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Chapter 4: "Mother, I'm all right,." I said. By the beginning of the eight month, Evalyn had been calling me from work a few times a day. Close to my due date, it had expanded to several times a day, and she'd been hinting that she wanted to be with me full time. Yeah, I bulged like a beached whale. The baby kicked and punched like I was a gym. I couldn't stray far from a bathroom. But I couldn't imagine that anything would go wrong. "Jesus H. Christ, I'll call you if anything happens. Now get back to work. Your department must think you're freaking nuts!" She finally hung up, and I settled back into the laz-y-boy, and closed my eyes for a nap -- if the baby would stop reliving Rocky II -- and faded away. I woke up when Leonard came home, and pushed myself up to be on my feet when he came into the living room. Marriage was a nineteen-fifties thing to him, the decade he was most in tune with, and for the time being, I was June Cleaver. In exchange for a few minor deferences, Leonard give me respect and the rule of the house. All-in-all, it wasn't a bad deal. If one managed to look past Leonard's old-world attitudes, he was consistent and reasonable and could be fun to be around. With things as they were, I could almost forgive the family for putting a tracker in my ass. After all, I began to rationalize, the family had cause to be careful and I had gained hundreds of years of lifespan as recompense. Were the hormones affecting me? Was making a baby making me soft? Possibly. All I knew for sure was that I wanted a real home, peace, and an end to fear. Leonard looked like he would be a good father. With our baby's birth, I dared to think we might truly bond. And yet, I couldn't find the words to say to him -- at least, not yet. I found that I had limits: I was damned if I was going to open my heart to the man who had drugged me and forced me to go down on him -- at least, I wasn't going to do it first. If he told me that he loved me, or that I was the woman he'd always wanted, then maybe I could have forgiven him, but I needed to see him vulnerable before I could let go. I wanted to see that steel Mengstrom siding pried off. The signs of that happening hadn't been promising, though, and I was starting to wonder. I grew angry. What didn't he like about me, anyway? He was a man. Until I acquired this living basketball, I was as pretty as Donna, maybe prettier. I'd been the kind of wife he wanted -- and damn it, he'd chosen me, not the other way around! I wouldn't have been in this mess if it hadn't been for him. So what the hell was his problem? Was he holding a candle for his dead ex-wife? Was his purebred Elowin pride so strong that I, the half-breed, had to abase myself before his nibs would reconsider our relationship? Leonard was a master of self- control. What did he really think of me? The matter lay unresolved when, a week later, just before lunchtime, Junior twisted a vise around my guts let me know he wanted out. I called Leonard, who told me that he would be there in five minutes, and I called Evalyn, who was further away and would meet me at the hospital. Even with my guts in a vise, I wasn't too concerned. Until then, I'd been able to divorce what was growing inside me from myself. I hadn't been raised to consider children coming from me, and none of it so far had been my choice. I would become a mother, but what did that mean, really? Half the planet had expelled children into the world. I met Leonard at the door with my bags. He pecked me on the cheek, a pro forma attempt to reassure me, I thought, and herded me to the car, a hand on my elbow to make sure that I didn't trip onto the sidewalk, fall and explode or something. I wasn't crazy: I made sure that I was paralyzed from the waist down. As the contractions came harder and closer together, I breathed and pushed while the obstetrician at the business end of me babbled about centimeters of dilation. It was still more that I was living someone else's life. And then, with one final effort, I pushed that baby out of me! My stomach dropped like a busted souffl?, and I, inexplicably a genuine, dictionary definition mother, heard my baby's first cry. A baby, and it was mine! Or ours, I supposed, considering Leonard's contribution. I asked for my child! Evalyn, watching from the side, looked like a praying mantis in hospital greens and mask. She saw the baby first, as the nurses wiped it off to make it presentable, but before the nurse handed it to me, Evalyn shot me a cold stare. "Congratulations, Mrs. Mengstrom," the doctor said, "you have a fine baby girl." ~A girl?