In Death 23 - Born in Death

rather study a crime scene recording—mass murder, mutilation, severed limbs—than look up some laboring woman’s crotch and watch a head pop out. Roarke had horror vids in his collection that were less gruesome. She could hear Mavis whispering to Leonardo, the entity’s expectant father, but blocked out the words.
    When, dear God, when would it be over?
    Some setup here, all right, she thought, trying to distract herself by evaluating the birthing center. The whole damn building was a kind of cathedral to conception, gestation, birth, and babies. She’d managed to duck Mavis’s attempt to give her a tour of the entire place by pleading work.
    Sometimes a well-placed lie saved friendships, and sanity.
    The educational wing was enough. She’d sat through a lecture, several demonstrations that would haunt her dreams for decades, been forced as part of Mavis’s coaching team to assist in a mock birth with the labor droid and squealing droid infant.
    And now there was this hideous vid.
    Don’t think about it, she warned herself, and went back to studying the room.
    Pastel walls covered with pictures of babies or pregnant women in various stages of bliss. All filmy and rapturous. Lots of fresh flowers and thriving green plants arranged artistically. Comfy chairs, supposedly designed to aid the women in hauling their loaded bodies up. And three perky instructors who were available for questions, lectures, demos, and serving healthy refreshments.
    Pregnant women, Eve noted, were constantly eating or peeing.
    Double doors at the back, one exit in the front, left of the vid screen. Too bad she couldn’t make a run for it.
    Eve let herself go into a kind of trance. She was a tall, lanky woman with a choppy cap of brown hair. Her face was angular, and paler than usual, with whiskey-brown eyes currently glazed. The jacket she wore over her weapon harness was deep green and, because her husband had bought it, cashmere.
    She was thinking about going home and washing the memory of the last three hours away in a full liter of wine when Mavis grabbed her hand.
    “Dallas, look! The baby’s coming!”
    “Huh? What?” Those glazed eyes popped wide. “What? Now ? Well, Jesus. Breathe, right?”
    Laughter erupted around them as Eve lurched to her feet.
    “Not this baby.” Giggling, Mavis stroked her basketball belly. “ That baby.”
    Instinct had Eve glancing in the direction Mavis pointed, and getting a wide-screen blast of the bellowing, wriggling, gunk-covered creature sliding out from between some poor woman’s legs.
    “Oh, man. Oh, God.” She sat down, before her own legs went out from under her. No longer caring if it made her a sissy, she groped for Roarke’s hand. When he gripped it, she found it as clammy as her own.
    People applauded, actually clapped and cheered when the wailing, slippery-looking form was laid on its mother’s deflated belly, and between her engorged breasts.
    “In the name of all that’s holy…” Eve muttered to Roarke. “It’s 2060, not 1760. Can’t they find a better way to handle this process?”
    “Amen” was all Roarke said. Weakly.
    “Isn’t it beautiful? It’s the ult, the extreme ult.” Mavis’s lashes—currently dyed sapphire blue, sparkled with tears. “It’s a little boy. Awww, look how sweet….”
    Dimly she heard the lead instructor announce the end of the night’s coaching class— thank God —and invite people to stay for refreshments or questions.
    “Air,” Roarke murmured into her ear. “I’m in desperate need of air.”
    “It’s the pregnant women. I think they suck up all the oxygen. Think of something. Get us out of here. I can’t think. My brain won’t work right.”
    “Stand with me.” He hooked a hand under her arm, pulled her up.
    “Mavis, Eve and I want to take you and Leonardo out for a bite. We can do better than the offerings here.”
    Eve could hear the strain in his voice, but imagined anyone who didn’t know him as well as she would only hear that easy, fluid stream of Irish.
    There was a lot of chatter going on and women were making a bee-line for the food or the bathrooms. Rather than thinking about what was being said or done, Eve focused on Roarke’s face.
    If it couldn’t distract a woman, she was too far gone to worry about it.
    He might have been a little pale, but the white skin only intensified the wild blue of his eyes. His hair was a black silk frame around a face designed to raise a woman’s heart rate. And