"Belly hurt, too?"
She frowned. "Don't be foolish. I'm feeling for the contraction. There it comes."
"The--but you just said the small of your back."
"Where do you think labor pains usually start?"
The pains were coming at twenty-minute intervals and the taxi had not arrived. Moira was packed and ready. Len was trying to set her a good example by remaining calm. He strolled over to the wall calendar, gazed at it in an offhand manner, and turned away.
"Len, I know it's only the fifteenth of July," she said impatiently.
"Huh? I didn't say anything about that."
"You said it seven times. Sit down. You're making me nervous."
Len perched on the corner of the table, folded his arms, and immediately got up to look out the window. On the way back, he circled the table in an aimless way, picked up a bottle of ink and shook it to see if the cap was on tight, stumbled over a wastebasket, carefully up-ended it, and sat down with an air of _Ici je suis, ici je reste_.
"Nothing to worry about," he said firmly. "Women have kids all the time."
"True."
"What for?" he demanded violently.
Moira grinned at him, then winced slightly and looked at the clock.
"Eighteen minutes this time. They're getting closer."
When she relaxed, Len put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it in only two tries. "How's Leo taking it?"
"Isn't saying. He feels--" she concentrated--"apprehensive. He tells me he's feeling strange and he doesn't like it. I don't think he's entirely awake. Funny--"
"I'm glad this is happening now," Len announced.
"So am I, but--"
"Look," said Len, moving energetically to the arm of her chair. "We've always had it pretty good, haven't we? Not that it hasn't been tough at times, but--you know."
"I know."
"Well, that's the way it'll be again, once this is over. I don't care how much of a superbrain he is, once he's born--you know what I mean?
The only reason he's had the edge on us all this time is he could get at us and we couldn't get at him. If he's got the mind of an adult, he can learn to act like one. It's that simple."
Moira hesitated. "You can't take him out to the woodshed. He's going to be a helpless baby, physically, like anybody else's. He has to be taken care of."
"All right, there are plenty of other ways. If he behaves, he gets read to. Things like that."
"That's right, but there's one other thing I thought of. You remember when you said suppose he's asleep and dreaming, and what happens if he wakes up?"
"Yeah."
"That reminded me of something else, or maybe it's the same thing. Did you know that a fetus in the womb only gets about half the amount of oxygen in his blood that he'll have when he starts to breathe?"
Len looked thoughtful. "I forgot. Well, that's just one more thing Leo does that babies aren't supposed to do."
"Use as much energy as he does, you mean. What I'm getting at is, it can't be because he's getting more than the normal amount of oxygen, can it? I mean he's the prodigy, not me. He must be using it more efficiently. And if that's it, what will happen when he gets twice as much?"
They had prepared and disinfected her, along with other indignities, and now she could see herself in the reflector of the big delivery-table light--the image clear and bright, like everything else, but very haloed and swimmy, and looking like a bad statue of Sita. She had no idea how long she had been here--that was the dope, probably--but she was getting pretty tired.
"Bear down," said the staff doctor kindly, and before she could answer, the pain came up like violins and she had to gulp at the tingly coldness of laughing gas.
When the mask lifted, she said, "I _am_ bearing down," but the doctor had gone back to work and wasn't listening.
Anyhow, she had Leo. _How are you feeling?_
His answer was muddled--because of the anesthetic?--but she didn't really need it. Her perception of him was clear: darkness and pressure, impatience, a slow Satanic anger ... and something else.
Uncertainty? Dread?
"Two or three more ought to do it. Bear down."
Fear. Unmistakable now. And a desperate determination--
"Doctor, he doesn't want to be born!"
"Seems that way sometimes, doesn't it? Now bear down good and hard."
_Tell him stop blurrrr too dangerrrr stop I feel worrrr stop I tellrrrr stop_
"What, Leo? What?"
"Bear down," the doctor said abstractedly.
Faintly, like a voice under water, gasping before it drowns: _Hurry I hate you tell him sealed incubator tenth oxygen nine-tenths inert gases hurry hurry hurry_
"An incubator!" she panted. "He'll need an incubator ... to live ...
won't he?"
"Not this baby. A fine, normal, healthy one."
_He's idiot lying stupid fool need incubator tenth oxygen tenth tenth hurry before it's_
The pressure abruptly ceased.
Leo was born.
The doctor was holding him up by the heels, red, wrinkled, puny. But the voice was still there, very small, very far away: _Too late same as death_