“Angelbees—they watch us all the time. In fact, our own angelbees must be broadcasting signals all the time, telling the keepers where we are.” It had never occurred to her that their “gift” of angelbee vision was also a source of control for the keepers, like the radio transmitters used by humans to tag animals in the wild.
“Well,” said Daniel, “at least we learned something.”
“We always do,” Isabel observed wryly. “All the same, we’re back to square one.”
For Isabel the hopelessness of escape was beginning to sink in at last. Any chance that her baby might yet be born in Gwynwood now seemed remote. She found that she had to face the fact, now, on a deeper level than she had allowed herself before. A sense of panic welled up, which she tried to repress, buried beneath the common sense needed to survive from day to day.
By the end of the eighth month, she was beginning to feel contractions, like a waistband slowly tightening, then relaxing. “Practice contractions,” her mother would have called them. When she jogged down the path around the hypersphere, the contractions grew stronger. It was time to start the breathing exercises, what she could recall of them.
One morning her belly had settled distinctly lower, the baby clearly headed for its exit. She felt immediately more comfortable, and her breathing came easier as the baby pressed less upon her diaphragm. Only one problem: as she felt around for its position, she was increasingly certain that the big round head was tucked upward while the sharp feet were kicking downward, toward the birth canal. A breech birth was in store. That meant extra complications, of the sort she had described to Megan.
Isabel tried the exercise that Ruth had done to coax the baby to turn around. The idea was to lie on one’s back, with the pelvis propped up, so that the womb lay just about horizontal and the baby could swim round more freely. It was not a comfortable position, with all that weight pressing onto the diaphragm again, but she set herself up in this position for ten minutes each morning and evening. She did this every day for five days. Still the baby’s head pressed upward, locked tight as ever.
Isabel grew depressed. A normal birth would be risky enough, but the chances that Daniel could successfully midwife a breech birth without assistance looked slim. What would happen if the baby got stuck halfway, with its head inside and suffocating? What if the baby came out but the afterbirth didn’t, and Isabel bled to death? She had put aside such thoughts before, but now there were too many grim possibilities to avoid them all.
It was too much to face, the thought of hours, even days, of agony, with almost certain death in the end. Daniel would have to go through it, too. In the end, he would be left alone, and he himself would not last more than a year or so, with his anemia untreated. All the while he would blame himself for her death, no matter what she said or did.
She thought again of the two tablets Keith had left her, final friends. She had not thought of them since Becca died. What would have been right for Becca was just as right for her. Like the Little Prince asking the golden snake for the mortal bite that would take him home…
It might be better for her to go now, to spare herself and Daniel this last horror. Daniel would not appreciate it, perhaps, but that could not be helped. If she went alone into one of the empty cells, and took the tablet there, then the keeper would seal her up overnight. Daniel would never have to watch her die, as he had watched Becca. Then, if he changed his mind, one last tablet would remain.
When Daniel was out gathering corn and firewood, Isabel hunted through the medical supplies for the pill bottle. It was not where she remembered, but after some frantic searching she found it. Her hands trembled as she opened the bottle.
There were not two tablets, only one. Someone had taken the second.
It could only have been Becca, whose angelbees had eyed Isabel’s supplies and knew where everything was. That explained how Becca had died so abruptly at the end. She must have removed the tablet early on, then saved it until the last, until she could stand it no longer.
Isabel felt shock, relief, mixed oddly with a sense of resentment that Becca had had to steal it, that she could not ask. Becca had always been so proud of doing things her own way. And courageous; she had endured weeks of agony without hope, all the while with the passage to death at hand. Now Isabel felt almost ashamed of herself, for she was not nearly as badly off as Becca had been. Isabel, after all, was healthy enough at present, merely terrified of the future.
She began to cry quietly, and she kept on for a long while, until Daniel came and found her there. She did not even bother to close the pill bottle. Daniel said nothing but stayed with her, holding her close, until she was capable of speaking once more.
