"Ancestors, NO!" The shrill howl bounced off the walls. How long had she been buried in this living hell? Weeks? Months?

"And not once has this miserable carcass had its menses!" Tach panted.

Her heart was pounding, she could feel it beating in her gut. Or was it that other thing, that unspeakable prospect? Her hand thrust down the front of her blue jeans. She drew her palm across the slight swell of the belly.

Too soon to tell. No, it couldn't be. What the hell else could it be? Flu.

Nausea after waking. Nerves.

No menstrual cycle.

"All right," Tach screamed, sick of the argument with herself. "All right! The goddamn body is pregnant!"

And in that moment she went a little mad. When she finally returned to herself, she was on her knees by the wall. Her throat was raw from screaming. And something warm and sticky was matting her hair and pouring across her left eye. Tach ran her tongue across her lips and tasted and sharp coppery taste of blood.

Slowly she raised her hand to her hairline. Whimpered in pain as her fingers touched the mangled scalp. She had been beating her head against the wall, a trapped and maddened animal biting off its leg to escape the trap. Death was an escape. But she hadn't succeeded, and now sanity had returned. She was making a noise far back in her throat that hardly sounded Takisian. Desperately, Tachyon scrabbled across the floor on all fours. Snatched up the spoon. Thrust it into her teeth as she clawed at the button and zipper on the blue jeans. Ripped them down, pulling them inside out as she kicked with frantic haste to free herself from the confining material.

Knees up, a hand resting on the curling pubic hair, fingers ready to part the labia. And she froze. She had no idea where the fertilized egg reposed. She would have to scrape each wall of the uterus. And if she didn't get it all the resulting infection… and if she tore the delicate walls of the uterus the resulting hemorrhage…

The smell of a woman rotting from the inside out filled her nostrils. A time when abortion had been illegal. A time when a desperate joker woman had butchered herself with a coat hanger.

Tach began to shake. Infection be damned, she thought. Consider what you are contemplating. I have no evidence this child is defective. I can kill a defective. I can't kill a baby.

It's not a baby, argued another part of herself. It's a collection of several hundred cells.

"It's going to be a baby," said Tach aloud.

And you're a man! Are you seriously going to go through with this abomination?

"What else can I do?" she cried desperately. "Butcher myself, and bleed to death?"

"It's a baby," she whispered again.

It will be defective. It's Blaise's child. It will be crazy! Destroy it now!

"You are arguing to save yourself from this indignity. Well… why? All the indignities imaginable have been heaped upon you. You have been kidnapped, robbed, assaulted, raped, and imprisoned. Why balk at this?"

Because I'm a man damn it! And there's something growing in me!

"It is a baby," Tach murmured as exhaustion struck her like a blow between the eyes. She flung aside the spoon. Heard its metallic jangle as it struck the far wall.

The temptation was effectively removed. She would have to crawl laboriously through the darkness to locate the utensil again, and by the time she found it, she would have again talked herself out of committing murder.

She groped for her blue jeans. Pulled them onto her shivering body. The cold sweat that had drenched her had now left her chilled to the bone. She crawled to her favorite corner and fell headlong into a sleep that bordered on coma.

The shrilling of pipes and the deep-throated booming of drums fell on her ears like a killing cloud on a field of young flowers. She was female again. Most annoying. Damn it, it was her dream. Why couldn't she be Tachyon again-slim and lithe and male? She became aware of movement, an undulating rocking that made her feel dreadfully insecure. She pushed aside the curtains and found herself perched atop a palanquin that was in turn perched atop the brawny shoulders of four young men. They paced a trail that wove between green fleshy stalks of daunting height and girth.

Tachyon sidled backwards, away from the threatening vegetation, and found a new threat. Something behind her, following like a shadow. She spun and saw it again. A flash of iridescence. Wings. Sweet Ideal, she had wings. She explored the contours of her borrowed face. It felt the same until she reached the forehead and her shrinking fingers discovered velvet-soft antennae springing from above each brow and curving back over her head.

She scurried on hands and knees back to the opening, oblivious to the grief she was causing her strong-backed bearers. The little procession was just emerging into a clearing, and at last she got a look at what topped the vegetable behemoths. Irises, giant irises, their petals hanging down like tongues of exhausted dogs. The clearing was dotted with toadstools, and each fungus was serving as a chair for other elfin creatures like herself. Beneath the shade of the mushroom caps were other breeds of creatures. Ugly and twisted, they resembled nothing so much as a mutant's seaside convention, all huddled beneath their umbrellas to hide from the light of the full moon that floated gibbous overhead. Tachyon wondered in what capacity they served their pretty, delicate overlords.

But closer examination revealed her mistake. It was the dainty fairies on top of the toadstools who wore the chains. The palanquin was turned and lowered awkwardly to the ground. Tachyon clung to the roof supports like a wife greeting a long-absent husband. Once the swaying and tilting stopped, she risked a glance and found herself confronted and confounded by the sight of a gigantic toad. It rolled out its tongue like a grotesque red carpet for visiting royalty. Tachyon shuddered and shrank back against the cushions. Two of her bearers reached in and dragged her out. Her bare toes seemed to be cringing away from the flicking tip of the toad's tongue, and as an errant night breeze teased at her gossamer gown, Tach realized that she was much more pregnant than she remembered or had any business being. Oddly, there was no substance to the belly that ballooned out the fabric of her gown.

The toad frowned. Said to one of its twisted minions, "can I fuck him when she's like that?"

"No, It'll get in the way… block your penis," was the creature's incredibly ignorant reply.

"Then I've got to get rid of it. Mind-rape ought to do. I can make her shove it out."

The toad wrapped its tongue about her head. Mucus dripped from its stinking surface and ran down her cheeks like tears. Tach gave a cry of revulsion that quickly became a scream of pain as stinging needles seemed to enter her mind. Fingers slipping on the surface of the tongue, Tachyon struggled to throw it aside. There was a click like a key turning in a perfect lock, and the pain and the tongue withdrew, the tongue coiling away like a wounded snake. Tach stared at the flames dancing on her fingertips and the fire that formed a shield for her mind.

"Then rip it out in blood," screamed the Blaise-toad, and one of the goblins drew a curved knife and advanced on her. Tachyon moaned her despair and laid her arms across the swell of her pregnancy. Then, surprisingly, the creature died in a geyser of blood, one clawed hand scrabbling at the knife that had somehow appeared in its throat.

A strong arm slid about Tachyon's waist, and she gasped in relief as the Outcast pulled her against his side. The tip of the rapier was weaving like the nib of a maddened calligrapher in the air before them. "No, Pretender," the outlaw said. "The child will survive to displace you."

There were screams and shouts from the goblins, and the toad let out a hiss like a thousand cobras threatening. Then an enormous wind blew up, the petals of the irises fell like rain, and the whole grand and grotesque assembly went whirling away, carried higher and higher into the sky until they appeared as small black dots against the face of the moon.