Shelter (25 page)

    "Sit down, sweetheart." Her mother's voice sounded strangled. Merry suddenly remembered what Constance had told Brenda, all those weeks ago. The doctors say she's probably fine.

    She sat. "What? I'm fine, aren't I? I feel fine! Am I sick again?"

    "You're perfectly healthy," Honoli said gently. "You aren't ill. But we've been keeping track of some relatively minor tissue damage, hoping it would clear up. I'm afraid it hasn't."

    "What?" she said, squinting. "Cancer?"

    "No, no! Nothing like that. But there are two areas of minor damage. Let me take them one at a time. The first is reproductive: there's some scarring of the fallopian tubes and some damage to the uterus." Constance paled, and Honoli said, "What this means is that you won't be able to conceive normally. But there are plenty of alternatives. You can still have children. You probably won't be able to have them without technological intervention, that's all."

    "Technological intervention?" Meredith said. She felt her back stiffen, saw her mother glare at the doctor. A vivid, terrible image came to her: bots with needles swarming over her abdomen, into her vagina, bots like sperm rushing into her uterus, stinging, sticking. Constance rose and moved around from Honoli's side of the desk to Meredith's, putting her hands on her daughter's shoulders. At her mother's touch, Meredith began to tremble. "What do you mean, technological intervention?"

    Honoli coughed. "Your ovaries appear unharmed; your eggs are probably fine"—there was that phrase again, probably fine, the two little words that had already been proven a lie—"although we won't be able to tell without more extensive testing, and I wouldn't recommend that until you're ready to start thinking about getting pregnant. If there's some problem there we can deal with it, I assure you. But to focus on the problems we already see"—Meredith felt her mother's kneading hands tighten on her shoulders—"there are a number of alternatives: uterine transplant, or the cultivation of a new uterus from your own tissue, although of course that's a good deal more expensive, or, if you weren't committed to experiencing pregnancy firsthand, the child could of course be gestated outside your body, either in an artificial womb or by a surrogate mother. The important thing is that whatever happens, we can pass along your genetic material. You can have your own genetic child. I promise you that."

    "Honey," Constance said, stroking her hair, "you don't have to think about any of this yet. You're getting too much information too soon. You haven't even had time to adjust to the news."

    Meredith felt herself choking. "You said there were two areas of damage. What's the second one?" Constance's hands tightened on her shoulders again, and Honoli looked down at his scans and cleared his throat.

    "The second sounds more serious, but it may be a more minor issue. There's some very subtle—very subtle, Meredith—damage to the part of your brain called the caudate nucleus. Now, you shouldn't worry—"

    "My brain?" Meredith said. "My brain's fine! I'm getting straight A's. Mom, tell him!"

    "Honey," Constance said, "let him finish."

    "Your grades aren't in question," Honoli said. "The caudate nucleus doesn't determine intelligence. It helps regulate anxiety, and the kind of damage you have could make you more susceptible to anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder."

    OCD. Meredith blinked, remembering how Raji had scolded her for washing the sheets three times. That had just been because she'd been distracted; she knew that. But she couldn't let anyone at Temple find out about this; they'd just blame her response to Hortense on OCD, and that wasn't fair. You didn't need to have OCD to get pissed off when someone pissed on your bed.

    Honoli was still talking. "The important thing is that it's only a susceptibility, Meredith, you understand? And if you do develop these conditions, they're very treatable; they respond beautifully to medication. But you need to watch yourself, especially during times of stress. You need to be alert to symptoms. If you become anxious and develop compulsive, ritual behavior—"

    "Does religion count?" Constance asked. Meredith could tell that she was working to keep her voice light. "She's a Temple initiate, you know. She's already been there for three months, and now she wants to re-up."

    Honoli coughed. "I don't personally consider faith an illness. Some people do, and yes, some forms of religious experience correlate with psychiatric conditions. That's not what we're talking about here. If Meredith develops OCD, you'll know it. Merry, I know this all sounds very scary, but none of it is a disaster. As aftereffects from CV go, well, you're really very lucky, especially considering how severe your case was." Constance's fingers dug into Meredith's shoulders again, and Honoli said quickly, "And in both areas, reproductive and neurological, you have choices. There are things you can do if either condition becomes a problem."

