certain, but it seemed normal enough. Back of the hand to the cheek. No fever. No pain or ache in the extremities. Probably not a flu. Food poisoning?
Unlikely-the heaves were mild, lacked that violent, almost projectile quality that accompanied food poisoning. Her mind continued to run symptoms and causes. Hit one, and froze. A vise had suddenly begun to close around her temples.
"Ancestors, NO!" The shrill howl bounced off the walls. How long had she been buried in this living hell? Weeks? Months?
"And not once has this miserable carcass had its menses!" Tach panted.
Her heart was pounding, she could feel it beating in her gut. Or was it that other thing, that unspeakable prospect? Her hand thrust down the front of her blue jeans. She drew her palm across the slight swell of the belly.
Too soon to tell. No, it couldn't be. What the hell else could it be? Flu.
Nausea after waking. Nerves.
No menstrual cycle.
"All right," Tach screamed, sick of the argument with herself. "All right! The goddamn body is pregnant!"
And in that moment she went a little mad. When she finally returned to herself, she was on her knees by the wall. Her throat was raw from screaming. And something warm and sticky was matting her hair and pouring across her left eye. Tach ran her tongue across her lips and tasted and sharp coppery taste of blood.
Slowly she raised her hand to her hairline. Whimpered in pain as her fingers touched the mangled scalp. She had been beating her head against the wall, a trapped and maddened animal biting off its leg to escape the trap. Death was an escape. But she hadn't succeeded, and now sanity had returned. She was making a noise far back in her throat that hardly sounded Takisian. Desperately, Tachyon scrabbled across the floor on all fours. Snatched up the spoon. Thrust it into her teeth as she clawed at the button and zipper on the blue jeans. Ripped them down, pulling them inside out as she kicked with frantic haste to free herself from the confining material.
Knees up, a hand resting on the curling pubic hair, fingers ready to part the labia. And she froze. She had no idea where the fertilized egg reposed. She would have to scrape each wall of the uterus. And if she didn't get it all the resulting infection ... and if she tore the delicate walls of the uterus the resulting hemorrhage ...
The smell of a woman rotting from the inside out filled her nostrils. A time when abortion had been illegal. A time when a desperate joker woman had butchered herself with a coat hanger.
Tach began to shake. Infection be damned, she thought. Consider what you are contemplating. I have no evidence this child is defective. I can kill a defective. I can't kill a baby.
It's not a baby, argued another part of herself. It's a collection of several hundred cells.
"It's going to be a baby," said Tach aloud.
And you're a man! Are you seriously going to go through with this abomination?
"What else can I do?" she cried desperately. "Butcher myself, and bleed to death?"
"It's a baby," she whispered again.
It will be defective. It's Blaise's child. It will be crazy! Destroy it now!
"You are arguing to save yourself from this indignity. Well... why? All the indignities imaginable have been heaped upon you. You have been kidnapped, robbed, assaulted, raped, and imprisoned. Why balk at this?"
Because I'm a man damn it! And there's something growing in me!
"It is a baby," Tach murmured as exhaustion struck her like a blow between the eyes. She flung aside the spoon. Heard its metallic jangle as it struck the far wall.
The temptation was effectively removed. She would have to crawl laboriously through the darkness to locate the utensil again, and by the time she found it, she would have again talked herself out of committing murder.
She groped for her blue jeans. Pulled them onto her shivering body. The cold sweat that had drenched her had now left her chilled to the bone. She crawled to her favorite corner and fell headlong into a sleep that bordered on coma.
The shrilling of pipes and the deep-throated booming of drums fell on her ears like a killing cloud on a field of young flowers. She was female again. Most annoying. Damn it, it was her dream. Why couldn't she be Tachyon again-slim and lithe and male? She became aware of movement, an undulating rocking that made her feel dreadfully insecure. She pushed aside