"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Watson, Congratulations! Your prenatal tests indicate that your daughter is carrying the Somatico gene lines four and seven. Your daughter carries our patented contra-senility and immuno-enhancer gene lines that were introduced into your family by Mr. Watson's maternal great grandmother in 2034. You can relax knowing that your baby daughter will grow old without being ravaged by the incapacitating effects of Altzheimer's, AIDS-4, (early tests indicate resistance to Carlson/Kramer syndrome), and that she will be especially resilient against breast and pancreatic cancers. The patent license of one hundred fifty six thousand dollars will be due upon your daughter's twentieth birthday (pro-rated in case of premature demise). Our financing department looks forward to helping you establish lines of credit and other payment plans..." Jean pushed herself away from the kitchen table and stood up, holding her hand across the tiny bulge in her belly.

Her friend said, "You know my sister's cousin, Deelia? She had her a little boy and he got the second line. Their whole family had myopic RK done, but his vision was always clear as an eagle's. Jean, aren't you excited?"

"No, I wish this hadn't happened."

"Oh, don't worry about the money. Insurance covers most of the license. That's what Carla says anyway. Besides, the commercial's right, you can't put a price on good health. Jeanie, this is a good thing. Remember what's important. I know you want this baby to bring the two of you back together. Don't let money get in the way. I don't know why you're getting so upset. You've got a healthy baby."

Jean closed her eyes. Her friend didn't know. She hadn't seen.

"It's disgusting."

"Oh, Jeanie..."

"You don't understand."

"Now, you don't mean any of that. You're just hormonally out of balance. It's understandable. Besides, you have twenty years. Well, twenty years and, what, another six months?"

"Twenty six weeks."

"Well, you think on it. I know you'll do the right thing. Listen, I have to go pick up Sammy and Bitsy at the playground and hope that my ex hasn't let them break or sprain anything critical."

Jean walked with her friend though the front room and said, "Don't mention this to anyone. I don't want Will to hear about it except from me."

"Of course, dear. Love ya, bye. We'll talk."

When she was gone, the house seemed too quiet, filled with little echoes and the sound of her footsteps pacing across the laminate wood floor. Quiet and solitude were what she needed to allow herself a moment of anguish. She put her hand to her mouth to suppress an awkward sob that was the only physical manifestation of her deep, furious well of despair and anger. She put her hand over her abdomen again and felt that she had somehow fallen into the wrong universe. Babies, not mutated, inhuman monsters were supposed to grow inside a woman's body. The words that hammered her like an endlessly looping LeviRail platform announcement were, "He lied to me, he lied to me." She sat down and clenched her fists against the sickness that she felt in her stomach.

The images from her other world flashed back into her mind, images from her career studies when she was seventeen and working in the rehabilitation labs, the hospice centers where the genetic companies hid their mistakes.

It was always children. They never lasted long enough to grow up, and yet they suffered with such brave, hopeful faces, crying and straining to do the rehabilitation exercises, as if they could shrug off the wrongness that had been written into their very being. When the face of little Amanda flashed back to her, Jean covered her eyes and tried to make the memory go away, but it refused.

Amanda's skin was spotted like that of a leopard. The attempt to reverse a hereditary tendency for melanoma introduced into her mother's genetic line caused her skin to become a patchwork of porcelain white and dark cocoa brown, a reaction from a combination with her mother's modified genes and her father's Asian lineage. The condition also affected her stomach and intestines, which were severely ulcerated and bled easily. She was in pain all the time, pain that would floor a grown man, pain that no human should ever have to endure in nature, made worse by the dozens of operations and harsh treatments that did more to gather data than to ease the hurt which pressed down every day upon her little calico brow, squashing her smile into a tiny curl of her lips.

"When I get better, I'm going to be a moon pilot."