“Why should I go through with it?” Isabel asked. “Why should I prefer a slow death to a quick one?”
“It’s thy choice,” he said in a low voice, more subdued than she had ever heard him. “I know I can’t stop thee.”
“We’ll all be dying, soon enough.” Her voice still shook with sobbing.
“People have been dying for a long time.”
Isabel turned and looked him full in the face. “What if I die, but the baby lives? What will you do about it?”
“Try to raise it, I suppose.”
“How? What will you feed it?”
A hint of annoyance wrinkled his lip. “I’ll try the milk from the sheep.”
“That won’t do, the baby will only spit it back up. It will only prolong her starvation.”
“Isabel, please don’t talk this way; what use is it?”
“What will you do? I just want to know, that’s all. Will you make the baby live, or not?”
Daniel looked away, the lines of his face softened, vulnerable. “Thee is cruel, Isabel.”
“Truth is cruel.” She felt a gleam of triumph. “What kind of God would leave us such an impossible choice? What kind of God would torture babies?”
“Who is thee to ask? Didn’t thee kill a harmless angelbee? Didn’t thy grandparents build the death that piled the skeletons around the Wall?” He sounded confident again. “So many choices we have, and so often we choose death. Yet, the choice is not impossible just because we can’t see the right answer. Of course, earthquakes happen; but God gives us the tools of compassion, to aid the victims, and reason, to learn to predict earthquakes, if we apply ourselves. So often it turns out that the right choice exists, only we need to look a little harder. Why should we expect any more of God than this, the chance to seek the right answer?”
“Do you think you deserve your own fate?”
“Certainly, I’ve chosen evil so many times. I even wished evil over you. A year ago I would have preferred that you had been born like Peace Hope, if I could have claimed you then.”
“But then,” said Isabel wonderingly, “I only wanted you.” If even someone as good as Daniel could be so blind, then what hope was there for intelligent life in the universe? No wonder all of them, even the keepers perhaps, ended up with a Doomsday.
Oddly enough, Daniel smiled. For some reason he looked just like Keith, castaway from his City, stamping out his last cigarette.
XL
TWO DAYS LATER, Isabel awoke feeling somehow “rearranged” inside. Something sharp jabbed toward her left side, and the pressure had eased over her bladder. She felt herself carefully, trying to locate the head and rump again. No doubt about it: the baby had “turned,” its head now locked into the birth canal.
It was as if the sun had broken through the clouds. Isabel felt a surge of energy, a new strength in every muscle. One way or another, the baby was coming out. It would be all right; it would be all right, she decided.
The contractions were coming more often now, and they lasted longer. They still did not hurt at all, only made her breathe a little faster and woke her at night. Her belly seemed to dip lower each day, as if it would eventually fall over onto the ground. Jogging became too awkward, as the motions pulled and stretched at her skin. She walked instead, keeping up
her imitation of Peewee, treading the circular path. When she was not walking or eating, she dozed, catching up on her lack of sleep at night. In the evening she sat before the fire, resting her head on Daniel’s shoulder while he stroked her hair.
“Isn’t it time we thought about names?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know,” said Isabel. “Ruth waited until the eighth day afterward.”
“Consolation, that would be a nice name.”
Isabel glared at him. Not one of those virtue names for a child of hers. “I want biblical names: Jael for a girl, or Sisera for a boy.”
One afternoon on her daily walk, something burst, and a gush of water splattered her feet. Startled, she cried out, then realized what it was. The membrane of the amnion had ruptured, releasing most of the fluid surrounding the baby. Usually this did not happen until labor was in progress. But she thought she had another two weeks to go.
She continued her walk, feeling distinctly more comfortable, less “tight” than before, but worried. If labor did not commence soon after rupture, the chance of infection would rise.
Her worry did not last long. By the time she returned to her cell, the contractions were coming in waves, rising to a dull ache and receding, every ten minutes. She stood outside and braced herself against the wall until each squeeze was past, then paced back and forth to relax herself.
