Weeping, with tears running down her cheeksand clear snot dripping from her nose, Mia held out her arms. “Give him to me!”wept she; so wept Mia, daughter of none and mother of one. “Let me hold him, Ibeg, let me hold my son! Let me hold my chap! Let me hold my precious!”

And the baby turned its head to thesound of his mother’s voice. Susannah would have said such a thing wasimpossible, but of course she would have said a baby born wide awake, with amouthful of teeth and a boner, was impossible, as well. Yet in every other waythe babe seemed completely normal to her: chubby and well-formed, human andthus dear. There was the red mark on his heel, yes, but how many children,normal in every other regard, were born with some sort of birthmark? Hadn’t herown father been born red-handed, according to family legend? This mark wouldn’teven show, unless the kid was at the beach.

Still holding the newborn up to his face,Scowther looked at Sayre. There was a momentary pause during which Susannahcould easily have seized Scowther’s automatic. She didn’t even think of doingit. She’d forgotten Jake’s telepathic cry; had likewise forgotten her weirdvisit from Roland and her husband. She was as enrapt as Jey and Straw and Haberand all the rest, enrapt at this moment of a child’s arrival in a worn-outworld.

Sayre nodded, almost imperceptibly, andScowther lowered baby Mordred, still wailing (and still looking over hisshoulder, apparently for his mother), into Mia’s waiting arms.

Mia turned him around at once so she couldlook at him, and Susannah’s heart froze with dismay and horror. For Mia had runmad. It was brilliant in her eyes; it was in the way her mouth managed to sneerand smile at the same time while drool, pinked and thickened with blood fromher bitten tongue, trickled down the sides of her chin; most of all it was inher triumphant laughter. She might come back to sanity in the days ahead,but—

Bitch ain’t nevah comin back,Detta said, not without sympathy. Gittin this far n den gittin shed of itdone broke her. She busted, n you know it as well’s Ah do!

“O, such beauty!” Mia crooned. “O, see thyblue eyes, thy skin as white as the sky before Wide Earth’s first snow! See thynipples, such perfect berries they are, see thy prick and thy balls as smoothas new peaches!” She looked around, first at Susannah—her eyes skatingover Susannah’s face with absolutely no recognition—and then at theothers. “See my chap, ye unfortunates, ye gonicks, my precious, my baby, myboy!” She shouted to them, demanded of them, laughing with her madeyes and crying with her crooked mouth. “See what I gave up eternity for!See my Mordred, see him very well, for never will you see another his like!”

Panting harshly, she covered the baby’sbloody, staring face with kisses, smearing her mouth until she looked like adrunk who has tried to put on lipstick. She laughed and kissed the chubby flapof his infant’s double chin, his nipples, his navel, the jutting tip of hispenis, and—holding him up higher and higher in her trembling arms, thechild she meant to call Mordred goggling down at her with that comic look ofastonishment—she kissed his knees and then each tiny foot. Susannah heardthat room’s first suckle: not the baby at his mother’s breast but Mia’s mouthon each perfectly shaped toe.

Three

Yon child’s my dinh’s doom, Susannahthought coldly. If I do nothing else, I could seize Scowther’s gun and shootit. T’would be the work of two seconds.

With her speed—her uncannygunslinger’s speed—this was likely true. But she found herself unable tomove. She had foreseen many outcomes to this act of the play, but not Mia’smadness, never that, and it had caught her entirely by surprise. It crossedSusannah’s mind that she was lucky indeed that the Positronics link had gonedown when it had. If it hadn’t, she might be as mad as Mia.

And that link could kick back in,sister—don’t you think you better make your move while you still can?

But she couldn’t, that was thething. She was frozen in wonder, held in thrall.

“Stop that!” Sayre snapped at her. “Yourjob isn’t to slurp at him but to feed him! If you’d keep him, hurry up! Givehim suck! Or should I summon a wetnurse? There are many who’d give their eyes forthe opportunity!”

“Never… in… your… LIFE!” Mia cried,laughing, but she lowered the child to her chest and impatiently brushed asidethe bodice of the plain white gown she wore, baring her right breast. Susannahcould see why men would be taken by her; even now that breast was a perfect,coral-tipped globe that seemed more fit for a man’s hand and a man’s lust thana baby’s nourishment. Mia lowered the chap to it. For a moment he rooted ascomically as he’d goggled at her, his face striking the nipple and then seemingto bounce off. When it came down again, however, the pink rose of his mouthclosed on the erect pink bud of her breast and began to suck.

Mia stroked the chap’s tangled andblood-soaked black curls, still laughing. To Susannah, her laughter soundedlike screams.

There was a clumping on the floor as arobot approached. It looked quite a bit like Andy the MessengerRobot—same skinny seven- or eight-foot height, same electric-blue eyes,same many-jointed, gleaming body. In its arms it bore a large glass box filledwith green light.

“What’s that fucking thing for?” Sayresnapped. He sounded both pissed off and incredulous.

“An incubator,” Scowther said. “I felt itwould be better to be safe than sorry.”

When he turned to look, hisshoulder-holstered gun swung toward Susannah. It was an even better chance, thebest she’d ever have, and she knew it, but before she could take it, Mia’s chapchanged.

Four

Susannah saw red light run down the child’ssmooth skin, from the crown of its head to the stained heel of its right foot.It was not a flush but a flash, lighting the child from without:Susannah would have sworn it. And then, as it lay upon Mia’s deflated stomachwith its lips clamped around her nipple, the red flash was followed by ablackness that rose up and spread, turning the child into a lightless gnome, anegative of the rosy baby that had escaped Mia’s womb. At the same time itsbody began to shrivel, its legs pulling up and melting into its belly, its headsliding down—and pulling Mia’s breast with it—into its neck, whichpuffed up like the throat of a toad. Its blue eyes turned to tar, then back toblue again.

Susannah tried to scream and could not.

Tumors swelled along the black thing’ssides, then burst and extruded legs. The red mark which had ridden the heel wasstill visible, but now had become a blob like the crimson brand on a blackwidow spider’s belly. For that was what this thing was: a spider. Yet the babywas not entirely gone. A white excrescence rose from the spider’s back. In itSusannah could see a tiny, deformed face and blue sparks that were eyes.

“What—?” Mia asked, and started up onher elbows once again. Blood had begun to pour from her breast. The baby drankit like milk, losing not a drop. Beside Mia, Sayre was standing as still as agraven image, his mouth open and his eyes bulging from their sockets. Whateverhe’d expected from this birth—whatever he’d been told toexpect—it wasn’t this. The Detta part of Susannah took a child’s viciouspleasure in the man’s shocked expression: he looked like the comedian JackBenny milking a laugh.

For a moment only Mia seemed to realizewhat had happened, for her face began to lengthen with a kind of informedhorror—and, perhaps, pain. Then her smile returned, that angelicmadonna’s smile. She reached out and stroked the still-changing freak at herbreast, the black spider with the tiny human head and the red mark on itsbristly gut.