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Thenike s skin, turning it reddish bronze and tinting her hair with copper. Marghe
knew that she could match her lover s heartbeat whenever she wanted, match her
breath, her pulse; that their rhythms were still connected.
 I want to do it now, she said suddenly.  Before I get too scared.
 Put your hand on mine. Feel the pulse in each fingertip, mine and yours. Yours
and mine. Thenike slid on top of her, muscle on muscle, her mouth an inch from
Marghe s.  Breathe with me. Breathe my breath.
It was hot; their skin was hot, and their breath. In and out, in and out. And
Marghe gave up everything, gave her breath to Thenike, took Thenike s into her
lungs. Then their arms were wrapped around each other, eyes open, staring deep,
and Marghe let herself slide down that long deep slope, that slippery slope, sinking
in, right in, right down until she was Thenike, was Thenike s pulse, Thenike s breath,
until she could skip back and forth: her breath, Thenike s breath, back and forth.
Back and forth.
They slid past each other like slippery same-pole magnets, going in.
And Marghe was standing before the cathedral that was Thenike s body and all its
systems, as Thenike stood before hers. She stepped inside.
It stretched far over her head, a vast, echoing space. She wandered, laying a hand
here, against the muscles sheathing the stomach, a hand there, between ribs. She
stopped and looked in a side chapel where bronchioles narrowed to alveoli. She
wandered on, noting cells and bones and connective tissue, glands and tubes.
Ovaries.
One ovary felt different from the other. Marghe stopped. She felt its heat, and
something else, a bulge, a ripe readiness. The bulge swelled. Marghe watched,
fascinated, as it split, opened, released its egg. Marghe followed the egg as waving
cilia gentled it down the oviduct.
Thenike was ovulating, and because Marghe knew their rhythms were matched,
she knew that this would be happening in her body, too, and that Thenike would be
watching. Marghe stepped closer, reached out cautiously. The electrum thread inside
shimmered and sang, and the ovum almost& changed. Marghe withdrew her hand.
The virus had altered everything. She saw how she could change the
chromosomes, how she could rearrange the pairs of alleles on each one. If she
reached in and touched this, enfolded that, the cell would begin to divide. And she
could control it she and Thenike could control it.
Marghe felt the connecting tension as Thenike stood waiting.
She could do it. She would do it; Thenike would match her.
She reached out again, and the thrumming electrum strand that was the virus
coiled and flexed and the cell divided. Marghe searched her memory of those
long-ago biology lessons: mitosis. But altered, tightly controlled and compressed by
the snaking virus until it resembled a truncated meiosis. Chromosomes began their
stately dance, pairing and parting, chromatids joining and breaking again at their
chiasmata, each with slightly rearranged genetic material. But the chromatids did not
then separate again and migrate to the cellular poles in a second anaphase; instead
they replicated. This daughter would be diploid, able to have her own daughter.
It was like watching beads on a string rearrange themselves. Gorgeous colors,
intricate steps, every bead knowing just the right distance to travel. Precision
choreography, again and again, as cells divided, normally now, and the one-celled
ova became two-celled, four-celled, eight-celled.
As they multiplied, Marghe felt the tight tension, the connection between these
cells that would divide and multiply inside Thenike, and those that would grow inside
her own body: fetuses. Fetuses that might one day be born as soestre.
Marghe sat up in bed, the coverlet wrapped around her, watching Thenike coax
the fire back to life. The candle, forgotten, had long since burned out. The only light
was the dull red of the hearth, sending Thenike s shadow high over the ceiling.
She watched her lover in silence; words would have been too big, too solid, for
what they had done together.
Thenike added some dry sticks. The flames leapt, sending her shadow swaying
and jumping over the walls. She examined her handiwork and added a log.  You
could be a viajera. If you chose. You have the skill.
Marghe cradled her stomach with her right hand. She had done this. They had
done this. She did not want to think about anything else.  They ll be soestre, she
said. A new thought struck her.  How would I travel as a viajera with a baby?
Thenike turned to look over her shoulder.  We d travel together. While they re
young, we ll travel smaller distances at a time, and less often. And when we get
there, we ll stay longer. We d be safe, together.
Marghe imagined the Nid-Nod tossed by a storm, Thenike wrestling with the tiller,
Marghe trying to reef the sail and stop both babies from being washed overboard.
 What are you smiling at?
 The future. And Marghe knew then that she did want to be a viajera, a teacher
and wanderer, a newsbearer, arbitrator, and traveler.  Wenn will be disappointed. I
think she d rather I stayed as a gardener.
 More useful to her way of thinking, Thenike agreed.
 I can t sing.
 Not necessary.
 Teach me what to do.
 I have been doing.
When they woke up the next morning, they hugged each other tight, then let go.
 Thenike, I need to get a message to Danner, at Port Central. Tell her where I am,
what s happening. Now that she herself knew, finally, what she wanted, she owed it
to them, to Danner and to Sara Hiam, to let them know the vaccine worked, that she
had chosen to discontinue taking it; that she was going to stay here with Thenike and
have a child. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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