Chapter 13

The next couple of weeks were kind of nice. It was like having a group honeymoon but more so. Sure we got on each others nerves a few times but nothing that wasn't settled fairly quickly.

Unfortunately, the day we found out Eve was pregnant was the day the feces impacted the rotating blades.

It started out normally. Eve tested herself like she had been doing every day, in fact sometimes two or three times per day. For someone who had balefully contemplated a loveless life as wife and mother of someone's heir, she seemed pretty excited about the prospects of being pregnant. The fertility drugs they had in those days were just as effective as the ones we have today; if a woman had the ability to conceive and the man wasn't shooting blanks, chances were excellent that within a few weeks she would be.

Anyway, three things seemed to happen almost at once; well, four if you count finding out Eve was going to help increase our little family. The first thing was a message from Liz saying they had noted a sudden flurry of activity in Stackman's group and to watch ourselves. The second was a startling response to our latest message to Stackman. Instead of the normal vid of condescending platitudes totally devoid of informational content we got a very short AI blurb stating the message was refused, would not be forwarded and no further contact would be required. If that didn't tell us something was up I don't know what would, although I figured Stackman had to be either scared, stupid or very confident to tip his hand like this. I considered any one of these three scenarios to be bad news. Scared people take chances they shouldn't; stupid people are almost impossible to predict and if he was very confident ... Well, you figure it out.

The third was a call I got from one of my snitches. He told me he had hot information on the particular questions I had been nosing around about but that he couldn't transmit it. I needed to meet with him at a certain place down by the shuttle bays. It stunk to high heaven, but what could I do? I needed to know what was happening on this end. Heaven only knows what was coming for us and I wouldn't know if I sat holed up in the apartment. Naturally the girls were less than enthusiastic about my leaving.

"Can't be helped," I said as Kee and Eve cried. Terry just swore at me continuously, without repeating. Actually it was ... educational. I'm not sure how many languages she used but I could only identify about half of them. I had my shirt off and pressed the chip injector against my side just below my armpit and pressed the stud.