"Leave it alone," she muttered to herself.
Okay, CHAP? What about that one?
After a moment's thought, Susannah flipped the toggle from ASLEEP to AWAKE and those disconcerting blue eyes opened at once, staring into Susannah's with what looked like fierce curiosity.
Roland's child,she thought with a strange and painful mixture of emotions.And mine. As for Mia? Girl, you nothing but a ka-mai. I'm sorry for you.
Ka-mai, yes. Not just a fool, but ka's fool - a fool of destiny.
"WITHOUT POWER REDUCTION IN SECTION ALPHA, TOTAL SYSTEM SHUTDOWN WILL OCCUR IN 25 SECONDS!"
So waking the baby hadn't done any good, at least not in terms of preventing a complete system crash. Time for Plan B.
She reached out for the absurd LABOR FORCE control-knob, the one that looked so much like the oven-dial on her mother's stove. Turning the dial back to 2 had been difficult, and had hurt like a bastard. Turning it the other way was easier, and there was no pain at all. What she felt was aneasing somewhere deep in her head, as if some network of muscles which had been flexed for hours was now letting go with a little cry of relief.
The blaring pulse of the Klaxon ceased.
Susannah turned LABOR FORCE to 8, paused there, then shrugged. What the hell, it was time to go for broke, get this over with. She turned the dial all the way to 10. The moment it was there, a great glossy pain hardened her stomach and then rolled lower, gripping her pelvis. She had to tighten her lips against a scream.
"POWER REDUCTION IN SECTION ALPHA HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED," said the voice, and then it dropped into a John Wayne drawl that Susannah knew all too well. "THANKS A WHOLE HEAP, LI'L COWGIRL."
She had to tighten her lips against another scream - not pain this time but outright terror. It was all very well to remind herself Blaine the Mono was dead and this voice was coming from some nasty practical joker in her own subconscious, but that didn't stop the fear.
"LABOR...HAS COMMENCED," said the amplified voice, dropping the John Wayne imitation. "LABOR...HAS COMMENCED." Then, in a horrible (and nasal) Bob Dylan drawl that set her teeth on edge, the voice sang: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU...BABE!...HAPPY BIRTHDAY...TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY...DEAR MORDRED...HAPPY BIRTHDAY...TO YOU!"
Susannah visualized a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall behind her, and when she turned it was, of course, right there (she had not imagined the little sign reading ONLY YOU AND SOMBRA CAN HELP PREVENT CONSOLE FIRES, however - that, along with a drawing of Shardik o' the Beam in a Smokey the Bear hat, was some other joker's treat). As she hurried across the cracked and uneven floor to get the extinguisher, skirting the fallen ceiling panels, another pain ripped into her, lighting her belly and thighs on fire, making her want to double over and bear down on the outrageous stone in her womb.
Not going to take long,she thought in a voice that was part Susannah and part Detta.No ma'am. This chap comin in on the express train!
But then the pain let up slightly. She snatched the extinguisher off the wall when it did, trained the slim black horn on the flaming control panel, and pressed the trigger. Foam billowed out, coating the flames. There was a baleful hissing sound and a smell like burning hair.
"THE FIRE...IS OUT," the Voice of the Dogan proclaimed. "THE FIRE...IS OUT." And then changing, quick as a flash, to a plummy British Lord Haw-Haw accent:
"I SAY,JOLLY GOOD SHOW, SEW-ZANNAH, AB-SO-LUTELYBRILLLL-IANT! "
She lurched across the minefield of the Dogan's floor again, seized the microphone, and pressed the transmit toggle. Above her, on one of the TV screens still operating, she could see that Mia was on the move again, crossing Sixtieth.
Then Susannah saw the green awning with the cartoon pig, and her heart sank. Not Sixtieth, but Sixty-first.The hijacking mommybitch had reached her destination.
"Eddie!" she shouted into the microphone. "Eddie or Roland!" And what the hell, she might as well make it a clean sweep. "Jake! Pere Callahan! We've reached the Dixie Pig and we're going to have this damn baby! Come for us if you can, but be careful!"
She looked up at the screen again. Mia was now on the Dixie Pig side of the street, peering at the green awning. Hesitating. Could she read the words DIXIE PIG? Probably not, but she could surely understand the cartoon. The smiling, smoking pig. And she wouldn't hesitate long in any case, now that her labor had started.
"Eddie, I have to go. I love you, sugar! Whatever else happens, you remember that! Never forget it!I love you! This is..." Her eye fell on the semicircular readout on the panel behind the mike. The needle had fallen out of the red. She thought it would stay in the yellow until the labor was over, then subside into the green.
Unless something went wrong, that was.
She realized she was still gripping the mike.
"This is Susannah-Mio, signing off. God be with you, boys. God and ka."
She put the microphone down and closed her eyes.
Twelve
Susannah sensed the difference in Mia immediately. Although she'd reached the Dixie Pig and her labor had most emphatically commenced, Mia's mind was for once elsewhere. It had turned to Odetta Holmes, in fact, and to what Michael Schwerner had called the Mississippi Summer Project. (What the Oxford rednecks had calledhim was The Jewboy.) The emotional atmosphere to which Susannah returned wasfraught, like still air before a violent September storm.
Susannah! Susannah, daughter of Dan!
Yes, Mia.
I agreed to mortality.
So you said.
And certainly Mia had looked mortal in Fedic. Mortal andterribly pregnant.
Yet I've missed most of what makes the short-time life worthwhile. Haven't I?The grief in that voice was awful; the surprise was even worse.And there's no time for you to tell me. Not now.