Foxfire
"Work with me on this, Possum," Foxfire said, striving for her best nursing tone. I'm probably
squeaking at her. Glory in the Lord, we're both nearly done with this pregnancy. Glory in Life,
thirty more days till the babies are due, only five more checkups after this one. Then The Tangent
will be graced with another set of these special children. Surely I can stay patient with Possum
that long.
"I cannot help it if I had to pee," shrilled the woman, fists on hipbones smoothed out of sight by
her swollen belly. She stood in the exam room's doorway, feet and back braced against her burden,
instead of waddling toward the scale. "I am ready now."
Get over here! Foxfire wanted to insist, but didn't. "Possum," she said with her best imitation
of patience. "Every checkup starts by weighing you and your baby."
"I know, child. And every checkup it just takes me longer to get there."
That's because you don't want me to know you've been overeating — again. And underexercising —
again.
A completion alert sounded behind Foxfire. "Possum, sit down on the scale. I have to go help
Maple." She spun around and hustled over to the resonance station.
The station provided a soft, beige reclining chair with broad arms. It also used a detection grid
in the form of a transparent shell that curved from side-to-side and headrest to footrest. So, as
the underlying med-tek unintrusively collected data about her and her baby, the patient sat, warm
and comfortable, feeling all the while like an historic astronaut rehearsing a deep-space mission.
The bank of foilscreens at the chair's back added to this impression.
Maple looked out through the shell and winked. "If I really wanted a machine to make me tingle all
over, I'd need my brains examined, not my plumbing."
Concerned, Foxfire leaned forward. "Do you really feel something?"
"Actually, I don't, but I do think Ailurus in there does." She nodded at the mound her
abdomen made beneath the examination muumuu, then grinned. "She stretched out like she really
enjoyed it, though she's quiet again."
Foxfire grinned back, then stepped away to check the station's displays. On a large foilscreen
behind Maple's head, a title panel declared, "Project: Bear, Cohort: 9, Patient: Ailurus," —
all the Bear children were named after species of bears on Gë — followed by, "Surrogate Mother:
Maple, Data Sample #45." Below that, a series of panels named all the tests, in order, with
results in shades of reassuring green and authoritative blue, and the words "complete, no errors,
results normal" alongside, just in case somebody bothered to read.
Next to these lines, sprawled over a large image panel, the station displayed a picture of Maple's
baby in utero. Shown with video clarity, Ailurus floated gently, thumb stuffed in her mouth, her
bulbous eyes closed but rolling about with a dream. Close to term, she no longer appeared human.
Her large, intricate ears sprouted a soft stubble of fur. Her nostrils flared to nudge her cheeks,
then fluttered closed. Her thick arms and legs twitched in imaginary play. Her weight alone, just
over seven kilograms, proved the difference. Only the largest human women who bore children easily
qualified to carry and raise a Bear child.
If only I were built that way. Bitter, the thought broke Foxfire's study of the mesograph. If
only I could bear such a child, came before she could muster her defenses against these habitual
self-incriminations, but now she forced other words through her mind. Glory in the Lord, there is
a reason for that. The displacement technique flowed more easily now. Just as there was a reason
for the first Bear. Helping things along, Foxfire lifted her eyes to the walls of the exam room.
A mural, drawn in quick, bold strokes of burnt sienna and jet and carmine and canary, flowed across
a wash of peach. Each scene, framed in jade arabesques, depicted a stage in the miraculous, though
short, life of Bear, as his parents named him. The tableau never failed to inspire Foxfire,
lifting her faith till it scattered renegade thoughts.
There, Bear's natural conception, artistically invoked as a dazzling fusion of colors surrounded by
a misty sketch of the loving embrace of his all-too-human parents, Scotchback and Mourningdove.
The Miracle in the Womb, soon thereafter, in which the Lord altered Bear's genetic structure,
manifested as a montage of helixes, suffused in a warm blend of colors, and a few lightning bolts
— childish, Foxfire knew, but she'd never discovered a better graphic metaphor.
The Miracle of Birth, where a living, breathing Bear lies calmly in the arms of his mother, a
happy, but exhausted Mourningdove, while a proud, but nervous Scotchback stands beside her.
The Miracle of Life, a winding collage of scenes skipping across Bear's brief span, showing him
grow, so vivid, so alive, so different from everyone else in The Tangent, a trail of joyful events
that led the eye to ...
The Gift, where a serious Bear, with flaring eyes and ears and hulking neck and shoulders, curved
his husky arms around a spot glowing in the air before his chest. The spot blazed with all the
vividness that the artist could draw from her pigments. Its light tinted everything around it, yet
at its very core hung a jet-black spangle, like a hole straight through that everything, where you
could see a spiral of stars hinting at the reaches of the Universe. Another artistic compromise:
mere humans couldn't really see Spaceª inside a Bear's anomaly, but it was there. Foxfire had
heard that the Bear Project had found ways to work with those anomalies.
After that, the Challenge of The Lord: one last panel focused on a dying, but beatific Bear, a
tremulous smile stretching his broad features, as he yielded the stem cells — magnified in their
own diffuse halo — from which a whole new race named after him would be born — if The Tangent
applied its skills in genetic engineering with sufficient faith and industry and endurance. A
Challenge that had defined the sect for as long as Foxfire could remember.
She explored this last, life-sized picture of Bear, all the while so aware of Ailurus' mesograph
glowing at her side. Never before had the connection between the progenitor and the latest cohort
of his descendants felt so clear, so vital.
