"What's this all about?" I demanded. "Have you two cooked up some crazy
scheme to rescue Hal? I hope to heaven not! It would ruin all of us,
including him!"
* * * * *
The wild daydreams I'd had myself flashed through my mind--the drug that
would seem to kill him and wouldn't, the anonymous false accusation of
subversion, the previous secret marriage. All impossible, all fatal.
Lucy disengaged her hands from the girl's and slipped her arm through
mine.
"You tell him, Bet," she said gently. "You're the one who should."
I'd never noticed how pretty the girl was till then, when she stood
there with her face flushed and her eyes straight on mine. A pang went
through me; if only she and Hal could have--
"No, Mr. Sturt," she said, "we haven't rescued Hal. He's gone. But we've
rescued part of him. I'm going to have his baby."
"Bet's going to live with us and be our daughter, Frank," Lucy
explained. "Hal and she and I worked it out in these two weeks, after
they came to me and told me how they felt about each other. We couldn't
tell you till we were sure; I couldn't bear to have you hope and then be
disappointed--it would be enough for me to have to suffer that."
"That is, I'll come if you want me here, Mr. Sturt," said Bet.
I had to sit down before I could speak. "Of course I want you. But what
about your own family?"
"I haven't any. My mother's dead and my father's an engineer on Ganymede
and gets home on leave about once in three years. I've been living in a
youth hostel."
"But look here--" I turned to Lucy--"how on Earth can you know? Two
weeks or less is no time--"
Lucy gave me a look I recognized, the patient one of the scientist for
the layman.
"The Chow-Visalius test, dear. One day after the fertilized ovum starts
dividing--"
"And I ran it myself every day for over a week. That's one of my jobs in
the lab and it was easy to slip in another specimen. And it didn't, and
it didn't and I went nearly out of my mind--"
"Every time Hal entered the apartment, I'd look at him and he'd shake
his head," Lucy interrupted. "It meant everything to him. And it would
just have broken my heart--"
"Mine, too," Bet said softly. "And his. And today was the last chance. I
was scared to try it. This afternoon at 14:30, just before the farewell
visits, was the deadline for viz messages to any of them. If I'd had to
send mine without the word we'd agreed on that would tell him it was all
right--But it was, at last! And now he knows, even if I never--even if
we never--Excuse me, please, it's been a strain. I'm afraid I'm going to
bawl."
* * * * *
We let her alone. Kids nowadays hate to be fussed over.
Us, we'd lost our son, and that was going to stay with us forever. But
now we would have his child to love and--
An appalling thought struck me suddenly. I can't imagine why I hadn't
realized it sooner. All this emotion, I suppose.
"Good God!" I cried. "An illegal child! We can't keep it!"
"Nobody's going to know," Lucy replied calmly. "Bet's going to live with
us, and when it starts to show, she's going to take her allowed leave.
We'll take ours, too, and we'll all go on a trip--to Mars, maybe, or
Venus--one of the settled colonies where we can rent a house. Babies
don't _have_ to be born in hospitals, you know; our ancestors had them
right at home. She's strong and healthy and I know what to do. Then
we'll come back here and we'll have a baby with us that we adopted
wherever we were. Nobody will ever know."
"Look," I said in a voice I tried to keep from rising. "There are four
billion people on Earth and about 28 billion in the colonized Solar
planets. Every one of those people is on record at Central Cybernetics.
How do you suppose you're going to get away with the phony adoption of a
non-existent child? The first time you have to take it to a baby clinic,
they'll find it has no card."
"I thought of that," Lucy said, "and it can be done, because it must.
Frank, for heaven's sake, use your wits! You're a newsgatherer. You know
all sorts of people everywhere."
"I don't know any machines. And it's machines that handle the records."
"Machines under the supervision of humans."
"Sure," I said sarcastically. "I just go to my ex-newsgatherer pal who
feeds the records to Io or Ceres and say, 'Look, old fellow, do me a
favor, will you? My wife wants to adopt a baby from your colony, so just
make up the names of two people and give them a life-check, invent their
ancestors back to the time Central Cybernetics was established, and then
slip in cards for their marriage, and the birth of their child--I'll let
you know later whether to make it a boy or a girl--and then their
deaths; and then my wife and I can adopt that made-up baby.'
"What kind of blackmailing hold do you think I have on any record
official," I asked angrily, "to make him do a thing like that and keep
his mouth shut about it? I could be eliminated for treason for even
making such a suggestion."
"Frank, _think_! Surely there must be _some_ way!"
* * * * *
And then it struck me. "Wait! I just got an idea. When I said 'treason,'
just now--It might barely be possible--"
"Oh, what?"
"It would have to be Mars, the North Polar Cap colony. The K-Alph
Conspiracy messed things up there badly."
"I remember, Mr. Sturt!" Bet said excitedly. "They wrecked everything in
the three months before the rebellion was crushed, didn't they?"
"Everything including their cybernetics equipment. Central doesn't want
it known, but I have inside information that it's still not in going
condition. That colony is full of children who have never been
registered. And I doubt if it will be in 100 per cent shape for the best
part of another year. Those hellions really did a job. Let's see--this
is the end of Month Two. We'd have to get away around Month Eight at the
latest and the baby would be born--when exactly, Bet?"
"Early in Month Twelve. We could all be back here again by the first of
next year, or even by the end of Month Thirteen."
"Well, I have enough accumulated leave for that and I guess you have
too, Lucy; neither of us has taken more than two or three weeks for
years. But what about you, Bet? You've been working less than a year."
"I can borrow it. Our director is crazy about travel and she'll be all
for it when I tell her I have a chance to go to Mars for a long visit.
Besides, she knows about Hal and me--I mean the way we are about each
other--and she'll understand that I'd want to get away for a while now."
Asher, my editor-in-chief, would feel the same way, I thought, and so
would Lucy's boss.
"I knew you'd find a way," remarked my wife complacently.