have you, Michael? Can I have you?”
He was trying to think, to process what she was saying and what was happening, the taste of her, and also the fact that she had now, it seemed, climbed on top of him, straddling him near the waist, her face still pushed into his own—a collision of impulses and sensations that rendered him into a state of mute compliance. A baby? She wanted to have a baby? If she had a baby she didn’t have to wear a ring?
“Mira!”
A moment of complete disorientation; the girl was gone, vaulted away. The room was suddenly full of men, large men in orange jumpsuits, crowding the space with their bulk. One of them caught Mira by the arm. Not a man: Billie.
“I’ll pretend,” she said to the girl, “that I didn’t see this.”
“Listen,” Michael said, finding his voice, “it was my fault, whatever you think you saw—”
Billie nailed him with a cold glare. Behind her, one of the men snickered.
“Don’t even pretend this was your idea.” Billie pointed her eyes at Mira again. “Go home,” she commanded. “Go home now.”
“He’s mine! He’s for me!”
“Mira, enough. I want you to go straight home and wait there. Don’t talk to anyone. Do I make myself understood?”
“He’s not for the ring!” Mira cried. “Poppa said!”
That word again, Michael thought. The ring. What was the ring?
“He will be unless you get out of here. Now go.”
These last words appeared to work; Mira fell silent and, without looking at Michael again, darted behind the screen. The feelings of the last few minutes—desire, confusion, embarrassment—were still whirling inside him while another part of him was also thinking: just my luck. Now she’ll never come back.
“Danny, go bring the truck around back. Tip, you stay with me.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
Billie had withdrawn a small metal tin from somewhere on her person. With thumb and forefinger she pinched a bit of dust from the tin and sprinkled it into a cup of water. She held it out to him.
“Bottoms up.”
“I’m not drinking that.”
She sighed impatiently. “Tip, a little help here?”
The man stepped forward, towering over Michael’s bed.
“Trust me,” Billie said. “You won’t like the taste, but you’ll feel better fast. And no more fat lady.”
The fat lady, thought Michael. The fat lady in the kitchen in the Time Before.
“How did you—?”
“Just drink. We’ll explain on the way.”
There seemed no way to avoid it. Michael tipped the cup to his lips and poured it down. Flyers, it was awful.
“What the hell is that?”
“You don’t want to know.” Billie took the cup from him. “Feeling anything yet?”
He was. It was as if someone had plucked a long, tight string inside him. Waves of bright energy seemed to radiate from his very core. He’d opened his mouth to declare this discovery when a strong spasm shook him, a gigantic, whole-body hiccup.
“That happens the first time or two,” said Billie. “Just breathe.”
Michael hiccuped again. The colors in the room seemed unusually vivid, as if all the surfaces around him were part of this new nexus of energy.
“He better shut up,” warned Tip.
“It’s fantastic,” Michael managed to say. He swallowed hard, pushing the urge to hiccup down inside him.
The second man had returned from the hallway. “We’re losing the light,” he said briskly. “We better get a move on.”
“Get him his clothes.” Billie steadied her gaze on Michael again. “Peter says you’re an engineer. That you can fix anything. Is that true?”
He thought of the words on the paper Sara had slipped him. Tell them nothing.
“Well?”
“I guess.”
“I don’t want you to guess, Michael. It’s important. You can or you can’t.”
He glanced toward the two men, who were looking at him expectantly, as if everything depended on his answer.
“Okay, yes.”
Billie nodded. “Then put your clothes on and do everything we tell you.”
FIFTY
Mausami in darkness, dreaming of birds. She awoke to a quick bright fluttering beneath her heart, like a pair of wings beating inside her.
The baby, she thought. This baby is moving.
The feeling came again—a distinct aquatic pressure, rhythmic, like rings widening on the surface of a pool. As if someone were tapping at a pane of glass inside her. Hello? Hello out there!
She let her hands trace the curve of her belly under her shirt, damp with sweat. A warm contentment flooded her. Hello, she thought. Hello back, you.
The baby was a boy. She’d thought it was a boy since the start, since the first morning at the compost pile when she’d lost her breakfast.