Glory in Life, Ailurus will live longer than Bear's nine years, maybe even a lot longer, with less
pain and more joy — if I, and the rest of The Tangent, enable it.
With a sigh of commitment, Foxfire returned to the mesograph. She longed to hold this little one
— and the other Bears in this cohort. The previous cohort had already left their cuddly infancy
behind. The ten of them now toddled through the clinic, confused, delighted, adorable, reminding
everyone of true bear cubs.
In the meantime, she must make one more check before announcing any results to Maple. Unnecessary
really, but Nurse Poplar wanted it done this way and Foxfire both trusted and feared Nurse Poplar.
She tapped a key on the patient-assigned llevar plugged into a bay beneath the station's displays:
it downloaded the med-tek's results, compared them to Maple's last checkup and to her pregnancy
projections, and agreed that everything was normal.
"Foxfire," Possum whined from the other side of the room.
Foxfire ignored the call, retracted the station's shell, told Maple everything was fine, then
helped this volunteer surrogate mother, no more or less pregnant than Possum, out of the chair.
Foxfire suddenly saw herself as a Nurse, not just in-Training, caring for a Patient. She felt very
privileged and responsible as she settled Maple on a low stool beside a wall-mounted
server. Maple then helped herself to milk and a multi-grain beygl now that her overnight fast
could be broken. The sight, mother tending child and herself, warmed Foxfire.
She turned away slowly, glanced at Possum, then — should have expected something like this —
marched back to the scale.
Possum definitely brought out another aspect of the job as she slumped over the sono-boom. Her
chin rested on crossed hands, her jowls bulged with the pressure, her forlorn eyes trolled the
floor. Does she spend the days between checkups thinking up new ways to be pitiful?
Foxfire ignored the implied plea for sympathy. She held back on the nudge under her patient's chin
so that it was gentle and encouraging, then positioned baby and dam so the automaton could get good
readings. The scale quickly flashed the results on its screen.
What did I tell you? Overweight — again! Concern for Possum's unborn child pulsed through
Foxfire's thoughts. Fortunately, routine gave her some time to control her words. As Possum's
llevar snagged the scale's data and massaged it, Foxfire sipped a long, settling breath.
"Possum," Foxfire began, "you—" Be more gentle, Foxfire, more nurturing. "Your weight is
increasing faster than we like to see it, Possum. So is the baby's. And ..." She surveyed the
woman's flabby body. Don't you care? For the baby, if not yourself? Yet Foxfire said only, "You
haven't been exercising."
"What are you going to do?" Possum's tone was unbelievably scornful. "Take the baby away? The
same way you gave it to me?"
Glory in the Lord, technology still couldn't duplicate the complex coordination between mother and
child as they cooperated in the process of forming a new life. Without surrogates, no Bears could
be born. Foxfire glared at Possum. Don't you value this privilege the Lord has granted you?
"Foxfire." A gentle voice slipped into her ear, one that was immediately obeyed despite its
gentleness.
Foxfire rested a hand on Possum's shoulder as she turned. "Yes, Nurse Poplar."
"May I see you a moment?" The wizened Nurse, tactician for the whole clinic and leader of all
schooled but not certified Nurses, beckoned with a smile.
Foxfire left her patient with a firm pat. I was doing O.K. with Possum, wasn't I? Sure I was.
Especially considering her tone and attitude. Remember, Nurse Poplar isn't bad news all the time.
In fact, most of the time, I'm glad when she's around. Mostly self-reassured, Foxfire stepped
through the door with the Nurse.
"Acacia's in the trauma clinic," said Nurse Poplar.
So? She's a Nurse-in-Training. So? "Yes?" Foxfire said.
"As a patient. Fibular fracture. She was scheduled to escort the fourth Bear cohort to the Large
Square Dance tonight. Can you fill in?"
"Ouch!" Foxfire blurted, then frowned as her schedule for the evening sank in: she was supposed
to meet Meyer on his side of Ganj Dareh. Her left nipple roused with the thought, as though he had
just suckled it. "I —" Can't tell her about Meyer. "I have an outing planned for tonight."
The Nurse's eyes didn't waver.
Why can't I tell her? The Tangent doesn't say we can't date boys from the Circle of Humanity. Our
people do tend to look askance on it. Nurse Poplar wouldn't be like that. Why chance it?
"With a boy?" Foxfire tried again with a touch of entreaty.
No change.
So much for going out. A flutter of regret raced along her thighs. "It's nothing special," she
added in surrender even as a positive take fluffed through her mind like a white cloth settling on
a table. A short-term benefit for a longer-term sacrifice. "I'll have to send him a cancellation
— right away, if you want me to fill in." She didn't fight back a shy smile. "Could you, ah,
tend to Possum while I get to an Em-Deh entrance?"
The next three seconds seemed much longer as Nurse Poplar returned the scrutiny. Then she grinned
and twinkled and nodded.
"She's overweight," said Foxfire.
"I know."
"Third checkup in a row."
"I see." The Nurse's eyes carried her attention back into the exam room. "I think I can handle
that."
"What — may I ask? — what will you say?"
"We're going to pick one of the cohort mothers for an in-depth documentary, and I sure would like
to consider her as a candidate."
"Except ..."
"Yes, exactly: 'except.'"
Foxfire stepped out of the way, then added as her superior passed by, "Are you?"
Without a backward glance, Nurse Poplar said, "Yes, we are making such a documentary. The truth,
Foxfire, works better as a prod, even when it's only a rimshot."
