Tinker glanced at the chronograph. “Speaking of time, shouldn’t we be starting back?”
Val lifted his hands from the controls.
“Home, Doberman.”
Walter met them in the garage. He appeared depressed.
“Must be important,” said Val. “For him to walk all the way down here.”
Wheezing, belly swinging, old Walter waddled up to them. “It’s Mu Ren,” he said. “Labor has started. Your dispenser called me.”
Tinker started to run for the door.
“The variance was denied,” called Walter.
Val caught up with Tinker downspiral.
“Won’t the Mediteck be there?”
“No authorization.”
They were sweating heavily when they arrived. Mu Ren dozed between contractions. Tinker looked at the viewscreen. A sensor was glued to her belly and biolectricals ran across the screen. Fetal and maternal cardiograms looked good to him. He placed a hard board under her buttocks to keep the outlet up out of the fluids. The dispenser’s class thirteen meck brain sorted through its delivery program.
“Mu Ren, pull your knees,” it said when the next contraction began. She awoke and put her fingers behind the bend of her knees, pulling her thighs up and out. Bag of waters bulged. Tinker sorted through his tray of instruments—two snub-nosed clamps and a pair of blunt scissors. Membranes burst with the next contraction. Fluids gushed. A black hairy head showed. It was still inside.
“Presentation?” asked the dispenser. Diagrams appeared on the screen. Tinker palpated the top of the baby’s head. The larger diamond-shaped fontanel was posterior—towards her sacrum.
“Baby is facing sacrum.”
“Occiput anterior, very favorable,” said the screen.
With her next contraction her perineum stretched and the top of the hairy head bulged into view again.
“Ritgen rag,” said the meck. Tinker picked up a coarsely woven, dry hand towel and supported her perineum. Between contractions he lifted upwards and delivered the baby’s head.
“Cord check,” said the meck.
Tinker flicked mucus from the little puckered pink face and felt deep between the baby’s neck and shoulder. One loop of the umbilical cord circled the neck. It felt tense. He dug his middle finger under the cord and pulled quickly. It didn’t budge. The fetal cardiogram became erratic. The meck accentuated the irregular pulse by putting it on audio. Tinker worked faster.
“One loop,” he said, reaching for the pair of snub-nosed clamps. Click, click. Picking up the scissors, he cut between the clamps. The head moved out a fraction of an inch and the cardiogram smoothed. Guiding the head down, he released the anterior shoulder from under her symphysis. Lifting, he released the posterior shoulder. The rest of the infant tumbled out in a jumble of cord and a gush of fluid. Wiping the wrinkled face, he handed the still infant to Val.
“I’d better chuck it down the chute before she hears it cry. That’d ruin her day,” mumbled Val, turning to the door. He held the wet, cheesy infant at arm’s length, like garbage gone sour.
Tinker was busy with the afterbirth. Mu Ren’s uterus was filling with clots and the placenta bulged into the vagina. She went pale and silent.
Val crawled down towards the spiral leaving a trail of cloudy white drops in the dust. The infant began to squirm and cry vigorously. Large eyes blinked at him. He tried not to return their gaze.
Val set the blades between chop and dice. He glanced down the dark chute. The granular brown walls carried nondescript stains that spoke of the varieties of waste it accepted. Standing back he began to swing the infant underhanded. If he tossed it expertly it should fall the two hundred feet to the blades with only minimal trauma against the walls.
“She’s bleeding,” called Tinker.
Val glanced back to see Tinker’s worried face in the crawlway. His swinging had quieted the infant.
“Did you try pressing the fundus?”
“Didn’t help.”
“Try calling the white team. A Mediteck with his Medimeck.”
“Won’t come. No paper work for this pregnancy. It is unauthorized.”
They both glanced down at the cooing infant. Dark eyes watched them. They smiled.
“The nipple-midbrain-uterine reflex,” said Tinker.
They carried the infant back to Mu Ren. She was trying to massage her uterine fundus, but the hemorrhage continued.
“Breastfeed,” said Tinker, handing her the infant.
She fumbled weakly, but the infant quickly locked onto the nipple—sucking strongly. Immediately she felt her fundus cramp and harden. The bleeding stopped.
“He doesn’t know he is unauthorized,” she said.
Several months later Tinker brooded over his bench at Garage. A tool kit with shoulder harness hung from his stool. Val came on duty and was surprised to find him there.
“What brings you in so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” said Tinker. “Besides, I’m not here for duty—just packing my things.”
“Oh?” said Val, fingering the kit.
“Going on strike,” continued Tinker. “I’ve been down to the Department of Population Control every day this month. Always the same thing. No variance on my class three birth permit. They want me to turn in the hybrid.”
Val adopted a sympathetic facade—more to keep a good worker in the garage than out of any true feeling for the infant.
“The committee’s vote is usually final,” he said realistically.
Tinker squared his shoulders.
“Well, we will see how the Big ES gets along without me. I keep half the machines in this city functioning.”
Val nodded. “True, but all you will do is lower our standard of living. We can’t influence the committee. Old Walter tried that. You need a planet-wide contribution—a heroic act to match the class five permit.”
Tinker’s androgenic shoulders stayed square—his chin up.
“We’ll see,” he said, strapping on his kit.
Mu Ren watched Tinker unload the staples.
“Calorie-basic?” she said.
He nodded and grunted.
“On strike. Pushing for a variance.”
She had watched the pressures of the past months wear him down—gone was the open-faced innocence of his neutral years. He barked and growled, threatening trauma to the clerks. He walked to his workbench and put on the earphones. She stood behind him with her arms around his shoulders and her forehead pressed against the back of his head.
“He’s crawling already,” she whispered.
He glanced around the room.
“Better pick up anything small and sharp. He’ll just put it in his…” he began. Realizing that the chute awaited the infant any day now, the theoretical danger of swallowing a sharp object seemed ridiculous.
“Well, anyway…” he cleared his throat. “The chucker team won’t know he is crawling. He is way ahead of schedule in his neuromuscular development.” After a moment’s reflection he added: “And don’t let Val in here anymore. He’s such a Good Citizen he’d feel he had to report Junior’s maturity—Val, the GC bastard!”
Tinker set his jaw and spliced his five-foot, black capacitor into the communicator’s power line. Pouring water into the heat sink, he checked the polarity reversal. A shaped field probed around the room, rustling loose tools. Mu Ren returned to her bedding and curled up with her child. The screen blinked with concentric dancing circles. Musical notes pulsed. He noted the coordinates, narrowed the beam, and called.
“Who is out there?”
The music grew loud and clear as the other transmitter locked onto his position. The concentric circles collapsed to a pinpoint. A metallic voice interrupted the tune.
“Who asks?”
Tinker worried about the ripples of green light on the edges of his screen—Security’s questing beams. He doubted if they would be able to lock in well enough to get their conversation. He worked fast—identifying himself quickly.