Chapter 66

Meiersdottir was adamant about having her baby on Eden itself rather than the Gardener. "It's not really about what I promised Gagugakhing, although I do think of that," she told Igwanda privately. "It's just that we have a perfectly good planet right here and I want our son"—routine prenatal care had revealed the sex—"to have a birthplace he can point to, at least on a star map, rather than just having to say he was born 'somewhere in space.'"

Predictably, both ship's doctors objected vociferously. They argued that the sick bay would assure a perfectly sterile environment, superior diagnostic equipment would be available in case of complications, there would be no alien observers to get in the way, a receiving room could be prepared for the infant, and on and on. She responded reasonably that sterile delivery accommodations could be readily arranged on the surface, that the shipboard diagnostics were intended for severe illnesses and not normal pregnancies, that she wanted an alien in attendance, and that "the receiving place for my baby is right here"—pointing to her breast—"the way it's been for babies through the centuries."

Igwanda, in the way of most fathers-to-be, was largely indifferent to such niceties; his overriding interest lay in the safety of mother and child. For that reason he would have preferred a shipboard birth because of the doctors' stress on this point, though he was not about to challenge his wife on the issue. But when Meiersdottir reported after one prenatal session that one of the doctors, having run out of medical arguments, was now accusing her of pulling rank—hers and his—to get preferential treatment, he decided it was time to put an end to the disagreement. Two days later he made a quick foray of his own back to the mothership for a brief, if somewhat pungent, discussion with the doctor in question, and after that there were no further argu­ments.

A few days before her predicted time she sat down with her husband and Joe to discuss the aliens' presence.

"I promised Gagugakhing that you could see when the baby came," she began, "and I keep that promise. I can't tell you exactly when it will be born. First I must begin what we call labor, which is when my muscles start to push the baby out and the birth canal, the place where it comes out, begins to open for it. Labor usually takes a long while, as much as a day or more, so there'll be plenty of time."

Joe was listening attentively but offered no comment.

"I'll tell you when my labor begins, or send someone. Only one of you may come, there's no space for more because I must have a doctor with me, and someone to help the doctor, and Carlos will be there too, and that's already crowded. It will be there"—she pointed to a small outbuilding that the natives had helped construct, this time with fabric walls as well as a roof; after the birth it was planned to convert the building into separate quarters for the humans' only complete family, both for their privacy and to protect others from interruptions in daytime and awakenings at night by baby noises.

"Now, I must tell you a thing more. Giving birth to a baby isn't comfortable for us. There's pain; it will hurt me. I may cry out because of that pain, I probably will—" She broke off; by now changes in the natives' facial expressions, small though they were by comparison with humans, had become familiar, and Joe was looking aghast.

"Why do you not control pain?" he asked. "Make it that you do not feel?"

"At home we have many ways of doing that," she said, thinking longingly of the acupuncture and other non-invasive techniques that were commonplace in childbirth. "But many of these require specialists, people who know how to do them. Here we have only some ways, and all the ways we have here use drugs—medicines that must go into the blood. Until it's born I share my blood with my baby, so any drug I take goes to the baby as well. That's not good for the baby. I'll use some drugs, but to protect my baby I can't use much, so I'll feel some pain."