She was always hopeful, because she knew that she was supposed to be, because her daddy and all the doctors and geneticists kept telling her that they would make her better. Her frail body, stripped of its natural rhythm and ravaged by treatments and pills and lasers, died two days before her eighth birthday. The vision of hope in the tired eyes of that little girl who had never known anything but pain, and had no idea that others were free from the torture she felt, were seared into Jene's heart along with all the other images of children struggling with twisted limbs, peeling skin, silver-blind eyes. Each one was a story of desperate, useless, hope. When Amanda died, and Jean realized that death was the closest to being natural that her body had ever been, she knew that it was pointless, selfish, unnecessary, and one of the worst wrongs ever devised by humanity.

And now, growing inside her, was such and abomination against nature. Most mutants were otherwise normal and healthy, with nothing to show of the tampering but the appearance of some enzyme or chemical, but the shortcuts could fail when the pieces of the patch were broken down into gametes and recombined with another.

The pain of her memories slowly ebbed as feelings of betrayal and anger forced her into a calm of conviction. By the time Will got home, she had reached the kind of stillness that comes from a completed, unquestionable decision.

He came in from the garage. "I thought we were having black bean chili," he called out from the kitchen. "Jean"?

She stood and with great effort, as if she were walking through thick, muddy water, made her way to the arched doorway between the front room and the kitchen.

"Cook!" He demanded, using the exaggerated voice of the flabby king from the old Buggs Bunny cartoon, "Where's my hossenpfeffer -- What's wrong?"

Jean pointed to the letter that was still lying on the small breakfast table.

He picked it up, read it quickly once, and then again slowly. "This is a mistake," he said.

"You lied to me."

"Jean, I..."

"You knew how I feel. The things that I had to see. I asked you, specifically." Her voice rose to an angry crescendo and broke.

"It's not true. It can't be."

Her earlier calm returned and she said, as if speaking not to Will, or even herself, but just saying the words mechanically.

"I will not have this thing inside of me."

Her husband approached with a look of confused panic twisting his face.

"Don't you -" she beat her fist down in front of her as she blasted, "Dare! Touch me." You god damned mutant, were the words she just barely managed to hold inside her mouth.

"I am leaving. Tomorrow I'm going to register for a transference. I am divorcing you."

She turned while she had the strength of her anger and walked past him to the garage. As she passed, he reached out and grabbed her arm.

"I didn't know. I don't understand. We can get through this. Together."

"This is my body. I do not have to let it be used as the host for a parasite against my will."

"A parasite? Is that all our daughter is to you? A leech, a tapeworm? It's your daughter."

His plea fell dead into the space between Jean and her husband. There was a moment, somewhere in the lingering silence that filled the house, that she could have considered changing her mind. There was a brief moment that Jean wanted very much to be able to pretend that what had happened had not happened. The moment passed.

"I know my rights."

* * *

Kera and her new school friend Demi waited at the LeviRail station, sitting on the concrete bench, swinging their legs back and forth while they and a handful of others waited for the next train. "I think Billy Doogan likes you," Demi said.

"Ugh, I hope not."

"Why? He's nice."

"What are you supposed to do when a boy likes you?"

"I don't know. If you like him, I guess you have to kiss him."

"Well I don't," Kera fibbed.

Demi asked, moving to a safer topic, "Do you think your father will let you go to Cathy's sleep over Saturday?"

"I think so, but it's not my dad. He's my grandpa, but he likes to be called Nick."

"Do you always stay with your grandpa?"

"That's where I live. My parents were killed when I was two. There was an explosion of some kind on Space Station Liberty Two. I don't remember them at all."

Kera didn't mind saying that. It was the simple truth, but everyone always seemed to think they were supposed to be sad about it. She couldn't figure out why she had to be sad about people she never really knew except from old video. It wasn't very practical.

"My brother Will was like half dad, half brother." After a pause, she added, "He's really cool," filling a canyon of love and admiration into that simple phrase.