Daniel returned from the garden. “Why didn’t thee call?” He touched her shoulder lightly.
Isabel pulled away, trying to concentrate. “Here, take the watch.”
He took the watch to time the contractions, then stirred up the fire beneath the stone pot, the one she had hewn with the keeper’s cylinder.
“We’ll need sterile rags,” said Isabel, “and also the pen knife. And remember, you have to press the cord between your fingers, stripping back toward the baby, before you tie it off and cut.”
“Yes, I know.” Daniel took off his shirt and tore it in three sections, then put them in the pot of water with the knife.
Isabel saw this happen dimly, as if from far away. As the day wore on, the sky deepened through artificial twilight to starless black, but for Isabel the whole world was contained inside, with the steady waiting, the rise of pain, then subsiding into waiting again. With each one she found herself thinking, I can’t go on with it, I will go mad if I have to climb that mountain of pain one more time. Yet afterward she would doze off even as she stood there, until the rising ache woke her again. Over and over the contractions rose and subsided, while Daniel counted the minutes in between. They were supposed to get steadily closer and stronger, but the interval seemed to hover forever between six to ten minutes.
Abruptly she felt an urge to push out this thing inside. Her legs buckled under as she fought to relax. “It’s too early,” she cried hoarsely, her mouth dry from hard breathing. She slid herself down, resting her back outside the cell.
“It’s been seven hours,” Daniel said as he stuffed her winter jacket behind her to cushion her back and a sterile cloth behind her legs.
Seven hours—it felt as if it had just begun. Still, it might not be ready. What if the cervix were not yet fully dilated? If she pushed then, the womb would split like a melon and she would be done for certain. Daniel would not know how to tell if she were ready, even if he could get under to see. For just an instant her eyes focused on him, his face etched harshly by the firelight.
She resisted the first few waves of pushing, breathing so hard her tongue was dry and swollen. Now she no longer dozed, she was alert, almost too alert, as if she had to get up and run again. At last she did try to get up, but a sharp pain dug into her pelvis, unlike the contractions before. Something was getting in the way of her legs. “Daniel—am I all right?”
“Keep going,” he said, pressing her drawn-up knee. “I think that’s the top of the head just appearing.”
Then she pushed as hard as she could, though it seemed rationally impossible, like trying to squeeze one’s foot into a hand-me-down shoe two sizes too small. It hurt harder than anything, as if someone were scraping her insides out. She thought, I’ll die for sure; even if I live, I’ll never enjoy loving again.
A cry came, or rather an indignant shriek. There was little Jael or Sisera, complaining at the cruel cold world before it was even completely out. A child worthy of its mother. One more shove, and the water creature was out on dry land.
“Okay? Is the baby okay?” Isabel gasped. Time had speeded up into a dim whirl, the universe collapsed inward, then out again.
Daniel hovered over her, the infant held in one hand. “The cord’s still stuck inside.”
The afterbirth had to come out. She made herself cough twice, like Ruth had done. She could not feel inside anymore, but something slid out past her leg. “You have to check…the placenta…that it’s all there.”
“I’ll do my best. It’s hard to tell—”
“Did you tie the cord? Was the knife sterile?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Is the baby okay?” she insisted.
“She’s fine, I think. Got all her arms and legs. I haven’t counted the toes yet.”
“Let me have her now.”
Daniel set the infant on her bare chest. She was so small and floppy. Isabel guided the infant’s mouth with her finger until it found the breast. The head with its tiny mouth actually sucked for a minute or so, then let go, eyes half open, almost a dreamy expression.
Isabel watched hard. The little face was wrinkled, the head battered and the nose pressed to one side. Still, she wanted to remember this sight as long as she lived.
A pattering sound filled the trees, the early-morning rainfall, right on schedule. “Help me up, please,” said Isabel.
