The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (95 page)

Later still he pressed his ear to Caroline's belly, listening for the second heartbeat. He couldn't hear it yet, though Caroline assured him it was there. "Do you think the tattoo work is good for the baby?" he asked.
"You're not tattooing the baby," she said. "If it makes me feel joy, then why shouldn't it be good for her?"
"How do you know it's a her?"
Caroline laughed. "Before I was a dried-up old crone I had enough children to know what it feels like, Lawrence. It's a girl."
That settled it in Lawrence's mind: He'd seen enough of Caroline's knowledge to know that you never bet against her. But he was still a little surprised when the baby came, and it really was a girl. By that time they had crossed the mountains, and had taken temporary shelter in the mouth of a "cave" that was really the ruin of an old mine.
Caroline knelt by their fire and waited, so that gravity would help her baby come. As the birth unfolded, Lawrence felt for the first time how crushingly alone they were. If anything went wrong, there was very little he could do about it. He felt a brief panic, wondering what he would do if by some catastrophe she died in childbirth.
But nothing went wrong, the baby dropped into Lawrence's waiting hands after only a few hours of labor, and both she and Caroline emerged from the experience healthy. Lawrence figured that Caroline's general high state of health had a lot to do with that; she had not let her pregnancy slow them down until it was time to actually settle in for the birth itself.
As Caroline nursed and recovered, Lawrence explored the mine for a short distance, and found a small yellow pebble that amazingly turned out to be malleable. It was the first metal they had encountered. They speculated that perhaps this speck of gold had survived Prime Intellect's cleanup because it had been underground.
In any case, it was what inspired Caroline to name their baby girl Nugget.

THE FALL + 4 YEARS

The mountains had started as a low haze on the horizon, then gradually grown as they had moved on. Now they were within striking distance, and Lawrence remembered the adventure of crossing the Rockies, having to rappel down gorges with homemade rope and climb bare rock faces dozens of meters high with his bare hands. Doing the same thing with a toddler and a new baby would not be a pleasant undertaking.
But Caroline assured him that there would be no such problems. "Those are the Ozarks," she said. "They're dark, but passable. I was born there, but I don't want to stop there. I want to go on to the
Ouachitas
."
The new baby, a boy, had been born during their approach to the northern Ozark range, across the long-fallow fields of what had once been Kansas and Missouri. Because they could see the mountains when he came, Caroline named him Ozark. Nugget was not yet old enough to walk, so they carried both babies on cradleboards, a trick Caroline had learned in her studies of actual Native Americans.
Her tattoo phoenix was complete, but Caroline had gone on to ask for a swallow on her thigh. Lawrence was convinced that she wouldn't stop until her body was completely covered, but it would take them many more years to accomplish that. Because the skin was more sensitive, it hurt more when he jabbed her now. At times she had to bite down on a piece of leather to keep from yelling.
But she always insisted that he keep working.
"Did it take this long for your friend in Cyberspace to tattoo you?" he asked as he worked.
"Fred used a knife. It's faster but less exact. And we didn't have to do anything else."
Rub, jab, jab. Rub, jab, jab. Wipe, test, fill in where it didn't take. Caroline nursed Nugget for
awhile
as he worked. Then she let the baby watch, becoming hypnotized by the repetitive activity and finally falling asleep.
"Don't you sometimes wish you had him here to do this instead of me?"
To his surprise Caroline laughed. "What a thought! If I'd woken up here and found Fred under that tree ... or Palmer ... you know what I'd have done?"
"No idea."
"I'd have killed them before they got the bright idea to kill me."
Lawrence looked up, startled.