Busted Flush Page 0,26

vicious twist. Regularity was crucial. Generations yet unborn - but cherished no less - would drop like mayflies, if not for BICC's rigid methodologies. And so she went, for the sake of her future family.

Therapy room two mimicked the layout of Niobe's own quarters, except for the larger bed (a California king-size mattress) and the curtains along one wall.

Christian was seated on the edge of the bed. He looked up when she walked in. "Where were you? They're going nuts in there." He gestured at the curtains with the long, knobby fingers that always felt warm and strong on her hips.

"With Xerxes." She wiped her eyes. "He passed. Just now."

He grunted, pulling the shirt of his BICC uniform over his head. The soft blond hair on his body didn't catch the lights, so his chest looked slick and bare.

"He was scared," she said, walking behind a bamboo privacy screen in the corner. Niobe had insisted on the screen. As she draped her sweatshirt over the top of the screen, she added, "He would have liked it if you visited."

"Who?"

"Xerxes."

"Oh."

The bristly hairs at the base of her tail snagged the waistband on her sweatpants. As she worked them free, she added, "You could come, next time." Christian said nothing.

She scooted under the covers while Christian had his back turned. The linens made scratchy noises as she pulled the sheets around her. She wished she had shaved her legs, wished the wild card hadn't given her pig hair.

The nightstand clunked as Christian dropped a prescription bottle into the drawer. He popped a pill in his mouth. She pretended not to see any of it. The pills made her feel ugly. Uglier.

She lifted the covers for him, but he paused to draw the curtains, revealing a long mirror along the far wall.

"Maybe we can leave the curtains closed, just once."

The mattress bobbed as he climbed in next to her. "They go ape-shit when we do that." As he plumped a pillow under his head, he added, "Besides, it's all for the kids."

A cotton tent raised itself farther down the bed, below Christian's waist, as he laced his fingers behind his head. The pill had worked, whatever it was.

She leaned over to kiss him, but he pulled away.

"C'mon, Niobe. They're waiting."

No warmth between her legs, no tingling desire. Not that it mattered.

Niobe sighed. She took care not to glimpse the mirror as she straddled Christian, not to see her shapeless, doughy body; her tail; her acne.

Christian laid his hands on her waist, strong fingers wrapping around her hips. He never touched her stomach, or her back, or her breasts. She wanted his arms around her, but resigned herself to holding his shoulders. His fingertips dimpled her flesh as they found a rhythm.

Her tail convulsed. Niobe groaned. The ovipositor widened for peristalsis with a tearing pain that robbed her of breath. The first egg in a clutch was always the worst.

Christian finished with a little convulsion of his own, but not before she was already climbing down. She wanted to hide behind the privacy screen, but Pendergast and the others were adamant about recording every detail of the birth process. At least the sheets made a passable toga; Niobe had a lot of practice.

Christian rolled off the bed. He pulled his boxers on.

The first egg formed at the base of her tail. Through clenched teeth, she said, "Won't you . . . unhhh . . . stay?"

He pulled his shirt back over his head. "What?"

"Don't you want to" - another burst of pain as the first egg passed midway along her tail and the second formed - "meet the little ones?"

"Can't. Docs gotta examine me." Christian combed his hair in the mirror. "I've explained this before."

She wondered why they couldn't examine him before each session, but couldn't catch her breath enough to ask. The tip of her tail tore open to pass a sticky, pineapple-sized egg. She deposited it in the square marked on the floor, where the cameras on the other side of the wall and in the ceiling could film the hatching from multiple angles.

Christian opened the door.

"Maybe you could come by and see them later?"

"Maybe," he said. And then he was gone.

Niobe dressed while the trio of eggs wobbled, shuddered, and expanded. The first disintegrated with a little pop, overlaying a talcum-powder smell on the odors of antiseptic and sex. In its place stood a three-foot-tall homunculus: stocky, bald, but with a bushy, fiery red beard.

He rubbed his scalp and looked around