Quiet fell at Paul’s name. Awkward silence lingered in the room. Atlas’s hand hovered over her belly.Ah. The real genetic link.But also dead and gone.
Simon leaned closer to Anna. His voice was gruff, “What Paul wanted doesn’t matter.”
“That’s right; he doesn’t.” Nora echoed.
A touch of Atlas’s long-dormant bedside manner returned to him. “This is your baby, Anna. No one else’s.”
“You’re right.” Anna took a shaky breath. “She sure is my baby girl.”
Tilly leapt up, bouncing on her feet. The pink cast she wore on one leg thumped on the tile floor, and her face was lit up in the fluorescent lights. “Like a sister for me?”
“Not exactly.” Nora turned around to smile at her daughter before squeezing Anna’s hand. “Kind of more like a cousin.”
“No.” Anna smiled at Tilly. “You can be like a sister to her, Tilly.”
Atlas watched the exchange.Sisters. There is no genetic link there at all.Tears were still coming fast down Anna’s face.
“This little girl is gonna have a better life here than we had on Earth," Nora said. "You got a name?”
“No,” Anna said softly. “I don’t want to name her until she’s here.”
She pressed on her belly, right above where Atlas held the wand steady.
“Alright." Nora leaned over and held her hand. "I understand. I did the same thing with Tilly.”
Simon began to pepper Atlas with medical questions. He answered, but his focus stayed on Anna, who was rubbing the bruises from the blood draws up and down her arms. Her eyes were glued to the monitor. The little baby girl kicking on the screen.This must be surreal for her.
“Here.” Atlas stiffly handed Anna a tissue. “For your eyes. When we arrive on Mars we can do more detailed scans, but I’ll get the basic data now.”
Atlas kept the wand steady while starting the data transfer to Sterling. The copies would also be available to the technical scientists studying how humans had changed since they last studied them, but Sterling preferred to focus on the measurements that mattered: Anna and the baby’s health.
Anna rubbed tears on her cheeks. Her breath caught, and she let out a small laugh. “This is crazy to see.”
Tilly came forward until she was right underneath the screen, her cast awkwardly banging into his plants. She pointed to the drawing on the wall, the drawing she had made that Atlas couldn’t bring himself to throw away. “You kept the picture I made!”
“Yes. It was a gift.” Atlas’s eyes softened, watching Tilly try to come closer to the ultrasound screen.
Atlas watched them all a minute. In the past, mothers were happy finding out about their babies. He had given hundreds, hundreds of ultrasounds. He remembered them vividly. Theywere one of the moments where the barrier between man and machine was lowered. Pain did that, sometimes. And joy. And now, one hundred and fifty years after the war on Earth, with humans so far in the past, he smiled. “Do you want to find the baby’s heartbeat?”
Tilly’s eyes lit up. “Yeah!”
Simon’s green eyes scanned the screen intently. “Do we know exactly how far along Anna is?”
Atlas positioned Tilly’s hand on the wand, gliding it over Anna’s belly. At the bottom of the screen, he pointed to the measurements. “Anna is just a little over seven months, like we thought. Hold it right there, Tilly.”
A whooshing noise filled the room. Tilly pointed at the monitor. “There it is!”
The sound was lost a second later as Tilly moved her hand too fast. Atlas had already calculated, though.Heartbeat is steady.
“Ah. Hold on.” He chuckled. “The baby moved.”
After a readjustment, the whooshing noises filled the room again. Tilly grinned, holding steady while everyone was quiet to listen.
The door opened to the med room, making Anna jump. An android with platinum blond hair and a fixed smile walked in. Exaggerated heels clicked on the floor over a standard suit that was modeled to a golden-ratio body.Stella.
Stella walked close to the monitor, her blue eyes scanning the feed. “The ultrasound worked? How wonderful.”
“Yes!” Anna adjusted herself on the table. “We just found out she is a girl.”
