Thirty-Four
Thirty-Four
I t would have been easier for Dafyd if he could sleep, but his nights were all becoming the same.
Even though he felt dull and waterlogged from the moment he rose until he went back to his room at the day’s end, he would shut off the lights, pull up the blanket, and his eyes would open on the darkness.
His mind, which felt so slow and sleepy during the day, now sparked and slipped.
It grabbed one passing thought after the next.
Things he wanted the spy to search for in the ocean of data that was the archive, questions he could ask the Deep Lothark, the diminishing number of days until Campar returned, the need to keep pressure on the visualization workgroup now that Jellit was fully subsumed by the spy, how long he could keep the lie of Jellit’s survival going for Jessyn, and what he would tell her when the time came to reveal his death.
There were more things to keep in mind than he had places in his consciousness, and so he kept rediscovering things that he’d almost forgotten.
He needed to know about Jessyn’s archaeologist Garral P?r and whether he was a pathway to open communication with the enemy.
Andermus and Korham were growing more and more antagonistic, and he couldn’t let that get out of hand.
And then back to the questions for the spy and the Deep Lothark and the start of the cycle again.
At some point, he might notice he was dreaming.
That was the closest he could come to sleep.
When he woke, he was haunted by the feeling that he had all the pieces he needed to make a working plan.
He was growing more and more certain that there was a way to fit them together if he could just get some sleep.
Instead, he got up, showered, put on fresh clothes, and did his work. Some days, his duties were simple and rote. Others were more memorable.
The crowd started arriving at the nursery hours before Brun’s team was scheduled to begin decanting the babies from their lamb sacks.
By the time Dafyd arrived, almost a third of the human moiety was in attendance.
The nursery was packed, and displays had been put up in the common room and in the courtyard by the half-built school so that the people who couldn’t fit could still participate.
A thousand grandparents waiting impatiently for the arrival of a hundred grandchildren with only a few parent-aged people in between.
If there had been a whiff of brimstone about the project, an ethical crossing of lines, the day had come when people were ready to overlook it.
The babies of the world-palace were about to be decanted, and the fine points of how they’d come to be were in the past. It was too late for anything to happen except for what had happened.
Dafyd made his way to the front of the nursery. The Rak-hund and two Soft Lothark waited by the side door, willing to let Dafyd fight through the crowd, but not willing to let him out of their sight. That was fine. He was going to need them later.
Brun came out from the lab and the crowd noise went up, and then shushed itself into quiet. Not calm. Dafyd could feel the tension and anticipation, but quiet because they wanted to hear.
“Hey there, everyone,” the thin man said.
He was almost bouncing with anticipation.
“I just want to take a second and thank you all for coming. For being here. And to set some expectations. The kids are all doing great. We expect the day to go well. And I know many of you have been through days like this before. Welcoming some new, y’know, people into the universe.
This is going to be a little different than you’re used to.
“These kids have been gestating in lamb sacks, so they’ve already been seeing things.
They’ve experienced light in a way most newborns haven’t.
We’ve been simulating maternal heartbeats and breath, but not really voices.
So these little guys are going to be more visual and less easily soothed by sound at first?
That’s normal. It’s something to expect, not worry about.
“The thing I really want to say is how much these little guys are going to need you. They’re going to need people to hold them, to sing to them, to interact with.
To feel loved by. That’s got to be all of us.
The moiety is going to be what these babies have, so we’re setting up a rotation signup for people to come feed and change.
Just engage with these kids. I know it’s mandatory, but I hope you’ll all do it anyway. ”
Brun grinned, waiting for laughter at the joke, and the laughter came.
“So everybody just hang on for a few more minutes, all right?” he went on. “I’ve got some folks I’d like you to meet.” The crowd cheered and clapped and stomped their feet. Dafyd caught a glimpse of Jessyn on the far side of the nursery, clapping her hands along with the rest of them.
Brun turned back, disappearing into the lab, and Dafyd followed after him.
