A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe)

by Leicht, Martin

  He is cradling my baby.

  The Goober is tiny and pink and wrinkly, cooing softly as Byron bobs her gently up and down.

  “We’ve made arrangements for your journey,” he tells me as he nears with my daughter. “You’ll leave on the Fountain. It will only take a few hours to get to the continent, although from there I’m afraid you’ll have to travel by dogsled. Technology is great, but it can’t trump Mother Nature. Still, it’s a relatively easy journey, at least to the base.”

  But I’m hardly listening. In the instant he hands me the Goober, the whole world seems to drop away.

  I am a mother.

  This wrinkled pink raisin is my daughter.

  She finally opens her eyes, and blinks up at me, and that’s when I start to cry. Huge, blubbering sobs. Worse than when Christian was killed off in season three of Martian Law.

  Byron takes in the scene quietly. Almost as if he were ashamed. I can only hope.

  “I never did ask,” he asks softly. “What are you going to name her?”

  I rub my daughter’s left cheek, where, curiously, her constellation of freckles seems ten times lighter than the last time I saw her. “Olivia,” I say through my sobs. I hold her close, feeling the rise and fall of her perfect, tiny breaths. “After my mother. Her name is Olivia.”

  Chapter Two

  In Which Ducky Barfs For Hours

  Grown men—even ones who, like my father, have difficult jobs to which they wear a suit and tie every day, and know how to use big words like “hypnagogic” in a sentence, and have even, perhaps, raised children of their own—might be forgiven for breaking down and weeping at the sight of their brand-new grandbaby, cradled in a daughter’s arms. You might even expect that such an event would cause tears—giddiness, even. Perhaps the grandfather in question might go so far as to tuck his legs up underneath him in his chair and clap his hands together like a kindergartner who’s imbibed too much orange drink.

  My father is currently doing all of these things. But it is not because of little baby Olivia. Oh, he likes her fine. He said she’s “adorable,” even, and “a miracle,” and he did spend a good amount of time cuddling with her when we first got on the mag rail.

  But the thing that’s actually making my father squeal like a preteen who just got Hansel Wintergarden’s autograph is, in fact, our means of transport.

  “You’d never even suspect how fast we were moving if you didn’t know it!” he gushes, pressing his nose against the window. “It’s smoother than the SleekTransit mag line, by far. Such a marvel of engineering. Wouldn’t you agree, Donald?”

  Next to my father, Ducky has turned a shade of pea-soup green that is such an exact match to the train’s upholstery that I could have sworn the designers used his face as a color swatch. “Yeah,” he moans. “A marvel.” The Duck, clearly, was not built for high-speed travel.

  Neither, apparently, is little Olivia, who is enjoying the ride about as much as having knitting needles crammed into her ears. She’s wailing a piercing wail, and doing the baby equivalent of the Electric Slide up and down my chest.

  “I think we’re going to be docking with the space elevator soon,” my dad gushes on. “Oh, wait until you see it, Elvie. Did I already mention it’s a marvel? A marvel! And to call it the Fountain? Ha, let it not be said these Almiri gents lack for sense of humor.”

  “I think you’re forgetting that this marvelous space elevator is taking us to a prison in Antarctica,” I mutter, bobbing Olivia in a futile attempt to get her to quiet down. Seriously, the girl might not be an Almiri like her father, but she sure has superhuman pipes.

  Dad must be able to tell that I’m feeling especially low at the moment, because he puts a hand on my shoulder. I stifle a tear that’s threatening to break loose from the corner of my eye and smile a tight smile at him. He smiles back, and I wait for his words of comforting fatherly wisdom that will get me through this whole ordeal.

  “Did I mention that the Fountain is the world’s first completely free-navigating space elevator?” he says earnestly. “There’s no Earthbound anchor needed at all!”

  “Flipping fantastic,” I say, turning away from my view of Ducky—who, at the mere mention of more travel, has begun hiccupping noxiously. “But, seriously, Dad, what’s our escape plan? How are we getting out of here?” I know my father, and if Mr. Harry Nara doesn’t have fifteen exit strategies in his pocket at this very moment, then I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Or mother, at least. I shift the screeching Olivia away from my eardrums. Her wailing is reaching a decibel I thought only tweaked dolphins were capable of, which is not superconducive to the whole “crafting a master escape plan” thing. I try to run through a list of ideas—diversion? sabotage? fan dancing?—but my head is so fuzzy from Olivia’s squealing that I’m practically useless.