~ That wasn't supposed to be possible. Mengstrom women combined with Mengstrom men only made boys. But when the nurse brought the infant to me, the space between her legs provided the proof. I held her in my arms and prodded her tiny hands and feet with my finger. Her blue eyes stared, unfocused, at her new world. She was beautiful. And mine. Nothing else mattered at that moment, and so it was easy to ignore Leonard, who looked as grim as his mother. "How could you do this to me?" he hissed in my ear. There was only one logical explanation for the girl in my arms, but it wasn't true. I hadn't cheated on him. I looked up. Evalyn was still all daggers, but Leonard's eyes mostly held pain at my assumed betrayal. So, he really did care for me, after all. It spared him some choice words. I motioned him closer and said, "I know what you think, but you're wrong. Don't bother making accusations until you check the DNA. I won't hear 'em." I returned to more important things like playing my baby girl's tiny little toes and making silly sounds. Leonard stormed out and, with a sharp backward glance, Evalyn followed. Leonard visited me the next morning bringing roses wrapped with a pink bow. Pulling up a chair by the bed, he presented the flowers to me with both hands. "I sincerely hope this makes up a little for my behavior earlier," he said. I sniffed them to be polite, then I dumped them into the vase beside the bed. "I'm inclined to forgive you, depending." Leonard motioned towards the nursery down the hall. "I saw before I came here. Our girl is a pretty little thing." "And you saw the DNA results." He sighed. "Yes, an hour ago." "I take it then, that there is no question that she is ours?" He placed his face in his hands. "Yes! Yes, she's ours. I was wrong to doubt you," he said, wiping away tears in his eyes. "She's the first girl to be born to the family. But there's more. Genetically, she's the first complete Elowin born in over 4,500 years. The genes that we thought were lost are a part of her." "How is that possible?" "This must be the way it happened, or at least none of us can think of a better explanation: In the very old days before the plague, Atlantis made occasional expeditions to the continents. At times, Elowin men and women set up residence in some of the ancient cities in Egypt, Mesopotamia, South America, and Asia, and reported back what was happening there. Some of the men and a few of the women mated with the locals and, occasionally, there were 'accidents.' As far as we can tell, you must be a descendent of one of those accidents. Our baby has her missing genes from you." "Are you saying that I was Elowin before I became Charlene?" "Mm, not exactly, but part of you was, and those genes carried over. You are more than 50% Elowin - more than the rest of the wives. It was just blind luck that you carry the exact genes necessary to produce girls." I whistled. "This is going to change things." "The council is already discussing what this means." "Does this mean that I've done my duty to the family?" He burst into laughter. "Like no other woman in the family has ever done before!" He kissed me for a long time. It was a good kiss. It was a good time, I thought, for one of us to say something that would bind us more tightly together, but he didn't, and neither did I. I was disappointed, but I was used to it by now. "I've done so well, I think it's time for some of those family privileges the council has been promising -- when I'm not taking care of our daughter." He nodded rapidly. "I'm sure the council would be happy to agree to whatever you want -- within certain limits. Both of you must be protected. You two are literally the continuation of our species. You, wife, are Mother Prime, Momma One, the Missing Link --" "Enough!" I cried, and reached over to cover his hand. "We have an immediate problem. We never picked out any girl's names." Leonard brought my hand gently to his lips, a gesture I hadn't seen in a long time. "What do you suggest?" "I've always liked Larissa. It was the name of my grandmother." "I like it, too. Very well, our daughter's name is Larissa Mengstrom." When we left the hospital, family guards waited for us, and treated Larissa and me like precious cargo. Cars to the front and rear escorted us to the estate, which the council had decided was more secure than our house. I understood the security, but when we pulled up to the curb, one of the men wanted to take Larissa from me. I had the feeling that I'd better assert my rights before this became a habit. I stated that I was fully capable of walking and demanded that as her mother, I would bring her in myself, and I had my way. Nothing was too good for Larissa. She had two rooms of her own, filled with stuffed animals, brightly colored blocks, balls, noisemakers, and anything else that might fascinate an infant. Evalyn quit work to be with her during the day. Everyone in the family eventually made the trek to see Larissa in those first two months. The men mostly congratulated me for having a girl -- as if I'd made it a conscious choice. The women were less complimentary. Some of it I wrote