In the lab, Clae the spy was working alongside the rest of what had once been Tonner Freis’s team. Apart from being on the younger end of the age spectrum, she fit in fine. When she smiled and nodded to Dafyd, it was just a greeting. A politeness.
The lamb sacks had been moved for the decanting procedure, hanging in four lines like some exotic fruit that sprang from a vine made of metal and tubing.
All the babies that had lived were in a row, still connected to the placental feed that would go on providing them with oxygen and nutrition for just a few more moments.
The team had a basin waiting, and a stack of blankets as tall as Dafyd’s arm.
“All right,” Brun said. “We all ready? We can get this going. Let’s start with number one.”
The first sack was a boy with dark, tightly curled hair already as long as Dafyd’s pinky.
Dafyd stepped close as one of the others took the sack off its hanging rod, put clips on the feeding tube, and snipped him free.
The lamb sack burbled as they moved to the basin.
The baby looked up at them, his lips opening and closing, his little ribs laboring under the effort of breathing fluid for the last time in his life.
They lowered the sack into the basin. Brun took a blade no bigger than his thumbnail and ran it down the side where the panels of the sack met.
The pseudoamniotic fluid smelled salty and hot.
Brun slid the baby out, lifted him onto a table, and cut away the umbilical cord so efficiently that the tiny new person hardly had time to twist his face into a mask of affront and rage before Brun had moved him onto a blanket and swaddled him.
“You’re good at that,” Dafyd said.
“I had kids,” Brun said, lifting the child up into the crook of his arm. “You want to take him out?”
“Don’t you need to test him or something? I always thought you had to weigh them and check their reflexes.”
“We know these kids down to the gram. We’re not going to learn anything new until we start feeding them. And that’s once we’re done with all this.”
“All right, then,” Dafyd said. “Sure.”
“You going to name him?”
“No,” Dafyd said. “I’ll leave that for someone else. Whoever feeds him, maybe.”
“You sure? All these guys are here because of you.”
Dafyd took the tiny bundle of baffled primate into his arms. The small, dark eyes found him, and the new mouth opened with a grunt that seemed like confusion but might have been anything. “We need people to bond with them. Naming the baby is a profound bond. I’m not going to waste it on me.”
“Your choice,” Brun said. “Go ahead. Take him to meet his people.”
The crowd in the nursery surged and cheered as Dafyd came out to them.
They weren’t cheering for him, but that didn’t matter.
He carried the fragile bundle to a newborn’s crib designed for him and marked with the numeral 1 and a blank space where a name could be written.
When he laid the baby down and stepped back, a half dozen people stepped in, gazing down and cooing at the new arrival.
The baby lifted a tiny fist, waved it in the air, and yawned massively.
“You know,” Uuya Tomos said, taking his elbow and whispering into his ear, “I still think this is a horrifying perversion. If there is a Gallantist hell, we’re all going to burn there.”
“I do. I know that.”
“You look glum for a man who won.”
“There’s only one victory that matters to me,” Dafyd said. “This isn’t it.”
The door opened behind him, and one of the team came out with the second baby.
Dafyd backed against the wall and gave the crowd and the children room.
All around him, people beamed. Maybe there were others, parts of the moiety who disapproved of the whole thing, but they hadn’t come to the nursery.
Dafyd let the moment of joy be what it was.
“Is there something wrong?” Uuya Tomos asked, more gently this time.
“When this is done, I need to have an unpleasant conversation,” Dafyd said.
“It’s hard to be the king.”
“I’ll remember that if I meet one,” he said.
The older woman laughed once, mirthlessly. “No, you’re right. That isn’t you, is it? All the throne and none of the crown for you. You ever regret getting the job?”
“No,” he said. “If it wasn’t me someone else would have it, and they’d do it wrong. I’m where I need to be to do what I need to do. Self-pity is a waste of time.”
For the next two hours, new babies arrived through the door and were taken to the cribs with matching numbers on them.
Dafyd waited with a growing dread each time that the next baby would skip a crib.
A stillbirth or failed decanting or whatever the right term would be.
One of the many possible lives that got as far as breath and then turned back.