    "I want to go now," Meredith said. Choices: Honoli sounded like Matt. She seemed to hear her own voice from very far away: a child's voice, thin and plaintive. "Mommy, I want to go home, to Temple. Can we go now?"

    "Of course, sweetheart. Of course we can." Constance bent and kissed the top of Meredith's head. "We'll go right now. We'll go out to. lunch. Or we can go back to the house. Whatever you want."

    "I want to go to Temple."

    "All right, darling."

    Somehow she got there, although she never remembered leaving Honoli's office or getting into the car or riding to the Presidio, where she must have insisted that her mother leave her. She found herself walking alone under the fragrant eucalyptus, and then through the shrubbery archway, and then to the dorm. It was lunchtime; the others sat at the picnic tables outside, their heads bowed over bread and soup. Raji looked up. "Merry? Are you okay?"

    She didn't answer. She walked into the dorm, intending to go to her cubicle and lie down and try to think, but Raji and the others followed her. "Merry," Gwyn said. "Meredith, what happened?"

    She opened her mouth, and closed it again. She couldn't seem to say anything. "I—I was at the doctor's."

    Dana, in a blue top and pink shorts, said, "What did the doctor say, Merry?"

    "He says—he says I'm damaged." They had all gone very still, their faces grave and guarded, and Merry, stumbling over the words, tried to explain. She had to tell them something, because she'd told them this much, but she couldn't tell them about her brain. She couldn't tell them about the OCD. "It's not a big deal, he says. He says I can't have kids." Gwyn made a strangled noise, and Merry remembered what she'd said the night before. I hope the Goddess never favors you with children. Did she want Gwyn to feel bad? She didn't even know. She added quickly, "I mean, I can have kids, but only if they do stuff to me. That's why it's not a big deal. Because they can do stuff, if I want them to." She blinked.

    "Stuff?" Fergus asked gently.

    "Um," Merry said, trying to drag her mind away from the OCD issue. Did she have it already? "They can give me someone else's womb. Or they can grow me a new one, you know, in a vat or something." She tried to smile. "Or somebody else can have my kid for me. So it's not that bad."

    "Well," Anna said softly, "you have a long time to think about it. You don't need to decide anything now."

    That was what her mother had said. But her mother was pregnant, and her mother had Jack. Merry only had these people, this ragtag band of eccentrics and misfits, who thought she was a cowardly and hateful child, and who'd think she was already crazy if they knew what was wrong with her brain. She wondered if they were happy this had happened to her. But Hortense was biting her lip, and even Harold looked sad.

    "We couldn't have kids either," he said. "It happens, Merry, even to people who haven't had CV. You can adopt too, you know."

    "Or not have kids at all," Johann said. "Lots of people don't have kids. There are plenty of people on the planet already, you know? Even after Africa."

    "Yes. I know."

    "Do you want extra meditation time?" Gwyn said. "I have the afternoon off. I can do your chores for you."

    "Thanks," she said. She knew she should be grateful to Gwyn, at least as grateful as she'd been the other day when Gwyn had done the doggie cleanup for her, but all she felt was numb bewilderment with an undertone of panic. "I want to be alone now. The rest of you go eat. I'll come out when I'm ready."

    They left, and she went into her cubicle and dragged her meditation pillow out from under her cot. Even once she had gotten settled into a solid three-point stance, though, she couldn't seem to still her thoughts. That was a symptom of OCD, wasn't it? She kept thinking about her mother, about Jack, about Preston. She kept thinking about Hortense saying, "You look like my little girl," even though she'd never had children.

    "Merry?" It was Raji. "May I come in?"

    "Um, sure." Startled, but grateful for the distraction, Merry uncurled from the meditation posture and stretched out her legs. "Lunch is over?"

    "Yeah. The others went off to work assignments."

    "What about you? Aren't you supposed to be someplace too?" No cutting chores to hang out with the pretty girls.

    "I'm supposed to be cleaning the dog run, but Hortense said she'd do it for me."

    "Hortense?" Merry laughed, and felt normalcy returning. "Do you think that's wise?"

