But Barbara didn't pick up the thought. She didn't appear to notice Evelyn's discomfort.
"Foolish!" she exploded. "I was foolish. Of course I should have taken it on faith. I felt I was right; I knew I was right. But the old scientific orientation finally drove me to the experiment. Experiment." She spat the word out. She paused again, calming down, and seemed to think back.
"Kill a woman?" She shook her head and gave Evelyn a wry smile. "Dear, that would be murder. I'm not a killer. These 'men' are already dead from my viewpoint; killing them is a mercy, and a defensive act. Anyhow, after I'd done the first experiment I realized I had really proved nothing. I had only disproved the assumption that a man cannot live with his head cut off. That left a whole range of possibilities, you see? Maybe the brain is not in the head. Maybe the brain isn't good for anything. How do you know what's inside you? Have you ever seen your brain? How do you know that you're not really a wired-up midget, two inches tall, sitting in a control room in your head? Doesn't it feel like that sometimes?"
"Ah..." Barbara had hit on a common nerve. Not the midget, which was only a fanciful way of putting it, but the concept of living in one's head with eye-sockets as windows on the universe.
"Right. But you reject the gut feelings. I listen to them."
The light in the room was rapidly failing. Evelyn looked at the bare bulb in the ceiling, wondering when it would come on. She was getting sleepy, so tired. But she wanted to hear more. She leaned back farther on the cot and let her legs and arms relax.
"Maybe you should..." she yawned, wider and wider, unable to control it. "Excuse me. Maybe you should tell me more about the parasites."
"Ah. All right." She went back to her chair and sat in it. Evelyn could barely see her in the shadows. She heard a faint creaking, as of wooden slats on a rocking chair. But the chair wasn't a rocker. It wasn't even made of wood. Nevertheless, Barbara's shadow was moving slowly and rhythmically, and the creaking went on.
"The parasites, I've already told you what they do. Let me tell you what I've managed to deduce about their life-cycle."
Evelyn grinned in the dark. Life-cycle. Of course they'd have one. She leaned on one elbow and rested her head on the wall behind her. It would be interesting.
"They reproduce asexually, like everything else. They grow by budding, since the new ones are so much smaller than the mature ones. Then doctors implant them into women's wombs when they know they're pregnant, and they grow up with the embryo."
"Wait a minute," Evelyn sat up a little straighter. "Why don't they implant them on all children? Why are girls allowed to... oh, I see."
"Yes. They need us. They can't reproduce by themselves. They need the warmth of the womb to grow in, and we have the wombs. So they've systematically oppressed the women they've allowed to remain uninfested so they'll have a docile, ready supply of breeders. They've convinced us that we can't have children until we've been impregnated, which is the biggest lie of all."
"It is?"
"Yes. Take a look."
Evelyn peered through the gloom and saw Barbara, standing in profile. She was illuminated by a sort of flickering candlelight. Evelyn did not wonder about it, but was bothered by a strange feeling. It was rather like wondering why she was not curious.
But before even that ephemeral feeling could concern her, Barbara loosened the cloth belt on her wrap and let it fall open. There was a gentle swell in her belly, unmistakably an early pregnancy. Her hand traced out the curve.
"See? I'm pregnant. I'm about four or five months along. I can't say for sure, you see, because I haven't had intercourse for over five years."
Hysterical pregnancy, Evelyn thought, and groped for her notebook. Why couldn't she find it? Her hand touched it in the dark, then the pencil. She tried to write, but the pencil broke. Did it break, she wondered, or was it bending?
She heard the creaking of the floorboards again, and knew Barbara had sat down in her rocker. She looked sleepily for the source of light, but could not find it.
"What about other mammals?" Evelyn asked, with another yawn.
"Uh-huh. The same. I don't know if it's only one sort of parasite which is adaptable to any species of mammal, or if there's one breed for each. But there are no males. Nowhere. Only females, and infested females."
"Birds?"
"I don't know yet," she said, simply. "I suspect that the whole concept of the sexes is part of the game. It's such an unlikely thing. Why should we need two? One is enough."