The LeviRail train arrived with a scent of electrified ozone and a whisper whoosh of air. The doors opened and they took a seat together in the back.

"Is he much older than you?"

"Who, Will? He was thirteen years old when I was born. Nick and Molly are nice, but they work a lot and Will stayed with me before he got married last year. He missed school, and dropped off the track team to take care of me. He's going to have another baby soon. He's a great dad."

Demi's stop was first. Kera waved her good bye and waited past the next three stops, remembering how he had fed her sugar water and peppermint candies when she was sick, and taught her how to chop wood and catch a fish, and how he wrote stories to read to her at bedtime. She got off at her stop and hurried down the stairs to get her bike from the rack. When she rode around the corner of her street, a smile spread across her face and she stood up to pump the petals hard because she saw Will's green car in front of her house.

She expected to find him where he usually was, in the living room having a cigar with Nick. But this time when she went in, the house was dark, and there were muffled voices coming from the library. The house held the hushed stillness that told Kera immediately that something wasn't right. She dropped her backpack onto the sofa and stepped carefully next to the doorway.

Molly said, "Give her some time. Jean's just upset. I know it will be okay. It has to be. I wish you'd let me call her."

"It's too late, grandma. Don't make me keep saying it. I know her. I know why." There was a long pause, strained by no one having any idea of what to say. Then Will said, quietly. "I'll find someone."

Nick told him, "You know that money is no object. We'll sell the house, if we need, so don't worry about money."

Kera peeked around the corner and saw them all sitting quietly, looking beat and afraid. When Will saw her, he stood up. She ran to him and let him pick her up into a tight embrace.

"What's wrong, Willy?"

Nick answered instead.

"Jean doesn't want the baby."

Will sat down holding Kera on his lap, holding his arms tightly around her as if needing a physical reminder of their unspoken bond of devotion.

"Why not?"

Nick took a large breath and gathered himself as if preparing for some important announcement or confession. "My mother had her genetics altered when she was young. Back then, and when I was young, it was almost fashionable, a source of pride like cosmetic surgery or a getting a net jack implant. Later, there were more and more people that didn't agree with that and your mother didn't want you to have to know for yourselves the things she went though. People called her terrible names and she got into a lot of fights when she was young. That's why she didn't want either of you to know. I suppose that was wrong."

"What about the baby?"

"It has your mother's genetics. So do you. So does Will."

"Is that why she doesn't want it?"

"That's right."

Will said quietly, the breath of his voice tickling her hair, "She doesn't want the baby. She doesn't even want it to be inside of her anymore."

Kera sensed the depth of what that meant. The horror of it washed over her and away, and she accepted it with quiet resolve. "She's going to kill it."

"They used to do that," Nick explained. "It was called an abortion, and there was a great deal of fighting over that issue. Presidents were elected or not based on what they believed about that issue. You see, an abortion meant killing the child, an unborn human life, which is clearly wrong. But the women of that day also knew that it was wrong for anyone to tell them that they had to donate their body unwillingly to support a life which fed off of it. They were both right, and so they were never able to reach an agreement."

"Until transference," Molly said. "Now that they can transplant the placenta and the baby into another woman's body, no woman has to endure an unwanted pregnancy. The surrogate mother takes over the pregnancy."

Nick continued, "She has to wait at least fifteen days for a surrogate to be found. That way if someone want's to acknowledge the sanctity of life, and do it with more conviction than the hateful slogans and protests of the old days, she can step forward and grant the baby a chance."

"Who's going to carry your baby now, Will?" Kera asked innocently. It seemed a simple matter to her, but her question caused Nicolas and Molly to turn their eyes away.

Will said to her, "I don't know yet. I've still got two days. I'm working with an agency and they promise to meet the deadline."

"Why can't Molly do it?"

"I'm too old, sweetie."

Will went on, "There were a couple candidates, but they use this as way to give work to immigrants, because they know we'll take whoever we can get."

