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"Can do," she agreed.
But you can't be there to see it. This trip, the risks. You'll never see a payoff. You could just as well have driven away with Ahn-Kha. You can never walk down an Ozark highway again. You're condemned by your own actions, an exile.
"She's quit dilating," Boothe said, bringing Valentine out of his thoughts with a flash of guilt over what Gail must be experiencing. She had a short flashlight attached to her forehead: a medical unicorn. "I'm going to C-section. Pe-Suki, get me the tray I laid out in the kitchen."
Valentine got out of the way as the midwife came in with the tray.
"Suki, keep her chin up."
Boothe poured a shot glass full of Bulletproof, then added a couple of drops of ether to it. She tipped it into a fist-sized wad of cotton.
"Have her breathe this," she said, handing the mask to Suki. Gail inhaled the mixture.
"Christmas baby. You were almost a Christmas baby," Gail said as the ether took effect.
"Enough," Dr. Boothe told Suki. "Gail, keep looking at the ceiling. Over before you know it." Valentine watched her focus on Gail's belly, steadying the scalpel.
Valentine watched, relieved and fascinated at the same time, as the scalpel opened Gail just above the pelvis.
"Coming now. Your baby's doing fine," Boothe said.
Valentine couldn't help but think about Malia. What had Amalee's birth been like? The sweet, burning scent of ether in the air, along with blood, sweat, and amniotic fluid?
God, do they all look like that?
Boothe pulled out a froglike creature, narrow, legs drawn up tight, arms folded like a dead insect's, brachycephalic skull all the more unreal as the doctor held it upside down. "Oh, Christ."
A baleful yellow eye, slit-pupiled, peered at him from a face pinched by internal agony. It hissed, fought for breath.
Gail Foster Post had given birth to a Reaper.
Suki backed away, hand over her mouth.
"Boy or a girl?" Gail said, then, when there was no reply, "What? What?"
Boothe showed her.
"Get it away from me!" Gail screamed. "Bastards! Lying bastards!" Her words trailed off into sobs.
"Stay still," Boothe ordered. "Suki, put three more drops in another shot glass."
"Give it to me," Valentine said, extending a towel. He took the struggling infant-cleaned its sexless body.
"What a mess. Tearing everywhere in the uterus," Boothe said. "I hope I can fix this." She turned her light on Valentine. "Just pinch its nose and mouth shut. Bury it outside."
Valentine took the infant out into the December air, instinctively holding it close against the chill. He looked at the blood-smeared face, purple and green and blue, crisscrossed with veins, horror in miniature. Black nails, impossibly tiny, gleamed wetly as it moved its hand.
The future death machine coughed.
Did yellow eyes make you evil? A pointed tongue?
"Do you have a soul?" someone asked, using his larynx, tongue, and mouth.
Valentine wondered if he'd directed the question to the newborn or to himself. Tiny nostrils, long little jaw; he could smother it one-handed.
My DNA is 98% identical to a chimpanzee. How much code do I share with you?
However much, a tiny amount of it was Kurian. Evil.