off to jealousy, and the rest I ascribed to the snobbery of longevity, the ancient ones invariably finding fault with the young, but when I caught a three hundred year- old matron sneering at my baby, I could barely believe it. But when I caught Evalyn at the changing table with Larissa and complained to her about it, she said, "You really don't understand, do you? There won't be any more men made into women." "So what? Pray tell how that affects that old biddy. How can anyone be hostile to a baby?" She looked at me as if I were dense, and washed her hands before continuing. "How are you and Leonard getting along?" "I'm discovering that life on a pedestal is tolerable, and the sex has been great." "Well, of course! You have that extra the rest of us don't: you give birth to Elowin girls. Until Larissa grows up, you're the closest thing to an Elowin woman in the universe. The rest of us have been devalued. We're obsolete." "That's a bit harsh. I --" She cut me off with a sharp gesture. "Charlene! Don't be an idiot. How do expect the other wives to feel? A mother will never again have that moment to choose her son's wife, and who knows what other customs will change. Have you given a thought of what this means to you? There are only seven genetic lines in the family. Without Elowin women, we haven't ever been able to mix the genes: it's been a father's genes passed on to his son's for thousands of years. It's entirely possible that you will be required to have at least one girl with a man from every line in the family -- or more." "I don't believe it. Where's your proof?" "I don't have to prove anything. I don't know, but it's a logical step to spread the genes. The council, I'm sure, is taking its time to get it right, but eventually it will make its decision, and when that happens --" "I will not be a brood mare!" "Really?" she said, her eyes narrowing. "You'll do whatever the council tells you to do. You're too young to realize this, but you have been given a great gift. Most of the women would sacrifice years of their lives to be in your position. We generally have only a single child in a very long life." "It's not a privilege if you're forced into it!" "It's the council's will that is important. It is not up to you," she said sternly. I held my tongue. When the women in the family talked about the council, they spoke with reverence, like it was some all-powerful entity. No women were permitted to be on it, which didn't seem to trouble them at all. It could have been very long tradition, but they were so universally adamant, sometimes I wondered if their minds had been tampered with. Worst of all, Evalyn was right. If the council ordered me to have a dozen or so children by different men, I couldn't run away. I could make a lot of trouble for myself, but ultimately, if the council told me I to, I would have no option except to squeeze them out year after year. Evalyn, my dear mother-in-law, the woman who had chosen me to join her in this asylum and my supposed greatest ally, saw nothing wrong with it. And there wasn't a damn thing I could think of to get around it. *** A week later, I still hadn't found a solution, but I didn't want to wait around for the axe to fall. Whatever happened, I didn't want to be stuck being a full-time mother for a hundred years or so. With nothing to lose, I decided to press the council for something I wanted before they made any decisions. Leonard had some influence with the council. I'd been in a pissy mood for the last week, so I figured I had to make amends. I dressed up that evening and took a couple of extra hours to make Leonard's favorite meal. I set out the candles, served Leonard wine, and let him know in small ways that I was his for the asking. "What's going on, Honey?" he said, not displeased in the slightest, but suspicious. "Dear husband of mine, I've decided that I'd like to learn more about our ancestors." "You already have access to the English language family biographies, thousands of records." "Most of them go back only a few centuries. I want to know about Atlantis. I want to see the ancient records." "Why? You wouldn't be able to read them. Only a comparative few have been translated. Not many in the family have more than a passing knowledge of Atlantean, and it's not as if we can order translator programs for it." "Well then, I'd like to learn Atlantean. With your mother and the nurse around, I have the time." He looked at me curiously for a moment, then shrugged. "If that's what you want to do, then I don't see why not. I'll petition the council tomorrow." The council had no objection. For several months, I struggled with the ancient tongue. Like most modern languages, the writing was phonetic. The alphabet wasn't dissimilar in concept from ours, and consisted of thirty separate consonants and vowels. There was no translation program, but a farsighted ancestor had