Waddling along the narrow passageways, Bara Horacek could feel the weight of the child in her swollen belly pressing down against her bladder. If she wasn't home soon she would piss herself. Breathless, she paused, leaning heavily against the greasy watt, nodding as two of her neighbours hurried by. She winced as a pain stabbed through her lower abdomen. It would be just her luck if her waters broke, with Vilem gone to his mother's and the boys staying with friends. She should never have let Vilem talk her into having another child, not at her age, but with the new legislation going through he had argued that there might never be another chance, and so ...
The pain grew. For a moment Bara closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, trying not to groan, not to cry out. It wasn't due. The baby wasn't due . . . Not for six weeks yet. But she knew that feeling. Home - she had to get home.
As the pain faded she walked on, each step jolting her stomach as if she'd been kicked there. Oh gods, she thought, feeling the sticky wetness on her thighs and trying to keep calm. What if it's a miscarriage? What if. ..
She pushed the thought from her, concentrating on the simple business of getting back to the house. How far was it now? A hundred?- a hundred and fifty paces? But each step now seemed a gargantuan effort, the space between each step a small eternity. Eight steps. Nine. A tenth. And then time slowed as the pain returned, enlarged, fiercer than before.
She cried out and almost fell. Two men from a nearby stall hurried to her aid, holding her up, their Han faces pushed dose, anxious for her.
"Is it coming?" one of them asked. "Can you feel the baby coming?" Bara nodded, uncertain. Too old, she thought. I told Vilem I was too old ...
"Fetch a blanket," one of her neighbours, an old Han woman, shouted, taking charge of things. "Get her on her back. The child wiB, be here any moment."
Bara let herself be laid onto a blanket between the stalls. There was a crowd of fifty or sixty gathered about her now, a small sea of curious faces, mainly Han, but she was beyond caring.
"Tett VUem ..." she said weakly, trying to talk over the babble of voices. "TeU him ..." And then the pain came again, like a huge black wave, taking her breath.
It's dead, she thought, despair gripping her. My child is dead.
Someone had removed her sodden knickers, exposing her, but it didn't matter. AH that mattered now was the pain and those small brief moments between the pain. Someone was gripping her hands from behind, someone else holding her knees up, her legs apart, but she was scarcely aware of it, all she could feel, all she knew, was the urgency inside her, the burning, tearing desire of the dead thing within her to get out into the world.
She groaned as if she'd been impaled, the shock of the breeching making her nerves sing in agony.
"Come on," someone said encouragingly. "You're almost there."
Sweat blinded her, distorted what she saw. Faces swam before her - goggle-eyed, staring faces filled with horror, as if what she were pushing from her was deformed, a hideous monstrosity.
She imagined it, a slick, black scaly thing with burning eyes, and whimpered with fear. No, she thought. Don't let it come out. Don't. . .
"Push," the old Han woman whispered at her ear. "Come on now, Bara. One last push and it's there."
She tried to hold back, but it was impossible. Her muscles pushed. There was a scream - her own, she realised - and then an easing of the pain, a sense of absence. There was a babble of voices and then, above them all, the cry of a chUd - a robust and healthy sound.
"It's a boy," the old Han woman said, bundling it up and thrusting it at her. "Afine, healthyboy. The gods have smiled on you, Bara Horacek."
Bara tried to shake her head, to say she didn't want it, but the child was in her arms, its dear blue eyes staring up at her as if it knew already what she was thinking.
Dead, she thought. You're dead. But the child stared back at her, its very existence a denial, its strange perfection sending a chill through her. Behind it, like a white hole in the blackness of the sky, the unfamiliar moon shone down.
Dead, am I? those eyes seemed to say, mocking her. Well see how dead I am.
Haifa world away, in a tiny room dose to the southern wall of Li Yuan's great European city, an old man stood over the dead body of his teenage wife, his shoulders hunched, his face in his hands, weeping. There was the sound of a child crying somewhere in the cold and Hi-furnished apartment, an awful, insistent sound that had not stopped for an hour. The old man shuddered and half turned his face, a flash of anger, of bitterness making his lip curl. He would silence the child. Would kill it for what it had done.
He went through, then stood there over the cot, staring down at the naked, kicking form. A girl . . . As if the gods hadn't mocked him enough! If it had been a boy. . . but no, his wife had suffered and died merely to bring a girl into the world. And what use was a girl? Would she sweep his grave after his death?
Would she carry on his father's line? No. Wett, he would have none of it. He would say she was stillborn.
He lifted the pillow and placed it firmly over the child's face, closing his eyes and pressing down, anger giving him the strength to overcome any misgivings he had. The sudden silence was like a relief and as the child ceased struggling he eased the pressure then slowly lifted his hands and backed away.
The pillow . . .
He stood there, unable to move, then, with a tiny shudder of aversion, he went to the cot and removed the pillow. The child lay still, almost peaceful, it seemed, and for the briefest moment, looking down into her still and tiny face, he felt a pang of regret. She was so like her mother. So like his darling Tian. Then, turning away, pushing that brief flicker of pity from his heart, he went through to tend to his dead wife.
When the Registry Official came an hour later the old man was still sitting there, staring blankly at the wall, his wife's hand cold and stiff within his own. The official looked about him, taking it all in at a glance, then, with a nod to the man, stepped through the bead curtain into the bedroom.
The child was dead, he could see that at once. And a good thing, too, he thought, writing a brief note on his report. What good was a newborn daughter without a mother to look after her? This way, at least, the old man was free of all burdens. He could buy a new wife, have sons, and no worries about the new birth quotas. No, it was for the best, all things considered.
He went back and stood over the seated man. "Did you give the child a name, lao jea?"
The old man looked up at him, expressionless. "ChuangKuan Ts'ai," he answered tonelessly. Coffin-filler.
The official swallowed, then left blank the appropriate box on his form. There were procedures for cases like this. They would allocate a number back at the office - something for the Oven Man's records. All that remained was for someone to come and remove the bodies.
"I’ll leave you now, lao jen," he said, bowing respectfully. "If there's anything I can do . .."
But the old man wasn't listening. He was staring down into the pale and vacant face of his young bride, his deeply-lined cheeks wet with tears.