Moira's hands curled into small helpless fists. After a moment, she
turned off the machine.
"What?" said Len incredulously. "To be continued--what kind of talk is
that?"
"He says he's bored with the novel," Moira replied dully. "He says he
knows the ending, so it's artistically complete; it doesn't matter
whether anybody else thinks so or not." She paused. "But he says that
isn't the real reason."
"Well?"
"He's got two reasons. One is that he doesn't want to finish the book
till he's certain he'll have complete control of the money it earns."
"Yes," said Len, swallowing a lump of anger, "that makes a certain
amount of sense. It's his book. If he wants guarantees...."
"You haven't heard the other one."
"All right, let's have it."
"He wants to teach us--so we'll never forget--who the boss is in this
family."
* * * * *
"Len, I'm awfully tired," Moira complained piteously, late that night.
"Let's just go over it once more. There has to be some way. He still
isn't talking to you?"
"I haven't felt anything from him for the last twenty minutes. I think
he's asleep."
"All right, let's suppose he _isn't_ going to listen to reason--"
"I think we'd better."
Len made an incoherent noise. "Well, okay. I still don't see why we
can't write the last chapter ourselves. It'd only be a few pages."
"Go ahead and try."
"Not me. You've done a little writing. Damned good, too. And if you're
so sure all the clues are there--Look, if you say you can't do it, all
right, we'll hire somebody. A professional writer. It happens all the
time. Thorne Smith's last novel--"
"It wasn't Thorne Smith's and it wasn't a novel," she said
dogmatically.
"But it sold. What one writer starts, another can finish."
"Nobody ever finished _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_."
"Oh, hell."
"Len, it's impossible. It is! Let me finish--if you're thinking we
could have somebody rewrite the last part Leo did--"
"Yeah, I just thought of that."
"--even that wouldn't do any good. You'd have to go all the way back,
almost to page one. It would be another story when you got through.
Let's go to bed."
"Moy, do you remember when we used to worry about the law of
opposites?"
"Mm?"
"The law of _opposites_. When we used to be afraid the kid would turn
out to be a pick-and-shovel man with a pointy head."
"Uh. Mm."
He turned. Moira was standing with one hand on her belly and the other
behind her back. She looked as if she were about to start practicing a
low bow and doubted she could make it.
"What's the matter now?" he asked.
"Pain in the small of my back."
"Bad one?"
"No...."
"Belly hurt, too?"
She frowned. "Don't be foolish. I'm feeling for the contraction. There
it comes."
"The--but you just said the small of your back."
"Where do you think labor pains usually start?"
* * * * *
The pains were coming at twenty-minute intervals and the taxi had not
arrived. Moira was packed and ready. Len was trying to set her a good
example by remaining calm. He strolled over to the wall calendar,
gazed at it in an offhand manner, and turned away.
"Len, I know it's only the fifteenth of July," she said impatiently.
"Huh? I didn't say anything about that."
"You said it seven times. Sit down. You're making me nervous."
Len perched on the corner of the table, folded his arms, and
immediately got up to look out the window. On the way back, he circled
the table in an aimless way, picked up a bottle of ink and shook it to
see if the cap was on tight, stumbled over a wastebasket, carefully
up-ended it, and sat down with an air of _Ici je suis, ici je reste_.
"Nothing to worry about," he said firmly. "Women have kids all the
time."
"True."
"What for?" he demanded violently.
Moira grinned at him, then winced slightly and looked at the clock.
"Eighteen minutes this time. They're getting closer."
When she relaxed, Len put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it in
only two tries. "How's Leo taking it?"
"Isn't saying. He feels--" she concentrated--"apprehensive. He tells
me he's feeling strange and he doesn't like it. I don't think he's
entirely awake. Funny--"
"I'm glad this is happening now," Len announced.
"So am I, but--"
"Look," said Len, moving energetically to the arm of her chair. "We've
always had it pretty good, haven't we? Not that it hasn't been tough
at times, but--you know."
"I know."
"Well, that's the way it'll be again, once this is over. I don't care
how much of a superbrain he is, once he's born--you know what I mean?
The only reason he's had the edge on us all this time is he could get
at us and we couldn't get at him. If he's got the mind of an adult, he
can learn to act like one. It's that simple."
Moira hesitated. "You can't take him out to the woodshed. He's going
to be a helpless baby, physically, like anybody else's. He has to be
taken care of."
"All right, there are plenty of other ways. If he behaves, he gets
read to. Things like that."
"That's right, but there's one other thing I thought of. You remember
when you said suppose he's asleep and dreaming, and what happens if he
wakes up?"
"Yeah."
"That reminded me of something else, or maybe it's the same thing. Did
you know that a fetus in the womb only gets about half the amount of
oxygen in his blood that he'll have when he starts to breathe?"
Len looked thoughtful. "I forgot. Well, that's just one more thing Leo
does that babies aren't supposed to do."
"Use as much energy as he does, you mean. What I'm getting at is, it
can't be because he's getting more than the normal amount of oxygen,
can it? I mean he's the prodigy, not me. He must be using it more
efficiently. And if that's it, what will happen when he gets twice as
much?"
* * * * *
They had prepared and disinfected her, along with other indignities,
and now she could see herself in the reflector of the big
delivery-table light--the image clear and bright, like everything
else, but very haloed and swimmy, and looking like a bad statue of
Sita. She had no idea how long she had been here--that was the dope,
probably--but she was getting pretty tired.
"Bear down," said the staff doctor kindly, and before she could
answer, the pain came up like violins and she had to gulp at the
tingly coldness of laughing gas.
When the mask lifted, she said, "I _am_ bearing down," but the doctor
had gone back to work and wasn't listening.