  “Dearheart . . . ,” Dad says at last, offering me a kindly smile.

  “I know you like me to figure these things out for myself, Dad,” I reply, shifting Olivia’s position again. If anything, she only gets louder. “But just at this moment I could really use some hel—”

  My father lifts the baby from my arms. And, without another word, he nestles Olivia’s tiny, slightly misshapen infant head securely in the crook of his left elbow. He shifts her up a few dozen centimeters, so they are nearly nose-to-nose. And then . . .

  My father starts singing.

  “I love you, a bushel and a peck.

  A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.

  A hug around the neck, and a barrel and a heap . . .”

  “Uh, Dad?” I say. This is for serious the weirdest escape plan I have ever seen. “You care to fill me in on what you’re—”

  “Shhhh.” Ducky cuts me off with a sweaty green hand on my arm. “I think it’s working.”

  “What’s work—” I start, before, duh, lightbulb.

  My baby has stopped crying. With me she was all screams and flailing, but two seconds with my dad and she’s calm as a cucumber. She’s even cooing.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  But Dad only has eyes for the baby. “ ’Cause I love you,” he finishes, “a bushel and a peck. You bet your pretty neck I do.” He brushes a hand across her forehead, smoothing out her fuzzy baby hair. “Sleep tight, baby Olivia,” he tells her. And sure enough—my mouth drops open—my little girl is asleep.

  Funny how a person can look about nine thousand times cuter when she’s not screaming bloody murder.

  I raise my eyebrows at my dad, who rocks Olivia gently in his arms.

  “Just like riding a bicycle,” he replies with a genial smile. He looks up at me. “That song used to be your favorite.”

  At that moment, the train car door slides open, and in walks Alan, a.k.a. the World’s Most Forgettable Man. Alan’s been nothing but a bundle of yawns this whole trip, just “Yes, ma’am”s and “No, sir”s, with hardly anything in between. Seriously, the guy practically has “Expendable” tattooed on his forehead.

  “Alas! Alack! It’s Alan!” I say, hoping for some sort of reaction.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says, all formal-like. “It’s almost time—”

  Dad shoots upright in his chair, clutching the still-dozing Olivia. “Time to dock with the elevator, yes! I could tell by the shift in the frequency of the train’s vibration. Elvie, just you wait. The whole thing will blow your mind, I promise.”

  “Golly gee,” I mutter. “Why didn’t I think to get myself shipped off to prison years ago?”

  Alan tosses each of us a silvery-gray jumpsuit. There’s even a bitty silvery papoose for Olivia.

  “What are these for?” I ask. “Are we going to need to free-float to the station? ’Cause I’ve had some experience in zero-grav.”

  “The thermals are for when we arrive in Antarctica,” he replies. “It’s cold there.” From anyone else, that would have sounded snarky, sarcastic, or just an attempt at deadpan humor. But God love ’im, Alan is one-hundred-percent not kidding.

  “We�
��re almost ready to transfer,” he goes on. “You have five minutes.” And with that, he leaves.

  “Better get a move on!” Dad says, more overcome with excitement than I’ve seen him since the New England Crossword Puzzle Championships (where, he’d have you know, he placed thirty-seventh). He hands Olivia back to me so he can put on his thermal suit, but of course, the instant he does so, she wakes up and begins wailing again.

  “It’s so nice to be loved,” I mutter, bouncing the baby in my arms in my best imitation of my Super Dad. But Olivia’s having none of it. “I love you,” I squeak out, “a bushel and a peck . . .” I am growing more and more frantic with each second of Olivia’s piercing distress signal. And it’s not helping things any that Ducky’s sitting on the other side of the train car with his fingers jammed in his ears, the pain written clearly across his face. “Is it my singing or Olivia’s screaming?” I ask him.

  He pulls a finger from his ear just long enough to answer. “Can’t it be both?”

  My father, of course, already has his arms and legs jammed into his thermal suit. “Don’t worry, Dearheart,” he tells me. “You’ll get it. Being a parent takes practice.” And with a quick peck to my forehead, he races down the hall as he zips his suit up down the middle. “Hurry up, now!” he calls back to us. I swear I can hear him tittering with glee.

