This time I slept peacefully without nightmares; it was Dio who woke me in the graying dawn, saying hesitantly “Lew, I feel so strange—I think the baby’s coming. It’s early—but I think I should go and be certain.”

It was far too early; but the Terrans have made something of a specialty of this, artificial wombs for babes cast from their mothers too young, and most of them, in that artificial life-support, do quite well, though they are beyond the thoughts and tenderness of their mothers; I have wondered, sometimes, if this is why so many Terrans are headblind, without any traceable laran, the distance from that most intimate of contacts, where the mother teaches the little heart to beat, and all things in the unborn body to function as they should… the body can grow, artificially supported and nourished, but what of the mind and laran?

Well, if this should damage the unborn child’s laran, so be it, if it saved his life… my own laranhad done me little good. And surely it would not hurt this child to be away from our troubled thoughts and fears, and such torment as it had certainly overheard during my illfated attempt to monitor. That attempt had certainly brought on this premature labor, and Dio must have known it, but she did not reproach me, and once, when I spoke of it, she hushed me, saying, “I wanted it, too.”

So I was cheerful as we made our way through the streets, from which all but a hardy few pleasure-seekers had vanished in these last gray hours before sunrise. The Terran hospital was pale and austere in the growing light, and Dio flinched as fast elevators swooped us upward to the highest floors, where they kept maternity cases; high above the sound and clamor of the noisy pleasure-world. I told them who I was and what was happening, and some functionary assured Dio that a technician would be there in a few moments to take her to a room.

We sat on characterless, comfortless furniture, waiting. After a time, a young woman entered the room. She was wearing Medic clothing, bearing the curious staff-and-serpents of Terran medical services; I had been told that it was an antique religious symbol, but the medics seemed to know no more than I about what it meant. But there was something in the voice that made me look up and cry out with pleasure.

“Linnell!”

For the girl in uniform was my own foster-sister. Avarra alone knew what she was doing on Darkover, or in that curious uniform, but I hurried to her, took her hands, repeating her name. I could have kissed her, and I nearly did, but the young nurse drew back in outrage.

“What—I don’t understand!” she exclaimed, indignant, and I blinked, realizing I had made an insane blunder. But even now, staring, I could only shake my head and say, “It’s amazing—it’s more than just a resemblance! You areLinnell!”

“But I’m not, of course,” she said, with a puzzled, chilly smile. Dio laughed. She said, “It’s true, of course, you are very like my husband’s foster-sister. Very, verylike. And how strange to meet a double of a close relative, here on Vainwal, of all places! But of course Linnell would never have come here, Lew; she’s too conventional. Can you imagine Linnell wearing that kind of outfit?”

And of course I couldn’t; I thought of Linnell, in her heavy tartan skirt and embroidered over-tunic, her hair hanging in shining brown braids down her neck. This woman was wearing a white tunic and close-fitting trousers… a Darkovan in such costume would have feared incipient lung-fever, and Linnell would have died of outraged modesty. There was a little patch with a name written on it. I could read the Terran letters now, after a fashion, not well, but better than Dio. I spelled them out, slowly.

“K-a-t-h—”

“Kathie Marshall,” she said, with a friendly smile. She even had the little dimple near the right corner of her mouth, and the small scar on her chin which she’d gotten when we’d gone riding in a forbidden canyon on Armida land and our horses had stumbled and fallen under us. I asked her, “If you don’t mind, could you tell me where you got that scar?”

“Why, I’ve had it since I was ten,” she said. “I think it was an accident with an air-sled; I had four stitches.”

I shook my head, baffled. “My foster-sister has one just like it, in the same place.” But Dio made a sharp movement, as of pain, and instantly the woman, familiar-strange, Linnell-Kathie, was all professional solicitude.

“Have you timed the contractions? Good. Here, I’ll take you and get you into bed—” and as Dio turned to me, grabbing at my hand in sudden panic, she reassured, “Don’t worry about it; your husband can come and stay with you, as soon as the doctor’s had a look at you and seen what’s going on. Don’t worry,” she said to me, and the expression on her face was exactly like Linnell’s, sober and sweet and gentle. “She’s very healthy, and we can do a lot, even if the baby is born too soon. Don’t worry about your wife, or the baby either.”

And within the hour they called me into her room. Dio was lying in bed in a sterile hospital gown, but the surroundings were pleasant enough in the Vainwal fashion, green plants everywhere, patterns of shimmering rainbows beyond the windows; laser holograms, I supposed, but pleasant to watch, distracting the mind of the prospective mother from what was going on.

“Our coridombehaves like this when a prize mare is about to foal,” Dio said wryly. “Petting her and fussing over her and whispering reassuring words into her ears, instead of leaving her alone to get on with it. They’re all over me with machines supposed to tell them everything about the baby including the color of his eyes, but they won’t tell me anything.”

They let me stay with her in the early stages, rubbing her back, giving her sips of water, reminding her of the proper breathing; but we all knew it was too soon, and I was afraid. And I sensed Dio’s fear too, the tensing of fright, even through her careful attempts to relax, to cooperate with the inexorable process that was thrusting our child, unready, too soon into the world. We watched the rainbows, played a game or two with cards, but even I noticed one omission; neither of us discussed the future, or spoke of a name for the coming child. I told myself we were waiting until we knew whether we were really naming a son or daughter, that was all. Every hour or so they would send me out into the hall, while they came and examined her; and as the day moved on toward nightfall, after one of these intervals, the young nurse, Kathie, said, “You’ll have to stay down here, Mr. Montray; they’re taking her up to surgery. Things aren’t going quite as they should, and this baby will be verypremature, so we need all kinds of support for him, or her, right at hand the minute he’s born.”

“But I want Lew with me—” Dio cried, almost in tears, and clung, hard, to my good hand.

Kathie said gently, “I know. I’m sure it would comfort both of you. But, you see, we have to think first of the baby. As soon as the baby’s born we’ll let your husband come up and stay with you again. But now now, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”

I held Dio close, trying to reassure her with my touch. I knew how she felt, let myself sink into her body, into her pain—on Darkover, no telepath, no Comyn, would have considered being apart from the woman who bore his child, sharing her ordeal, so that he too should know the price of a child… but we were not on our home world, and there was nothing to be done.

“He is frightened,” Dio whispered, her voice shaken, and it frightened me too, to see her cry; I had grown so accustomed to her courage, her unflinching strength which had so often supported my own fears. Well, it was my turn to be strong.

“They’ll do the best for you that they can, preciosa.” I tried to send forth all kinds of soothing, calming thoughts, to enfold Dio and the child in a wash of calm and comfort; under it I saw the pain go out of her face, and she sighed and smiled up at me.