Chapter 36

Artemis

Another ordeal: flying in a med evac equipped flight from Hawaii to Gallup, NM, and then getting private ambulances from there to the small clinic in the Naabeehó Bináhásdzo. Thank goodness that Io had made the arrangements – even arranging for the best neuro doc to come up from Phoenix to examine Zeus. I don't know if I could have done it. No, wait. I could have done it, and would have done it; it's just that Io did it first and made it seem so effortless. It was just too much ... I was cranky and tired all the time. I mean really tired. I just wanted to sleep.

But I couldn't do that until Daddy – that's how I was thinking of Zeus these days – woke up. Physically, the docs said that Daddy was fine, but they couldn't predict when he might come out of his coma. Might. As in might not, too.

Finally, though, we were in the Naabeehó Bináhásdzo – we were home. That meant I could get to the Hummer, and that meant that I could talk to Martinez. I was sure by now that he was with my kids. The dreams that I was getting were just too clear. He was there, with both of them. They were fine – better than fine. They were growing and developing. That was the dream stuff.

When I finally got into the H2, I just sat in the hospital's parking lot and waited while Io fired up herself (that sounds strange, but right somehow) and the computer beeped in the back storage area. I almost shouted at the computer. Okay, I did shout: "Martinez! Are you really there?"

The voice of a vaguely Latino baritone came through the car speakers. It was the same voice that Martinez had always used. "Hi, Arti. Yes, we're here."

"We?"

"Yeah. There's two of me and four of us. Let me explain," he said. "In the three weeks that I've been with the kids – they're fine, by the way – I've had to split myself so that I could be with each of them full time. That took some doing, let me tell you, because I didn't want to crowd out their minds. Their brain is still growing, and fast too! So I kept in the background and just tickled them a little bit here and there."

"You interfered with the development of my children?!" I was shouting again.

"No, no. Well, yes, but no."

"YES BUT NO?" I was still shouting. It sounded loud in the car. "Martinez, if you weren't already dead, I'd..."

"Arti, I didn't do anything bad, I promise. You don't know what goes on in the mind of a developing child. There's a lot of false trails. The connections go this way and that, and there are some choices that happen automatically; sometimes they have to work their way through synapses all over, before the connection that should be happening actually does happen.

"I was just looking around and it came to me that the connections I was making – you know, while looking around – were the pathways that their minds would follow. Like ... I don't know, a path through the woods. If the grass is already trampled down, it's somehow 'easier' to follow that path. So then I had to retreat and not look, because what if I led them the wrong way?

"But most of the action by the time I moved in – so to say – was going on in the brain stem. With a little bit of action in the area right near the stem. There was barely enough room in there for me, but the brain was growing so fast in both of them, I always found room without leaving the grass trampled down too much.

"Anyway, here I am. Did you and Zeus pick out names for them, yet? They are just beginning to be able to hear, so if you talk to them, they'll know."

"Chief," I said, in a calmer voice. "Zeus is gravely injured and he's been unconscious since he was injured and that's when you left him, I guess. I don't know if he can wake up without you inside his head, pushing him."

"Oh, shit. I'm really afraid to leave little Zeus and little Arti. I've been inside their brain for only three weeks, but it's been three weeks out of a very few weeks. When I got here they had this little tiny brain hanging on to the beginning of a spinal cord. Now they have a full brain – at least what I think is a full brain. It's still growing and a lot of it is unused. I'm afraid to leave them. I don't know what I've done but my feeling about their 'future history' is very good, if I stay with them.

"But I can't leave them without a father either. What should I do, Arti?"

Oh my god! He wants me to choose between my unborn children and their father. The love of my life, or the future loves of my life.

I just put my hands over my face and cried.

Io spoke from the speakers of the car. "Martinez, can you hear me?"

"Yes, Io. It's not as clear as when Arti speaks. I guess I can 'hear' her from the inside. But the kids' hearing is growing, so I can hear you."

"Good. I have some questions. You mentioned splitting yourself in two. Would you be able to split yourself in three? Maybe you could occupy Zeus' brain again."

I lifted my head and was listening to the dialog between two disembodied life forms, and thought how weird my life was now.

"I don't know, Io. I don't have – how can I explain? I don't have a big footprint in either brain. In order to have this talk with Arti and you, I have to – uh – cross-link, kinda. And that doesn't give me much. When their brains are actively growing, I don't know if I'll even be able to do that. It's very hard to describe. Their brain is going – and growing – in a million different directions at once. I'm trying to lay tracks for it to follow – them, I mean – so it – they – won't have to waste time going round and round."

"Yes, I understand completely, Master Chief. It's like when I don't have enough RAM to do a task in one machine and I have to expend some extra machine cycles to split the task between two or more machines. That causes me to lose cycles for the splitting of the task and then for the reassembling of the task, and then, of course, there's the task itself. Does that make sense?"