Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (46 page)

But she only laughed at my clumsy attempts to bring her marital estrangement out into the open. “I’m not bitter about Paul’s behavior over the pregnancy at all, Rogi. I understand that his first loyalty had to be to the Milieu and not to me. I
did
commit a serious crime. But now that it’s turning out so well, I feel it’s best that we wait to discuss it. Farspeaking would accomplish nothing. What we must say to each other, we should say face-to-face. I want to show Paul his perfect little new son as a fait accompli. Put Jack into his arms. Then he can’t help but be as proud of us … as we are proud of him.”

“He’ll be damned proud,” I asserted stoutly, “and now that he’s First Magnate, he’ll move heaven and earth to do whatever it takes to get you off the legal hook!”

She turned her head away. “I know. Once Paul
meets
Jack, everything will be all right again.”

I busied myself making Teresa a cup of tea and then sat beside her on the stool while I rubbed her back and told her some of the details of the inauguration that Denis had passed on to me.

She asked, “Was the election for First Magnate close?”

“Fifty-nine votes for Paul, forty-one for Davy MacGregor. Closer than the family had expected.”

“How strange … I’d thought Paul was a shoo-in. Not that Davy isn’t a sweet person and a brilliant statesman. I’ve always liked him and his wife.”

“There’s going to be an inaugural gala—a banquet and a ball with celebrity entertainment. Lucille is all ready to do her metapsychic grande dame routine, and her gown will probably be a smash. Marc’s going to wear his first white tie to the ball, and Denis is confident that he’ll be the designated dreamboat of the younger adolescent female set.”

Teresa laughed with genuine pleasure, then caught her breath abruptly. Her eyes widened. “Rogi! The waters!”

“You need water?” I leapt to my feet, alarmed. “Cold? Hot?”

“No, dear,” she said gently, shifting about in the bed. “The amnion, the membranous bag full of fluid that Jack floats in. It’s broken.”

Perspiration shone on her brow. She gasped, then uttered a peculiar guttural cry.

I hovered at her side, terrified. “What should I do?”

Her eyes were closed, and she gripped the edges of the bedframe with whitened knuckles. Again she made that peculiar grunting noise.

She whispered, “Put on a fresh shirt. Scrub your hands to the elbows. Rinse them in water that has a little bleach added.”

“Yes!” I cried, stumbling about the cabin. “Yes! Just take it easy. It won’t take me two minutes!” Hold on, Jack! Not so damned fast, for God’s sake—

IT HURTS! IT HURTS!

“Oh, Jesus,” I wailed.

It wasn’t Teresa in pain; she was pushing and straining, her mind closed in upon itself in utter concentration. The one hurting was Jack.

—the amniotic fluid that had cradled and protected him for nine months was now draining away with the rupture of the enveloping membrane.

—his delicate little body was squeezed by the fierce contractions of the powerful uterine muscles, now coming at two-minute intervals.

—and he was being propelled forward, centimeter by centimeter, headfirst through the crushingly narrow birth canal, the plates of his tiny skull and the marvelous brain within compressed, deformed.

—and with his mother distracted and withdrawn, he appealed to me.

IT HURTS … Uncle Rogi it hurts so much I can’t do the thing Mama wanted help me pleaseplease helphelphelp—

“I will, I will!” I cried, kneeling beside the bed, putting one hand on Teresa’s covered belly. She still lay beneath the comforter. I let my mind merge with that of the fetus and felt his agony, his terror. I seemed to see a bright fragile globular thing that pulsated with pain, threatening to shatter. And there in the scarlet dimness lurked something else, which would pounce if the bright globe broke and would devour the precious being that had been inside. The monster was there, but it had only limited faculties. I was a match for it! In some way I took hold of Jack’s shining hurting mind, enclosed him and steadied him. I dredged up strength for both of us from God knew where. Somehow I shared my own experiences with suffering. Somehow I helped.

And abruptly, Jack withdrew from me, safe and in control again.

I was back in the dimly lit cabin with the Arctic night wind moaning outside. Teresa was still grunting at regular intervals and bearing down valiantly with each contraction; but the fetus was no longer crying out. He was exerting his metapsychic faculties in a new way, incomprehensible to me. He was
growing
.