compiled a dictionary with the ancient Mycenaean script, Linear B. Another had translated that into Ionic Greek, the written language of the Iliad, and then, hundreds of years later, to Koine Greek, the common Greek that Alexander the Great had spread throughout the ancient world. That language was well known. It had been the lingua franca of most of the Mediterranean world during the height of the Roman Empire, and continued to be taught to school children well into the twentieth century. As Leonard had said, some of it had been translated into English, mainly history, and I devoured those early on. The ancient Atlanteans had been scholars, artists, and scientists, and often all three at various times during their lifetimes. Unlike the rest of humanity of that remote age, they hadn't struggled to survive. Ocean currents had provided a constant source of power to the islands. They took most of their food from the sea, and cultivated the rest in vast greenhouses. Those long-dead architects had designed the ancient structures to last. They fit the contours and colors of the island's environment, curving and stacking them on the other like cells of an organism, strong and beautiful, in a way, not unlike a combination of Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese temples. Literature, visual arts, the art of love, and science flourished. A man or woman might spend centuries studying what they wanted, in whatever direction they desired. Such lifetime experts had produced breakthroughs in metallurgy and biochemistry that we couldn't match today, and practically none of it had been translated. When the last families abandoned Atlantis for the mainland, they arrived without the infrastructure to support their advanced technology. The old machines gradually broke down and could not be replaced. The refugees were too few to even try to recreate what they had lost, and indeed, the effort could have proven deadly in a land where "magic" or the suspicion of an unnaturally long lifespan could spell a trip to the next world over a bonfire. The ancient technologies still existed, but the knowledge was locked away in round tubes of what looked like glass or plastic, each about the size and shape of the cardboard dowel from a roll of paper towels. It was all there, waiting for a day when the world's technology had caught up enough to read them. Fortunately, for me, there were translation programs from Koine Greek to English that worked tolerably well, and after months of study, I knew enough Atlantean to begin working out algorithms to create an Atlantean to English translator, bypassing the complex Indo-European syntax of the ancient Greek. As long as I stayed busy, I managed to push my fate the council was deciding to the back of my mind. Leonard and I found time to be away together, too, mostly local dining out, but occasionally to more romantic places: dancing, sailing on the nearby lake, and one memorable weekend, at the beach. I awoke that morning and slid out of bed, leaving Leonard to sleep. I made some coffee, then carried the cup outside to the balcony. The sun was nearly all the way up, beaming orange and red above the breakers. Terns and seagulls cried and fought each other for crabs and clams at the water's edge, their caterwauling mixing with the the surf and wind to become part of the background noise. One of the family guards strolled the strand a story down below us. He wore a baseball cap and windbreaker, which concealed his holster and radio. Security was always around wherever Larissa and I were present, enough to recognize patterns. Today it was the "beachcomber" and the "guy with a cigarette" across the street. Two men in the next room monitored the corridor and coordinated the operation. They were all professionals, and at times I could almost forget they were around, not so much, lately. Larissa's first birthday approached, and council members who formerly rarely visited, saw us more often, usually two or three at a time. Sometimes their focus was on Larissa, sometimes on me. Sometimes they complimented my studies. They always met privately with Leonard afterwards. "Just man talk," Leonard called it. I called it bull shit. The council was up to something. As time went on, and I had a chance to think about it, I figured the question wasn't so much what they were up to, but why they didn't just ask me. If the council asked me nicely: "Charlene, we need more babies to ensure the survival of our family. Would you mind having a dozen or so children, all girls?" I would have said, "Sure, what the hell." Upon objective reflection, having a dozen children in a six or seven hundred year lifespan was not that arduous, and depending on how they were spaced, it would be possible to spare the other wives the threat of a flood of "real" Elowin women that their husbands might covet -- but the council wasn't, it