“Well—yes,” I conceded. We were probably going to have to ask the parents not to produce any more children with their current bodies. We simply weren’t set up to handle them.
Of course, that was presuming this baby had happened by accident, and not as a result of careful and deliberate planning. Flora, certainly, did not seem to have intended it—but Flora was not the only parent. Perhaps someone else had found a way to undo all our fertility restrictions. Perhaps everyone was going to end up pregnant and the ship’s population would skyrocket. We could feed everyone with the autochefs, of course, but finding places for so many new people to live was going to be a disaster…
I reined myself in. It’d been less than a day since this mess began, but perhaps I was already spending too much time near the flickers. Stories that powerful had a way of warping perspectives. Even mine.
Please deposit part of the baby in the salvage bin, said Ferry.
Well, that was no way to maintain calm: It took five full minutes for John and me to persuade Ruthie not to flee the hospital and go on the lam to protect the child from dissection by a malicious machine. “I’m sure we could just use a lock of hair, Ruthie.”
“Or…” John pulled up a fresh nappie from his bag and waggled it demonstratively.
I narrowed my eyes at the baby, who blinked up at me with the satisfied look of a creature that had had two full bottles of milk and plenty of time to process them.
And so the soiled nappie went into the salvage bin, and the baby’s wild and feathery hair remained on his head. I popped the mess into the intake with a creak of metal and glowered through the glass as it began to glow and dissolve.
“Ferry,” I said while we waited, “how many hearts are beating on the ship at present?”
Nine thousand, eight hundred, and seventy-three,the ship said after a moment. Relief was plain in his mental voice.Not counting the seventeen in Medical that have been built but aren’t active yet.
I breathed out, and some of my fear ebbed away. John looked positively ecstatic. So our population boom really was an increase of only one. An accident rather than an influx.
A few seconds after that, Ferry revealed the child’s parentage.
FLORA WAS THEmother, no surprise there.
The father, it turned out, was not the insufferable Jason Ipcar—it was Hugh Renois, an accountant who mostly worked with the projectionists and the live theaters of Aft Port Eleven and so had an office on that deck. He wore half-moon spectacles and an extremely loud floral waistcoat, and when we showed up with the baby he sat back and polished the one upon the other in the gentlest expression of shock. “Oh my word!” he said. “How curious. A child, you say? My child?”
“You didn’t know?” I was watching him closely: He was not particularly expressive, but his astonishment when Ruthie had plunked the baby’s basket down onto his desk had seemed genuine enough.
He returned his spectacles to their perch upon his stout nose. “Mine, and—Flora’s?” he asked, thentsked at himself.“It would have to be Flora—there hasn’t been anyone else. Not in years.” For a moment, those half-moons gleamed sadly as his head turned aside, but then he rallied. “Is she all right? Has something happened?”
“Why would you ask that?” I returned.
He blinked at me. “Well, I assume you wouldn’t be talking to me if you could be talking to her. She’s the one who would be at risk, surely?” He tugged the hem of his waistcoat and smoothed his lack of hair. “Was it—did she—was it on purpose? The pregnancy?” He swallowed. “Only I hope she’d know that if she’d wanted—if she’d asked, I’d have…” He trailed off with an unhappy expression.
I wondered if Flora knew how many broken hearts she was leaving in her wake. I counted two so far, which wasn’t so many, except that it represented 100 percent of the people we’d talked to in Flora’s life. “When was the last time you spoke to her?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said with a sigh, “that would be—second quarter, last year. She and Anne—Mrs. Godfrey, I assume you’ve met her?—were celebrating the Palace’s fifth anniversary. They held quite a party, and the memory cocktails Flora decanted were exquisite. Especially the Savoy Saturday night—made you feel like you were at the best and most luxurious party in the world just before midnight, when everyone is tipsy enough to be brave but not yet drunk enough to be obnoxious. Flora was wearing silver spangles, and I asked her todance, and, well…” He shrugged, pinkening, and ducked his head. “I shall leave out the details, if that’s all right.”
“And it was only the one time?”
Mr. Renois tugged his waistcoat again, the blush deepening. “I woke up alone in her bed. Apparently she had an early matinee at some other theater that she was very keen on seeing. Flora loves the flickers more than anyone else I know… I went to the kitchen to make myself some breakfast from the autochef and Anne was there. Now, I quite like Mrs. Godfrey, but that morning she didn’t seem to like me very much. I’ve been her bookkeeper for three out of those five years and never found her less than pleasant—but that morning, she was entirely different. Awkward, silent—not cruel, I don’t think she has cruelty in her, but—well, it was very apparent that she wanted not to be resenting my presence so much. And then she looked up, and her face changed, like a light that was out had come back on. And I turned to see Flora standing behind me in the doorway. Later, I got Flora alone, thanked her for a lovely evening, and made it clear that I understood it was only a one-off. She seemed relieved, and I stayed away from the Palace except when Anne came here for business reasons.” He lifted one shoulder. “You see how it is.”
“What?” Ruthie demanded. “How what is? I don’t see anything.”
I bit back a sigh. I was going to have to find a way toabandon my sidekicks, and soon. “Mrs. Godfrey is in love with Miss Tilburn, Ruthie,” I said. “Mr. Renois is explaining that he knew it, and did not pursue Miss Tilburn because of it.”
“It seemed prudent to bow out gracefully, avoid the trouble before it started,” Mr. Renois confirmed.
That was the kind of sensible thing that everyone knew was wise and virtually nobody ever actually did. Perhaps I should keep Mr. Renois in mind as an aberration, in case he was the solution to any of the puzzles in this case.
But there were still a few more questions to resolve: “Would you like to claim custody of the baby?” I asked. “We still have to sort things out officially, but if you are interested then we can include you in the process going forward.”
He reared ever so slightly back in his chair. “Custody! Oh no, I don’t think so. I’m generally a very solitary kind of person, even when people aren’t babies.” He gazed at the basket as one would a nest of small, nonvenomous snakes: mild wariness but not outright fear. “Would I be permitted to arrange visitation, instead of custody?”
Ruthie was ruffling like a chicken in a rainstorm, but I cut him off before he could explode. “We’ll see what we can do,” I replied. And now, the more delicate question: “Would you be willing to report to Medical for an examination, so we can determine how the pregnancy happened, and how to prevent future occurrences?”
“I should hardly think that necessary—Flora was, um,an aberration from my usual habits—but if it would help, then of course.”
