Jenny followed, wincing. How arrogant to drag him here, as if she knew better than the hospital. She ached for Polly, for Assam, and for Dan who must want to make their baby healthy as much as she did.
At the intensive care nursery he said something to a staff member, and Jenny was given a gray coverall and cap. She didn't want to go with him, but she'd dragged him here. She must. They walked through the steriline into the gently lit room where soft music played with a beat that was surely that of an adult human heart.
It was so peaceful. Surely it couldn't be a place of death.
At least Gaia accepted the latest technology for problems like this. There were four red-laced incubator pods and two nurses moving between them, constantly checking the sheath monitors on their arms.
Dan paused at each incubator, then stopped at one. He signaled a nurse, and she hurried over. Jenny saw the sudden light in the nurse's eyes, and tears pricked at her own. Dan had found something he could fix, but the name card said Smithers. It wasn't Polly's baby.
She went closer and saw a tiny baby under a multicolored mesh. Its chest labored, and its legs and arms seemed grayish instead of pink. Dan pushed his hand through the mesh and touched the child.
The baby clutched his finger as babies do, but to Jenny it looked as if the mite recognized a lifeline. The little chest still rose and fell, but less desperately, and the fingers and toes began to turn pink. The mesh began to fade and retract…
"Heart," said a nurse, coming up beside Jenny. "Valve," she went on. "I was hoping it would be fixable when Dan came around. I'm glad he's early. It's always special to see him work."
"He comes every day?"
"Or when we call. We wait if we can. He has to have a life."
Yes, he did. Jenny was ashamed that she didn't know his real life at all. Some friend she was.
He eased his finger out of the baby's clutch, then touched the round cheek, smiling a little. But the smile faded as he moved on to the last incubator.
"He won't be able to help there," the nurse said, obviously surprised.
Jenny trailed after to see the flaccid, laboring baby. It already looked ancient and withered. Dan put his hands on the shell and leaned there. She tried to believe that he was doing something, something miraculous, but she knew it was simple grief.
She wanted to say, Sorry, sorry, sorry …
He turned and walked out. She hurried after.
"Since I'm here I might as well do my rounds. You'll want to be with Polly and Assam." It was a dismissal, but he added, "If they ask, tell them I'm sorry."
Then he was gone, and Jenny fought tears, for him as much as for the baby, as she worked her way out of the hospital gear.
After that, things only got worse. Polly and Assam had been the first of Jenny's friends to choose pregnancy, and the disaster appalled them all. Pregnancy was supposed to lead smoothly to a beautiful, healthy baby. The other babies in the pods had shown that problems happened, that perhaps disaster was natural, but it felt all wrong on top of so many other all wrongs. She couldn't stop thinking that it was blight, carried as spores on the wind.
Polly and Assam didn't blame Dan, but they avoided him. Jenny thought about telling them that he'd visited the nursery, but would it make it better or worse? Two weeks after the birth they decided to visit Assam's family in Araby, even though it was farther south. The good-bye party was subdued. Dan attended, but briefly.
Jenny looked at him and thought his flame was dying. Was it drowning in the blighters' growing power? Or was he as sick as she was of the bitter catch at the back of the throat, the amorphic taste of ashes on the wind?
Or was it simply the dead baby?
She couldn't fight off strange thoughts about that.
Had Dan struggled for a moment over that incubator? He'd talked about hard decisions. He'd used the word "can't." That didn't just mean able to; it could mean allowed to. She cornered him just outside the room.
"Could you have saved little Hal?"
He looked at her, eyes guarded. "Yes."
"What?"
He put fingers over her lips. "Not here."
He grabbed her arm and drew her out of the house, into the street. "There are rules, Jen. We can't fix what shouldn't be fixed."
"Who says? Who says what shouldn't be fixed?"
He shook his head as if it buzzed. "The rules. There's a difference between something broken and something sick. Nature must rule in the end."
She stared at him. "You let your father die because of rules?"
He didn't answer, but she knew it was true.
She turned and walked away, walked home to find her parents talking about it being too long since they'd visited cousin Mike in Erin. Obviously the soothing reports of "progress" and "imminent solution" weren't working anymore.
Or the soothing had stopped. When she turned on the Angliacom screen cell, the announcer was talking about the blighters "swarming." It made them sound like maniac bees.
Where, then, was the honey?
"However, we will soon see victory in the Hellbane Wars."
That was the first time she'd heard it officially described as a war.
She knew war. They'd studied it in school. Armies and battles, diplomats and negotiations. One side knew who the other side was, knew what the enemy wanted. If this was war, what did the enemy want? Where were the negotiators with whom they could bargain for mercy?
Then one day a news camera accidentally caught an ashing. The camera was panning a deserted settlement, but then switched to a person in the distance, walking toward the road. The woman, in dusty shirt and trousers, a knapsack over one shoulder, waved and hurried forward, probably hoping for a lift.
Then she looked around as if she'd heard something or caught something out of the corner of her eye. And she became afraid.
Jenny watched, tasting that fear as the woman began to run, calling for help but constantly turning and twisting as if trying to track an enemy. She stumbled, scrambled up, then stopped, frozen, mouth wide in a scream of terror. There was nothing to see of the blighter; not so much as dust stirring in a breeze.
The picture juddered, though, showing the operator's fear. The mike caught his mutters along with the scream. "Can't do anything. Can't help. God help us. Gotta go. Gotta go…"
But he stayed, holding the camera as steady as he could, to record the anonymous victim's abrupt translation into empty clothing and that small pile of ash.
No explosion, no fire, no wind.
Just dissolution.
Jenny's mother broke down in tears, then declared that they were all leaving, now.
Jenny protested. "I don't even know cousin Mike."
"That's not the point, and you know it!" Her mother turned to Jenny's ashen fifteen-year-old brother. "Charlie, grab some clothes. Not too many."
"I have work to do," Jenny said.
"Gaia can live without another brochure or handbook. No, you can't take all those books. Bill!" she yelled to Jenny's father. "Pack for Charlie, will you? Jenny, love, please. You saw that film. You want to stay for that?"
"I don't think we can run from it, Mum. If the fixers can't stop them, the blighters are going to eat us all."
"Not my family, they aren't." Her mother dashed around, gathering little things — photographs, documents. "Of course the fixers'll fix it. It'll just take a little more time. And during that time it's stupid to stand in the way!"
Jenny helped stuff the things in a bag. "You're probably right, Mum, but I can't go. I'm sorry."
She realized then that part of the reason was Dan. She was still angry with him, but she couldn't abandon him.
She helped everyone pack, went with them to the station, and bit back tears as she waved them off. She didn't regret her decision, only her mother's tearful despair.