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16
KETHA
“Now settle down, everyone—settle down!” Mistress Morebutt called to the room. “Let the baby-view technician explain how this works.”
All of the richly dressed Yonnite Mistresses stopped talking and grew quieter. They were all gathered around a rolling, padded table where Ketha was lying, feeling extremely uncomfortable since she hated being the center of attention. Beside the table was a large projection screen as big as a dining room table. Her mother had requested the largest screen with the best definition, so that everyone in the room would be able to see every detail of the baby.
The technician herself was a wise looking lady in her middle years with gray streaks in her hair. She was wearing a no-nonsense white uniform and holding the baby-view wand in one hand as she waited for silence.
When all the whispering and murmuring had died away, she lifted her voice to address the crowd. It was clear she was used to doing this, Ketha thought. Which wasn’t surprising since baby-viewing parties had recently become all the rage in Opulex.
“Now then, ladies,” the tech began. “Thank you for coming. I want to let you know how this works. The baby-view wand doesn’t show us exactly how the baby looks right this moment—you wouldn’t see much at only three months gestation. Rather, the wand takes the information it gathers and extrapolates an image of exactly how the baby will look shortly after birth. We can even show extrapolated images of how the little girl will look as she gets older.” She glanced at Mistress Morebutt. “If that’s something you desire?”
“Yes, yes—we want to see images as far into the future as the wand can extrapolate!” Ketha’s mother exclaimed.
“Very good.” The tech did something to the wand in her hand—probably programming in the parameters, Ketha thought. “All right then—I want to further add that our wand projects with one hundred percent accuracy,” she went on. What you see on the screen is what you’re going to get—no question about it.”
“Good—very good!” Mistress Morebutt made a “hurry up” gesture with one hand. “Now please get to it! I can’t wait to see my granddaughter!”
Ketha was interested to see as well. Would the baby girl look like her, with light brown skin and green eyes? Or would she have golden eyes and red skin like Styx?
She was hoping for the former—it would be much easier to explain. Otherwise she was prepared to say she had used DNA from Polaris Three—the people there had red skin and golden eyes, though they were much smaller than the huge Kindred. Either way, though, she was covered. No one would ever know that she had allowed a male to penetrate and impregnate her rather than going to the Conception Center.
“Now then, here we go!” the tech said, cutting into her train of thought. She smoothed Ketha’s dress to center the hole in it right over her belly and squirted some chilly blue gel on her tiny baby bump. Then she pressed the baby-view wand to her skin and began rubbing it around.
Ketha tried to hold still as she watched the screen, waiting for the picture to form. The tech had explained to her earlier that the sticky, slimy gel helped the wand’s connectivity and accuracy, so she bore it grimly, though it felt extremely uncomfortable having her stomach coated in the stuff.
Then, suddenly, a picture began to form on the screen.
“Oh, here it comes! Here it comes—the first view of my granddaughter!” Mistress Morebutt clasped her hands together and practically danced with excitement. “Oh, I can’t wait to see her! I can’t?—”
However she stopped talking abruptly and fell silent. Ketha couldn’t understand why until she looked at the screen. On it was an image of a healthy looking infant. It had red skin and when it blinked, she saw its golden, glowing eyes. On either sides of its forehead were two tiny blunt horns.
But between its legs, something was sprouting. And that something was most definitely a…
“Oh my Goddess—is that a penis? Does the baby have apenis?”someone in the crowd murmured.
“Surely not—it must be a mistake,” someone whispered back.
But then the picture changed. It showed the baby as it would look at two years old. This time there was no mistaking it—the image on the screen was definitely a little boy. The horns were longer and sharper and the penis was more defined as well.
“Oh my Goddess,” one of the women in the crowd murmured. “It’s amale!Mistress Morebutt’s daughter is pregnant with amale baby!”
Ketha’s mother had a horrified look on her face as she stared at the screen and she seemed to be frozen to the spot.
Ketha felt frozen herself. What was happening? How could this be? Hadn’t she taken the medication to ensure female-only conception correctly? Or had it been a faulty batch of meds? Or maybe it simply wasn’t strong enough to combat Styx’s DNA and the Kindred propensity to sire males ninety-five percent of the time.
Whatever the case, the result was clear—she had a son in her belly,nota daughter and now all of Opulex and every member of the Sacred Seven knew it.
But the baby-view wand wasn’t done yet. It continued to send age-extrapolated images to the large screen. Ketha saw her son growing up—saw him as a laughing child and then a brooding adolescent and then a proud young man. He looked so much like Styx—he had his father’s thick, dark eyebrows and smirking mouth and full, sensuous lips. For a moment, she almost felt like she was looking at the big Kindred all over again and her heart ached with longing for him! Goddess, she missed him somuch.
Suddenly, Mistress Morebutt seemed to thaw from her frozen shock.
“This is a mistake! This can’t be right! Stop this—stop it at once!” she shouted at the technician. “Your wand is inaccurate—it’s sending lies to the screen!”
“No, it’s not!” the technician denied. “I told you, Mistress Morebutt—our baby-view wand is one hundred percent accurate. I’m very sorry to inform you of this, but your daughter is carrying a boy—amalechild.”
“I know what aboyis you idiot!” Mistress Morebutt shouted. “But there’s no way my daughter is carrying one inside her! How would she even get a male child when all the seed at every Conception Center on the planet is guaranteed to only carry female DNA?”