I got up from my knees and stripped off my grubby wool shirt. A newly washed one hung on the line above the stove. I scrubbed my hands and lower arms and put the fresh shirt on, then checked over the birth supplies on the table: the folded clean cloths, the sponges made from wool duffel, a larger piece of material that Teresa had designated as the birthcloth, the sterile knife and string.

Teresa said calmly, “Rogi, I’ve soiled the bed. It’s normal. I want you to take away the comforter now. Fold the sheet up over my stomach and lift my nightgown, and bring me a cloth dampened with clean water so I can wipe myself. Then slide the shitty cloth out from beneath my legs. Hold it by the edges when you gather it up, and burn it in the stove. Then bring another clean cloth and put it down.”

I gaped at her.

“Hurry, dear.” Teresa smiled encouragingly at me, but there were tears in her eyes for poor Jack’s pain. “Do as I say, Rogi! The head is on the perineum.” She gave another heroic grunt. Her face was deeply flushed and she was drenched in sweat.

I did it. There was a mess of fluid and a few feces on the cloth. I took care of things briskly.

“No, don’t cover me up again,” she gasped. “Can … you see him?”

I crouched down. Her feet were braced hard against the bedframe and her knees were spread wide. With no embarrassment, I checked the vulvar opening. Something was there. With each fresh contraction it advanced—then retreated a bit when the thrust ceased. But it came forward a little farther each time she bore down. Finally the entire top of the head was visible, like a cork in a wine bottle. It was slightly bloodstained and coated with a pasty white substance.

“I see him! He’s coming. But there’s blood and stuff all over him—”

“Okay,” she gasped. “Okay … now!”

She gave a loud, orgasmic shout. I seemed to hear another cry ring in my mind, equally joyous, and at that moment the baby’s entire head came free. His eyes were closed. His skull was pathetically misshapen—

She was looking down at him, her hands cradling the poor little head. “He’s all right,” she managed to say. “The distortion … normal. Get … birthcloth. Lay it … between my legs. No, further away … get ready to catch him … slippery … 
aaaah!”

With her second ecstatic cry the baby’s head turned to one side. Tiny shoulders emerged, together with a great gush of clear fluid that soaked the flannelette and the pads and dripped into the sawdust under the bed. I took hold of Jack under his wee arms as the rest of his body slithered out quickly, together with more liquid, stained pink with blood. He was
very
slippery. His body was bluish beneath the cheesy white coating. The umbilical cord was a bright sky-blue color, and throbbing. The baby did not seem to be breathing.

Without thinking I lifted him by the ankles and smacked him on the bottom. He opened his mouth and spat out fluid. His little chest heaved. He turned pink almost immediately.

And began to squall and wriggle.

“Look! Here he is!” I babbled. “It’s Jack! And he’s breathing!”

I would have done it on my own!

“Put him down, dear,” Teresa whispered. She was smiling now. “On the birthcloth. Get the knife and the string. Do you remember what to do?”

“You bet.” Trembling, the great accoucheur tied one string tightly around the cord about two centimeters away from the baby’s belly. Then tied another string a ways away. Then (cringe!) cut the cord.

“Wrap him up in some clean flannelette and give him to me.

I did as she said, and she took the wailing little thing and held him to her breast, crooning softly. His head was already starting to look more normal. I stood there at a loss, a “What next, Coach?” expression on my face.

Thank you. That’s much better. Mama. Uncle Rogi
.

Both Teresa and I burst into tears.

*    *    *

She rocked him in her arms, singing telepathically at the same time that she wept for happiness. The baby’s mind had become completely inaccessible, shut away from all human intercourse except at the animal level, the superintellect having throttled back into oblivious infancy after savoring its triumph. Jack was breathing strongly, his heartbeat was even, and his head with its wisps of dark hair rested against his mother’s breast. The yucky white stuff on his skin, Teresa informed me, was a normal coating called vernix which would easily wash off later. In minutes Jack had fallen peacefully asleep, his tiny mouth still fastened to the nipple.

I told Teresa about my excursion into the infant’s mind, and about the “monster” I had apparently perceived hiding there.

“You must have imagined it, Rogi. Or else it was a construct of his own unconscious. His Low Self threatening the High Self in some strange manner.”

I shrugged. “Well, maybe.”