Daniel took the baby, though Isabel’s eyes kept following her, and he put his arm under her shoulder to help her up. “Can you make it through the window?”
“Not yet. I need a shower anyway.” The fine raindrops fell and splattered, coursing into rivulets down her skin, washing away hours of sweat and blood and fear.
For the first day, then the next, she stayed inside the cell, alternately dozing and eating. She ate hungrily, building up for the milk to come in. She kept Jael with her all the time, almost jealously, until she was too exhausted to stay awake. Jael sucked strongly, and she hoped the milk would come in soon. It came not all at once, she realized, but as a gradual thickening and whitening of the antibody-rich substance that had leaked out before.
The strength of her own feeling for the infant at times took her breath away. Despite the odors, the diapers that could not be cleaned thoroughly, the still-present ache of her torn insides knitting back together, none of it counted for anything the moment she could see this perfect new creature. Such tiny fingers with little fingernails like specks of mica, and such an exquisite little yawn when Jael stretched in her sleep. Even the scent of the scalp, with its perfect swirl of baby hair, was indescribable. Her skin was so delicate that the blood vessels shone through, coloring her limbs red; she would darken with time, as African babies did. It was impossible for Isabel to have imagined beforehand how she would feel; it was as if she had never seen a baby before, although she had helped deliver several. She wondered whether Daniel would feel the same way. She guessed that he did by the way he held the child and watched her as if nothing else existed.
By the end of the week, the exhaustion and the impossibility of their condition returned, redoubled, to overwhelm her. She could walk but a short distance yet, for her insides still felt as if they were falling out. Jael’s needs were continual, around the clock, with no escape from that hungry mouth. Yet it was at her most peaceful, when the infant slept soundlessly in her little bed of fleece, that Isabel felt most undone. She found herself thinking would it be kinder to strangle the child as she slept, now, rather than let her grow up in this appalling cage? It was impossible to say aloud all the wild contradictory impulses she felt, but she clung to Daniel, convinced that somehow she could get through it al
l, if only the three of them stayed together.
In the long run, though, the three of them together could not last. Isabel herself was still bleeding heavily, there were not enough rags to keep up with it. There might be something wrong, perhaps a bit of placenta still attached to the uterine lining, and she had to have it checked out by a doctor. As for Daniel, he looked pale as he had the year before; without his medicine, his days were numbered.
While the infant nursed, Isabel’s thoughts quieted again. She found herself thinking again of the keepers and their Queen. If the Queen was their lord of life and death, then perhaps she would be a presence to appeal to. Surely if the keeper Queen felt anything for her offspring like that which Isabel felt, she must take pity on Isabel’s situation. Perhaps the Queen did not know what was going on; how closely did she look after her “zoo”? The Queen might take a more sympathetic view than those eyeless, armless keepers.
“Daniel? Are you awake?” The three of them lay in a cozy heap on the floor of the cell. Jael was not too messy, she could wait a bit. Outside, the birds were just tuning up for their morning concert.
“Yes, Isabel.”
“What if we petition the Queen herself to let us go?”
Daniel raised himself on one elbow. “How do we do this? How do we even find the Queen?”
“Ask the pylon. Somehow.”
The pylon loomed ahead against the night sky, bathed in concentric circles of infrared. Isabel walked toward it slowly, carrying Jael asleep on her chest, her tiny head cupped in Isabel’s hand as round as an egg. Daniel kept close to her protectively.
Slowly the concentric circles faded away. Traces of a domed ceiling appeared within the hexagonal pyramid. It was the geodesic dome of the Queen cell. As the joints between the dome’s polygonal tiles came into focus, Isabel waited expectantly for the Queen.
But the Queen did not appear. Minutes ticked by and still the cell stood empty. Outside, the din of the tree frogs pressed to her ears, the bright infrared bats swooped after insects, the pungent scent of a passing mother skunk entered her lungs, while before her the pylon with its Queen cell stood empty of life.
The Wall Around Eden Page 26