  I glance down at the screaming infant wedged between my left arm and my boob, and then at the two thermal suits in my lap. Across from me sits Ducky. He doesn’t seem to be in much of a rush either. I take advantage of a moment when Olivia’s gulping for air, and there’s an actual second of silence between us in the train car.

  “Ducky?” I say softly.

  He looks up.

  “I’m really sorry,” I tell him. “About . . . everything.” How I managed to drag the best friend in the universe into this whole mess is beyond me, but here he sits. Dragged.

  Ducky shakes his head. “Not your fault,” he replies simply. And somehow the fact that he seems to really mean it makes me feel even worse. But before I can kick up my apology another notch, he reaches across and plucks the baby thermal suit from my knees. “Here, let me help,” he says. “You look like you could use it.” Ducky’s face, I should mention, is still green as a jar of Manzanilla olives.

  “You think she’s always going to cry this much?” I ask Ducky as we stuff the screeching baby’s chubby legs into the infant thermal pouch. Ducky’s not a baby expert or anything, but he seems to know more than I do. Maybe because while I spent the past nine months actively avoiding any useful baby knowledge, Ducky actually read, like, half a baby book.

  “She’s hungry,” Ducky tells me. “She probably hasn’t eaten all day.”

  “Oh God,” I say. And my eyes go huge. Because, duh, Ducky’s right—babies need to eat. Like, almost always. But it has suddenly occurred to me what she needs to eat. I may have been avoiding baby knowledge, but even I’m not such a chromer that I’m unaware of an infant’s natural food preference. “You think that’s why she’s been so squirmy?” Ducky shrugs. “Shit.” I’m really beginning to wish I took On Your Own class first semester, before, you know, our school exploded. But . . . well, how hard can it be? I look down at Olivia, still wiggling and screaming in my arms. Her little head is like a rag doll’s, doing its darnedest to flop around on her neck. I hug her closer. Moms have been breast-feeding for years, right? It’s probably, like, in my genes to know what to do.

  “Here goes nothing,” I declare.

  And so, while Ducky feigns an unnatural interest in the lining of the thermal suit in his hands, I quickly snap open the top four buttons of my shirt with my right hand, balance Olivia with my left, and try my best to work some slick shifting-bra maneuvers. This shit is definitely not in my genes, though, because by the time I’ve exposed enough skin to the baby for her to nosh on, my shirt is practically tied in a knot at my armpit. Worse, Olivia seems completely uninterested.

  “Come on, Livvie, chow time,” I coo. I thought babies were supposed to go gaga for this stuff, but my kid just keeps crying and wiggling in my arms. “Come on,” I say, trying to swoop her head at a better angle toward the boob, like a reverse “Here comes the airplane.” “You’re hungry. You need to eat.” She wails and flails some more. “Olivia, seriously, we have to dock in a couple minutes and . . . oh.”

  The child has found my boob.

  “She did it!” I tell Ducky, who is now staring at a stain on the ceiling of the train car like it’s a Rorschach test he’s being quizzed on. “She’s totally eating. I’m feeding my baby. I’m like a mom, Ducky, seriously. Can you bel—”

  Olivia undocks and starts screaming again. And no matter how much I nudge her in the right direction, she’s completely uninterested. “What’s going on?” I ask, definitely way past the end of my tether. I can’t calm my baby down, and I can’t feed her either. Total mom fail. “I thought babies were, like, booby fiends.”

  Ducky lets out an enormous sigh. “You’re probably not producing any milk because it’s been several days and you didn’t start feeding right away when she was born,” he says, still staring at that spot on the ceiling. “The book said that would happen.”

  Ducky’s not looking at me, but I give him my “I’m going to pinch you in a sensitive area” death stare anyway. “Why didn’t you tell me that before I rearranged my whole ensemble?” I ask.

  Ducky just shrugs, picking up my thermal suit and doing a fairly half-assed job of blindly covering my décolletage as Alan appears again in the doorway to summon us.

  “We’re coming, we’re coming,” I say, before the guy even has a chance to chastise us.

