Sam showed her the baby. The smile that spread over her face cut through her exhaustion like a sharp knife through tender steak. “Give him to me,” she said, and held out her hands.
“You can nurse him now, if you like,” the doctor said from behind Sam. “In fact, it would be good if you did. There aren’t going to be many bottle babies, not any more.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Barbara said. “Before the war, of the people I knew who had babies, hardly any nursed theirs. Bottles seemed so much more modern and sanitary. But if there aren’t any bottles-” She drew aside the sheet that was draped over the top part of her body. For a moment, Sam was startled that she’d bare her breasts to the doctor. Then he told himself not to be an idiot. After all, the fellow had just helped guide the baby out from between her legs.
Barbara set the baby on her breast. He knew what he was supposed to do. If he hadn’t known, people would long since have been as extinct as dinosaurs. He made little slurping noises, just like the calves and lambs and piglets on the farm where Sam had grown up.
“What are you going to name him?” the doctor asked.
“Jonathan Philip,” Barbara answered. Sam nodded. It wasn’t the most imaginative way to name a kid-after his father and hers-but it would do the job. Had it been a girl, they would have called it Carol Paulette, for her mother and his.
He said, “I wish we had some kind of way to let our folks know we had a baby.” After a moment, he added, “Heck, I wish we had some kind of way to let our families know we’re married, or even that we’re alive. I wish I knew whether my folks were alive or dead, too; from what I hear, the Lizards have been in Nebraska just about since they landed.”
“What I wish,” Barbara said, sitting up and draping the sheet over her like a toga, “is that I could have something to eat I feel as if I’d spent the last two weeks digging ditches.”
“We can take care of that,” the doctor said. “In fact, we should be taking care of that right about now.” As if his words were a cue, a nurse came in carrying a tray that bore a huge steak, a couple of baked potatoes, a pumpkin pie, and two large mugs. Pointing at those, the doctor said, “I know they should be full of champagne, but that is the best homebrew we’ve made yet. Call it a wartime sacrifice.” He pushed a little wheeled table next to the one on which Barbara was lying.
Since she was still nursing Jonathan, Sam did the honors with knife and fork, cutting alternate bites for her and himself. As far as he could remember, he’d never fed anybody like that before. He liked it. By the way Barbara smiled as she ate, so did she. She hadn’t been kidding about being hungry, either; food disappeared off the plate at an astonishing rate. The homebrew was as good, and as potent, as promised.
Barbara said, “If the beer goes to my milk, will it make Jonathan drunk?”
“Maybe,” the doctor answered. “If it does, it’ll probably make him sleep better, and I don’t think you’ll complain about that.”
Sam wondered how they’d do: a man, a woman, and a baby, all in one room. People did manage, so he supposed they would. Then he remembered he’d be going back up to Missouri any day now. That didn’t seem fair, either to him or to Barbara, but he didn’t know what he could do about it No, that wasn’t true. He did know what he could do about it: nothing.
When they were done eating, the nurse took away the tray. Sam waited for her to come back with a wheelchair for Barbara, then realized that wouldn’t do any good, not without the elevators running. “She can’t walk upstairs to our room,” he protested.
“Oh, she probably could,” the doctor said. “One thing you find out pretty fast is that people are tougher than you’d imagine. But we’re not going to let her. You and I, Sergeant, we’ll get her up there.”
They did, too, in a sort of modified fireman’s carry that had them both panting by the time they made it to the fourth floor. The nurse followed with Jonathan. When they finally came out into the hallway Barbara said, “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk.”
Walk she did, toward their room. It was more shamble than stride; her feet were as wide apart as if she’d spent the last twenty years in the saddle. While that wasn’t true, she had spent a good long while in the stirrups.
Straha came out of his room to see what was going on in the hall. He kept his body paint unsmeared and in the magnificent shiplord’s pattern he’d worn when defecting: no Official American Prisoner markings for him. He came skittering up to the nurse. She drew back a pace, as if to protect the baby from him. “It’s okay,” Sam said quickly. “We’re friends. Let him see Jonathan.”
The nurse looked dubious, but held out the baby boy. As Straha examined it, he looked dubious, too. “This is a Tosevite hatchling?” he said in his own hissing language. “It is a Little Ugly, not a Big Ugly.” His mouth fell open in appreciation of his own wit.
Barbara answered in the same tongue: “Shiplord, that ismy hatchling, and it is not ugly.” For good measure, she tacked on an emphatic cough. Yeager added one of his own, to show he agreed. Among the Lizards, that was grammatically uncouth, but it got the message across.
“Familial attachments,” Straha said, as if reminding himself. “No insult was intended, I assure you. For a Tosevite hatchling, this is undoubtedly a paragon.”
“What’s he talking about?” the doctor asked.
“He says we’ve got a cute kid,” Sam answered. He was skeptical about Straha’s sincerity, but the Lizard was too big a cheese for him to make a fuss over it. Besides, except for an exaggerated sense of his own brilliance and worth-hardly a trait unique to Lizards-he was a pretty good fellow.
Barbara returned to English: “I may be able to walk, but I can’t stand in one place very long. I’m going inside and lying down.” She waddled the last few steps toward their door and started to go into the room. The nurse followed with the baby.
Before she got there, Ristin and Ullhass came out to look over the new arrival. They were politer than Straha, but still curious. When Jonathan opened his mouth to squawk, Ristin exclaimed, “The hatchling has no teeth! How can it eat if it has no teeth?”
Barbara rolled her eyes. “If the baby did have teeth, it wouldn’t eat from me,” she said feelingly.
“That’s right-you Tosevites nourish your hatchlings yourself.” Ullhass was more thoughtful, less high-spirited than Ristin. “I am sure you will do everything you can to make this little-is it a male or a female? — this little male an upstanding member of your race.”
“Thank you, Ullhass,” Barbara said, “but if I’m on my feet another minute, I’m going to be a downfalling member of my race.” She went into the room she and Sam would now share with their son.
The nurse brought in the baby. “Y’all holier if there’s anything we can do,” she said as she gave it to Barbara. “Good luck to you, honey.” Then she left, and closed the door behind her. All at once, in spite of what the nurse had said, it seemed to Sam that he, his wife, and their child were the only people left in the world. He gulped. Could he handle responsibility like that? After a moment, he realized the question hardly mattered. He wouldn’t get that much chance to handle the responsibility of being a father, not when Jonathan was here and he’d be heading back up to Missouri.
Barbara set Jonathan in the crib he’d bought at a secondhand store in Hot Springs. The crib wasn’t very large-even if it did crowd the already-crowded room-but the baby all but disappeared in it With a long, shuddering sigh, Barbara lay down. “You all right, hon?” Sam asked anxiously.
“I think so,” she said. “I don’t know for sure, though. I’ve never done this before. Am I supposed to feel as if a steamroller just mashed me?”