Leaves flexibility, she wrote. But no, she hadn't written, had she? The notebook was lost again. She burrowed down into the pile of blankets or furs on the cot, feeling warm and secure. She heard a sliding sound.
There in the peephole, ghostly in the candlelight, was a man's face. It was the attendant, looking in on them. She gasped, and started to sit up as the light got brighter around her. There was the sound of a key grating in a lock.
Barbara was kneeling at the side of the bed. Her robe was still open, and her belly was huge. She took Evelyn's hands and held them tight.
"The biggest giveaway of all is childbirth," she whispered. The light wavered for a moment and the metallic scraping and jiggling of the doorknob lost pitch, growled and guttered like a turntable losing speed. Barbara took Evelyn's head in her arms and pulled her down to her breasts. Evelyn closed her eyes and felt the taut skin and the movement of something inside the woman. It got darker.
"Pain. Why should giving birth involve pain? Why should we so often die reproducing ourselves? It doesn't feel right. I won't say it's illogical; it doesn't feel right. My intuition tells me that it isn't so. It's not the way it was meant to be. Do you want to know why we die in childbirth?"
"Yes Barbara, tell me that." She closed her eyes and nuzzled easily into the warmth.
"It's the poison they inject into us." She gently rubbed Evelyn's hair as she spoke. "The white stuff, the waste product. They tell us it's the stuff that makes us pregnant, but that's a lie. It warps us, even those of us they do not inhabit. It pollutes the womb, causes us to grow too large for the birth canal. When it comes time for us to be born, girl and half-girl, we must come through a passage that has been savaged by this poison. The result is pain, and sometimes death."
"Ummm." It was very quiet in the room. Outside, the crickets were starting to chirp. She opened her eyes once more, looked for the door and the man. She couldn't find them. She saw a candle sitting on a wooden table. Was that a fireplace in the other room?
"But it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't. Virgin birth is quite painless. I know. I'll know again very soon. Do you remember now, Eve? Do you remember?"
"What? I..." She sat up a little, still holding to the comforting warmth of the other woman. Where was the cell? Where was the concrete floor and barred window? She felt her heart beating faster and began to struggle, but Barbara was strong. She held her tight to her belly.
"Listen, Eve. Listen, it's happening."
Eve put her hand on the swollen belly and felt it move. Barbara shifted slightly, reached down and cradled something wet and warm, something that moved in her hand. She brought it up to the light. Virgin birth. A little girl, tiny, only a pound or two, who didn't cry but looked around her in curiosity.
"Can I hold her?" she sniffed, and then the tears flowed over the little human. There were other people crowding around, but she couldn't see them. She didn't care. She was home.
"Are you feeling any better now?" Barbara asked. "Can you remember what happened?"
"Only a little," Eve whispered. "I was... I remember it now. I thought I was... it was awful. Oh, Barbara, it was terrible. I thought..."
"I know. But you're back. There's no need to be ashamed. It still happens to all of us. We go crazy. We're programmed to go crazy, all of us in the infected generation. But not our children. You relax and hold the baby, darling. You'll forget it. It was a bad dream."
"But it was so real!"
"It was what you used to be. Now you're back with your friends, and we're winning the struggle. We have to win; we've got the wombs. There's more of our children every day."
Our children. Her own, and Barbara's and... and Karen's, yes, Karen. She looked up and saw her old friend, smiling down at her. And Clara, and there was June, and Laura. And over there with her children was Sacha. And... who was that? It's...
"Hello, Mother. Do you feel better now?"
"Much better, dear. I'm all right. Barbara helped me through it. I hope it won't happen again." She sniffed and wiped her eyes. She sat up, still cradling the tiny baby. "What are you naming her, Barb?"
Barbara grinned, and for the last time Eve could see the ghostly outline of that cell, the blue robe, Doctor Burroughs. It faded out forever.
"Let's call her Evelyn."
Beatnik Bayou
THE PREGNANT WOMAN HAD been following us for over an hour when Cathay did the unspeakable thing.