  The steady hum of the train rises in pitch a good half tone as we all walk, single file, out the door and down the length of the train to the center docking car. My dad was right, the ride is smooth, but the wailing infant with the crazy octopus limbs is making it difficult for me to keep my balance anyway.

  “Hey, uh, Mister Almiri Guy?” Ducky says as we walk. He’s already forgotten Alan’s name—and the Duck can list from memory every Spider-Man villain in reverse-alphabetical order. “Elvie here needs something for the baby.” And I gotta give the guy props, because despite the fact that he is clearly about to lose his lunch, he’s still trying to make sure that Olivia gets hers. “She’s hungry.”

  “Yes, sir, but what do you suggest I do about it?” Alan answers. And do I detect a little bit of annoyance in his tone? Look who just found a personality.

  “Well, you guys must have been feeding her something for the past couple days,” Ducky answers. “Whatever it was, we need some more of it.”

  “I suggest your friend lets nature run its course,” Alan says in reply.

  “Well, first of all,” Ducky says, going all “Revenge of the Bestie” on the dude’s ass. “I don’t think you understand that expression, like, at all. And secondly . . .” I’m not gonna lie—Ducky’s take-no-crap attitude is kind of impressive right now. Who knew he had it in him? I clutch Olivia’s butt tighter and hustle to keep up, glad for the moment that Ducky has taken to the role of Male Protector. “Either you find something for this poor kid to eat pronto, or I’m gonna shove one of these thermal suits right up your—”

  “Hey.”

  The voice stops Ducky in his tracks. Me too. I look up, and sure enough, there’s Cole, flanked by two Almiri guards, wearing the same gray thermal jumpsuit we’ve all been outfitted with. He looks none the worse for wear, except he’s sporting cuffs. I guess the Almiri didn’t figure Dad and Ducky and I posed the same sort of threat to escape as one of their own commandos.

  “Cole!” I squeal. Yes, actually squeal, like a little girl. And I don’t even feel one titch embarrassed about it either. I rush to him, shouldering the guards aside, and hit him hard with one massive I-was-so-worried-you-were-dead lip-lock. “You’re okay,” I breathe.

  He smiles, his face so close that his breath makes my skin tingle. “Better now,” he replies.

  I tilt Ol
ivia so that she’s facing him. She’s still screaming and kicking, but she’s never seemed so beautiful. “Meet Olivia,” I tell him.

  He bends down ever so slightly. “Hello there, Olivia,” he greets her.

  She is mesmerized by the sound of Cole’s voice. Like, absolutely mesmerized. She goes stone silent, eyes wide, and stares at him.

  “Remind me to keep you around,” I tell Cole—right before Olivia lets out a tiny baby fart and begins wailing again.

  Well, it was nice while it lasted.

  Cole turns to Ducky beside me. “Hey, Duck Man.” He offers him a clumsy high-ten, but Ducky only stares at him. I can’t tell if he’s being rude or annoyed or just motion-sick again—his face has moved from pea soup to limeade—and I guess Cole can’t figure it out either, because he steps toward my father instead, not two meters away. As he approaches, Cole extends his hand. Well, actually, both hands, because of the cuffs and all.

  “Mr. Nara, I’m Cole, we met at the hospital,” Cole says. I roll my eyes, but Dad has the good grace to just smile knowingly and take his hand in a good, sturdy “dad shake.”

  “Yes, son, the birth of one’s first alien grandchild is a memory that lasts,” Dad says. Cole laughs nervously.

  “So your friends are kind of douchetards,” Ducky pipes up finally, nudging his head toward our Almiri guards.

  Cole sneaks a look at Alan, who doesn’t appear all that amused. Or annoyed. He simply seems to not want to be anywhere near us. “Yeah,” Cole agrees. “They get that a lot.”

  Cole turns back to me then, but he doesn’t say anything, he just kind of blushes and looks at the floor. I guess he’s a little ashamed that he’s gotten us all into this mess, I mean, having the Almiri keep tabs on me after we got back from the Echidna and tracking the end of my pregnancy. But he thought he was protecting me, and I can’t really fault the dumb ox for that.

  “Elvie . . . ,” he says, trailing off. I take a step forward and dip down slightly so that I can look him in the eye.

  “It’s okay, Cole,” I say. “It’s not your fault. I’m just glad you’re all right. That we’re all together.”