seemed, in the business of asking women for their opinion. A pair of thuds on the floor behind me told me that my husband was up. Leonard's arms wrapped around me from behind and pulled me backwards against his chest. I let him and relaxed. Normally, he was a solid, comforting presence. After nearly two years of marriage, I had a better sense of who he was. I knew he wanted me. Bit by bit, his desire for me had grown, and he let me know, from the way he made love to me to simple thoughtful gestures. It might be any day now, that he'd break down and go mushy. I wanted him to tell me that he loved me, the words I had to hear to be able to forgive him, but now I wasn't at all sure if I could reciprocate. It was all this damned secrecy: was Leonard mine, or did the council own him? "You look pensive this morning," he said. "Last day blues. I miss Larrisa, but it's good to get away from the estate." "Have you thought of having another child?" That was new. I turned around and looked up. He was dead serious. So, the council had finally decided. I might have expected that he would spring it on me here, away from the estate and on vacation. "Ah," ~Careful!~ "Ah, has the council discussed this?" "They're still discussing it. I wanted to know how you felt about it." I doubted that Leonard would ask me anything of the sort without council approval, but still, if they were asking me, the truth had a whole lot going for it. "Personally, I'd like to have another child as soon as possible. It would be great for Larissa to have someone about her own age to grow up with." He looked at me like he wanted to take me straight to the sheets and do some fertilizing. "And what about later?" He asked me softly, but his demeanor told me that this was the important question. Again, I tried the truth: "I know that I'm the mother to the girls of this generation, but I'm worried about the effect on the other wives. Ideally, I'd like to stagger any future births, maybe every twenty or thirty years or so, but if that's not possible, I would like to have some of my eggs implanted in the other wives. If they were having children, too, it would keep the peace." Apparently, it wasn't precisely the right answer because he frowned -- or maybe he didn't like the idea of me being spread around like that. "That's considerate of you," he said. "You may not see it, but the other wives look at me like I'm another species. There are a lot of hard feelings about this." "I'm not criticizing your intentions or your kindness. You have their best interests in mind." "Hmm. Well, can you tell me what the council would think of that?" "As I said, they haven't made any final decisions, but I'll be sure to pass on your wishes." Was I worrying too much? Was this all on the level? Would they try to accommodate their "Mother Prime?" I didn't know anything, except that I was sick of being tired of being on edge. For that, at least, there was a ready solution. "Then what about us, right now? Do you think the council would object if we practiced?" He grinned. "Perhaps we should, just in case." He brought me inside in a manly way, and that was the last security saw of us for some time. Larissa's first birthday was a lavish affair. The council was there, as well as about twenty other family members. After the presents, the cake, ice cream, and the dinner that followed later that night, the guests departed, and I carried Larissa to bed, where she was already asleep before I tucked her in. I turned off the light to her room, and slipped out quietly. Leonard met me in the hall with a couple of glasses. "A drink to celebrate our daughter's first year," he said. "And many more to follow." I took the glass from his hand and clinked them together. I knew as soon as it touched my lips what it was. It was all I could do to look natural, and forced it all down in one long series of swallows. He watched me drink as he drank whatever he was having. I continued to smile, and wiped the liquid from my lips. "That was good, but excuse me, I've got to pee." I walked past him quickly, continued down the hall and into the bathroom. Once inside I locked the door and turned on the faucet. Shaking with fury, I went to my knees over the toilet, and stuck two fingers in my mouth as far back as I could and threw up everything: the dinner, the dessert, the wine, and the drug. Some of it was already inside me making me a tad hazy by the time I made it back. Leonard was waiting, naturally, observing my approach. He talked for a while. I said a few things, and let the drug be my guide, accentuating its effects, fading out like the zombie the drug wanted me to be when I judged the time was right. "Charlene, the council wants to meet you in session. I know you want to meet them. You've been hoping to meet them." "Yes. They want to meet me and I want to meet them," I said dreamily. "Come with me." He took my hand and