    "Harold's helping her. Um, Merry—you aren't damaged. I mean, I don't think you're damaged. I mean—"

    "Thanks," she said, suddenly too shy to look at him; she raised her eyes only when she felt him tentatively stroking her hair. She knew why he'd come. "Um, Raji, everybody else is-cooperating with this, right? They aren't going to report us to Matt?"

    "No, they aren't going to report us to Matt. Do you feel weird about it?"

    "I don't know." Did she? She frowned, thought about it, and realized that her body had made the decision for her. So she was breaking her vow to Matt and her mother; she didn't care. Cautiously, she snuggled into Raji's chest, butting his shoulder with her head, like one of the cats at the shelter, so that he'd put his arm around her. There. That was better. "At least we don't have to worry about—"

    "Oh, Goddess!" He wiggled away from her, said, "Do you think that's why I'm—"

    "No, no. I'm sorry. It was a joke, kind of. Come back."

    He did. After a while she said, ''I'm surprised Gwyn didn't have a fit, though. About the age thing."

    Raji laughed into her hair. "Gwyn said, and I quote, 'If you hurt that little girl, I'm going to have your testicles for breakfast.' "

    Merry, feeling giddy, giggled. "Gwyn has a thing about eating balls. Yours, Harold's. Have you noticed?"

    "Yeah. But anyway, that means you have to be sure to tell me if anything hurts."

    Nothing did.

    Ten

    THEOPHILUS Forrest Walford-Adam was born on February I, 2037, on an unseasonably mild day of soft, fragrant winds; he was delivered by cesarean section, following thirty hours of brutal induced labor. Before the decision to switch from vaginal delivery to C-section, Jack, Meredith, and Preston all served as labor coaches, along with three nurses, two doctors, and a small army of medibots. Jack stood at Constance's head; Meredith stood on her left, holding her hand, and Preston offered encouragement from an overhead monitor.

    "You don't have to do this," Constance had told Merry, three days before she went into labor. They'd been in the sunroom at home; Constance, Buddha-esque, was helping Meredith mix paint samples for Matt's office. Merry's redecoration of the common room—followed by the cubicles, kitchen, and laundry room—had been so successful that Matt had asked her to work on the administrative building too. He wanted various shades of beige, marigold, and peach, so Merry was putting together a palette from which he could choose. She loved this new work as passionately as she'd hated the old; she loved creating patterns, creating order, creating places where people could be safe. And if her rage for order was a symptom of brain damage, well, it was also a gift. It made her happy. "Honey, everybody knows you don't like hospitals or bots, or seeing people in pain, and you looked pretty green through most of the childbirth classes." It was true; watching video footage of women in agony, Meredith's main thought had been, Thank the Goddess I'll never have to go through this. "I appreciate the fact that you even went to the classes, but you're not likely to enjoy the actual event."

    Jack and Preston had said the same thing. "Neither are you," Meredith said, feeling stubborn, and Constance laughed.

    "Well, I don't think anyone does. But I have to go through it whether I want to or not; you don't. Look, why don't you just wait outside and come in for the actual birth?"

    Meredith shook her head. Constance usually made a big deal about family unity in the face of media pressure, and ScoopNet was already acting as if it had been appointed Theo's honorary corporate sibling. She didn't know why her mother was being so considerate of her phobias; she knew her mother didn't understand why Merry was being so pigheaded about being at the birth.

    She hadn't understood it herself, not at first. "I really want to be there," she'd told Raji in bed one night. "Isn't that weird?" She and Raji didn't actually sleep together, because the dormitory beds weren't wide enough for two, but they spent time together in one bed or another, having sex or just talking, nearly every evening. They'd learned to fit their long frames together comfortably on the narrow mattresses; right now they were spooned, Raji's chest against Merry's back, Raji's left arm serving as Merry's pillow while, with his right hand, he played with her hair. "I hate medical stuff."

    "Well, as medical stuff goes, this is pretty happy, Merry. I mean, babies are a good thing, right? Theo's your brother. This is your family."

    "Huh. I don't know. Jack and my mother don't always feel like my family. They feel like their own. That's why I like it when you come to our house for dinner, but it's not like I can have you there when Theo's born."