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That can't be yet. Stay quiet. Wait until we are both certain.
But another circle of pain wrapped tight around her middle. It pressed white-hot against the small of her back. And there came another jab and a soundless sense of something breaking. Fluid leaked between her legs. She felt the wetness and at the same time the blood seemed to drain from her face. That awful lightheaded feeling--you're going to pass out.
"Stop the truck now here," she said.
At first he didn't understand.
"You need help, lady?"
"No. Stop the truck. See those lights? Stop there. That's where I'm going. Stop the truck!" She flashed her eyes on him. She saw the intimidation, the fear, yet he eased into the stop.
"Do you know who lives back up in there?"
"Course I do." She opened the door, and got out, stumbling over the step. Her dress was soaked. No doubt the seat behind her was wet, and now in the glare of oncoming lights he could see it. Poor man. How disgusting it must all seem to him. That she had lost control of her bladder, when that wasn't it at all.
"Go on, now, thanks." She slammed the cab door. But she heard him hollering from inside.
"Ma'am, your purse. Here. No, no, that's OK, you already give me plenty money."
The truck wouldn't move on. She cut across the ditch, hurriedly, and climbed up into the high grass on the other side, and passed into the dense bank of trees, into the soft relentless chorus of the tree frogs. Up ahead she saw light, and she moved towards it, at last hearing the sound of the truck drive away and vanish within seconds in the silence.
"I'm finding a place, Emaleth, a soft dry place. Be quiet, and be patient."
Mother, I cannot. I must come out.
She had come through the trees into a clearing. The lights she'd seen lay way far away to the right. She did not care about them. It was the great grassy place that lay ahead, and a beautiful oak, immense in size and leaning tragically on its long arms as if reaching out to the woods beyond in a futile effort to join with it.
The oak broke her heart suddenly, its giant knuckled branches, its great sweeps of dark moss, and in the soft glowing starry night, the sky was so bright behind it.
It's beautiful, please, Emaleth. Emaleth, if I die, go to Michael. Once again, she registered the vision of Michael's face, the numbers of the house, numbers of the phone--data for the tiny mind inside her, which knew what she knew.
Mother, I cannot be born if you die. Mother, I need you. I need Father.
The tree was so distinct, massive and graceful. Some lovely vision came to her of the forests of olden times when trees like this must have been the temples. She saw a green field, hills covered with forest.
Donnelaith, Mother. Father said I was to go to Donnelaith, that we were to meet there.
"No, darling," she said aloud, reaching out for the trunk of the tree and then falling against its dark, good-smelling rough surface. Like stone it felt, no hint that it was alive, not here at the craggy base where the roots were like rocks, only up and out there where the small branches moved in the wind. "Go to Michael, Emaleth. Tell him everything. Go to Michael."
It hurts, Mother, it hurts.
"Remember, Emaleth, go to Michael."
Mother, do not die. You must help me be born. You must give me your eyes and the milk, lest I be small and useless.
She wandered out from the trunk, to where the grass was soft and silken under her feet, between a pair of the great sprawling elbow branches.
Dark and sweet here.
I'm going to die, darling.
No, Mother. I'm coming now. Help me!
It was dark and sweet here, with heaps of leaves and moss like a bower. She lay on her back, her body pulsing with one shock of pain after another. Moss above, soft moss hanging down, and the moon snagged up there, and so beautiful.
She felt the fluid gush, warm against her thighs, and then the worst of the pain, and something soft and wet stroking her. She lifted her own hand, unable to coordinate, unable to reach down.
Dear God, was the child reaching out from the womb? Was the child's hand against her thigh? The darkness above closed in as if the branches had closed, and then the moon shone bright again, making the moss gray for an instant. She let her head roll to the side. Stars falling down in the purple sky. This is heaven.
"I made an error, a terrible terrible error," she said. "The sin was vanity. Tell Michael this."
The pain widened; she knew the causes of this, the mouth of the womb wrenched open. She screamed, she couldn't help it, and she felt nothing but the pain grow worse and worse and then suddenly it stopped. Slipping back into ache and sickness, she struggled to see the branches again, struggled to lift her hands to help Emaleth, but she could not do it.
