I quarrel with you gettin’ every toy Biocontrol dreams up fo’ the credulous planter? Like those steakberries?” John winced more sincerely; the high-protein meat-mimicking fruit had proven a beacon for every vermin, pest, scavenger, and grub in Italy. Their son began to cry softly. “I could scarcely take Davie along with you and Gwen, now could I?”
They glanced over to the nurses. Delores was just lifting a full breast out of her blouse and brushing the engorged brown nipple across the infant’s mouth; she rocked the child and crooned, smiling, as he suckled.
“That reminds me, you-know-who dropped a broad hint it’d be appreciated if I had anothah befo’ shippin’ out. Hm, Gwen? You likes a little brothah or sistah to play with you?”
The girl had been seated on Marya’s lap, watching the adults and ignoring her cousin with five-year-old disdain. “Can’t play with a baby,” she said practically. “They just makes messes an’ sleeps.”
Yolande laughed, and glanced an inquiry at her brother and sister-in-law. Mandy nodded. “One more’s no problem, ’Landa. Freya knows, what with ours and the two new ones ma an’ pa are having, we gettin’ to be more of a tribe than a family.”