A few moments later, and the bed o’ babes crawled off him. It was Pandasala he’d been kissing. He grinned at her. She slapped him. Stormed out. Jay shrugged. Roxalana held out his pants to him. Raised her eyebrows.

Chapter Thirty-One

There was a crane dismantling Jetboy’s tomb. The Great and Powerful Turtle and the Harlem Hammer were taking exception to this activity and were hammering on the crane – one from the top, one at the bottom. The racket was terrible Jay approved of the sentiment, but then the crane collapsed, and it was heading right for him!

Ackroyd woke with a snort and a cough. Sat up on the couch. Pale light was creeping in the window. Haupi was seated on the sill preening her wings. The racket was still continuing from the direction of the kitchen. It ceased, and Hastet came hurrying through. She checked when she saw that Jay was awake.

“Ice chips,” she said, and tipped the glass so Jay could see. “The poor little thing is so thirsty, and she can’t keep anything down.”

“Still no baby?” Jay asked. He was surprised the words could force their way past the fuzz on his tongue. She shook her head. Jay checked his watch. Seven A.M. “Don’t you love it when a plan turns to shit in your hands?”

Hastet continued for the bedroom. The concern was a big change from the cold courtesy with which she’d treated Tisianne for the first few hours. It had all been your highness this, and your highness that. But somewhere in this endless night, distrust and resentment had turned to sympathy. Maybe it was something all women shared. That this suffering was unique to women drew them together. Except Tisianne wasn’t a woman – not really.

Jay didn’t want to go back into that bedroom. It was all too earthy, too primitive. Why wasn’t there some high-tech way to have babies? A culture as advanced as the Takisians ought to have artificial wombs. Unfortunately Tisianne got knocked up on Earth…

He was stalling. Maybe it was because he just couldn’t stop thinking of Tisianne as Tachyon, and there was something so creepy about a man giving birth. Maybe he just couldn’t stand to see any creature in so much pain. Sucking in a quick breath, he pushed open the door and entered.

Not much had changed in the hour and a half he’d napped. Meadows was still hunched in a chair at the side of the bed, Tisianne’s hand clasped tightly in his. His other hand rested on the mound of her stomach. Her gown had been thrown up, and Jay quickly averted his eyes from that expanse of white flesh, and the wide-open legs. Hastet had lifted the girl’s head from the banked pillows and was slipping ice chips between Tis’s chapped white lips. There was something so gentle, so womanly in Hastet’s pose, in those strong, unmanicured hands. Jay felt an unaccustomed tightness in his chest. Thrusting aside the odd feeling, he moved a few more hesitant steps into the room.

Both Meadows and Hastet were murmuring encouragement. The ace’s voice had gone hoarse from all the hours of talking. The other sounds in the room seemed too loud when matched against Tisianne’s unnatural silence. Jay had been told to expect screams. He was prepared for screams. This harsh animallike panting was killing him.

Awkwardly he said, “I’m told it helps if you scream.”

For the first time Tisianne focused on him. There was a flicker in those gray eyes that was pure Tachyon.

“And what… in the hell… would you know… about it?” She groaned, arched violently upward as a particularly hard contraction rocked her.

“That was good,” Mark said. “Can you do it again?”

She turned shadowed eyes on him. “No… I’m so… tired.”

Mark released her hand and jerked his head toward the door. Hastet hesitated, not wanting to leave the suffering girl. Mark nodded again, more imperatively this time.

Once in the living room, the hippie said softly, “We’re in real trouble here. She’s getting awfully weak. We don’t have the facilities to perform a cesarean. And forceps… don’t know how -”

“Could Tisianne talk us through it?”

“I don’t think the baby’s far enough into the birth canal for that anyway.” Mark pushed his glasses up onto his head and scrubbed his hands across his face. They left wet streaks. “Jay, I was wondering if you could, like, pop the baby out…

His voice trailed away under Jay’s incredulous look. “I’ve got to see something. Baby’s head, anything.” He realized his arms were waving wildly, and he dropped them to his sides.

Hastet was looking from one silent man to the other. “Well, we must do something. We have come too far for either of them to die!”

“Let me think,” Mark said, and walked away to stare out the window. Jay sat back down on the sofa. He frankly didn’t have a single idea.

It was almost a relief to have them gone. Less of a distraction from the growing anger, frustration, and fear she was reading from her child’s mind. She was trying to block her agony from Illyana, and not doing a very good job of it. She was trying to remind herself that she loved this child, and not doing a very good job of that either.

“Oh, Ideal,” she whimpered. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

Another contraction, and she felt as if her pelvis were splitting apart. She tried to put herself between her legs, to monitor the progress as she had on so many deliveries. The prognosis was not good. The pain washed in and swept away all her training, all hope of clinical detachment.

Hands closed around her shoulders. Tisianne’s eyes snapped open. Mark was almost nose to nose with her.

“Listen to me.” His voice was husky with exhaustion and unshed tears. “You know, better than any of us, what you have to do. But you’re, like, in your own way, man. You’re thinking, shit, I’m Tachyon, I’m a man, I’m embarrassed in front of Jay and Mark, and Hastet’s my subject. Well, this is a woman thing now. This is female power, and you gotta get in touch with it and stop resisting it, or you and this baby are gonna die. Do you, like, understand me, man?”

He was right. Once spoken, it made such sense. And was no help. “I can’t.” Tisianne turned her head away.

He snatched it back. “Yes, you can! We’ve all, like, got the male and the female in us. Yin and yang. You’ve just gotta find it, and love it and hold it, and use it.” He gripped her hands between both of his. “This isn’t gross, this isn’t ugly. This is magic, man. This is life. Don’t blow it on pride!”

The next contraction was gathering, rippling through her body. Tis stared at Mark for a long moment, then threw herself into it as if the pain itself could batter down the walls around her soul. Illyana fired a blast of terror as she moved out of safety and into darkness.

Tis was dimly aware of Hastet and Jay on either side of her, arms linked behind her back, supporting, encouraging. There seemed to be no break between the contractions now. Never in a long and dangerous life had she felt such pain.

“That’s it! That’s it! I can see her head!” Mark was crying. “One more, one more, come on!”

“Push, you bitch!” Jay yelled in her ear.

Their hands were on her belly. For one intense moment they were not four individuals, they were a single organism bonded in a telepathic union with this tiny struggling life. Tis threw back her head and screamed.

Silence.

Then a tiny outraged cry like a hiccuping kitten.

“Oh, Doc, she’s beautiful.”

Hastet helped her up. Tis looked between her knees. Mark held Illyana aloft, wet and bloody, the umbilical still attached.

“Oh… delightful,” Ackroyd said. “My, what a lot of blood.”

Mark tied off the cord and cut it. The touch of the antiseptic brought a scream of protest from her daughter. Tisianne held out her arms, and Mark laid the infant in them.