Chapter 2 Nobody’s Baby
FLORA TILBURN’S SECRET apartment was on Forward Port Six: People here kept mostly to themselves, and the apartment units were particularly famous for soundproofing, a sense of isolation, and smoked-glass panes preventing anyone from catching a glimpse of the interior.
Thick rugs on the walkways muffled our footsteps as we approached the door.
If you wanted to hide your personal life, this was the place you went to do it.
And it seemed Flora had. Yes, there were several outfits for the baby here, and in the icebox was food for both infants and adults that was wilted but hadn’t yet had time to spoil.
A few dresses—all in Flora’s size, and only Flora’s size—hung in the closet, but no sign of any second adult inhabitant.
I went to check the door lock just as a neighbor in brown wool was walking by. The baby, upstairs, let out a wail.
The neighbor’s step slowed, and their eyes briefly met mine.
I glared at them stonily until they dropped their gaze and hurried away.
Intriguingly, the front door lock had been wiped clean of any entry records, which implied that someone with some technical savvy had been trying to cover their tracks.
No real surprise there: Flora and her roommate were both neck-deep in the flicker crowds, who were almost as mechanically adept as the automata folks down on Forward Starboard Seven.
Anyone who knew their way around the complexity of a skimmer system would have no trouble with a simple lock.
Perhaps Mrs. Godfrey had reset the lock when she came in and found the baby; perhaps someone else had come by in the days since.
Either way, nothing here told us anything about the other part of the baby’s parentage. So it was back in the lift, and up to Medical.
There was a public entrance—a lovely one—but we didn’t use it.
We went in through the back and to the morgue, where bodies were taken when no longer needed so that they could be broken down into their constituent atoms. It was kept strictly separate from the object-reclamation center down on Deck Seventeen, but the process was essentially the same.
There was always a faint but unsettling smell of luncheon meat, whose source the technicians staunchly refused to identify.
“Ferry,” I said when we were safely ensconced in the mortician’s borrowed office, “I’m afraid I have to ask you about someone’s genetics.”
Because I was a detective, and because I was in Medical, the shipmind’s reply was swift.
Oh dear, said the Fairweather. Is that truly necessary, Miss Gentleman?
Genetic patterns, like passengers’ memories, were some of the most closely guarded data on board ship: It was rare for even a detective to have reason to open them up.
“I’m afraid so,” I sighed. “We need you to find us the father of this baby.”
A pause. What baby, Miss Gentleman? Babies are not permitted while in transit.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Ruthie looked as flummoxed as I felt, staring down at the baby as though he were looking at a tiny, adorable ghost.
John’s lips quirked in a way that somehow mingled both amusement and exhaustion. Poor man, he really deserved a nap. “Ferry, how many people are in this room right now?”
I sense three, Mr. Pengelly.
Now we all looked at the baby. “Ferry,” I said slowly, “how many hearts are beating in this room?”
Another pause, then: Oh shit.
I shot a glance at my nephew, who had the grace to blush. “So you taught the shipmind how to curse?” I asked.
“It seemed prudish not to,” Ruthie muttered, color splashing high on his sharp cheekbones.
Ferry’s agitation distracted me. Why are there four hearts and only three people?!
“The thing is, Ferry,” I said, “someone’s made a baby. Not built one—made one. Do you see?”
Every time a body was reconstituted in Medical, it was rebuilt at the age of twenty.
Nobody had wanted to go through puberty multiple times, not if they could avoid it.
And every single cell of every new body had a tiny little something extra built in, a little molecular scrap that Ferry could use to sense and communicate with.
And, occasionally, as I had personal reason to know: to control.
But only in the most exigent circumstances.
But this freshly produced child had none of that extra material.
He was, to Ferry’s very specialized senses, invisible.
What eyes Ferry did have were focused outward, scanning for asteroids and planets and other dangers of the vastness around us.
The ship could no more look casually at its insides than I could.
But the ship did have a wealth of other internal sensors, in case of depressurization or malfunction in the artificial gravity or an impact that might threaten the integrity of the hull.
It made Ferry quite sensitive to vibrations.
Such as, for example, the difference between three and four hearts beating in a single room.
“We need you to tell us who made this baby,” I said.
So you can stop them from making any more? Ferry demanded plaintively.
“Well—yes,” I conceded. We were probably going to have to ask the parents not to produce any more children with their current bodies. We simply weren’t set up to handle them.
Of course, that was presuming this baby had happened by accident, and not as a result of careful and deliberate planning.
Flora, certainly, did not seem to have intended it—but Flora was not the only parent.
Perhaps someone else had found a way to undo all our fertility restrictions.
Perhaps everyone was going to end up pregnant and the ship’s population would skyrocket.
We could feed everyone with the autochefs, of course, but finding places for so many new people to live was going to be a disaster …
I reined myself in. It’d been less than a day since this mess began, but perhaps I was already spending too much time near the flickers. Stories that powerful had a way of warping perspectives. Even mine.
Please deposit part of the baby in the salvage bin, said Ferry.
Well, that was no way to maintain calm: It took five full minutes for John and me to persuade Ruthie not to flee the hospital and go on the lam to protect the child from dissection by a malicious machine. “I’m sure we could just use a lock of hair, Ruthie.”
“Or…” John pulled up a fresh nappie from his bag and waggled it demonstratively.
I narrowed my eyes at the baby, who blinked up at me with the satisfied look of a creature that had had two full bottles of milk and plenty of time to process them.
And so the soiled nappie went into the salvage bin, and the baby’s wild and feathery hair remained on his head. I popped the mess into the intake with a creak of metal and glowered through the glass as it began to glow and dissolve.
“Ferry,” I said while we waited, “how many hearts are beating on the ship at present?”
Nine thousand, eight hundred, and seventy-three, the ship said after a moment. Relief was plain in his mental voice. Not counting the seventeen in Medical that have been built but aren’t active yet.
I breathed out, and some of my fear ebbed away. John looked positively ecstatic. So our population boom really was an increase of only one. An accident rather than an influx.
A few seconds after that, Ferry revealed the child’s parentage.