led me away to the council chambers, and ushered me inside. All five of the Council was behind the heavy table, which I'd heard, was made in the time of Charlemagne. They were mostly of a type: hard men who had seen half an age. All were well past five hundred years old, which meant all looked at least in their fifties. They made no offer for me to sit, so I continued to stand, looking straight ahead, expressionless but thinking dark thoughts. When these bastards had ordered me drugged they had blown their probation. "Is she prepared?" Henry, the council leader in the center asked Leonard. The oldest man alive had a presence in the council chamber: it was as if the centuries had winnowed away his "chaff," leaving only the essence, which seemed to be a dyspeptic coach eternally dissatisfied with his team. Evalyn had told me about him: he'd been a young man in London during the Black Death. Most of the family had run for the hills when the rats started dying, but Henry had been unlucky: buboes had swelled his armpits and groin, and he'd been left behind to live or die. The others on the council ranged from cool to calculating, but this pale, scarred scarecrow was a cut beyond. He'd lived when tens of thousands had perished around him. The experience could have left him forever grateful to be alive; instead, he'd been looking for the turd in his oatmeal ever since. "My wife drank the full amount ten minutes ago," Leonard replied. "We'll start then. Charlene will have the Elowin girls as quickly as possible. There is no practical alternative." Leonard's grip tightened on my hand. "Why? Charlene is ready to have another child immediately, and she's willing to have more after that. All she asks is that they be staggered, or to donate some of her eggs to the other women." Henry nodded, unperturbed and undeterred. "So you informed us earlier. It all sounds reasonable, but the old convention has passed on; the new age requires new solutions." "And what is that supposed to mean? I don't understand your objection to what seems to me to be the ideal solution." "This will be difficult. It would be best if you sat down," he said. His voice was pitched to be soothing, but the stiff finger pointing to the chair opposite him at the table expected to be obeyed. Leonard hesitated, giving me a glance, but I was still doing my happy zombie impression. Releasing my hand, he slipped away from me. "All right," he said, settling into the chair. "Convince me why my wife has to be pregnant for the next thirty years or so, and why you don't mind alienating the wives." "We've kept our numbers to fifty, give or take, because it's a sufficient number to keep our gene pool valid until the day we can recover our presence in the world, while low enough to keep the humans unsuspecting. There is, however, a third reason to keep our membership low, obvious but not often discussed: we can't trust the women. As much as we value them as mothers and wives, over the millennia, more than a few have bolted. Consider the one who escaped to Spain with her lover in the second century. It took us decades to track down rumors of a woman who didn't age. Another nearly made an end of us in the thirteenth century when she convinced a cardinal that we were devil's spawn." "Yes, but what does that have to do with this? The drug can make any non-Elowin --" "The drug is a tightrope, Leonard. Its primary purpose has always been to ensure that the women are content to be a part of us, but it has its dangers: shift the woman's personality too far from where she is inclined to go, and she is damaged. Damage her too much and she goes mad, forcing us to make her disappear. Too much of that and other women grow nervous, some of whom will then desire to leave our nest, requiring more use of the drug to keep her in line, and soon it becomes a vicious circle. "The council has perfected its methods of selection over the millennia. Sophisticated profiling has replaced observation. Young men are loosed in the world for a hundred years, not only to prove to themselves that human transience is ultimately incompatible with our species, but also to satisfy their mercurial natures, returning only when they are 'settled.' There are still problems, of course. Women sometimes develop in unexpected ways, and men, even after a hundred seasoning years in the world, occasionally change their tastes in women, but overall, it was manageable if limiting system." Henry made a curious circular gesture with his open palm. "All that changed after the Elowin girl was born. With the advances in plastic surgery and digital record keeping, the family now has the capacity to hide not just the fifty we have, but hundreds, even thousands. The final step to our advancement is to replace the half-Elowin women with real Elowin women." "Yes, I understand that," Leonard said impatiently, "but why force Charlene to give