not a person, just a thing, a walking womb, a thing used for breeding, my mind gone, my skills useless... just a brood mare...
"It won't be that bad," he said in deep sympathy. "There will be plenty for you to do. But that's the way it's got to be,Camilla. I'm sure it's worse for you than it is for some others, but it's the same for everyone. Our survival depends on it." He looked away from her; he could not face the blast of her agony.
She said, her lips tightening to a hard line, "Maybe it would be better not to survive, under conditions like that."
"I won't discuss that with you until you're feeling better," Ewen said quietly, "it's not worth the breath. I'll set up a prenatal examination for you with Margaret--"
"--I won't!"
Ewen got quickly to his feet. He signaled to a nurse behind her back and gripped her wrist in a hard grip, immobilizing her. A needle went into her arm; she looked at him with angry suspicion, her eyes already glazing slightly.
"What--"
"A harmless sedative. Supplies are short, but we can spare enough to keep you calmed down," Ewen said calmly. "Who's the father, Camilla? MacAran?"
"None of your affair!" she spat at him.
"Agreed, but I ought to know, for genetic records. Captain Leicester?"
"MacAran," she said with a surge of dull anger, and suddenly, with a deep gnawing pain, she remembered... how happy they had been during the Winds.. .
Ewen looked down at her senseless form with deep regret. "Get hold of Rafael MacAran," he said, "have him with her when she comes out of it. Maybe he can talk some sense into her."
"How can she be so selfish?" the nurse said in horror.
"She was brought up on a space satellite," Ewen said, "and in the Alpha colony. She joined the space service at fifteen and all her life she's been brainwashed into thinking childbearing was something she shouldn't be interested in. She'll learn. It's only a matter of time."
But secretly he wondered how many women of the crew felt the same--sterility could be psychologically determined too--and how long it would take to overcome this conditioned fear and aversion.
Could it even be done, in time to bring them up to a viable number, on this harsh, brutal and inhospitable world?
Chapter
TWELVE
MacAran sat beside the sleeping Camilla, thinking back over the hospital interview just past with Ewen Ross. After explaining about Camilla, Ewen had asked him only one further question:
"Do you remember having sex with anyone else during the Wind? I'm not just being idly curious, believe me. Some women, and some men, simply can't remember, or named at least half a dozen. By putting together everything that anyone does remember, we can eliminate certain people; that is, for genetic records later on. For instance, if some woman names three men as possibly responsible for her pregnancy, we only need to blood-test three men to establish--within rough limits, that is--the actual father."
"Only Camilla," MacAran said, and Ewen had grinned. "At least you're consistent. I hope you can talk that girl into some sense."
"I can't somehow see Camilla as much of a mother," MacAran said slowly, feeling disloyal, and Ewen shrugged. "Does it matter? We're going to have plenty of women either wanting children and unable to have them, miscarrying during pregnancy, or losing them at birth. If she doesn't want the child when it's born, one thing we're not going to be short of is foster mothers!"
Now that thought stirred Rafael MacAran to a slow resentment as he sat watching the drugged girl. The love between them, even at best, had arisen out of hostility, been an up-and-down thing of resentment and desire, and now the anger got out of control. Spoiled brat, he thought, she's had everything her own way all her life, and now at the first hint she might have to give way to some consideration other than her own convenience, she starts making a fuss! Damn her!
As if the violence of his angry thoughts had penetrated the thinning veils of the drug, Camilla's blue eyes, fringed by heavy dark lashes,
flicked open, and she looked around, in momentary bewilderment, at the translucent walls of the hospital dome, and MacAran by the side of her cot.
"Rafe?" A look of pain flicked over her face, and MacAran thought, at least she's not calling me MacAran any more. He spoke as gently as he could. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well, love. They asked me to come and sit with you a while."
Her face hardened as memory came back; he could feel her anger and misery and it was like pain inside him, and it turned off his own resentment like a switch being turned.
"I really am sorry, Camilla. I know you didn't want this. Hate me, if you've got to hate someone. It's my fault; I wasn't acting very responsibly, I know."
His gentleness, his willingness to take all the blame, disarmed her. "No, Rafe," she said painfully, "that's not fair to you. At the time it happened I wanted it as much as you did, so there's no point in blaming you. The trouble is, we've all gotten out of the habit of connecting pregnancy and sex, we all have a civilized attitude about it now. And of course none of us could have been expected to know that the regular contraceptives weren't working."
Rafe reached out to touch her hand. "Well, we'll share the blame, then. But can't you try to remember how you felt about it during the Wind? We were so happy then."
"I was insane then. So were you." The deep bitterness in her voice made him flinch with pain, not only for himself but for her. She tried to pull her hand free, but he held on to the slim fingers.
"I'm sane now--at least I think I am--and I still love you, Camilla. I haven't words to tell you how much."
"I should think you'd hate me."
"I couldn't hate you. I'm not happy that you don't want this child," he added, "and if we were on Earth I'd probably admit that you had a right to choose--not to bear it, if you didn't want to. But I wouldn't be happy about that either, and you can't expect me to be sorry that it's going to have a chance to live."
"So you're glad I'm going to be trapped into bearing it?" she flung at him, furious.
"How can I be glad about anything that makes you so miserable?" MacAran demanded in despair. "Do you think I get any satisfaction out of seeing you unhappy? It tears me up, it's killing me! But you're pregnant, and you're sick, and if it makes you feel any better to say these things--I love you, and what can I do about it, except listen and wish I could say something helpful? I only wish you felt happier about it, and I wasn't so completely helpless."
Camilla could feel his confusion and distress as if they were her own, and this persistence of an effect she had associated only with the time of the winds shocked her out of her anger and self-pity. Slowly, she sat up in bed and reached for his hand.
"It's not your fault, Rafe," she said softly, "and if it makes you so unhappy for me to act like this, I'll try to make the best of it. I can't pretend I want a child, but if I have to have one--and it seems I do--I'd rather it was yours than someone else's." She smiled faintly, and added, "I suppose--the way things were going then--it could have been anyone, but I'm glad it was you."
Rafe MacAran found himself unable to speak--and then realized he didn't have to. He bent down and kissed her hand. "I'll do everything I can to make it easier," he promised, "and I only wish it were more."