A great warm heaviness lay on her thighs. It lay on her belly. She felt the warm wet touch on her breast.
"Mother, help me!"
In the vague sweet darkness, she saw the small head rising above her, like the head of nun, its long wet hair so sleek, like a nun's veil, the head rising and rising.
"Mother, see me. Help me! Lest I be small and useless!"
The face loomed above hers, the great blue eyes peering down into her own, and the wet hand suddenly closing on her breast, making the milk squirt from the nipple.
"Are you my baby girl?" she cried. "Ah, the scent of Father. Are you my baby girl?"
There was the burning smell, the smell of the night he was born, the smell of something heated and dangerous and chemical, but nothing glowed in the dark. She felt the arms encircling her, the wet hair on her stomach, the mouth on her breast and then that delicious suckling, that wondrous suckling, sending the pleasure all through her.
The pain was gone. So beautifully and wholly gone. The darkness of the night seemed to enfold her, and lock her down to the fallen leaves, to the bed of moss, beneath the delicious weight of the woman who lay on top of her.
"Emaleth!"
Yes, Mother. The milk is good. The milk is fine. I am born, Mother.
I want to die. I want you to die. Both of us now. Die.
But there was no longer much to worry about. She was floating and Emaleth drank the milk in deep hearty gulps and there wasn't anything now that she could do. She could not even feel her own arms and legs. She could feel nothing but this suckling and then when she tried to say...it was gone, whatever it had been; I want to open my eyes. I want to see the stars again.
"They are so beautiful, Mother. They could guide me to Donnelaith if the great sea didn't lie between us."
She wanted to say, No, not Donnelaith, and to say Michael's name again, but then she couldn't quite follow it, couldn't quite remember who Michael was, or why she had wanted to say that.
"Mother, don't leave me!"
Her eyes opened for one precious second, yes, see, and there was the purple sky and a tall willowy figure standing over her. It could not have been her child, no, not this, not this woman rising out of
the dark like some grotesque growth from the warm, verdant earth, something monstrous and...
"No, Mother. No. I am beautiful. Mother, please, please, don't leave me."
Nineteen
THE POSITION WASN'T embarrassing. It was flat-out crazy. He had been on the phone for forty-five minutes to the Keplinger people.
"Look," said the young doctor on the other end. "It says you came yourself, you took the files, you said that it was top secret."
"Damn it, I'm in New Orleans, Louisiana, you fool. I was here all day yesterday. I'm at the Pontchartrain Hotel. I'm with the Mayfair and Mayfair people now! I didn't pick up anything! What you're saying is, the material is gone."
"Absolutely, Dr. Larkin. Gone. Unless there's a copy somewhere filed in such a way that I can't access it. And I don't think there is. I can keep..."
"About Mitch. How is he?"
"Oh, he's not going to make it, Dr. Larkin. If you could see him, you wouldn't want him to. Don't pray for that now. Look, his wife's on the other line. I'll call you back."
"No, you won't. You'll run for cover. You know what's happened. Somebody's walked out of there with all the material Rowan Mayfair entrusted to me, everything Flanagan was working on. You guys slipped up! And Flanagan is critically hurt and unable to communicate."
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then the same young, brittle voice again:
"Correction. Dr. Flanagan's dead. Died twenty minutes ago. I'll have to call you back, Doctor."
"You better find the records, you better find the complete and entire computer record of every experiment made by Mitch Flanagan on behalf of Dr. Samuel Larkin for Dr. Rowan Mayfair."
"You have a record of sending us these things?"
"I brought them."
"And that was you, the real you, who brought the stuff--not somebody apparently pretending to be you? Like this doctor yesterday who wasn't you. But said that he was? Oh, yeah, OK. Now, I'm looking at a videotape of this man. Yesterday four p.m. Pacific Standard Time. He's tall, dark-haired, smiling, and he's holding up to the camera his identification, a California driver's license: Dr. Samuel Larkin. And you say you are Samuel Larkin and that you are in New Orleans?"
Lark was speechless. He cleared his throat.
He realized he was staring at Ryan Mayfair, who had been watching from the shadows of the office for some time now. The others still waited in the conference room--a distant and solemn ring of faces around the mahogany table.