“Perhaps it was symbolic of all the difficult tasks that lie ahead of him. When he wakes there’ll be all those new stimuli to process. The next few days will be very difficult for him. Poor Jack! His mind may be highly advanced and self-aware, but it’s trapped inside a helpless infant body. It didn’t bother him while he was safe in a symbiotic relationship with his mother, but now that he’s out on his own, he’ll have a lot of adjusting to do.” She winced. “Oh-oh. Here we go again. It’s the afterbirth. Now this is what you do …”

I attended Teresa as she passed the placenta. This was an unattractive fleshy mass like a thick, veined pancake with the umbilical cord attached to its middle. Along with it came miscellaneous bits and pieces that Teresa said were the membranes that had enclosed the fetus, and a fair amount of blood. The fluids were mostly soaked up by the sawdust. Teresa directed me to burn the afterbirth, the soggy sawdust, the bed pads, and the most badly soiled cloths. She herself swabbed Jack off, dressed him in a bellyband, a diaper, plass overpants, and a little terry-cloth suit, then stowed him in his swansdown bunting and cradle furs while she washed herself and put on a fresh nightgown. She lay down to rest on my bed, with him tucked into the sleeping bag beside her and both comforter and fur blanket piled on top. The cabin was cooling off rapidly; during the past hectic hour, I had forgotten to stoke the fire. I told her she must
sleep in my bed, closest to the stove. We would switch bunks. “And why don’t I make us some strong tea?”

“There’s better than that for us. Look in the corner of the bath alcove.”

Mystified, I went to check. And there was the split of Dom Pérignon that had been part of her original bag of “necessities,” resting in a bucket of half-melted snow. I let out a cackle of appreciation, popped the cork, and poured the champagne into teacups. Laughing like loons, we toasted Jack’s arrival and wished an early end to our other travails.

“I’m afraid my bedspring ropes are rather messed up,” Teresa said, grinning over the rim of her cup.

“Big deal. I’ll put a plass sheet over them tonight and weave a new spring tomorrow if I can’t wash them clean.”

She nodded. Her face was radiant. She looked like anything but your stereotypical exhausted new mother.

I said, “I didn’t expect you to be … in such good shape. Afterward.”

“Some women feel pretty decent, others are knocked out. I feel like I climbed a mountain and fell down the other side. But tomorrow I’ll be fine. Cook your breakfast.”

“Good God. And that’s all there is to it?”

She laughed. “I’ll bleed for a while, but I have pads ready. If I don’t get an infection or hemorrhage too badly, I should be in fine shape inside of a week. But I intend to be a right layabout for the next six or seven days, eating and sleeping like crazy and nursing Jack. You’ll have your work cut out for you, bonhomme, waiting on me hand and foot. I’ll cook the breakfast tomorrow because right now you look worse than I do.”

“I feel like
I
gave birth to the kid. My hands are still shaking!” I extended a batch of quivering digits. We were sitting side by side, she in my bed and me in one of the chairs I had dragged over. “Do I get to be godfather?”

“You get to baptize him.”

“What …?”

“Tomorrow. The circumstances are unusual, so it’s quite justified. And it’s the way I want ft.”

I took refuge in the cup of champagne. “Whatever you say.”

We sat in peaceful silence for some time. The cooling stovepipe clicked and the Great White Cold crept in through
the planks of the cabin floor and nipped my feet in their wool socks. Then there was a distant explosion.

“The trees are starting to pop off again,” I observed. “Going to be another really cold night. Think I’ll visit the outhouse and get us some more firewood before I turn in.” I checked my wrist chronometer, which I had stashed out of the way when scrubbing up. “Almost midnight.”

“We did a good job.” She finished her champagne.

“Damn right.”

I took her cup, and she settled back to sleep. The baby beside her had not made a peep, either vocally or mentally, since she finished bathing him. But now that all the excitement was over, I became aware of unfamiliar vibes pervading the atmosphere of our little cabin—weird and wonderful and quite different from any human aura I’d ever experienced before. I figured they had to be coming out of Jack.

I looked down at the tiny face, which was now pink and attractive. Perhaps he would grow up to be the greatest human mind ever! I said to him: Que le bon Dieu t’bénisse, Ti-Jean.

Then, aching in every muscle, I put on my Paks and layer after layer of outer clothes and wrapped my lower face in a muffler before pulling the parka hood tight. When it was really cold, exposed facial skin would freeze in less than a minute.