Kera turned and slid down from her brother's lap. This was not something she wanted to say while cradled in his arms like a child.

"Will," she said softly. "I can carry your baby for you."

"No," Nick insisted.

Will fixed his eyes on her. "Can you...? I mean, have you...?"

"I started last April." She knew she her body was capable of carrying a baby now. She had been taught by her school, by society, and by Will before any of them, that her body belonged to her and what that meant. The days when young adults were forced through a limbo where they were physically capable, but not legally allowed, to make such decisions for themselves, led to an epidemic of irresponsible behavior, as if creating a life was some kind of prank to get away with behind the backs of the grown ups. It was not until they all stopped blaming the parents, the schools, the politicians, and the social programs, and placed the responsibility and the blame directly on the backs of the young adults that the situation began to reverse itself.

"No," Nick repeated. "You're too young. I won't allow it."

She raised her head to him slowly and told him what she knew as deeply as she knew her own name. Her voice held a hint of confusion that he would consider saying such a thing.

"I get to decide." Then she turned to her brother and added, "If he picks me."

She didn't need to hear in words what she read in his face.

* * *

It was fun at first, having a baby inside her, feeling it move and then kick. Will had lost his house and a lot of his money in the divorce, so he moved back home to take care of her once again. He was there to rub her back, and take her to birthing classes, and help her with her homework. He was with her on her fourteenth birthday, when the baby came, causing her to leave guests, cake, and all her unopened presents. He held her shoulders in the delivery room while she pushed, and screamed, and cried that she didn't know it was going to hurt that much. Three days later, they came home to a house filled with friends, reunited to finish her birthday party.

Demi was holding the baby so Kera could open her gifts. She said, "You know, Kera, I think you're supposed to kiss the boys first, and then have the baby, or did I miss something?"

Her cheeks blushed a tiny bit as she looked over to Billy Doogan who was hiding behind a cup of punch. She opened the present and everyone went "Awww" again over a little pair of baby bunny socks.

She picked up a small gift box.

"That one's from Billy," Demi announced. The crowd offered a prolonged, suggestive, "Oooo," to prepare the moment. She took off the ribbon carefully and opened the wrapping paper. It was a small friendship necklace and two tickets to the Corella Blue concert for the next weekend.

"Oh, thank you," she squealed. "Look Demi, two tickets. Do you want to go with me?" She paused just a moment while poor Billy Doogan slowly died of embarrassment. Then she jumped up and ran around to him and said, "Thanks, Billy. I'd love to go with you. Can I, Will?"

"Can she, Will?" Demi repeated, followed by Susan, Mikayla, and then the rest in a chant until he said, "Ask Nick."

"Nick!!" she screamed. He came into the room munching on a piece of birthday cake.

"Ask Will," he said with a grin.

"Go, silly," Will told her. "You know you don't need my permission."

She let Billy Doogan put the necklace around her neck, gave him a quick, nervous peck on the cheek and rushed back to her seat amid hoots and whistles from her friends.

Will watched Kera smiling and laughing and being silly with her friends. On the outside, she was still a little girl in his eyes, like a new bud, opening to the warmth of the sun. During the five and a half months of her pregnancy, he had seen a young woman, proud, competent and sure. Who were they, he wondered about his grandparent's generation, to presume that adolescence was the same as childhood, and to ignore the fact that, against their parents if necessary, teenagers have always dealt with issues more complex than the adults ever cared to acknowledge. They all knew, and now they didn't have to hide that they knew that their lives and their bodies belonged to them.

When the party was over, and orange sunbeams slanted into the quiet house that still held the scent of ice cream punch and sugar icing over the scattered remnants of wrapping paper, Will brought his crying, hungry daughter over to Kera. She smiled and undid the top buttons on her blouse. He sat down in the soft recliner chair, held his sister on his lap as she held her niece to her breast, and he rocked them slowly in time with the pendulum clock that ticked softly from the next room.

:^D