birth to all the Elowin girls? The task could be accomplished in a tenth the time by spreading the load, and the wives would be happier as they are phased out if they are a part of the process." "We considered having the others give birth to girls using Charlene's eggs. As you say, it would shorten the time considerably, but the women would raise their children separately." "So?" "You were gone too long among the humans, Leonard," Henry said. "Divided loyalties. The half-human women would confer human loyalties to the Elowin girls. They would bond with their mothers, making what must follow a disaster. The baby girls will be raised on the estate in a controlled environment, and made loyal to Elowin. When they are all old enough, in fifty or sixty years, the young women will marry us. Simultaneously, the half-Elowin women will be eliminated. It's regrettable, but we've fulfilled their dreams -- more than fulfilled them -- and most have lived centuries past their normal life spans." Leonard's jaw dropped. "You can't. That's --" "It's done!" Henry shouted, snapping his hand down in a chopping motion. "It wasn't an easy decision, and the council was not unanimous, but it's over. The family has no choice. We barely have enough genes to survive as a people now. If we ever hope to expand to anything like our former greatness we need to have the entire family unquestionably loyal to the Elowin. Sooner or later the humans will know of us. By that time we'll need to be strong enough to prevent being studied and dissected. The half-human women have, regrettably --" "You keep saying that word. These are our mothers, our wives!" "It's done," he repeated, his face like stone. "Most of the women have already been conditioned. Charlene is the last." "My mother --" "We suggested to her, under the drug, and to the others, that she shouldn't be anxious about her future. She wanted to believe it, so it was a light touch. She is unharmed and sanguine. The half-human women were created to continue the species until we could rise again. They have served well, and we appreciate their service, but our need for them is almost over." "Not Charlene." "When the time is at hand, her, too. It's the closing of an era. This sacrifice is for the species. If you don't issue the commands, we will. It would be best coming from you." I waited to see what Leonard would do, what protests he would make on my behalf, but the rat just sat, staring into his hands. ~Damn it! Say something, you bastard!~ "Henry, I..." he said, looking up finally. "What do you want me to say to her?" he asked in a strangled voice. "I think you know already." "I suppose I do." He rose from his seat as if his ass had been pry- barred and dragged himself before me. He gazed at me, one of those looks that memorizes everything before it all changes. I had to stand there, and think of airplanes, jet engines howling, the New York Yankees ... otherwise I might have cried. He placed his hands upon my shoulders, and I looked up. "Charlene, your greatest joy is giving birth," he said. "You want to have as many children as you can." ~Fuck you, Leonard."~ Yes. I love babies," I breathed. "I want to have as many children as I can." "Tell her to obey the council," Henry said from his place at the table. "Make sure you tell her that." Leonard's eye twitched in anger, the first real sign of backbone I'd seen in him that night. "That wouldn't be a good idea," he said, turning his head towards Henry and the council. "Charlene doesn't like you. She calls you five, 'Grimm's basketball team.' In fact, I think she despises you all." I might have thought something like that, but I'd never said it! Henry stared, flicking his eyes between the two of us. "What?" "It wouldn't be a good idea. Clearly, forcing her to obey you with the drug would be powerfully against her will; it would damage her at the very least and might do worse. Can we risk her going mad because of it? Imagine a madwoman as our savior, giving birth to child after child. If you think the women were concerned about this arrangement before, see what that does to them. It's in all our interest to let her be happy for as long as she can." "That woman is a bloody loose cannon. We must have control." "As far as you're concerned, you could be describing the typical independent twenty-first century woman. I don't see the harm, Henry. There is no need for total control. We only need to keep her satisfied." I faced the old man's glare, smiling like I couldn't wait to spawn. "Keeping her happy is a means to control her," the old bastard said at last. "Even if the worst happens, Charlene is only a phone call away. Very well, for the moment we'll let it stand." When Leonard turned back to me, he had his "white knight" look on. He probably figured that he'd bought me sixty years of happiness. It was a gesture, but it wasn't enough -- not by a long shot.