"You shouldn'tneed my word!" the doctor snapped. He flapped his hands in a Gallic gesture of disgust. "Didn't your mothers have any children that lived?"
"I - " Haber began, but the doc went right over him. He was on a roll.
"How long have we been waiting for this, hmmm? How many times have we rehearsed the procedure? Why must you be so f**kingstupid, so Christingslow? Put her down on the b - "
Sayre moved with a speed Susannah wasn't sure even Roland could have equaled. At one moment he was standing beside Haber, the low man with the bulldog face. At the next he'd battened on the doctor, digging his chin into the doc's shoulder and grabbing his arm, twisting it high behind his back.
The doc's expression of petulant fury vanished in a heartbeat, and he began to scream in a childish, breaking treble. Spit spilled over his lower lip and the crotch of his tweed trousers darkened as his urine let go.
"Stop!"he howled."I'm no good to you if you break my arm! Oh stop, that HURRRTS!"
"If I sh'd break your arm, Scowther, I'd just drag some other pill-pusher in off the street to finish this, and kill him later. Why not? It's a woman having a baby, not brain-surgery, for Gan's sake!"
Yet he relaxed his hold a little bit. Scowther sobbed and wriggled and moaned as breathlessly as someone having sexual intercourse in a hot climate.
"And when it was done and you had no part in it," Sayre continued, "I'd feed you tothem. " He gestured with his chin.
Susannah looked that way and saw that the aisle from the door to the bed where Mia lay was now covered with the bugs she'd glimpsed in the Dixie Pig. Their knowing, greedy eyes were fixed on the plump doctor. Their mandibles clicked.
"What...sai, what must I do?"
"Cry my pardon."
"C-Cry pardon!"
"And now these others, for ye've insulted them as well, so you have."
"Sirs, I...I...c-cry - "
"Doctor!" the rathead nurse broke in. Her speaking voice was thick but understandable. She was still bent between Mia's legs. "The baby's crowning!"
Sayre let go of Scowther's arm. "Go on, Dr. Scowther. Do your duty. Deliver the child." Sayre bent forward and stroked Mia's cheek with extraordinary solicitude. "Be of good cheer and good hope, lady-sai," he said. "Some of your dreams may yet come true."
She looked up at him with a tired gratitude that wrung Susannah's heart.Don't believe him, his lies are endless, she tried to send, but for the nonce their contact was broken.
She was tossed like a sack of grain onto the bed which had been pushed next to Mia's. She was unable to struggle as one of the hoods was fitted over her head; another labor pain had gripped her, and once again the two women shrieked together.
Susannah could hear Sayre and the others murmuring. From below and behind them, she could also hear the unpleasant clittering of the bugs. Inside the helmet, round metal protuberances pressed against her temples, almost hard enough to hurt.
Suddenly a pleasant female voice said, "Welcome to the world of North Central Positronics, part of the Sombra Group! 'Sombra, where progress never stops!' Stand by for up-link."
A loud humming began. At first it was in Susannah's ears, but then she could feel it boring in on both sides. She visualized a pair of glowing bullets moving toward each other.
Dimly, as if from the other side of the room instead of right next to her, she heard Mia scream,"Oh no, don't, that hurts!"
The left hum and the right hum joined in the center of Susannah's brain, creating a piercing telepathic tone that would destroy her ability to think if it kept up for long. It was excruciating, but she kept her lips shut tight. She would not scream. Let them see the tears oozing out from beneath her closed lids, but she was a gunslinger and they would not make her scream.
After what seemed an eternity, the hum cut out.
Susannah had a moment or two in which to enjoy the blessed silence in her head, and then the next labor pain struck, this one very low down in her belly and with the force of a typhoon. With this pain shedid allow herself to scream. Because it was different, somehow; to scream with the baby's coming was an honor.
She turned her head and saw a similar steel hood had been fitted over Mia's sweaty black hair. The segmented steel hoses from the two helmets were connected in the middle. These were the gadgets they used on the stolen twins, but now they were being put to some other purpose. What?
Sayre leaned down to her, close enough so she could smell his cologne. Susannah thought it was English Leather.
"To accomplish the final labor and actually push the baby out, we need this physical link," he said. "Bringing you here to Fedic was absolutely vital." He patted her shoulder. "Good luck. It won't be long now." He smiled at her winsomely. The mask he wore wrinkled upward, revealing some of the red horror which lay beneath. "Then we can kill you."
The smile broadened.
"And eat you, of course. Nothing goes to waste at the Dixie Pig, not even such an arrogant bitch as yourself."
Before Susannah could reply, the female voice in her head spoke again. "Please speak your name, slowly and distinctly."
"Fuck you!" Susannah snarled back.
"Fuk Yu does not register as a valid name for a non-Asian," said the pleasant female voice. "We detect hostility, and apologize in advance for the following procedure."
For a moment there was nothing, and then Susannah's mind lit up with pain beyond anything she had ever been called upon to endure. More than she had suspected could exist. Yet her lips remained closed as it raved through her. She thought of the song, and heard it true even through the thunder of the pain:I am a maid...of constant sorrow...I've seen trials all my days...