“It always works out in the movies.” Jillian mumbled and thud-thunked her baseball again.
Louise opened her mouth to say, “Not in horror films,” but realized that Jillian had lifted up the WWII escapee persona like a shield to protect herself. Making Jillian see the truth would only hurt her now. They couldn’t afford, though, to chase after an impossible dream. “Babies need a real mother. Not a woman who had poverty or some disaster that forced her into giving birth to children she doesn’t want. They need someone like our mom. Someone that wants children. Someone that can love them completely. Someone that can be patient and strong and wise. .”
“They’ll have us.”
Louise hunched against a scream of denial. She felt so close to crumbling. She couldn’t bear the idea of being responsible for four real babies, each one as hungry as Joy, and as inquisitive as Nikola. Four Joy/Nikolas all with poopy diapers? Louise couldn’t be their mother. The babies needed someone that wasn’t teetering on the edge. They deserved someone that didn’t feel so eggshell fragile that they were starting to wonder when, not if, they would break under the stress.
The twins needed to save the babies. It would destroy them both to lose the babies now. But be the babies’ parents? No, they couldn’t do that.
Louise woke up to a mischief of singing mice. Four of them stood on her pillow; one tapped her on the nose. When she opened her eyes, they began to sing in four-part harmony.
“Blue Moon,” the four mice sang. “You saw me standing alone. Without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.”
“Nikola?” Louise rubbed at her eyes, wondering if she were dreaming. When she’d fallen asleep, there had been only one naked mouse robot. She had been struggling to fit fur onto it. Her sewing skills weren’t matching up to the task of creating the form-fitting skin.
No, she was awake, and there were definitely four white-furred mice sitting on her pillow. They each had a tiny scarf of different colored fabric wrapped about their neck. The one with a blue muffler waved its hand, identifying itself as her baby brother while the other three clapped their tiny paws. It was very cute in a slightly creepy kind of way.
She sat up, careful not to knock them from the pillow. “How did you. .? There was only one. . And it was naked.” She cautiously picked up Nikola mouse to peer closely at its skin. The rabbit fur had been perfectly joined together so she could barely see the seams.
The babies all started to talk at once.
“Joy fitted the skins,” Pink Scarf said.
“We printed more mice!” Red Gingham said.
“She used magic!” Green Velvet said.
“It was boring waiting to take turns!” Pink cried.
“They’re kind of cramped, even just for one,” Nikola squeaked. It was still Christopher Robin’s Welsh lilt but sonic high, thin, and fast.
“So we made one for each of us!” the girls chorused.
“Vroom! Vroom!” Pink cried. “We can run really fast!”
“And climb!” Green added.
“We can race!” Pink cried.
And the girls took off running in a lap around Tesla, making high-pitched motor noises. Tesla lay unearthly still. Louise had gotten used to the babies moving the dog’s body. It was even creepier to see the big robot sitting idle.
The mice finished their lap with Pink winning.
“Joy made us racing scarfs.” Nikola showed off his blue muffler. “Mine is Wind Clan blue!”
“Mine’s wonderful amazing pink!” Pink cried. “I want goggles, too! Just like Tinker and Oilcan!”
It took Louise a moment to recognize the nicknames of their sister and cousin. It also made Louise realize that she’d been thinking of all of the babies as Nikola Tesla when only one of them was a boy. The three girls still were unnamed.
“Have you thought about names?” Louise asked.
“I want to be Jawbreaker,” Red Gingham stated.
“Jawbreaker?” Louise echoed, mystified.
“It’s Joy’s favorite candy,” Jawbreaker explained.
“Maybe. .” Louise hesitated in suggesting “Candy” as a name. It was one of those weak, sexist female names that always appalled her mother. “Girls should have names that allow them to be Supreme Court judges if they wanted. Sissy and Candy would have an uphill battle just because of their names.” Still, Candy had to be better than Jawbreaker. . right?
“I want to be Chuck Norris,” Pink announced as Louise struggled on with the whole “strong name” issue.
“Chuck Norris is a boy,” Nikola pointed out.
“I can be a boy if I want to be,” Pink stated firmly and then turned to Louise. “You get to pick your gender, don’t you?”
Before Louise could answer, Green Velvet squeaked, “I want to be Jawbreaker, too.”
“No! I said it first!” Red Gingham cried.
They collapsed into a ball of squirming fur as they wrestled for use of the name.
“Careful!” Louise caught them in her cupped hands before they could roll off the edge of the bed. “Hey, no fighting.”
They were so tiny and light. The two of them barely weighed anything at all as they squirmed about, all soft rabbit fur and plastic bones. They felt so fragile that it took her breath away. She could crush them by accident.
This isn’t really them, she reassured herself. They’re still safe within Tesla.
“What’s wrong with names like Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey or Rachel Carson?”
“We want names like Tinker and Oilcan!” the babies squeaked in chorus. “They’re so cool! You should see them race! They’re awesome!”
“Race?” Louise wondered if she was mistaken about the whole “awake” thing.
Sometime during the night, the babies had visited the Jello Shot forum and discovered a vast treasure trove of pictures and video of Alexander. All of them had to do with hoverbike racing. The still shots were all after winning a race, covered with mud except where goggles protected her eyes, grinning triumphantly. In many of the photos, Orville was within arm’s reach, smiling just as brilliantly.
The Jello Shot people were divided in several camps. The haters were disappointed that Alexander didn’t look like the valkyrie from The Queen’s Salvage. What did Prince Yardstick see in such a short, dirty, wild thing? With so many beautiful female elves to choose from, why had he married her?
The romantics decided that the blonde in the video was a clear reference to Disney’s Cinderella and that Lemon-Lime had merely presented an iconic princess with a Pittsburgh twist. Clearly the masses weren’t ready for the truth, which was “Love is indeed blind.”
A growing number of fans, however, were entranced by Alexander. They wanted to know everything about her, hence the unearthed videos. The sources were Pittsburghers in college on Earth, people who had studied at the University of Pittsburgh, and the small but rabid niche fandom of hoverbike racing.
The Jello Shots had found an amateur documentary made during last year’s blistering hot summer. The filmmaker was Charles Wyatt, a grad student in history attending the University of Pittsburgh. Apparently it was his only effort at making a documentary, and it showed. All the scenes were horribly framed, badly scripted, and lacked anything in terms of editing. At least he had a rich, deep voice. He saw the hoverbike as the first integration of elf magic and human machine. It might turn out to be like the Jacquard loom, which could be “programmed” via paper tape, arguably the great-grandfather of the modern computer. “A chance to record history as it’s being made by the people actually making it,” Wyatt announced at the start of the video. He’d conceived of the documentary with only a few months left on Elfhome to film it. Almost immediately, he ran into an unexpected reluctance of those involved to talk to anyone with a camera.